Page 51 of Spooks & Specters

“Please.”

“There you go,” Nox said, easing the pressure on Austin’s throat. “See? That wasn’t so hard, now, was it? Play nice, darling.”

“Maia. W-what did you… did you inject Maia with?”

“Just a little something one of my labs has been working on. It’s nothing poisonous, just a little sedative. Something to keep her out of my way, but she’ll get to watch what I do to you before she passes out. Won’t that be fun?”

“Fuck,” Austin swore softly.

“Or, and hear me out here, she can leave and go find Kage. Tell him to come here, alone and unarmed. We need to talk.”

“I’m not leaving Austin!” Maia yelled.

“Fine. You can watch what I do to him, and then he can watch me slit your throat.”

Austin shuddered. “Jesus, Maia, go. Get Kage.”

Kit lay under the desk watching the scene play out in front of him. Questions raced through his mind. How did Austin know that thing wasn’t him? Who was Nox? How did that thing become him? Stuff like that didn’t exist outside of fiction.

He listened to the three of them argue. Then the woman… disappeared. Kit was positive his eyes were playing tricks on him because she basically stepped into a shadow and… and was gone.

Kit blinked. Surely he didn’t see that. Surely.

“And now we wait.”

“What did you do with Kit?” Austin asked. “Tell me you didn’t kill him.”

Kit lay there quietly trying his best not to draw attention.

“I didn’t kill the human.”

Human?

“He’s laid out on the floor behind the desk. Did you know his boyfriend, Don Porter, is one of my hunters?”

What’s a hunter, and how did I not know Don was involved with this thing?

Kit listened to them talk, although none of it made sense to him.

Then Austin’s boyfriend, Kage, stepped out of the shadows. “I’m here.”

Kit blinked again. This time he was positive he saw what he thought he saw. Kage and that other woman had used shadows to… what? Travel? It shouldn’t be possible, and it absolutely made no sense, but that’s what they did.They aren’t human, either.

More words were thrown around, words like portal, daemon, and clan member, and nobody acted like anything was unusual about that. As Kit listened to Kage and Nox talk about past history, it slowly dawned on Kit that there was another world besides the one he was aware of. Apparently, Austin was part of it.

AndapparentlyAustin had dragged Kit into this new world.

Then Nox suddenly jammed his fist into Austin’s throat, and Austin screamed as if he was in pain. Kage roared. Then he turned into something that Kit could only describe as a monster.

It kind of reminded him of the demons portrayed in the Christian Hell. There were wings and horns and… and black spots were dancing in front of Kit’s eyes.

It took a second for him to realize that he’d been holding his breath. As quietly as possible, he released it before he fainted. Out of all of them, Kit was the only one who was freaking out about what Kage had just turned into.

Chapter Three

BEFORE KIT’S eyes, a shadow extended from the couch to the ceiling. That… that wasn’t possible. Then a werewolf leaped from it—straight at Nox. Austin jerked his head away from Nox’s hand and collapsed to the floor.

A woman stepped from the shadow the wolf came from, and with a flick of her wrist, opened another… another… tear in space as the wolf collided with Nox. The wolf and the thing that attacked Kit tumbled into the opening, snarling and yelling.

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