Demon Bound

—with barely room between their shoulders.
    She took it all in on her first step. The ground was soft, slimy. Her feet sank into it. She didn’t glance down. Three demons approached, surprise in their psychic scents—and, she thought, horror as they stared at Jake’s small body. Horror . . . not out of fear, but concern .
    As if they were appalled to see a winged child injured.
    Until she raised Zakril’s sword. As one, they cried out and froze. Jake opened his small eyes. They glowed crimson, and his mouth drew back in a grimace full of fangs and blood. The shriek from his tiny body was an unholy sound of rage and terror.
    The demons fell over themselves stumbling back.
    Holding back her own scream, Alice wrapped her arm around his chest and launched into the air. From inside the prison, one of the sentinels called out.
    Oh, dear God, dear God. She or Jake should have reset the spell with their own blood, preventing the sentinels from warning the others. Far too late now. She rose toward the ceiling, then shot toward the cavern entrance.
    Shouts of awe and disbelief rolled across the floor on a crescendoing wave. Thousands of red eyes turned upward. Her heart and wings pounded furiously. They hadn’t realized yet. The demons near the prison knew they were Guardians, but the rest had not yet heard.
    A few more seconds, she prayed. Just a few.
    But beneath the voices she heard the flap of leathery wings, like a colony of startled bats. Saw demons rising into the air, mobilizing.
    “I need a ninety-degree, Alice, or you’re going to get fried,” Jake said, and it was a small voice that she could barely hear over the rush of wings. She glanced down, saw the missile launcher that he held horizontally in his chubby hands. The long tube was supposed to go over his shoulder, and the exhaust would blow out of the back. Impossible when she was behind him.
    She rolled to the side, holding Jake out in front of her and facing the wall of the cave. When the launcher aimed down, Jake pulled the trigger. The backblast of fiery gas shot up toward the roof, illuminating it for a brief, horrifying moment.
    So many legs. So many eyes.
    Terror dug icy spikes into Alice’s heart. This wasn’t a cave. And there was a reason why none of the demons had been in the air before they’d come out of the prison.
    She straightened out just as the explosion rocked the ground ahead of them. Demons scattered away from the plume of smoke and fire. She glanced behind them. Hundreds more were coming. Jake vanished the launcher, pulled in another.
    She reached out with her Gift, and felt the response. The spiders were corrupted and fetid—but they were hers .
    Swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, she razed them with her Gift like a scythe. They began to drop.
    “Alice!” Jake’s voice was deeper, his weight heavier. “Give me a ninety, now!”
    “No.” Her voice was thick with sickness, but she pushed her Gift harder. “Aim for the ceiling.”
    “What!”
    “It’s not a cave.” She rolled, let him see.
    It was worse, now that the spiders were moving. They had too many legs, their round bodies were misshapen, bulging, as if they’d gorged themselves beyond capacity. Each one could have filled her quarters with its size, and the roof of the cavern was covered in them.
    Jake sucked in a breath. “Oh, Jesus Christ, please strike me blind!”
    He flipped the launcher around and fired.
    The missile ripped through the abdomen of one of the falling spiders. Alice dove to the side, barely avoiding its seeking claws. Below them, around them, the tenor of the demons’ cries changed from anger to terror.
    Faster, she urged the spiders, and began climbing higher. She dodged more claws, slipped between the trailing silk that sparkled with orange, like a flame trapped inside a diamond thread. Be hungry.
    The missile exploded above. Charred exoskeleton rained down, more that was wet and decaying. Alice fought not to gag, and spun to evade another spider. Through the burning and the smoke, she saw the pocket of deep red.
    The sky.
    The suffocating bloat around her lungs eased. Jake let out a whoop as they shot through the hole in the carapace, but the sound faded into disbelief when he realized what they’d been inside.
    “Holy shit. Those were flippin’ babies .”
    “Yes.” Alice didn’t look at the giant corpse they flew over. “They’ll be coming out soon.”
    “The babies or the demons?”
    “Both,” she said, and