Page 57 of Hell Sent

The shock ebbed, and for a moment, feeling returned to his limbs. He jabbed a hand toward the vythian’s head. Raking his fingers across its face, he hit upon something soft that tore in his grasp. With a shriek, the vythian released him and backed away, swinging its head in distress. One of its eyes was gone.

Azreth dropped to his knees. Blood gushed from a row of tears along his torso.

“Hey!” someone shouted.

Azreth looked up. So did the vythian. They both turned toward the voice, toward the slight figure that was approaching from the city.

It was Raiya. She was running straight toward the vythian. Azreth’s heart nearly stopped. He paused to wonder whether he was hallucinating, because it looked like she was brandishing a long stick with a jangling sack tied to the end of it.

“That’s right,” she shouted, waving the sack in the air like a war banner. “Leave him alone!”

To Azreth’s horror, it did as she asked. It ran toward her, and—and she ran to meet it. She had gone mad. The vythian raised its head above her. It opened its mouth, ready to strike.

And then, like some kind of avenging eldress warrior queen, Raiya hefted the stick high and thrust it deep into the vythian’s mouth, where it stuck.

The vythian stopped, its neck convulsing. It shook its head, trying to dislodge the stick caught in its throat as Raiya backed away.

Azreth didn’t fully realize what she’d done until the vythian began to retch. Thick, greenish steam poured from its mouth, and its screeches became strange, heavy gurgling sounds, like its insides were melting.

It was iron. She’d force-fed it a sack full of iron.

He’d thought being bitten in half would be a bad way to die, but this was worse. Much worse.

It was mercifully quick. The vythian fell to the ground with an earth-shaking crash, then went still.

Stunned, he looked at Raiya. She looked back.

She had killed a vythian.

She’d remembered its weakness and had used her mortal nature to her advantage. Azreth couldn’t have made an iron weapon to kill it, but she could. Even with all the strength and magic at his disposal, she had still outfought him.

She was incredible. And right now, she was rushing to meet him, tears in her eyes, like he was the most important person in the world.

“Azreth! That was foolish of you to fight that thing alone. Damn you, that was foolish.”

“Are you hurt?” he wheezed.

“No!” she snapped, as if she disapproved of him asking. She fawned over him, nervously hovering her hands here and there as she surveyed his wounds. “You saved everyone. The whole camp. The whole town.”

“The behelgi?”

She made a choked sound. Her emotions were vast and heavy. He couldn’t quite tell if she was laughing or crying. She looked over her shoulder to check the herd. “They’re fine. They’re all fine.”

By the city, there was a crowd watching. Hundreds of mortals were gathered near the gates, staring at him. At a dying demon. A few pointed at him, lifting weapons.

He had been willing to die fighting the vythian, but he did not want to fight the mortals he had begun to feel close to in these past weeks, and he did not want to look into their hateful eyes as he died, now that they’d discovered what he was. He didn’t want to be hated.

He looked at Raiya, suddenly less resigned to death. He didn’t want it this way, not here, not by the hands of the people he’d only wanted to help.

“Help me,” he asked Raiya. He realized it was something he’d never asked anyone before.

A stray tear spilled onto her cheek. She nodded quickly, helping him up.

She helped him run as far as he could—which, it turned out, was only a few dozen strides before he collapsed in the grass again. He was bleeding heavily, and he was dizzy and lightheaded from the loss of blood. Raiya knelt over him and compressed the worst of the wounds with both hands. He winced as pain pounded through him.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

“Yes.” Of course he did. Nearly since the beginning, he had, even if he hadn’t wanted to.

---