"Let go of me." She jerked again, her angry glare and growl growing more intense. She pulled harder, determined to break his hold.
Thanks to the angelic power she’d inherited, he didn't see the toe of her shoe coming until it collided with his shin. He grunted but didn’t let go. "Enough, Karly." He fought the temptation to shake a little sense into her. "You've already drawn the demons a map right to us. What the hell is going on?"
Tears filled her eyes and her fury gave way to confusion. "Kassern? What happened?"
Terror pumped into Kassern at her sudden confusion. Not a good sign. "There's no time to talk about it now." His demon radar was screeching warnings and he glanced around, looking for the threat. "Come on, we have to get out of here before a—" He staggered into Karly when something big hit the center of his back, hard.
The switch flipped in her eyes again and she went from his sweet, confused wife, to the angry mean banshee. Her palm met his jaw with a resounding thwack that rocked him back on his heels just as another blow from behind rattled every bone in his body.
Kassern spun to meet the new threat, reluctant to turn his back on Karly and whatever was going on with her. His ruby armor gave him his current favorite automatic handgun modeled after the .50 caliber. He panned the gun's muzzle across the visible area, searching for the threat.
Nothing.
The tightly packed spiritual power in the ammo wouldn't do much good without a target to blast. Frustration formed a knot in his gut. He didn't have time to search out the enemy and fight his determined wife when he should be getting the hell out of Dodge.
As the thought passed through his head, he saw it. A low demon grinned, displaying a mouth full of nastily serrated teeth, brilliant white enough for a toothpaste commercial. A Soul Eater. The thing didn't have much spiritual or physical strength, but psychically, it was formidable.
It moved a little, revealing its vaguely canine body. Bipedal and human sized, with a chameleon-like ability to blend into the background, the Soul Eater looked like an over-sized collie/shepherd type dog with misshapen hind legs that allowed it to walk upright.
The beast raised its head to sniff the air, flaring too-large nostrils to reveal crusty yellow and green tissue. Large ears flicked front to back. "What's this?" The long narrow mouth and lolling tongue, unintended for human speech, mangled the words. The demon pulled black leathery lips back to reveal the magnificent teeth again. "Angel and human. Sex. And something dark and new."
Kassern refused to rise to the demon's bait. He grabbed Karly's hand to flash them away, the mist of ruby particles swirling around him.
Suddenly his hand was empty. He spun within the rising cloud and found Karly outside the red haze of his long-distance translocation power.
The grin on his wife's face froze Kassern's blood in his veins. Cold anger and hatred turned her natural beauty into an ugly mask of evil. Holy Father. Could the demon exert some kind of power over her? Of course it could, through the taint of her previous sins of prostitution.
Kassern stepped out of the mist ready for battle. He would not forfeit his beloved at any cost.
The demon's grin broadened. "Ah, I knew you couldn't resist the challenge."
Suspicions confirmed, Kassern switched weapons. His handgun morphed into a weapon of his own design, patterned after a fishing net. He cast it without warning, allowing the ruby filaments of power to expand. A second net immediately followed.
The strands of the first net stretched, glistening and pulsing with supernatural energy, to surround and encompass the demon.
The thing screeched and shook furiously, but the net held fast then began to contract as the demon struggled against the restraint. At the same time, the second net surrounded Karly and pulled snug to fit her like a glove. As the net came into contact with her skin, it glowed, radiating the power of Kassern's love for her.
Karly's face changed again, the evil rolling back to reveal her normal visage as she looked around in surprise.
The demon's net continued to shrink, pulling the thing into ever tighter contortions while it shrieked and howled, a sound of fury, until it was finally just a bit larger than a softball. Kassern snatched it up and exhaled a ruby mist to cover every pore of the demon's skin. The moisture soaked in, then hardened into a gemstone-infused lump of dark material.
He sliced through the fabric of the dimension with a fingernail and tossed the thing through. The slit closed with a liquid melding that left no trace. The demon would join the several thousand others being safely contained in the inter-dimensional space until Kassern had time to deliver them safely to the Gates of Hell.
He turned back to Karly who once more looked like the woman he'd fallen in love with, the shadow of evil gone from her face.