by Rob Cornell
“What are you all staring at?” I asked when nobody spoke.
Markus smiled. “The Unturned.”
I peeled my lips back like an angry mutt. “I really don’t like it when people call me that.”
He shrugged, all casual, like nothing in the world mattered. “You’re an anomaly, Sebastian. One most of us would have enjoyed getting to know better if you hadn’t turned out to be such a prick.”
I barked a short laugh. “Oh, I’m the prick? Aren’t you all the ones who’ve been trying to kill me or feed me to vampires?”
“Your condition was not part of the plan. As you can tell, the vampires rather have minds of their own. And demons with minds aren’t anything but trouble.” He held his hands up, mea culpa style. “Prick was the wrong word. Thorn might be better.”
“Sorry I had to mess with your plan to rule Detroit.”
Able spoke up. “We’re not trying to rule the city, we’re trying to save it.”
“I already had this conversation,” I said. “I only want to know three things. Where’s the cloak? Where’s Toft? And where the fuck is my mom?”
Markus nodded his head toward the bedroom on the left. “Judith is in there. The other questions aren’t your concern.”
I pointed at the other bedroom door. “So they aren’t in there? Good old Tofty curled up in bed until the sun goes down? That’s not the plan?”
“Let’s kill him already,” the woman against the door growled behind me.
I looked over my shoulder at her. “That’s not very original, you know.”
She curled her lip and wrinkled her nose in a nah-nah face. So mature.
“She has a point,” Skunk Girl said. She kept on picking at her nails when she spoke, and sounded as bored as she looked.
“I don’t want to kill him,” Markus said. “He’s no longer an issue. Neither is Judith. We just need to keep them contained while the work continues.”
Able crossed his thick arms like a good lumberjack would. “What’s to keep pretty boy here from crying to Prefect St. James?”
Markus frowned. “I suppose you’re right.”
“No,” piped up the little mayor in the corner. Sweat rolled down his deep brown face like tears. “No killing. I never agreed to killing.”
Markus, Able, and the woman with the platinum hair all laughed. Skunk Girl and Angry Door Leaner didn’t, probably couldn’t. Some horrible anti-humor disease had them both infected.
Markus said, “You have no idea what you agreed to, Mr. Mayor. How could we possibly enact our mass gentrification initiative without killing a great many people.”
“You…you said with magic.”
“Indeed, very powerful magic. But that magic is what’s going to kill all those people who are in the way of progress.”
My stomach churned so hard, I nearly puked on the fancy beige carpet. “Do you hear yourself? You’re evil. Do you like being evil?”
“Not evil, Sebastian.” Markus gave me a dead stare. “Practical. Isn’t the death of a bunch of already miserable people worth also wiping out the bulk of the city’s vampire population?” Then he pressed his hand to his mouth and looked up in mock revelation. “I forgot. You like the vampires now.”
“Not all of them,” I said. “Not most of them. But it isn’t the vampires I’m worried about. Delivering death doesn’t mean delivering salvation. This isn’t some inane Christian myth. Killing those people won’t save them.”
“Honestly, I don’t care anymore. I did at first, but I’ve grown so tired of the hundreds of news stories about these people killing each other in the streets, surrounding themselves with drugs and squalor. They are better off dead. Gods, they already are dead!”
I felt a presence close behind me. I smelled mild body lotion and sweet breath.
“Can I kill him already?” the Hispanic woman said over my shoulder.
Markus sighed. “I suppose.”
Her knife jammed hard into the small of my back.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The pain was tremendous. She must have hit some kind of sensitive nerve or—worse—a vital organ. Maybe my kidney, based on the location. Whatever she did or did not hit, the stab hurt like a motherfucker. When she ripped the knife free, the pain doubled. I felt blood gush hot from the wound, soaking my shirt, running down under my waistband.
My legs went numb.
I sank to my knees.
The mayor in the corner let out a girlish shriek.
