Page 34 of Nope, No Regrets
Rei
Iliterally just got out of jail. If Hell had fabulous beaches and grand palaces like the one I lived in now, and Bael’s place, did we really have to end this in another jail? I’ll bet Kudan did that on purpose. He struck me as being passive aggressive when he wanted to kill me. Dick.
Fergus told Amduscias where to open his portal, and we emerged from it at the end of an empty hallway. There were no witches or demons milling about. I took Sabrina and Kudan as the kind of pouter that took it out on other people when they didn’t get their way. If I were one of their minions, I’d be hiding while they duked it out over that mattress, too.
We’d planned this down to the letter. Wren didn’t just have a potion that helped us see in the dark, she also knew a spell that ensured no one would hear us as we moved into place. I loved Wren to death, and she constantly surprised me with her cunning spells she had at her disposal to assist in sneaking around, murdering people.
I didn’t know where we were going. I certainly hadn’t been sneaking around in areas like this when I was in jail. Many of our previous Scorchwood residents seemed to know exactly where to go if you wanted to find the warden’s apartment, and the one memory foam mattress in the prison.
We all gathered outside the door, and Amduscias checked his phone. He nodded to me. That was my cue. It was pretty fucking cool how easy it was to cause a power outage now that I had that extra tail. I barely blinked, and the lights went out.
Faust and Sota didn’t try to stand in front of me and hold me back from this fight. They stood side by side, like they knew I could handle this, even if I didn’t have that many tails yet. Dakarys and Rajack were at my back. Wren and Charley were holding hands so they could be more powerful, and sweet Autumn was standing there like she was ready to cut a bitch.
Almost as soon as I cut the power, there was this horrific sound from behind the door. We were all counting on Sabrina getting scared, and she didn’t disappoint. I started laughing like a madwoman when she tried to tear ass out of that room, completely covered in gore! She was shrieking her head off and calling for backup.
She didn’t realize we were out there. Sabrina ran straight into Faust, who whipped her around and stuck her in a big, wolfy headlock.
“Who wants to hit her?” he growled.
I definitely owed her one, but that honor should go to Autumn, as should her fate. I thought I was going to wet myself laughing when Autumn sucker-punched her right in the gut.
Sabrina always lookedimmaculate,with the perfect resting bitch face. She had totally come undone. There were bits of my brother in her hair and hanging off her chin, and I think she just now realized how epically stupid it was to come for me here.
I wanted to just sit there and enjoy the show of Autumn beating the shit out of her… but that ungodly shrieking had all the doors in the hallway opening. Witches and some pretty fucking scary looking demons started spilling out into the hallway to fight us. I was all for locking them in, but I was outvoted. Everyone wanted a fight.
Skoll shifted into his wolf and jumped into the fight. Fergus was back with us. He turned into this badass dragon, made of fire, and started burning his way down the hall as Solron shrieked something or other about how he was going to pay for that. She was hollering about property damage to her prison, but she kept cutting out.
She was a shadow demon, and this entire wing was now pitch black. She kept grabbing witches or demons and disappearing with them, only to come back screaming at Fergus about scorch marks on the wall.
The demons and witches realized the level of shit they were in. Solron was trying to grab demons that Skoll, Fergus, and Roman hadn’t killed and get them to Bael’s dungeon before they portalled out.
Faust’s wolf came barreling through the fight then and began ripping throats out. Who the fuck was holding Sabrina down so anyone who wanted could punch her? Come to think of it, there were a lot of screams of pain and terror, but her awful shrieks had stopped.
I ducked a burst of magic that flew my way and tried to look back to where I’d last seen Sabrina. Autumn and Amduscias were gone. Sabrina probably just got portalled to her posh new real estate, in a torture dungeon in Hell.
Some weird flying demon, that was nowhere near as pretty as Sota’s Tengu, dive bombed at my head. I think it was pretty clear at this point that Kudan was a bloody mess in that bedroom, and Sabrina was gone, but these bitches weren’t giving up.
Most of them were just trying to kill as many of us as possible and escape, and then there was this flying bitch still trying to take me out! I let my ears and tail spring out and hurled a crackling bolt of electricity at him. My aim had been perfect when I killed Venus, but this was still new to me, and Venus wasn’t airborne.
The demon veered, and my bolt of electricity missed, blasting an entire section out of the ceiling instead of brains out of a skull. Solron had just reappeared in the darkness to witness me damaging her precious prison.
“Fuck, Rei! You’re paying for that!” she shrieked.
My aim was much better the next time, and that ugly demon fell out of the sky right before he could peck my eyes out with that nasty beak.
There were more witches than demons in here, and they wanted me dead, too. Those utter assholes were probably blaming me for how this went wrong. What exactly did they think was going to happen? They had two wolves, a gargoyle, a sphinx, a vampire, a flame dragon, and two witches chanting dark magic, and they werestilltrying to get at me.
None of my tails blocked witch magic. Was that a thing? I needed to ask Sota later. I had fire and electricity at my disposal, and I didn’t care if I destroyed this entire prison with it, but bodies were clashing all over the place, and I didn’t want to kill someone on my team. I’d missed Kitsune preparatory school, where they apparently taught you all about using these things right when they first magically appeared.
Those fucking witches had committed to a unified front to kill me. They lined up and made this wall of bodies, with a shield of dark magic that sent Faust flying across the hall. I swear to shit, if they hurt him, I’d personally sign up for torture duty.
Autumn was back in the fray, and was the only one of us who studied their grimoire in depth. She shoved me out of the way, flung her hands out, and started chanting at them. Charley and Wren came forward to place their hands on her shoulder to give her a boost of magic.
That magical force-field was cheating. They could fling all kinds of nastiness at us, and we couldn’t fight back… unless one pissed-off coven had paid a demon to steal their grimoire and use it against them. Autumn knew the counterspell to take it down.
With the extra boost from Charley and Wren, the entire thing shattered and instantly killed the witches directly behind it. Even that didn’t stop them though, they just stepped over the dead bodies like they weren’t part of the same coven.
They were all shrieking to give the grimoire back. They knew someone here had it, or they wouldn’t have been able to disable their spell. There were dead witches everywhere. The hallway stank of blood and burnt flesh and it hung in the back of my throat. If I were them, I’d be less worried about demanding that grimoire back and more worried about trying to make it back to Earth with my tail between my legs.
