That left four against three and we were tiring. The oshk weren’t.
The left-legged oshk drove me backward. For every hit of my magic on her skin, my suit took an equal blast of her secretion. Cool air blew across my thigh. I glanced down to see the tear in my suit, missed my footing and tripped over a fat fallen tree branch, falling on my ass.
The oshk glided toward me, wound some blobbiness around my leg like an evil Barbapapa and pulled me toward her now-grotesquely distorted mouth. I dragged my gloves along the ground, scrabbling for a hold on anything, magic flying off my body.
The oshk ducked and wove, avoiding my strikes. I went slack, letting her lift me up and position me over her fetid pie-hole, willing myself to remain still, remain calm even as the black hole of her mouth filled more and more of my vision. The demon lowered me, my toes brushing her lips. I held on another second until my foot was now inside her mouth, the hole closing around my ankle, and blasted my current out through my shoe, down her esophagus and into her body. It bounced around inside, lighting her up like a pinball machine before dinging her heart.
She disappeared, dead. I fractured my ankle with the ensuing fall. Better that than my nose.
Rohan and Drio weren’t faring much better. The last three oshks had forced them back-to-back and were taking their time circling in for the kill.
The demons flowed together to form a huge misshapen woman with a human head, a right leg, a left arm, and a whole lotta blob.
Drio fired his pole, impaling her in the heart but the iron weapon didn’t even stop her. She shook herself and expelled the pole without breaking her stride.
Drio grabbed Ro and flashed out.
Finding them gone, the huge oshk turned her gaze on me.
I scrambled back in the dirt using my one good foot, my magic tapped out. I let her come for me, trusting that while the guys were mad at me, and my relationship had been ground into dust, that at least for this mission, they had my back.
The oshk loomed over me, blotting out the sun.
Drio and Rohan appeared behind her. Drio swung, decapitating her human head with a meaty thwack.
The oshk fell apart into three separate entities and in the split second before they could regroup, Ro firehosed them with an entire canister, freezing them on the spot. I blew them up, demon blobs hitting the ground around us like hail.
Drio located each of the larger blobs that was their hearts and drove the iron blade into them. The pieces disappeared, the forest once more tranquil.
I tore off my face mask, unzipped my suit and rolled it down to my waist, exposing my sports bra and letting the breeze cool my fevered skin. My hair clung to my face in dank strands. The men had done the same as me, both equally sweaty and red-faced.
Rohan gave me an inscrutable look before he and Drio left, canisters and the bladed pole tucked under their arms. I sat down on a log, my injured leg stretched out and the fingers of my left hand digging into the rough bark, breathing in the rich dirt, cedar, and pine.
The mission was over for Ro and I, but the question remained: were we?
A hand tangled into my hair, yanking me up off the ground. Malik’s face edged in close to mine. “Where’s Lila?”
I stretched as far as I could for my tiptoes to remain on the ground, scrabbling at his fingers. “I don’t know.”
Malik’s hold tightened. His hair was unkempt like he’d been running his fingers through it, his shirt buttoned incorrectly.
Blood rushed in my ears and my heart threatened to break free of my rib cage. I stared into his glittering eyes and saw death. So I did the only thing I could do: I kneed him in the balls as hard as I could.
Malik gasped a wheeze and dropped me.
Ignoring the red-hot agony blazing up from my injured ankle, I scramble-hopped back inside the door to our warded backyard, tripping safely behind it as Malik lunged.
He bounced off the invisible shield of the ward with a snarl. “Did you kill her?”
“I voided our deal.” Or I carried it out in grand style. I had no idea.
“Things not go as planned? Poor petal.”
My foot throbbed, I was exhausted, and yet, the waves of deadly hostility rolling off him only amped up my own fury. It didn’t matter that I’d gone to Malik to begin with: I wanted to savage him for putting me in Lilith’s path. For facilitating whatever the hell state my relationship was now in. “Get lost, demon.”
The marid nosed right up to the ward line. Only inches separated us. “You’ve got everyone poised to attack each other: your friends, the Brotherhood, witches, demons. There’s a war coming and you better be ready, petal, because I intend to survive it. And when I do?” He raked his fingers through his hair, smoothing it down, and smiled a polished smile. The one the wolf wore for the Three Little Pigs. “I’ll expand your lexicon with the true meaning of the word hurt.”
He portalled out.
I had no doubt that my day of reckoning was coming with him–with all of them–but right now there was only one person whose words meant anything.
I hopped my way into the kitchen and cornered Rohan. “Can we talk?”
He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and jumped up on the counter. “Go nuts.”
I tried, but dissolved into a coughing fit, still not at liberty to voice our deal. I swiped his water bottle, chugging it back, and wiped my mouth. “You go first. Last night.”
I toyed with the cap, a hollow pit opening in my stomach. I didn’t want to hear the details, since she’d probably rocked his world, but I couldn’t not know, either.
He studied me. “You really can’t say anything? Dr. Gelman wasn’t kidding.”
My head jerked up. “Dr. Gelman?”
“Nava, I figured there was something going on the second you restored my magic.”
“Oh.” I grabbed an industrial bottle of extra-strength ibuprophen and dry swallowed two before swiping a pack of frozen peas from the freezer. I sank into a chair, slipped off my shoes, and slapped the bag against my ankle. “I guess you wouldn’t have believed I could heal you.”
“I know you healed me once. I felt it when I was unconscious. It was the same honeyed warmth as when Rivka tried. But the second time? It was a sharp snap, more like an electric shock from all your magic at once. It was too much to believe you suddenly had the power to unravel the magic knot when Rivka didn’t know any witch strong enough.”
“So you called Gelman?”
“I did. She figured out what must have happened. Drio zipped over and picked up what I needed while you were in the shower.”
“Those smudgy candles and the world’s saltiest fish.” Now it made sense.
“We tried to pull Lilith out of you.” He rubbed his neck.
I may not have had the Word of the Day app anymore, but I was pretty solid on my grammar. Tried implied that an attempt had been made. The silence that followed implied it hadn’t gone well. “And?”