“Rose!” I yell at him. “She’s a demon slayer, she should be helping us.”
“She doesn’t do that anymore,” he says, the two of us dodging a couple with a stroller. Who brings a baby to New Orleans?
“What do you mean? She just stopped?”
“Yeah, she quit. She told me as much last night.”
“You can do that?”
“She did.” He glances at me quickly. “You know you don’t have to do this either, right?”
I shake my head. No way. I am what I am. “And leave you on your own to fight these bastards without me? I don’t think so.”
He bursts out laughing, grinning at me. “I fucking love you, you know that?”
My mouth drops open.
Dead.
I’m dead.
I stop running, rooted in the ground and Max stumbles a few feet, his momentum ripping him out of my grasp.
“What did you just say?” I say incredulously, my heart pounding even louder now and it’s not the fact that we’ve been running for five minutes.
Max walks back to me, determination on his brow. “You heard me.” He looks over my shoulder. “And I think they’re all close enough to hear me too.”
I blink, feeling dumbed up in love, and look behind me to see about twenty demons running after us. No one else in this damn city seems to be paying any of this any attention.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing my hand. “We can discuss this later.”
We start running again, but I’m having a hard time shaking what he said.
He loves me.
Did he actually mean that?
Was it a joke, something said in a burst of adrenaline, like how two people will make out if they think it’s the end of the world?
I’m still pondering this, jumping between his words and the fact that demons are after us, as we head down Royal Street, about a block from the hotel. Luckily the car is parked closer to us.
Unluckily, there’re a shit ton of people out on the streets.
And none of them are frozen.
Some of them are already wondering why a girl in a bloody sundress and Ginger Elvis are running down the street.
Whatever time manipulating voodoo shit the demons were doing for the sake of Gwar, they aren’t doing it here.
We reach the car, Max opens the trunk and I put my hand on his arm, pressing down.
“Wait,” I tell him. “There are people around.”
Max looks around. “I know. I can probably try and control some of them after the fact, but I can’t do it and fight them at the same time. And we need to fight them, Ada.”
“Or we could just leave. Now!”
He stares at me for a moment, hand hesitating around the sword.
But then his eyes flare up again as they go over my shoulder.
“Duck,” he says beneath his breath, and I immediately crouch down just as he brings the sword out of the trunk and swings it through the air.
A head slices off. Demon dust falls from the sky.
I pop back up in time to see the rest of the demons have found us and people on the street are freaking out, staring at us in horror.
“You take care of them,” I tell Max, meaning the innocent bystanders. “I’ll fight.”
I don’t wait for his response. I run forward to the next demon, flipping over it and landing on its shoulders, ripping its head off before rolling backward onto the ground, taking out another head with a swift running kick, using the energy to propel me around.
I take out another and another and another, bouncing around Royal Street, the traffic having come to a standstill, headlights highlighting everything I’m doing. Until suddenly they all go out, including the street lights, in a one-block radius and I know that was Max’s doing. We’re in the dark now. Easier to fight. Not so easy for bystanders to watch, or heaven’s forbid, shoot video.
I’m just pondering that in horror when suddenly I’m taken out from the side, tackled to the ground, a snapping mouth trying to rip my shoulder off.
Max appears, wielding the sword above me, slicing its head off and I roll over and up, getting out of the way as two more come running at Max from behind.
“Look out!” I scream.
Max doesn’t even have to look. He meets my eyes for a moment, the flames growing, and then he spins around, sword out in one hand. Takes both their heads off with one go.
Okay, so if he’s serious about being in love with me, then I’m lucky as fuck. Nothing could be hotter than this, watching this man expertly wield a medieval-looking sword in the middle of Royal Street, decapitating demons left and right.
Be still my fucking heart.
“Ada!” he yells at me.
I spin in time to see a demon lunging at me.
I go to the ground, just as the swoosh of Max’s blade passes above, killing the demon. Seconds later, he turns around stabbing another one through the eye.
Demon dust covers the whole street.
He pulls me up to my feet. “You okay?” he asks.
I nod, looking around.
People are staring.
Lots of people.
“I think you need to fix this,” I tell him, nudging him in the side.
I try to grab the sword from him to take back to the trunk, but it’s so heavy I can’t even move it. What is this, like Thor’s hammer?
“Go to the room, grab what you can,” he says, not taking his eyes off the crowd of people.
I don’t want to leave him, especially when I’m sure more demons are on the way, but I think he needs to concentrate and I certainly don’t help if I’m around.
I turn and run, knowing I have to be quick.
Nineteen
“Don’t cry. With my toes on the edge, it’s such a lovely view.”
– I Appear Missing
I run up the street to the hotel, up the staircase to the room. I burst in through the door and try to think of what to grab. I can’t handle both suitcases and I don’t want to screw
