Work harder! I cried as the impact sent me stumbling into the side of the sink.
My hip hit the unforgiving marble hard enough to bruise, but a moment later, my eyesight returned. That would have been a relief, except that it freed up my attacker to grab back one of my hands. Luckily, it was the bad one, and it dropped the hair pick it had snatched up before it could stab me in the eye with it.
The pick went down and my other hand came up—along with a jagged piece of the mirror that it used to slash at my jugular. Billy caught it just in time, but the hand didn’t drop. It hovered menacingly in the air in front of my face, shaking from the effort, while three different spirits battled for control.
I couldn’t tell who was winning, but I didn’t think it was us. I stared at the wickedly sharp triangle as it slowly edged closer, reflecting back to me wildly matted blond hair, a bone white face and dazed blue eyes—and the door to the dining room over my left shoulder. It was nearer now, and I was still on my feet.
I ran for it.
Halfway there, my body went into spasms and I went down. But I managed to snag a potted fern on the way. The pretty piece of blue and white delftware was on a pretty little stand, which made a pretty little crash when it tipped over and exploded against the hard tile.
And, finally, that was enough for the guards. The door burst open and three vamps rushed in, stopping in confusion when they saw nothing but a skinny white girl ripping the bathroom apart. And then it felt like something was ripping me, too, a burning, tearing sensation that mercifully only lasted a second before something shot out of me.
A wordless scream knifed through the silence, and something shivered through the air of the bathroom. The presence was oily and slick and wrong, but the smell was worse: sickly sweet, thick at the back of my throat, cloying, instantly nauseating. It sparked a feeling of primal revulsion deep in my gut, and it didn’t look like I was the only one. The vamps ducked and pulled guns, despite the fact that there was nothing for them to shoot—except for me, and they managed not to do that even when I suddenly dove through the middle of them.
I wasn’t driving, but I didn’t think the entity was, either, because I could feel every inch of hide getting burnt off as I hit the carpet in the dining area face-first. Not helping! I told Billy, just as the remnants of the mirror shot by overhead and embedded themselves in the remaining guards.
I didn’t have time to apologize, because the apartment was going nuts. A decanter set flew up from a nearby cart and slammed into the wall behind me in a wash of booze and expensive glass. The cutlery on the room service cart followed and would have skewered me if a vamp hadn’t thrown himself in the way. And then the light fixture over the dining table ripped out of the ceiling, whirling for me like a crystal tornado.
Billy flung us into the living room and behind the sofa, which didn’t help, and then rolled us under the coffee table, which did. At least for the moment. All I could see through the glass top were a few hundred crystals beating against it like an expensive hailstorm, but the view through the side was less obstructed.
I stared around, as much in disbelief as panic, because I’d never seen anything like it. Ghosts find it very difficult to move even tiny things, like a paperclip or a piece of paper. They don’t rip curtain rods off the walls or toss heavy paintings at people’s heads or throw chairs through plateglass windows.
Except for bleeding walls, it looked like something out of The Amityville Horror.
I blinked, finally making the connection. And then I squeezed Billy so hard he yelped. Cut it out!
We have to get to Pritkin, I told him quickly.
What? Why? What can he—
This isn’t a ghost.
No shit!
So it’s probably some kind of demon.
So?
So he’ll know how to drive it out!
Billy didn’t say anything, maybe because Pritkin was our resident demon expert. Or maybe because the coffee table had just splintered down the middle. He flipped us onto all fours and we scrambled out the other side, just as the chandelier burst like a crystal grenade all over the living room.
It might not have been made for this type of activity, but the dozen or so thick columns of wood flying around looked sturdier. They also looked familiar. I finally recognized one when it slammed through the piano while trying to get at me. I stared at one of the legs off the dining set and wondered why the entity would bother trashing that. We were on the other side of the apartment now, so it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
Until I saw one of the guards run past, being pursued by the equivalent of a flying stake. He dodged it—mostly—and it hit his leg instead of his heart. That was lucky, because it punched through flesh and bone as easily as the other pieces did the walls, the furniture and the flimsy sides of the piano.
The vampires who formed my bodyguard were all senior-level masters and, presumably, they’d seen a lot of crazy stuff through the years. But it didn’t look like they’d seen this. Vamps who prided themselves on strength and impassivity were running around wild-eyed, attacking the misbehaving furniture as if they thought it was the problem, o
r just trying to avoid being vamp shish kebab.
But other than for the sound of the suite imploding, it was weirdly quiet. I couldn’t talk and the vamps didn’t need to—at least not aloud. They could communicate mentally with each other as easily as I talked to Billy, something that usually gave them a hell of an advantage in a fight. Except, apparently, for right now.
But at least one guy had decided that they needed outside help, because he’d whipped out a cell phone. He was on the other side of the room from where I was hunkered down behind the baby grand, and I didn’t have control of my vocal chords, anyway. So I poked the guy who did. Tell him to call Pritkin!
And Billy tried. But between my burning throat and the mortal peril and the deafening noise, nobody paid any attention. These guys are new—I don’t even think they know who he is! Billy said frantically.
Then you’ll have to go get him.