It didn’t take long for Aunt Lin and me to gather everything that we needed from the Wings of the Sea, and soon we were back on the island at the location that I had chosen for our ambush. It took longer to gather enough firewood and pine boughs that would make a fire noticeable enough that the Demons would know to find us there, rather than on the small yacht, when they eventually launched their attack. Once the fire was roaring and we had plenty of wood and boughs to keep it going until the sun set, we began working on the other preparations.

Thankfully, the ‘spell’ to enchant our weapons and ammunition was as easy to learn and perform as my aunt said it was, and we finished that task not long before the sun reached the horizon. Even though my plan only called for the use of our guns, we had enchanted all our melee weapons as well as the ammunition. We probably wouldn’t need them since both of our andivapn would most likely be effective against Demons, but it was better to have them prepared and not need them than the other way around.

With that and the other preparations finished, we settled in by the fire to wait for our guests to arrive, our andivapn unsummoned and our other gear out of sight but within reach in our respective bags of holding. As we waited, we tried to appear relaxed and unaware of the impending attack, toasting marshmallows by the fire, and my aunt told stories about her adventures with my mother to pass the time. The sky was painted bright oranges and reds, and the sun was moments away from completing its daily travel beyond the horizon when Demona whispered uncertainly in my mind, “I… I think something is coming.”

It was over a minute later that my aunt quickly whispered, “My perimeter alert spell was just triggered, it’s showtime.” Then, without missing a beat, she continued telling her story as if nothing happened.

A few minutes later, Demona added with more certainty, “It’s right behind us, watching from a tree branch, about twenty feet up.”

I was so startled that, for a moment, I fumbled with the stick I was toasting my marshmallow on, dipping it into the fire and setting it aflame. As I hurriedly blew out the flames on my now scorched treat and tried to keep looking casual, I sent back to the representation of my Demon half, “You can sense Demons?”

“Maybe? I think so,” she replied, not sounding entirely certain. This was not something that I had considered, but it might just be useful in the battle to come.

“Okay, good job, Demona. Please keep me updated on their movements, if possible. Both of you should get ready to fight as soon as I summon you, too.” I received a quick confirmation from both halves of Penny while I continued to listen to my aunt’s story and nommed on my slightly burnt, but warm and gooey marshmallow.

Much as I would have liked to tell Aunt Lin about this new development, we were being watched, and we would have to be ready to put the plan into action as soon as the enemy scout was gone. It was a tense several minutes that followed as I tried to appear natural and relaxed, and I almost sagged in relief when Demona reported that the spy had vanished, probably teleporting back to his superior to report his findings. “He’s gone,” I repeated for my aunt’s sake. “It’s time to get to work.”

Aunt Lin’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but she didn’t question it, well aware that we didn’t have the luxury of time to discuss matters. The sun had set, and a dark twilight had settled upon the little valley on the island. We likely only had a few minutes before that scout would be back with reinforcements and it was time to enact the plan.

So, my aunt merely nodded, placed a round object in my hand, and vanished to see to her part of things. As for me, I flew straight up to just below the treetops and began working on the first magical effect that my aunt had taught me to create. It was an easy spell and would be an integral part of phase one of the plan.

Phase one was simple enough. The idea was to lure them into a false sense of confidence by appearing unaware of their presence in a fairly open area where the lion’s share of their forces would be free to press the attack. Then we would pull a few surprises from up our sleeves to sow some chaos, take away their advantages, and make them scatter.

“They’re here, and there are a lot of them down there,” Demona reported as I finished enforcing my will on the world with the Light within me, my eyes tightly closed. Even with my eyes closed, the bright light that I’d summoned into existence nearly blinded me as well as the Demons below. It would only last half an hour or so, but it would negate their advantage in the darkness, and hopefully the battle wouldn’t last that long.

The Demons were having a lot more trouble adjusting to the sudden new sun above them than I was, and I took the opportunity that their sudden blindness presented to pull the pin on the surprise I’d been given and drop it onto the base of the rocky slope on the south side of the little valley. The only experience I had gotten with using grenades was flash bombs, since we didn’t want to cause too much damage to the trees and wildlife on the island, but the concept wasn’t much different for this one, just pull the pin and make sure it lands where you want it to.

The fragmentation grenade had been given a little Divine kick alongside our ammunition, and the resulting shrapnel took out three Demons who were standing within the blast zone. While that was three fewer enemies we would have to deal with later, that wasn’t the true purpose of the grenade. I knew this little valley intimately; My aunt knew every hiding spot with a good view of the valley, and I had broken my ankle here because the southern rockface was dangerously unstable.

