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Or embarrassment. Since I’ve been doing flips and summersaults and I’m wearing a dress with no underwear.
“We can get out that way,” he says, pointing to the edge of the balcony where no demons have gathered, only people frozen in place.
He pulls me along quickly as the demons from behind us follow, their demented jaws snapping hungrily.
We reach the edge and see the exit down below, only a handful of demons between us and the door.
Only problem is we’re high up. Very high.
“What do we do now?” I say to Max, looking behind me as they get closer and closer and I’m counting at least fifteen here, no time to kill them all and survive.
“We jump,” he says.
And then he climbs up, stands on the edge of the railing and just fucking jumps.
“Max!” I scream, leaning over the edge watching as he just lands on his feet, thirty feet below on the dance floor, no problem.
What the fuck is with this guy?
He reaches up with his arms, beckoning me.
“Now your turn.”
“Are you crazy!? I’ll die!”
“I’ll catch you.”
“Then you’ll die!”
“No, you’re going to die if you don’t jump!” he booms. “And then I’ll die. Remember?”
Fuck he’s right.
I turn around in time to see the demons starting to run at me.
I step up onto the railing, trying to balance myself to make the leap, but I lose my footing right away.
I fall, twisting, turning in the air, the scream ripped through my lungs, expecting to hit the ground.
But I land in Max’s arms, so strong and so steady, that it’s like he’s catching a pillow.
He puts me down on the ground, gives me a cocky smile that I totally deserve, a told you so, and then we start running to the exit.
I take out one demon with a kick to the head.
Max rips the head off another.
Then we’re bursting out of the doors and into the outside, gulping the humid swampy air.
Pedestrians pass by on the street, laughing, drunk, taxis zoom along, zydeco music plays from a nearby store.
It’s normal out here.
But there’s no time to waste.
Max grabs my hand and we start running down Decatur Street, him leading the way, dodging people as we go, navigating the uneven sidewalks.
We run all the way to Jackson Square, then cut across it past the statue, adrenaline keeping me sprinting.
“What do we do now?” I yell at Max as our legs are pumping, mine working double time to keep up with his. I look over my shoulder to see if demons are following us, but immediately trip over some grass.
Max reaches out and steadies me just in time and I’m stumbling for a moment before we keep on going.
Problem is, I’m pretty sure I saw demons behind us.
“I think we’re being followed,” I tell him, my lungs burning.
Max looks over his shoulder, and that’s when I notice the flames in his eyes are still flickering. “I reckon you’re right.”
“Should we call for backup?”
“Backup?” he says, pulling me to the left along Saint Ann Street, then across the road, nearly getting hit by a car as we go. “Is that another name for my sword?”
“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.
