My shoulders slumped and I held my middle as I exchanged a look with Ivy across the tables, knowing what was going to happen next. We could do nothing but watch as Ku'Sox strode forward, his hand outstretched. The Were shook his head in warning, grimaced, lowered the weapon, pointed, and pulled the trigger. I jerked as the bullet exploded the wall behind the demon, people screaming as the splinters of wood and plaster went everywhere.
The manager's mouth opened, and Ku'Sox yanked the gun from him, not angry at all, but curious. "Please make it fast, God," I whispered. I couldn't stop this. I couldn't stop it!
"It works like this?" Ku'Sox said, turning the gun around and blowing a hole in the man's chest.
I couldn't tell if the noise or the color came first: the blood and tiny bits of bone coating the register in a speckled red wash of thunderous noise. People screamed, and the Were looked down at the hole in his chest in shock. Red bubbles frothed from his lips as he tried to speak. Then he dropped to his knees and fell forward into a puddle of his own broken insides.
It was ugly, and I leaned against the wall as the rising fear hit me along with the stench of gunpowder and hot metal. I wished this had never happened, that I'd never agreed to help Trent, that I'd never, ever gone to the library two years ago looking for a way to do whatever it was I'd been hoping to do.
I didn't even remember anymore. Whatever it was, it had been a mistake.
Shutting my eyes wasn't making it go away, though, and I opened them to find Pierce standing resolutely on a table, his moving fingers wreathed in blackness as his whispered Latin buzzed through my brain, an echo of his rising curse. I turned to the exits, seeing that everyone had gotten out but the few collapsed in fear. "Vivian!" I shouted, seeing her not panicking, but not knowing what to do, either. "Get them out of here!"
Thank God Jenks is gone. I don't want him to see what I do next.
"What a waste," Ku'Sox said as he looked at the rifle in his hands, then tossed it from him to clatter across a table. "It killed you far too quickly." Scanning the nearby tables, he found a woman in white, sobbing, curled into a ball and spending her five minutes in hell.
"You're still alive, though," he said, and the woman shrieked as he plucked her from under the table. "I'll eat you instead," he said, and the woman came to life as he held her up, ignoring her clawing hands as he pulled her closer, his jaw opening to fix on her throat.
It was like a demented kiss, and the woman had one breath to scream-a terrifying shriek of pain and fear-of shock at what was happening. And then he pulled her from him with a sudden jerk, his face bloody and a two- pound gap of flesh in the woman's neck. She still struggled though her head flopped at an impossible angle, bits of bloody froth spraying from her torn throat as she tried to scream, her lungs still working though her voice box was now inside Ku'Sox.
I wanted to turn away, but I couldn't. I wanted to run, to leave it for someone else to deal with, but I couldn't. It was me or no one.
"Oh my God," Vivian said, and I jumped when I realized she was next to me, clutching my arm. I swallowed my bile down before I emptied my stomach. "This is why I know how to do black magic," I whispered.
Vivian looked at me as Ku'Sox finally ate enough of the woman to kill her. Vivian's eyes were wide, her mind not yet having found a way to believe what her eyes were telling her.
"Even dead vamps remember pity," Ivy said, coming up on my other side.
"He-he...," Vivian stammered, white faced and unable to say it.
"You think I know black magic for kicks?" I said harshly. "I'm trying to survive." I shoved the sight of a demon in a silver suit biting a woman's throat out to the back of my brain to wake me in a cold sweat later. What can I do? I thought as I found Pierce throwing up behind a table. Burn him? Like the curse I almost did in the garden? Could Pierce, Vivian, and I kill a demon together? My heart pounded, and I took a step forward, feeling Ivy's hand take my bicep. I doubted we could kill him, but it was all I had. Killing Ku'Sox wasn't murder, it was survival. And if it made me a black witch, then so be it.
My memory flicked back to Pierce crouched over Al and ready to end the demon's life for his freedom. Maybe there was no difference between us after all, and the reason I was mad at Pierce was because I was seeing reflections of myself in him, and I didn't like it.
Ku'Sox looked to the ceiling as a cascade of red-tinted ever-after washed over him, rebounding at the outermost point of his aura and soaking back into him. Tucking the dead woman under his arm, he headed for the door. I could hear sirens out there, and my heart hammered. Black craft or not, I couldn't let him leave.
"Are we letting him go?" Pierce shouted, angry as he wiped his mouth and came out from behind the table.