So, in addition to taking out a few of their numbers with shrapnel, the explosion caused an avalanche that had the half-blind Demons, scrambling to get away via teleportation, and buried a pair that were too slow to do so. It wouldn’t kill them, and they would probably just teleport out of the rubble while their regeneration kicked in, but that wasn’t the point. This wasn’t some poorly thought-out attempt to kill them all; it was to confuse them and destabilize their plan of action so that we could kill all of them in the chaos that followed.

And now it was time for phase two of the plan, something that I liked to call the big bluff. I continued to hover in place as the dust settled below and Demons reappeared to look around for anymore unwelcome surprises. It just so happened that I had one for them.

“Surprise!” I called out tauntingly, glad that they didn’t have any fliers; teleporters were bad enough. “Welcome to the party. Did you honestly think we didn’t notice you coming? We’ve got you surrounded. Every Valkyrie in the northern hemisphere is hiding out there in the woods, waiting to take you assholes down.” It wasn’t even a lie since, as far as I knew, my aunt and I were the only two of our kind in existence.

On cue, semiautomatic weapons fire rang out in the east, taking out two Demons that Aunt Lin had managed to get in her sights. Not even ten seconds later, gunshots from a very different weapon sounded from the northwest, taking down another Demon with enchanted rounds. Then a crossbow bolt caught a Demon in the throat, fired from somewhere south of us. Damn, Aunt Lin was teleporting fast and switching off weapons as she did so to sell the bluff.

The Demons were looking appropriately confused and demoralized, and we had managed to take out almost a third of their forces already. I was pretty pleased with how things were going to plan so far. And then one of them decided to try to restore order, calling out to the others, “There’s only the two of them, you fools! The other one is teleporting! Moz, take what’s left of your unit, summon some hellhounds, track down the bitch in the woods, and kill her!”

The Demoness who issued the orders looked tall and muscular with crimson skin, long black hair, and an impressive set of golden horns curled along the sides of her head and over her pointed ears like a crown. She was also wearing some very ornate armor. Another Demon, a huge, obsidian-skinned monstrosity who I assumed must be Moz, was quick to follow her orders, gathering his men and then vanishing.

It was six fewer Demons that I would have to worry about. Okay, seven less since a bullet from the northwest had claimed another, leaving roughly a dozen left for me to deal with while my aunt had fun in the woods. As an added bonus, I now knew who the leader was and could skip straight to phase four of the plan, killing her.

First, though, I wanted to even the odds just a little bit more. I quickly extracted my assault rifle and fired a swath across a group of Demons who were somewhat close together and still trying to figure out exactly what was going on here. I only got two of the three since one had regained his senses enough to teleport away from the gunfire. Figuring that I would take what I could get, I returned the weapon to my bag of holding, summoned Penny, and dropped to the ground with an overhand strike that only narrowly missed the Demoness in charge. Damn, she was fast.

I barely managed to raise Penny to block a counterattack that probably would have skewered me if my reflexes and speed were a little slower, and delivered a kick to her gut that knocked the wind out of her and sent her flying backwards. That had been a close one; she was faster than I expected, and that sword she was using was enchanted somehow. Not like Penny, but I could sense magic on it, maybe Metal magic. I couldn’t be certain, but it didn’t feel like Divine magic, and it didn’t feel like the Death magic I could feel from some of the Demons either. If Penny hadn’t sliced through it like warm butter with that block, then it had to be magically reinforced somehow, and Metal magic made the most sense.

My opponent quickly got to her feet, and I was surprised that none of the other Demons took the opportunity to try and get a shot at me. One look in her eyes explained why. Yeah, that was not a person on friendly terms with sanity. She snarled at me as she drew a dagger with her off hand, and then her eyes widened from the glare she was previously sporting as she got a better look at the weapon in my hand.

“Kryztic’kol,” she hissed with a look of horror and anger. “Where did you manage to get one of those? You’re just a mutt!”

“Oh, you’ll find that I’m full of surprises,” I taunted. She didn’t need to know that I knew practically nothing about the weapons in question and that, while Penny might look like one, she was something altogether different.

She vanished from sight, and even though I anticipated that she would strike from behind and quickly pulled myself into the Holy Plane to avoid it, I still felt the bite of the enchanted blade slicing across my back before I appeared in the familiar Mist. Okay, that hurt like a bitch, but I could already feel the tingling sensation that told me my regeneration was healing the wound. I immediately pulled myself back into the Material Plane, roughly one foot back and three feet to the side of my former position.

I was already mid-slash toward her left side when I reappeared. Still, she was quick, quick enough that she was able to react. Her position and the dagger she was wielding on that side didn’t allow her time to deflect or parry the blow, but she managed to frantically dodge the swing that would have removed her head, only taking a shallow wound to the left side of her neck instead. A wound that on a full Demon should have sealed up practically immediately due to her regeneration, but was still trickling blood as she hurriedly backed away to put some distance between us.

