Convoke

Chapter 53

Ezra threw the first punch. After wrenching his arm free from the demon on his right, he broke the nose of the demon on his left. He tried to travel, and the demons clung onto him.

They landed five miles away, hitting the ground hard and rolling down a cobbled street that was thankfully empty. Ezra scrambled to his feet, ready to travel again, but a demon clutched his ankle and shoved him to the ground.

They wrestled, punched, and kicked. But Ezra was always stronger. He punched harder, pushed them harder, and he would have kicked them harder if he hadn't been smacked in the head by a loose pebble. Several boots embedded into his ribs as he curled up to protect himself.

He felt the blood oozing down his face, and his right eye started pulsing in pain.

He managed to get himself onto his knees and punched one of the demons between his legs. While he had fallen to the ground in searing pain, he attacked the other one until he hurt enough to leave of his own accord.

Ezra leaned over the one clutching between his legs and said, "Go, or you'll regret it."

The demon left, and Ezra lumped against a brick wall, sinking down until he was sitting on the cold pavement. Pain rippled through him. With every breath, it was like a thousand knives stabbed deeply into his ribs. He wiped blood from the side of his face and got it all over his jeans.

He sat in the quiet, dark street, until the cold seeped in and his limbs stiffened. But his heart had calmed, and the ringing in his ears had died down. Jevlo could have sent more demons after him, but he didn't.

Ezra knew a part of him really listened to what he had to say. Jevlo had been interested, which meant he had also noticed something.

Ezra sat quietly until the sun turned the black sky into a dark blue. When the bin lorry made its way down the street, he got up and travelled to his next location.

Moving was hard when he was bruised and aching. But he had to press on, no matter how much he longed to be tucked up in bed with Tom's breath on the side of his face, and his soft fingers in his hair.

I have to spread the word. I have to warn the demons, Ezra thought as he moved to a town that was sixty miles away from Wileshire village. He knew a demon here, an old demon who was one of the very few to be respected by humans in her community.

She lived as though she was a human, how demons used to do in the past, before the violence made a simple life too dangerous.

Ezra knew exactly where to go. He walked through empty streets, steep both up and down. He passed a postman who stopped to gawk at him. Ezra knew he was covered in blood, and had a nasty bruise pooling under his eye. His black hoodie was ripped at the shoulder. He looked a state, but he had to keep going.

Melonisa's house was tucked away on the corner of the neatly kept street of bungalows. Hers was a well-kept little house, with flowerpots along the window ledges, and neat bushes lining the trimmed grass. Climbing plants laced one wall with big white flowers that tilted towards the floor. The uneven path had been recently washed, judging by the difference in colour to her neighbours.

Her comely house was on the edge of the street, right before the woods that lead to a large park and an even larger fishpond.

Ezra stared fondly across the road, and down the woodland path. He had once played with the towns children when he was just a child himself, many years ago. The kids trusted him then, when he was an angel. Not much had changed, except the trees had grown tall and full, and he had a barbed wire tattoo choking him.

He knocked on Melonisa's bright yellow door and waited. He heard shuffling inside, and was patient as she yelled that she would be only a moment.

She struggled to unlock the door and pull it open. She was a small woman, leaning heavily on a zimmer frame. Her glasses were wide and thick as she peered through sunken eyes to see who was at her door.