Page 237 of Mayhem and Minnie

My eyes widen. It must be around ten feet tall at this point.

Its bulky, misshapen frame rises from the fallen debris of the fall.

Minnie gets up, but she’s wobbly on her feet.

Her dress is in tatters, and blood stains every visible inch of her skin.

She’s breathing hard as she looks back, her features tense when she sees that most of the guests are still in the driveway.

Everyone is screaming bloody murder now.

If they’d been scared at the sign of an earthquake and a potential fire, now they’re absolutely terrified as they come face to face with the ugly mess of mangled flesh that’s this demon.

“Marlowe…” my mother whimpers.

I don’t have time to console her, though.

Giles is already dragging her and my siblings away to the car, so I focus my attention on Minnie.

Reaching her side, I let her lean on me as she recovers from the blow.

Her skin is healing, but she looks out of breath. Tired.

“Minnie, maybe you should?—”

She shakes her head.

“I have things under control,” she murmurs, her voice ragged.

I raise a brow.

“The demon is almost double the size it was before,” I point out in a dry voice.

“That’s the point,” she wheezes. “That’s its demonic essence. Now I just need to end it. Stay back.” She pushes me out of the way, but I don’t think she realizes her strength because I’m thrown back a few feet. I barely keep myself from falling. But at the same time, the demon releases a loud, earth-shattering growl and advances forward.

It’s nimbler on its feet than before.

And as it rushes toward Minnie, dark smoke surrounds its body, almost as if it’s seeping into the atmosphere, infecting it.

A bright blue light erupts from Minnie’s chest.

She becomes covered in a translucent blue armor. It molds to her body until there’s not an inch left uncovered. Her hair, too, flows down her back, lengthening until it reaches her ankles. Around her face appears an ice-like face mask that covers her cheeks, forehead, and nose. Only her eyes and lips are still visible.

The armor appears to come from deep within her, and I soon realize that it’s made of ice.

She manifests her ice swords in each hand, and before I can blink, she’s out of sight.

She moves with the speed of light as she strikes against the demon.

I can only make out some flashes of blue and the horrible cries of pain of the demon as she slashes at him, time after time.

But whereas before it could immediately mend its body, this time, the ice blade cuts deep within its essence, fast and strong so that the demon cannot heal.

With each blow, she chips away at its body.

It tries to strike back, both with its crooked arms and with his energy blasts, but she’s too fast for him.

She flashes herself from his back to his front, then to the side and back to the front, cutting away at him.

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