Page 33 of Eternal Mate

Ignoring the pain as best as I could, I turned to Barimuz. The Archdemon seemed to be unaffected, but a change in his stance indicated that he was getting ready for a fight.

Azazel ignored us to pounce directly on him.

Even though I tried to keep watching through the stabbing pain in my head, I could only vaguely register a flurry of claws, demonic magic, and whipping tails before I had to screw my eyes shut and drop to the ground in a kneel.

It felt like hours before the screeching stopped, although it was probably only a matter of seconds.

I jumped up from my fetal position to frantically look around. Atlan and Sariel had also gotten to their feet, and they were looking wide-eyed at something to our right.

When I followed their line of sight, I was flabbergasted.

Azazel’s head had been straight-up ripped off. A new one was growing in its place, unfortunately, but the old one was slowly dripping out of the jaws of something I’d never seen before.

A black wolf with heavy silver feathering around its scruff stood on two legs beside Azazel.

The way his spine curved and the finger-like hooks of his front claws gave him a human stance. On top of that, a red glow came from both his eyes and the pocket of his throat, and instead of a fluffy wolf tail, a long, silver lizard one trailed behind him to slink against the ground.

After a few seconds, this new wolf spat the rest of Azazel’s head onto the ground, then wiped his maw off with his clawed hands. “Gross,” he growled out.

It was growly and pitched down a few octaves, but I recognized Ashe’s voice well.

While the three of us were recovering from the surprise, Barimuz stepped forward. “Good work, whelp. That screech only affects non-demons. Now come help me power the circle while these three distract him.”

He jumped to a much less crowded part of our chosen arena to continue his work. Ashe looked from him, to Azazel, and then to us, after which he gave us a helpless shrug and sprinted over to Barimuz’s side.

I would process that demon-wolf revelation later. For now, as I watched Azazel’s head reform, I had bigger things to worry about.

“Sixty percent,” Barimuz called out. “Two minutes.”

Two minutes until full activation. We could do that.

Azazel was currently on the edge of the circle, near the rightmost cave wall. He turned his attention to us, snarling, and readied his remaining spider limbs.

He pounced, spread out to try and get us all at once.

We scattered. A random idea popped into my head, so I grabbed one of Azazel’s left limbs and pulled.

The beast screeched and listed to the side, knocked off-balance. Although he looked formless, maybe there actually was some kind of structure within him to knock off-balance.

Atlan darted up to Azazel’s fallen body, then let out some kind of supersonic bark that rattled my brain. It seemed to rattle Azazel’s even worse; his gelatinous skin rippled, and a nasty snarl-slash-whine left the spaces between his teeth as the gloop began to fall away from him.

I didn’t have time to react properly before Azazel lashed out and knocked Atlan clear across the cave.

I could only helplessly watch as Atlan hurtled through the air at a higher speed than I could fly—right toward Ashe.

Dual yelps sounded out as the wolf hybrids crashed to the ground together. I kept my eyes on them only long enough to make sure neither of them were fatally injured, and then I turned back to Azazel.

He was still losing ‘skin,’ somehow. I wasn’t sure what Atlan had done to him, but he seemed to have made Azazel lose permanent fine control over himself—he was interchangeably trying to make appendages with his main body and attempt to conjure up those spikes again, but they always trembled and lost form in milliseconds.

After a full couple of seconds of trying, he let out an angry roar. Skeletal arms suddenly shot out of his diminishing body, and he used those to ground him instead as he leapt forth.

Sariel dodged him, beginning a game of cat and mouse.

Azazel would swipe, and Sariel would beat his wings to fly up. Azazel would stab outwards, and Sariel would swirl to the side.

While I had the chance, I checked on my fellow wolves. Ashe was standing tall and seemed to be fine, but Atlan was laying on his side on the ground behind him, ears flat and eight eyes narrowed in pain. That initial hit must have hurt him pretty badly to take him out.

Eventually, Azazel turned his focus onto me, sweeping his arms outwards to slash at me. I continued the stalling game, flying off and away from all of his attacks.

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