“I… think I just did something. I felt something just now.” Demona’s voice spoke in our shared mind space as the Demoness glared at us in fury.

“You cursed me, bitch!” she snarled, before visibly attempting to calm herself and handing her bloodied blade to one of the Demons watching our fight. “Take this to that fool, Reimus.”

Fuck no. I recognized that name; he was the asshole who wanted my blood to unseal Baerahn, Archdemon, and my poor excuse for a grandfather. I rushed toward them, but he was gone with my blood before I could reach them. Worse yet, the Demoness in charge had drawn another sword to replace the other, a short, curved blade that practically reeked of Death magic. I could not let that thing touch me.

I ducked under a slash of the blade and twirled into a leg sweep that took her legs out from under her, and then I had to roll away and pull myself back into the Holy Plane as she recovered quickly and let loose with another wild slash. I had barely reappeared when her underlings called out my position, and she launched herself at me again, going for my right side. No, that was a feint; she wasn’t committing to the strike, but I was already off balance and a little distracted as my phone started ringing with the ringtone I had set for Erin. There was no time to answer it at the moment, though, not while I was up to my neck in Demons.

“Chain, and light it up,” I mentally commanded Penny as I gripped the hilt of Angela’s angel-wing blade with my left hand and pulled the chain enough to intercept the Demoness’s weapon and entangle it. Another kick to her gut sent her staggering backward, and she lost her grip on the weapon. It clattered to the stones beneath us, and I whipped Angelica’s blade toward her, hoping to get lucky.

I did get lucky. The chain wrapped around her left arm, the one still holding the knife, and as soon as the pale flames that coated the chain made contact with her flesh, the Demoness shrieked in agony as her entire arm from the shoulder down was quickly consumed and turned to ash. Well, now that she was unarmed, maybe I could finish this before I lost the advantage of my light spell.

A mental signal had Angela coating Demona’s large, demonic blade in pale fire as I pulled the chain back to bring Angela’s blade back to my left hand and moved in to attack. For an instant, the Demoness watched my approach in mounting horror before hissing, “Kill her, you fools,” and then teleporting away.

I cursed under my breath as the remaining eight Demons either charged at me or teleported, probably to try and get a cheap shot in while their pals distracted me. I whipped Angela’s blade out once again, entangling one of the Demons approaching, and while he was screaming and being reduced to ash, I used Demona to behead one that was getting a little too close for comfort. “There’s one behind us and another coming in from three o’clock,” Demona cautioned.

I ducked under the hammer swing of the one coming in from behind and to my left, kicking his kneecap hard enough that I both heard and felt the sickening crunch that followed, and brought Demona over my head to block an overhand blow, and yanking back Angela’s chain, her blade clipping one of the legs of the one in front of me and dropping him to the ground, howling in pain. None of them were out of the fight yet, but it gave me a moment to decide on my next move and get a sense of where everyone was on the battlefield.

“Raven, above us!”

I didn’t hesitate. As soon as I heard Demona’s warning, I pulled myself into the Holy Plane and then back out, in the air above my attackers and beating my wings rapidly to keep myself aloft. The Demon that had attempted to drop on me from above crashed into his fellows, and the Demoness was still nowhere to be seen. She was probably licking her wounds somewhere safe.

I allowed myself to drop, running Demona’s massive, flaming blade through the back of the sneaky Demon who had tried to pull the same trick on me, pinning both him and the Demon underneath him to the ground. As they were both being consumed by the pale flames, I wrapped the chain around a third to give him the same treatment. Now there was only the one whose knee I had destroyed, and three others who were teleporting all over the place, trying to keep me off balance.

The former thought that I was within reach of his hammer and sent it in a violent arc toward my head. In response, I let go of my grip on Demona and caught the business end of the hammer in my hand, stopping it cold and causing the Demon’s eyes to widen in surprise at my strength. He was still gaping as I let go of the hammer to rake my claws down his face.

He was screaming in pain as I thrust Angela’s blade through his neck to finish him off, her flames finishing him off as quickly as those I had caught in my attack from above. That just left the three annoying ones who were teleporting all over the place and waiting for a chance to strike. I’d noticed something, though; they were all sticking to ground level after the failure of that attack from above.

“Demona, full length on the chain,” I told my Demon half.

“You got it, Raven!” she quickly replied as she pushed the length of her chain to its limits. The moment that I sensed she couldn’t push it any further, I whipped the chain as hard as I could to my left, causing it to quickly lose any slack as it extended to full length and swung out in a deadly arc. My fishing expedition proved successful as one of the Demons rematerialized in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the flaming chain caught him and wrapped itself viciously around him.

