Daimon, DANIELLE BOLGER [read my book .txt] 📗

a roundhouse kick, causing me to buckle over. Then he kicked under my descending chin and propped me back upright, before striking back down with a crude elbow to a soft spot in my shoulder. My ribs received a sidekick that sent me flying back towards the center of the lagoon.

I was still soaring through the air when he appeared above me in a flash and knocked me flat onto my belly with the point of his heel. I flopped heavily against the water's surface before plunging hard into the stiff dirt below. I didn’t even have time to struggle for air as a hand wrenched me from the water, and the heel of the other palm struck right into my sternum. The bone crushed upon impact, pushing sharp debris against the fascia of my heart. He threw me into the air, and I soared like Peter Pan.

My air travel was interrupted by a tall, round, thick object behind me. I gasped with the pain of my spinal discs shifting onto my spinal nerve, and was momentarily paralyzed by the damage. As the object behind me began to shift backward, I realized it was the trunk of a tree as it collapsed to the ground with a deafening explosion. Limp as I was, it took me with it, and I fell back further still before rolling my face onto dirt. My hair was yanked roughly, forcing my head off the ground. Soil besmirched my face.

Hot, humid wind cradled my ear. “If I knew it was going to be this easy, I would never have eaten the beautiful Ruby. Oh, well. Time to end this game, I think.”

His smooth, soft hand entered my back, severed that already beaten spinal cord, and found its way towards my heart. His fingers curled around it, cradling it gently.

That moment froze. No, I thought desperately, this can't be it—it just can't be! I've come so far, fought such impossible odds. I can't die yet, not before Sandra is safe. Not before I kill him. I have a duty to my father, a destiny to destroy the evil in this city. I have to make it safe from crime, safe from monsters!

You are the monster, my sly, malicious voice cooed. If you want to make this city safe, then you should accept death.

No, I whispered back to it. I will die, but not before I kill Rose, not before I do everything I can to protect the Blue Coast.

That moment unfroze, and no matter how much I pleaded within myself to find that extra energy reserve, none came. I used it all already. All my loved ones living inside me, and all those pent up emotions lying at the core of my being, were finally extinguished and I could do nothing to stop his hand from retracting.

There were a few snaps, my blood vessels separating from my vital organ, and then several more sharp sounds as bones were crushed in the retrieval. Then it was gone—my heart was torn from my body. I could already feel those photons trying to float away from me.

It was too late; I had failed. Rose won the game, and I was dead. In a minute, all my sparkly flecks would lose form and take my corpse with it. I would simply disappear and no one would know where I had gone. Sandra would be killed, and hers and Zach's deaths would never see justice against this empowered demonic being. Ryan would wonder what had happened to me, but thinking that I had run off to another state like my brother, he would simply move on and find a girl that truly deserved his affection. Jack would hear some whiff about his sister disappearing in his hometown. He would wear a somber expression for just a moment, before brushing it off and getting back to his life on the west coast. That would be it; no tears would be shed. None, bar the black oil that dripped down my fading face.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I waited for it; I could do nothing else after all. With my spinal cord crushed and severed, I had only the faintest of movement in my hands and arms. There was none at all in my lower body. As I watched the hazy tree leaves blur in and out of the black background, I thought: at least if I was to become a paraplegic it would not be for long; I will never know its associated fearful dependence.

I thought I could sense it behind me, the twinkling flecks parting way where Rose's lips should have been. I knew I could also have just imagined it in my mind, filling the unseen gaps in a picture. Either way, his mouth had stretched into that grotesquely large cavity I myself depicted on so many occasions. There, my heart was being lowered inside his stretched jaw, descending down his neck to indicate a successful swallow.

I barely detected a muffled drum sound. Or was it a bang? A stamp? Did Rose kick my back just to gloat in his victory over me?

Then there was a very subtle thump, and I felt something roll across to my feeble arm. I turned my head to it wanly and focused with great concentration at the ill-defined red object. Straining my concentration, I noticed it gave a small pulsing.

It’s my heart! He dropped it, but how? Well, that doesn’t matter for the moment; all that matters is that I take that precious thing back!

Sluggishly, like a snail crawling back to its crack in the wall as it paced away from a hungry bird, I fumbled over that fist-sized roundish object. It was heavy, almost too heavy to lift, but I had to—I had to have it back before I lost my miraculous chance.

With a trembling hand, I pulled my heart back to my mouth, stretched wide with enormous difficultly and fit it inside. I closed my mouth and swallowed.

In the distance, those retreating golden flecks halted for a long, excruciating moment; held in stasis, as if unsure whether to return to their disappointing owner, but ultimately deciding to give her another go. They circled back around and assimilated back within me. Their touch was like pixies' wings fluttering against my skin, but the energy they supplied was far greater.

