Page 24
Nineteen
O ne moment, Ruby’s mind was full of nothing but pleasure.
Then the ward started glowing, and she was filled with so much more .
She was still reeling when she stumbled through the portal, and Slate held her arm to make sure she didn’t fall over.
“Ruby,” he said. “What happened ?”
Ruby giggled. She couldn’t help it. She also couldn’t help the shudder that ran through her as another burst of magic jolted her, filling her with a power she had never even dreamed of when she was the guardian witch of Sweetsguard.
“I’ll tell you later,” she said, only slurring a little. “Come on.”
She tugged him toward the trees. Her hometown was not far, and the screaming was starting.
Slate’s ears twitched as the first horrified yell rang through the trees. “What is that?”
“You’ll see in a second.” She tugged harder. Then she stopped, her bleary brain reminding her of something she had forgotten among all the fizzing magic and ritualistic fucking.
“Slate,” she said. “You should?—”
Slate scooped her up in his arms before she even had the chance to say it. Ruby clung to his neck and giggled as he started to sprint. She could feel magic in her fingers and come dripping down her thighs, and she had a sneaking suspicion that everything was going to be okay.
After the screaming ended, anyway.
They burst out of the woods to find the small town of Sweetsguard awash with shade demons.
Slate growled. He glared up at the shades swooping down to claw the cowering townsfolk, yanking on the barred bakery door and trashing the broken Paimon ward in the middle of the town square.
“They’re not all yours,” Ruby assured him. “They teamed up with others outside the ward limits. Can you?—?”
She didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence. He had already set her down and taken off sprinting toward the nearest demon.
Ruby watched with barely concealed glee as he jumped mightily into the air and grabbed a demon around the ankle. He brought the demon down with a roar, slamming it onto the ground with such force the cobblestones cracked.
Ruby laughed. Then she noticed how many people were shrieking and fleeing for their lives and collected herself.
She ran into the town square and raised her arms.
“I will give you one last chance to retreat,” she called.
Not a single demon looked her way. But several townsfolk did, their expressions twisting in terror as they noticed her flowing black gown.
“Glenda told the truth,” one woman yelled from her hiding spot beneath an overturned milk cart. “It is the witch, transformed to her true form and returning to kill us all!”
Ruby sighed.
Slate bounded to her side, his claws wet with demon blood. He gave her a look that was both confused and searching. She knew it in her bones: he was with her whatever she decided to do next.
She wanted to kiss the demon blood off his mouth. She settled for turning back to the sky, still thick with demons, and gritting her teeth. Magic crackled up her arms, her irises glinting dark blue.
“I will take out as many as I can,” she said, her voice splintering into something twisted and thick. “You deal with the rest.”
Slate’s black eyes widened as he saw the magic sparking around her. Then he set his jaw and nodded.
Ruby grinned. The more magic that swelled around her, the more demons took notice. Some of them were slowing or even stopping in midair, pointing for the others to watch the strange little witch who had started glowing.
Ruby snarled a word that had been dead for a hundred mortal generations and threw the roiling jets of magic as hard as she could. A dozen screamed out and fell from the sky, holes burning through their torsos.
Slate growled and took off, launching himself at a demon who had stopped clawing through a door to gawk. He plunged his claws through the demon’s chest and threw him into another demon, both of them going down in a crunching pile of ash.
Demonic cries of outrage poured from all sides of town. Demons rushed into the square, most of them aiming for Ruby.
Ruby raised her hands again. They were shaking, but it was hard to care with so much magic pouring through her. She could feel it fizzing in her bones, burning through her blood. Dark and horrifying and beautiful, just like the monster she had bound herself to.
“LEAVE US OR DIE,” she yelled, throwing another whipcord of magic.
Demons slammed out of the sky, caught by the speeding chord. Others dodged it, still aiming for her.
Slate caught them one by one. He bit off their heads or shredded their chests with his claws, grabbing them with his tail and dragging them in to be slaughtered.
