He nodded slowly. As he stood, he batted the devils away from his face so he could see.
I was at the very edge of the boundary. A pulse of energy hit me as my foot strayed past the tree. A shock of warning. How could Naomi have missed it? It raced through me like an alarm, running up my leg and back down my spine. I yanked my foot back. The magic had a menacing undertone. I’d never felt anything like it.
Danny opened his arms to ready himself and I lobbed a single dart underhanded. He stumbled forward to catch it. It hit his open palm and he curled his fingers around it, capturing it without breaking it. Then I threw the next one. Once he held both, I yelled, “Go! Pierce Naomi first and then yourself. Do it now!”
He jerked around and fell to his knees next to her. There was a mass of devils on her chest. He ripped them off, their mouths saturated with blood, and plunged the dart deeply into her stomach.
She convulsed once and went still.
Then he turned the second dart on himself, stabbing it right through one of the screeching devils high on his thigh. Danny froze in place for a millisecond before he toppled onto Naomi, none of his body parts moving.
Blue meant freezer.
Almost immediately the devils started to fall off. Each of them twitching once before freezing in place on the ground.
“Ohmygod, it’s working! Come on. We have to go get them now,” I yelled, tugging Tyler’s arm. “Eamon said it won’t last long.”
I moved forward only to be yanked back once again. “Tyler! You have to stop doing that.” I turned, angry. My irises sparking. “I’m not a child and you’re wasting valuable time.”
“The hell I’m letting you out there,” he snarled. “My job here is to protect you. It’s what you hired me to do and that’s what I’m damn well going to do. Get another spell primed for me. I’ll bring them back, and if those little fuckers get me, stab me with it once I cross the line.”
He took off before I could argue. I hadn’t technically hired him—my father had. But he was right; it was why he was here—that and he loved me. As he ran, the winged devils that hadn’t succumbed to the spell swarmed him. “Tyler!” I screamed. “Keep moving!” I tried to infuse as much power as I could into my voice. I had no idea if it would work on my brother, but it was worth a try.
He raced to Naomi and flung her over his shoulder. She landed stiffly, which made it hard. Then he turned and grabbed Danny by the arm. Instead of lifting him, he dragged him behind. I fumbled for another spell, this time yellow. I fisted it right as Tyler barreled back through the trees.
He tossed Naomi at a stunned Eamon, who caught her with ease. At the same time he let go of Danny and dropped to the forest floor on his knees. The few of the devils that had clung to him fell off and seemed discombobulated, opening their red-stained maws, gasping for breath. None of them had bitten him. “Why didn’t they bite you?” I asked.
“I think they all had a taste of the spell, even if it wasn’t a lot, and I think they’re confused.” He grabbed one off the ground where it had fallen. The thing tried to latch unsuccessfully on to his finger. Its eyes blazed a feral orange and its skin was both scaled and leathery. Tyler gave it a squeeze. Its chest imploded and it went limp. Before he could toss it back over the boundary line, it disappeared right out of his hand with a little pop.
“Okay. That was strange.” I took a step closer and one of the devils on the ground flew halfheartedly at me. It wobbled like it was drunk, but its intentions were clear—it wanted my flesh and blood. “Oh, no you don’t.” It zoomed at me lopsided. I angled my arm back. When it was within a foot of me, I pounded my fist into it. It connected hard, and the thing exploded with a shriek and sailed outside of the boundary line and blinked out of existence.
Tyler started picking up a few errant ones. “Help me toss them out there.” He gestured to the clearing. “You need to kill them first so they go away. Then chuck them past the trees.”
“Wait,” I said after he’d killed two and threw them back. “We should keep one.”
He glanced at me with a question. “Why would we keep one?”
“The ones that aren’t frozen are dazed in here. Look at that one.” I pointed to one on the ground that wobbled in a circle. “We have to find a way to defeat them or we can’t go any farther, so let’s keep one.”
Tyler shrugged. “Okay. Fair enough.”
“Alive.”
He grimaced. “How are we going to keep it from attacking us? What if it decides to wake up?”
“We can tie it down somehow. How about nailing it to a tree?”
“That might work.”
“But we don’t have a hammer, do we?”
Tyler grinned. “I don’t need one. I can pound anything into a tree with this.” He lifted up his fist. “I’ll find a sharp rock.”
Now that the devils were figured out, I knelt by Danny’s side. He was lying facedown, so I gently rolled him over. It wasn’t easy because he was still frozen.