Free Unnatural Souls by Linda Foster

that, the first demon drifted around the corner,
smiling.
    Suddenly the closest demon
was moving in on me. I was surrounded by demons, and backed up in
the dead end of an alley. Which meant the only way out was through them. Here went
nothing. I tensed, took a deep breath, and leapt forward, dashing
across over the two feet that separated me from the first demon.
When I reached it, I rammed at it with every ounce of strength I
had, hoping to shove past the thing, but it barely budged. It
pushed me back like I weighed nothing, and I went flying backwards
five feet, landing on my butt.
    Shit. I had to get away from them. I
had to get home.
    Then things got even worse.
    “ Come on, angel,” a third
voice said from behind me.
    I leapt to my feet,
sparing a quick glance backwards, and gulped. Three of them? Demons
normally worked alone, from what I’d gathered on my missions with
Kali. It was rare seeing two demons hunting together, but three? It
was unheard of, as far as I knew. And of course I had the poor luck of running into
the ones who—for some reason—were doing just that. I was dead. I
couldn’t take on one demon by myself, and now I was surrounded by
them. Alone. I wanted intensity training, right? Well, I certainly
got what I asked for.
    And as terrified as I was, my blood
began to boil. I was going to die and my brother was going to be
taken to Hell, all because of Kali and my inability to call a
stupid weapon to myself.
    Suddenly I saw Ash in my mind. My baby
brother. I pictured his sweet smile, the blue eyes that crinkled
when he laughed. Then the image of him in the clearing the night I
almost died. The determination and desperation. There seemed to be
no question that he would do anything and everything it took to
bring me back to life, and he did. He didn’t let me die. If I were
killed here, my death would seal his fate for good, and I couldn’t
have that. I hadn’t worked this hard to be dispatched in some back
alley by demons just because Kali decided to throw me to the
wolves.
    No. I was going to make it through
this. I was going to save him.
    But how? I couldn’t kill them, and
unless I was able to focus long enough to use my powers of
teleportation I wasn’t going to be able to flee, either. I stilled
myself, trying to find the calmness deep down inside my soul. That
was what I needed—that lack of emotion. After a split second, I
felt it, just under the surface, and reached for it, hardly daring
to breathe…
    There. The moment I came across the
serenity, I grabbed at it and pulled it around myself like a
blanket. I felt my power spark slightly, and my mind raced ahead of
me, trying to form a plan. There was only one option: buy myself
some time. Distract them long enough to call my weapon, or—more
likely—escape.
    And when it came to distractions, I
had just the thing.
    I did the only thing
I really knew how
to do—the moment I had my power in my hands, I called every object
on the small, dead end street to me. Every brick, bottle, and
trashcan. I focused all my power on becoming a magnet to any
movable item, and within minutes the debris began to fly around me.
I welcomed the growing craznado with a smile and turned my
attention from the arsenal of objects around me to the monsters in
front of me.
    When I saw them, my smile grew wider.
The sight of the craznado had been enough to make them pause, and
the two furthest from me had even taken a few steps backwards. The
one closest to me was staring up at the craznado in what I hoped
was horror. At that moment, I willed the objects toward them,
throwing them with my mind. And they flew forward just as I’d
imagined, blasting toward the demons as quickly as bullets from a
gun. In the blink of an eye, the demons were barraged, the objects
exploding into them before they could move. A number of bottles
smashed when they struck the demons, shattering into glass shards
and drawing blood, and the bricks I’d conjured hit them with such
force that