Page 40 of Hellish Witch (Playing with Demons #3)

Chapter 39

A groan burst from my lips.

And I crumpled.

Dirt rushed up to greet me as Alvie let me fall.

My ears rang from the explosion of magic, and tears blurred my vision as Alvie’s sunlight blazed painfully bright.

Fuelled by me.

I struggled onto my side, hollow and aching. Bone-deep pain cracked open my chest where my magic should have been.

Dark figures flitted into the light’s edge.

Alvie loomed over my body with a victorious grin on his lips. “Well done, Eve!”

Faint blips of life rippled through my subconscious. Roughly fifty life forces pricked my magical senses before I lost count to the panic swelling inside me.

They weren’t just any humans.

They were hunters .

“How could you?” I hissed at Alvie, trying to blink the world into glaring focus, but everything kept swimming. “They’re your coven. Your family .”

“I’m doing this for them.” He sneered. “Your father is weakened by greed. All we do is summon demons and make deals for more magic and money. But what about what it costs the rest of us? Weak leaders weaken covens.”

More shadows peeled from the trees towards us. I pushed myself shakily onto all fours, pain spiking my empty chest with every heaving inhale. My arms trembled under my own weight. I’d never felt so weak.

But I couldn’t let everyone die.

This was my fault.

Men in black cargos and tight jumpers held pistols and knives as they approached on swift steps.

I stumbled to my feet, trying to veer away from the traitorous mage. My hand shook as I raised my claws.

I had to do something.

My father might not be the family I’d secretly dreamt of as a naive child, but I couldn’t just let hunters take him and all those people. I’d barely survived my nightmare in their captivity.

And Killian was back there.

“C-Call them off,” I slurred, gasping for each shallow breath. “Put the ward back, or you won’t have a coven left to lead.”

He rolled his sunlit eyes. “I’m not stupid, Eve. I’ve made a deal with the lead hunter. He’s only going to take the coven elder. I’ll keep everyone calm while they take your useless father.”

“You fangless fool.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

I didn’t have time to argue with the traitor; the hunters were almost to the fallen ward line. The first few aimed spelled pistols at us as they closed in, scanning the area in a cautious sweep.

I couldn’t take on over fifty armed hunters. Right now, I’d lose to five kittens.

The ward was my only hope.

I dug deep for the dregs of my magic. It was like trying to grasp a handful of syrup. Thick and sluggish, it responded slowly. I urged it on, mentally trying to reach for the void where magic should have sparked.

I threw my power at the ward line.

It bounced off the dead stones.

Alvie snatched my arm, tugging me back to his side. “Stop it,” he sneered. “I was going to take you on a date after all this, but you’re being an ungrateful bitch!”

“I’m devastated.” I raked my claws deep across his arm.

He let me go with a hiss, eyes blazing. “I’ll deal with your insubordination later. First, I need to greet my allies.”

“They’ll kill us all.” I grabbed at him, missing his glowing arm by inches. “Fix the ward, Alvie!”

He peddled back, ignoring my urgent plea. I couldn’t raise the ward myself.

But I hadn’t been raised in magic. I’d been raised in violence.

I leaped at the golden mage, wrapping my legs around his waist and forcing him to stagger under my weight. I pressed my claws to his throat. “Do it, you idiot!”

The closest hunter lifted his pistol, magic sparking off its barrel. A grin slashed through his lined face. “Stupid fucking demons.”

He fired off a round as I dropped from Alvie’s back.

The mage jerked, stumbling. He fell to his knees with a whine, sunlight extinguished, clutching at the centre of his chest. Blood gushed down his pale shirt, the liquid almost black in the darkness.

The next bullet slammed into my shoulder, rocking me back. Another shattered my kneecap. Pain roared.

Burning. Scorching. Searing.

My jaw clenched on a scream.

I abandoned the traitorous mage in a pool of his own blood, clutching my shoulder and staggering behind the nearest tree. Every step was a hot poker to my blown knee. I half-hopped to the next trunk, trying to put distance between me and the hunters as I pushed my failing body toward the coven.

“Leave it,” a male huffed. “It’ll bleed out, anyway. We need to hit their satanic base before any of the other vermin scurry off.”

Spelled bullets hurt so much worse than regular ones. Like acid being poured into the raw wounds.

Wisps of my powers jumped to the screeching joints, battling to reverse the damage. Hot metal worked out of my flesh, the blood-covered round flashing in the moonlight as it fell to the dirt. Warming magic soothed the pain, leaving behind a fierce ache and ragged holes in my clothing.

Dull thuds filled the forest as the hunters moved.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and tested putting weight on my healed knee.

