Page 170 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

“I suggest you let go,” he said in the demon tongue.

I smiled. “I appreciate the feedback.”

Carving a path with a vicious drilling of my magus magic first, I shoved the dagger—blade, hilt, and all—inside the demon king. My father’s blood was in that blade.

The ruler choked and staggered forward, and then I was hurtling through the air, pummeled bodily upward and away by a crushing blow.

I rolled across the ground, and my inner focus settled on a red spear of his blood shooting toward me. No barrier would help me with that, and my body was in shock from the blow.

Sascha hurtled into the path of the blood spear, and I cried out before seeing the spear had broken across the Luther’s back and splashed to the ground.

Of course. Luthers weren’t affected by demon blood.

Another spear was coming.

Andie intercepted this one, and I finally made it to my feet, forcing magic into my shocked body to spur it back to action.

The king’s eyes glowed red, as did his scales. Smoke poured from him now, and at least I had the relish of seeing the fucker lose control.

I switched Ryzika’s blade into my other hand, panting hard.

I opened a portal and sent an image of myself through. The demon king turned toward the image behind him, and I blurred forward from the front.

He’d half expected the trick, and a wall of red smoke rose between us. I couldn’t alter course in time, and I screamed as the smoke singed and picked at my skin.

I sliced across the backs of his legs, driving my black smoke into the wounds.

A red thread was coming for me. Too quick.

On instinct, I redirected it from me, and the demon king stumbled midturn. He frowned, and I kicked savagely at the wound in his side where I’d buried my father’s blade. Sending out a blast of my magic, I sealed the skin over the dagger.

Get that out, you bastard.

The demon king sprawled on the frozen ground, and I flicked away another of his intended attacks. A rage I’d locked away a long time ago in an act of self-preservation had steadily been freed as I fought.

The rage was one of loss.

This supernatural changed my life forever one summer’s day. He’d gone out of his way to kill people who had no designs to ever challenge his rule.

He’d killed my family.

I shrieked with fury and released a funnel of magic so powerful that it left my channels raw.

I fashioned the funnel into a blade and aimed it directly at a gap in the demon king’s scales.

His arm thudded to the ground. The guy just stared at his arm on the ground, not making a sound.

“Grandmother would have liked that,” I said.

The demon king was clawing at his side, trying to remove the poisonous blade I’d placed there.

Tsk, tsk.

I released another burst just as powerful.

This time, I connected my magic to the dagger buried inside his body. Hooking a rope of my power around the dagger, I then continued drilling to the iron cage around the ruler’s heart. Breaking the case would take more power than I possessed, but I hooked the other end of the rope around the iron casing, connecting it to my father’s blade.

Now, he couldn’t pull the poisonous dagger free without ripping his own heart out.

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