The predators burst up through the opening in the floor just as a ribbon zipped over my head and burst into a huge bubble of green flame.
There was no keening this time, no death cries. The drapes died suddenly and violently.
When the green flames faded, I saw the predators swirling around the opening—close enough that I could have rolled over and slapped one—but not coming through. Then the floor reappeared and became solid, sealing over the opening.
Thick wads of gray sludge covered the baseboard and wall. Damn if we hadn’t just found a way to kill the drapes without letting more into our world. I saw Annalise pluck another green ribbon from her vest. It was her last one.
“Boss, don’t kill the ones who can turn invisible.”
“He didn’t look invisible to me.” Police sirens grew louder. “Remember what I said about the police.”
She stepped onto the hall floor, one hand on the banister just in case the portal reopened. It didn’t. I stepped out behind her. Wally stood at the end of the hall, with an open door behind him that led to the backyard. The front of his shirt was torn, and his swollen belly had burst open. I could see dark, wet things moving inside.
He held Lino Vela beside him. Lino looked at me, gasping for air. He was so freaked out that any of us could have controlled him with a gentle word. At the edge of the room stood Summer and Fidel, and they looked just as shaken and helpless as Lino. Flickering light from a fire I couldn’t see played against their faces.
“This guy,” Wally said, his voice quavering a little, “can help us find the Book of Oceans. We can make a deal. Your people are looking for it, too, and—”
Annalise lowered her shoulder and ran through the gray sludge at him.
Summer and Fidel vanished.
Wally shoved Lino in front of him. “Listen! Wait!” he said, but that wasn’t going to stop Annalise. Lino cringed.
“Boss!” I shouted, moving toward her, but it was too late. She threw a ribbon into the room. A greenish black tentacle whipped out of the open wound in Wally’s gut and slapped Lino toward it.
Lino and the ribbon touched. For an instant, green fire lit his terrified expression. He didn’t scream. He didn’t have time.
Wally, though, screamed high and loud. Annalise charged into the room just as the flames died. Lino’s smoking bones hadn’t even had time to fall to the floor before she knocked them around the room.
I followed. Wally stumbled and fell onto his side. He raised his left hand to protect himself; everything from the middle of his forearm to the tips of his fingers had burned down to a stiff, gleaming, resinous bone.
Annalise grabbed him just above the elbow and stomped on his thigh.
His leg flattened and buckled. Wally shrieked, and the sound of it stopped me in my tracks. I stood in the doorway, horror-struck at the noise he was making. Goose bumps ran down my back, and I flushed with shame. I hated Wally, but no man should ever be reduced to making a sound like that.
Annalise, her face utterly blank, like that of a skilled worker with a complicated job, twisted Wally’s burned arm like a chicken wing and tore it off at the shoulder.
There was no blood for some reason, but I could see the awful knobby end of Wally’s upper-arm bone. Annalise crammed that raw bone into his open, screaming mouth.
I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t want to see the breaking teeth or the way she nearly pushed the bone out the back of his head. This was her work. I didn’t want to see any more, but I couldn’t look away, either.
This was who we were.
Something greenish black inside Wally’s body lashed out at Annalise, but she caught it with her other hand. More tentacles flashed out at her, battering her and knocking her away, but she had hold of her victim and there was no way she’d give up now.
God, she was winning.
The strange orange flow erupted out of him, and Annalise was thrown back and her body curled to the side as though gravity was bending around her. The distorted flow suddenly changed direction, shredding the tentacle in her hand.
Annalise staggered. The torn flesh on Wally’s belly opened again, showing more of the formless, writhing thing inside him. A limb flashed out, slapping Annalise away. The flowing orange distortion struck her again, lifting her off her feet and blasting her into the living room.
I rushed after her to keep her in view. She flew in a straight line, smashed through the plate-glass window, and passed through the greenery out of sight.
Damn. I ran toward her as though she had me on a leash. I had to make sure she hadn’t been turned inside out or something.
She lay tangled in the bushes by the front gate, and two LAPD uniforms struggled toward her, guns drawn. Her expression was furious and frustrated.
A cop turned toward the house, and I ducked out of sight.
Wally was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I ran into the kitchen. Ty, Summer, and Fidel were gone, and so was Wally. Had they carried him away? I doubted it. They wouldn’t have stuck around for the whole of that beating.
Lino Vela was still here—his bones were all over the floor. And there was his coffee thermos, and the little statue that Wally had wanted so badly. A burning piece of table lay against the wall, and there was a small fire on the wooden counter. Goose bumps ran down my back as I went near it, but it wasn’t spreading like the fire that had burned me a few days earlier. No polyester.
I picked up the statue. The urge to return it to the shelf was strong, even though the shelf didn’t exist anymore.
Someone pounded on the front door. The cops were about to bust in, and here I was standing in a ruined house beside a dead man’s bones. Even better, Lino’s gun lay in the corner.
I picked it up and fired two shots into the floor. The pounding changed to cursing and retreating voices. That may have bought me a few seconds, but when the cops came, they were going to come in force.
The compulsion to put the statue down was strong. Instead, I laid the edge of my ghost knife against the cut part of the man’s neck.
And damn if that wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. The enchantment on the statue demanded that I ignore it, but the ghost knife cut right through all that. The ghost knife wanted to cut the statue. I slid it through the metal, and the head fell, thunking to the ground.
I picked up the head—there was nothing usual about it—and set it on the counter. On the statue, there was a tiny hole on the cut stump of the neck.
It was small, less than half the size of the mouth of a soda straw. I angled it toward the window, hoping daylight might show a sliver of paper inside, and something blue spilled out.
The liquid dangled from the statue like a long, thin line of mucus. I righted the figurine and the stream zipped back up into the opening. Damn. What was that?
I grabbed Lino’s coffee thermos off the floor and spun the lid off.
The liquid poured out of the statue in a thin, milky-blue stream. I tossed the statue away, and the spell’s effects faded. The compulsion had been laid on the statue, not on this strange fluid. In fact, there was an odd feeling to the liquid—an absence, almost, as though it wasn’t really there.
Whatever. I twisted the lid on tight. Time to go.
I snatched a big bottle of corn oil off the counter and splashed it onto the floor, then onto the hall carpet. In the other room, the phone rang. I tossed the oil onto the floor beside the spreading fire. Then I grabbed an antique lantern off the floor and smashed it against the burning wood. Firelight chased me out the back door.
No one shouted, “FREEZE! POLICE!” I vaulted over the back fence into the next yard. A huge brown mastiff raised his head to look at me, then lowered it again. It was too damn hot to bark.