Page 72 of The Morning Star
I raised my sword and beheaded the demon who had been about to fry Snip to a crisp from behind. His body fell, falling as a million grains of sand upon the ground while the head rolled to stop against the trunk of a crooked tree.
I grimaced, feeling his death like the sharp sting of a bee. “What Snip? Not a good time, so hurry up and spit it out.”
“Mistress, Barf and Rutter have lost ground and been pushed over to where Ahia and the werewolves are fighting.”
I turned to swing at another demon and missed. He took one look at the sword, and took off. Good. One less that I had to kill. I hoped he’d run all the way back to Seattle and through the gate. I hoped he ran straight back to Hel. I wished they’d all do that, but with the fake-Samael prevailing, the demons weren’t showing any desire to abandon him for me. Although they did seem mighty intimidated by my sword.
“Mistress?”
“That’s good. Go help them. Stay a good distance from Ahia. When she’s fighting, she doesn’t always look where she’s swinging.”
“But Mistress, we’re supposed to protect you, to fight by your side.”
I could see glimpses of fake-Samael ahead, his white-blond hair reflecting the sunlight. He looked like a bad copy even from this distance. How could that have fooled Doriel, who I suspected had once had a very intimate glimpse of the real thing?
He’d come out from his hiding spot behind the army, wanting a more prominent position now that they were winning. Still, he was surrounded by the strongest demons, three Ancients by his side. Fucking coward.
I needed to work my way over there, to cut my way through those demons and Ancients and kill him. And I didn’t want vulnerable Lows at my side when I attempted that.
“No. Go help Ahia with the others. I’ve got this.”
Snip got that stubborn gleam in his beady little eyes and planted his feet.
“That’s an order,” I told him, swinging at another demon and missing. Damn it. “An order. From your Mistress.”
He darted off, grumbling, while I fought yet another warmonger in yet another lion/bear form. Couldn’t these guys be a little more creative? How about the occasional elephant/crocodile? Or a wasp/penguin?
I finally managed to kill the guy, wincing from the bite of his death, then got another fix on fake-Samael’s position.
We were losing. There were just too many demons, and our angels weren’t as skilled in fighting in physical form beyond some of the Grigori. I watched with helpless frustration, realizing that a sword wouldn’t do me much good against thirty thousand demons. I could kill maybe a dozen with the weapon, but in the end we’d be overwhelmed. Samael was right, being the Iblis wasn’t about the sword.
And without the sword, I was just an imp.
A demon rushed me, and I batted away his energy attack with the sword, meeting him head on. As I slashed upright with my blade, he pivoted, his clawed hand coming down on my wrist and digging in through the flesh and bone.
The sword clattered to the ground. I opened my other hand to call it to me, but the demon stepped into me and jerked his head forward. I saw the horns coming for my face, and instead of calling my sword, I reached out and grabbed one. He twisted his head and I held tight, gritting my teeth as I struggled against his superior strength.
“You need to go back to Hel,” I ground out, my feet slipping as he pushed me backward. “Go to Hel!”
He jerked to a stop, his bovine eyes meeting mine. Something stretched between us, like a taut sinew, vibrating with the tension. I felt him. I felt them all, not as a faceless group, but as distinct individuals. Just as I had briefly in Hel, for a second, every single demon on that battlefield was like an extension of me. Every one of them was mine.
Then the moment passed. The demon blinked, snorted, and pushed forward again, shaking his head to pull the horn free from my grasp. A clawed hand raked my side and I yelped, twisting to prevent myself from being disemboweled, all while struggling to hold his head in place. I felt the sting of torn skin, the warm wet of blood running down my hips and leg, a cold breeze from where he’d ripped the pants half off my body.
Great. Now I was half-naked, like those fucking loser Spartans, only with me it was my lower half and not my top half. It’s not like I knew how to recreate clothing, either. A naked imp. How awe inspiring was that? But there were more important things to worry about—like keeping this demon from impaling my face with his fucking horn. I bent my head down for leverage and gripped tight, trying to twist the guy’s head enough to maybe break his neck, or at least break his horn. The tattered fabric of my jeans shifted and something fell from my torn pocket—something shiny, something copper.
One of the flattened, stamped pennies. The Seattle one. Snip had insisted I take it for luck, because you were supposed to wish on pennies.
Tens of thousands of pennies. It was as if time stood still for a breath while I calculated the exact weight of that bag, the weight of the individual pennies, and came to a realization. Not ten thousand pennies. Thirty thousand pennies. All of them from cities where the seven gates from Hel resided. Most of them from Seattle. Pennies. One penny for each demon in the army.
Humans with their short lives needed a focus. The sword was nothing but a focus. The amulets, the wands, the spells…this penny.
It’s all in the focus. One penny for each demon. Pennies stamped with the cities representing the gateways.
That sensation of connection returned. The coin at my feet glowed. Demon. Gateway. Hel. The coin that helped my mind tie it all together.
“Go. To. Hel,” I commanded.
The demon screamed, his knees buckling as he dropped to the ground. The horn snapped free in my hand. His claws scrabbled at the ground. The penny caught fire, then with a puff of white smoke, both were gone, through the gateway in Seattle. In the depths of my mind I saw the demon kneeling on the red sands, the city of Dis in the distance. I heard his bellow, and saw him rise and run, afraid, whatever loyalty he’d had to the fake-Samael broken.
