She’d almost been fucking grabbed!
Delora flittered to them and turned solid. Lindiwe threw a shield over them so they could take a breather, and Emerie assessed their opponents.
The feather-winged Demon landed right in front of her with a double thwap of its pawed feet. Terror and painful memories bubbled hot inside her consciousness like acid, threatening to corrode the remnants of clear-headedness she’d somehow been pulling out of her arse for this fight.
Emerie pushed herself between the two women waiting near her and turned to give the winged Demon her back. Someone else could deal with it because she sure as shit could not.
However, other than it, only two more Demons remained besides Jabez. Four enemies in total, not bad.
Reia had managed to take out quite a few on her own, and many were littered with Delora’s arrows. Emerie was sure those black magical tentacles aiding them had crushed one or two as well. She and Lindiwe hadn’t been so successful, considering Emerie couldn’t just turn intangible within the blink of an eye, but every monster they killed had helped.
“What are we going to do?” Emerie asked. “Reia, she... Won’t the guys come now?”
“Every Phantom’s return time is different,” Lindiwe explained. “It could be a few minutes, or an hour. It won’t matter anyway. It’ll take them a day to get here in their monstrous forms. This will be over long before that.”
Guilt squeezed Emerie’s heart, and she wished the reminder of Ingram hadn’t been pushed into her thoughts. This will be over soon... Her life was about to be over, and she worried how Ingram would react to that.
She clenched her eyes and shook her head. No. I’m replaceable, she reminded herself, hoping, pleading that was true.
“I-I need to collect my arrows,” Delora muttered through heavy pants of exertion. “I’m almost out.”
“We need to focus on Jabez,” Lindiwe demanded. “The barrier... It won’t last much longer. Weldir’s magic is waning. We’re running out of time.”
Even now, Emerie could see it pulsating and growing smaller before it suddenly expanded – only to shrink again. Weldir must be helping from wherever he was, pushing more magic into it sporadically as it continued to weaken.
“I thought he was powerful,” Emerie accused, panic threatening to settle in completely.
Honestly, watching Jabez disappear and reappear out of nowhere was frightening her. How was she supposed to get him before he teleported?
And the fact he could just slyly come up behind her had her spine tingling with awareness of how... vulnerable it was.
At any given moment, she could end up like Reia and everything would be lost.
“He is, but it’s limited,” Lindiwe quickly defended. “Everything I do drains him.”
“Fuck it then,” Emerie rasped. “Guess we better hurry up.”
“Delora, keep the Demons from interfering with us.”
She nodded, shoulder-length hair waving around her sombre face. “Got it.”
Their backs bumped up against each other’s in encouragement before they lunged forward. Lindiwe and Emerie ran for Jabez standing on the steps of the throne’s podium, while Delora ran in the only direction there wasn’t a Demon so she could grab what arrows she could.
The ones she picked up would be blunt, but the force of her shots should still penetrate. Not as deeply, but hopefully enough.
“He’ll focus on me,” Lindiwe said under her breath, glancing at Emerie from the corner of her eye.
That was all Emerie needed to know.
They separated, going around him to split his focus. Just as she foresaw, Jabez turned to Lindiwe.
At the top of the stairs, Emerie fought against a medium-sized Demon that looked like it had been grotesquely mashed between a lizard and a human. It wasn’t very tall, but it was thin and fast. It was completely human in form besides its tail, with pale patchy skin, but it was covered in scales and spikes.
It kind of reminded her of Ingram, just ugly and without a raven skull.
Delora perched herself on top of the throne’s backrest and kept the other Demons at bay. They were one person down; it would have been a lot easier with Reia here.
Behind her, Emerie heard the clatter of a fight. Slaps, snarls, and gasps echoed, and the only time she saw anything was from her peripheral.
At one point, Lindiwe had taken to hovering in the air while solid, like her cloak was giving her the ability to float for a few seconds. Jabez would materialise in front of her, allowing himself to fall as he tried to grasp her before she turned incorporeal.
The Demon grabbed Emerie’s arm to protect itself when she attempted to cut it across the face, causing her to wince when its claws began to cut into her arm. It was too big and strong, and the diadem did little to protect her skin this time. However, it yowled in pain when it tried to grab her head, yanking its hand away from directly touching the diadem.
With the help of Delora, who shot the lizard Demon in the eye, Emerie was able to slice across its neck.
Then Delora moved, going to the rest of the throne room littered with Demon corpses. She took the attention of the two remaining monsters who still breathed, and the winged one took flight to stop her from shooting from the air.
This was Emerie’s chance.
Jabez obviously didn’t see her as a threat.
Why would she be? She was human. She was the weakest one out of all of them.
That was his mistake.
Emerie uncoiled her whip from her weapons belt, along with the enchanted rope that already had a securing loop ready. She held it by the knot while threading her hand through the hole, and waited while keeping her senses open for the last two monsters in case they approached.
Lindiwe pushed him closer and closer to Emerie. Then she flung herself at him and clamped her arms and legs around his torso, trapping his arms to his sides. Black sand wrapped around his body like tentacles, trapping him further.
Emerie leapt forward and grabbed a chunk of his long hair before he could dematerialise. She squeaked when everything went black, like she’d closed her eyes despite them being open. Then she was shoved back into light, and the dimness of the room was suddenly too bright.
Overcome with dizziness, Emerie was disorientated and couldn’t work out where she’d ended up. She felt like she’d drank an entire bottle of booze and had woken up with a killer hangover, and her head lolled when it felt like the room was spinning.
Humans were not meant to teleport. She grimaced.
None of this was enough to stop her from shoving her hand fisting Jabez’s hair downwards as she pushed the rope up.
“The fuck?” he spat, as he spun in a circle and Emerie followed.
He lost interest the moment Lindiwe dropped from the air above him.