The second the fireball shot upward, I brought up the strongest shield I could manage and closed my eyes. I didn’t see what happened next, but I heard a large boom followed by numerous impacts against my shield. When I opened my eyes, moonlight permeated the darkness, and rubble lay all around us. The blast had destroyed half of the church; there was no ceiling anymore, so we were effectively standing in a hole ten feet below ground level. I looked around and saw six domes of light as well as Titus’s shimmering bubble. Each of the Cloaks had a glowing bracer; they must have been enchanted with shield charms to activate when the user is in danger.

“Spellswords, take that one!” Kaine shouted indicating Hungry. Without another word spoken, Caine lifted his hand, and rock shot forth from the ground directly at Hungry. The Cloak back flipped avoiding the rock and landed on the ground above us outside of the ruins of the church and began to run away. I knew he was luring us away, but that was fine with me. I summoned my sword, jumped, and followed. As I ran, I heard Emma and Neil behind me. Once we’d run around thirty feet, Hungry stopped and turned to face me.

“I generally have no ill intent toward the Gnosilepides, but I’m afraid I will have to kill all of you,” Hungry said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Gnosilepides,” he muttered as if tasting something unpleasant. “That partially comes from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis. Well, I’m afraid you have too much knowledge, and for that you must die.”

“You can fucking try!” I screamed. I used the same spell again, summoning another fireball, this time the size of a basketball and shot it at the Cloak. He didn’t dodge, jump, or even activate his bracer; he just lifted his hand as orange light enveloped it. The flame collided directly into his hand, and… paused hanging in midair. The spherical fire grew smaller and smaller until it went out completely; Hungry stared at me with a great smile.

“Mmmm,” he said as if referring to a chicken nugget or whatever you think is nummy. (Get the name now?)

“Dante,” Emma said, “He’s using Famine.”

“Do you ever speak plainly? I have no idea what that means!” I spat in frustration.

She shot me a nasty look and replied, “Pick up a book once in a while; his soul resides in the fourth level of hell. That gives him the power to absorb any spell and convert it into pneuma for himself. The only way to kill him is with physical attacks.” She paused for a moment before adding, “But you can’t let him touch you.”

Well, that’s just fucking great. “That’s fine with me,” I grinned. Neil stepped next to me and nodded at me. I ran toward Hungry’s left while Neil ran on the right with Cassie taking up the rear. Neil reached him first, swinging his mace at the Cloak’s legs while I jumped and attacked from above. Hungry jumped easily avoiding the mace and kicked Neil in the chest throwing him backward. He lifted his sword which was still glowing orange and blocked my swing. The instant our swords made contact, mine began losing its structural integrity; after minor resistance my sword vanished completely while his continued straight for my heart. I waved my hand creating a gust of wind which blew me backward and away from the sword’s range. I hit the ground tumbling a few times scraping my arms just as Emma launched her attack. Hungry’s sword was still poised to strike at where I had been when she swung her sword on a trajectory to slice the Cloak in half. He managed to avoid the brunt of the attack but the tip of Emma’s blade sliced a 7 or 8 inch long gash across his side.

This guy countered me in every way; I couldn’t use big flashy spells because he would absorb them; I couldn’t use my sword because he would absorb it, and I couldn’t touch him, or he would absorb me. I clenched my fists in frustration; well, at least I could be a distraction. I summoned my sword again gripping it tightly in my right hand and charged at the same time as Neil. I let him strike first; this time, Neil swung his mace right at Hungry’s face. The Cloak bent backward like he was in the fucking Matrix; I swung down at his neck as he gripped his side in pain. That momentary distraction allowed me to strike, but I was only able to cut a gash about an inch long before he absorbed my sword through his skin. I had too much momentum with my swing to stop, so I fell to the ground now disarmed and harmless. Emma brought her sword down on him as well, but in a seamless movement, he grabbed her wrist stopping her swing and kicked Neil in the face hard enough to break his jaw. Neil fell to the ground down for the count as Emma screamed in pain; Hungry was still holding onto her wrist.

