out of the wall and roared with a noise that couldn’t possibly come out of a human being.
George raised his hands. Blue light seemed to pour from his eyes, before it streaked down his arms and erupted from his fingertips. A blinding arc of electricity crashed into Crow. The noise was deafening. Thick black liquid sprayed out of Crow’s chest and across the room, burning and smoking. Faye cried out as some hit her arm and sizzled.
The demon was hurled back, but kept thrashing and pushing against the energy. After several seconds of the Crackler’s fury, George gasped and stumbled, dizzy. Crow took a step back toward them. His body was charred to ash and billowing smoke. “Not too shabby,” he said around a mouthful of needle teeth.
“You shoulda been fried!” George bellowed.
“There’s nothing worse than a nigger with magic.” Crow seemed to shimmer as his body continued to change. “Time to learn your place, boy.” His feet scorched the floor as he strode toward George.
“He’s a Greater Summoned!” Ian grabbed George by the arm. “He’s too strong. Up the stairs! Go! Go!” Ian fired his pistol repeatedly as George and Whisper ran past him.
Good idea! They were trying to funnel Crow so he wouldn’t have room to maneuver, but he was too fast. They wouldn’t make it. She needed to distract Crow away from her slower friends. “Hey!” Faye appeared directly behind the demon, shoved her pistol into his back and fired twice. He threw a backhand at her, but Faye appeared directly in front of him, extended her pistol and shot Crow squarely through the brain.
The blast of smoke from the wound blinded her. He lashed out and Faye gasped as a terrible burn crossed her stomach. Crow lifted one hand and showed her his newly formed claws. “Try to keep up, Toots.”
She Traveled out of his sight and landed in the kitchen. The distraction had given her friends a moment, but it had cost her. Wincing, Faye lifted her blouse and discovered a mean cut dripping blood. “Darn it!” But like Mr. Sullivan always said, if it wasn’t squirting then it wasn’t a big deal. Faye grabbed the biggest kitchen knife she could out of a wooden block with one hand and a cast iron frying pan in her other. Now she was mad.
Faye appeared in the dining room. The curtains were on fire and the place was filling with smoke, natural and demon both. Crow was trying to push his way up the stairs, but was being simultaneously blasted with arcs of electricity and a stream of billowing fire. Whisper and George could only hold that kind of Power for so long and it gradually tapered off to nothing. Crow began climbing the stairs.
“Hey, stupid!” Faye shouted.
Crow slowly turned to look at her. At some point he had become seven feet tall and ram’s horns were sprouting out the side of his head. He was charred like a piece of meat forgotten on a campfire spit. His skin was flaking off in gigantic burned chunks. Smoke was bleeding from dozens of holes. His voice had become deeper, the kind of voice you only hear in your nightmares. “You should have come along quietly, Faye. Your friends wouldn’t have had to die.”
She held up the butcher knife and frying pan. “Only person dying around here tonight is you!” She screamed and leapt. Crow surged toward her. Faye disappeared at the last second, came around, and clubbed him in one horn with the frying pan. The knife went through one of his gigantic legs. Faye Traveled back, breathing hard, but Crow was already following her. Crap! He’s faster than Delilah!
Faye moved through the house, popping in and out as quick as her head map could determine it was safe. Crow followed her, swinging madly with fingers that had turned into black sickle claws. She continued to Travel in, striking and stabbing wildly, then getting out at the last second. The knife was slick with demon’s ink. Her eyes and lungs stung. The house was wreathed in flames. Five jumps. Six jumps. Crow was still right behind. Seven. Eight. Nine.
She was getting tired. Her Power was flickering.
Crow followed her into the living room. He picked up one of the couches and hurled it at her. She barely had time to move before it shattered the window and flew into the night. The wind came howling in and brought the choking dust with it. Faye’s head map screamed danger everywhere. Grit struck her in the eyes. The dust particles were too big to Travel in! Upstairs!
The demon lifted his hands to his four eyes as the dust blinded him as well. Desperate, Faye leapt and landed at his feet. Shoes had been replaced with enormous goat’s hooves. Lifting the knife, Faye screamed, and then drove the knife down as hard as she could through the hoof, pinning it to the floor. Crow emitted a horrific shriek and lifted his other foot to smash her through the boards, but Faye was already gone.
She hit the carpet on the second floor landing. The dust was billowing up the stairs, chasing her. Soon there would be nowhere safe for her to Travel. The neighboring houses were in range, but she wasn’t about to abandon her friends. Below, Crow continued his demonic roar. Whisper was at the top of the stairs, moving her hands back and forth, gathering the fire roaring through the first floor together into another solid ball. The violent wind whipped her black hair around her head in a halo. George appeared, shoving a heavy dresser in front of Whisper to serve as a last-ditch barricade. Ian was sitting on the floor, looking calm as could be.
“What’re you doing?”
Ian barely opened one eye a crack. “Calling in reinforcements.”
“Poop.” Faye checked her head map. The old lady was still sound asleep in her room. Faye couldn’t just let some nice grandma get burned to death. This was going to take too much Power, but she had to do it. Faye popped into her room, took the woman by her arm, then picked a spot that seemed nice two houses down.
Faye appeared in the living room of a very surprised family. They had all been watching out their window the exploding, electrical light show coming from the flaming boardinghouse, and they screamed when they saw her. “Hey! Take care of her, would ya?” The father had been stuffing shells from a cardboard box into an old pump shotgun, but he yelped and dropped it when she scared him near to death. “Mind if I borrow this? Thanks!” Faye grabbed the shotgun and the box of buckshot, concentrated, and Traveled back.
She picked the furthest room from the stairs and barely beat the flooding dust. It stung her skin, but a moment later and it would have been inside her skin. Faye loaded the old Winchester the rest of the way as she walked down the hall. Her eyes were watering and she could barely breathe as poison smoke burned her lungs.
Crow was on fire and rumbling up the stairs. Whisper was continually whipping flames into the demon, over and over, her robe torn open and snapping in the wind around her. “Burn, demon!” The only reason they could breathe at all was that Whisper’s magical skill was so great that she was causing the smoke to be funneled away from them. The black air coming from Crow’s wounds was darker than the natural smoke roiling around him.
Faye leaned around Whisper, shouldered the shotgun and let Crow have it right in the face. The buckshot messed him up far worse than the pistol bullets. It kicked her good as she fed him four more rounds, but then the Winchester was empty and she was fumbling to reload from the box. Whisper fell back, Power exhausted, and George took her place.
Lightning crackled between his fingers. His eyes were pools of flashing blue. All of Faye’s hair stood up. “This place is coming down. Get them outside, Faye. Now!”
“You can’t stop him by yourself,” she cried.
“Do it!”
Faye did as she was told. With Whisper’s Power done, the smoke and dust was too much to bear. She couldn’t breathe. Her head was spinning. She fell and the shotgun shells spilled down the carpet. The entire house shook and groaned as beams snapped. Faye crawled for the next room; she could at least breathe a little on the floor. She could feel Whisper behind her but couldn’t see anything. She crashed into something soft. Ian. He seemed to be in a daze as she pulled him along.
The three of them fell into the bedroom.
“George?” Whisper asked.
There was an awful roar behind them and the crash of thunder. Blue light flickered through the smoke.
“Reinforcements?” Faye asked.
Ian was coughing. “On the way.”
Faye made it to the window. It wouldn’t open. Of course, everything was caulked shut because of the storm. She used the shotgun butt to smash the glass out. There were shingles below them. “Get outside!” Whisper went through the window and disappeared into the dust. She turned back and ran into Ian. “I’m going back for George.”
“Can you Travel him?”
“Can’t. Dust.”
