The gate opened up near the pile of burning bodies. Demon bodies. The smoke was bad and the stench was worse. How could she not have noticed the stench the first time around? It smelled like a mix of burned hair and burned plastic with a hint of roasting flesh. For one mad second she wondered what in hell demon bodies were made of.
She couldn’t see Weng from here, but she knew where he should be. She heard Fang’s voice calling out commands as she ran after Rule, Grandmother, and Toby for several long strides, catching a single instant’s glimpse of Ginger through the smoke. The Great Bitch’s avatar stood motionless on the other side of the fire. Then she veered. Rule and Grandmother and Toby ran on without her, racing for the mountain of pink flesh Lily knew was at the far end of the room. For Xitil.
Lily aimed at a black pillar rising darkly through the smoke, the pillar where she’d skidded, twisting her ankle, knocking herself silly. Feet pounded behind her. And there were the Claws who’d been about to catch her when Gan took her out of this world—bipedal creatures at least eight feet tall with built-in weapons on each foot, each hand, and at the ends of their muscular tails. One had red skin, the other an insanely cheerful bright pink.
Behind them was Tom Weng. He was pointing at her—hurling a spell maybe. She sure as hell hoped so. His spells would bounce off. If he decided to throw fire instead, she was cooked. Magic slid off her. Fire didn’t, even if it was magically generated. But Weng had wanted her alive to give to the Great Bitch. They were gambling that he still did. For him, only a few moments had passed.
“Get her!” he yelled.
He was yelling, she realized, at the Fists behind her. Good. She veered around the Claw who, after a moment’s frozen startlement, had started toward her. Behind her, someone called out in Chinese. And the Claw started to wither as water splashed to the floor at its feet.
When you sucked all the water out of a body, that body died. Even when it belonged to a demon.
Lily ignored the other Claw, trusting that those coming up fast behind her would deal with him. And launched a spinning kick at Weng.
None of them could defeat a demon spawn with magic, which left brute force. Only she was immune to the spawn’s magic, and Weng would take her alive, if he could. This meant she had to be the one to take him down. Rule had not liked where logic led him, but he was too good a tactician to ignore it.
Weng was fast, but so was she—and he’d had no martial arts training. He ducked her first kick, but failed to take advantage of the split second when he could have used the miss against her. She flowed from that kick into a quick side kick. That one connected. So did the next one, and the one after that was to his temple—a blow that might have killed a human. It knocked Weng silly. He swayed. Her next kick sent him to the stone floor.
Lily was on him the second he landed. She didn’t try to pin him. He was dazed, not unconscious, and the spawn were insanely strong. He reached for her throat. She fumbled with the stopper on the vial, pulling it out just as his fingers closed, vise-tight, around her throat, cutting off her breath as she poured the contents of the vial onto his face.
Téngtòng mǎyǐ. Pain ants. Dozens of them—Kongqi’s entire stash—spilled onto Tom Weng’s face.
His eyes widened for a split second before he began screaming. His hands fell away from her and he clawed at his face.
They had, at Kongqi’s estimate, between twenty and thirty seconds before Weng’s super-duper healing cleared out enough of the venom for him to think straight. She scooted back quickly and yanked open his shenyi, then shoved up the thin silk shirt he wore beneath it.
Cynna dropped to her knees next to Weng and slapped the magic cage on his upper belly, chanting as she did. “That’s it,” she said. “His magic’s bound. Take him and tie him up.”
Lily repeated that in quick Chinese for the Fists who’d run up behind them, adding, “For God’s sake, be careful of the pain ants.” She sprang to her feet.
Three of the Fists were engaged with the other Claw, their swords darting. One lay on the floor, the front of his armor dented. Several more swarmed up around them, one of them with a coil of rope.
She couldn’t see, dammit. Couldn’t see what was happening at the far end of the room, where Rule and Grandmother and Toby had gone. Where Benedict would be lying unconscious. Where Cullen and Jude should be, and Mason, and maybe Max.
And Xitil.
“Come on,” Cynna cried, and took off running.
“Squad seven,” Lily called, “with us!” And she raced after Cynna.
Cullen had set off a demon-killer bomb in the chamber. That was the source of that pile of bodies. But it hadn’t killed all of them, and those who’d survived had mostly regained consciousness. Lily heard Cynna snarl a spell, then she threw something invisible off to her right. A huge Claw staggered out of the smoke and collapsed right in front of them.
Cynna jumped over it, so Lily did, too. Three more strides and she passed out of the densest smoke—and saw Xitil. Rule. Toby. And Grandmother.
Rule was holding off one of the red-eyes with his borrowed sword. Toby may have thought he was helping. He yipped and darted in, much too excited, but he jumped back before the demon could connect. Behind him, Lily glimpsed Fang and his squad fighting three more demons.
Xitil was a lovely blend of pinks—a deep rosy color shading into soft petal-pink. She was also huge, the size of an elephant. She looked like a mad scientist’s gene-blending creation, a cross between a centaur, a slug, and some bugs. Her lower body was vaguely slug-like, with a centipede’s legs and a scorpion’s tail. Her upper body was mammalian, with six pendulous breasts and four arms. Her neck was short, her head round and hairless, and her wide, wide mouth lacked lips. A dozen or so bright blue eyes circled that round head like a hippie’s headband.
Several of those eyes were fixed on Grandmother, whom she held in two of her large hands. Grandmother stared back at her. It was terrifying. It was exactly what was supposed to happen.
Demons can’t use mind magic worth a damn. Not even demon princes. And Grandmother was very good at ensorcellment.
Grandmother was speaking in a firm, quiet voice. “. . . not harm us. You want all the humans, the lupi, and our companions in this realm to remain alive. You do not want your subjects to harm any of us. This is extremely important to you.”
After a moment Xitil nodded her round, bald head. She spoke in a sweet, lilting voice in a language overly full of consonants and short on vowels.
The fighting . . . stopped. Just stopped.
“Great prince,” Grandmother told the demon holding her some ten feet off the floor, “you grow sleepy.”
Xitil swayed. Several blue eyes closed, opened again. Some stayed closed. The big hands opened—and Grandmother fell to the floor. “Whoops,” Xitil said in perfectly good English, and giggled. And collapsed.