“LET HER GO!” I screamed in fury. When someone you love is in danger, your brain tends to stop working; I lifted my hand and a barrage of white hot flame shot forth. Hungry casually threw Emma aside and lifted both hands, completely absorbing the spell. I looked at Emma, and she looked… different. She was never a large woman, but she looked like she’d lost twenty pounds in twenty seconds. The Cloak’s absorption power apparently wasn’t limited to just pneuma. In any case, Neither Emma nor Neil was getting up anytime soon, so it was up to me.

“I’m going to rip you to pieces with my hands!” I shouted, running toward him. With a big grin on his face he opened his arms as if to embrace a lover he hadn’t seen in a long time. I swung at him with all of my speed and strength again and again and again. He easily dodged everyone single blow without breaking a sweat. I guess he got bored of me, so he finally struck. He slashed his sword overhanded, but I dodged it and headbutted him in the face, breaking his nose. Bright red blood flowed freely into his mouth… and he looked pissed. It was my turn to grin; “Tastes good, doesn’t it?” I asked manically. His face twisted in rage and grew red, and he attacked.

He swung his glowing blade at me repeatedly from various angles, but I managed to dodge the first ten blows – which occurred in a matter of seconds. That eleventh blow was a doozy though; I had just narrowly escaped a strike from left to right, but instead of rebalancing himself to strike again, he let his momentum carry him turning all the way around in the blink of an eye. The sword was moving too fast to dodge, so I summoned my shield. I’m humble enough to admit my mistakes on the rare occasion I make them, and this was certainly one of them. The moment the sword encountered my shield, it cannibalized all of the energy within it, and my shield vanished. Luckily, the shield managed to rob the weapon of its kinetic energy, stopping it short of slicing me into pieces. Having your spell shattered like that is a little disorienting, so I didn’t react fast enough to Hungry’s other hand. It came up in a flash and grabbed me by the throat, lifting me off the ground. A glow of orange appeared around his hand, and I felt it… My physical, mental, and magical energies were all being drained rapidly; my muscles began to ache, my mind felt like I’d been awake for days, and I didn’t know if I could cast even the simplest of spells. What’s more, as I looked around wide-eyed, I watched my muscles atrophy before my eyes. I was losing weight, becoming the skinny boy I had been all those years before. I struggled to free myself, but I couldn’t budge even one of his fingers.

the demonic voice said calmly. Nearly every ounce of strength in my body was gone, and I knew the demon was telling the truth. My head was foggy; I could barely string two thoughts together, but will all of my mental might, I imagined the dam, and suddenly I was there. I stood before the concrete structure separating my soul from the red ocean behind it. With a thought, I punctured a large hole right in the center; I felt the red water pour over me just as the power streamed through my body… only, it didn’t; I began to panic. Why wasn’t it working? My train of thought was interrupted by a burning feeling on my finger. The ring containing the demon’s power grew hotter and hotter, and I felt my skin begin to blister. Just when the pain became unbearable, there was a loud pop as the ring disintegrated, and the familiar demonic energy soared into my cells. I felt my muscles regrow to their normal size, and I opened my eyes. With the democculus, I could see the individual before me had no soul; he was a purely physical being save for one thing. There was a psychic chain tethering his body to his soul in hell; I watched as power flowed through the tether and into him. His orange eyes widened in shock as he saw what was happening.

“How…” he started, but I interrupted him.

