Pale Demon (The Hollows #9)(62)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Holy crap," I whispered, scared to death. I looked across the restaurant to Pierce, seeing that he was as horrified as I was. Beside him, Vivian shook, utterly terrified-she had nothing to stop a soul-eating demon. I hadn’t even known you could pull someone’s soul out like that.

Both Vivian and I jumped when a rifle shot exploded through the sound of alarms and terrified people.

Only the ringing door alarm broke the sudden silence as everyone turned to the front where a huge bear of a man, a Were by the look of it, stood in a sifting of ceiling dust. There was a rifle as big as he was in his thick hands. "All right!" he said, and I nudged Trent to get the hell out of here. "The cops are coming. You just clear out, and we’ll have no more trouble!"

It was a nice thought, but he clearly didn’t know this wasn’t your average brawl, supernatural or not. "Get the car!" I all but hissed at Trent, and finally the man started to drift back toward the kitchen. Under the ringing alarm, I could hear a woman crying. Ivy stood slowly, able to focus again apparently. She had a hand to the back of her head, and I hoped she was okay. I didn’t dare move yet. Ku’Sox seemed to have forgotten me, and I was too chicken to remind him; maybe we could all just slink out of here real quiet like…

"Stay with Trent, Jenks," I said, unable to look away from Ku’Sox, and the pixy dropped to hover in front of me.

"Don’t make me leave," he said, his fear obvious.

"What is that marvelous creation!" Ku’Sox exclaimed, looking across the restaurant at the rifle, and when he moved, people started for the door again. At least the alarm to the back door had gone quiet, and it was only people screaming this time.

My gaze flicked to Jenks, and I felt a stab of shared fear. "I don’t trust Trent. We need the car. Do this for me." My palms were sweaty, and I wiped them on my jeans. "You’ve got my back, Jenks," I said as he hesitated in frustration. "Make sure Trent brings the car. I’m counting on you."

"Damn it back to the Turn," Jenks swore, looking both pissed and scared as he darted through the swinging kitchen doors to follow Trent. A silver sparkle dripped from his path, and I prayed Trent wouldn’t cross us. Jenks would kill him.

Shaking, I turned back to the restaurant. Maybe I could salvage something.

"I don’t want no trouble," the Were manager said as he cocked the rifle again.

Maybe not.

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.