“Some can. Looks like your demon has gained some extra followers.” The demon locked eyes on them, screeched, and launched at Tyrian.
Tyrian swung his axe in a wide, arching sweep just as the demon moved, clipping a wing off with a meaty sound. The demon screeched and rounded on Tyrian as something hard started banging on the front door. The keychain rattled violently against the door, the frame splintered and shook. Chloe frantically looked around for a weapon, anything, but saw nothing she could actually use. She didn’t have some magical axe to fight with.
Tyrian went after the demon with a series of swings that sent it tumbling back into the wall. With one final swing, its head was severed from its twitching body. The demon fell limply to the floor like a doll.
The front door cracked, then splintered open in an explosion of wood. Demons poured in, too many for Chloe to count. They screeched ear-piercing sounds that had her huddling away, covering her ears to block it out. Something heavy and hard slammed into her back. She never saw it coming.
It wrapped its limbs tightly around her, nearly squeezing the air from her. She ran backwards, rammed her back into the corner of the wall and the arms around her opened as the demon squealed in pain. Spinning around, she was ready to fight for the right to live.
The demon didn’t fight her though, but grabbed onto her arms and pulled her towards the broken window. Chloe screamed in the demon’s face and wrenched her arm away. She let her fist fly and hit him in the face with everything she had. The demon let go of her as it yowled in pain.
Chloe turned and found Tyrian making his way towards her, lopping heads, arms, and
legs off as he came. The room was filling fast with more idummi. The look on his face was one she’d never seen before.
Two demons broke past him, each latching onto her arms with clawed fingers. Screeches, roars, and cries of pain echoed in the room sounding like some epic-scale battle from a movie.
Chloe kicked at the demon pulling her as she struggled fiercely to get her arms back.
Hot burning pain shot up her arms with the exertion. Nothing she did worked. They
continued to drag her closer and closer to that window, their bony, fleshy wings flapping and slapping against their backs anxiously. Suddenly, another demon came up and snatched one of them off her, tossing the demon into the wall where they began to snap at each other. Chloe had no chance to be relieved, because the action set the other demon’s claws deep into her stomach.
Chloe stopped breathing as she stared down at the four bleeding lines appearing on her naked stomach. Searing hot pain blasted across her stomach like four hot pokers were pressed up against her. She screamed, flailed, and finally managed to dislodge the other demon from her.
Agony rippled through her stomach and went deeper and deeper.
Before panic could set in Tyrian was there and so was Rayn. She didn’t stop to think how the warrior got there, was just relieved when her body began to tingle all over in that increasingly familiar way. Then everything faded around them as the room transitioned to some room she didn’t recognize. But she recognized the stone, gray walls. Castle Death.
Rayn was speaking quickly, “I’ll get Nanu.”
“Hurry,” Tyrian said. He urged her onto a white hospital bed; made her lie down and she did because the retching pain in her stomach had tears streaming down her eyes. Intense pain seared into her organs like hot knives covered in boiling acid.
“What’s happening to me?” she croaked.
Tyrian’s face was paler than usual, his eyes shielded with impassable ice.
“Nanu!” he roared.
“Please tell me.”
He grabbed her hand and pushed the hair back from her face. The pain was spreading like lava in her body, pressing up to her chest and down to her hips and thighs. “It hurts,” she said and couldn’t stop the sob that came out. “Stop it, please.”
“I know, sweetheart. Just hold onto my hand.” Chloe squeezed tight to his hand. His hand felt freezing in hers like he’d been holding it in a bucket of ice water. What was wrong with him?
Did something happen to him, too? Chloe slammed her eyes shut as piercing pain punctured through her legs, down to her feet, then up into her arms and hands.
“It’s taking me. Don’t let it take me, Tyrian.” Everything around her was turning fuzzy.
The bright, fluorescent lights on the ceiling were fading, dimming out. Tyrian’s face wobbled before hers. Was it from her tears or was she dying. “I don’t want to die.” Will I see Papa if I die?
“I would never let anything happen to you, Chloe. Look at me.” Chloe’s eyes fluttered, scrambled wildly around the room searching for him. Then he was right there. If she focused hard enough she could feel his breath against her face, cooling her hot tears. “You know that I do not lie. I would never lie to you. I will not let you die.” Tyrian squeezed her hand as if to prove his point. Then he threw back his head again and roared, “Nanu!”
Chloe might have winced if she wasn’t dying, because she was. She’d never know where Lily and Willow were. She’d never discover all of Tyrian’s secrets. She’d never have babies and know what it felt like to have a baby suckle her breast.
The pain inside her morphed, twisted into something worse. She screamed, her body
shaking violently on the table, her teeth chattering hard. She knew Tyrian was speaking but couldn’t hear the words. The room spun and shook around her, growing fuzzier, blacker. In one last searing wash of pain, she sucked in her last breath of air and everything faded to black.
Chapter Nineteen
Nanu came sprinting into the room.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Tyrian growled. Nanu came to a hard stop at the sound of his voice. She’d never heard him yell before.
“I’m sorry I was in bed.” Quickly, she pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves and grabbed the stethoscope off her desk. “Tell me what happened.” She listened to Chloe’s heart as he answered.
“Demon attack at the hotel. It clawed her straight across the midriff.” Nanu pulled back the scope and barked orders.
“Go to the med’s cabinet and grab the two clear bottles that say diazapram and sodium pentobarbital. Now!”
As Tyrian rushed the cabinet, Nanu swabbed Chloe’s arm with alcohol. Tyrian handed
her the bottles and she quickly filled a cocktail in a thin needle. As she did, she said in clear, modulated tones, “Listen to me, I need you to go to into the next room to the bathroom. There’s an ice machine behind me. Fill the tub with ice and cold water. We need to lower her body temperature now.”
Tyrian paused and leveled a hard look on her. “If you let her die...”
“I know. You’ll kill me. Hurry up and get her in there. I’ll be right behind you.”
Tyrian filled the bath with cold water and ice and had Chloe floating in it in less than thirty seconds. “What’s wrong with her?”
God, he felt wired, strung out, and terrified. And why did he even ask what was wrong?
He knew what was wrong. He’d been fighting demons for most of his life. Now he was just losing his mind.
“She’s poisoned. Relax, Commander Tyrian. I should be able to drain it from her system before it reaches her brain.”
Her brain, he thought and froze. “Hurry,” he said gruffly. How much time had already passed since she was poisoned? He tried to think fast, to count the minutes and seconds, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d been fighting a wave of demons, hadn’t even known she was being dragged back. He ran a hard hand over his face. He fucked up and it was his fault.
Tyrian could only stand back and watch everything happen. Could only watch as his most skilled healer slit open Chloe’s wrists, a vein under her knees, and one in the center of her chest.