rage from everyone slain before their time and lasered it at Dagon. The demon’s smirk actually fell beneath the silent, seething onslaught. Then, he caught himself, and his arrogant smile returned.
“Or, I’ll watch you die now, boy. That’ll be fun, too.”
With that, two humps swelled beneath the garbage that layered the bottom of Ian’s circle. Ian jumped back, pulling out more weapons. In the moments it took the forms to burst free from the trash covering them, Ian had already fired several rounds into both of the growing humps.
He’d hit his marks, but no blood spattered the creatures that rose up from the trash piles. They grew impossibly fast, going from the size of dogs to horses in the scant time it took Ian to holster his guns and hurl silver knives into their heads next. The metal pierced skulls that looked leonine, if lions also had horns, but then the knives fell out without any visible damage to the creatures. Feathers slithered over their torsos, skipping their hairless, lionlike heads and humanoid hands and arms. Then two wings unfurled from their backs.
I stared in disbelief. These creatures had been carved into stone murals when I was a child, but I hadn’t known they were real. Dagon saw my reaction and laughed.
“You do recognize them! Anzus were considered demons to ancient Sumerians, but what else do you expect primitive humans to call lesser divinities? They’re also rarer than Simargls, so you’ll appreciate the effort it took me to bring them here. Cost me two souls a piece.”
One of the Anzus reared up and swiped at Ian with its huge, claw-tipped, humanoid hand. Ian leapt back, hitting the walls of his circle. The circle’s defense mechanism slammed into me with the force of a car crash. Breath exploded out of me and my bones instantly broke. I staggered, avoiding touching the sides of my own far smaller circle because I didn’t want to be hit with another blast of defensive magic, as Dagon called it.
Ian gave a worried look in my direction. The other Anzu seized on the distraction and flew at him faster than he could avoid. Claws ripped through everything except Ian’s bullet-proof vest. Ian’s blood spattered the walls of his circle. I felt new inner slashes from even that slight contact. Then, Ian threw the creature aside. It slammed into the circle’s barrier, setting off another chainsaw-rampage sensation inside of me.
All I saw was blood for a few agonizing moments. It spurted from my eyes, mouth, and nose, forced out from the internal damage I could neither defend against nor protect myself from. When it stopped, I was on the floor, dangerously close to the edge of my own circle. Ian screamed my name. I looked up to see him stab his demon bone trident through one of the Anzu’s eyes with absolutely no effect.
“Destroy the head,” I croaked, hoping the old myths were true.
Ian flew up to avoid the second Anzu’s attack, leaving his trident in the first one. The Anzu ripped it free, then broke the trident under a massive back paw.
Ian torpedoed back down, landing on the Anzu’s back hard enough to snap the spine of any other creature. The Anzu didn’t even lose its balance. It began flying around the circle, bucking wildly, striking the walls and the other Anzu in its rage to get Ian off its back. Between bursts of agony from the repeated contact with the circle’s walls, I saw Ian hold on . . . and slam his longest, widest knife through the Anzu’s skull.
The breath I held exploded out of me when the Anzu ripped that knife out of its skull with one of those humanlike hands, then bent down and rammed Ian against the circle’s barrier hard enough for me to hear his bones shatter. I didn’t hear anything except my own screams after that. The circle’s defensive ricochet from that tremendous impact ripped me apart on the inside.
When I could focus again, Dagon’s laugh was the first thing I heard. Then the blood left my vision and I saw Ian, far bloodier than before, flying out of the Anzus’ reach while trying to avoid the sides of the circle. He must have figured out touching them was the source of my debilitating damage.
“Did I forget to mention my favorite part about Anzus?” Dagon’s voice rose with vicious satisfaction. “No weapon forged can harm them.”
Chapter 41
I could stand to watch Dagon gloat, and I could stand to die.