I couldn’t let the hunters reach their target.

The coven wasn’t in any position to defend themselves. Most of them were healers, and probably drunk by now. They were unarmed and unprepared, even if Orion must have felt the ward break.

It would be a slaughter.

I peered around the trunk supporting most of my weight, tracking the hunters racing through the forest.

I drew a deep breath.

There was going to be a slaughter all right.

I stepped from my hiding place.

And reached deep into the abyss.

Dark hunger embraced me.

I craved their blood and pain. For every drop of mine they’d spilled. For every bone they’d broken. Every cut they’d carved into my flesh.

I screamed, throwing my hands out. Bloody magic raced forwards and slammed into the monsters.

They screamed back, dropping to the ground. Grunts of pain echoed. Bones crunched. The slick sound of blood splattered the forest floor.

Red swirled over my vision, tinting the gloom. Power flooded through my veins in bright lines of electricity as my magic devoured their essence, vibrating its way deep into my chest. Strength charged my limbs as my demonic side fed on the excess magic.

For the first time in my life, both sides of my heritage worked in perfect harmony, and it felt right. Natural. Like I hadn’t been born a mistake.

Hunters raised their weapons, and gunfire burst through the night.

My heart squeezed as it rained bullets.

I dodged, zigzagging my way towards the frantic humans. Pain flared in bright sparks along my limbs as spelled lead grazed me. My magic swallowed the damage, but the pain threatened to buckle my knees.

A burly man staggered towards me, bleeding from multiple gashes on his arms. He bared his teeth, lifted his pistol, and squeezed the trigger.

It spat a magic round, whizzing past my ear. I snarled, eardrum ringing painfully, and swept low, gripping the barrel before he could get a second shot off and shoving it aside. It exploded in my hold, the percussive force mincing my hand, but the bullet found its home in another hunter, groaning on his knees beside us.

I swiped my claws through the hunter’s throat, cutting short his yell with a wet gurgle as blood drenched my repairing fingers.

And then violence descended over me.

I spun and sliced, claws cutting flesh, fangs tearing jugulars. My magic latched onto most of the hunters, reopening countless old wounds, but not all, and they came for me in a blur of blades and bullets, their fury matching my own.

Pain ricocheted through my body with every slice and shot that found my flesh, until the world darkened at the edges, dancing with the red. My healing magic fought for my survival.

I stumbled as another spelled bullet smashed into my thigh, buckling my leg. I hissed, rolling through a pile of fallen leaves as I dodged the next round.

Gunshots boomed through the forest, pierced by their screams and my snarls.

A bright flare of life in my subconscious set my soul aflame, but dread chased on its heels.

Killian dropped through the canopy on shadowed wings, landing close enough for me to feel the gust of air as he used his body as a shield. His sword was already drawn, black blade angled towards the hunters.

“Get up, Eve. Run!” he snarled over his wing, but his focus never left the threats closing around us.

“Shoot to kill!” one hunter yelled. “We can still harvest corpses!”

I shuddered at the idea of their scientists getting hold of Killian, dead or alive, and lurched back to my feet, stumbling out from behind the demon my soul keened for.

With Killian here, I couldn’t risk my darker magic cutting him down faster than the hunters, even if it wasn’t completely spent.

So I tuned into the rhythm of violence, of the dance I’d learned long before any magic.

“Stubborn witch,” Killian growled, blade slicing through the arm of a hunter, trying frantically to reload.

“Stupid demon,” I hissed back. “As if I’d leave you.”

Silvery eyes cut to me, filled with so much worry my heart ached. “Don’t die.”

Manic laughter spilled up my throat as I dodged another bullet. “I won’t if you won’t.”

Killian and I cut through the hunters together. But with every bit of damage I took on, I could feel myself weakening—my healing power waning under the strain.

Something flittered at the edges of my consciousness, the tease of other living things on the horizon, but the signatures were all over the place, blending with the hunters and animals of the forest as my focus wavered.

“Traitorous bitch!” a voice croaked behind me.

I whirled, coming face to face with Alvie.

Ghoulish yellow light cast across deathly pale features. Blood covered his front from the bullet lodged in his chest. Angry red flesh was edged by charred fabric where he’d cauterised the wound that should have killed him.

But it was the glowing sunlight between his palms that shot me through with terror.

The deadly orb of power sailed straight for me.

Something slammed my side, knocking the air from my lungs and sending me sprawling to the ground.

Killian stood over me, wings flared.

Sunfire sizzled the air as it passed over me and smashed into Killian’s chest, exploding in a blaze of vicious gold.