The alley smelled like wet concrete and old garbage. Abel was halfway through it, heading for the spot he'd used a dozen times before to portal himself, when the Earth Demon stepped out of the wall.
Not through a door. Not around a corner. Out of the wall, the brick and mortar parting around his body like water, then sealing shut behind him. He looked like a young Black man in his twenties, handsome in an unremarkable way, except for the faint crimson glow behind his pupils and the fact that he'd just phased through solid matter.
"The Witch Heart Demon was right. Follow the knight, and you find the Contract." His voice was calm, almost conversational. "Human mage. Hand over the Contract of San Venganza."
They followed Johnny to find me. Blackheart used Johnny as a tracking dog, and it worked.
Abel responded with action.
A half-step back. Right arm raised, wand angled forward. The universal language of try me.
"Mere human mage. You don't know what you're facing." The Earth Demon raised both hands slowly. "My subordinates. Come."
The alley cracked open.
Fissures split the floor and walls like lightning frozen in stone. From each fissure, a devil emerged. Dark red skin, black-blue limbs, twisted faces with too many teeth. They pulled themselves out of the cracks like parasites hatching from a wound, filling the narrow space with the stench of sulfur and rot.
Then the space itself changed.
The walls rolled outward like waves. The ground buckled, expanded, reformed. The ceiling sealed shut overhead. In the span of a breath, the cramped Manhattan alley had become something else entirely: a vast subterranean arena, hundreds of meters across, lit by the dull red glow of the devils' eyes.
Abel reached for his Sling Ring. Nothing. He then casted the apparition spell, without any result. The space resisted, thick and viscous, like trying to run through mud.
He created a subspace. His own pocket dimension. Damn, I didn't know that they could do that! And none of my travel spell works.
The only way to escape this space is by defeating him.
Clever bastard.
"Catch him alive. The Witch Heart Demon wants him delivered."
"Alive is all we need, right?" One of the larger devils grinned, showing three rows of teeth. "So if we eat his arms and legs, that's fine?"
"As long as he breathes. The rest is yours."
The devils screamed, howled, and charged.
Abel's wand swept a circle around his body. The tip dragged a trail of blue-white flame that expanded outward in a shockwave, catching the first wave of charging devils and detonating on contact. Bodies flew. Limbs separated. The concussive blast sent a dozen of them tumbling backward through the air.
In the same motion, Abel tapped his wand to his own forehead.
The sensation was immediate. A cold and invisible liquid, trickling from the crown of his skull downward, coating his body like a second skin. His form wavered, thinned, and vanished.
"Caecus."
"Where is he? Where's the mage?"
"He's hiding!"
"Your brain is full of sulfur. This space was created by Earth Demon. There's nowhere to hide!"
The low-level devils roared and scattered, searching. Abel moved between them like smoke, silent, invisible, his breathing controlled to near-nothing. Caecus bent light around his body, rendering him effectively undetectable to anything relying on sight. Not true invisibility, more like a chameleon effect, the outline of his form shifting and blending with whatever was behind him. Against creatures with magical sensing, it would fail eventually. But these low-level devils were operating on eyes and ears alone.
Abel stopped behind a tall dark-red devil, twice his height, its back turned.
"Sectumsempra."
No light or sound was in sight. The curse was designed for silence, an invisible cutting force that sliced through flesh like a razor through paper. The devil's body separated at the waist, the two halves falling in opposite directions, blue-purple blood spraying across the stone floor. It screamed once, twitched, and went still.
Abel was already gone. Relocated. Standing behind the next target.
Two more heads left their necks before the Earth Demon reacted.
"It's that mage! Everyone stay alert! Focus on the magical fluctuations when he casts!"
The devils tightened formation, backs to each other, scanning the empty space.
A devil on the perimeter caught it. A flicker, a shimmer behind his neighbor, there and gone in the time between heartbeats. The neighbor's body split diagonally from left shoulder to right hip, the two halves sliding apart in a wet, heavy collapse.
"I saw it! I saw it! The mage becomes visible for an instant when he strikes! Everyone watch for the—"
His vision spun. The world rotated once, twice, and then he was looking at his own headless body from the floor. The last thing his fading consciousness registered was a single thought: oh.
Abel knew the pattern would be discovered. Caecus broke for a fraction of a second every time he cast another spell. Sectumsempra, strike, recast Caecus, move. Strike, recast, move. Each cycle left a microsecond window where his body was visible. Against humans, that window was too fast to exploit. Against dozens of devils with enhance physics on high alert, with a commander shouting instructions, it was only a matter of time.
So Abel changed tactics.
He stopped hiding among the crowd. Instead, he used the devils' own bodies as cover, positioning himself so that when Caecus broke, a devil's bulk stood between him and the nearest observer. He killed from blind spots, struck from angles no one was watching, and moved the instant the blade fell.
Six more devils died in under a minute.
The Earth Demon's patience broke.
"Enough!"
The ground erupted. Stalagmites and stone spears shot upward from the floor in every direction, a forest of rock needles rising with violent speed, aimed at every point in the subspace simultaneously. Not targeted. Saturated. The Earth Demon couldn't see Abel, so he attacked everywhere.
Abel dropped Caecus. No point hiding when the entire floor was trying to impale him.
He ran.
The black-smoke wings materialized on his back, lifting him above the stone spears, weaving between the jagged pillars that continued to grow from the walls and ceiling. Below, the remaining devils scrambled to avoid being skewered by their own master's attacks.
Abel's wand swept outward.
"Depulso!"
The Banishing Charm hit the nearest cluster of devils with concussive force, scattering them like bowling pins. Abel followed with a wave of conjured flame, not meant to burn, the devils were fire-resistant, but to obscure their sight. Behind the curtain of fire, he Transfigured the wall into a barrier, buying himself three seconds of breathing room.
The devil count had dropped to less than half. The subspace reeked of sulfur blood and charred stone. Abel's arms ached from the constant spellcasting. His magical reserves were holding, but the pace was grinding.
Earth Demon hasn't committed to a direct fight yet. He's using his subordinates as cannon fodder, waiting for me to tire. Smart. But his army is shrinking fast, and he can't replenish it in here.
Time to force his hand.
Abel landed on a relatively clear patch of ground, planted his feet, and raised his wand toward the Earth Demon.
"Your subordinates are running out, Earth Demon. How about you stop hiding behind them and face me yourself?"
The Earth Demon's crimson eyes glowed brighter. His arms shifted, skin darkening, hardening, turning to stone from the elbows down. The stone hands reshaped into massive war hammers, each one the size of Abel's torso.
Then he charged.
END CHAPTER 57