The demon swung his gaze toward me next. Adrian took advantage of his distraction and hurled a fireplace poker at him. The poker sunk into the demon’s chest, impaling him. Adrian immediately chucked a chair, the other couch and the coffee table at him next. My right arm was throbbing with pain, but I got into the mix and flung a handful of grave dirt at the demon.
To my surprise, nothing happened, and Adrian stopped his furniture assault to shove me back toward the staircase.
“I told you, run!” he warned me. “He’s—!”
That’s all Adrian got out before the furniture covering the demon exploded away. In the next moment, he had grabbed Adrian. Almost at once, a blue tinge covered Adrian’s skin, followed by a shiny white layer that resembled ice. Frostbite, I realized in horror, remembering the glazed sheen that had overtaken the wood from the piano. That’s why Adrian had been fighting this demon with furniture instead of his fists. Somehow, the demon must be able to freeze everything that he touched.
And everything he’d touched had frozen so rapidly, it had ended up exploding.
“No!” I screamed, grabbing the remaining grave dirt and throwing it at the demon.
Not only did it fail to make the demon release Adrian, he grinned at me as if I’d amused him. His teeth were filed into icicle-like points, and those pale, white-on-white eyes seemed to burn into mine. A choking sound escaped Adrian and his arms began to flail in a jerky, uncoordinated way. Panic overwhelmed me, making the pain from my now golden tattoo feel almost blissful by comparison. The demon was killing Adrian right before my eyes, and the only weapon I had wasn’t working!
It’s not your only weapon.
The words whispered across my mind, so faint that I barely heard them. I don’t know why I looked down at my right hand, but I did. Even with my jacket covering me to the wrist, the tattoo of the ancient slingshot was glowing so brightly that it lit up the space around me. In fact, the incredible light radiating from it made the image of the rope that wrapped around my fingers and hand look almost...real.
Without thought, I grasped a section and pulled. If I would’ve paused to consider what I was doing, I never would’ve done it, let alone kept pulling when I felt the unmistakable give of something tangible beneath my skin.
The demon’s grin faded into a look of disbelief. I didn’t pull anymore; I yanked, agony searing up my arm as if I’d sliced it open to the bone. But when I glanced at my right arm, my skin was unbroken. And I now held a long, golden rope that was very, very real—and thrummed with enough supernatural power to make my teeth rattle.
As if everything were happening in slow motion, I saw myself grab a fragment of wood and fit it into the sling’s loop. Saw the demon drop Adrian and charge toward me. Watched me dodge him and spin the rope, then snap it at him. Then felt the icy, paralyzing power of his abilities as the demon’s hands closed over my legs, but in moments, that grip loosened, then vanished.
I fell to the floor, my legs feeling like they’d been turned into popsicles. The demon’s face was right next to mine as my head banged onto the tile, and I glimpsed a cut on his forehead. Before I could roll away from him in instinctive defense, his features began to splinter, crack and dissolve. By the time I’d hauled myself into a sitting position, he was nothing more than a pile of ashes on the ground next to me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“WHAT IS HAPPENING?” a male voice demanded.
I didn’t reply. I dragged myself over to Adrian, needing to use my upper body because my legs still wouldn’t work. He was curled into a ball, and the blue tinge clinging to his skin scared me so much, I almost burst into tears. When I reached him, I wrapped myself around him, trying to use my body to warm his. He was barely breathing, and his skin was so cold, it took only seconds to realize that he needed a lot more warmth. Now.
I summoned all the strength I had to drag him over to the fireplace. The tiles in front of it were hot, and I laid him over them. Then I grabbed the poker from the demon’s ashes. It was so icy after being embedded in the demon’s body that it stuck to my hands, so I simultaneously froze and burned as I used it to stoke the fire higher. Once it was blazing, I threw myself on top of Adrian, hoping the trifecta of heat coming from all sides would reverse the awful effects of the demon’s touch.
Nearby, demands for answers grew louder, but I kept ignoring them. All my attention was on Adrian, whose skin was slowly losing that terrifying bluish color. I barely noticed the agony shooting through me as the slingshot began to wind itself back into my right arm as if it were a snake returning to its home. I did notice Adrian wince when a section of the rope brushed across him, but I was so happy to see him coming back around that I didn’t pause to wonder why.
“Adrian? Can you hear me?” I asked, lightly shaking him.
He made a noise. More moan than a word, but it was a response. Then he tried again, and this time, I understood him.
“That...hurt,” he croaked.
Relief crashed into me with such force, I could no longer control my tears. They spilled from my eyes even as I laughed from the sheer, giddy joy of him being alive.
“So much,” I agreed, climbing off him so he had room to maneuver. “I still can’t feel my legs.”
That was true, but the slingshot was back to being twined around my finger, wrist and forearm as if it were no more than the tattoo it now resembled. If I wasn’t sitting next to a pile of demon ashes, I would’ve sworn that I’d imagined it reforming into the hallowed weapon, but the ash was there. So was the pain, and the last time I’d felt anything this excruciating was when I’d used the slingshot to wipe out Adrian’s former realm.
Adrian looked at the ashes on the floor next to us, then at my right arm. His hand landed on my tattoo, which was still shimmering with that iridescent golden color. With a yelp, he let go and a red welt appeared on his palm.
“Son of a bitch,” Adrian breathed. “It still works.”
Tremors ran over me as the shock from the last several minutes faded enough for me to fully accept that.
“Not like it used to.” My voice was shaky, yet even as I spoke, I began to pull myself together. “But enough.”
More than enough. Having a weapon that could kill demons built-in to my arm was an incredible gift. So what if I was only able to kill them one at a time? That might not be as scary as how the slingshot had simultaneously wiped hundreds of them out the first time I had used it, but everyone had thought it was defunct after that, if you counted how it had resembled nothing more than a tattoo on my arm.
Adrian sat up very slowly. Every movement was clearly painful for him, and seeing it made tears well in my eyes for a different reason this time.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I distracted you, that’s why he was able to grab you. I shouldn’t have gotten in your way.”
He pulled me into his arms. His embrace was chilly, but it was still the best thing I’d ever felt. “It’s not your fault,” he murmured. “I couldn’t beat him. Oblivion was one of the oldest, deadliest demons in existence. Demetrius wasn’t playing when he brought him here as backup.”
Costume Man picked that moment to lose his cool. “I demand to know what’s happening!” he snapped as he stomped over to us.
Adrian let me go, then pushed himself off the floor and rose. His movements were far slower than normal, but the stare he leveled at Costume Man was full of warning.
“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, and if you want to go home, you’ll shut up and do what we say.”
“I’m a park ranger as well as the tour guide for Scotty’s Castle,” Costume Man said, recovering. “If you don’t want to get arrested, you’ll do what I say.”
To punctuate his point, Costume Man, aka the park ranger, pulled out a gun. Before I could react, Adrian had knocked it out of his hand. Even in his weakened condition, he was far faster than a normal person.
“Anyone else want to test me?” Adrian all but growled.
The costumed ranger paled, and the people who’d come upstairs with him looked equally intimidated. I didn’t want them to be frightened of us, so I tried another way.
“Sir, something awful has happened to this place. We’re going to help get everyone out of here, but we don’t have a lot of time to explain, so you’ll just need to—”