“You want power? Then take it!” I screamed. I directed the demon’s energy directly into Hungry. He screamed in pain and tried to draw his hand back; my feet touched the ground, and I gripped his hand keeping it on my throat and maintaining the dark pneuma flowing into him. “What’s wrong Cloak? I thought you wanted to take my pneuma. You can have as much as you want!” Every inch of his body was covered in black cloth except for his face, so I’m not sure what was happening to the rest of him, but glowing red lines began to appear on his face as if a poison was coursing through his veins. As more and more power entered his body, the lines glowed brighter and brighter until they broke through his skin and blood trickled out of everywhere. After about thirty seconds, his eyes changed to brown, and he stopped absorbing energy. He looked up at me in anguish for several seconds and passed out. This asshole had tried to kill me and my friends, so I was very unhappy with him. To vent my frustration, I raised my leg, centered my tennis shoe over his face and brought it down shattering his skull. When you observe someone die with the democculus, you see their soul leave their body. Usually souls stick around their bodies for a while after death unable to accept the situation, but in any case, you can see the moment the soul is set free. When Hungry died, I saw the tether snap in half like a rubber band being pulled from both sides. Both pieces of the chain fell through the ground presumably into hell leaving only an empty shell.

I ran to Emma to check on her; she was unconscious, but her heartbeat was strong and stable, and her soul was the same scared little girl it always was. She hadn’t been in contact with Hungry for long, but she did lose some muscle definition and was probably out of pneuma. I hoped she’d return to normal over time, but she’d be ok even if she had to regrow the muscle naturally. Next, I went to Neil; his jaw was definitely broken, and he might have had a mild concussion, but his soul was still larger than life and strong even in unconsciousness. He’d be ok too. I heard sirens in the distance; I don’t know if it was the same cops headed toward the cemetery, but either way the authorities would be here soon. Hopefully, the ambulance would pick my friends up, and we could retrieve them from the hospital later; at least for now, they were alive, but I didn’t know how Kaine and Titus were doing.

I ran back to the underground floor of the church we started in. It was empty and covered in the alien ice, hellfrost. As I stared at the substance, I heard an explosion from the other side of the church. I rushed to investigate and saw a sight to behold: there was a thirty foot tall, twenty foot wide ice wall with Kaine before it. With demonic vision, I could really see the ice for the first time; it “felt” wrong because it was wrong: I could see the energy of hell radiating off of it. Furthermore, I couldn’t see through it. The democculus could see through any solid object I had encountered at that point, but apparently, hellfrost was an exception. Kaine had a car-sized fireball hovering a few inches above his hand held high in the sky; his soul looked old and tired, but that was normal. He launched the flaming sphere at the wall creating a large explosion that blotted out everything with white light. When the light subsided, I could see the ice had cracks splintering throughout; however, it still stood. I turned and saw Titus and Sicky in combat; a white sword clashing with a green one. She was similarly soulless with a tether attaching her body to hell; Titus on the other hand certainly had a soul. It looked identical to him, strong and beautiful, but it was glowing brightly, and a light, invisible with the naked eye, shone down from the sky illuminating it. I guessed that was the power of the gods invigorating him. He and Sicky jumped apart creating several feet of distance between them, and she began shooting some kind of green energy at him. It wasn’t magic, at least not magic as I know it, but Titus recreated his shimmering bubble of light around him, and the green bolts bounced harmlessly off of it. Before I joined the fight, I noticed one more important detail: there were dozens of people in the street a couple hundred feet away filming us with their phones. First things first: I needed to at least try to stop the general public from learning about magic.

Clearly, I’m not a scientist; I’m a high school dropout, but Kaine explained this to me: there is some unknown connection between arcane energy and electromagnetism. It probably means there is some arcane quantum field undiscovered by mainstream science that’s coupled to the electromagnetic quantum field. Granted, I don’t know what that means, but it’s a quote from Kaine… that I probably fucked up. My point is untransformed arcane energy emits electromagnetic radiation; depending on the density of energy, different frequencies of radiation are emitted. If you can summon arcane energy and rapidly change its density, waves covering the entire spectrum will be released. In other words, an EMP or electromagnetic pulse. Normally, that would be far beyond my capabilities; even for wizards such a spell would be very troublesome. However, with the demon’s power flowing through me, body and soul, I was pretty sure I could pull it off. I lifted my hand in the air, a pink sigil appeared casting ominous shadows around me; a dozens of small purple spheres sprang into existence above the symbol, bumping into each other and bouncing off. With an effort of will, the spheres converged on each other forming a single sphere about the size of a baseball; with a greater effort, the energy condensed to the size of a grain of rice, and I shot it into the sky. Once it was twenty or so feet in the air, it exploded, lighting the sky with pink light. At that moment, all of the streetlights in a five or six block radius went out, and the spectators lowered their phones. I checked my phone to be sure, and it wouldn’t turn on. Every electronic device around was fried for good.

