Page 12 of Vicious
Sweat leaked down Mase’s face as he watched the lightning snake back and forth in front of the doorway. His tongue flicked out and wetted his upper lip. His chestheaved.
Parker stopped at the opposite end of the bar underneath the teralingua head and turned, a half smile tilting his palemouth.
I had to get us out of here, but I had no idea what would happen if Mase crossed the lightning to leave. He gazed at it as if he wanted to devour it. Because it was associated with Parker, a drug baron, it must’ve had something to do with Mase’s former life as a drug addict, but the way he looked at it hinted that former hadn’t been all that longago.
Behind the lightning, one of Parker’s men exhaled a puff of steam, but nothing dangled from his fingertips or lips to indicate he was smoking anything. He shivered and glanced behind him, rubbing the back of hisneck.
Mase’s unsteady breaths caught in the air too. A rush of goosebumps swept over my skin, dragging a sense of dread along withit.
Footsteps pounded outside, louder than Parker’s and all his men had been, shaking the bar’s foundation. A shapeless mass loomed behind the man in the doorway, bigger,taller.
Winter air burned through my lungs with my next inhale, and I held it, completelyfrozen.
The man in front of the door shivered violently and threw himself into the corner of the bar, glancing behind him as if he’d just been touched by death. Because hehad.
Sharp talons scraped the floor as the shape entered. Black scales and white hair towered up to the ceiling. Jagged teeth curved from its extended snout, and its four arms were tipped with lethal claws, the whole terrifying form as solid assmoke.
Glowing green eyes cut across the room, past Parker and his oblivious crew, and connected withmine.
A Saelisghost.
Here.
Now.
Forme.
With a mighty howl that dropped my stomach to my heels, itcharged.
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Ishriveledinto the wall and pawed at the pocket of my sweatshirt, grasping for iron. I had this ghost magnet thing down. I’d passed ghosts through me before, but even so, experience didn’t make it any less frightening as the Saelis stomped towardme.
“Come in,” I whispered as softly as Icould.
The bar blurred behind a black cloud of incoming smoke. It funneled into my mouth, clawing at my throat andtongue.
Images flashed through my head of random events in this Saelis’s life, but mostly I felt what it felt—a desperate, raw hunger for the parasite inside me. It pinched my organs out of its way and tore at them with ghostly claws for a taste. I clenched my teeth against the rippingpain.
My fingers still poked around my pockets for an iron cube, but it felt like they stabbed into nothing but darkness. I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from screaming so I wouldn't give us away. Icouldn’tgive us away. Fogged, black fingers wafted over the inside of my eyes and crowded everything else out, except the pain, ripping and shredding andshifting.
Hidden in the corner of my pocket, my fingertips finally touched iron. Somehow I curled them around the cube while the rest of my body jerked and twisted. The albino alien tightened her fist around my sweatshirt, keeping me invisible, but I knew I was making a racket even though I couldn’t helpit.
I brought the iron to my mouth, but before the metal touched my tongue, the ghost scraped at the back of my throat. Scrambling wildly. Climbingout.
The dark cloud over my vision cleared some. Black smoke roiled in front of me, clinging to my mouth, half in, half out. With a violent rush, it burst out all the way. Then, standing in front of me, was the Saelis ghost who couldn’t, or didn’t want to, come in. Even though I had invited it. What hadchanged?
Solid and not at the same time, it thrust out a hand. With a frustrated roar, it ripped me away from the albino alien, from the safety of hertouch.
My body soared. And then I landed. One of the unconscious bodies that littered the bar softened half of my fall. My head smashed against something sharp, like an elbow. Grit billowed up around me from the force like broken angel wings splintered with glass shards and fallen furniture pieces. Pain cracked through my hip one nerve at atime.
Claws clicked toward me at top speed. I didn’t have time for pain. I posted my hands underneath me and scrambled away from the fury of the oncoming ghost in a crabwalk. Toward Parker and hismen.
Behind me, guns slid from sheaths and safetiesclicked.
Click, click,click.
I unfurled my clenched fist while pieces of glass dripped from my hand and touched the iron to mytongue.
