Not a gift, or anything like that. Eva just didn’t have the time to sheath the thing, and tossing it to Rose was just as easy as letting it fall to the ground.
Reaching into her back pocket, Eva drew something she’d scavenged from the church.
A simple wooden cross.
A symbol, Rose thought. She heard.
The demon had only just recovered from its failed grab. Now Eva moved, fluid and smooth, holding the cross out.
The demon backed away, now, redoubling the effort on its howl.
Blake was losing his grip entirely. In a heartbeat, he’d fail to weather the storm, and both he and Rose would be lost to the howl’s effects again.
The witch hunter had the means of warding off the demon, driving it back. She took things one step further. She touched the cross to the demon’s wounded chest, then brought a foot up, pinning it there, keeping it there as the demon dropped to its knees. Smoke billowed.
The witch hunter drew a third gun from within her open coat, and began firing it into the demon’s open mouth, trying to shut it up.
She’s utterly fearless, Rose thought. But that lack of fear echoed Blake’s. It wasn’t a healthy thing, it was a sign of something missing.
“Won’t hold!” Rose shouted. “Get back!”
Eva kicked, pushing herself away from the demon, leaving the cross there, fused with melted flesh. The demon reached for the cross, but the hands were forced away, as if repelled by magnets.
The witch hunter grabbed Alister under one arm, while Rose took the other, handless arm. Together, they dragged him back toward the door, near the point where the sphinx had collapsed. The Elder Sister was only a short distance away.
“…and as I delivered harm to my Sandra’s house, I accept harm to my own,” Jeremy was saying. “In exchange for the power to act now, I forfeit power over my demesne. Let it be something wild and uncontrolled, a garden untamed, and I will tend it. For this, give me favor.”
He met Rose’s eyes.
She drew a line in the snow, a plain circle around herself and Eva. She looked at Jeremy, then nodded.
“This favor I ask for now, is a bit of liquid courage for those who fight against the titanic evils,” Jeremy said. “Excepting my allies in the circle here, please.”
The effect spread, not touching Rose and Eva. One by one, the various fallen individuals roused.
Insensate, maybe, or a little insensate, but only enough to disturb the hold the howling demon had on them.
Alister looked over at Rose, started to rise, then winced.
He’d been on his hand and knees in snow, gloveless, so his hand was free to practice. Now his hand was numb.
Rose seized it in both of hers and held it fast as she pulled him to his feet. Held it after.
Lola. Peter. Paige. Ainsley. Green Eyes. Mags.
She checked on each, helping them rouse, focusing on those who were closest first. By the time she reached Ainsley, the fight outside had resumed in earnest. The Elder Sister was working with the eye, meeting destruction with raw destructive energy, striking imps out of the sky, where they were still wary of approaching or interfering with the other two demons.
The flames around the third demon had been banished by lawyers, and lawyers themselves were rousing.
We have to go now, or we might never get a chance, Rose thought.
Ainsley was taking the longest to rouse. The girl looked hollowed out, almost haunted.
The Sphinx still hadn’t risen. Paige was stroking fur, but got no response. The sphinx’s chest rose and fell, but the angle of her head and the sheer quantity of hair that had fallen in front of her face made her expression impossible to see. Armfuls of hair, really. Thick, luxurious, and on a head that was larger than most. Paige didn’t even try wrestling with it. She only touched onyx fur.
A descent into madness is a bigger fall for some than others, Rose thought.
Hopefully the sphinx would survive that fall, in the end.
Evan had taken to the air again, a streak of flame against an overcast sky.
He strafed the group of lawyers again, but this time he was warded off. A freshly drawn diagram in the snow glowed orange, and Evan was pushed away, the spill of fire dying before they touched ground.
He tried twice more before landing beside the Elder Sister and the Eye.
“That sucked!” Evan declared, putting a little too much emphasis into each word.
“Are you okay?” Rose asked.
“I feel powerful!” Evan boomed each word. “So good!”
“You’re drunk,” Jeremy said.
“Being drunk is awesome!”
The Eye and Sister’s efforts against the demon of ruin were failing. The demon had ceased approaching the church, and was now staggering off to one side. Not trying to make headway against the torrent of elemental energy that the two were capable of putting out, but moving toward the howling demon.
Ms. Lewis shouted something. Communicating to the diabolist by the ward that had stopped Evan.
Too late. The demon of ruin charged its fellow, and she slammed the cube-fist into the cross.
The howling demon was sent sprawling, and the one who had summoned it, off to one side, folded nearly in half.
Ms Lewis scowled, gesturing, her voice inaudible amid the howling, and she dismissed the demon of ruin on its summoner’s behalf. The cube-encrusted she-demon was banished, consumed by darkness.
Then she began uttering names.
Three. Three more demons, to join the two that remained.
“We have to go,” Rose said. Or we won’t get another chance.
“Go,” Alister said. He pulled his hand away from Rose’s grasp, flexed it, only revealing how stiff it was. “I… I’ll do what I can. My head’s swimming, but I’ve studied this. Protections.”
She checked over her shoulder, and she saw Emily. Fell’s niece, the little illusionist.
“We need to avoid being detected with the Sight,” Rose said.
Emily traced a sign in the snow. A rune.
“It won’t hold for long, but if you need to slip away, this is the thing. One for each of us. Or you can put it on an object to hide it.”
“We need it to hold,” Rose said.
“It’s going to burn up whatever fuel you give it,” Emily said. “I don’t know of much else. I’m still newish.”
“Then we’ll have to use old standbys,” Rose said. Lines of blood to break connections. It won’t keep us out of their sight forever. Maybe not at all. “Get those runes down, people. On your right hands.”
Rose frowned, glancing at the lawyers and the emerging demons.
“Go. Blaze a trail, Evan,” Rose said. “Watch the imps!”
The great firebird took off, leaving a stirring of sparks and cinders behind it with every flap of its wings.
He circled the church, fire spilling out from his tail feathers, then flew through a crowd of imps that were getting too close.
Fire splashed onto the street, near and around the lawyers, but the ward protected them.
Rose worked to draw out the symbols. Mags had already pricked a thumb and was drawing out symbols on the backs of Peter and Ainsley’s hands.
They were finished. Each held up their ungloved hands, marked with blood.
“Ready,” Rose said.
“No you aren’t. Wait,” the Elder Sister said.