On My Way - Eve Langlais Page 0,58

and lifted me. Grinned as it drew me to his mouth.

I was about to be eaten.

You’re a witch. Do something witchy.

Like what? Abracadabra, turn into a cute little rabbit?

The house shook just as the demon was about to tear out my throat. It jostled hard enough that the demon paused, seeming uneasy. Could it be scared of my home?

“I hope my house eats you,” I spat.

The most inane threat ever, and yet the demon took a step back and his grip on me loosened just the slightest bit. I took advantage and remembered the number one safety rule for girls from the eighties. Kick them in the jewels.

The demon didn’t have a penis hanging, just a knob. He did have a pair of tight balls, and my knee connected.

He folded. But he didn’t go gently.

He bellowed and raked his claws down my arms.

I screamed at the sharp pain and buckled as he released me. I hit the floor and fell to my side, a palm barely managing to keep me from face planting. Blood rolled down my arm in a warm red rivulet. It raced past my wrists and pooled between my fingers where they palmed the floor. It sank into the grain of the wood. I’d never get the stain out. Especially since the floor absorbed it like a sponge. It inhaled my blood. Slurped that stuff up, leaving no mark behind.

The house shivered.

The demon recovered and stood, a menacing form that loomed.

If only I had… The palm braced on the floor suddenly wasn’t flat. I felt something beneath my hand. An object I could grip.

A gun.

As the demon leered and swooped in for the kill, I raised that gun and fired.

Point-blank.

It should be noted that while I did get that demon in the chest, I also had no idea of the recoil and punched myself in the face.

As I rolled and gasped at the sharp pain in my nose, there was bellowing. Lots of it. The gargoyle minions hooted.

I managed to get to my feet and through teary eyes saw the demon lying on the floor, not quite dead. Not yet, but he soon would be considering the little bodies crowding over the hole I’d put in him. Sucking their master dry.

How gross.

I raised the gun and held it two handed this time.

“Get the fuck out of my house!” I fired. Bang. Bang. My aim sucked, but luckily, they were closely clustered.

Problem was shooting them drew their attention from the demon lunch to me. My plan to kill them suddenly backfired as they moved too fast for me to shoot them all. Two of them hit me hard while a third tangled my ankles.

I hit the floor with a thump and found myself face pressed to the floor. Blood dripped from my mouth. I managed to gasp, “Got anything better than a gun?”

I coughed and sprayed part of the circle. A piece of the line flashed, and the bodies atop me paused.

I remembered the floor sucking at the mess I’d made with my blood. I pulled myself to the edge and placed my wet lips on the line and smeared it with a bloody kiss. That section began to glow, and the gargoyle closest to me stumbled away.

Afraid.

I had blood rolling down my arm from where the demon had scraped me, and it dripped down my hand and pooled at my fingertips like ink in a pen as I quickly traced the rest of the circle in blood. The moment I was done, the whole thing glowed.

Oh hell yeah.

The house stilled. I’d not realized it vibrated until it stopped.

The biting of my body ceased, too. Suddenly the gargoyles trying to get a bite threw themselves away from me and sprinted for the window. The foot of one monster hit a tiny etched symbol on the floor. The beast ignited, quickly engulfed in a pillar of white fire that turned almost instantly into ash.

The gargoyle that gripped the sill to heave itself out yelped as its hand sank into the symbol-covered frame. I didn’t watch it getting sucked in. I pushed myself to my knees just as the third almost made it to the back door. The floor literally opened up under it and swallowed it whole.

As I watched, the house took care of the living gargoyles, then the injured, and lastly the bodies of the dead. All of them absorbed into the house until only the demon was left.

He lived, barely. His chest quivered, but he didn’t bleed.

I