“It’s a temple,” I explained. “Now get these ropes off me so we can get out of here.”
“A temple?” Jimmy replied, eyebrow raised, scouring the area.
“Aye. There’s also a fox spirit who eats holy people, a monkey god, and a fuckin’ wizard over there. Now get me out of here.”
Jimmy stared at me with an anesthetized look in his eyes. I didn’t blame him; it was a lot to process. Of course, this was exactly why I hadn’t brought him along in the first place—I couldn’t afford to hold his hand in times like these. I shoved him with my shoulder. “Jimmy! Ropes!”
Jimmy grunted and began fumbling with the rope wrapped around me as an errant fireball slammed against a nearby pillar, spewing flames in all directions. Jimmy flinched, but I could see his head was at least in it, now.
Over Jimmy’s shoulder, I saw the fighters reemerge as the Monkey King nimbly dodged yet another blast, hopping and swinging from one rope to another. But then, with a brutal snap, Sun landed on a rope that had been too ravaged by fire to support his weight. It gave out, and sent him tumbling to the floor.
Sun groaned, but rose. I could see patches of fur that had been singed. He glanced over at us, and I felt Jimmy jerk upright, his grip on my shoulder tightening.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Um, I’m pretty sure that thing just spoke. Except—”
“Ye heard him in your mind, aye,” I said. “Ye aren’t imaginin’ t’ings. What’d he say?”
Jimmy frowned and shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “Nothing important. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He began working on the rope once more, trying to pry it up and off me. Sun’s gaze lingered on us for a moment longer, but then quickly shifted to his two opponents as they materialized out of the smoke.
It seemed the Monkey King had nowhere to run.
Chapter 50
Gladstone prepared another blast of flame as Foxy leapt at her opponent, still struggling to pair off against Sun’s staff, which licked out at her faster than my eyes could track. Somehow the Monkey King managed to angle his attacks to keep Foxy between himself and Gladstone, which was the only thing preventing the wizard from blasting away. It was working, but I knew it couldn’t last forever; eventually Gladstone would find an opening.
“How’s that rope comin’?” I asked.
“There’s no give,” he growled, yanking at the rope in frustration. “What’s this thing even made out of?”
“The hair of a thousand virgins,” I quipped.
Jimmy’s eyebrows shot up, and his hands stopped working. “Really?”
“No! Idgit.”
Jimmy scowled, then rose to study the knot around the pillar, much like I had thought to do before realizing that—with my hands locked to my sides—there was little I could do but gnaw at it with my teeth.
Which, admittedly, I had considered.
I glanced over at the fighting and noticed Gladstone was pointing at Sun, no longer trying to blast him, but instead ominously tracking the monkey god’s movements with his index finger—though, with Sun doing backflips off pillars and pole-vaulting around the temple itself, even that was proving difficult.
“Did ye bring a knife?” I asked, nudging Jimmy.
He grunted. “I’m carrying two guns and enough ammo to reload twice. I figured if I needed a knife, I was pretty much dead anyway.”
“Some boy scout ye are,” I admonished.
“Well, where’s your knife, then?” he fired back.
“The wizard has it. Used it to cut that man’s throat. The one on the other side of the portal.”
“Yeah, I saw that.” He sounded a little relieved.
“What? D’ye t’ink I had somethin’ to do with it?”
Jimmy didn’t answer.
“Seriously? Ye should know me better than that.”
“I thought I knew you pretty well, until I woke up alone this morning,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
I had nothing to say to that. If Jimmy wanted an apology, he knew me even less well than he claimed. I wasn’t sorry I’d left him behind—I stood by that decision. I was only sorry that I needed his help; being the damsel in distress didn’t sit well with me.
At all.
I felt the rope shudder; he’d done something to loosen its hold on the pillar, although it was still tight around me. “Besides,” Jimmy continued. “what if he was threatening you? If it was between you and him?”
I hesitated.
“Exactly,” he said. “I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know. I’m glad it wasn’t you. But, for the record, it wouldn’t have mattered, as long as you were safe.”
