Page 121 of Throwing Shade
Max flicked the light on to better inspect the damage to his car, bathing us in a cold bluish glow.
“Max,” I said impatiently. “The car isn’t going anywhere. Come on.”
He stood up with a huff and jabbed two fingers from his eyes to Kirk’s. The vampire’s eyeballs started to bleed. “Let’s go.”
“Finally,” I said, but as I turned around, there was a meaty thud.
Kirk had tripped Max. The vampire belly-flopped on top of the Ohrist and tore out his throat.
Max gurgled, his eyes wide under deeply creased brows. He reached for his neck, but with a raspy wet breath, his arm fell limply down, and his head lolled sideways, blood staining the concrete like a Rorschach test.
“You killed him.” I pressed my hand against my breastbone.
What kind of bullshit magic world was this anyway, and how did I seem to keep triumphing over immediate danger, trying to navigate doing as little harm as possible, only to be blindsided by something so much worse?
How would I save my best friend? Was this the start of me losing everyone who mattered?
A hot rush of rage danced through my veins and Delilah jumped into a combat-ready stance behind me thanks to the overhead bulb.
“Did that hurt? Good.” The vampire rushed me, but he wasn’t as fast as Lindsey. Right, Kirk had only been turned six months ago. However, with Max dead, the vampire’s body had returned to normal.
Ducking low, I spun away, grabbed his shadow and crumpled it. Cold darkness glooped over my left hand.
Kirk struggled to move, calling me every name in the book. Unlike Lindsey who still had very expressive facial movements even if her body was immobilized, Kirk was so paralyzed by my hold that he could barely speak.
“Shut up, you murdering piece-of-shit.” I visualized my shadow scythe but nothing happened. “Mut.” I shook out my hands, my teeth grinding from the efforts of my concentration. “Come on. Mut.”
Nada. Stupid dybbuk-specific weapon.
“I’m going to kill you, you cunt,” the vampire said.
“Language,” I tsked, and circled him. “You came to my house in the middle of the night, didn’t you? To scope things out.”
He hawked a glob of spit at my feet.
I tightened my hold on his shadows, my knuckles turning white, and the vampire gasped. “Allow me to share a hard truth with you,” I said. “I didn’t ruin your life, you did. You lied to Zev about Jude’s betrayal, and you told your mother about the golem. I could have forgiven all that but you cost me—” My voice caught. “You cost me answers and took an innocent man’s life.”
“So you’re going to kill me now?” he said. “An eye for an eye crap?”
“Isn’t that why you came for me?” I pulled out the lighter that was in my pocket and flicked it, bringing the flame closer and closer to his shadow.
His breathing turned fast and shallow.
I’d flamed Lindsey as some form of justice for killing that pizza employee, but I didn’t want to take a life tonight.
I just wanted to save one.
Maybe I was a fool.
The flame went out and I dropped his shadow. “I’m not going to kill you.”
Kirk shot me a triumphant smirk, like I’d signed my own death warrant, then his body curled around a stake that was stabbed into his heart. He looked down at it. “Shit,” he said, and dissolved into a pile of ash.
I kicked his remains. “I didn’t say you weren’t going to die.”
Yoshi picked up the stake, inclined his head at me, and disappeared into the night. I’d seen him right before I extinguished the lighter, but there’s no way he’d just arrived. If he’d acted a few minutes earlier, he would have saved Max.
What a good little minion following his boss’s directives to the letter. Spare me, kill Kirk, Max’s life was irrelevant.