I glanced at Ivy to tell her we weren't, then Vivian, who still didn't understand the reality of demons. "Yep," I lied, leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest and rocking back on one foot. "This is not my problem."
"What?" Vivian said, and I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. "You can't let him walk out of here! He just killed two people!" she raged, her anger at her own naivete, her fear, and her disbelief finding an easy scapegoat in me.
I should have told her that this was all Trent's fault, but I held my tongue as Ivy slinked away to take up a defensive position. "What do you want me to do, Ms. Coven Member? You're telling me to do black magic? Huh? 'Cause that's the only thing that he's going to notice!"
She licked her lips, clearly at war with herself. Ku'Sox, though, was almost to the door.
"He'll notice this," Pierce said, and then, pulling on the line so heavily even Ku'Sox felt it, he threw a spell. Vivian gasped as it flew the distance, burning the very air as it passed. Ku'Sox spun, bouncing it back at us with a quickly instigated bubble.
"Down!" I shouted, and I dropped to the floor. The curse hit the stage, and the amp exploded, sending sparkles of ozone over us. "Damn it, Pierce! Watch what you're doing!"
"Mmmm," Ku'Sox said as he started back in our direction. "Curious accent to your spell work. Not at all like hers. Who taught you?"
"We can't stop him!" Vivian exclaimed.
"Duh," I said, trying to decide if Vivian was scared enough yet. If I could convince her that someone needed to know black magic, they might let me keep my mind when they shoved me back in Alcatraz. Sort of a plan B in case demons came visiting again.
Pierce jumped onto a table, shouting Latin, and seeing that he had Ku'Sox's attention, I pulled Ivy and Vivian to me. "I have an idea," I said, silently thanking God that Pierce was here-even if he was a black witch. I needed him. Al was right.
Vivian hesitated, but it was Ivy who said, "Like the fairies?"
I nodded, even as my heart seemed to clench. I was going to burn Ku'Sox-and I wasn't going to stop the curse. "Vivian, we need your help." Her face became more frightened, and I looked at Pierce, winding up and throwing another curse at Ku'Sox. Okay, the man not only knew what he was doing, but he looked good doing it.
Pierce followed the first charm with a second, scoring on the demon when Ku'Sox didn't see the one hidden behind it. A black sticky something coated Ku'Sox, and the demon dropped the dead woman to claw his way out of the green aura covering him.
"A casting," I said, watching Pierce flick his hair back as he caught his breath. "We have to do a casting. I doubt it will kill him, but he might go somewhere else to lick his wounds. Pierce?"
His gaze never leaving the demon, Pierce raised his hand in acknowledgment.
My heart gave a hard pound. Ivy. She'd be safe, but she'd have to stay with me.
"That's-" Vivian began to say, starting to look aghast again, and I wondered what it was going to take to convince her.
"Casting isn't illegal," I interrupted her. "Just the curse. And I'll twist it, not you."
"Down!" Pierce yelled, and I dropped, yanking Vivian with me and snapping a protection circle over us. A red-tinted ball of death exploded behind us, and the smoke alarm started going off. Outside, I could hear sirens. "We need a decision here!" Ivy said, looking shaken.
"I can't do a black curse!" Vivian babbled, the last of the professional young woman dropping away as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. "I'm coven!"
"Bloody hell paste!" Ku'Sox was shouting, still not altogether out of Pierce's last spell.
"All you need to do is hold the inner protection circle against all creation," Pierce said, his blue eyes sharp with an old anger at the reluctance of uptight women. "You don't need to sully yourself-we'll do that."
I dropped my bubble so Pierce could join us, and he took a symbolic step forward. He knew the spell I wanted to use. "My outer circle won't hold him long. Pierce, you'll have to be quick in the casting. If he breaks it, the curse will incinerate half of Vegas."
Ivy looked scared. "Get it right, witches."
"'Scuse me," Pierce said with a grunt, throwing another ball of goo at Ku'Sox.
This time, Ku'Sox absorbed it, the black mass dissolving in a cascade of sparkles. He had mastered the countercurse. We had to work fast. "I'm of a mind to see if you're as grand as you think you are," Pierce said to me, and I smirked back.
"Same here," I said, exhilarated even as I was scared to death. "Okay! Let's do this!"
"Look out!" Vivian shouted, and I jerked as Ku'Sox backhanded Pierce into Ivy. They slid across the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, the spell that Pierce had begun fizzling in a sparkle of green and red. Crap! When had he gotten that close?