knocked on your ass. But nothing else had made a dent, until that moment, and I needed to exploit that weakness.
With a two-step run-up, I launched a jumping side kick square into Alec’s formerly normal face, the thing staggering back a couple of paces as I landed light on my feet.
My boot left a perfect print, like I’d walked through soft mud.
Before I could ponder just what that meant, Bobby did something monumentally stupid. I’d forgotten he was there, actually, taking it for granted that they’d spirited their charge out like they were supposed to.
His arm snaked around the tall creature’s throat, putting it in a choke hold that would have meant lights out for anything else. As I’d discovered already, this thing wasn’t going to go down that easily.
“Bobby, don’t!”
My warning was too late, of course. The thing spun in Bobby’s hold, wrapping its arms around his rib cage and bodily lifting the big marine off his feet. Still, Bobby refused to let go, smashing his forehead into the thing’s mangled face twice, even as his own face was going blue.
God, I could hear his ribs cracking as the thing squeezed. The sound was louder, it seemed, than Gretchen’s screams and the distant sirens outside as help finally arrived. “Let him go!” It was me the thing wanted, dammit, not Bobby.
The only thing I could think to do was hit it until it stopped moving. The spells on my right bracer lasted exactly one hit, and caved the back of the thing’s head in. The left one lasted two more before it flared into ordinary, scorched leather, and by that point, the creature’s head was a lopsided mass of…I have no idea what. One ear was on top of what remained of its pulp of a head, the other was caved so far in I couldn’t even find it. What had appeared to be hair was now a solid mess of brownish paste, and one cheekbone jutted out at an impossible angle to the rest of the face.
Staggering on its two feet, it dropped Bobby, which was really all I’d needed. The bodyguard fell to the ground and didn’t move, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.
I expected the thing to turn and come at me again, but apparently having its head mashed into a Picasso painting was causing some problems. It turned to look at me once with its one functional eye, the other smashed closed by Bobby’s forceful head butts, then lumbered off into the chaos, tossing people from its path like they were so much kindling.
I wanted to follow. Everything in me ached to chase it down and kill it. But I didn’t know how, still, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t take it one-on-one. And we had a man down.
Gretchen was leaning over Bobby, tears streaming down her face as she tried to wipe the blood away, smearing it more than anything. “Oh God…Oh God…Bobby…” Her phone was in her hand, though, smart girl that she was, and I could tell she already had the paramedics on the way. Tai towered over them, gun drawn but pointed safely down, standing grim guard, but the lunacy that had overtaken the party guests seemed to be fading. It left behind a room full of the broken and the bleeding.
The source of the rage-inducing spell wasn’t hard to find, once I got a moment to focus. The faint hint of sulfur lead me back to the buffet table and the cans of flaming Sterno. Someone—our mashable friend if I had to guess— had placed little wooden coins in the blue flames. Most of them were destroyed already, but I managed to find one that was only half charred. On it, a demonic sigil had been etched. It was half erased by the chemical flame, but I could still feel the prickle of magic as I swiped my thumb over it. With the design altered by the burning wood, it was harmless now, but I stuck it in my pocket anyway. It was too dangerous to just leave things like that lying around.
15
Hospitals look very different when you’re not the one in the bed. The chairs are uncomfortable, the vending machines are full of stale food, and I’m pretty sure that time passes there according to no known law of physics. It might have even been running backward, and wouldn’t that be helpful? Rewind the evening and start over?
Bobby apparently didn’t have any next of kin to call, and Gretchen refused to leave until she knew if he was going to be all right. So we sat in the waiting room, watching white coats come and go, surrounded by some of the other party casualties. Someone brought Tai an ice pack for his head, once he’d made it very clear he wasn’t leaving Gretchen’s side, and after I snarled at a few of the nurses, they steered wide around me too. I guess I looked bad, but none of the blood was mine, I swear.
The most interesting event was the moment they wheeled Alec through the emergency room doors. Alec, the party host, whose head was notably
Sneaky thing that I was, I managed to overhear the paramedics as they handed him over to the attending physician. “Found him stuffed in a closet, beat to crap. Freakin’ crazy rich people. Probably had the whole party hopped up on something.”
They weren’t wrong, exactly. The whole party had been hopped up on something, but it was nothing that would show up in a drug test. I flipped the warped piece of wood over the back of my knuckles as I pondered it.
Alec—the real Alec—had been beaten and stuffed in a closet so Not-Alec could take his place. That I was pretty sure of. Impossible to know if that had happened during the party, or long before any guests arrived, but the idea had led me to several conclusions.
One—I was pretty sure Not-Alec and the centurion were one and the same creature. So, while the thought of only one enemy was comforting, the thought of an enemy that could change shapes was not. I needed to find out how to detect it sooner, since it seemed to be getting better at taking human form.
Two—My hands were covered in dried blood—Bobby’s, I was sure—but they were also covered in a layer of gray…something. It flaked off as it dried, turning to powder, just like the muck on my hands at the movie lot. I wasn’t sure what it was. It didn’t smell like anything, and tasted faintly like chalk (yes, I know that tasting it wasn’t smart, but…you do what you gotta). I saved some of it in a folded piece of paper for examination later. Whatever it was, it was connected to the creature.
Three—It wasn’t a demon. The mace would have sent him scrambling. It wasn’t one of the Yeti’s zombie pets. The blessed pentacle would have seared it like a hot brand. As the centurion, it hadn’t spoken, but as Alec it had.