“Jimmy…” I trailed off, then sighed. “I’m glad ye came,” I admitted.
He nodded. “Me, too. Sorry I wasn’t here sooner. But after you ditched me,” Jimmy said, then held up a hand before I could defend myself, “it took me a while before I could track you down and follow you out here.”
“Ye were followin’ me?” I asked. I shook my head, realizing how oblivious I’d been over the past few days. First Jacob, and now Jimmy. Between tailing Serge and being tailed by two rather conspicuous men, I was zero for three in the sleuthing category.
I had homework to do, if we survived this.
“At a distance,” Jimmy admitted. “But when you didn’t come out of the house right away, I got suspicious, so I broke in.”
“Broke in? Jimmy, the door was unlocked,” I said.
Jimmy’s tugging stopped for moment, then resumed.
“Ye kicked that poor door open, didn’t ye?”
“Who doesn’t leave their door locked?”
“The dead guy, that’s who.”
Jimmy grunted, then fell to his knees as a flash blinded us both. I lost my balance and fell back into him. By the time I was able to sit back up, the air around us was singed and heavy with the stench of burnt hair. Gladstone chuckled in the eerie silence that followed. “Got you, you bloody bastard.”
“What was that?” Jimmy whispered.
“Pretty sure he shot lightnin’ out of his finger,” I replied, praying the spots behind my eyes would one day go away, and that I wouldn’t be blind for eternity.
“Seriously?” Jimmy asked, eyes wide.
“Welcome to me world.”
“Quinn!” Jimmy hissed.
“What?”
“I think the monkey god is glowing.”
“He’s probably on fire,” I replied.
I pinned my eyes shut until something other than residual light registered, then opened them and squinted. Gladstone seemed exhausted, shoulders slumped, his clothes covered in both blood and mud at this point, smoke rising from his right hand. Foxy was on all fours, growling, patches of bloody skin and welts visible beneath her fur from the series of blows Sun had landed—apparently her plan to let the wizard tire Sun out hadn’t worked out so well.
I scoured the area until I spotted Sun some twenty feet away. A black stain marred his chest from where Gladstone’s lightning bolt had struck, a stain which became more and more visible as the glow around his body expanded. A golden aura licked at his limbs, sending his hair straight up and causing it to clump together in spikes as though pinched together by static electricity. The temple rumbled, and the pillars, already damaged from the fighting, creaked and groaned as dust poured down sporadically above us, sending sparks flying whenever it hit a patch of untended flame.
Sun began to howl, his voice full of rage. His hair flickered between a dark brown and a solid shade of gold, back and forth between blinks. Waves of searing wind pulsed out from where he stood, the ground beneath his feet cracking as stones defied gravity, spinning laconically in midair.
Turns out The Monkey King wasn’t on fire, after all.
He was simply going Super Saiyan.
Chapter 51
The final seconds of the Monkey King’s transformation shook the temple’s foundations and sent all of us flying backwards. I landed on Jimmy, the
rope around my torso pulling taut, abrading my arms yet again. At this point, I didn’t want to think about how many parts of me were going to be bruised or torn if and when we survived this—not that I didn’t already have plenty of scars already.
Thank God for health insurance.
Looking around, I realized the temple was in a worse state than I was; flames licked here and there along blackened ropes, and smoke drifted like fog among the canopy. A few pillars were cracked, and their shadows flickered in response to the flames and the Monkey King’s aura, which emitted its own pure, golden light.
Jimmy shrugged me off, and I rolled onto my knees in time to see Gladstone sit up. He raised his uninjured hand and desperately shot another bout of flames at Sun, but this time the Monkey King didn’t even bother dodging; he strode into them, oblivious to the heat.
Gladstone scrambled backwards, but refused to let up on the flames as he scanned the temple. I could tell he was searching for Foxy, but the blast from Sun’s metamorphosis had thrown her out of sight. Sun waved at the flames in front of his face as if they were little more than insects obscuring his vision.