“Run!” I shouted at idiots standing around watching a magic fight. A few of them took off, but most just stared at me with blank expressions. Why are people so fucking stupid? With a mix of annoyance and frustration, I did something that you might argue is extreme: I launched a fireball directly at the biggest mass of them. It worked; they all ran away screaming. Right before the flame would have incinerated them, I lifted my hand, and a wall of earth broke through the asphalt absorbing the blow.

I turned around to head back toward the battle, and Kaine and Titus had switched partners… again. The Templar was in some kind of magical Kamehameha battle: he was projecting light like a spotlight shining from his hand that met the hellfrost emanating from Frosty’s hand. The two beams were pushing against each other like they had mass and force behind them; ice kept forming only to be destroyed by stray bits of light bouncing off of the light blue frost ray. They seemed to be evenly matched or at least the two energy beams met each other roughly equidistant between the two of them. Kaine wasn’t as fortunate; Sicky repeatedly launched her green bolts at him, and he was going to great lengths to dodge them all. I remembered back to my first mission when the hellfire burned through my shield like it wasn’t there. The power of hell must trump arcane constructs. It looked like Kaine needed my help, and Titus was kind of a dick, so I went after Kaine. As I ran, I summoned my sword; unfortunately, before I could reach him, he failed to dodge one of the green bolts. It barely grazed him, but it was enough. Kaine dropped to his knees, coughing up blood. I stopped mid run, my mouth gaping… this was impossible. I’d never seen Kaine fuck up even once. Sicky shot forward and grabbed him by the throat the same way Hungry had done to me earlier. Her hand was glowing green, and Kaine’s veins shone from beneath his skin; blood was pouring out of his nose, mouth, and eyes, and possibly elsewhere. Sicky’s entire focus was on killing Kaine which is probably why she didn’t notice me come up behind her; I grabbed the back of her hood managing to get her hair in my grip and pulled her off Kaine. I intended to slam her face onto the pavement, but she grabbed my arm and slashed at me. I blocked her blade with my own, but dizziness and weakness overcame me. I barely managed to stay standing, and when I looked down, her hand on my arm was glowing as were the veins near it. Her power was from the fifth level of hell: pestilence (hence the name.)

Stolen story; please report.

the demon’s voice was urgent. I felt a trickle of blood come out of my nose, and my sword was on the verge of disintegrating. Fine, fuck it. I’d already relied on the demon once today, what’s one more time? I went back to the dam in my soul, and widened the hole being careful not to let the whole thing come crashing down.

My dizziness instantly abated, and my veins stopped glowing. Sicky stared at my arm in amazement; she slowly lifted her head to look at my face. I could see the red glare from my glowing eyes on her face, and her expression changed from bewilderment to excitement. No, that’s not right… giddiness. She looked like she got a pony for Christmas or something. With a flick of my wrist, I disarmed her and glanced at Kaine. He was still infected… He was going to die unless something happened. Titus! He healed me before; he could do the same for Kaine. I looked back at Sicky; she had removed her glove and was twisting a ring on her left middle finger.

