Page 7 of Grabbed By the Guard

My knees buckle, and I start to pitch forward. That’s when I discover just how fast a demon is. For a creature his size, he should lumber. He doesn’t. He flies toward me, faster than I can even see him move, and suddenly he’s there. One catcher mitt-sized hand grabs me by the upper arm, hoisting me back to my feet before I fall flat on my face.

And without letting go, he says that same word from before. “Uxor.”

He looks down at me expectantly. As though I should thank him for man-handling… demon-handling me, or if his touch on my arm is supposed to do something. All it does is make me realize that demons run at a way hotter temperature than humans do, and while he’s not burning my arm, he needs to let go.

Now.

“Let go of me,” I tell him, jerking my arm out of his hold.

He doesn’t.

This close, I can make out a couple of rows of ridges over his nose and on his brow. They seem to crease as his face sets, cheeks hollowing as the big demon tightens his jaw and his grip.

His green eyes glow even brighter, and on his arms, unfamiliar golden runes appear over his black skin.

What the?—

His hand is still on my arm. I feel it, though I don’t see it as, suddenly, the red-skinned demon disappears into an oversized mass of black shadows. It’s like a silhouette of where he was with only the green eyes and golden runes to prove he’s still there somewhere.

And that’s when he tugs on my arm.

I struggle, but I don’t scream. This time I don’t because the last thing I want to do is wake up Sierra and Three in time for them to see me being abducted by this demon. I don’t want the monster to make them another target, either, though if Jared got caught in the crosshairs… well, that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?

No. I’m not just Sierra’s manager. I’m her best friend, and her older sister figure. Though I’m sure she has to be the target, I’ll do what I’ve always done: I’ll take care of this insanity, one way or another.

Hey… it can’t be any worse than the time Tandy and Sierra almost got the three of us banned from Amsterdam after that Thr33peat show, can it?

So I don’t scream, though I do struggle, and as he yanks me forward, pulling me with him into a patch of impossibly black darkness in the corner of my kitchen, my biggest regret is that I never got the chance to grab my phone before I’m swallowed up by it.

Beneath the facade of Billie the manager, Billie herself can be very reactive. An example? The moment the world stops spinning, my eyes don’t seem blacked-out anymore, and my feet sink into something that’s both pillowy and kind of sandy, I start slapping at the big, meaty forearm that is holding me pressed against a hard chest.

Clearly surprised by my display of violence, the demon releases me.

I spin on my heel and smack his arm again.

“How dare you? You don’t just grab a person and?—”

It takes a second for my brain to catch up to my eyes, and for my mouth to register what I’m seeing. Just for fun, my nose decides to come on-line and, as I suck in a shocked breath, I gasp and choke as the stink of a thousand rotten eggs singe my poor nostrils.

“Oh my God! What is that?”

Faced with such an awful odor, all media training flies out the window. I’ve spent years learning to think first, speak second, but when all I can think is how much it stinks all of a sudden, I can’t help it. My hand flies to my face, shielding my nose and my mouth, but the damage is done.

It’s hot, too. Really hot. Like I’ve walked out of the air-conditioned lobby of the Dorado and into a muggy August afternoon even though it’s still November. This is a dry heat that surrounds me, and to add insult to injury, I can just feel my curls wilting.

I take a step. The ground is uneven. I bobble, jerking away from the demon before he can grab my arm again. Once I have my footing, I glare down at the dirt.

Only it’s not dirt. It’s ash.

Why does it look like I’m standing in the middle of the world’s biggest ashtray?

My head jerks up. And then up some more.

Shoving my curls out of my face, I goggle up at the sky.

Even if I wanted to be delusional and pretend that it was possible for the demon to pull me out of my kitchen and to the outside, I’m slapped in the face with a little bit of reality when I see that there are two moons high over my head: one that is full and cast with a reddish tinge, and another that is about halfway full and is gold.

I’ve heard of there being such a thing as a blue moon, but a red one? A gold one?

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