“Please bring her back,” Chloe said, tears falling down her face. The sisters huddled next to each other, hands held tightly.
Telal stepped forward, clasped Lyonis’ shoulder in his hand and said, “Hold tight.”
And then they disappeared.
Chapter 40
The dark, endless sky above cracked with streaks of silver lightning. Thunder boomed in the open space around her and Willow struggled to sit up to see. What kind of magic was this?
She cried out as her broken ribs stabbed at her. The sky formed a white slit that reminded her of a thin cloud, and then it was gone and two men appeared on the ground. The demon roared and spewed garbled words. Danny, Stephanie, and Rachel launched themselves at the intruders.
Willow gasped at the sight, blinking several times as unbelievable hope filled her chest.
“Lyonis!” It came out more as a croak, but he heard her.
He turned back to look at her just as Danny tackled him down to the ground. His eyes took in everything in a blink, then his gaze focused on the boy on top of him, and she saw his pained expression.
The blue-haired demon was here too. He locked into a battle with Rachel as Stephanie sidestepped around him to engage with Lyonis. Telal quickly got Rachel in a chokehold.
Willow struggled to her feet, favoring her good leg. Her chest hurt to breathe, to move, and hell, it hurt even when she didn’t move, but she stood.
“Don’t kill her!” she screamed.
The blue-haired demon flicked her an annoyed gaze, and tightened the pressure around Rachel’s neck. Her eyes fluttered shut slowly and her body slumped. Telal dropped her to the ground, surprisingly gently.
He squared off with the demon who started chanting more dark words. Black, wispy smoke came out from the ground and slowly took the shape of clawed hands. Another arm appeared then dozens of skeletal bodies, black and oozing like tar, pulled out from the sharp ground with groans and moans.
Willow made her way towards Lyonis, dragging her useless leg and holding her ribs. She had to help him, had to kiss him one last time just in case they didn’t make it.
Telal suddenly let out a fierce battle cry. The sound brought chills down her body and made her pause at its power.
Lyonis also knocked down Danny and Stephanie without killing them, and then he rounded on Dura. Dura took a hard step back and Willow toppled to the ground with a choked scream as her hurt leg roared with pain. Only Telal and Lyonis didn’t budge as the demon moved with quaking steps.
Willow refused to give up. She had to help them.
The black, oozing monsters she’d summoned surrounded Lyonis and Telal, screeching war cries. Willow rolled onto her stomach and used her elbows to lift herself off her broken ribs. The pain was excruciating; tears fell again and again, intermixed with her sobs of pain as she crawled, dragging her useless leg behind her.
Lyonis transformed. She’d never seen anything like it.
He let out an unholy roar as his body grew into a great monstrous beast. A gigantic wolverine, Lyonis towered as tall as the demon with claws as long as a butcher’s knife, legs as thick as tree trunks and brown shaggy fur covered pointed ears, a fanged mouth, and a monstrous chest. Still, he clenched the miniscule dagger in his paw and launched himself at the demon.
He hit it, knocking the demon to the ground. They rolled together and then he plunged the dagger into the demon’s big rounded belly.
Telal spun on the black summoned beings. He held out his hands and spoke harsh demonic words. The beings slammed against an invisible barrier, falling backwards, only to charge again and again at it.
Telal’s expression was fierce as he kept his palm out, then faced his other palm to the ground as if he was coaxing something to come out of it. And then white streaks of energy like shafts of sunlight came out. Brilliant blinding light. The demons screamed and scuttled away from the light as they ran. Those that were too late, too slow, were pierced with the light and exploded in a buff of black smoke.
Willow continued to crawl, somehow managing to move with the intense pain inside her. Lyonis and the demon continued to fight, claws slashing and missing as they both dodged each other’s blows.
She had eyes only for him as Telal continued to destroy the summoned creatures.
Lyonis faced off against the demon. The slash in its belly oozed black blood on the sharp ground. Lyonis lunged forward in his great form and slashed two-handed down the demon’s middle. He caught scaly skin, ripping it in shreds down the front. More blood spilled, but the demon didn’t drop, didn’t seem to weaken.
Telal turned to her with wide eyes. “The spell!” he shouted over the screams and shouts of the monsters.
Startled, she remembered the words and started chanting. Her voice was a croak. Each time she tried to scream to be heard over the monsters, her chest constricted, ribs stabbing at her. Still she continued to crawl forward, chanting the words.
“Go back whence you came, I unsummon thee, demon!”
The demon slashed forward, and Willow stopped moving as the demon’s black claws caught at Lyonis’ shoulder and slashed down. He let out a painful cry as he dropped to his knees. He wobbled for a moment, then collapsed to the ground, his body once again returning to its human state.
“No, no, no,” she cried over and over again as she crawled faster.
Telal spoke louder, fiercer and then the entire room was blinded in piercing white light. The summoned demons exploded in loud cracking explosions like firecrackers. Their black bodies formed a big smoky cloud that smelled so strongly of sulfur that Willow’s eyes burned.
Lyonis pulled his shaking body up onto his knees, but then the demon cried out a garbled sound and slammed its massive leg into his back. Willow stopped moving.
As if in slow motion, she watched as Lyonis cried out then slammed against the ground with a nasty crunch of breaking bones. He laid there, body unmoving.
Telal cursed loudly and dove for the dagger. Turning back to her he yelled, “Don’t fear it! Its power is based off your fear; you summoned it!”
Willow heard his words but they didn’t break through the cold shell around her. Her eyes couldn’t move from Lyonis’ prone body. She moved towards him, the pain she’d been feeling nothing to what her heart was feeling in her chest. The sobs couldn’t be stopped by time she reached his side.
She heard both demons speaking in that dark demonic language, heard the chanting of spells going back and forth but she couldn’t watch. Didn’t even care anymore. She collapsed next to Lyonis and lifted his head onto her lap.
The tears were blocking her vision, making it blurry, so she wiped them away fiercely.
“My love,” she said. She couldn’t stop touching his face, his lifeless body.
Telal let out a pained shout and then he landed in a hard mass next to them. Willow lifted her gaze from Lyonis with a serene, calm look on her face.
Telal looked at her and sighed as he grimaced his way to a sitting position. “Glad you do not fear it anymore, but I need you to do one more thing.”
Willow heard his words but didn’t comprehend them. He handed the silver dagger to her and when her lax fingers dropped it, he picked it up and curled her fingers hard around the handle.
Grabbing her by the back of her neck, he leaned his face close to hers. “I can save him if you kill it.”
She blinked, his words finding their way into the thick, numb cloud in her mind.
“Huh,” she said slowly.
He spoke clearly, slowly. “I said I can save him if you kill the demon. No fear, you know what to do.”
Her heart pounded with a wild, frantic beat as she came to a wobbling stand. The demon teetered on its feet, so much black blood spilling out of its wounds and pooling around it. It must be hurt or else it would have come after her.