House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,174

rain as a knife embedded itself to the hilt just above its mouth.

Hunt was upon it again, drawing another long knife from a hidden panel down the back of his battle-suit and plunging the blade right into the skull and toward the spine.

The creature struggled, snapping for Bryce, its clear teeth stained red with Hunt’s blood. She’d wound up on the pavement somehow, and crawled backward as it tried to lunge for her. Failed to, as Hunt wrapped his hands around the blade and twisted.

The crack of its severing neck was muffled by the moss-shrouded trees.

Bryce still aimed the handgun. “Get out of the way.”

Hunt released his grip, letting the creature slump to the mossy path. Its black tongue lolled from its clear-fanged mouth.

“Just in case,” Bryce said, and fired. She didn’t miss this time.

Sirens wailed, and wings filled the air. Ringing droned in her head.

Hunt withdrew his blade from the creature’s skull and brought it down with a mighty, one-armed sweep. The severed head tumbled away. Hunt moved again, and the head split in half. Then quarters.

Another plunge and the hateful heart was skewered, too. Clear blood leaked everywhere, like a spilled vial of serum.

Bryce stared and stared at its ruined head, the horrible, monstrous body.

Powerful forms landed among them, that black-winged malakh instantly at Hunt’s side. “Holy shit, Hunt, what—”

Bryce barely heard the words. Someone helped her to her feet. Blue light flared, and a magi-screen encompassed the site, blocking it from the view of any who hadn’t yet fled. She should have been screaming, should have been leaping for the demon, ripping apart its corpse with her bare hands. But only a thrumming silence filled her head.

She looked around the park, stupidly and slowly, as if she might see Sabine there.

Hunt groaned, and she whirled as he tumbled face-first to the ground. The dark-winged angel caught him, her powerful body easily bearing his weight. “Get a medwitch here now!”

His shoulder was gushing blood. So was his forearm. Blood, and some sort of silvery slime.

She knew the burn of that slime, like living fire.

A head of sleek black curls streamed past, and Bryce blinked as a curvy young woman in a medwitch’s blue jumpsuit unhooked the bag across her chest and slid to her knees beside Hunt.

He was bent over, a hand at his forearm, panting heavily. His gray wings sagged, splattered with both clear and red blood.

The medwitch asked him something, the broom-and-bell insignia on her right arm catching the blue light of the screens. Her brown hands didn’t falter as she used a pair of tweezers to extract what looked to be a small worm from a glass jar full of damp moss and set it on Hunt’s forearm.

He winced, teeth flashing.

“Sucking out the venom,” a female voice explained beside Bryce. The dark-winged angel. Naomi. She pointed a tattooed finger toward Hunt. “They’re mithridate leeches.”

The leech’s black body swiftly swelled. The witch set another on Hunt’s shoulder wound. Then another on his forearm.

Bryce said nothing.

Hunt’s face was pale, his eyes shut as he seemed to focus on his breathing. “I think the venom nullified my power. As soon as it bit me …” He hissed at whatever agony worked through his body. “I couldn’t summon my lightning.”

Recognition jolted through her. It explained so much. Why the kristallos had been able to pin Micah, for one thing. If it had ambushed the Archangel and gotten a good bite, he would have been left with only physical strength. Micah had probably never even realized what happened. Had likely written it off as shock or the swiftness of the attack. Perhaps the bite had nullified the preternatural strength of Danika and the Pack of Devils, too.

“Hey.” Naomi put a hand on Bryce’s shoulder. “You hurt?”

The medwitch peeled a poison-eating leech from Hunt’s shoulder, threw it back in the glass jar, then replaced it with another. Pale light wreathed her hands as she assessed Hunt’s other injuries, then began the process of healing them. She didn’t bother with the vials of firstlight glowing in her bag—a cure-all for many medics. As if she preferred using the magic in her own veins.

“I’m fine.”

Hunt’s body might have been able to heal itself, but it would have taken longer. With the venom in those wounds, Bryce knew too well that it might not really heal at all.

Naomi ran a hand over her inky hair. “You should let that medwitch examine you.”

“No.”

Her onyx eyes sharpened. “If Hunt can let the medwitch work on him,