Once we were outside and headed for the car, I clicked the key fob and popped open the trunk.
“Tell me you didn’t buy another guitar,” Sybil said as we neared the car.
“You’re a musician?” Hills asked, coming up from behind me and grabbing me around my waist. She pushed the front of her body against my back and looked over my shoulder at the guitar case in the trunk.
Despite being a ridiculous question to ask someone with a guitar in his trunk, I nodded and opened the case, ready to show off my new six-stringed friend.
Before I could do that, Hills squealed, and I smelled the stench of stale beer right before someone hefted my body into the air and slammed me down hard onto the parking lot asphalt.
Chapter 14
WHEN MY FACE HIT the parking lot, it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.
I sprang to my feet, worried about Sybil and Hills, but they were both gone. Maybe they’d been kidnapped, but that didn’t seem likely. Sybil wasn’t the kind of demon who was easily made to do something against her will. The only other possible scenario I could think of was they had run away and left me alone to face my attackers. Maybe Sybil was testing me, wanting me to prove to her I was the real John. Or maybe it was just the kind of shit demons did to each other.
Either way, I felt angry and abandoned. When I turned to face the guy who’d just tossed me, I recognized him and his sunglasses from the bar. His jewelry glistened in the light of the parking lot overhead lamps as he snarled at me.
One of his two friends was as big as a professional football player, and he stepped to me and took a swing with a fist the size of my head. Before I knew what was happening, I’d moved out of the way faster than should have been possible. Mr. Muscles overextended his punch, tripped, and face-planted into the pavement.
I looked back at the guy wearing the sunglasses and his remaining pet mountain and I smiled.
I’d never been a great fighter, but I had a feeling that was about to change. John’s body was a serious upgrade from the one I’d been stuck with all of my life. I flexed my muscles and prepared to go into full-on demon attack mode.
At least that was my plan before the guy with the sunglasses landed a fist in my stomach that bent me in half and sent me to the ground puking up mozzarella sticks and french fries.
Before I could get back to my feet, all three of them started kicking me and stomping on my back. Not only was I hurting—I was also confused and not very impressed with my so-called demonic powers.
With no better plan, I covered my head and waited out their onslaught. They must have worn themselves out pounding me into the asphalt, because instead of going in for the kill, they backed away, breathing hard and giving me time to get to my feet.
“You’re making a big mistake,” I said, hearing how empty my words sounded.
Mr. Sunglasses touched a circular silver pendant hanging from around his neck with a stylized face in the middle of it that was sticking its tongue out—a monster as best I could tell—maybe even a demon. He smiled at me, arrogant in his safety while his two gigantic friends stood on either side of him.
“I have a message from Marco,” he said in a distant voice. “Ashburn is our town. Your services are no longer required.”
I spit blood onto the ground and tried to ignore the fact that it was black.
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said, coughing and forcing myself to take a deep breath. “If you can get me out of this piece of shit suburb, I’ll leave right now, and you can have it all to yourself.”
“You have been warned,” he said, before he signaled his two friends to attack.
As they closed in, I thought about making a break for it—about taking off as fast as I could and hoping none of them were in the running club.
Out of nowhere, the opening guitar riff from Footloose wormed its way into my head and started playing on repeat. Don’t ask me why. Maybe because I felt like the spiky-haired kid in the movie who wanted to get away from his small-town blues. Or maybe it was because Footloose was the perfect music for a dance—or a fight.
While I was jamming along with Kenny Loggins in my head, one of the big guys reached out to grab me, and on instinct, I tried to push him away.
When my open hand touched his chest, it was like receiving the most intense static shock you could imagine. After a huge pop, my essence poured out of me like water and into my attacker’s body.
For a second, I was disoriented as hell. I’d spent all day getting used to John’s body, and now I had to deal with someone else’s. The difference this time was that the person who owned the body was still in there with me. I could hear what he was thinking and see his thoughts and memories like they were my own. It turns out, his name was Paul, and Paul was more than a little freaked out that I had taken over.
I looked through his eyes, down at John’s body sprawled out on the pavement. Without my soul to animate it, John’s shell was useless. But Paul’s human body was just what I needed as Mr. Muscles bore down on top of me. His name was Buddy, and before I knew what was happening, I’d made use of Paul’s highly developed fighting instincts and slammed a muscled forearm into Buddy’s windpipe.
Good ol’ Buddy fell to the ground, cursing and screaming, confused about why his friend had just clotheslined him.
Mr. Sunglasses’ name was Miguel, and he wasn’t worried one bit about Paul or Buddy’s safety. Instead, he came at me with a wide-bladed wooden sword that was studded with razor-sharp black stones. Paul’s body reacted with the speed of a trained fighter, but it wasn’t fast enough to fully dodge Miguel’s swing. When the wooden sword sliced into Paul’s right leg, Paul’s spirit bellowed in agony. But even though his blood was spewing onto the parking lot, I didn’t feel a thing.
Call me a jerk, but I really didn’t care about what happened to Paul. With the freedom of recklessness that comes from risking someone else’s body, I lunged at Miguel and tried to overwhelm him with pure force.
