Released (The Eternal Balance #3)(24)
“Girl?” he stammered. It was hard to make him out over the fake screams and manufactured otherworldly howling. “What girl?”
I dislodged Jax’s hand and wedged myself between them while trying to push away the creepy chills skittering up and down my spine. “I saw her here last week,” I lied. “I kind of have a crush. I wanted to get her number.”
The guy looked from me to Jax, eyebrows high.
“Him? He’s my brother. Here for moral support.”
He shrugged. “Has to be Van. She’s the only girl who works at the house,” he yelled over the noise. “But you’re wasting your time. She’s a cock jockey.” With a grin, he added, “Just ask our manager, Paul.”
Nice. Asshole. “Oh. Well, can’t hurt to try. Point me in the right direction?”
He pointed to the hallway on our right and pulled his hockey mask back into place. With one last once-over, he shuffled into the dark, and I turned to Azi. “Shall we see—”
Another scream split the air, but this one was different. It was real. Not too surprising in a place like this, but the fierce growling and ensuing sounds of chaos were. Several other people screamed, and something crashed to the ground.
“A dog,” a man’s voice shouted. “There’s a real dog in here!”
“This way,” another called. It sounded like our Jason wannabe. “The exit is around that corner. Everyone out!”
Another scream, this one from a girl. I knew that voice! “Crap,” I said, forcing my feet into motion. “That’s her.”
It didn’t take us long to find her. When we rounded the second corner into a room made up to look like a bedroom massacre scene, she was standing with her back against the far wall. In front of her, with his back to us, was what sort of looked like a tall man. Something about his shape and the way he held himself, though, gave me the impression that he wasn’t quite a man.
Another giveaway was the smell, similar to the carnivus in the alley, with an underlying tone of decay. He wore a black suit that had seen better days. The left sleeve was shredded, the ends tattered and frayed, as was the back hem. His feet were pale and bare, and it almost looked like there were several toes missing from the left one.
“Tracker,” Azi said with a growl as it came up beside me.
The man—who was, in fact, not a man—turned. Its face was long and thin with sharply protruding cheek bones and nearly translucent skin. Its super thin lips had a cobalt tint which almost complimented the strange crystalline blue of its eyes.
The thing’s mouth twitched. “Aziraaaak.”
“Be gone,” Azi said. It took a step closer, every muscle in Jax’s body tensing. “What you seek belongs to me. You are done here.”
The infamous Tracker’s lips twitched. “I aaaam here to do aaaa job. You will not staaaand in my waaaay.” It turned back to the girl. “If the humaaaan does not give the stone freely, I will teaaaar it aaaapaaaart.”
The girl’s expression changed. Instead of the tightly drawn brow, now there was an easy glare of confidence. The slight tremble I’d noticed when we walked in had become squared shoulders and a strong frame. Her lips hitched upward in the right hand corner, accentuating a small dimple, and as she cocked her head to the left, she snickered. “Wanna bet?”
A bright flash blinded me for a moment, and Azi screamed. I thought the Tracker had done something, but as my vision returned, I saw the demon racing forward, toward the Tracker. He reached it as the thing’s body hit the ground.
“I appreciate the help, but I had it under control,” the girl said. She stepped over the fallen monster, giving it a good, hard kick for solid measure.
Azi growled something I couldn’t quite hear and jumped up. “You foolish little girl. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Her lips twisted into a sly smile. “Nope,” she replied. “But I know exactly what I’m gonna do.”
She brought her hand up and waved it in a wide circle in front of us as her lips began to move. I couldn’t hear her, and I realized I didn’t care. Whatever it was she was whispering didn’t matter, because I was suddenly so damn tired.
The room in front of me grew hazy. I heard Jax’s voice grumble something, followed by a soft thud. Then, as they say in Hollywood, everything faded to black.
Chapter Eleven
Azirak/Jax
“What the hell just happened?” One minute I was standing next to Sam in the Haunted House, the next I was back in the white room.
“The girl is a witch,” Azi said, the demon’s smoky presence churning angrily on the other side of the room. “She cast a spell.”
“Sam?”
“I imagine she is as we are. Asleep on the floor of the Haunted House.”
“What about that thing?” How the f*ck could the demon be so calm? We were both lying there, helpless.
“That thing is called a Tracker, and it is not a threat at the moment. But thanks to the witch, if we do not wake soon, it will be an issue.”
“So it’s not dead?” The thought of Sam lying unconscious while the Tracker was still out there with her made me feel even more useless than I had minutes ago.
“There is only one way to kill the Tracker—and that was not it. All the witch did was complicate things.”