My pulse quickened. It was so loud in my ears, I thought my ear drums might tear open.
Pumppumppumppumppump.
My would-be killer stepped up and grabbed me by the hair. She yanked my head back to expose my throat. From the corner of my eye I saw her raise the blade as if she meant to pound it straight into my neck. She didn’t even have the courtesy to make it a simple slice, had to get all brutal about it. What had I ever done to her?
Bitch.
She must have wanted to line up her strike perfectly, because she took a moment before drawing the knife down in a killing arc. This gave me enough time to yank open the leather pouch still in my palm. For such a small pouch, it opened surprisingly wide. Wide enough, in fact, that when I lifted it into the path of the knife, the woman’s arm, knife and all, sank right in to her elbow.
She screamed so loudly, I felt her voice like a vibration through my body. She instantly yanked her arm free, but the only thing that came out was a charred stump. The woman had literally reached into hell.
“How do you like that?” I said and gave her a shove.
The pain and horrid sight of what remained of her arm had the woman off balance. She went down easily.
The spectacle had glued the rest of the party members to their seats in shock. The wide-eyed expression on Able’s face was especially priceless. He looked like a frightened little boy with a bearded man-face.
I jerked the pouch’s pull string like a ripcord and closed it up. A residual blast of heat rippled the air, then dissipated. My cheeks felt hot and dry.
I tried to stand, but the pain in my back shot down my leg. I fell onto my side, the side with the stab wound, and cried out against more pulses of agony that ripped straight through my whole body. The woman with the hellfire-burned arm lay beside me squirming. Her mouth opened and closed, but only a hoarse whine came out. She stared at me with wide and accusatory eyes. The smell of her flame broiled flesh wafted over to me, and if I hadn’t been so clenched with pain, I would have emptied my stomach.
By now, the rest of the crew had shaken off their initial surprise. All four of them rose, even Skunky (not so boring now, huh?), and gathered around me and the burnt woman. Their gazes collectively went to the woman. They wore matching expressions of horror.
Then Markus turned his gaze to me. “What is that?”
“Hell.” I grinded my teeth to near the cracking point, grabbed his ankle, and pulled.
He wasn’t expecting the move and toppled as easily as Stump Lady. These were old magicians, used to letting magic do their fighting. Able was the only one who looked at all physically imposing.
I pulled the bag open and shoved it up Markus’s right leg like a baggy leather sock. I wriggled on my side, the pain in my back begging me to stop, but my survival instinct pushing me on. I hiked the bag up until I reached his knee.
He thrashed and cried. His left shoe’s hard sole clocked me in the side of my face.
A beefy set of hands grabbed me by one of my legs and dragged me away from Markus. I clenched the hell bag, refusing to let my only advantage go. Able’s hands let go of my leg and descended toward my throat. I drew on my limited power to conjure a gust of wind and blew him off his feet. Then I cast another gust to lift me to a standing position. A sloppy maneuver, and it hurt like hell as the air jostled me around. But I didn’t think I could get to my feet any other way with that agonizing stab in my back.
I could feel the blood pouring down my back, some dripping down my hip under my pant leg
. More of it drenched my shirt. Another outfit ruined. Good thing I got the cheap stuff from Meijer instead of shopping at Ralph Lauren.
I landed on my feet, staggered a few steps, and bounced against the nearest end table, knocking the lamp to the floor. On the way down, the lamp’s light whirled around like an out of control spotlight.
A haze of smoke hung in the room, smelling like a barbeque from hell. Which, I guess, it technically was. Even when I was bleeding to death, I was funny.
Markus rolled around on the floor howling. A bit of his knee joint peeked out of the blackened end of his stump.
The woman who’d lost her arm had regained her composure. With the help of Skunky, Stump Lady stood. That bite-my-face-off look she gave me when she answered the door looked tame compared to the way she looked at me now. Now she looked like she wanted to swallow me whole.
