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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 him over, so I open both, throwing half my shit out of mine, then throwing in half his shit.
I run to the bathroom to grab our toothbrushes, my makeup kit, and I pause in horror when I see myself in the mirror.
My hair is a rat’s nest of blonde, my face is covered in blood, as is my dress, long painful-looking claw marks running over my shoulder to my chest. On my arms. On my legs. My back.
I almost start crying.
Not because of pain.
But because for the first time I’m realizing how close I keep coming to dying. How dangerous this job is. Maybe I would have realized it earlier if I had remembered my time in the hospital in San Francisco, but right now, it’s hitting deep.
