Page 114 of Hellish Witch

It would be a slaughter.

I peered around the trunk supporting most of my weight, tracking the hunters racing through the forest.

I drew a deep breath.

There was going to be a slaughter all right.

I stepped from my hiding place.

And reached deep into the abyss.

Dark hunger embraced me.

I craved their blood and pain. For every drop of mine they’d spilled. For every bone they’d broken. Every cut they’d carved into my flesh.

I screamed, throwing my hands out. Bloody magic raced forwards and slammed into the monsters.

They screamed back, dropping to the ground. Grunts of pain echoed. Bones crunched. The slick sound of blood splattered the forest floor.

Red swirled over my vision, tinting the gloom. Power flooded through my veins in bright lines of electricity as my magic devoured their essence, vibrating its way deep into my chest. Strength charged my limbs as my demonic side fed on the excess magic.

For the first time in my life, both sides of my heritage worked in perfect harmony, and it felt right. Natural. Like I hadn’t been born a mistake.

Hunters raised their weapons, and gunfire burst through the night.

My heart squeezed as it rained bullets.

I dodged, zigzagging my way towards the frantic humans. Pain flared in bright sparks along my limbs as spelled lead grazed me. My magic swallowed the damage, but the pain threatened to buckle my knees.

A burly man staggered towards me, bleeding from multiple gashes on his arms. He bared his teeth, lifted his pistol, and squeezed the trigger.

It spat a magic round, whizzing past my ear. I snarled, eardrum ringing painfully, and swept low, gripping the barrel before he could get a second shot off and shoving it aside. It exploded in my hold, the percussive force mincing my hand, but the bullet found its home in another hunter, groaning on his knees beside us.

I swiped my claws through the hunter’s throat, cutting short his yell with a wet gurgle as blood drenched my repairing fingers.

And then violence descended over me.

I spun and sliced, claws cutting flesh, fangs tearing jugulars. My magic latched onto most of the hunters, reopening countless old wounds, but not all, and they came for me in a blur of blades and bullets, their fury matching my own.

Pain ricocheted through my body with every slice and shot that found my flesh, until the world darkened at the edges, dancing with the red. My healing magic fought for my survival.

I stumbled as another spelled bullet smashed into my thigh, buckling my leg. I hissed, rolling through a pile of fallen leaves as I dodged the next round.

Gunshots boomed through the forest, pierced by their screams and my snarls.

A bright flare of life in my subconscious set my soul aflame, but dread chased on its heels.

Killian dropped through the canopy on shadowed wings, landing close enough for me to feel the gust of air as he used his body as a shield. His sword was already drawn, black blade angled towards the hunters.

“Get up, Eve. Run!” he snarled over his wing, but his focus never left the threats closing around us.

“Shoot to kill!” one hunter yelled. “We can still harvest corpses!”

I shuddered at the idea of their scientists getting hold of Killian, dead or alive, and lurched back to my feet, stumbling out from behind the demon my soul keened for.

With Killian here, I couldn’t risk my darker magic cutting him down faster than the hunters, even if it wasn’t completely spent.

So I tuned into the rhythm of violence, of the dance I’d learned long before any magic.

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