Page 33 of Mortal Heart

He pressed his mouth to her ear and warned, “Farrell is not well.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” She spun her blade reflexively in her hand without having to look at it. “Seems to be a couple fries short of a Happy Meal.”

“It’s more than that,” he insisted. “I can smell—”

Farrell’s maniacal laughter cut off abruptly, replaced with a choking sound. His eyes had gone completely black. The sickening odor intensified.

“Phew.” Arkady wrinkled her nose. “Somebody’s a stinky little vamp.”

“I…had…her…first,” Farrell gurgled. His eyes bulged slightly as he met Ronan’s gaze. “Your Valkyrie…is…mine.”

Ronan worried Farrell’s taunt would hit a nerve. But when he glanced at Arkady, she smirked. “Yours?” she scoffed. “In your dreams.”

Farrell’s mouth opened impossibly wide, stretching the pale flesh of his cheeks until it tore. His jaw broke apart with an audible sound and hung loose from his face, held in place by torn skin and tendons.

“Ruh-roh,” Arkady muttered.

A horde of screeching four-winged insects spewed out of Farrell’s mouth. No, not large insects, Ronan realized immediately—tiny demons. Hundreds of them, all wearing armor and wielding razor-edged swords likely dipped in poison. His angelic ability to sense the presence of demons remained, even if most of his other powers had been taken away. Farrell crumpled to the floor, apparently insensible.

Minor demons like these had posed no threat to Ronan as an archangel. He would have swatted them as easily as the flies they resembled.

As a mortal man, however, he could be sickened and even incapacitated by their poison. And Arkady, for all her knives and unrelenting cockiness, could absolutely die from it.

The horde of tiny demons made a beeline for them, their deadly swords leading the way.

Though Ronan doubted she’d ever seen such creatures in her life, the sight didn’t seem to faze Arkady in the least. Brandishing knives in each hand, she ran straight toward the horde with a banshee yell.

A frontal assault was a tactic clearly neither he nor the demons had anticipated. Caught off guard, the demons seemed conflicted about whether to attack or get out of the way of the much-larger human woman about to plow into them. While they had numbers on their side, minor demons weren’t terribly bright. It was a weakness he and Arkady would have to exploit to survive.

Just before she reached the horde, Arkady dropped to the floor with one leg outstretched and the other bent like she was sliding into home plate. Her momentum carried her past the confused demons. Unfortunately, the less-befuddled ones managed to stab and slash her as she passed. His stomach lurched as they left bloody wounds on her face, neck, and chest. How much of the poison could she withstand?

Once clear of the horde, Arkady jumped to her feet and dashed for the dungeon’s bedroom. He had to assume she had a plan and wasn’t just running for cover. That meant he needed to buy her time.

His celestial sword would have incinerated the demons without even touching them, but he couldn’t wield it. Instead, he drew his hidden and enchanted, but much less powerful, sword from the scabbard on his back.

On impulse, he picked up Arkady’s discarded flogger. When she’d produced it back at her house to use as part of their ruse, it had appeared fairly well used. Arkady seemed to have an appetite for adventurous sex. Which was why when they’d first entered this dungeon all he’d been able to think about was how much fun they could have had here if they hadn’t been after Farrell.

Sword in one hand and flogger in the other, he charged the demon horde.

The tiny flying demons might have been confused about how to react to Arkady, but they had no such trouble attacking Ronan. Maybe they sensed his angelic origin or celestial sword and attacked him instinctively. Or maybe they recognized him as the greater threat. Either way, they swarmed him like bees.

As the demons reached him, Ronan lashed out with the flogger, dashing a dozen demons at a time to the floor, where they lay dazed. The dozens of thin leather strips were far more effective than his knife would have been. But for every one he hit, a dozen sank their tiny swords into his flesh. The poison raised welts that burned white-hot like they’d been made with branding irons. He gritted his teeth and swung his weapons harder and faster.

Pale and a little unsteady on her feet, Arkady emerged from the dungeon’s bedroom carrying the black sheets from the king-sized bed. He was horrified to see her wounds had turned black and oozed blood. Her breathing sounded labored.

Halfway across the room, she stumbled and almost fell. “Son of a bitch, that hurts,” she gasped. She flung one of the sheets at him. “Let’s…get ’em.”

Her plan was obvious. He caught the sheet, returned his sword to its scabbard on his back, and fought to trap as many of the demons in the sheet as possible. While the demons’ swords could inflict painful wounds and armor safeguarded their bodies, their wings had no protection. Once the demons were entangled and immobilized in the sheet, he and Arkady could stomp them until their wings broke off, leaving them to writhe and screech on the floor.

They quickly discovered that de-winged did not mean disarmed or helpless. Arkady flinched and plucked several toothpick-sized blades from her forearm. “Son of a—they’re throwing their swords!”

Ronan pulled a half-dozen swords from his own skin and tried to keep the demons focused on him.

Arkady, her teeth gritted, somehow managed to stay on her feet until the last of the tiny demons had been de-winged. “What do we do with them?” she asked, panting. “Can’t cut them up. That armor’s made of mithril or some shit.”

With a growl, Ronan covered the wriggling horde with both bedsheets, then toppled a heavy rack of whips, chains, and restraints on top of the sheets. The demons’ shrieks at least were muffled now. “That ought to hold them,” he said. “We’ll let disposing of them be the vamps’ problem.”

Arkady swayed on her feet. He caught her before she fell. “Little assholes,” she wheezed into his chest. “I think they poisoned me.”

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