Suddenly, I felt Jimmy’s solid weight at my back disappear. I fell backwards, which gave me a perfectly horrific view of Jimmy in the fox spirit’s grasp.
Foxy had pinned Jimmy’s mouth closed with one clawed hand, the other draped delicately over his exposed throat. The threat was clear enough that, when Sun emerged from Gladstone’s inferno, he froze immediately. I tried to get to my feet, but the angle was wrong, and I ended up falling onto my side and cracking my shoulder against the pillar.
“Let him go!” I screamed.
“Hush,” Foxy said, “this does not concern you.” The fox spirit slid her nails along Jimmy’s throat as if brushing the strings of a guitar. “I think we should settle this a different way,” Foxy said, meeting Sun’s intense stare.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you entered my temple without an invitation,” Sun replied, speaking in Chinese, but translated in real time in my mind. “Very rude.”
“I was…enticed. By the mortal.”
“Right.” Sun sniffed and turned to Gladstone, who had given up on the pyrotechnics in favor of rising to his feet. “And what is your excuse?”
“Huh?” Gladstone seemed to be struggling with the whole dubbed, telepathy thing.
“For entering my temple, uninvited. For placing the blood of a killer on my altar.”
“Well, I—”
“Actually, don’t speak. It’s not important. I’m feeling generous today. You fought well, and I do love a worthy opponent. If you all leave my temple, now, all will be forgiven.”
Foxy took a breath as if preparing to accept, but nothing came out. Instead she sniffed, gingerly, at the nape of Jimmy’s neck. Jimmy struggled, but she barely had to exert any energy to keep him from breaking free. With strength like that, I realized she could snap his neck in an instant.
“Did you know,” Foxy said, her voice riddled with a raspy vibrato, “that righteous men come in all shapes and sizes? It’s not their faith that makes them so tasty,” she purred. “It’s their willingness to sacrifice themselves for others. To take on other people’s burdens.” She lifted Jimmy’s badge and turned it over in her hand, then looked me directly in the eye, the placidity of her face settling into something cold and cruel.
“No! Don’t!” I yelled.
But it was too late.
Because she’d already torn out Jimmy’s throat with her teeth.
Chapter 52
Jimmy landed beside me, his face mercifully turned away. If I thought my throat ached before, it was nothing compared to what I was experiencing now; I screamed his name, telling him to get up, but he didn’t so much as twitch. I fought against the rope so hard I could feel my skin tear. Foxy, meanwhile, strolled casually around Jimmy’s body, avoiding the pool of blood spreading beneath him, which was odd considering how much had spilled down her chin and throat.
The Monkey King hadn’t moved, but he was no longer bathed in golden light, and he seemed smaller, frailer even. I could see the distress and anger on his face, but something else too—resignation? I wasn’t sure what that meant, but at this point I didn’t care; I needed to get to Jimmy.
Foxy began licking her fingers clean, lapping at them with a tiny, darting tongue. Aside from the blood dribbling down her front, she appeared more or less as I’d first seen her—horrifically tall and freakishly pale; her wounds had healed completely and she no longer sported claws or whiskers.
“Grab the woman!” Gladstone insisted. “We can trade her to get—”
“That’s enough,” Foxy said, flinging her hand in his direction. Gladstone fell to his knees, a shallow wound appearing across his chest, as if someone had slashed at him with a knife. “I have everything I need to defeat the great Sun Wukong. His temple has been desecrated, and I have eaten. You know…I’d forgotten how invigorating it was to consume a man.” Foxy turned her attention to Gladstone. “When I am done here, I will come to your world. I will hunt down your people. And, when I am fully satisfied, I will come for you and use your bones as toothpicks for presuming to make a deal with me.”
Gladstone blanched.
“You should get out of here while you can,” Sun said, his voice oddly calm. “Free the woman and flee together. This is no place for mortals.”
