The standoff dissolved in less than a second.
The demon didn't waste time roaring or striking a pose; it simply attacked.
A massive, oily tentacle whipped out with the velocity of a snapping rubber band, coiling around Greta's ankle before she even had time to scream. One moment she was swaying drunkenly with her bottle of whiskey; the next, she was yanked off her feet, dragging across the dirty concrete toward the open jaw of the manhole.
"GRETA!" Jude screamed.
She clawed at the ground, her fingernails scraping uselessly against the asphalt as the black sludge bubbled up to meet her.
Jude didn't think. He didn't weigh the pros and cons of breaking his secret identity, and he certainly didn't worry about Bob yelling at him. He just reached for the light.
The sensation hit him like a lightning bolt. The pain of being rewritten tore through his shoulders, shredding the back of the nice black shirt he'd spent twenty minutes ironing.
Two massive white wings exploded outward, spanning the width of the alley, while a golden halo ignited above his head to banish the shadows with blinding, harsh light.
Jude launched himself forward, moving faster than humanly possible; a blur of white and gold cutting through the darkness.
Just as Greta's boots dangled over the lip of the sewer, Jude caught her. He grabbed the back of her denim jacket with one hand and slashed downward with the other, a blade of pure golden light manifesting in his grip to sever the tentacle in a spray of black sludge.
The demon shrieked, the sound grinding like metal on bone.
Jude flapped his wings once, a powerful, concussive beat that sent trash cans rattling down the alley. He shot backward, carrying Greta like a ragdoll, and slammed into the ground at the far end of the alley near the street entrance.
They tumbled across the pavement, Jude taking the brunt of the impact as his wings scraped the concrete in a shower of sparks. When they finally skidded to a stop near a dumpster, Jude scrambled up, placing himself between Greta and the monster.
He was breathing hard, the halo pulsing rhythmically above his head. He split the light-construct in his hands, forming the dual recurved blades of the Celestial Bow.
"Greta," Jude panted, not looking back. "Get up. Run."
Silence.
Jude risked a glance over his shoulder. Greta was sitting on the ground, leaning against a pile of garbage bags next to the shattered remains of her whiskey bottle.
She wasn't running or screaming; she was just staring at him.
Her eyes, dilated and black from the drugs, were wide enough to swallow her face. She looked at the massive white wings flexing on his back, the glowing halo, and the golden weapons in his hands. She looked at Jude—the 'mascot', the invisible friend, the coward—and her brain couldn't process it.
"No way," Greta whispered, her voice trembling and slurred. "No fucking way. I got a bad batch, Em. I'm tripping balls."
She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again.
"You're... you're glowing," she giggled hysterically, a tear leaking out of her eye. "Jude the Dude is a lamp."
"Greta, this is fucking real!" Jude yelled, turning back to the threat. "Get out of here!"
The ground shook as the demon rose fully out of the hole.
Bob had called the Scavenger a raccoon, but this was a grizzly bear. It was fifteen feet tall, a towering mass of obsidian sludge that shifted and boiled like tar. It had no legs, just a thick trunk of muscle and slime supporting a torso wider than a car. The violet sores on its body pulsed in time with Jude's halo, mocking him.
It didn't have a face, just a vertical slit that opened to reveal rows of spinning, serrated teeth.
"Oh fuck," Jude whispered. The bow in his hands felt like a toy.
The demon lashed out, three tentacles cracking the air like whips. Jude crossed his blades to block, but the impact was like being hit by a freight train. He was lifted off his feet and slammed into the brick wall of the laundromat, the masonry spiderwebbing behind him as he fell to his knees, wheezing.
"Is that all you got?" Jude gasped, trying to sound brave for Greta.
He stood up, shaking, and combined the blades into the bow. He pulled the string, forming a shaft of blue lightning, and aimed for the largest violet sore on the creature's chest.
The arrow flew true, striking the demon dead center. But instead of exploding, the arrow sank into the black sludge and vanished. The demon absorbed it, the violet light of the sore glowing brighter as it fed on the energy.
The creature let out a gurgling, wet sound that resembled laughter.
"It didn't fucking work," Jude realized, panic turning his blood to ice water. "Bob, you didn't tell me this shit didn't work!"
The demon advanced, dragging its bulk forward with wet, sucking noises. Jude looked back at Greta, who was still sitting there, mesmerized by the colors.
"Pretty," she mumbled, pointing at the demon. "Purple."
"Greta, RUN!"
Jude didn't have a choice. He couldn't shoot it, so he had to draw its aggression.
He screamed—a raw, terrified war cry—and charged. He flapped his wings, launching himself at the creature's head, swinging the golden blade with everything he had. He severed a tentacle, but the sludge knit itself back together instantly.