Not a single demon made it to Ruby, who stood in the middle of the blasted town square and shot down every demon foolish enough to try and take her down.
By the time the town fell silent, Ruby and Slate stood in the middle of a hundred ashy demon corpses as they watched the few smart demons fly away to safety.
One last demon made a weak swipe at Ruby’s ankle.
Ruby stabbed it through the hand. Slate stood on its head, grinding it to dust.
Slate turned to Ruby. “Are you alright?”
Ruby wiped her dagger on her dress and slid it back into its holster band. “I’m fine. You?”
“They barely touched me.” Slate gathered her face in his bloody hands, his thumbs rubbing gore into her cheeks.
For a moment Ruby felt like there was no one else in the world. She wanted to melt into him, to have him take her right there in the middle of town square on top of all the corpses they’d made together.
Then a timid throat cleared, and Ruby remembered there were still people watching.
She turned. The bakery door creaked open, townsfolk peeking out from behind the makeshift barricade they’d erected when the demons started attacking. Either they had gotten lucky, or they’d started running demon drills after all, like Ruby always told them to.
Glenda stood at the front of the crowd, trembling limb to limb. She tried to turn around, but someone behind her shoved her back.
Glenda cursed her quietly and turned to face Ruby. “We… we thank you for saving us, O witch.”
Slate snorted. He gave Ruby a questioning look, and Ruby knew he was asking if she would like him to kill this woman.
She shook her head. Glenda was annoying but not dangerous.
“She deserves more than your thanks,” Slate said darkly. “I would have let you die in a second. She saved you. You should be on your knees in worship.”
Glenda’s knees hit the damaged cobblestones.
She wasn’t the only one—everyone who was in sight dropped to their knees, some of them in sheer terror and others in reverent admiration.
The latter shook Ruby more than the first; fear and distrust, she was used to.
She had no idea what to do with all that admiration.
“We will do whatever you wish,” Glenda babbled. “The Bygone is right; we would be dead without you. You don’t think you could…”
Her panicked gaze darted toward the broken ward in the middle of the square.
Ruby sighed and stepped up to it. It was riddled with cracks, stone crumbling into the cobblestones below. The ward rune was unrecognizable.
“I will renew your ward,” she said. “But first, I should explain how things are going to work from here on.”
Glenda nodded, dazed. She bent down and dropped her head onto the cobblestones. “Whatever you say, my lady!”
Slate stepped up beside her again. He gave her another questioning look, and the wonder in his eyes made her want to kiss him all over again.
She resisted the urge, turning back to the townsfolk.
“So,” she said. “To begin?—”
A friendly bark cut her off.
Ruby tried to hold back a smile. “I’m sorry. Were you saying something?”
All eyes turned to the dog spirit, who trotted up to Ruby and sat down heavily on top of a dead demon.
Slate frowned. “Dog. What are you doing here? What happened to your head?”
The spirit looked up at the goat horns that had sprouted from its skull.
“I will give you two guesses, old friend,” said the dog spirit formerly known as Paimon, in a voice that Ruby sometimes heard in dreams. “And the first one doesn’t count.”
Slate rocked back in surprise. Then he sighed. “I should have known. Nobody else is that annoying.”
The dog spirit chuckled. There was a short bleat somewhere in the middle and a growl at the end.
“Apologies,” he said. “I have been so many things by now. I sometimes get them confused. Ruby, maybe you should be the one to explain.”
“I would be happy to,” Ruby said.
She took Slate’s dripping hand. Then she turned to the gaping townsfolk. Some of them had obviously caught onto what was happening since they started clasping their hands together and praying in shocked whispers that echoed over the square while everyone else looked around in confusion.
“Our goat deity, Paimon,” she began, letting the oblivious ones gasp in realization. “Tired of his godly existence. He had been human, and then a god, and now he wanted to experience something new.”
“Something carefree,” the dog spirit interjected, tail thumping happily. “Something small and simple. Hence: dog spirit!”
