As soon as he said that, he came at me full force. When it came to hand to hand combat, he was slower than Bishop, but the weight behind his swing left a stronger impression. For every blow, I felt a burst of power inch my grounded feet further and further. He had me on the defensive end of the fight, blocking short after shot. Despite his slower approach, he was quick when it came to blocking my counters. It was like he knew where I was going to strike before I made contact.

With an advantage like that, getting in was going to be a problem. Wren noticed, summoning a shadow tendril from the ground behind him and snapping it around his wrist.

Now was my turn.

I cocked back an uppercut, but Ash caught it. Wren’s shadow tendril didn’t last very long, leaving me open again for abuse. He squeezed his fingers around my blocked fist with one hand, and attempted to punish me with the other. Again, he went for my neck, but this time, he used his flat fist as a blade.

I held him back, our twisted arms between each other locked in place. Resisting him wasn’t easy, every muscle in my body being put to work right now. He was a high ranked demon, and I expected this challenge.

“His hold is too strong,” Wren panted. “He’s limiting my power.”

“A cheat!” He laughed. “What’s the matter, Samael? Still have your girls fighting your battles for you? Not strong enough to beat me on your own?”

“I’m just getting started, you piece of shit!” Bones cracked, blood seeped, and flames started to whirlwind around me with hellish speed. Ash noticed that I was getting stronger, tapping deeper into my bloodlust. When my flames started to eat down his skin, he fell back. Desperate, he left his hands behind in my grip, flashing me a toothy smile as he took a step back and vanished beyond my flames.

He disappeared. I veered my head back, looking around to and fro. His scent was there, so I knew he was around, but I didn’t expect this bastard to have a vanishing spell under his sleeves.

“It’s Ash’s specialty,” Trista said. “But he’s not on your level, Isaac! You’re the next of kin to the demon throne! Roast his ass rotisserie style!!”

My head jerked back, followed by the sound of a whip snapping, the direct shot from Ash nearly making me fall off the heel of my foot. The sting from his bloody strike wasn’t as troubling as the speed of his blows. I felt like he was hitting me at two dozen places in under a half second. The bastard tore through my clothes, his whip eating at my skin, forcing me to constantly regen. The strategy was to make me bleed as fast as possible, so he could drain my bloodlust for a quick win. His speed and invisibility combo was too much to handle, but only if I let it. I drew an X with my arms over my face and summoned a flame wall around me. The execution came naturally, as did the smoke mask I surrounded my space in. Now if he wanted to toss that pansy whip at me, I’d see it.

The next one came in, slicing my flame wall in two. I acted fast, snatching his whip and pulling him into the fire. The base temp for my flames wasn’t enough to torch him, so I increased the temperature and the volume, listening to the prick cry out in agony among my roaring blue blaze.

“This is for fucking my mother!” I cried out, tossing a hard blow into his face. My fist swallowed his skull, fragments of his brain scattering along the sidewalk. His headless body flew along the pavement, allowing my girls to break free from his hold. I’d just killed Ash Rider, the flames around me dying down while I watched his last breath escape him.

“You did it, hubby!” Ruby cheered, my girls surrounding me. “You killed that flashy demon scumbag demon lord style.”

“Hmm, that wasn’t as bloody as I thought it’d be,” Trista said, stroking her chin. “I thought he’d be more of a challenge.”

“Maybe his blood bar wasn’t at its fullest! Whatever! Doesn’t matter, master took him out! A high ranked demon at that!”

“I’m with Trista on this one. This felt a little easy. Granted, he was faster than Bishop, but—” I choked, feeling the splash of warm blood hit the side of my face where Lumi was. My eyes peeled back, my head pivoting slowly, afraid of what I’d find.

“Lumi!” Ruby screeched, her fingers raking down her face as we all witnessed the devastating blow of what looked like a civilian carving Lumi’s chest out with his fist.

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When he yanked his fist out, my familiar fell lifelessly into my arms, the blood from her chest stamping my shoes. I was in so much shock that I couldn’t process what had just happened, until Trista leaped into action.

“You dirty son of a bitch!” she fumed, jumping into him and slamming the bald-headed stout man on the ground. He didn’t react. In fact, he looked like a zombie the way his emotionless eyes fixed forward. When Trista bashed the back of his head against the pavement over and over again, he made no sound, and followed with no resistance. He wasn’t a demon, he was a puppet, with the solo task of killing Lumi.

