This was who I was supposed to stop.
A demon—who when he was only just possessing a body—held me down without breaking a sweat. If he came through the veils, physically came through, all his powers would be intact. I had to stop him now. This was the only chance I had.
He threw his head back, laughing, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Oh, please do struggle, I love to play rough.” He jerked me up and then slammed my upper body back into the ground.
Three times he used me like an oversized fly swatter. I curled my head to my chest, to keep my skull from being cracked open wide, but it was the best I could do. Even so, the warm spread of blood trickled down the back of my neck, as he twisted me to the side, catching me off guard, smashing me into a protruding rock.
A soft nicker floated across to me. I turned my head to see Calliope struggling to her feet, one front leg hanging at a bad angle, snapped at the top of her black sock. Her violet eyes gazed at me, her would-be rescuer. Hope flared between her and I, the belief that I would save her as real and solid as the mountain below us.
Fuck, if I couldn’t get him off me, I wasn’t going to be saving anyone.
Orion turned his head to follow my gaze. “Ah, the innocent. They are made to suffer. They are made to be taken, and broken, and used.”
“Not as long as we’re around.” Liam’s hand wrapped around Orion’s neck and yanked him off me.
Orion’s howl was cut short as Liam snapped his neck, the crunch of bone the most heartwarming sound I’d ever heard. With a casual thrust of his arm, Liam tossed the body away from him, and bent over me.
“You okay?”
I reached up, my hand hovering over an ugly burn on his forearms, the skin black and weeping. “I’m fine, but—”
He grabbed my hand and helped me to my feet. “It’s all good. I’ve had worse frying bacon.”
Calliope let out a sharp, blasting neigh, what could only be the equivalent of a scream.
Orion wasn’t done yet. Head flopped to the side, wobbling with each step, he stumbled toward the filly, mumbling under his breath. A spell cloaked in the darkness of the demon’s power, I could feel it gathering around us. The lava bubbled upward, the sulfurous air quickly choking out what oxygen there was.
No time for insults, much as I wanted to hurl one of the Triplets’ epithets at Orion. I pulled a sword free, ran and leapt in the air. As I came down, I used my weight to leverage the bite of the blade, slicing through Orion’s stolen body from his left shoulder, through his torso, and out through the lower right side of his ribs.
He gasped, red swirling eyes turning to me, filled with hatred.
“Yeah, I feel the same about you, bitch.” I kicked his body with my foot, the two halves sliding apart to the ground.#p#分页标题#e#
To be sure, I bent, grabbed a still twitching leg and hauled it to the edge of the pit. With a heave, I threw the lower half in, the lava swallowing up the legs in two gulping burps of bubbles.
Liam followed my lead and held up the upper half of the body. Though Orion still gazed at us, he seemed to have lost any ability to actually control the body.
“Any last words?” I smiled at him, feeling pretty damn good. Prophecies fulfilled, we’d killed Orion. I could rest easy; the foal was alive, Eve would be fine.
Life was looking up. Please, gods, let it be.
“This isn’t over.” The words were slurred, hard to hear, and strangely didn’t surprise me. Not from a demon.
“Pitiful last words,” Liam said as he threw what was left of Daniels and Orion into the pit. I blinked as the body slid below, eaten by the lava in seconds.
From the pocket inside my jacket, I pulled out the small brown bag Milly had given me. I opened it and poured the spiked demon stone into my hand.
“Lava should do the trick, don’t you think?” I held it up, the spikes pressing into the flesh of my palm. I rolled it to get a better look at it, wondered if I would ever know if Milly really had been enthralled.
Liam bumped my hand and the demon stone fell, landing with a hiss and a gulp as thick lava swallowed it up.
We stared down, the heat curling up around us, drying the sticky mud on our clothes. Thirty seconds passed and Liam stepped back, but I continued to stare, my throat tightening up.
“Does that seem higher than before?” I pointed at the lava as it freaking well surged upward. We fell back, the blast of heat singeing my eyelashes and eyebrows.
“Okay, time to go.” I ran for Calliope. There was no way to set her leg; she’d have to be carried. “Liam!”
“I’ll do it.” The voice was not Liam’s. I looked up at the lip of the overhang, a grey-skinned ogre staring down at us. “You don’t really have a choice, Tracker. You’re going to have to trust me.”