I pulled the bag open wider than before. It seemed to grow to accommodate me, and I felt I could stretched large enough to consume a whole person. “Come get some, bitch.”
She smirked, her eyes catching something behind me. I knew what it was the second before those big lumberjack arms wrapped around me and lifted me off my feet.
“Grab the bag,” he shouted to the three women.
Skunky made a move toward me, but when she looked directly into the hell pouch she shrunk away.
The woman with the platinum hair growled and pushed Skunky out of the way. She came at me, her eyes focused on my face, not the bag. I didn’t know what they saw in there, but it clearly disturbed them.
Platinum raised her hands up, fingers curled. Claws of ice formed around them with points that looked as sharp as Beastvamp’s had been. She thrust those ice talons at my face.
With my arms pinned against me, I couldn’t bring the bag up. Instead, I adjusted the angle of its opening. Enough heat poured from it to melt her claws some, turning to steam, before they reached my eyes. She still had enough to scrape some skin off my face.
Able started squeezing harder.
I struggled to lift the bag up a little higher. The heat drove Platinum back with a snarl.
She didn’t come at me again.
She didn’t have to.
The pressure around me felt too strong for Able’s arms alone. Sure enough, I had a layer of packed earth around my upper arms and torso, hugging me along with Able. An earth elementalist. I should have figured, with his whole lumberjack vibe.
The layer of dirt thickened a little, but it didn’t spread. Unlike heat, air, and even moisture, you didn’t find a whole lot of earth hanging around indoors. Able must have drawn from the few potted plants in the suite and whatever dust floated in the air. It didn’t give him much to work with, but it held me tight enough that he could let me go and kick one of his heavy boots right where Stump Lady had stabbed me.
I screamed and fell forward.
Luckily, I folded the top of the bag over before I landed so I didn’t accidentally burn myself. Based on Markus and Stump Lady’s reaction, it looked like hellfire hurt worse than a stab in the back.
Of course, stabbing hurt plenty. And between Able’s boot and the clingy dirt, the pain had tripled since the knife first went in. I couldn’t clear my head enough to call some fire or air or something. (Sure as hell not freaking dirt, though. How lame.)
I felt Able and the two women close in on me. Now that my magic bag was closed up, they weren’t so skittish. But before they started kicking me to death or carving me up with ice fingers or choking me with dirt, a resonant voice boomed, “No!”
They all stopped and spread apart.
Markus sat up against one sofa, glaring at me. His stump still smoked, and gristle snapped and popped around his exposed kneecap, but he hardly seemed to notice. “I’m going to kill this little fucker myself.”
Then he shifted into a cougar.
The cougar was missing one of its hind legs, which corresponded to Markus’s missing limb. It made him look a little vulnerable and pathetic, if not for the pure hate in the cougar’s gray eyes. He opened his mouth wide and emitted a raspy cry.
I rolled onto my side so I could face him.
I pulled open the bag.
The cougar glanced at it and leapt back, fumbling to keep its feet with only three of them to work with.
The others backed away, too.
“Forget this, Markus,” Stump Lady said. “We’re done anyway.” I was faced away, but I heard the deadbolt snap and the door open, then slam shut.
Markus in cougar form shied away, pressed against the couch. I couldn’t see Able, Skunky, or Platinum, but Able’s earth trap crumbled. I wanted to see what was going on, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Markus. I couldn’t trust that whatever frightened him in the bag would keep him from pouncing on me anyway.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Will someone please tell me what’s so scary in—”
Something in the bag lurched, then kicked.
And that’s when the hellhound jumped out.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Hellhound was really slang for any kind of four-legged, somewhat doglike demon. Some of them hung low and slick, sneaking up to their prey. Others lumbered like monstrous horses, trampling whatever stood in their way. The one I had let out of the bag (har, har) was engulfed in flames, of course.
It had black skin with cracks full of molten lava. Its long, thin tail had a barb of flame at its tip. It had leapt out with its back to me, so I didn’t have a good view of its head, but as it growled at Markus’s cougar, I could see a black jaw the length of an alligator’s chomper.
