The heart was merely a means of transporting blood around her body. What need had she of such a redundant organ. She had served as a heart for Genoa once. Obviously she could do a better job with her own blood that she had complete and total control over. Some of the injury, she simply healed. Blood plugged up the rest while she ensured that her liquid blood kept flowing within her veins.
“I heard a story about a man who could summon an infinite number of swords,” she said slowly as a small dagger appeared in the hunter’s hand. The same dagger that had sent her to Hell not so long ago. “I wonder how many you have left.”
She screamed, pointing the dagger at Eva more like a wand than a bladed weapon. Eva blinked just in time to avoid an explosion at its tip.
A narrow chunk of the ritual circle turned to slag where the dagger had been aimed. The very rock turned bright red. Some parts melted entirely.
It had Eva thinking that maybe she had deserved to die the first time around. She hadn’t exactly been cognizant of what her body had absorbed last time.
With the hunter’s large arm being nothing more than dead weight, Eva half jumped, half blinked to the woman’s side. But she didn’t stay there. Eva blinked away, intentionally leaving a portion of herself behind.
A snap of her fingers detonated the hanging arms and legs, sending the hunter sprawling over the ground from the force. The dagger skidded across the surface of the stone ritual circle.
Right to Eva.
She stepped on the blade, coating the entire thing in a thick layer of blood. Before she could snap her fingers, the hunter, still lying on the ground, opened her hand wide.
The dagger reappeared between her fingertips.
Still coated in blood.
Blood and viscera—mostly red but with a slight purple hue—exploded at the stump of the hunter’s arm. She screamed out. Nothing articulate. Just random noise of pain, anger, and hatred.
Eva didn’t give her a chance to teleport or come up with any other plan. Blinking right on top of the hunter, she thrust her foot into the half-human, half-enigma maw, filling it with blood.
She didn’t even back away before snapping her fingers.
One moment, the wide eyes of the hunter were staring up at Eva.
The next moment, the wide eyes of the hunter were flying across the ritual circle with no skull to contain them.
Eva stared down at the headless corpse, panting for breath. Maybe having a lung damaged was a slight issue. But only slight. She could manage. Humans—or demons—had two lungs for a reason. She stared, looking for any sign of motion. With the mutation on its back and arm, Eva wasn’t going to take any chances.
Even though it hadn’t moved in the short time it took Catherine and Srey to finish walking up to her, Eva started stuffing the entire body with blood. Especially around the massive eye and the already damaged arm.
“You’re looking a little shorter.”
Eva glared up at Catherine without stopping the blood filling. Her glare apparently came intense enough that both demons took a step back.
Though the succubus might have a point. Eva had used up enormous quantities of blood throughout that fight. Especially in her final few attacks; leaving behind most of her arms and legs and the spears of blood that disabled the hunter’s arm should have run her blood supply completely dry. If her legs were
She just about complained about the lack of assistance she had received during the fight, but thought better of it.
“The enigma I brought with me,” Eva said, pointing a vague hand towards the edge of the ritual circle. “Drag it over to the middle, just next to the avatar.”
“You have a plan?”
Eva grinned. She could taste a little blood on her sharp teeth, though couldn’t say exactly where it had come from. “Oh yes,” she said. “We’re going to shove this lobotomized hunk of flesh back into Life’s skull. Or whatever passes as one for Powers.”
Pest Removal
Devon strode into the Brakket Academy main lobby area with two demons in tow. Once upon a time, doing something so brazen would have gotten him killed without a doubt. Who in their right mind would ever allow a demon summoner and demons into a school?
How times had changed.
His weren’t even the only demons he had spotted around the school. He had spotted a capra demon disguised as a student turning one of the many enigmas into minced meat just outside the entrance to the school. A few nearby human guards hadn’t even batted an eye as Devon passed by. Apparently, so long as he wasn’t a tentacled monster, he was perfectly welcome. Either that or Eva had told them that he would be coming.
