Page 55 of Witch Queen

The demon handed her the weapon two hours later.

Her hands shook as she took it, the metal cool against her skin.

“Why don’t you try pouring your magic into it?” Armaros suggested.

Mae swallowed. Demonic energy laced with black and white magic bloomed around her as she drew on her cores. She gathered the potent aura into her hands and willed it into the pendant. Brimstone transformed and pressed his brow to her back, his tails vibrating as he lent her his powers.

Despite their efforts, the weapon stayed as inanimate as the tools that had forged it.

Mae’s vision swam with tears. Her shoulders slumped.

No, Na Ri mumbled.This cannot be!

Armaros scratched his head. “I don’t understand. I used the same process the first time I made him.”

“Was there something else?” Astarte frowned. “Something Azazel had to do to make him, I don’t know,” she waved a hand, “—wake up?”

The answer came to Mae and Armaros at the same time.

“Oh!” the demon mumbled.

Mae grabbed a knife from the table, her heart racing. She cut her thumb and squeezed blood on the pendant.

It absorbed the crimson drops with a hungry hiss.

Hope exploded inside Mae, making her dizzy. Na Ri shuddered.

They invoked the name that had inhabited their every dream and waking moment since the fateful night they last fought the Sorcerer King.

“Come, Hellreaver!”

The fire that pulsed inside their cores made Mae gasp. Brimstone stiffened above her when he felt the echo of the weapon’s revival.

A crimson light trembled into life around the pendant.

Nikolai tensed. Vlad and Cortes grew wary. Astarte and Ilmon appeared fascinated by what they were witnessing.

A smug smile stretched Armaros’s mouth. “Told you guys I could do it.”

Mae stared breathlessly at Hellreaver. The power swelling inside her and Na Ri’s cores felt stronger than when they’d first experienced the weapon’s awakening, in the cemetery in South Ridgewood where Rose’s family had laid her empty coffin to rest.

It matched the thickening glow engulfing the pendant.

He is more powerful, Na Ri murmured in a voice full of wonder.

Black and white threads appeared amidst the scarlet energy shivering violently on the metal.

Mae’s eyes widened.Is that because our magic has evolved?!

Probably.

Hellreaver levitated out of her grasp with a speed that made her suck in air. He transformed, the haze around him shrinking down to an aura of black and crimson static.

“I know I’ve asked this question before,” Cortes said leadenly, “but is he bigger too?”

Mae’s heart pounded hard, her stunned gaze riveted to Hellreaver’s new form.

He was sixty inches of wicked menace, his metal twice as thick and gleaming ominously despite his inky color, his serrated edges deeper and more jagged where they glinted with magic.

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