“That’s reassuring.”
Devon didn’t bother responding to that.
Which didn’t make Eva feel any better. How was she supposed to try not to die? Obviously, she didn’t want to die. It wasn’t like she could hold on to the edge of a cliff or dodge a bullet.
Eva shook her head. Worrying about it would just lead to stress and anxiety.
“You,” Devon shouted, pointing towards Lucy. His arm swing around to point at Serena. “And you. No matter what you hear or see, you are not to cross onto the ritual circle. In fact, take ten steps away and do not move.”
That was even less reassuring. Just what were they going to hear and see?
Turning back to the demons, Devon took a deep breath. “Everyone ready?”
“Get on with it already!”
Eva had to agree with Catherine. The longer Devon delayed, the more nervous she got. This treatment was nothing like the sessions with Arachne. That had been a little unconsciousness and a little lethargy afterwards.
This sounded like it was going to be painful.
There was a sigh from Devon and Eva was proven very right.
Eva’s hands had been resting on her knees. When the ritual started, the hydraulic pressure in her hands failed. Lacking any resistance, the strong muscles in her hands clamped down.
The only reason she hadn’t crushed her knees was because they were made of demonic chitin. The strength of her knees was just enough to resist the strength of her hands.
Gritting her teeth, Eva watched with wide eyes.
As the lines of the ritual circle lit up around the demons, something started peeling off and pulling out of the back of their necks.
Smoke poured out of their necks to pool in one great cloud above Eva.
A pitch black cloud.
It took Eva’s panicked mind a moment to realize that it was blood.
While Zagan didn’t seem to notice at all, Catherine moved her hand back to idly scratch at her neck. She wasn’t hurried or panicking. It was as if whatever she felt was no more notable than a mosquito bite. The blood just flowed around her fingers, not sticking to them in the slightest.
Eva couldn’t see the carnivean’s reaction–she didn’t have the mental power to spare on looking through her blood sight.
The dark cloud of demon blood gathered overhead made its way closer and closer to Eva.
Thin spools–two miniature tornadoes–pulled downwards from the cloud. They reached Eva’s wrists and started burrowing.
Up until now, Eva had managed to keep the pain under wraps. Though she grit her teeth and couldn’t control the clenching of her hands, she hadn’t made a sound.
That ended the moment the blood entered her wrists.
Eva arched her back, opening her mouth wide to scream out at the sky. The blood tore through her body. It didn’t care that there was meat and, after leaving her arms, bone in the way.
Organs? Shove them aside. Can’t shove them? Go straight through them.
She could feel it coursing through her. Despite feeling like it was penetrating straight through her organs, she could also feel it wrapping around them, embracing them, infusing them.
From the tips of her toes to the deepest recesses of her brain, her body felt as if it were on fire and drowning at the same time. Flayed to shreds. Worse even than the effects of her method of teleporting.
Her screams died to rasps as her throat gave up.
The dark cloud overhead was steadily shrinking. The demons were no longer contributing to its growth.
The last droplets came down and disappeared into her wrists. Her pain hit a crescendo and everything stopped.
Eva slumped forward. She could barely process what was happening. The runic circle was still glowing with magical energy and she could still feel that energy swirling around inside of her.
Trying to sit as still as she could even with her ragged breathing, Eva waited. She waited and she hoped that the worst of it was over with.
Twelve eternities passed before the light of the ritual circle was finally snuffed out. It had been near noon when they had started, but when the light died, the sunlight had gone dark.
Only the pale moonlight lit up the ritual circle.
Like a puppet with her strings cut, Eva slumped forward. Her arms could muster no resistance to stop her head from smacking into the concrete.
Eva’s hazy mind caught sight of the blazing red eyes of Catherine’s demon form staring down at her.
Everything went dark.
Chapter 007
A wall of cold water slammed into Eva’s face.
Her eyes snapped open. The icy liquid ran down her neck and chest, sending all kinds of shivers through her body.
Cold did not agree with her.
Coughing and sputtering, she tried to reach out with her awareness and get some sense of what was going on.
She was in the women’s ward on her couch. A somewhat soggy couch that had just had ice water dumped all over it.
There would definitely be shouting about that later on.
Devon stood over her with a rusted iron bucket in hand. As Eva blinked up at him, he tossed it off to the side. The loud clatters it made had Eva wincing until it rolled to a stop. He stared down at her with a disapproving frown on his face.
What the frown was for, Eva couldn’t guess. She was far too distracted.
In the distance, Eva could feel a group of demons. Zagan, Catherine, Lucy, and even the carnivean. At first, she thought that she was sensing their blood. With a start, she realized that she was feeling them. The carnivean and Lucy were both stringy, though with enough distinction to tell them apart. Catherine was a ball of chilled emotions.
And Zagan… The only word that came to mind was power. It bordered on overshadowing the rest.
All of them were nearby. Perhaps just barely out of range of her sense of blood.
“You’ve slept for long enough,” Devon said. Without a word of warning, he leaned down and used the fingers of his normal hand to pry open one of Eva’s eyes. His tentacle was coiled around a small pen light that he moved side to side and up and down.
Eva followed the pen light with her eyes. Had she not, Devon would have barked out orders for her to do so. Groggy though she was, she had sat through enough post-treatment examinations to have her reactions being almost second nature.
As soon as he finished with her eyes, he moved on to pinching her cheeks and pulling at her ears.
She just let him perform his examination without protest. Post-treatment examinations were always invasive checkups.
After a moment of more prodding around her face, Devon paused to jot a few notes down in his notebook.
As he did so, Eva took a few moments to focus on herself. One of his questions would eventually be about how she felt and if she had noticed any changes. He always got irritated if she had to think about the answer for too long.
“Open your mouth.”
Eva complied. Opening her mouth turned to a yawn part way through. The yawn wanted to end with her jaw closing, but Eva suppressed the instinct so as to avoid biting off Devon’s fingers.
Though, it almost looked like someone had tried already. Devon’s hand was dotted in cuts and scrapes. Thin lines of blood had leaked out and scabbed over already.
Seeing her looking at his hand, Devon grunted. “You were less cooperative while unconscious.”
Eva meant to ask how long she was unconscious, but the words came out as nothing more than unintelligible mumbles. Devon still hadn’t removed his fingers from her mouth.
Said fingers ran over her teeth, prodded the insides of her cheeks, and even yanked on her tongue.
She smacked his hand away at that last action. “What did you do that for?”
“Your tongue is elongated,” he said almost absentmindedly as he wrote in his notebook. “I’ll get a measurement later.”