Page 5 of Mayhem and Ember

“What the hell, Chaos?” I hocked up the biggest loogie I could and spit the rest of the roach goo from my mouth. “Make your demon friend behave.”

“He’s not a demon.” Ash grabbed my arm and dragged me out from under the creature from not-Hell. “He’s a fae.”

“What?” I fumbled with the rope still tied around me like a harness. “How did he get so big?”

“He’s midlevel,” Chaos said. “Most likely a scout for the greater fae horde.”

“Fabulous.” I got one knot untied when the flitting of roach wings assaulted the air and the sucker swooped to the ground, grabbing the rope that was still tied to one leg and jutting upward to the ceiling once more.

My feet left the floor with a jerk of his arm, and he hauled me halfway up, leaving me dangling upside down like a witchy chandelier in the middle of the room.

Blood rushed to my head, but I swung myself upright and grabbed the rope. “How do I kill him?”

“Beheading is the fastest way,” Chaos said. “Unless you can find an opening in his exoskeleton to stab his heart.”

I freed my other leg from the harness and glared up at Roachman. He yanked my dagger from his neck and hurled it to the ground, heaving a giant breath against the pain. As his chest expanded, so did his armor, revealing an opening right beneath his heart. Or…where I assumed his heart would be.

Lifting my leg, I snatched a knife from my ankle holster and silently prayed to the goddess it would be long enough to reach the prize. Clutching the metal handle between my teeth, I hauled myself up the rope, which was a lot harder than I remembered from gym class. When all this was over, I needed to hit the weights.

I peered down at Ash, who rummaged through her spell kit, no doubt trying to concoct something to weaken his armor. Chaos kneeled beside her, taking the ingredient bottles as she handed them to him, and Shade…

Was he on his phone?

“Bastard,” I mumbled around the steel between my teeth. Returning my attention to Roachman, I hauled myself up a little farther, but my vision wavered and my lips suddenly didn’t feel the coolness of the handle pressed against them. My whole mouth went numb.

Nausea churned in my gut, and I gagged. The knife fell to the ground, and I tried to move my jaw, to speak, to scream, to…anything.

But I couldn’t feel my face.

“Don’t let him bite you, Ember,” Shade called and held up his phone. “According to the witchy web, these guys are venomous.”

Fan-friggin’-tastic. That explained the numbness spreading down my neck.

I hurried a few feet down the rope and let go. My knees buckled when I hit the ground, and I rolled before jutting to my feet again.

“Heh…” was the only sound I could muster, so I pointed to my mouth and pressed my hands against my cheeks and my head.

Ash’s face pinched with concern. “He already got you?”

I nodded.

“If you can bring him down, I’ve got a softening spell that might weaken him enough to get a knife through.” She held up a steaming copper bowl.

If I’d had my sword, I would’ve lobbed his head clean off by now.

“Hey, ugly.” Shade hurled a knife, but it bounced off Roachman’s armor and tumbled into the crevice where my sword lay, out of reach. He tried again, this time hitting an impenetrable wing.

If my mouth worked, I could have told them about the two soft spots I’d found, but my tongue had swollen to the size of a lemon. I couldn’t close my lips, much less make sound pass from them. Hell, it was a miracle I could even breathe.

“Are you sure that spell won’t reach the ceiling?” Shade asked. “Or what about hellfire?”

Chaos flexed his fingers, gathering fire in his palms before shooting it toward our foe. The Roachman screeched and wrapped his wings around his body, shielding himself from the flames. As the demon called his fire back, smoke billowed from the creature’s form.

Cracks spread across his rigid wings, the surface peeling from the heat of Hell, but Roachman hung on, hissing and fluttering, raining charred bits of wing onto us.

“You’ll have to go hotter.” Ash poured the powdered potion into her hand and closed her fingers around it.

“I hit it with everything I have. I will try again.” He gathered more hellfire, and I turned to the mess the imps had made of the basement. Surely there was something here I could throw at the beastie. My last knife attached to my ankle had a blade only three inches long. Even if I could get it beneath the armor, it wouldn’t pierce the heart.

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