Mist had just begun hauling himself up when a long tongue shot out from behind and wrapped around his middle. All that work, and he was about to get eaten before he had a chance to fight again.
Several things happened at once.
He sensed the sudden stirring of magic in the air. It wasn’t a familiar magic, nothing he had ever felt in Paimon’s lair. Powerful and deep, he felt it tether somewhere inside him like yet another binding. For that reason, he resisted it.
He hadn’t much focus to spare, however, considering he was currently hurtling with incredible speed toward the gorath’s waiting mouth. And he wasn’t positioned to fight back. His back was to his foe, and he was upright, so the beast would have to chew to get him down.
And then everything shifted.
One moment he was rushing towards certain doom, and the next he was whooshing through space, surrounded by green light.Temporal magic.
And then he was slamming back into his body, back to the world, into the ground…
And landing in the middle of a summoning seal on Earth.
The sigil’s magic tried to constrain him, and he instinctively used every drop of his remaining strength to fight it. Somehow, he felt his ability to turn to mist return, and he did so, pushing with all his might against the barrier until he found a weakness.There.
He burst through like a cloud of death and rushed to destroy whatever foe had dared try to enslave him yet again.
12
Summoning Up The Courage
As the black mist spun like a vortex inside the summoning seal, Lily finally admitted she’d been a little reckless. It was her first time being confident, and she might have gone overboard. If she could go back now, she would’ve taken that demon’s offer of help in a heartbeat, whether he threatened her or not.
She’d banked on Mist knowing it was her when he was summoned and not fighting back, but that wasn’t happening at all.
The magic in the air was so thick it choked her. Wind blasted through her flat, knocking things off shelves, blowing the coats off the racks and the cushions off the sofa, and oh god, her fabrics were a mess—
She tried to silence her thoughts. Distractions would get her killed, and she already knew she was losing the battle against the demon because the chaos should have been confined within the sigil. The fact that it was leaking out was not a good sign.
Must… keep… focused!
Blinded by the wind, bent nearly in half to keep from falling backward, she lifted an arm to shield her gaze and visualized the seal with all her concentration. She kept chanting the syllables, sweat dripping down her back, limbs shaking with exhaustion. The roaring was so loud, she began shouting, and— Oh no, had she just mispronounced the last—?
The sigil ruptured in a blinding flash. Lily screamed. A furious snarling deafened her, and suddenly, black mist swirled everywhere. Amidst the cloud of rage, she caught glimpses of sharp teeth and claws and knew they were coming to kill her.
So she turned and ran.
Racing down the hallway, following a purely instinctual urge to flee, she ran with no thought to where she was going or what she would do when she got there.
She didn’t make it far, anyway. The mist crashed into her back, knocking her flat. The air gusted from her lungs and, winded, she couldn’t draw another breath. Clawed hands formed from the cloud over her wrists, pinning them to the floor. Sharp teeth opened over the side of her neck from a mouth wide enough to tear out her throat in one bite.
But he didn’t.
He froze.
Everything froze, in fact. The snarling, the winds, the mist—all of it, Lily included.
She lay there pinned beneath the demon she should never have underestimated and waited for him to kill her. The teeth were still at her throat. She could feel their sharp tips digging in with a stinging burn, breaking the skin.
Cheek pressed to the floorboard, eyes squeezed shut, she waited. And waited. And still, she wasn’t torn apart or beheaded or any terrible thing a demon might do to a witch who failed at a summoning.
Slowly, she cracked an eyelid and saw a dark shape. A wing. Fine boned and leathery, the talon was planted on the floor beside her head. Her gaze shifted, and she saw gray skin—a long, muscled arm was reaching over to pin her wrist down.
“M-Mist?”
A low growl was his response. His teeth still hadn’t left her throat, and she didn’t dare move an inch.
