Page 12 of A Shade of Myself
“I just don’t want him living with me again,” my best friend said.
I wagged a finger. “Liar. You loooove your baby.”
Jude arched an eyebrow. “You want to go down this road?”
Hell no. “Stop nattering. I’m trying to spot rogue dybbuks.” Head high, I marched up the trail to the sound of the women’s laughter.
Shockingly, the hike got worse. I’m not sure why I was surprised since it was called the Grouse Grind and not the Grouse Scenic Stroll. Not only was the trail dybbuk-free thus far, I was so sweat-soaked in the cool mountain air that my teeth chattered like one of those wind-up novelty pairs. Whimpering may have been involved.
I even stopped counting people going faster than me as a means of distraction because I’d run out of oxygen to spare for math. Okay, fine. After a woman with a toddler strapped to her back overtook me, I got too depressed, contemplating curling into the fetal position and waiting until I was eaten by bears.
I’d just taken another break to scarf down my last protein bar when nausea slapped me hard, a tremor racking me from head to toe. For a split second, I thought my body was giving out for good and exploding from the inside, but then my magic came awake like a lion from a nap in the sun, sniffing prey.
Calling out for Jude and Ava up ahead to wait, I carefully checked for dybbuks, but there were none in sight. I did, however, smell rotting onions—a putrid, eye-watering intensity that clogged my nostrils.
Gehenna’s signature perfume.
“Problem?” Ava cautiously approached, Jude right behind her.
The disgusting stench grew stronger and I plugged my nose. “You don’t smell that?”
My friends shook their heads.
I didn’t see anything odd, but my magic tingled insistently, so I let Delilah loose. The second my shadow animated, I slid into her green overlay vision of the world.
A dinner plate–sized circle at eye level shimmered as if rippling off hot concrete even though the day was overcast.
The closer I got to it, the more my stomach roiled, the hairs on the back of my neck lifting and my skin prickling at the sense of an abomination I had to destroy. I couldn’t get within five feet of it without wanting to scratch my skin off.
“This must be how they’re coming through.” I backed up. “Either of you ever heard of, I don’t know, a thin spot or tear or something?” It would have been nice to have Laurent here with me to confer on this.
“I don’t know about a thin spot,” Jude said, “but dybbuks are drawn to crowded places. That’s why small towns or villages don’t tend to have a problem with them.” She glanced up and down the trail. “This place is busy, but comparatively speaking, it’s hardly downtown Tokyo.”
“Vancouver isn’t either.” Ava gave a wry smile. “I heard once there are…” She snapped her fingers, searching for the thought. “Imagine that dybbuks get from Gehenna to earth via different doors. For some reason, these doors open in certain places more often, because of a phenomenon similar to ley lines, but not exactly.”
“Vancouver is a Hellmouth? Great.” I made a frustrated noise and walked around the circle, starting at another belch of rotting onion, which preceded the circle ripping open.
Three pulsing crimson shapes flecked with a sickly gray color shot out of the tear on a plume of jagged fog.
I gasped, my shadow scythe instantly in my hand, and jumped in front of my friends. “Mut!”
My friends couldn’t see dybbuks, but they saw my weapon. Ava screamed and ducked, but Jude froze, drained of all color.
The dybbuks ping-ponged off a party of hikers traipsing past. Luckily, they were Sapiens and therefore safe from enthrallment, but Ava and Jude weren’t.
“What’s happening?” Jude said in a tremulous voice.
I left Delilah to cover them, since she only wielded the scythe when vamps were involved.
“Stay back.” Leaping up the stairs, I pushed past my burning hamstrings and swung the weapon. I nailed two of the dybbuks, killing them, but the third one veered off back down the trail. Weapon aloft, I ran after it, rounding a corner in time to spy the dybbuk flying into a young man. I sprinted for him and slammed the scythe into his shadow, spraying dirt.
He pushed me back a few steps and removed an earbud. “Hey, lady. No hiking back down the trail.”
It registered that he didn’t seem perturbed by my weapon, but I was focused on the angry ghost that had sprung out of the man again. Narrowing my eyes, I impaled the crimson phantom, cleaving it in half. It drained of all color and imploded, dead.
The man heaved a sigh. “You shouldn’t do the Grind when high. Whatever you’re on might be fun, but take it to the dance floor, not the mountain.”
My mouth fell open. “Huh?”