The demon swatted him with a backhand blow, casual and dismissive.
A massive limb of heavy sludge caught Jude in the chest, and he felt his bruised ribs finally give way with a sickening crack. He was launched backward out of the alley and into the street, flying twenty feet through the air before colliding with the windshield of a parked SUV.
The safety glass shattered into a thousand diamonds as the roof caved in. Jude rolled off the hood and hit the pavement, coughing up something that tasted like copper.
He tried to stand up, but his legs didn't work. His left wing was bent at a sickening angle, and his nice black shirt was soaked in blood.
The demon squeezed out of the alley entrance, filling the width of the street. It ignored the broken boy in the wreckage and turned its eyeless head back toward the meal sitting by the dumpster.
Jude reached out a shaking hand. "Run," he choked out, blood bubbling past his lips. "Greta... run."
The demon turned its attention back to Greta. A massive, slick tentacle lashed out, wrapping around her waist and hoisting her ten feet into the air like a child's doll.
Greta kicked, her boots thudding uselessly against the thick, rubbery hide. The movement seemed to jar something loose in her brain, shaking off the chemical fog. She saw the teeth spinning in the vertical maw. She saw the violet sores pulsing with hunger.
And she looked down.
Jude was lying on the hood of the crushed SUV, blood pooling under his head. His left wing was snapped, dragging on the asphalt like a broken sail. He was trying to push himself up, his arms trembling, but he collapsed back onto the glass, gasping for air.
He looked exactly like what she thought he was. Weak. Broken. Useless.
"Jude!" Greta screamed. It wasn't a plea; it was an accusation. "Get up! You pussy! Get up!"
She thrashed against the constriction, her face twisting in a mix of terror and furious disappointment. "Don't you fucking leave me here! DO SOMETHING!"
The scream hit Jude harder than the car had. It pierced through the ringing in his ears and cut through the agony of his shattered ribs.
Coward.
He watched the demon's maw open wider, ready to drop her in.
Useless.
Jude grit his teeth, tasting copper and bile.
No.
He dug his fingers into the crumpled metal of the car hood. He didn't have a plan, a weapon, or enough magic left to fire a single arrow. But he had rage. And he had a contract.
Jude roared, a wet, gurgling sound that tore his throat raw, and forced his broken body to move.
He launched himself off the car. His good wing beat the air frantically, dragging his broken one along like a missile—a desperate, uncontrolled trajectory aimed straight at the girl.
The demon sensed him too late. Jude collided with the tentacle holding Greta, clamping his hand onto her arm.
Skin touched skin. Celestial energy met mortal desperation.
For a split second, Jude looked into Greta's wide, terrified eyes and saw the reflection of his own glowing halo. Then, the circuit closed.
It wasn't a sound; it was a rupture in the fabric of the night.
A blast of blinding, pure white light exploded from the point of contact—not the soft glow of the halo, but the brilliance of a supernova detonating in a trash-filled alleyway. The world went white. The demon shrieked as the light incinerated its hold, blowing out the car windows and shattering the streetlights.
Everything vanished into the glare.
The ringing faded slowly, replaced by the distant, rhythmic blaring of car alarms triggered by the shockwave.
Jude peeled his face off the asphalt. Everything hurt. His left arm was numb, and his ribs felt like a bag of crushed gravel. He rolled onto his side, coughing up dust and blood, and forced his eyes open.
The streetlights were gone. The only light came from the center of the street.
Jude squinted through the haze of pain, expecting to see a crater or a corpse. Instead, he saw Greta.
She was standing ten feet away, boots planted wide on the cracked pavement. She wasn't swaying anymore. She wasn't screaming.
She was holding something.
It was massive; a double-headed battle axe, a Labrys, that looked too heavy for a human to lift. But it wasn't made of steel, nor was it made of the stable, golden light of Jude's bow.
It was chaotic. It crackled with energy that shifted violently through the spectrum: neon pink, violent violet, electric blue, acid green. It was a rainbow of pure, unstable voltage trapped in the shape of a weapon.
In front of her, the demon was dissolving. The massive obsidian bulk shriveled, turning gray, then white, then flaking away like burning paper until the violet sores flickered out. It let out one last, pathetic hiss before collapsing into a pile of harmless ash.
Silence rushed back into the street.
Greta stood there, her chest heaving, looking down at her hands. She flexed her fingers around the handle of the weapon, watching the colors pulse against her skin. She didn't look high or drunk; she looked awake for the first time in years.
Slowly, she turned her head to look at Jude, lying broken and bleeding in the street. The rainbow light reflected in her wide, sober eyes.