I backed him up across the parking lot, but I made a wrong move, and Miguel spun me around and threw me into the rear gate of a Ford F150 truck. I could hear Paul scream in my head as his face bashed into the vehicle. But I still felt fine, so I pushed away from the truck and went for Miguel again.
The only problem was that Miguel must have figured out what was going on, because he started moving straight for John’s body.
I closed half the distance between us with two lumbering steps, but I had no idea what I was going to do once I caught him. I needed a weapon, but nothing in the parking lot seemed a fair match for Miguel’s brutal sword.
Over to my right, I saw the open trunk of the Audi. I dashed over to it, pulled up the floor of the trunk where the spare tire was, but couldn’t find a crowbar. And I was out of time. The only thing of any substance I could swing was my brand-new guitar.
I glanced over in desperation as Miguel neared John’s body.
Without thinking about it, I lifted the guitar from its case—its wood cool in Paul’s beefy hand. I held it by its neck like a club and bolted for Miguel.
I reached him just as he raised his wooden sword above his head like he was about to chop a log in half with an axe. When I slammed the guitar into the back of Miguel’s head, it shattered into several pieces, but he dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, cradling the back of his head. Still holding what was left of the guitar neck in my clenched hand, I lashed out with a horizontal swing. When the jagged end of the guitar neck connected, blood splattered from the side of his face, covering his silver bling and showering the parking lot with blood and broken teeth. The blow knocked the sunglasses from his face, and I could finally see his wide-open, crazed eyes. He rolled away, and I followed him, ready to hit him again.
Before I could catch Miguel, Buddy tackled me, and with Paul’s leg still losing blood and not working all that well, I collapsed to the ground, pulling Buddy down with me. I tried to push him away, but he felt like dead weight on top of me, and when I
looked into his eyes, they were lifeless. When I rolled him off me, I saw that the jagged end of the guitar neck had pierced his chest.
Like I said, I’d never been much of a fighter, but I’d never been a killer either. The same as everyone else in America, I saw death all the time on TV and at the movies. I’d read about death, sung about death, and for all intents and purposes, I’d even died myself. But seeing Buddy’s lifeless body and knowing I’d been the one who made him that way hit me harder than I expected.
Through my shock, a part of me knew I still had to deal with Miguel. When I turned to look for him, he’d backed up against a car tire and was trying to get to his feet.
I grimaced and extracted the guitar neck from Buddy’s corpse, then stumbled over to Miguel.
He stopped trying to get up, frozen. Suddenly, his crazy eyes returned to normal, like a fog had been lifted from his brain, and he started to howl in pain.
“Don’t kill me, man,” he stammered as he struggled to hold it together. “I don’t even know how I got here. I swear to Santa Maria, man.”
Since my arrival in Ashburn, I’d been able to read people’s expressions like a second language. And as I peered down at Miguel trying to shield his face from me, I believed him.
Evil and hatred had dripped from him only moments ago. But now he looked like a guy who’d just woken up from a nightmare only to realize his reality was worse than his dream.
I lifted the jagged, red-stained guitar neck to Miguel’s throat, letting him know I could finish him if I wanted.
He started shaking, and a tear travelled down his ripped-up cheek.
“Why did you try to kill me?” I said. “And who the hell is Marco?”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “I don’t even know who you are.”
He looked past me at John’s crumpled body.
“Oh shit, is that John?” he said, his eyes wide open in surprise and shock. “You better hope that asshole is dead, because if he’s not, you don’t have a lot longer to live.”
I moved the edge of the jagged guitar neck away from Miguel’s throat, then turned and walked over to John’s body.
Behind me, I heard the slapping of footsteps as Miguel bounced from car to car, careening away from me into the darkness.
I knelt next to John’s body and pressed my open hand on his chest. Just like before, I felt a quick snap of static electricity before my essence poured out of one body and into the other.
Back inside John’s shell, I felt safe again—at least for the moment.
Miguel was long gone, and Buddy was still on the ground, rubbing his throat and taking heavy, rasping breaths. When Paul’s spirit reclaimed ownership of his torn and beaten body, he screamed so loud that I had to cover my ears.
Chapter 15
PAUL PASSED OUT within seconds—the pain too much for him to handle. If I’d been smarter or meaner, I would’ve woken him up to get more answers, but I was too tired to care. Instead, I wiped the bloody guitar neck with his shirt and tossed it in the trunk before starting up the engine and heading back to John and Sybil’s house.
I kept the stereo quiet as I navigated the streets of Ashburn on autopilot. Before I realized where I was, I was turning into the driveway. It had been a long and hard first day on the job, and even though I had more questions than answers, I tried to look at the positive side of things. I was still alive, my new body was strong and healthy, Ahriman’s spell was leaving my stomach in peace, and there was a comfortable bed, a hungry dog, and possibly two hot women waiting for me inside.
That put a smile on my face, but I was still annoyed about Sybil and Hills abandoning me back at the bar. Maybe it had been another one of Sybil’s tests—one where I could either prove I was really John or die in the process. But Miguel said he’d been delivering a warning from someone named Marco, which seemed to let Sybil off the hook. Even so, that still didn’t explain why she hadn’t stayed with me, and I was ready to give her a fair amount of shit as I entered the living room.
