Pain flared in a dozen places simultaneously, each blow from Victor feeling more like a gunshot than a punch. He tightened his core, shut down the fear, panic, and pain, and summoned his inner warrior. More than fifteen years of close-quarter combat training kicked in, and Jed maneuvered into the closed guard position—bringing his legs up, clamping them around Victor’s torso and hooking his ankles in the back. As he scissored his legs, he was taken aback at the lack of mass and thickness between his knees—the thing attacking him was spindly and skeletal. He could manipulate the weight, but when he put a squeeze on with his powerful legs, it was like trying to compress a block of aluminum. He arched his back to get separation from the melee of blows still raining down from above. He could already feel the swelling from massive hematomas forming along his wrists, forearms, and shoulders. The handful of blows that Victor had landed on his face and head were also punishing. His left eye was swelling shut, a gash above his right eye was streaming blood, and his right ear throbbed and was ringing.

With a grunt, he extended his hips and pressed away with his knees to get vertical separation while maintaining control in the guard. For a brief respite, the maelstrom of blows stopped as his upper torso was now just outside the range of Victor’s reach. But Victor adjusted quickly and began to savage Jed’s midsection. An on-target blow to the solar plexus sent a volcano of hot pain through his insides, and alarm bells went off in his head that Victor might have ruptured his diaphragm.

Like previous Dark Ones Jed had been forced to fight gladiator style to the death, Victor was performing at a level far above what his human body should be capable of. And rage and adrenaline were not the reasons why. The demons within the enslaved warriors imbued them with inhuman strength, stamina, and resilience to pain. On his very first encounter with a Dark One in Nashville, an emaciated homeless man had fought with the tenacity and power of an MMA champion in the ring. And his hand-to-hand battle with Nicholas Woland in the tunnels under Vatican City had pushed Jed’s NFL linebacker–size frame to the breaking point. But this adversary was different, as Jed realized Victor was augmented by not just a single demon, but a legion.

He felt a gash open in his right side below his kit.

A millisecond later, a stinger to his lower abdomen roiled his guts.

The blows from the demon horde were relentless.

He felt like he was being trampled by a herd of mustangs.

How can I possibly stand against so many? he thought in a panic.

You can’t, Victor’s voice taunted in his mind, and Jed felt his resolve begin to wane. You have lost. You have failed. You are defeated.