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CHAPTER 13
“Motherfucking pus bucket! What the hel —” Vanzir’s voice echoed in the darkness as our unseen assailant took a swipe at me.
Camil e let out another yelp. “Something scratched me and man, it stings.”
“Enough of this.” Morio let out a growl and began to grow into his ful demonic form—eight feet of youkai-kitsune, a cross between gorgeous man and dangerous fox with claws that could eviscerate a buffalo. As he shifted, he muttered something under his breath and there was a loud flash in the room and then, slowly, in the inky void, I began to see shapes around us.
Discorporate figures, black silhouettes surrounded by a faint green aura, fil ed the room. There must have been ten or eleven, circling us, no features showing—just shadow men, darting around us.
“What are they? Ghosts?” Camil e breathed slowly, but I could stil hear the tremor of her voice.
“Not ghosts,” Morio said. “I don’t real y know what they are.”
Chase let out a low sigh. “I can see into them. They’re . . . they’re little bits of evil, incarnate in shadow form. They have no real consciousness, but they’re hungry for our life force.” His voice was distant, as if he were a mil ion miles away.
“Chase?” I felt Camil e shift as she turned in his direction. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t know, but I just do,” he whispered, sounding afraid of his own voice. “We need some light.”
Morio mumbled and foxfire lit the room with a neon glow. The effect was eerie—the shadow men circling us, a globe of green light hovering over us.
“So, what do we do about them?” I stared at our opponents. They could obviously hurt us, if they’d knocked Camil e to the ground and managed to almost shove me off my feet. And now, in the light of the foxfire, I could see that Camil e was bleeding from a long scratch down her arm.
“You okay?”
She glanced down at it and shrugged. “Yeah, unless it turns out to be poisoned. I’ve been hurt so many times that I feel like I’m constantly wearing a big red bul ’s-eye on my back. Let me try a blast of Moon magic.”
“Shit, just don’t backfire. We don’t want to spread too far apart here.”
With a nod, she raised her hands and closed her eyes, focusing. I surreptitiously stepped to the side. Although the death magic she performed with Morio usual y went right, her Moon Mother magic stil backfired a good share of the time. One backlash was al it took.
As she summoned her power, one of the shadow men suddenly let loose and raced for me. I raised my arm to block his high kick and was surprised when he slammed into me hard enough to knock me off my feet.
“They’re tough!” I somersaulted backward, rol ing easily to my feet. As I came up in a crouch, the shadow closed in on me, and I could hear a faint snarl on the wind. It slashed out with one darkened hand and hit me in the gut, a razor-sharp slice cutting me deep above the bel y button. I jumped back and it kept on going, tumbling over itself as I threw it off balance.
As it went down, I decided to see just how corporeal it was and stomped on its back, landing dead center. My boot met solid flesh. “These things have to take form to attack us!” I jumped on its back with both feet, landing as hard as I could. The creature let out a huff and flattened to the floor.
Then, before I could do anything, it vanished.
Camil e held out her hands toward four of them that were congregating around her. “Eat this, suckers!”
Maybe not the most elegant of spel s, but a bril iant flash came forking from her fingers, the lightning striking al four, branching out in the cavern with a concussion that shook the wal s and floor. The creatures vanished, sizzling.
Morio raced forward and two of the shadow men engaged him. They swiped at him and blood trickled down his side. He caught them in his massive hands and the next thing I knew, they were howling and trying to get away, but he began to squeeze the shadows together and their screaming grew louder. There was a loud slurping sound and they vanished like bubbles popping.
Stepping out in front of us, Vanzir held out his hands. “Let’s see if these motherfuckers have anything to feed on.” He closed his eyes, and pale snakelike tentacles emerged from his palms to barb themselves into the shadow men. Vanzir could feed on life energy. If these creatures had any form of life.
It occurred to me that whatever spel Morio had cast was al owing us to see into the astral—
which made sense if we could see the auras of our enemies. Vanzir’s tentacles weren’t visible in the physical realm.>The ladder led down a long ways, far longer than I expected it to, and by the time I found myself standing down below on a walkway, I had just about given up hope of it ever ending. I quickly stepped to the side and switched on my flashlight, scanning the area. Nothing in sight, though I did see a pile of rat droppings. The tunnel didn’t look like a sewer tunnel, though, and it occurred to me that we’d been off about our assessment of the area. For one thing, the floor was cobblestone in some areas, wood in another.
Once the others were down, I lowered my voice and said, “This is no sewer. No wonder it was an iron ladder. What is this place?”
Chase flashed his light around. The walkway ran both right and left, and there was an alcove right across from us. In the alcove were crumbling boxes, an old wooden chair, and a smal table.
A row of shelves lined one wal of the niche.
“Crap. I don’t believe this.” Chase stepped over the crumbling wal that exposed the cubbyhole.
