One of his arms unfolded. They weren’t thick and stumpy after all, but multi-jointed, long, and very thin. Folded up they had to be strong as a bundle of sticks to support Asag’s weight, but extended—
—extended it lashed at me like a whip, scoring a slice across the arm protecting my face. Acid burned so deeply I couldn’t even cry out. All I could think was I’d have lost my eyes if my arm hadn’t been in place. I could fight a demon, but I couldn’t fight it blind. I curved my spine and rolled backward, narrowly escaping another lash, and waited for adrenaline to kick in hard enough to let me push past the pain in my ribs.
The crunch of hitting the ground did the trick. I’d been sitting, so it hadn’t been a long fall, but it didn’t need to be. Endorphins flooded my system, burning pain away so fast I knew I’d pay dearly later. But it was the only way there would be a later, so I was willing to pay. I rolled to the side, pulled a knife from a thigh holster, and braced myself for the next hit.
Ichor spurted from Asag’s arm when it met the knife. A clean cut, severing the end, which fell to the ground lifelessly. The silent faces in his belly screamed aloud. I drew another gun to open fire into the tender flesh.
This time the bullets had an effect. He staggered back, reeling from one thick leg to another. Both his other arms unfolded, snapping at me almost too quickly to be seen. I tried firing once, then stopped wasting bullets: I was a crack shot, but they were slim and speeding. The knife was a better weapon against them.
The third time an arm lashed at me, I dropped the knife—I had another—and grabbed it. My hand went around it easily, and it wrapped around my lower arm like a lover’s embrace. An abusive lover, because it pulled me back toward the demon’s body, knocking me against rocks and yanking my feet out from under me. Still, I needed to be close if I was going to inflict the most possible damage. Letting Asag reel me in was a more likely avenue of success than trying to dart in on my own.
When I got close enough, I shot what would be a kneecap on a human, but the bullet lodged in the stony overhide. Wrong angle, or not enough exposed flesh on the legs. I didn’t have time to try again. The arm shoved me toward one of the gaping mouths. I wished I dared detonate the last frag, but there was no way I could get out of range before it went off. I shot the screaming face instead. Acid muck rained everywhere, scalding my arms. Between boiling lakes, dry pipes and the distance to the nearest hospital, I was going to come out of this one scarred.
Scarred was fine. Dead wasn’t. I shot another face and came up empty on the second squeeze. The faces screamed again, but this time in triumph, and then the whole demon folded shut again.
Around me.
It was not how I’d planned for this mission to go. I didn’t dare breathe. My ribs began to throb, adrenaline or no. I squirmed an arm back, trying not to think about the burns scoring my arms with each move. They’d gone beyond pain already, reaching a dull red state that would later burst into flame. Later was all that mattered.
I fumbled, tugged, and found it: the switch that activated my space blanket. Solar power radiated out, heating Asag from the inside.
He’d been defeated by a god of healing and sunlight, back in Sumer. Maybe I was smart after all.
Five seconds passed. The rotten fish stench changed to cooking rotten fish, permeating my nostrils even when I held my breath. I gagged and bit my tongue to keep from either vomiting or breathing. Ten seconds had gone by. Normally I could make it for three minutes, maybe four, without breathing, but that was with preparation, and without cracked ribs. I figured I was good for thirty seconds, maybe forty-five, and then I was screwed.
At thirty seconds, a howl vibrated through the demon, and he erupted. I flew into the air like a geyser was propelling me, coming down hard on pointed rocks. Agony ripped through my back muscles, spasms tugging at my ribs and taking away any chance of drawing a comforting breath. I couldn’t even whimper. Teeth ground together, I stared at the sky and thought hoo-ah, hoo-ah, hoo-ah, until a spasm released me and I could suddenly move my toes again. Nothing critical was broken, then. I was going to have a bad night exposed out here on the mountain, but at least I’d survive.
Stone slipped near my head. I twisted just enough to see what was coming at me.
The golem. The one I’d blown the leg off but hadn’t killed. Stone was patient, crawling down the mountainside toward me while I fought the father demon. I closed my eyes, thought fuck, then whispered, “Hoo-ah,” and opened my eyes again, because damned if I was going to die with my eyes closed. I had one last frag. At least I could take the bastard with me. Inch by painful inch, not much faster than the golem was moving, I tugged my backpack out from under me and dug down for the frag. When the golem was five feet away, I pulled the pin.
At the count of five, the golem disintegrated in a shower of blue.
At the count of eight, the frag did not go off. It should have. I was still staring in bewilderment at where the golem used to be. I hadn’t put the pin back, or even thought to. Stones rattled, sliding and cracking against one another as footsteps pushed them out of the beds they’d settled in. I stayed on my back, clutching a grenade that should’ve gone off. Thin white clouds spun across the sky. If Asag had re-amalgamated and was coming back, I was in trouble. He didn’t seem like the type to creep up cautiously after one defeat, though, and I was sure he hadn’t destroyed his own golem.
My spine hurt.
After a minute or so a face intruded into my line of vision. Green eyes, a thin scar on one cheek. Pixie-cut hair scattered with iron grey that stood out sharply against the original black. A few lines around the eyes and mouth, but not that many for a woman pushing fifty.
When I was a kid, I’d thought she was beautiful. Now, as an adult, I could see she wasn’t. Attractive, yeah, but not beautiful. Her nose was too beaky, her chin too sharp, her height too great and her shoulders too wide for anybody’s idea of conventional beauty. Put it all together, though, and I still thought she was beautiful. Some of that was hero worship. Some was the power that lit her from within. But mostly it was just Joanne Walker, who had taught me there was magic in the world.
Politely, even solicitously, she said, “Mind if I take this?” and removed the frag from my death grip on it. Only when she lifted it did I see a glimmer of silvery-blue magic stuffed in the pin hole, keeping it from detonating. She gave it a casual toss that had great upper body strength behind it, and a few seconds later it exploded at a safe distance. Then she looked down at me. “I hope you don’t mind me putting the kibosh on that last thing. I’m sure you could have handled it, but I was in the area. I take it you defeated the bad guy?”
I nodded.
She crouched. Her hands dangled in front of her knees, above my sternum. “Got your ass kicked doing it, too, hm?”
I nodded.
“Couldn’t wait a couple hours for me to get down here to help, huh?”
I shook my head. Joanne grinned. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have either when I was your age. I didn’t. All the time, I didn’t. I tell you, Ash, hook up with one of the Holliday kids. Get a little mojo on your side to go with the impressive martial arts skills. Clara’s single.”
I closed my eyes. Joanne laughed out loud and ruffled my hair. “Good news is you’re only bruised all to hell and back, sweetheart. Hang on a second and let me patch you up. It’ll make getting out of here easier.”
The drink-of-water-in-a-desert magic rushed me. It pushed away all my aches and pains, until I could tell my spine hurt because a rock was sticking in it. My feet were numb because of the rock’s location, not because I’d shattered anything. I exhaled deeply, more relieved than I wanted to admit.