Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

22: Father of the Demon

The Demon hurled me at a guard before I'd caught my breath. I dove within his reach and wriggled between him and his rifle, sending it clattering to the floor in a hail of bullets. A stray bullet took out the second guard's ankle, who crumpled to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

The sight of it all had the Demon screaming for more. It launched me at the fallen guard in a frenzy, making me tear at his keffiyeh to expose the soft skin of his neck. I bit down. The Demon's needles writhed in ecstasy as the metallic tang of the guard's blood gushed over my tongue. He screamed, perhaps more at the violation than the pain, but the Demon drank in every scream and wail and yelp, overjoyed at the chaos. I smiled—more of a demonic rictus than a smile—and bellowed out a laugh that was not my own.

By the time the second guard had reclaimed his rifle, the Demon's bloodlust was thrumming in my ears and rushing through my veins. I lurched off the fallen guard's prone body and swung at his comrade, catching his knee and locking my elbows tight around it. He dragged me around the floor, his balance too unsteady to aim his AK. The Demon had me clawing my way up the guard's legs while he tried to prise my fingers clear. A brief struggle for his rifle ended with me pummeling him on the nose with the stock. He crumpled in a heap at my feet.

Where the fuck was Mira? I'd at least expected a jambiya blade to the face while fighting the guards. A fleeting glance across the room revealed Mira al Assad stood there, looking bored as fuck.

Of course. My dance with the guards had followed the rigid Alcor protocol that Mira had devised, and Zaki had enforced, to test new recruits. She knew that her guards were no challenge to me, and I could tell that she was itching to fight me alone, just as she had done the first day I'd met her. But this time it wasn't a spar to find my place in Alcor's pecking order. It was a fight to the death. I leaped toward Mira.

She was faster than ever, a blur, prancing and feinting around me while I lumbered across the room swinging my kris. Outmatched, still my dumb ego had me casting out threats I couldn't keep. "I win, and you let Dante go."

The Demon shoved me forward, pounding my kris hilt into Mira's cheek as she flew out of reach.

"You can't beat me, Ahmar." She sprang toward my knee. Her blade sliced through my jeans, narrowly missing skin. Her jambiya cut through the air again. "After a period of atonement, you will stay with me, Rayan, and the Demon Star."

My kris raised sparks in a last-second parry, a splinter of steel flying off the blade with the impact. "I'd rather die."

"Thanks to my work, our family will live forever." Mira spun on her heels. Her singing jambiya took a nick outta my earlobe. "Don't you want that, Ahmar?"

"You're not my family."

The Demon was slowing. My attacks were barely on target. My muscles sizzled in lactic acid. Mira looked as fresh as if she'd just woken up from a damn good sleep. I stalled with a few feinted kicks that sent her lunging toward me, and managed to pin her by her hair. Without a second thought, she swiped at the trapped hair with her jambiya, beautiful black locks fluttering loose around the room as she whirled away.

On her second attack I got within her guard and flung her as far as the Demon could manage. She crashed against an ornate screen, tearing through the wickerwork. I thought she'd been knocked out, but she wrestled herself free and flew at me again. Her jambiya hilt crashed down on my forehead.