Then I saw Sybil and Hillary sitting on the couch, cuddled up, without any clothes on.
I was still angry, but not as much, because you know, forgive and forget—that’s what my dad always said.
“That took longer than I expected,” Sybil said.
She tilted her head toward the dog sitting on the floor at her feet.
“Shadow was starting to get worried about you. I hope you had a good time, at least.”
I glared at her through narrowed eyes, then shook my head. I didn’t know what the hell John did for a good time, but it seemed my definition of enjoyment was a lot different than his.
“I was hoping you would have stayed and watched,” I said, trying to guess at how John would have reacted.
Hills started rubbing Sybil’s shoulders and kissing her neck.
“I didn’t want our new friend to get hurt,” Sybil said. “Besides, watching you teach a few humans a lesson didn’t seem like it would be worth it.”
Maybe John made a habit of beating up gang bangers, but if dispatching those three was supposed to have been easy, I had a steep learning curve ahead of me.
My moment of introspection was interrupted as things between Sybil and Hills continued heating up. Both of them were stunning in their own right, but together, they were irresistible, and the looks they were shooting my way told me I was welcome to join them whenever I wished.
I started to take off my shirt, trying to get into the spirit of things. While I struggled to get my head out of the polo shirt’s neck-hole, unwanted thoughts about Miguel and the mysterious Marco entered my head. I also wanted to know why humans had been able to hurt me so easily while I was in John’s body.
“The head guy, Miguel, gave me a warning,” I said as I threw my shirt to the floor.
Sybil sighed loudly, frustrated that I was ruining her fun by talking too much. She stopped kissing Hills and held her at bay with one hand.
“What kind of warning?” Sybil asked.
“He said Marco was tired of working with me and that my services were no longer required.”
Sybil let out a burst of laughter.
“Marco and his little gang of Olmecs wouldn’t be anything without you. He’s the one providing services to you—not the other way around. We’ll talk to Marco about Miguel the next time we see him. But for now, why don’t you stop thinking and come join us.”
“He seemed like he really meant it,” I said as I unzipped and stepped out of my khakis. “But he was also pretty confused at the end of the fight. Said he didn’t know what he was doing there.”
Sybil went back to licking Hillary behind her ear, and the young woman’s moans and euphoric squeals confirmed she was enjoying the attention.
Sybil looked up from ravishing Hillary as I stepped toward the couch.
“Are you going to join us or not?” she said.
“Come on,” Hills said, with her own version of a devilish grin. “Think of it like practice for Sunday. Sybil invited me to the party, too. You Ashburn people really know how to have a good time.”
I raised my eyebrows at Sybil, but she closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Get down here, now,” she said with a sudden tone of authority in her voice.
I stepped forward in my boxer briefs and socks. Before either of the women could comment on my sexy attire, I put one knee on the couch and leaned in closer to them.
I kissed Sybil deeply and didn’t resist when Hills joined in and started kissing me too. I could still hear that voice of morality in the back of my head, telling me that I was deceiving Sybil because she thought I was John. But the voice was much quieter this time. I was just about to dive in head first when Sybil pressed her hand against Hillary’s chest and turned to me.
“The first time I saw you looking at her, I knew you wanted her,” she said with a snarl.
I backed away as razor-sharp talons grew from the ends of Sybil’s fingers and her eyes started to glow a deep crimson red.
Without breaking eye contact with me, she shoved her hand deep into Hill’s chest, then pulled it out with a wet, sucking sound. I watched as Hillary’s eyes and mouth opened wide when she saw Sybil holding her still-beating heart.
I tried to speak, but I had to close my mouth to keep from throwing up.
Hillary’s body went limp and fell to the floor, and Sybil held the young woman’s shining slick heart out to me as if she were offering a freshly picked apple.
Through the fog of my disgust, I knew she was testing me again, and that I had already failed.
Sybil stood up and shoved the heart closer to my face, insistent. I shook my head and backed away.
“I didn’t think so,” she said as she tore off a giant chunk of the organ with her fangs and chewed.
“I can explain,” I said, backing away. But before I could say anything else, Sybil was all over me, and not in a good way.
Thankfully, John’s muscle memory kicked in. My hands shot up on their own and held the she-demon at bay as she frantically tried to reach my jugular with her teeth. My vision turned into a dark tunnel with her in the middle, and in the background, Shadow barked and growled.
“Tell me who you are,” she said, spitting Hillary’s blood at me with each over-enunciated word. “Because you sure aren’t John.”
To emphasize her point, she hit me with the oldest fighting move known to women—a knee to the groin. And it hurt like hell.
I groaned, and thankfully she paused in her assault just long enough for me to lunge at her with all my strength.
Surprisingly, that turned out to be quite a lot, as I slammed into her body and sent her sailing across the living room and into the kitchen. I followed after her while Shadow whimpered and barked behind me.
Before I could close the full distance, Sybil was on her feet again and snarling mad, and that’s when I realized my big mistake. I’d sent her into the room where all the sharp things were kept. Sure enough, in a flash she grabbed two chef’s knives from the counter and threw first one and then the other at me with blinding speed.
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