Chapter 112: _ Unanswered Questions
Junie screams.
It’s not your usual scream either. It’s the kind that rips out of your lungs like it’s been scraped raw by glass. The sound echoes, high-pitched, jagged, and piercing through the chaos like a fire alarm nobody can turn off.
Heidi can’t believe what she’s seeing. Her eyes widen, her wolf brain roaring in disbelief even as blood splatters her muzzle. Junie’s arm... her arm—is gone. It’s not scratched or nicked. It’s gone. Severed clean like a doll limb popped out of its socket, except there’s no neatness to the spray of crimson gushing from the stump.
Heidi’s wolf snarls in denial, hackles bristling, but the truth is painted across the labyrinth floor in a hot, slick puddle. Junie collapses to her knees, clutching at the space where her arm used to be, wailing.
The demon that struck her—an angular nightmare with too many elbows and a face split down the middle, isn’t satisfied with just maiming. It rears back, shrieking as it raises its black claws. It’s going to finish the job.
"NO!" Valentina screams, and without thinking—without knowing what she’s doing, she throws her hands up.
The air tears.
Right there in front of them, a circle the size of a hula hoop snaps open, swirling like someone pulled reality apart at the seams. Its edges shimmer violet, bending light as a small-sized portal appears where nothing should exist.
The demon freezes mid-strike, eyes bulging at the impossible rupture. Its scream cracks into confusion. The other demons stutter in their assault, distracted for the first time since this slaughter began.
Val herself stands frozen, mouth open, staring at her hands like they betrayed her. "What—what the..."
The demon soon recovers and tries to attack her anyway, snapping back to instinct, but before it can close the gap...
A Moon Blessed boy, one of the wolves who were unable to shift, tackles the demon from the side. He grunts, his whole body straining as he muscles the screeching thing toward the portal. With a grunt that sounds like his spine might give out, he shoves the grotesque thing in.
The demon’s claws scrape the stone as it’s sucked inside. The portal swallows it whole like quicksand, and then... poof. He’s gone.
Silence stuns the battlefield for a fraction of a second. Val blinks. Then her brain catches up to the impossible thing she just did, and her face transforms from horror to dawning, manic realization.
Her ability has been awakened!
"WAIT. WAIT. I—oh my god..." She spins toward the others with wild eyes. "GET IN! Everybody, GET IN THE PORTAL! NOW!"
Heidi snarls as her heart breaks for her friend, but she can’t stop fighting. She’s still tearing through demons like they’re chew toys, but her ears prick at Val’s command.
Junie is still writhing on the floor, clutching her bleeding stump, and whimpering in shock. "I—I can’t—I can’t move..."
Val jumps toward her, grabbing her good arm and practically dragging her toward the flickering portal. "You don’t have a choice, babe! It’s either the portal or demon chow!"
Junie cries out, stumbling as her knees stagger, but Val is relentless, her Italian-accented voice shouting: "MOVE. MOVE. MOVE."
Around them, the surviving Moon Blessed—only about forty left from the hundred that started, don’t need to be told twice. One by one, they sprint, scramble, or dive into the portal. Some shove others ahead of them, some fling themselves in with desperate abandon.
The demons recover from their distraction and start shrieking again, claws whipping toward the crowd. The Alpha boy pounces on them and Heidi intercepts two, jaws snapping through tendon and bone, ichor burning her tongue like acid. She doesn’t stop. She can’t stop. Val is screaming for her.
"Heidi! GO! NOW!"
It’s the Alpha boy who jumps first after Heidi hesitates. Her wolf doesn’t want to leave. Every instinct tells her to fight until the floor itself collapses under her paws. But then she remembers seeing Val shoving Junie who was still bleeding, pale, and crying—into the portal. She sees the last cluster of Moon Blessed sprinting toward it, tears streaking their gore-stained faces.
And she knows.
With one last vicious shake, Heidi snaps the neck of the demon in her teeth, tosses its twitching body aside, and barrels toward the portal. Two demons leap at her, claws slashing, but she rams them into the ground and springs forward, diving into the glowing circle just as it begins to sputter.
The sensation is like being swallowed whole. Cold and wet, like plunging into a whirlpool. The world sucks her in and spits her back out.
She hits the stone floor hard, her claws scraping it. Her vision tilts before righting itself.
This side of the labyrinth is darker and oppressive. The torches sputter low in a sickly green sheen. The walls drip with some foul slime, and the air smells like mildew and rotting flesh. It’s the same maze—but it’s the part they’d seen earlier and avoided, the dark side.
Her fur bristles.
Val tumbles out right behind her. But before the relief can set in, two demons, who are apparently smart enough to follow, burst through the portal after them.
Snarling, Heidi doesn’t even think twice. She springs their way, her wolf body colliding with one mid-air, claws raking down its torso. The Alpha boy leaps on the other. His wolf is huge and sandy brown.
Together, they tear the demons apart, and in a matter of minutes, their bodies crumple, twitch, and then still.
When Heidi lifts her head, her muzzle is dripping black. She catches the Alpha boy staring at her. His golden wolf eyes glow, but it’s not with rivalry, or arrogance, but with respect.
Admiration even.
For a moment, even in this nightmare, that look makes her chest swell. She doesn’t understand all the events of the past three hours they’ve spent fighting the demons. How she was able to kill so many when she’s literally never killed any before is something beyond her knowledge and comprehension.
Even the boy with the Alpha wolf is obviously badly injured, although, his wolf is healing itself already. Yet, an ordinary wolf like her barely sustained any injury.
Fine, Amias had trained her last night, but one could barely call it one. She truly appreciates his advice and effort, she does. However, they barely had the time to do anything.
So how... where on earth did she learn to fight like that?
The next thing she hears makes her brows crease. "Well, little wolf, wouldn’t you like to know?"