hell help, me, it felt right. I worked beside the snipers on that bridge until my eyes streamed. My body trembled. We appeared to be winning. The demon numbers thinned, rebel and enforcer ranks swelled, and then the first of the princes came through, and the world went to hell in a hand basket. He came out of the heaving dark like the bow of a vast ocean liner, looming too high and too vast to comprehend all at once. Bullets skipped off his stone armor. We might as well have been insects throwing pebbles at him. The helicopters circled his monstrous head, guns rattling, but he barely paid them any attention. Moon-like eyes regarded the people like scurrying ants at his feet. The power rolling off him numbed my skin and unnerved my demon.
“Can you turn that one to ash?” the sniper I’d saved yelled above the sound of the choppers and the groaning bulk of mega-prince.
I shrugged a shoulder. Fire and stone? I’d need to funnel enough heat to melt him. Doable? How the hell was I supposed to know? It wasn’t as though I knew what I was doing.
“We’ll cover you. Get down there.”
“Listen, if a big-ass, black-skinned, lava-veined demon shows up, don’t shoot him, okay. He’s on our side.” I hadn’t yet seen Akil. The battle spread too far, but I sensed him close. He’d be here.
“No promises.” The sniper flashed me a crazed smile and boomed orders to cover me.
The enforcers fell back behind their armored vehicles. Someone fired an RPG. The rocket exploded against the prince in a bloom of rolling orange flame, but it only seemed to piss him off and barely chipped his armor. I stopped, planted my feet, and released my demon. Raw hunger, liquid fire, and explicit power tingled across my flesh. I flared my wing, readied my stance, and drew in the heat. My reserves were limitless, like trawling a net through the ocean. Heat from this world and the unrefined heat from the netherworld rippled around me. At some point, mega-demon noticed little ol’ me burning bright a few hundred yards in front of him, little more than a firefly. This firefly packed one helluva bite.
His voice—spoken directly into my mind—grated, like stone on stone, an abrasive noise that set my teeth on edge.
I grinned, not that he could see my tiny smile on my itty-bitty face. “I burn you. Yes?” The fire strained at my control and burst free. Lashings of ethereal energy spun away, twisting and writhing as it rushed toward mega-demon. As soon as my power made contact, fire flooded up his legs and bloomed across his chest. He spread his arms, admiring its climb, not concerned in the least.
Well, shit. I poured more through me, trying to convey furnace-temperature thoughts. Sniper fire cracked to my left and right, picking off demons as they attempted to tackle me. I lit up like a beacon for all things demon.
Mega-demon lifted a foot and slammed it down, quaking the earth below the entire park. Stumbling, I fell to one knee. Wasn’t I meant to be some uber-powerful she-demon? Hello, Mother of Destruction here. There had to be more to this, more I could give. I jerked my head up. Mega-demon crouched down, oblivious to the bullets raining over him. I met his huge eyes and thought of Stefan and how he’d brought me back from the brink of madness. I thought of Dawn, and how the brave little half blood had stared into the face of death, accepting her fate. I thought of Ryder, his stubborn determination and need to protect is family. Nica—sweet Nica—she’d died believing I needed to be stopped. I owed it to Nica, to everyone, to become all that I could be. My friends, my family. If I didn’t stop this beast and those that would surely follow, everything I loved would be gone. Hope, when the storm passes, there will be something worth returning to.
Standing tall, wing held high, I lifted my chin, glared into the curious face of a demon the size of a mountain, and reached out to the warm, beating heart of Boston.
Akil was right. Until tested, we never know what we’re capable of. It is only in the eye of the storm we discover who we truly are. Fire consumed me. Heat overwhelmed my flesh, spilled through my veins, filled my mind, and scorched my demon body until solid became liquid. Fire is