sticking into and out of their prey so wildly that I could barely see them. I didn't dare move. "Get me something!"
Nothing happened for a moment, then a clanging avalanche of weapons hit the floor. Billy had managed to knock over the closet shelf. Most stayed where they fell, but a single knife slid across the floor and bumped my foot. I grabbed it, but the demon was thrashing around at my feet, not staying still long enough for me to use it.
"Finish him!" Billy was flickering in his agitation. "Do it!"
"I'm trying!"
The demon couldn't see me, being blinded by the acid that had almost completely eaten away his face. But he could hear, and he rolled toward me, hands outstretched. His skin was a cracked mess of charred black and red, and the leather coat had melted against him in patches. I stared down at him, feeling suddenly queasy that I had done this to anything, even something as vile as him. What the hell was happening to me?
He turned what had been his face up to me, beseechingly, and I hesitated. In less time than it took to blink, he had me by the foot, the raw bones of his fingers sliding against my skin in a slick caress. Immediately, the horrible draining sensation was back, my power flooding into him from that one small touch.
Pain made the world go white for a heartbeat. Then I screamed and tried to jerk away, but it did nothing except to unbalance me. I fell on my butt and kicked out at the same time, hitting the blackened face hard enough that crumbled skin fell off in a withered cascade. Stark white bone showed through, but the demon only bared its teeth at me in a parody of a grin.
"You'll look worse in a moment," it whispered, and upped the speed of the drain.
For a second, the world went gray. "Don't even think about it!" Billy said frantically. "I got nothing left, Cass. Pass out and it's over!"
"I'm fine," I told him, biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. My knives were continuing to stab and pull out, over and over, but it was as if the creature had stopped noticing them. "The neck," I told them, my voice barely audible even to me. "Sever it."
To my lasting shock, they not only heard but obeyed. They set to work with a will, sawing away at the tendons and flesh, until I heard them hit bone. Blood roared in my ears and my eyes were growing dark, but I wouldn't let them close. Little pinpricks of light had started exploding in front of my vision by the time the knives finally completed their task, severing the spine with an audible crack.
The room was immediately filled with a hurricane. Clothes, bedding and shards of glass went whizzing by in dangerous parabolas that had me clutching my head and trying to shrink into as small a space as possible. I could feel everything spin crazily around me while my gut clenched and tried to force itself up my throat and my whole body seized up like a giant cramp. I wanted to pass out. I wanted to know what was happening. I wanted to see Pritkin's face and I didn't want there to be blood on it.
Dimly I heard yelling from somewhere nearby, but I couldn't even work out the separate sounds. Scream after scream of tortured air passed over me, around me, but I huddled into myself and refused to look. Then, as quickly as it had started, it was gone. Utter silence descended, except for the sound of my faint, whistling breaths.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. It was all I could do to heave the air into and out of my lungs. My hand lay open on the floor, fingers still slightly curled around the knife I'd never used. Even with solid concrete under me I felt dizzy, like I was going to fall right off the edge of the world. At least the creature's body was gone, I thought dully, right before I was violently sick.
It seemed to go on for a while, although my time sense was so screwed up by then that I really had no idea. My vision kept trying to go dark again, and cleared only spottily, black fading away until I could see the scuffed toes of Pritkin's boots and the pale skin on the inner side