“I found the possessed spellsword!” she shouted excitedly. “He does exist.” Well, that wasn’t ideal. I moved to stab her, but she jumped back away from me. That was fine by me; I raised my hand and blasted her with dozens of bolts of lightning. She lifted her left arm with symbols glowing across her bracer; a purple dome nearly identical to my shield appeared preventing the lightning from reaching her. She still had that goddamn smile on her face, and I vowed to get rid of it. I poured demonic power into my sword, and a red mist surrounded it interior and exterior.

“DEMON!” Titus shouted. He pointed his sword at me; the light radiating off of it made me unconsciously take a step back. “I knew I felt the stench in your soul! You will die before my blade!”

“Heal Kaine!” I shouted back. “And once these bastards are dead, you can kill me next.” I wasn’t sure if I meant it or not, but if I was going to die, I’d take these fuckers out with me. The Templar gave me a hard look deciding if I was his top priority or not. I guess he decided I wasn’t because he nodded and bent over Kaine.

I looked back at Sicky still hiding behind her barrier. Her smile persisted, but there was a hint of worry within it. I smiled back, holding my sword behind my back; I pumped pneuma into my nerves and muscles and ran right at her as fast as I possibly could. I don’t know what my max speed was, but I reached her in less than a second; I shoved my sword forward and thrust it right at her shield. It shattered as the Cloak’s bracer disintegrated into dust; unfortunately, though the shield didn’t deflect my blow, it did stop me dead in my tracks. In my moment of stationariness, Sicky struck; her hell powers were ineffective against me, so she swung from the right with her blade. I blocked the blow, raised my other hand, and sent hurricane strength winds directly at her. The gust picked her off of her feet and flung her through the air; before she hit the ground, I rushed toward her with the same speed and thrust my sword directly into her heart.

If you kill someone out of revenge, you don’t feel better when they die. You just feel an empty place inside you that the rage used to occupy. The longer you’ve held onto the feeling, the emptier you feel. Luckily, I had only just decided to kill Sicky; once the sword penetrated her, she grunted with a bit of blood escaping her mouth, and then all she was ceased. Just like Hungry, I saw the tether between her body and hell break. We landed on the ground, and I placed a foot on the corpse and pulled my sword out. I looked back at Titus; he was still kneeling over Kaine with light pouring out of one hand healing the spellsword. The blood had stopped pouring out of Kaine, and his veins had dimmed but had not vanished completely. The process must be a long one; the Templar’s other hand was extended in front of him forming the shimmering barrier protecting both of them from Frosty’s attacks. The Cloak was attempting to freeze the pair of them, but the light blue beam coming from his hand was unable to affect the barrier.

“Hey Asshole!” I shouted getting Frosty’s attention. He looked at me and then looked down at his fallen companion. His glowing blue eyes stared at me, enraged. “Oops, I think I killed your friends,” I taunted. It worked; he completely forgot about Kaine and Titus. He raised his hand and a blue beam of light shot out headed straight for me. I could see it more clearly now; as the light traveled through the air, it condensed all the water in the air making it seem like it was steaming. I raised my hand to respond.

the demon warned me.

I took the demon’s advice; an orange sigil appeared before my hand, and I carefully ensured only the demon’s energy to power the spell. A white-hot stream of flame poured out of the symbol, meeting the hellfrost. When the two forces struck, a shockwave went out in all directions. It nearly knocked both of us over, and it shattered windows of buildings all around. That’s right, another Kamehameha battle; Frosty and I were standing roughly twenty feet apart. The fire struck the hellfrost about five feet in front of me, so I was at a disadvantage, but I managed to prevent it from coming any closer to me. The problem is, separating the demon’s power from my own is a very taxing process. Once I let the demon’s energy within me, it naturally mixes with my own pneuma. Separating them requires a great deal of concentration, and separating them while actively casting a spell is nearly impossible. I let my sword vanish and used both hands to increase the effectiveness of the fire spell. The flame pushed the ice beam another foot or so away from me, but it stalled there. I didn’t have the concentration to maintain the two-handed spell and sort my power, so the beam started moving toward me. Slowly at first, but it accelerated more and more every second; after five or six seconds, the hellfrost was less than a foot away from enveloping me in ice. I rolled at the last instant possible, and a giant iceberg grew where I was standing. The ice expanded so quickly, I was caught by it; the hellfrost touched my bare hand which seared with pain. I drew my hand back in pain as the ice grew toward the rest of me; I summoned my shield powering it primarily with the demon’s power.

