As we were taking the steps up to the second floor, Luke roared behind us, announcing his presence.
“You scared the shit out of me!” Shea shrieked at him as his fur brushed against my leg. He bounded along beside us and then squeezed past me, knocking my body into Shea. Soon he was at the front of the line, right beside Lincoln.
It was in that moment that I heard the small, yet mighty scream of a child. Adrenaline pulsed through me, and emotion tightened my throat. I wasn’t sure there was anything else in the world that motivated a soldier more than the wail of a helpless child.
Lincoln jiggled the door handle and then nodded to Luke.
“We’re on borrowed time!” Lincoln shouted, pulling his sword as blue splinters of light shot from the blade.
Luke wasted no time, rearing up on his hind legs, and then charging the door. Putting all of his probably five-hundred-pound weight into the push, he came down on top of it. The door was one of those cheaper aluminum ones, so instead of cracking or falling apart, it simply burst off the hinges and then fell flat onto the floor, revealing an apartment.
Lincoln waited for no one, charging past Luke and running headfirst into the house. My man was fearless. I hadn’t yet decided if that was a good or a bad thing.
We all waited as Lincoln, Noah, and the other two Fallen Army soldiers ran into the apartment. Then the first team went in—the one tasked with removing the dead little girl’s body. My heart ached at the very thought of seeing a dead child. I had every intention of being a good girl and awaiting Lincoln’s next instructions until I heard Bonnie’s call for help.
“She’s not dead!” my classmate screamed.
Instinct took over then. Bonnie was a Necromancer—she knew death. If she said the little girl wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead. I was the only healer available, so if the little girl needed help, it was going to have to come from me.
The second I started for the door, Shea and Luke trailed behind me without question.
“What are you doing?” the second group whispered. They were waiting by the door for Lincoln’s okay to come get the second twin.
“Don’t worry,” I told them, and then I was in the apartment.
As I entered the space, the first thing that hit me was the smell. It was surprisingly sweet and alluring—vanilla, but with an underlying decaying odor.
There were some gnarly battle sounds coming from the bedroom, and it took everything in me not to go in there, and try to help out. I had to trust that Lincoln had this handled.
‘If he doesn’t, I’m ready,’ Sera told me. I patted her hilt in an effort to calm her. I had every intention of not seeing that Succubus.
“In here!” Bonnie whisper-screamed, and I turned toward the sound. They were all hunched over a small child’s form, and the familiar swirls of purple and orange Necromancer magic—that I’d grown up seeing with my mom—were dancing around the little girl’s body.
I frowned. “I thought you said she wasn’t dead?” The little girl’s brunette hair was cropped short and splayed out onto the carpet behind her, and she was seemingly lifeless. If she wasn’t dead, why was Bonnie using Necro magic? Even if she was, why the hell was Bonnie using Necro magic? Besides it being forbidden to raise the dead in Angel City, it was doubly forbidden to raise a child.
Bonnie held her hands over the girl. “She’s kind of half in, half out. Her soul keeps jumping from that room back here into her body. I’m trying to pin it into her,” Bonnie explained.
That was some crazy shit. My mom tried to explain to me once how she knew someone was dead even from twenty feet away. It was the light, the aura, the soul. Necromancers could see it, sense it, manipulate it at times. It kind of freaked me out.
“Can you force it down? Then, maybe I could heal her.” Bending down, I ran my hands over the little girl, trying to do a healing scan. It was a third year study but Noah had shown me a little so I was going to wing it. She was human, obviously, and therefore quite frail from the trauma. There would be no supernatural healing kicking in for her.
Bonnie shook her head. “This is some advanced shit. The Succubus in the room is doing something. I’m pulling against her.”
I breathed in and out slowly, trying to feel for something I could heal, but there was nothing I could sense that needed healing. Her life-force felt so weak, and I wasn’t sure how to help that. I needed to work on my healing skills with Noah more.
“Lincoln, look out!” I heard one of the boys call from the room, and then a crashing sound rang throughout the house.
Screw the rules.
I pulled Sera from my thigh holster and took off running to the bedroom. I wasn’t going to let some little demon bitch hurt my man and steal this little girl’s soul.
I have the mark of Lucifer himself, and I’m not scared of any demon. They should be scared of me!
With all the confidence of a lioness, I ripped the door open and readied myself for a fight. But when my gaze fell onto the creature suspended in midair, I nearly pissed myself.
“Holy shitballs.” I breathed.
And then she tried to kill me.
Chapter Eight
I grew up around demons. Warts, oozing skin, horns, scales—none of it scared me. But the creature before me now was absolutely terrifying.
She was humanoid-looking with long, thin silvery hair, and gaunt cheeks that made her look even more ghoulish. Her body was waif thin, showing protruding bones from every angle. That was okay—a skinny demon, I could handle—but her eyes were… missing. Where a human would have eyes, she had black empty pits, and yet she looked right at me. Her hands were weapons themselves. The fingers didn’t seem to have skin, they were just sharpened bones that turned into claws, and glowed an angry red. She was grinning in my direction, and I saw a legit razor blade peeking out from behind her teeth.
I guess Lincoln wasn’t joking about that part.
Jesus Christ, have mercy.
Everything happened so quickly that I could barely process it. I did a rapid scan of the room to see both of the Fallen Army guards unconscious on the floor and Noah leaning over one of them, healing orange light emanating from his palms. Lincoln was crouched over a terrified, pale, stricken little girl identical to the one in the living room. His sword and gun were drawn and he looked feral, blood dripped from his left eyebrow and down his cheek.
The Succubus was already halfway to me, crawling across the ceiling like a possessed monkey. My name burst from Lincoln’s lips, but all I could hear was my heartbeat slamming in my ears. My eyes flicked once again to the little girl and how terrified she looked. This evil demon was feeding off them and had nearly killed her sister in the other room.
Anger boiled inside of me and I just… reacted. Sera told me nothing, gave me no advice, I just exploded. I leapt into the air to meet the demon instead of falling back. With a roar, I lashed out, and Sera shot a bolt of white-hot light from her blade that licked across the demon’s abdomen, cutting it open.
Holy shit.
I barely had time to register how badass Sera was, and that she’d cut the demon without touching her, when a razor blade flew across the room and sank into my left upper arm. Pain shot up my muscles, as I fell backward with all the grace of a giant elephant. The Succubus didn’t let up—she was coming for me full throttle.
“Brielle!” Lincoln roared, but didn’t leave the little girl’s side.
Rage boiled hotter inside of me and I did a kick up, throwing my legs into the air and forward, allowing the motion to pull my body into a standing position. A little something Darren taught me. The demon dropped from the ceiling like a freaking hundred-pound spider, landing right on top of me. Her hip hit my head, throwing me to the side, and then I felt her searing hot claws on my back. I’d fallen to my knees with her weight, but her leg was right in front of me, and I took the opportunity to shove Sera in, right up to the hilt.