Page 23 of Till Death

None of them listened to me. I bent my knees slightly and swung my sword in an arc. The movement felt natural at this point, and Bertha an extension of me. The Halflings surrounded me and I lashed out with fist and sword and knee, rage flaring, ready to get them out of my way to continue my search.

Fire pumped through my veins as I hit the nearest ugly asshole right in the kidney. Or at least, where his kidney should have been. Unfazed, he snarled at me and took a menacing step forward. Was his skin made of iron? It definitely felt like it, the way my fist throbbed. He kept coming forward, so I parried the first hit with a second punch to his jaw. His head snapped back and it still wasn’t enough to deter him, saliva dripping from his huge lower jaw even with his neck cracked.

The absolute gall of him made me furious. I sliced Bertha across his neck with enough force to have his skin gape open like a smiling face. None of it mattered. Another soon moved forward to take his place. Then another. And another behind him.

A few broken bones weren’t enough to slow these guys down. They needed to be good and dead before they were not a problem anymore. I sliced through the first few before my arms began to shake, the chunk in my leg throb in time with the movements. Blood rained over me in a downpour. The creatures, as varied as they looked in appearance, all had a single goal in mind: death.

Utter destruction of anyone and anything in their path.

Their nature demanded nothing less, and the fact that they used to be people, kids trying to fight against the literal demon inside of them, didn’t make the killing any easier to swallow.

My hands trembled with each new kill and I locked my knees to keep from falling over. They bum rushed me from every side, forcing me a step back at a time until my spine hit the wall.

I still wasn’t able to properly use my light power and didn’t want to chance passing out and making myself vulnerable. The risk just wasn’t worth the reward because there were too many for me to take out with a single blast.

What were they all doinghere, anyway?

One of the creatures got too close and sank its fangs into my upper thigh. I yelled, twisting away and ripping out more skin with the movement. Blood spurted up from the wound no matter how quickly I tried to put distance between me and those fangs.

Celestial speed? Agility?

None of those things seemed to matter right now. At least, they didn’t for me. I wasn’t exactly the picture-perfect Archangel. Like any other person going up against a Halfling, I fought and bled for my life. I got winded. I got tired.

I earned a gash on my shoulder for my split-second of hesitation, glancing up in time to see even more Halflings racing towards me.

“Enough!” I tried to scream but little sound came out.

Plan B?

I didn’t have one.

Desperate times called for desperate measures apparently, and this certainly qualified. Time to pull out the big guns and hope they paid off at least a little bit. It looked like I’d be seeing Hank a lot sooner than I’d bargained, or his devil counterpart—however my soul ended up being weighed, because I knew there was no afterlife left for me.

Sucking in a deep breath, I lifted my free hand and prepared to call whatever light I had left anyway. If I had to go down, then I’d go down in a blaze of glory.Literally. I pulled on every ounce of magic left inside of me and focused on sending it out in a wave, focused on it crashing down on these guys.

White light began to curl around my wrist and the Halfling in front of me went wide-eyed, staring down at my hand.

Good. I hoped the creature felt even a bit of the fear I’d seen in Cole when he’d begun his transformation.

I just…had to center myself. Concentrate.

Ready to blast these suckers into endless nothingness, I pulled back my elbow with a yell, my power gathering. I paused for the briefest second at the flash of movement to my right, just time to notice a new tear rip through the wall. The veil went thin enough that I saw the mortal world clearly, as though I stood on the street corner.

I recognized the spot, too. Only a few blocks away from Divine Magic. My chest seized, heart ready to beat right through my ribs.

My distraction gave the Halflings time to twist their focus from me to the tear in the veil. It gave them time to bolt toward the opening and disappear into the mortal world while I was busy trying to call my light.

“No!”

My friends weren’t expecting a fresh wave of hellions on their doorstep. They could barely cope with the swarm they already faced. They’d never be able to handle these newest additions.

Did I stay or did I follow?

Torn in two different directions, I froze. I’d already spent so much time searching for Cole and I hated having to turn back now, when I was this close. How did I abandon him? But it was a rock and a hard place situation.

Abandon my search for Cole to follow and help my friends…or not?

My heart jolted to the point where my head spun and everything around me went hazy. My body made the decision for me in the next breath, jumping toward the rip to follow the demons out. I would have made it, too, if a hand hadn’t fallen on my shoulder to paralyze me.

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