Which means…

I snapped my head back to where Ash’s body was supposed to be, and the only thing that looked back at me was a fresh pool of blood.

“Mijo, is that anyway to treat your mother?”

That’s impossible…

Ash was back up again, wearing my mother to the fight.

I couldn’t help the chills overpowering me. I swear I decapitated that son of a bitch! How was he back up again?!

“For your insolence, I’m going to enjoy ripping her soul out of her body…nice and slow.” He smirked. “I have yet to repay you for what you’ve done to my women and my establishment. Years of hard work…” He reached his hand into his stomach and pulled out a long ropy large intestine. When he snapped it in the air, it shifted into another whip, this one vaping off fumes of black as it glowed red.

That sick fuck…

He was messing with me, carving the sight of my mother out with his hands. He promised he’d do worse to her, further crippling my mental state as I held my dead girlfriend in my arms.

Shit, I couldn’t let him get to me…

I settled Lumi down against a mailbox, laying her hand over her wound. The time it took for her to come back was right around the corner. She had six lives left, but I couldn’t wait for her to use it. Ash was still on the premises, a huge threat to my other girls. “You better come back to me, Lumi,” I struggled through my jagged breath. “I’ll turn this demon wasteland inside out if you don’t!”

My fingers brushed along her ivory bangs and I gave her a kiss. I heard Ash and my girls fighting before I pivoted around, doing a double take when I noticed something small and shiny by that pool of blood Ash was laying on.

I approached it slowly, turning around every now and again to make sure this wasn’t another one of his tricks. Up close, I got to see exactly what it was, but I couldn’t process what it was for. A flower, with a wide pistil and many petals branching out of a black porous center.

When I noticed the random shiny flower on the pavement was absorbing Ash’s blood, I realized a correlation. My girls had been containing Ash for the most part, but the more blood this thing absorbed, the stronger he got. He wasn’t at full strength.

I whispered, “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? I still can’t find his head.”

Normally a demon head disintegrates along with the body over time after a confirmed kill. But Ash didn’t die after I beheaded him. If I had to guess, this flower was keeping him alive, or keeping him connected. I crouched over and noticed the flower had roots. Through cement? I was skeptical, so I took a hard whiff, detecting a source of sulfur underground. “So, your head is buried underneath there, isn’t it? I’m not sure how we missed that, but you’re still connected to it somehow. And that’s how you managed to keep yourself alive when I tore it off.”

Well, that cute demon trick of his was over now. I snapped my fingers, setting the flower in flames. Immediately, Ash responded, peeling away from my girls and trying to escape. They wouldn’t let him. Those sisters, they were relentless. Ruby animated the corpses of his strippers, making them tackle him from behind. The six zombie girls held him in place while Wren charged at him with her sword. Unfortunately, Ash was prepared. He smoked out of his vessel, Trista trying to disrupt him with a volt of electricity to no avail. It all happened so quickly that by the time I made it to the scene, Ash was already gone.

“No!” I cried.

“Coward.” Wren hissed, giving his vessel a sharp kick into his chest, letting it fall into Ruby’s zombie stripper girls. “He’s gone…” Wren whispered, stowing her sword away. “That restoration power, he must have stolen it. It’s not a native skillset.”

“Or maybe it’s a newly acquired trick,” Trista theorized.

Ruby scoffed. “Coming back from that? I doubt it’s something he learned to do. Even if it was magic from the crypt.”

“I don’t care where he got it from! He’s gone! How the hell am I going to break this contract now? It’s not like we have another way of finding him!”

“We will find a way, Isaac,” Trista said, trying to comfort me.

Ruby scooped up the body that began to reveal its true form before the shapeshifting act. The meat suit was already dead, so the only thing I expected Ruby to do was turn him into one of her zombie slaves. Instead, she hauled him over her shoulder, just as people started to edge closer to the roaring furnace behind us.

“A siren, first responders aren’t too far behind. We need to leave, now,” Trista said, marching over to Lumi’s body.

“We’ll take an alleyway the next street over,” Wren said, and under a few seconds more, we were back in their apartment.