“D?”
Behind Demetrius the portal popped and sizzled in a band of brilliant light that shimmered over the dark clearing. With one arm wrapped around Gryphon’s waist, the other holding the guardian’s arm at his shoulder to support his weight, dread welled in the bottom of Demetrius’s chest. “Yeah?”
“Tell me I’m hallucinating,” Gryphon muttered.
Dozens of glowing green eyes peered their way.
“Neither of us is that lucky.”
“Mother…” Gryphon winced in pain. “The portal didn’t improve our situation.”
No shit. As the daemons in the field turned and headed their way, exit strategies raced through Demetrius’s mind. A descendant of Perseus, the great hero who’d defeated Medusa, Gryphon had the power of paralysis, but he rarely used it. Not only was his power unpredictable, but using it drained him of strength and left him blind until the weakness passed. The Argonauts didn’t like him to call up his power unless they were in dire straits, and though that’s exactly what this was, in his current state there was no way Gryphon could freeze-frame their enemies without possibly killing himself in the process. That left battling their way out of this mess, which didn’t look all that promising from where Demetrius was standing.
No, Gryphon was wrong. Demetrius would take fifty witches over a pack of daemons any day.
Moonlight cascaded over their seven-foot-tall bodies, over their catlike faces, doglike ears, and horns that looked like something off a rabid goat. He glanced sideways to where Isadora was standing still as death, staring out at what now faced them.
His adrenaline surged. No way he could open the portal again and send her and Gryphon back to Argolea. Not with those daemons so close. If even one got through…
They didn’t have time. He unhooked Gryphon’s arm from around his shoulder. Pushed the guardian toward Isadora. Gryphon stumbled, but Isadora was right there to catch him. “Get back. Both of you.”
“Demet—” Isadora started.
He unstrapped the knife at his thigh and pushed the handle into Isadora’s small hands. It wasn’t much of a weapon against hell’s monsters, but it was better than nothing, and hopefully it’d give them a chance. A slight chance.
Sonofabitch. He’d thought they were fucked before? This topped that by a mile.
The black mist swirled and deepened, condensed in his chest. He whipped the parazonium from its scabbard and turned to face the coming doom. The daemons were now in a full-out charge, headed right for them. “Run, already!”
There was no time to look and see if Gryphon and Isadora had listened. The first daemon flew through the air, blade swinging, claws thrashing. Demetrius’s parazonium made contact with the daemon’s sword, the vibration of the hit ricocheting down his arm. Five, maybe six, he could handle on his own. But not the forty or so that were out here. And wasn’t it just his dumbass luck that he hadn’t paid attention to where he was opening the portal in the human realm, had simply opened it to the last place he’d come from. Which had been days ago, at the half-breed colony, when he’d been here with the other Argonauts helping to fend off a daemon attack.
A scream rang out. He stabbed the daemon in the chest and pulled his blade from the unholy’s body as he whirled around. Gryphon and Isadora were thirty feet from him, flanked by two massive daemons. In a daze he watched one daemon swipe out with razor-sharp claws, saw Gryphon go down. Isadora stepped closer to Gryphon’s body, wielded the knife like a pro, and though he was momentarily shocked by her courage and skill, he knew that wouldn’t keep the beasts back for long. The three daemons making a beeline for her didn’t look like they cared about her bravado or the puny weapon she held in her hand.
Demetrius’s chest pounded, his throat closed. He’d never reach her in time. His mind tumbled with options, but when the daemon smacked the knife out of her hand and her body spun from the blow, he didn’t even think.
The magick that was as much a part of him as his eyes and hair and teeth, but which he denied at every turn, gathered in his hands. A chant rose in his mind, circled, and swirled until the words poured from his tongue without encouragement.
“Earth, wind, water, fire, grant to me your growing power.” He felt the force push through his hands, zing out his fingertips. Imagined his arm shooting across the distance and his hand wrapping around the daemon’s throat. Sensations rippled through him. The instant he felt contact, he clamped down and yanked.
The daemon lost its footing. Jerked back ten feet before it slammed into the ground. Isadora scrambled to her feet. The daemon jumped up with murder in its green eyes as it searched for whoever had grabbed him.
He homed in on Demetrius and charged. Demetrius had just enough time to brace himself. He darted a look toward Isadora and the remaining daemons closing in tight. The daemon launched just as Demetrius swung out. His parazonium caught the beast across the chest, tore into its thick flesh. Demetrius swiveled out from under its weight.
“Isadora! Run!”
Blood spurted over him as the daemon hit the ground and rolled. From the corner of his eye Demetrius saw Isadora sprinting toward the trees. But the monster was up again, charging, blocking his view of her, teeth bared, fangs unsheathed, eyes a blinding glow in its grotesque head.
Isadora screamed again. A loud crack resounded through the chill night air seconds before the daemon slammed into Demetrius, knocking him to the ground. His head hit hard, stars fired off behind his eyes, but panic over what he couldn’t see happening only yards away had him swinging out again and again with his blade.
He couldn’t make headway. Didn’t have enough time to focus and draw on his magick. The creature knocked the blade from his hand. Metal pinged against rock as his parazonium clanked across the ground. The beast reared back, blood-coated claws seconds from annihilation.
“Stop!”
The daemon above hesitated. His gruesome head swiveled toward Gryphon and Isadora and the daemon who’d shouted the order.
Demetrius looked too. Ten or more daemons had gathered around Isadora, blocking his view. The daemon kneeling on the ground nodded toward the beast that still had Demetrius pinned. “Bring him.”
The daemon curled its claws into Demetrius’s shirt and yanked. “Get up, asswipe.”
Demetrius staggered, caught his balance, stumbled again as he was dragged across the ground. The daemon threw him to the dirt near the others.
Pain seared every inch of his body, but he pushed up on his hands, searched through the sea of tree-trunk legs and arms for Isadora. Sweat and blood rolled into his eyes, but he barely cared.
Isadora’s face was bruised, her arms limp, her head tipped to the side. Blood trickled down her temple. More dried blood caked her short blond hair and matted the side of her head. One foot was twisted at an odd angle, and her chest neither rose nor fell.
No. Oh, skata, no…
The daemon who’d summoned him stepped in Demetrius’s line of sight, blocking his view. He wrapped his meaty hands in the front of Demetrius’s shirt and jerked him to his feet. Demetrius didn’t fight back, didn’t try to defend himself. All he saw was the image of Isadora lying dead on the ground.
The daemon’s glowing eyes roamed Demetrius’s face, and that black mist brewed in Demetrius’s chest with every passing second. Two hundred and eighteen years of life had come down to this. To making one monumentally fucked-up mistake that had just toasted all three of them and sent Isadora straight into Hades’s clutches for good. “Just kill me, you fucking prick.”