Alterant (Belador #2)(41)

Those two demons must have figured out she couldn’t hold the wall of power in front of her and above her at the same time. The one perched overhead jumped as the demon on the ground attacked.

She changed her hand positions and shoved her power straight up, making a fast plan. When the flying monster hit her force field she would heave that animal at the one coming across the ground.

Her plan might have worked, but the one that landed on her field of energy hit and bounced off, smacking a pine tree that hadn’t been thick enough to do any damage.

And the demon on the ground had anticipated her move.

He jumped sideways.

Then slashed back at her before she could swing her kinetic power to stop him.

Fangs bared, he lunged for her knee.

His jaws crushed bone with the first bite.

She screamed at the pain. Claws tore at her thigh, ripping skin and muscle. Blood gushed down her leg and over the demon’s muzzle. She beat his head with her fists.

Cartilage shot up along her arms. Energy racked her body with the impending change.

No. Not the beast. She couldn’t trust Tristan not to rat her out if they faced the Tribunal together, and she’d glow red if she lied about shifting.

But dying would negate all of that.

Her fingers elongated with clawed tips. She clenched her teeth, shaking hard with the force of holding off the change.

The demon’s teeth ground into her knee. Blinding white pain burned through her leg, up into her abdomen and chest. The impending change had given her a weapon she wouldn’t waste. Cocking her arm back, she shoved the sharp claw on her index finger into the creature’s eye.

And kept shoving.

Bone gave as she pushed the stake deep into his brain.

His other eye rolled up in his head. His jaws loosened.

She pulled back and swung her fist like a sledgehammer, driving it down on the animal’s head. Its head broke away from her knee. Two fangs buried in her muscle snapped at the skin line.

The haze surrounding her glowed so bright that it practically blinded her sensitive eyes. When had she lost her glasses? She groped around, found them and shoved them back on her face.

Dizziness assailed her.

She couldn’t focus her vision. Something attacked her body almost like a poison, draining her power. She yanked out the broken fangs and gasped for air. Blood shot from opened arteries with each pulse of her heart. Pain screamed through her.

She was going to lose that leg . . . if she didn’t die first.

Her arms felt heavy. She was light-headed. What kept depleting her energy beyond the blood loss?

Greenish-yellow liquid mixed with blood streamed down her leg.

The demon’s saliva.

Maybe that’s what had weakened Tristan. The demons’ saliva had to be attacking their blood.

The tree-climbing demon that had bounced off her kinetic power shook his head and gained his feet, facing her with dead eyes. He wobbled when he took a step toward her.

With her power dwindling, she had one shot left.

She threw a blast of energy at the tree ten feet up, severing the trunk and sending a ton of wood down to crush the demon’s backbone.

Now she didn’t have enough kinetic energy to snap a toothpick.

Tristan bellowed in agony.

She twisted around, clenching her teeth against the throbbing pain. The creature still had what was left of Tristan’s mauled arm locked in his jaws. He used the bloody stump to shake Tristan’s entire body back and forth.

No point in being quiet now, she yelled, “Where’s the dagger?”

“Right . . . boot,” he croaked out in a voice wrought with pain. Blood covered his arm, his body and the ground.

Dragging her bad leg, she crawled to his side and lurched for his boot, unable to stop a cry of anguish at banging her crushed knee.

She reached inside his boot and curled her fingers around the handle of her dagger.

Energy wicked up her arm.

With the last surge of strength in her body, she lunged for the demon’s head, driving the dagger between its eyes. That had worked on demons in the past and, hallelujah, this one burst into an explosion of light, then turned into gray powder.

Tristan fell back with a pitiful howl.

Nothing alive should sound like that.

She shoved the dagger into her boot and climbed over him. Flesh and muscle hung loose from his shoulder, his arm a mangled mess. He wouldn’t survive that any more than she was going to survive a crushed knee that was bleeding out.

“Have to . . . heal,” he rasped out in a pain-drenched voice.

She’d healed some wounds quicker than a human would be able to but not an injury like this. “Tristan, my knee is destroyed. I don’t have the ability to heal this kind of damage.”

She rolled off his body so he could move. He drew a couple of hard breaths and pushed up on his undamaged arm. His sun-kissed skin had turned a sickly gray.

He wheezed out, “Go to . . . the lake.”

Like water was going to fix their ravaged bodies? “How will that help?”

“Have to wash away . . . saliva . . . it’s attacking our blood.”

“That might stop the power loss, but—” She took a couple of breaths to keep from throwing up. “Unless that lake has majik in the water . . . not going to fix mangled bodies. It’s too late . . . saliva’s draining us.”

He gave her a look of confusion, then got to his feet with a great deal of grunting through clenched jaws. He extended his hand to her. “Too much . . . to explain.”