The otherworldly cold shattered my shield, but it managed to save me. I was in a hollow half-sphere inside of a structure of ice in complete darkness save for the red glow of my eyes. Luckily, I didn’t need light to see. Frosty thought me dead; I could use that to my advantage. I turned toward Titus and Kaine. If I focused, I could barely see through the hellfrost kind of like looking through a fogged up windshield. Kaine was on his feet again, but he seemed very shaky, likely next to useless in a fight. The Templar stood before him, sword raised, and they began to fight. I looked all around my frost tomb and found the place where the ice was the thinnest; I raised my hand toward it and paused. If I used a spell strong enough to break through the ice, it would obliterate me too. This was one of those times when I wished I had more precise magic instead of just raw power. I wasn’t completely out of luck; there was one option left to me. I had time now. Time to gather 100% demonic energy, and force it into my muscles, nerves, and even bones. I stood on the side opposite of the thinnest part of the ice, and with all of my speed, I rushed toward the weak spot. Once I was a few feet away, I reared my arm back, and punched it with everything I had. The ice shattered like glass creating a small hole to the outside world. My hand throbbed with pain, but it felt distant somehow. Like I was injected with not quite enough Novocain before getting a cavity filled; I looked down at my hand; my knuckles were broken, and blood was dripping from numerous cuts in my skin. What’s more, the skin was burned where I’d touched the hellfrost; the injuries began healing in front of my eyes. The bones twisted, cracked, and reformed into their natural state, and the cuts sealed themselves. The burns were similarly healing but much more slowly.

The ice was separating me from the others; with any luck the Cloak still thought I was dead. Sadly, it looked like things were about to become complicated. In the distance, I saw roughly a dozen cops running toward us. I don’t know if the EMP had taken out their cars or if other cars in the streets prevented them from driving to here, but either way they were on foot. We had to finish this fast, or we’d have to break out of jail… again. I ran around the ice glancing back at the authorities; when I turned my head, I saw Frosty’s glowing blue blade stab Titus through the chest. The Templar dropped his sword, Frosty pulled his blade from Titus’s body, and the knight fell to his knees before freezing solid. Without Titus’s support, Kaine fell to the ground, barely able to hold his weight up with his arms. I glared at Frosty with murderous intent.

“Don’t look at me like that, demon!” the Cloak screamed at me. “If he’d managed to kill me, you’d be next.” I squinted my eyes at him and summoned my sword. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you even though I’d like nothing better. You see, we have plans for you!” I neither knew nor cared what he was talking about; I was going to keep doing my job and protecting people regardless of what those assholes wanted me to do. I tightened my grip on my sword and prepared to charge when the ice encasing Titus began to splinter. At first, there were just a few cracks running all over his body, but they quickly began to grow spreading out in all directions.

the booming voice screamed at max volume in my head.

{What? You want me to lock you up? That bastard will shatter me into a million pieces,} I mentally objected.

