Dark Time: Mortal Path by Dakota Banks Page A

it was my future.
    Even though her demon master was at a distance, she felt a blast of anger from him that nearly knocked her flat on her back.
    It’s gonna be bad. I should’ve slit that baby’s throat from ear to ear.
    She yelled at the top of her lungs, pulling bravado from somewhere within her. “Get it over with, you damned stinking pile of burnt dog hide! I’ve had enough of taking your orders! Go find yourself another slave!”
    A searing pain burst in her chest. She clawed at the outfit she was wearing and ripped it away from her upper body. A thin stream of blood shot out at least a dozen feet from the wound between her breasts and hung in the air like a horizontal lightning bolt before breaking loose and splashing on the ground. With each beat of her heart, blood flew from the wound and added to the pool that was forming a few steps away.
    “You want my blood? Here, let me speed things up!” She fought mightily against the heaviness in her limbs induced by his presence, and broke through it. Tugging a knife from its sheath, she grabbed it with both hands and pointed the tip at her chest. Her hands began the fatal plunge.
    The knife froze in the air as Rabishu came into sight, and the bleeding from her chest slowed to dripping that ran down her body and pooled at her feet.
    This time he appeared to her in his most horrifying form yet. He was emptiness, a yawning black hole walking on all fours, a hideous parody of a black panther. The fog of Midworld swirled toward him and vanished into the nothingness that was his body. Susannah fastened on the idea that the void was a direct channel to the Underworld where he lived. She felt a slight pull toward him and feared that she would be drawn in like the fog, trapped forever in his foul innards or delivered straight to one of his torture cages.
    “Not without a fight.” She said it standing straight, as though Rabishu had politely consulted her.
    “I’ve got weapons and the will to use them. All I need is a chance.”
    Susannah dismissed the thought that came to her afterward, that her weapons couldn’t damage Rabishu. Whatever was about to happen, she was going to face it with her chin high, and shaking her fist, too.
    Eyes the size of eggs floated in his face, bobbing eerily as he walked, and underneath them two rows of teeth were suspended in the blackness. It was a predator’s mouth that could grab her and tear a huge chunk from her body effortlessly. His movement was cat-paw silent except for the occasional snap! of his long tail, more whiplike than the tail of the animal he imitated.
    Rabishu stopped ten feet away. A tongue emerged from between his teeth and he greedily licked up the blood that had spurted out of her chest. Her stomach turned at the sight, and at the thought that her blood was an appetizer and the rest of her would be the main meal. Then her knife, still frozen in midair, whirled toward him. He caught it with his teeth and crunched down on it, with a sound like the snapping of bones. Her defiance wavered.
    Brave words, that “chance to fight” business.
    “Go back to your Lord Nergal,” she said, a little shakily, “and tell him he’s an impotent piece of shit, and so are you!”
    Rabishu made no indication that he’d heard her, or if he did, he’d brushed her threats off as a human might brush away a buzzing mosquito. Fog rose at her feet and flattened into a wall, and glowing writing appeared on it. She knew now that it was cuneiform; when she first saw it, it looked like sticks tossed on the ground.
    Your contract. Rabishu’s words thundered in her head. The writing scrolled upward at great speed.
    Rabishu reached out a large paw, bristling with claws, and touched it to slow the motion.
    This section is the way of termination.
    A portion of the writing zoomed down and hung in the air before her. Up close, the writing appeared to be made of a complicated system of thin vessels, disturbingly like her own arteries and veins.