Page 135 of The Shade of Things
The arm was joined by a second one and then a fuzzy torso. I’d have laughed at its adorableness were I not now hanging upside down, held by my ankle.
While cloaked.
My magic swirled down my arm into a scythe, but I shut it down because I needed this demon alive. I madly toed off my runner, freeing my foot and landing awkwardly on my shoulder.
The demon’s eyes blinked open from the center of its fur. Had the wind not been knocked out of me, I’d have laughed because it reminded me of Gossamer, the monster from the Bugs Bunny cartoons.
I scrambled to my feet, hurried up the ladder, and popped myself into the chute, my fingers curled around the top so I could watch.
The monster grew and grew, expanding out and up until its fur brushed the top of the dome, its eyes tiny pinpricks of white. It cracked its jaw from side to side, then let out a sulfurous belch that shook the slide.
I hung there, hidden, my eyes watering from the stench, but wildly curious to see what it did next.
The demon’s lower jaw dropped, hitting the ground.
I looked into its gaping maw and shivered. My brain kept trying to see something, a shadow, a glimpse of a lighter patch, but there was nothing. Not darkness, not some cosmic void, simply an absence of all things.
The swings disappeared, followed by the light towers and the grass. Not eaten, not sucked inside the demon, just gone as he pointed his mouth their way.
Something wet dripped inside my skull and the wooden platform attached to the slide disappeared, causing the chute to tumble down.
I pushed off as hard as I could, the plastic tube vanishing behind me. Sweating in terror gave me an extra boost of speed, and I made it out alive. I shot into the room that the dybbuk had attacked us in on my ass, breathing heavily, and clutching my invisibility mesh around me like a security blanket.
Clea had given me a demonic devourer. What a product!
If I’d stayed a second longer, would I have ceased to exist in one fell swoop or would my innards have dissolved into mush? I touched a hand to my head, feeling woozy, but not like my brain was melting anymore.
I was too shaky to stand up, but I wasn’t safe here. The devourer wouldn’t get me out in the real world, but a member of the Consortium could enter at any moment, and I didn’t have it in me to remain cloaked much longer. I used a chair to push to my feet.
Was that what Clea meant by it being self-cleaning? The demon would devour itself at the end the same way it devoured the rest of this demon space leaving no trace of anything?
Motion from the tabletop model caught my eye. The playground, the high school, and the nightclub were all gone. A fog rolled over the model toward the downtown core, leaving nothing but the bare table underneath in its wake.
I shuffled closer, careful not to touch it, yet watching in fascination.
It took less than a minute for the entire model to be devoured. All that was left were the yellow letters of the starting line reading “Can you survive the Human Race?”
Like a taunt.
The fog whipped into a whirlpool, funneling tighter and faster and then winked out.
An alarm blared and heavy footsteps thundered over my head.
I dove under the table, the shadows rippling outward like a warm, shallow pond, and then falling off me like droplets when I landed in the KH. Uncaring of the rough cave floor, I rolled onto my back and laughed. Ever since I’d kept my parents’ involvement in Tatiana’s car accident from her I’d felt off, like I was keeping track of a litany of lies and who knew what truth.
This victory on the heels of all those secrets coming out—the good, the bad, and the ugly—filled me with a lightness. I swear I could float.
“What’s funny?” Pyotr stood above me with his hands on his hips.
“Vacations are boring.” I stood up.
“You’re weird.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Grabbing a sock, I waltzed out the narrow green door, but I didn’t go home. I’d had my pity party, been a zombie, and now I’d returned from the dead.
I stepped into Laurent’s living room. “Hi. Hope it’s okay that I just dropped by.”
“Hey.” He put aside the book he’d been reading and came over to me. “It’s done already?”