With an enormous spurt, they burned at my torso and spine to rectify the damage until finally I could move my legs. I was not at optimal health, my limbs were slow to respond and I desperately craved something to eat, but it meant I still possessed a fighting chance.

With the looming danger of Rose close by, I took no moment to indulge in my regained health, and brought myself to my feet as hastily as my frail limbs would allow. I whipped my head around towards the clearing, poised my hands defensively before me and focused my blurry sight. Time for round three.

My gaze traveled between the trees to either side of me, over the tops of resplendent ebony roses, across the quivering surface of the lagoon to two figures just on the other side. There was a woman with short black hair, holding a black object firmly in both hands, and a certain youth who approached her with alarming speed. Before I could widen my eyes in surprise, I saw Rose backhand Alex with a sickening blow. She crushed to the garden's floor. She remained motionless after the attack.

When the black object skidded across the ground, it misfired and sent another shot Oh, Alex, how could you be so stupid as to save me?

Rose turned back around, and, this time, did not look so pleased at my recuperation. His face darkened.

I gulped. Did that mean playtime was over?

He was twenty meters away, but then he was twenty centimeters away. I never even saw him press off. His hand wasn't that far, though, his fist was at my belly. It was a blunt hit so it did not cut through. Instead, it ripped me internally as he forced that appendage more than halfway through the depth of my torso. I felt my intestines flatten all at once. What else was there—a liver, a stomach? Whatever other soft things there were, they were flattened, and my skin stretched with purple streaks from the point of impact. I couldn't see all this, not outright. It was my insight; those torn, and tragically trusting, fairies told me just how ravaged I was becoming. That was just one hit. Then came the other fist.

It landed in my stomach again, squashing everything once more. The second jab was sent to my ribs; these were turned to dust as he pummeled either side of my torso. Then a hook to my skull cracked the solid bone. My cranium dipped inside like a deflated basketball. Thankfully, Rose did not interrupt my flight as gifted by this last blow, which gave me a much appreciated moment of reprieve, even if it was limited to an all-too-brief moment.

I landed against another tree, this time crushing my shoulder, and as I fell the timber tumbled to the floor loudly. Rose was hovering midair, over the top of me, with his fist pointed downward at my face, and his eyes twinkling in their amethyst splendor.

I twisted away just in time to feel only the rush of air along the left side of my body, and to hear the ground quake with a roar.

There was his leg, coming at me incredibly fast. Somehow it came from my right even though he was at my left and turned down into me.

With a screaming expulsion of force from my mind, I somehow avoided that attack and instead felt the ground quiver just superior to me. However, before I could make sense of my evasion, he lunged into the air with the ease of an arachnid, and with more deafening thuds hunched over me with all four limbs, setting up bars at all four corners.

How can he move like that? I barely formed the thought before he smashed his skull into mine, causing me to dip into the earth so that my head was almost buried.

He raised a hand up to me, my only defense to shut my eyes tightly. “See no evil,” does not mean one experiences no evil. He plunged a knuckle into my left cheekbone, just beneath the eye.

My mind started zinging, and then I felt myself floating in an endless ocean. Waves upon waves of turbulent water berated my inner-form. The moisture was everywhere: my clothes, skin, hair, my organs, and brain. My brain was leaking, I could not feel it, but I knew it to be true. As those waves cascaded down on me, I saw their color change from blue to red, and through the ocean, I could see an ill-defined pair of...eyes. Beautiful blue ocean eyes—Ryan's eyes—and they were turning blood red.

I opened my own eyes, where things did not quite seem to line up right, as the scenery was staged in hues of crimson. Rose, the delicate, beautiful, ethereal, demonic beast, lay down another hand towards me.

Thump. My arms were outstretched above my forehead in an x-shape. As they blocked my attacker's fierce throw, the thin bones shuddered and accrued multiple hairline fractures under the force. They held still, though, determined not to let anymore of that wretched and pleasing color etch the form of another friend.

Rose pulled back his fist, drilled into my linked arms and thought to have another go. Aiming for an uppercut to my ribs, he struck, but I pulled this X down lower to block this additional attack. With several more cracks, I was alerted that more hairline fractures were occurring in my arms.

He twisted to his left, exposing an undefended right torso. If I had more energy; if I was stronger, tougher; I would have made for it, but I was beaten. I had been spared, a moment from death, only to be propelled towards it at a neck-breaking pace. I missed my chance, and then he swung back around, led by first a heavy shoulder, then a solid elbow, ready to strike at my solar plexus.

Seeing the immense power, I abandoned blocking and opted for the slim chance of dodging. Tucking in my knees, I rolled as swift as I could to the side he left open. His elbow almost missed me; it fell, scraping alongside my back, crushing my rear ribs and knocking a vertebra into an