I tend to not listen to the evil god living inside me; hell, I got addicted to drugs for nearly a decade just to clear my mind of him, but I could think of no nefarious reason why he’d want to be locked up. I revisited the dam in my mind; the red liquid was pouring out freely into my soul. I clenched my fist, and the stone mended itself, and the flow of demonic power stopped. I opened my eyes in the real world, and my vision returned to its normal state. That was only half of the battle; the demon said I had to dump any of his remaining power. What spell would get rid of it the fastest? As the ice cracked more, I had a stroke of genius: if I destroyed the church in the biggest explosion I could muster, when the authorities sorted through the rubble, they’d find the DNA of the son of son of Sam murderer and assume he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. You might think that doesn’t explain half of the shit that went down here not to mention if any of the videos survived, and you’d be right, but it doesn’t matter. People don’t want to believe in the supernatural even if it’s staring them in the face. Somewhere between one in three and one in two people have seen ghosts or lights in the sky or something, and 99% of them ignore it. The police would be happy to have all of those murders off their board, and they’d be perfectly fine ignoring any loose threads that don’t fit their world view. (Ok, I don’t know if cops really have a board, but that’s what Dexter taught me.)

I began separating what was left of the demon’s power from my own pneuma when more of the ice cracked.

the demon ordered, and I complied. I focused all I had into my left arm and raised it. An orange sigil appeared before my hand and a ball of fire before it. I focused more and more energy into the sigil, and the spherical flame grew and grew. It was so bright; it looked like a small sun in the middle of the street, growing all the time. I was nearly out of pneuma, and the fireball was about twenty foot in diameter when the rest of the ice shattered. Titus stood up as if his wound was inconsequential and screamed; his body was enveloped in the brightest light I’d ever seen. It completely eclipsed the glow of the white-hot mini-sun in front of me; what’s more, my arm exploded. Or at least that’s what it felt like; every pain receptor in my arm fired over and over again as it flash cooked. I had just enough presence of mind necessary to fire my spell before I fell to my knees. I felt the shockwave as the church was destroyed and heard the calamity, but my mind was singularly focused on the immense pain consuming my left arm. I tried to keep my balance, but I couldn’t; I fell forward face first onto the street. I was only marginally aware when the light went out; you know when you stare at the sun and when you look away you see a big hole in your vision? (For the record, I’m not stupid enough to stare at the sun, but I’ve glanced at it before.) That hole in my vision was all there was; not just darkness but the absence of any sensory input. 100% of my attention was on respiration: just breathing while in so much pain was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I barely noticed as my vision came back; it “untunneled.” Ok, I made that term up, but first, peripheral vision returned; I could only see things on the edge of my eyesight but not what I was directly looking at, but the edge grew and grew until I became aware I was looking at Titus’s body. Whatever he’d done must have killed him, or perhaps, his wounds killed him, and that was his last act. I took a deep breath and turned my head; Frosty was nothing but a smoking black cloak. The light must incinerate anything with the power of hell in it; I was lucky all of the demon’s power was concentrated in one arm. I turned my head more and saw Kaine standing and flexing his arms. I spat out a muffled chuckle; the light must heal anything without the power of hell in it. Kaine turned to look at me, clearly disoriented, but when he saw my injuries, he rushed over.

“Dante! Are you ok?” he asked urgently.

“GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR FINGERS INTERLACED!” a voice barked from behind us. What a perfect time for the cops to show up.

“This man isn’t breathing!” Kaine shouted back and started doing chest compressions.

“I’m breathing, Kaine!” I coughed barely audibly.

“STOP! GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” a different cop shouted.

“I can’t just let him die!” Kaine protested. In a quieter voice, he said, “Where are Emma and Neil?”

My mind was swimming; I tried to remember when I’d last see them, but my memories were so fuzzy. Granted, Kaine pushing on my chest and occasionally breathing into my mouth didn’t make it any easier. “They’re on the other side of the church!” I exclaimed as my brain started working again.

“THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING! GET ON THE GROUND, AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!” the first cop screamed. I couldn’t see them from my position, lying on the ground, but judging from their voices, they were very close now. Kaine bent down to breathe into my mouth again and touched his finger to my injured arm. Fire shot through my nerve, and I grunted in pain. He had a drop of blood on his finger which he moved to his leg where the hellblade was holstered.

“He’s reaching for a weapon!” a new voice screamed in panic. And with that, they opened fire.