Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [188]
I will not become like him, she told herself then. I will never let that happen. I will die first.
She waited until he was so close she could make out the lines of his face in the gloom, and then she attacked him with her magic. She struck out with ferocious determination, using every bit of power she could summon. She met his gaze squarely, locked his eyes with hers, and went after him. He was not expecting it. The force of her assault jolted him back a step, shook him from head to foot. His mouth opened in surprise, and his eyes went wide. But he did not collapse as Danny Abbott and Robert Heppler had. He kept his feet. His face underwent a frightening transformation, and for a moment she could see clearly the depth of his evil.
“You foolish little girl!” he hissed in undisguised fury.
He came at her again, stronger this time, breaking past her defenses, brushing aside her attack. She retreated from him, trying to bring more power to bear, to slow him, to keep him at bay. The feeders were scrambling and leaping wildly, closing about, tightening their circle. She felt their anticipation, sensed their readiness. They would feed soon. They would feed on her.
Then she saw Wraith. He left the ground as if catapulted,‘his huge, rippling body uncoiling, his muscles stretching. He crossed the open space between them in a handful of heartbeats, paws tearing at the earth, jaws spread wide. A high-pitched snarl broke from his throat, so dark and terrible that for a second everything seemed to freeze with its sound.
In that second, Nest was certain he was coming for her and she was about to die. She brought her arms up quickly to shield herself and dropped to one knee.
But it was the demon Wraith had targeted, and he flew through the air in a blur of black and gray tiger stripes, crashing into his creator and bearing him to the earth in a bright flash of white teeth. The demon disappeared under the beast, body twisting, arms flailing in an effort to find purchase. Nest staggered back from them, nearly falling, not understanding what had happened. Why was Wraith attacking the demon? The demon screamed in rage and pain as the ghost wolf tore at him. It seemed as if the beast had gone insane, attacking with such ferocity that there was no stopping him. Feeders broke over them both, writhing and twisting jubilantly in response to the battle, frenzied in their eagerness to dine. They scattered momentarily as the demon threw off Wraith with a superhuman effort and struggled to his feet, torn and bloodied and battered. But Wraith was on top of him again in an instant, jaws snapping.
The demon screamed something then, just one time, a name that Nest heard clearly. “Evelyn!” There was recognition in the cry; there was rage and terror. Evelyn!
Then Wraith was all over him, dragging him down and ripping him apart. Blood and flesh flew in ragged gouts, and the demon’s screams turned to muffled gasps. Arms and legs flopped wide in limp surrender, and the demon began to come apart, throat and chest gaping, insides spilling out. Feeders tore at him hungrily, swarming out of the night. The demon’s savaged body lurched upward as if jolted by electricity, and something dark and winged and unspeakable tried to break free from the gore. But Wraith caught it as it emerged, and his jaws snapped down with an audible crunch. Nest heard a single, horrifying shriek, and then silence.
Wraith moved away from the demon’s body then, head lowered, jaws dark and wet with blood. The demon lay crumpled and motionless before her, no longer recognizable as anything human, reduced to something foul and wretched. She stared at it a moment, watching it collapse on itself as the maentwrog had done, watching