“Take that, demon ho!” She jutted the gun forward.
Olian reached for Keri like she would attack. Then she choked, and the same yellow blood spilled from her lips. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell forward. Her skull cracked against the hardwood floor, the sound echoing down the hall.
“Is she dead?” Keri leaned forward, peering down at the demoness. “I mean, did I just kill a demon? I didn’t think bullets were strong enough for that. Shit, they didn’t work in Constantine.”
“I don’t know. Damn, I thought dropping her from the sky would have killed her, but it clearly didn’t.”
“Yeah, okay. We need to get out of here.” Keri grabbed my bag and hers, then pulled her keys from her pocket. “On second thought, we can take your car. I just got mine detailed.”
“Seriously?” I followed her as she carefully tiptoed around the fallen demon.
“Hey, these are your demons,” Keri whispered. “I’m already going to have to deal with cleaning this up. How the hell do you get demon blood out of teakwood floors?”
“Hell if I know.” I made it past Olian’s body. “Let’s just get out of here in case she wakes up.”
“Still think it was a bad idea for me to get a gun?” Keri waved the weapon before stuffing it into her bag.
“Now is not the time to debate gun laws.” I shook my head as we headed for the car.
My body hurt terribly badly, but I moved as quickly as I could. There was no way I was taking my time to avoid further injury, because that would mean giving the demon the chance to regenerate and catch up to us. Keri took the wheel, and I sat in the passenger seat as she peeled off down the street, tires squealing.
“What the hell do we do now?” Keri gripped the steering wheel and adjusted her collar. “I really shouldn’t be driving right now.”
“I don’t know.” I glanced over my shoulder, afraid Olian had somehow healed that quickly and was chasing after us. When I saw nothing, some of the tension eased, and I felt my jaw unclench. There was no threat, only the passing of busy homes and trees dusted with the fresh snow that fell as we drove. “She shouldn’t have been able to get back here. I didn’t see that happening, and Metice isn’t here. He says he can feel me, sense when I’m in danger. This is the second time she has attacked me, and nothing. He’s nowhere to be found. Something must be wrong.”
“Maybe she found some way to block it. I mean, you said he had that one witch work her magic to block you from other demons. What if there’s some spell at play that doesn’t tell him when you’re a danger? At least, not when she’s there.” Keri offered what sounded like a totally plausible reason, considering everything that had happened.
“Is that the lawyer side of your brain kicking in?” I asked. “How the hell are you so calm right now?”
“Hey, I told you half of what I do is playing detective to figure out what’s really going on behind the story people give me.” She laughed. “You think criminals tell the truth to their lawyers?”
“I just got to figure out somewhere safe to go. I can’t go back home. Not yet.” I looked out the window. “She’s been there. If she’s looking for me again, that’s the logical place for her to go next.”
“I think you better figure that out real quick.” Keri adjusted the rear-view mirror. “We got company.”
“What?” I asked.
“Something’s coming up behind us quick, and I don’t think that thing is a fucking car.”
I turned in my seat to look out the back window and damn near shit myself. Running behind us was a thing that looked like a demonic transformer. It ran on all fours, with massive talons that destroyed the concrete beneath it. The thing was the size of my car, with a yellow body and a blue spine and neck that reached down with a snarling face. Its beady red eyes and sharp teeth were a threat to what would happen if it caught us.
Luckily, the thing wasn’t accustomed to running on ice. The fresh snow on the road caused it to slip, and it slammed into a parked car as the sharp hook that stuck out from its forearm ripped through the door.
“What the hell is that?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing.
“You’re asking me? I’m not the one familiar with demons, you are,” Keri yelled. “Hang on.”
Keri whipped the car across two lanes and pulled onto the interstate, because that’s what you do when a monster is chasing you—you get on the expressway! I wasn’t sure what shocked me more: the monster chasing us, knocking unsuspecting drivers around the road, or Keri’s driving skills.
“The snow is coming down fast.” I looked out the window. It was like the clouds were just dumping out clumps of snow. There had barely been any at all when I arrived at Keri’s house, and now, you couldn’t even see the ground.
“What are the odds one of your demon buddies can control the weather?”
“God, I hope not.”
She weaved in and out of cars with ease and put a sizeable distance between us and the thing behind us. For a second, I thought we would outrun it, but of course, two seconds after I had the thought that we might actually survive this encounter, another one of the jacked beasts dropped in front of us. Just as we were hitting a turn beneath an overpass, it hit the road less than a hundred feet in front of us.
Keri tried to maneuver around it, but with us already turning at a high speed on an icy road, that spelled disaster. Keri’s scream rang out as everything spun around us. The crunching sound of metal against pavement broke what composure I had as the car flipped I didn’t know how many times. My leg twisted beneath me, the bone snapping as the force pulled my body in different directions. I cried out, but a moment later, my head slammed against the door, and everything went black.