Mark leaped forward with a cry like a hunting horn. He cut at the Mantids’ legs and forelegs, crippling them; they fell around him, spraying green-black ichor. It stank like burning gasoline.
Emma began to run for the bluff. Demons surged up at her as she went. She slashed at where they were weakest, the connective tissue where the chitin was thin, severing heads from thoraxes, legs from bodies. Her jeans and cardigan were wet with demon blood. She skidded around a dying Mantid, slid toward the edge of the bluff—
And froze. A Mantid was lifting the cycle in its forelegs. She could swear it was grinning at her, its triangular head splitting open to reveal rows of needle teeth, as it clamped razored forelegs around the cycle, crushing it to pieces. Metal screamed and rent, tires popped, and the Mantid chittered in joy as the machine came apart, the pieces hurtling down the side of the bluff, taking with it Emma’s hope of an easy escape.
She glared at the Mantid. “That,” she said, “was a really sweet ride,” and catching up a knife from her belt, she threw it.
It jammed into the Mantid’s body, severing thorax from prothorax. Ichor sprayed from the demon’s mouth as it tipped backward, spasming, its body following the cycle down the cliffside.
“Jerk,” Emma muttered, whirling back toward the field. She hated using throwing knives to kill an enemy, mostly because you were unlikely to get them back. She had three more in her belt, a seraph blade, and Cortana.
She knew it wasn’t nearly enough to take on the two dozen Mantids still prowling the grass. But it was what she had. It would have to do.
She could see Mark, who had climbed the face of the granite hill and was perched on an outcropping, stabbing downward with his blade. She began to run toward him. She dodged a lashing foreleg, arcing Cortana up to sever the limb as she ran. She heard the Mantid shriek in pain.
One of the taller Mantids was reaching up toward Mark, jagged forelegs grasping. He brought Remiel down, hard, severing its head—and as it collapsed, a second Mantid appeared, its jaws biting down on the blade. It fell back, shrieking its high insect shriek. It was dying, but it had taken Remiel with it. They subsided together into a sizzling puddle of ichor and adamas.
Mark had used all the weapons Emma had given him. He pressed his back against the granite as another Mantid reached out. Emma’s heart lurched into her throat. She raced forward, flinging herself at the wall, scrambling toward Mark. A massive Mantid loomed up in front of him. He reached for his throat as the Mantid leaned in, jaws gaping, and Emma wanted to scream at him to back down, back away.
Something shone between his fingers. A silver chain, gleaming arrowhead dangling. He whipped it forward toward the head of the Mantid, slashing open its bulging white eyes. Milky fluid burst forth. It reared back, screaming, just as Emma leaped to the ridge beside Mark and slashed Cortana forward to cut it in half.
Mark dropped the chain back over his head as Emma swore and pressed her only seraph blade into his hand. Ichor was running down the blade of Cortana, burning her skin. She gritted her teeth and ignored the pain as Mark raised his new blade.
“Name it,” she said, breathing hard, pulling a knife from her belt. She clutched it in her right hand, Cortana in her left.
Mark nodded. “Raguel,” he said, and the blade exploded with light. The Mantids screeched, crouching down, wincing away from the glow, and Emma leaped from the rock.
She fell, whipping Cortana and the dagger around herself like the blades of a helicopter. The air was filled with insectile screeches as her weapons connected with chitin and flesh.
The world had slowed. She was still falling. She had all the time in the world. She reached out, left hand and right, severing head from thorax, mesothorax from metathorax, hacking through the jaws of two Mantids to leave them drowning in their own blood. A foreleg reached for her. She slashed through it with an angled twist of Cortana. When she hit the ground six Mantid bodies tumbled after her, each landing with a dull thud and vanishing.
Only the foreleg remained, sticking into the ground like a strange cactus plant. The remaining Mantids were circling, hissing and clicking, but not yet attacking. They seemed wary, as if even their tiny bug brains had noted the fact that she was a danger to them.
One of them was missing its foreleg.
She glanced toward Mark. He was still balanced on the rock outcropping—she couldn’t blame him; it made an excellent fixed position to fight from. As she watched, a Mantid lunged toward him, swiping a razored limb across his chest; he brought Raguel down, stabbing into its abdomen. It roared, staggering back.
In the bright light of the seraph blade, Emma saw blood bloom across Mark’s shirt, red-black.
“Mark,” she whispered.
He spun gracefully. His seraph blade cut the Mantid apart. It fell into two pieces, vanishing just as the night exploded with light.