“Good choice,” Slate said faintly. “You might have told me, old friend.”
“I tried. You would not wake until after I made the change.” The dog spirit licked Slate’s bloody hand. “It is good to see you awake.”
Then the dog spirit turned to Ruby, its gaze light and unbothered. “Ruby! Thank you for taking my power from the ward. I think I still have some to spare. Would you like it?”
Ruby considered. She did like this power. It lit her up in ways she didn’t know were possible. But if she accepted the full power of a god, she would lose things in return. She liked her humanity. She wanted some of it to stay, at the very least.
“Not yet,” she decided.
The dog spirit bowed his head. “As you wish. I will see you back in the void. Mortals, goodbye!”
Several townsfolk stuttered a stunned goodbye, including several of Glenda’s children who looked delighted to see a talking dog, never mind that he was the former god of the town.
The dog spirit vanished.
Slate pulled Ruby’s hand, turning her away from the whispering townsfolk. His eyes were huge and confused behind his skull mask, staring at her in a way that made her anxious. The confidence of a god was starting to dim, leaving her with her usual human nerves once more.
Ruby wiped a smear of blood off her neckline. “What? Do I look okay?”
“You look…” Slate’s brow furrowed behind the mask. “Resplendent. Ruby, I… What are you?”
Ruby laughed, short and wild. “I don’t know! I’m not a human. I’m not a god. Not all the way, anyhow. I’m… whatever I want to be. Within limits.”
Slate didn’t respond. His hand clenched around hers, a strange look entering his dark eyes. It looked a lot like hope.
“Witch god,” a voice called from the back of the bakery. “There are wings on the horizon!”
Ruby looked up and sighed. More demons were heading their way, barely specks in the distance.
“One second,” she told Slate.
She turned toward the ruined ward and held out her hands. She could still feel the power they created during the ritual and Slate’s come dripping down her thighs.
Magic crackled at her fingertips. Her hole throbbed with it, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She still ached from taking his cock, and she was deeply glad for it.
She touched the ward stone. It glowed blue under her touch, light springing out and filling a nearby crack. That light bled into the next one, and soon, all the cracks were glowing with light, the townsfolk covering their eyes as it swelled.
Ruby stepped back.
The light died. A new ward stone sat in the middle of town, shiny and perfect. The rune was different: instead of goat horns, there sat a crude, slim dagger.
There was a faint shriek in the distance. Ruby smiled and looked up to see the demons falling out of the sky, writhing.
The ward was renewed. The town of Sweetsguard was safe again.
A lone cheer rang through the square.
“The demons are banished,” cried Glenda, grabbing her children away from their impassioned whispers about the see-through dog to hug them close. “Praise our new god witch, Ruby!”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Ruby began.
But it was too late. The townsfolk were crowding out of the bakery, popping out of overturned wagons, and running from their houses to rejoice at their savior. Many of them stumbled to a stop when they noticed Slate lingering behind her but calmed once they saw everyone in the bakery cheering.
Then the questions started.
“What do you wish to be called, god witch?”
“Would you like sacrifices, god witch?”
“How is the Bygone involved? Should we pray to him, too?”
Ruby backed away, bewildered by all the clamoring and kneeling and people trying to thrust flowers and gold into her hands.
She turned to Slate, only to find him walking toward the forest.
“Hold that thought,” she told the people bustling to get their question asked first.
She ran to Slate and ducked in front of him. “Where are you going?”
“Home. To the void.” Slate gave her a tight smile. It did not reach his eyes. “You will want to address your new followers. At least, they appreciate you now.”
“ Followers ?” Ruby laughed. “Slate?—”
But Slate was gone. Ruby touched the shadows swirling in the air where he had been standing and sighed. She had recognized the anguish in his eyes. The same look had been in her eyes an hour ago.
“You idiot Skullstalker,” she whispered.
She turned to address the waiting crowd. First, she would talk to her old town. Then she would return to the void.
Her void. If she was lucky.