FINAL GATE (#3 GHOST PORTAL series)

TWENTY

Though Jessamine couldn't see herself in a mirror to confirm it, she knew her face was covered in gashes. She sensed their stinging across her skin, and remembered how often she'd had to dodge swipes from monstrous beasts who'd lunged at her to stop her from locking them up.

The demons were, for the most part, supposed to protect her and Landon. But with such an outburst of otherworldly beings, with so many creatures to restrain, immobilize, and shove through gates, it was hard for them to be everywhere at once. Thankfully, the demons inside Jessamine reacted fast enough to avoid any dangerous damage. She had slashed arms and bruises on her legs and a few cuts on her fingers and neck, but she was otherwise unharmed.

But the pain from all her injuries was immense. Similarly to earlier, when she'd gotten too close to the exit door, she felt as though barbed wires wove around her arms, digging their spikes into the flesh of her thighs, calves, even into her feet. As if they'd sliced into her while she fought off portal monsters, aggravating her already irritated skin.

There were no barbed wires; the proximity with portals and so many foreign creatures was causing her hallucinations. It took her some time to understand that, and soon enough she stopped imagining the wires, the spikes. Because the invaders had given her the wounds she now blew on, begging them to stop bleeding. Blood attracted certain of the escaped monsters, or so the demons within had warned. So she hurried to wipe off the flow of the copper-smelling liquid before its stench filled the air.

They were almost done. A handful of gates remained, and Landon and Jessamine were headed towards them, weeding through the crowd of zombified not-quite-humans who'd been drawn over by a cluster of demons hurling insults at them.

Jessamine was woozy. She couldn't tell if it was because of her ongoing injuries, her continued panic, the threat of more hallucinations, or if the beings inside her were the ones making her nauseous. She leaned towards the latter idea, persuaded that the demons were working so hard against their instincts—to fully possess her, to turn her evil—that it hurt them, which hurt her.

"Indeed," said one demon, reading her thoughts as she and Landon floated on towards a gleaming, metallic gate awaiting closure. "Our battle takes a toll on your body, and believe it or not, we're sorry for it."

As they lowered themselves on either end of the gate, Landon squinted at her. "This place is going to collapse," he said, gesturing at the chaotic crimson sky, the worsening lightning, the horde of skeletal fiends racing up to the demons blocking the portal. "You need to get out. I bet I could finish this on my own."

Jessamine panted, catching her breath. Flying, in itself, wasn't exhausting, since the demons controlled most of it. Yet her lungs squeezed in her chest and she struggled to take in sufficient oxygen. Had the air in the realm grown hostile to her? Or had she been hurt internally by one of the monsters, and not realized it? Or were the invaders capable of changing the atmosphere and making it harder to breathe?

"I can't," she said, also motioning at the oncoming attack, cringing. "We're not done here. You can't handle all that alone."

"But I probably could. We got through the most challenging of them, I'd say." Landon scrunched his nose, slightly tilting his head; he was talking to the demons in him, though he was glancing at Jessamine. "Because you," his gaze shifted from Jessamine's face to her still bleeding arm, "aren't looking so good."

She flinched, holding in a hiss as a burning sensation reached from her wrist to the crook of her elbow. She spotted the wound there, and it was deeper than she'd thought. The worst of the bleeding had passed, but blood still seeped out of her and trickled down through her fingers. The stickiness made her want to gag.