Free Night Huntress 03.5 - Devil to Pay by Jeaniene Frost Page B

there. Another blow knocked her into the van again. Then another and another, all made by someone she couldn’t even see.
     
    Elise tasted blood where her lip had split. The bright afternoon sunlight, naked of any cloud cover, felt like needles on her skin. Something seized Elise’s hair, grinding her face into a ragged piece of metal from the dent her body had made.
     
    “Bring him back, ” Xaphan said again, and she was shoved into the van.
     
    Blake was still slumped over the chamber, motionless. Elise pulled him all the way out of the water, laying him on the van’s floor. He was as white as the salt outside, all the color gone from his skin, and his skin was cool enough to feel like he’d been carved out of ice.
     
    The van gave a violent rock that had equipment sliding into the corner.
     
    “Stop it!” Elise snapped. “If you break everything in here, I can’t save him.”
     
    “Do it now,” that horrible, disembodied voice ordered.
     
    Her hands trembled as she set the breather over Blake’s mouth, turning on the machine that would pump warmed, humid air into Blake’s lungs. We must reheat his core slowly, Mencheres had said. Too much artificial warmth to his extremities will make lethal gases fill Blake’s bloodstream.
     
    Therefore, Elise didn’t use the hot packs with Blake yet. She covered him with blankets and set up the IV to fill an artery with heated blood. Another IV was inserted for a warmed saline solution. Then Elise began CPR, forcing Blake’s stationary heart to pump.
     
    An invisible hand slapped her across the mouth. “Faster,” Xaphan said.
     
    The demon’s voice seemed to rise and fade at the same time. Elise took out a syringe with an elongated needle, punching that needle through Blake’s breastbone to inject epinephrine directly into his heart. Then she began compressions to his chest again.
     
    “Bring him back now, ” Xaphan roared. The van lifted off the ground a foot and smashed back down, shattering the windows.
     
    Elise paused to take a long, poignant look at Blake’s face. That demon is going to regret what it did to me, he’d told her. Don’t try to take that away from me, Elise.
     
    That was what she was doing right now, taking away his choice because it hurt her too much to honor it. Searing pain tore through Elise’s heart. I can’t do it. I love you too much to betray you like that.
     
    She kissed Blake’s cold lips, then sat back. “It’s over,” she told the demon.
     
    A viselike grip settled around her throat, lifting her until her head banged on the ceiling.
     
    “You will obey me,” Xaphan said. Waves of sulfur curled around her, the odor so thick, it felt like it was slithering inside her.
     
    Elise could barely talk with the pressure on her throat, but she managed to force out her reply.
     
    “Go… to… hell.”
     
    The van shook, metal curling back from the frame, before it was lifted and slammed repeatedly to the ground. Elise used all of her strength to tear away from the force that held her. She crawled toward Blake, covering him with her body when she reached him. Shielding him from metal shards that sliced through the air, ripping into her flesh and gouging the equipment around them. For a few nightmarish minutes, it felt like the entire world was being shaken and ripped apart.
     
    A piercing shriek scalded her ears, causing Elise to lift her head and look in its direction. In the open doorway of the ruined van, a cloud of black flame appeared. It stretched into the form of a man with long, smoke-tipped wings coming from his back.
     
    “Die,” the demon hissed. That cloud of burning sulfur shot straight toward Elise and Blake.
     
    Elise braced herself but didn’t try to escape. She wouldn’t leave Blake, even if it meant her death.
     
    Mencheres suddenly appeared in front of her, his power crackling the air around him. The flames reached him—and stopped, dissolving into smoke mere inches from his