Sun faced off against the much taller adversary, and I could read the eagerness in him, as if everything up until this moment had been some sort of elaborate preamble to the fight that was about to take place. I hated him in that instant—hated him for not killing Gladstone, for letting Foxy take Jimmy, for being excited by the prospect of fighting her now that she was strong enough to give him a real challenge.
Sun bristled a little.
I’d forgotten he could hear me. This time, I thought at him directly, louder. I screamed at him and called him a coward. I demanded he let me go so I could take Jimmy and get out of there.
Your friend is already dead. I knew she might use him, and so I told him to flee, but he refused. I’m sorry, but you should go.
With that, Sun took off towards Foxy, spinning his staff in one hand, howling as he went. He no longer seemed eager to fight, which was a small victory, I guess. Foxy grinned and lowered herself into a squat, anticipating his charge.
Gladstone, meanwhile, grimaced, shuffled until he was well out of Foxy’s reach, and then bolted for the portal, pausing only to examine Jimmy’s body. He nudged Jimmy’s shoulder with his boot, causing the detective to flop over on his back.
Jimmy’s eyes were mercifully closed, his jaw cocked away from the rest of his face. Except for the gaping wound at his throat, he could have been sleeping. I inched closer, trying to see if he was breathing, hoping to cover that awful, gruesome gash.
Gladstone caught a glimpse of the badge dangling from Jimmy’s neck and sniffed. “Fucking coppers, always sticking their noses in where they ain’t wanted.”
Something inside me snapped.
I got my legs underneath me and lunged at the bastard, howling. I managed to tackle him, but, with my arms pinned, I couldn’t do much more than ram into him. Gladstone fell with me on top of him. He froze in surprise, then—realizing I was still tied up—kicked me off and backed up until I was out of reach. He wiped at the grime that covered his shirt and trousers. “Stupid bitch, you’ll get what’s coming to you.”
He scurried through the portal.
I spit in his general direction, then sluggishly began sawing at the rope with the knife I’d managed to retrieve from his pocket when we’d fallen. “Don’t ye worry, Jimmy. I’m comin’. Hold on, I’ll be there soon,” I whispered.
Chapter 53
Foxy smashed the Monkey King’s face into a pillar, sending chips of stone flying to the ground. His face was a bloody, mangled mess of cuts. His staff, broken, lay several feet away. And yet, still, he fought. He somersaulted backwards, trying to create some distance, but Foxy pres
sed her advantage, kicking him in the side hard enough to send him flying.
“And to think, all those stories they tell about you…and look at you now,” Foxy chided, stalking him.
Sun tried to rise, but the fox spirit swept his legs out from under him, then pressed the heel of her foot on his tail, pinning it to the dirt. Sun howled in pain, his eyes pinched shut. Foxy hunched over, the blood on her chin dry and flecked, her teeth stained pink. “But then, you almost always had help in one form or another, didn’t you?”
“Ye really are a bitch, d’ye know that?” I asked, standing behind her, finally free.
Sun’s eyes shot open.
Foxy spun to face me.
And I put a bullet through her teeth.
Then another. And another. I unloaded Jimmy’s pistol, then pulled out his smaller handgun. I kept firing until Foxy’s face looked like a plastic surgeon’s worst nightmare…and then I fired some more. I reloaded while she stumbled around blindly, then aimed at her knees, taking out her kneecaps with a few well-aimed shots. She toppled, falling forward onto her hands. I moved on to her wrists.
Funny things, guns.
There were plenty of Freaks out there who could stare down the barrel of a firearm without the slightest twinge of fear—unless you had silver ammunition, a werewolf could heal a bullet wound in a matter of minutes; zombies were oblivious to damn near everything, including dismemberment; and, short of firing iron musket balls at them, the Fae were more irritated by the obnoxious noise guns made than being hit by a bullet. But, at point blank range, with plenty of ammunition and no one to stop me, I could do some serious cosmetic damage—enough to cripple any Freak for at least a little while.
And Foxy was no exception.
“Get up!” I screamed at Sun, who looked up at me in total shock, one eye swollen completely shut. He managed to stand, woozily, his body shaking from exhaustion.
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