Demon Bound

tore from the ceiling, followed by the thump of a falling limb. A sentinel raced in from the side and hit a trip wire. A sticky web scooped him up, a fish wiggling in a net.
    No, she thought. Her focus narrowed, the world contracting into sharp flashes of shape and sound. Flies. Flies in my parlor.
    She lashed out with her Gift an instant before reaching the first sentinel. It was useless here, with no spiders, but the demons would feel the thrust of it—and they wouldn’t know that nothing would come of it.
    The demon hesitated, and one of Jake’s bullets exploded through its left eye. Alice struck from that side. Her polished blade was a dance of reflected crimson light in her hands. It countered her weapon once, twice.
    Jake darted by. His sword swept from the demon’s left side to the opposite underarm—through the heart. Blood pulsed out from beneath his breastplate.
    Jake’s gaze narrowed over her shoulder. Alice whirled, calling in her whip. The crack of it was as loud as a gunshot. The razor threads at the end wrapped around the sentinel’s neck.
    Alice yanked. The demon was still running, still raising its sword when its head slid off.
    She heard Jake’s grunt of pain—saw the demon in the air with a crossbow. Too far away for her whip. She aimed at a silk thread stretched taut across the ceiling instead. It snapped like a cable, cutting anchoring threads, ripping through webs. Freed from its moorings, a razor web settled over the demon’s horns like a mantilla. He lost his talons on both hands trying to tear it off, and his screech joined the ring of Jake’s swords. Alice ran to assist him as he fought the last sentinel by the door.
    She counted as she ran. One demon perched in the far corner of the ceiling, hemmed in by layers of webbing—apparently he hadn’t realized he could cut through them yet. Three were caught in bloody bags of silk. There was the one that Jake had killed by slicing through its heart. Another had no head; and yet another, no fingers. Venom-coated bolts and spears had taken down four others. They were paralyzed, but for how long?
    It only had to be long enough .
    Jake turned, and she saw the bloodied crossbow bolt jutting from his sternum. The demon slashed with his sword; Jake stumbled back. Alice dove in, caught the sentinel through the knees. With a single, heavy stroke, Jake sliced through the demon’s neck.
    The doors, he signed, and ripped the bolt from his chest, tossing it aside. Her talons found the groove in the black marble, and she pulled. Jake cleared Belial’s blood from the symbols, breaking the spell.
    Oh, dear God. The pressure—the number of psyches outside—was almost deafening. So many voices. Screams. Bloated rot rolled over her Gift like a putrid corpse.
    Jake stood at her back, watching the remaining demons. Alice braced her taloned, scaled foot against the left door, heaved with her full strength, and felt the stone beneath her hands slowly begin to give. Rancid, heated air rushed in.
    With the spell gone, they could return to the prison—if they had to. But she would rather try to escape than wait, endlessly. Outside, there was a chance; trapped inside, there was none.
    “The sword,” she whispered, and held out her hand.
    Jake placed Zakril’s sword into her palm, and shifted. His clothes disappeared.
    Alice looked at the shape he’d taken—a chubby, blond toddler with tiny feathered wings and a bleeding hole in his little chest—and decided that maybe praying would help. Heaven knew, they were going to need something like a miracle.
    They might have had more of a chance shape-shifting to resemble Thor and Superman.
    But there was no time to doubt. She fisted her talons in his thick golden curls, and lifted. Jake closed his eyes; his small body swayed. Forming a pair of demon’s wings, Alice surged outside.

    Alice had known it would be horrible. It was, after all, Hell.
    But even prepared for the stink and the heat, the first images almost overwhelmed her with dismay.
    They were not outside, with the possibility of escape by air, but in a cave. The roof of the cavern seemed to be moving, and the pale light glittered as if dark crystals were trapped within the black stone. The floor sloped downward away from the prison, and the shadows told Alice that the source of light originated from across its enormous length. Between the prison and the cavern entrance, thousands of demons milled about— Dear God, were there so many of them?