“Get over here!” I yelled as I yanked hard on the chain, pulling him flying toward me and into as hard a punch as I could manage. My fist went violently through his head before the flames could finish him off.

The two remaining Demons attempted to take advantage of my distraction as I shook gore off my hand and got Angela to retract her chain. “Left and right,” Demona called out.

I pulled Demon’s blade out of the ground and jumped backward as they appeared to either side of where I was, weapons thrust out to try to end me. A slash with Demona lopped off the head of the one on the right, and I reached out to grab the other by the throat, wrapping my aura around him and pulling him with me into the Holy Plane. As we appeared in the Mist, his sword was still swinging toward my throat, but I dismissed Penny and batted his weapon arm away with my now free hand.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warned with a smile. “Do you even know where we are?” Seeing confusion in his eyes as they darted around, I decided to educate him. “We’re in the Holy Plane, asshole.”

“I…urrk…” He struggled to speak with the grip I had on his throat, but the look on his face was pure terror.

“Watch your sword,” I told him, squeezing his wrist hard enough to crack bones, elicit a gurgling scream from him, and force him to release his grip on the weapon. As soon as the weapon left his hand, it started changing into a vaguely sword-shaped liquid, which was changing into something else before it could even hit the ever-shifting surface that passed as the ground in this place. “See, that’s what happens to stuff here that isn’t protected by my aura, like you are right now. Neat, huh?”

I could feel the lump of fear he was swallowing through my grip on his throat as I casually continued to speak. “Now, you could try to teleport, but that will make me lose my aura grip on you, and the Mist is pretty determined to change everything that passes through here, so you might be able to do it, but you probably won’t be recognizable when you reach the other side. Maybe you’ll get lucky and still be something alive and sentient. If the Mist doesn’t do something else entirely. You are a Demon after all, and I’ve always wondered what might happen to one of you in the Mist.”

“Y-you… hurk… wouldn’t…” he managed to croak out. I now had his undivided attention, and I planned to take advantage of it.

“Wouldn’t I?” I asked with a smile. “Now, I have some questions, and either you’re going to answer them, or I’ll get to see what the Mist does to one of your kind. Either way, I win.”

The Demon was very cooperative after that, and I learned a lot. His boss, the Demoness that I maimed, was Commander Ultir, Reimus would have to wait until the next lunar eclipse to use my blood to free Baerahn, and the ritual would have to be done in the same place that he was sealed in the first place. All good information.

He was also kind enough to tell me why Demons were so terrified of Penny, and the weapons that her demonic half was based on. Apparently, Archedemons can use Kryztic’kol to curse other Demons cut by their blade, stripping them of their regeneration and making them much easier to kill. Some, like my ‘grandfather’, would do that to Demons that had displeased them and then have them hunted down and very slowly killed. If Penny had even a fraction of that ability, it would explain why the Demoness wasn’t healing and fled rather than continue the fight.

He was very informative about his boss and her operations. From the sounds of it, she was a psychopath, even for a Demon. She also had at least a dozen places that she could have gone to hide and lick her wounds, and he couldn’t tell me where any of them were.

She also apparently had an inside man in the Vancouver PDA office, not that my aunt and I hadn’t figured that out already, though he didn’t know exactly who, so he wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped. One useful bit of information that he did provide, though, was that they didn’t just attack the island; they planned to attack my home as well, with non-Demons who could get past the wards, and that had me in a hurry to get back there and make sure everyone was okay. Dammit, that was probably what the phone call was about during my fight with Ultir.

Since he was kind enough to answer all my questions, I let him go. I may have done so in the Mist, but I hadn’t promised not to, and that was educational as well. I learned that the Mist doesn’t change Demons; it destroys them utterly, much like Angela’s flames.

By the time I returned to the now devastated little valley on the island, my aunt had returned and was looking a little beat up, but very pleased with herself. “Do you need Angela to heal you?” I asked in concern.

Aunt Lin waved the suggestion off. “Nah, nothing is broken, and we still have work to do. Once I was done hunting down the Demons in the woods, I found two more on their boat and interrogated one of them before finishing him off.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, cutting her off. “They sent people to my house, too.”

She nodded grimly. “We can come back to clean things up and retrieve the Wings of the Sea later. I hope you’re ready for another fight, kiddo.”

“Yeah, they’re going to pay for attacking the people I care about. Let’s go kick some ass.” I didn’t waste any more time and immediately pulled myself through the Divine and then to the front yard of my family home. My heart lurched in terror for Lydia, Erin, and Alice as I immediately felt the heat of the flames and saw my home ablaze.