I tested my cord. I should be able to travel right back to my body along its length. But the stuff covering it acted as a roadblock. I’d have to figure out a way to blast it off before I could get back to my body. And soon. Already the gold had begun to fade. If I waited too long I’d lose that line and never be able to find my way home.
I stared at the Magistrate.
Which was your plan all along, wasn’t it, asswipe? Just keep me here until I had no other choice.
“I like your hair,” said the Magistrate. I ignored him, concentrated on moving up my line, but force would not remove the glop that encased the cord. “You know what that shock of white tells me?” he inquired. As if we were having a polite conversation, he went on. “It says you have a very close relative in hell who touched you on your last tour.”
I looked at him then, narrowed my eyes, barely bit back a threat. Anything I said could endanger my mother.
He giggled with delight. “You two will have such fun together.”
“I’m not staying,” I said. I closed my eyes.
Raoul, I’m in deep trouble here. Any ideas?
No reply. I didn’t really expect any. Hell was probably way out of Raoul’s calling area.
Another chorus of screams opened my eyes. They came, not from the audience, but from the band. A group of fighters had rushed the stage from the back. Dressed all in white, including masks that covered everything but their eyes, they attacked the demons with weapons that glittered so brightly it was hard to look at them.
I wished Cole was with me so he could verbalize what I was thinking. He’d pop a big old grape bubble and say with childlike wonder, “They are like ninjas from heaven.”
Two of them swung on Uldin Beit with curved swords carved with runes that glowed in turns, as if the sword itself was somehow speaking as its wielder fought.
Uldin responded with surprising speed, leaping from her stool and spinning her sticks like nunchakus. With each spin the sticks grew, until she held a couple of mallets with round heads sprouting sharp points. Medieval weaponry fans would’ve called them morning stars. I thought they looked too evil for such a pretty name.
Two more light-coated warriors swarmed Sian-Hichan. This duet carried swords as well, only they were straighter, bulkier, built for heavy lifting. Sian-Hichan swung the guitar over his head, slammed it against the stage. Instead of scattering Gibson parts as far as the eye could see, he pulled back holding a double-headed battle axe. And damned if he couldn’t swing that thing like Paul Bunyan on a bet.
The third demon had already fallen by the time I glanced at him. His three opponents were still beating him with what looked like miniature silver telephone poles. The Magistrate had uncoiled his whip in readiness to rescue his fallen bandmate when he was attacked himself.
Built like a heavyweight boxer, his single foe didn’t seem to need or want assistance. He rammed into the Magistrate, making his eyes do a dance I called the oh-shit-blink-and-pop, widening the way they will when one has just encountered a force of nature. The two went down, trading punches, wrestling for control over the whip.
The white fighter clocked the Magistrate solidly to the nose. Blood went flying as both it, and the Magistrate’s grip on the whip, broke. The fighter rolled free, armed now, and apparently well versed in the offensive capabilities of a tightly braided length of steel-tipped leather. He cracked the whip against the Magistrate’s side as he rolled to avoid the hit. Got him in the back too before the Magistrate caught the whip on the third strike. A brief tug-of-war followed, during which the whip broke.
The Magistrate screamed in fury, a sound echoed by Uldin Beit as her attackers overwhelmed her, one of them skewering her as the other lopped off the lower half of her arm.
Sian-Hichan still held his own, fighting with the mindless rage of a berserker. His axe blurred as he swung at his attackers, its bloody edge and their wariness both witness to his effectiveness.
The wet slap of fists on flesh brought my attention back to the Magistrate and his opponent. Now they fought hand-to-hand, throwing kicks, blocks, and punches with a speed that astonished me. Honestly, you just don’t see fighting like that in the world. At least not outside of a movie screen. It looked almost — choreographed. The Magistrate jumped and spun, his kick just barely missing the white fighter’s skull. Only a late block by the fighter followed by a flurry of kicks to the ribs kept him in the game.
The Magistrate tried a knife hand to the neck, missed high, and instead ripped the mask off his opponent, who looked at me with such alarm you’d have thought I was about to turn state’s evidence against him.
My knees folded like the paper fans my sister, Evie, and I used to make from Granny May’s church bulletins. I don’t guess I hit the stage gracefully. That would’ve been too much to ask. I did land on my ass, and since I wasn’t corporeal it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t pretty either. But my mind had no room left in it for that kind of thinking. It was full. Brimming over, in fact, with the discovery I’d just made.
My late fiance was a ninja from heaven.
Chapter Seven
Some things you just know. I’d stood at Granny May’s bedside as she’d drawn her last breath. I’d watched her eyes empty, and I’d known she was gone. Where she went, well, that we could debate all day long. But she’d left our realm, of that I was certain.
So at my core, where I absolutely refused to bullshit myself, I knew this moment was too good to be true. But I wanted it so badly that the rest of me took some convincing.
“Matt?” I whispered.
He didn’t have time to reply. The Magistrate had closed in, whacked him good with a combination of punches that backed him up several paces. But by then his comrades had finished with their demons. They joined him, turning the tide, whaling on the Magistrate with their various weapons until he sprawled on the floor, looking like an autopsy photo.
A sick, weak feeling stole over me. I checked my connection to physical me. Uh-oh. “I have to go,” I murmured.
Within moments I was surrounded. I stood. Looked into Matt’s eyes and wished I could weep. It wasn’t him.
