Martina placed the phone back down and moved back to the window. Luckily, school was out for the summer. Most teachers were gone. Most students were gone. New first years hadn’t even arrived yet. The only ones sticking around were those with no place else to go.
Of course, given how watched the city was since the sky issue, it wouldn’t surprise her to find out that some reporters were recording this somehow. Unfortunately, there was nothing that she could do about that at this point.
Martina was about to take another drink when she heard a loud cracking noise.
She turned towards the door just in time to see it split in two. Both halves flew across the room and turned to splinters as they hit the wall.
Silhouetted against the hallway light was a lithe woman, head tilted down so that her red hair hung down and obscured most of her face. Her hands up to her elbows were coated in black liquid. Viscous droplets hit the ground, staining it with each splash.
Behind the woman, two void portals swallowed up the remains of what could only be her guard demons.
The woman looked up, locking one green eye and one red eye with Martina’s eyes.
Martina took a casual sip of her drink as she looked over the woman. She held no obvious focus. No wand, no book, no gemstones. She had no rings on.
But she had just killed two demons. Granted, she may have ambushed them, but it looked like she had torn them apart with her bare hands. And with that eye…
“A half-demon? Or did you graft the eye?”
“Hellfire?” the woman said back. “You know that’s made by mortals who thought it would be a cool name? No relation to demons at all.”
Frowning, Martina brought the glass to her lips once again. Of course she knew that. She had become addicted to the taste long before she summoned her first demon.
And the hunter hadn’t answered her question.
“Here to talk?” Martina asked. That would be the best case scenario. Anything to delay until Zagan got off his ass and finished up with the armored hunter. Or even until Catherine returned. “Or here to fight?”
“Here to kill.”
“I see.”
The hunter dashed across the room without further preamble.
Martina dove to the side, dropping her glass as she moved. She forced her magic into the summoning circle in the center of the room, hidden beneath a large rug. There was no enticement set. She was opening the portal, a calling to any demon who might answer.
Frankly, she didn’t care what kind of demon she got. Though she was hoping for something marginally stronger than an imp. It was doubtful that such a pathetic being would even give the hunter pause.
There were no shackles around the circle either. A good thing in this case. So long as the demon went after the hunter and not her. Normally Zagan would be present. He was the best deterrent to any subterfuge, better than any set of shackles created by man, in any case.
The hunter jumped away from Martina, landing in the center of the circle. She clenched her fist and slammed it down into the floor.
Audible cracks ran through the floor.
Martina felt her magic backfire before she saw it. A sudden twist of her magic in a way that was not meant to be.
She cut off channeling her magic into the circle.
Too late.
The damaged circle rumbled before exploding outwards, filling the air with dust and debris.
Martina flew back, hitting her hip against the edge of her desk. Groaning out, she breathed in a cloud of dust. She descended into sputtering hacks and coughs. Pulling up the edge of her shirt to cover her mouth, Martina tried to breathe in a lungful of filtered air as she looked around for her opponent.
The cloud of dust obscured everything more than a foot away. There were shadows around.
One moved.
Martina used her rings to fire off a sickly green bolt of lightning.
“Summoning more demons? Tisk, tisk.”
She whipped her head around and immediately shot off another bolt into the corner of the room.
“I appreciate a fight as much as the next hunter, but I’d say that we have our work cut out for us with what is already around.”
A different corner, where the sound had come from, exploded from another lightning bolt. More dust and debris filled the air, sending Martina into a fresh set of coughs.
Her eyes burned. The shadow was moving around faster and faster, making Martina dizzy as she tried to follow it around her room.
“You kill me,” she coughed through her shirt, “and Zagan will be off his leash. You don’t know the destruction he will cause. He’ll kill everyone around. Innocent students, teachers, children.”
“Ah, I’m sure Clement will be broken-hearted to hear that. Unfortunately for you, you mistake me for someone who cares.”
Martina didn’t launch another lightning bolt. That tactic was obviously not working. She had to try something else.
Building up her magic, Martina tried for a teleport.
