Ghost (The Halloween Boys #1) (79)
My friend gave a small smile and squeezed my arm. “Anything you need’s in the closet. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
I stopped her, pulling at her long purple robe. “Will you tell him . . . that I’m safe if he comes looking?”
The beautiful witch chuckled and softly ran a finger down Raven’s puffed chest. “Oh, he’ll come looking, alright. But yes, we’ll let him know.”
It was the most I could hope for. I didn’t want to go to the church alone, even with all the promises that it was a safe place. It was big and cold and creepy. I wanted to be here in the warmth and coziness, even with the older woman’s disapproving tone. I wearily padded to the supply closet, fitted with bottles of water, fluffy white towels, body wash, a toothbrush and . . . Raven hopped off my shoulder onto the shelf and bent down. “A dead frog, really?” I said in disgust.
The bird cackled in the same way he did as a humanoid before scooping it into his beak. “This is a magic cabinet, isn’t it? They’re real witches, aren’t they?”
Raven chucked back the limp amphibian and swallowed it whole. I almost gagged on the bottle of water I was downing in desperate gulps. “My brain’s had enough paranormal for the day. I’m taking a shower,” I said, grabbing the shower supplies.
When I emerged from the steam, scrubbed clean of the black between my upper thighs and the mud and blood from my knees, I pulled on a big T-shirt and walked to the window. The town was silent. Nothing to be seen but the flickering orange of jack-o’-lanterns and the rustling of the tops of decorative bundles of straw. My heart gripped, wanting to see him, wanting to know he was okay. It was insanity, what I’d been through. But it was also a strange sort of relief. I wasn’t crazy. This wasn’t a dissociative episode. I’d killed my stepfather and something took over his body. The same brand of something that had my core aching sore with need. Exhaustion pulled at my eyes as I fell into bed. I pulled open my eyelids long enough to see Raven perch on the windowpane. The gruesome, empty faces of the legions peppered my fading thoughts, along with the smoke my Archdemon flicked at my center . . . and then sleep pulled me under.
CHAPTER 30
Ghost
PLEASURE SUCKING
October was always the least dependable of months … full of ghosts and shadows.
Joy Fielding
The fury roiling through me was a tangible, seething darkness. Its tendrils of sacred smoke sought and slaughtered. Dragon and I had killed fifty each before realizing the legion was a hydra. The fucker was regenerating twofold for every single kill. That was a mistake on their part, because it only made my anger and bloodlust intensify.
“What the actual fuck is a hydra-fucking-legion of demons doing chasing down our girl?”
“My girl,” I corrected, trapping a group of seventy demons squealing like pigs inside my cocoon of night. I’d made a nice entrapment for Blythe, but for these fuckers, they got the full package. The smoke would debilitate them, seeping poison into their every pore and shutting their wretched bodies down from the inside out. The hydra’s cells wouldn’t see it as a killing, but as a dying off, and the bastards wouldn’t regenerate like the cockroaches they were.
A hundred now targeted Dragon, who stood surrounded in his green hellfire. “Need some help?” I yelled as I swatted away a dozen demons as if they were nothing but flies. They fell, sizzling and shrieking under my smoke. “I’m getting bored over here.”
Dragon chuckled. “Ghost gets his balls back for a night and thinks he’s better than me. Funny, dude.” Hundreds fled me and flocked to him—exactly what he wanted. Taking a deep inhale, green radiated and swirled around him, blinding and hot. Then he dropped his protective ring of fire, and everything went dark. The legion cried out in victory as they struck.
A dark shadowed beast appeared next to me as I crossed my arms, watching the show. Into the air, like a firework from Hell, shot a massive, glowing, scaled outline of pure flame. Demons tried to flee but it was too late. The dragon spun and roared, its incinerating breath burning the hundreds so thoroughly that when a new hydra demon popped up to take its fallen counterpart’s place, it crackled in death before its miserable life even began.
“Show off,” Wolf muttered.
I snorted a laugh.
Wolf’s yellow gaze shot to mine. “You’re in a good mood for someone who’s territory was just attacked by a fucking army.”
I shrugged. “You know I needed some kills. These are basically gifts.”
Wolf huffed and pawed at the ground. “You and I are going to talk. But first, I need to bite some fucking demon scum.” He shot forward, circling Onyx. “You’re not even going to shift? Pussy.”
“You’re dying to fight me in full dragon mode, aren’t you, little guy?”
“Little guy?” Wolf charged, taking the neck of a screeching black shadow and pressing his venomous maw together, paralyzing it. “Shift and let’s see how little I am.”
Dragon seared through another wild and erratic pocket of filth. “That’s your problem, Wolf. You and your kind are all brawn and teeth and no style.”
“Yeah well—”