The demons came at first light which meant we had maybe thirty seconds of warning before fifteen turned into twenty-three and our careful defensive positions became chaos.
Twenty-three. Not fifteen. The demon had been recruiting.
I stood at the center of the eastern clearing with two hundred fighters arranged around me in concentric circles—wolves in the inner ring, vampires in the second, witches providing cover from elevated positions—and watched nightmare creatures pour out of the tree line like someone had opened a door to hell and forgotten to close it.
My hands were shaking and I fisted them at my sides because showing fear in front of two hundred people who were betting their lives on me seemed like a terrible strategic choice, but fear was the dominant emotion right now so I just had to work with it.