Markus hissed like an oversized house cat. It was the last sound he would ever make.
The hound’s massive maw opened unnaturally wide and clamped down on the cougar, engulfing the cat’s entire head. The hound bit through Markus’s neck and ripped his head clean off before the cougar could so much as cry out. The cougar’s headless body tipped over onto its side and twitched, blood spurting from the jugular in long arcs that painted the flank of the hound.
Someone screamed.
The hound was too busy munching on Markus’s cougar head to notice. The crunch and squish the head made as the hound feasted pushed bile up the back of my throat and made me gag. But I didn’t waste time getting sick. I doubted it would take the hound long to devour Markus’s head. It was the only chance any of us in that room had to survive.
I wrenched the bag shut and it shrunk to its normal size. I shoved it in my pocket and struggled to stand. Platinum stood gaping at the hound, eyes wide and wet. I shouted at her. “Freeze it!”
She blinked, looked at me as if I had said feed it instead.
I figured her for a highly skilled water elementalist. Not only could she manipulate water physically, but she could change its temperature as well. I could work water, but nothing close to that.
I got in her face.
Behind me, most of the crunch had gone out of the hound’s chewing. Whatever remained of Markus’s head made slurping sounds as the hound ate.
I snapped in Platinum’s face. “Your water. Freeze it. My fire won’t work.”
My fire would probably make it stronger, in fact.
She snapped out of it, gave a quick nod, then turned toward the hound. Her face wrinkled with fear and disgust, but she didn’t look away. She raised her hand, fingers spread, and hard streams of water shot from her fingertips as if each finger were its own mini power washer. But when the water hit the hound, it froze instantly.
The hound reared around to face her even as she covered it with a smoky glaze that steamed like liquid nitrogen. It had big, black orbs for eyes, like shark eyes. Its ears were split down the middle like a pair of forked tongues on its head. Its snout looked like a hot coal on the end of its muzzle. But it was the sight of its black teeth that sent a chill through me. Three rows of jagged pieces of onyx surrounding its gray serpent tongue. Chunks of cougar head were still caught between some of them, bloody flaps of furred skin and a cracked slice of bone lo
dged toward the back.
The hound’s howl shook the floor, but it didn’t last long.
Platinum filled its mouth with ice until it couldn’t close its jaw.
The hound swung its head from side to side. Cold breath chuffed visibly from its nostrils. Platinum kept pouring on the ice. She sprayed until the beast’s entire head looked like a sloppy ice sculpture. The hound collapsed shortly after that. But Platinum kept shooting until the streams petered out and she fell to her knees. She had poured everything she had into taking down that hound, and had done a damn fine job of it.
So I felt a little bad drawing on the last shred of my magic to engulf my hands in orange flame.
I hobbled backward until I had Able and Skunky in sight as well. Once I did, I turned my flames from orange to blue. It was easy. All I had to do is think about Mom trapped in the next room. Or about Markus’s betrayal, not only for how foolish that betrayal made me feel, but how much it must have hurt Mom. I knew that feeling all too well.
I knew I couldn’t hold the flames for long, though. I simply had not had enough time to recoup my magic. Taking down this trio would spend what I had, and that was assuming I could take them without too much of a fight.
Able and Skunky were both breathing hard and staring at the cougar’s headless corpse. The soiled stink of fresh death hung in the air. The smell of hellfire and meat locker added a nauseating flourish.
Platinum stood on her hands and knees, panting, gaze on the floor. She looked ready to pass out.
Their shock had temporarily erased me from their minds.
I leaned against the wall, the pain in my back wanting to send me to the floor. I smeared blood across the cream paint and hit a Monet print with my head, knocking the frame askew. I would only have a few moments here before they turned their attention back to me, the guy who had inadvertently summoned a hellhound into our world and let it bite off their leader’s head. I don’t think the inadvertently would matter much to them.