“What the fuck’s wrong with you, demon,” I hissed. “You don’t just sniff at people! Return to Hell and learn some manners before you come to the surface again.”
“She’s the prize! Grab her!” the archdemon yowled.
Héctor roared in rage, leaped, and cut off the archdemon’s horns.
The demon screamed profanities, and the whole demon army surged toward us with a cacophony of bellows, their spears and axes raised high.
The last of my fires pushed toward them like burning waves, vanishing squads of demon soldiers, but the next waves kept coming.
I had no more fire.
“We need to go, lamb,” Héctor said, grabbing me with one hand as he wielded his sword to cut down the next approaching wave of demons.
A roar thundered beside us, and a new wave of energy threw the demons back.
Axel landed in front of us.
“Cookie, are you all right?” he called urgently.
And then more flashes of light arrived, and Zak and Paxton landed, blood already coating them. They were wounded.
“Paris was a trap, too,” Paxton said, then charged toward the two remaining archdemons and their army. He had cuts all over himself, his armor shredded.
Zak was no better off.
My chest tightened at the sight.
A horn sounded somewhere amid the ranks of the demon army.
The two surviving archdemons, though one was now missing horns, turned into smoke and disappeared.
The ground rumbled and tore open, and the demon army jumped to the abyss, returning to Hell. A few seconds later, the ground sealed again.
“The demons have learned how to open a portal from the underground,” Zak said gloomily.
The four demigods closed in around me to check on me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “You’re wounded.”
“You’re spent, lamb,” Héctor said, his right wing twisted and broken behind him. “You’ll need to feed soon.”
“Will you just stop worrying about me?” I squirmed. “We need to get all of you fixed first. We need to get the fuck out of here!”
“What happened here?” Zak asked, scanning around.
“Ares vanquished our soldiers with his Glory to bring in demons,” Héctor said, cold wrath rolling off him. “He’s determined to get rid of us and steal our mate.”
Axel’s face paled a shade. “I’ll kill the fucker.”
“We need to go back to Bushwick to aid my friends and the students,” I said urgently. “They’re still battling the demons.”
“The demon horde was already heading this direction, coming for you,” Axel said.
“Let’s go,” Héctor called, and the five of us entered his slipstream as he teleported all of us to Bushwick and Myrtle Ave, where our buses had been ambushed.
Five blocks had been destroyed in their entirety. Buildings had collapsed, and smoke twirled into the sky. Blood coated the streets. Broken bodies lay scattered on the ground. The two remaining buses had been wrecked.
The demon army was gone.