His hands came up to grasp my shoulders, and he pulled me violently against his body. Lava-like tears fell onto the front of the red jersey, burning right through the fabric and scorching my chest. The pain freed me, clearing the fog from my mind just as his head dipped toward mine, cheeks writhing like they were about to burst.
It had been almost a year since I’d taken ninjutsu, but my muscles responded as if it had been yesterday. I swept my arms up in effortless arcs, breaking his grip, and then rapidly sank down into hoko, striking his chest with both hands like an attacking bear and smashing him to the ground.
Then I started to hyperventilate. Flaming tears will do that to a girl. I was scared, and that made me angry, which made me feel like picking a fight, which made me remember that I’d lost my edge, which made me more frightened. It was a vicious cycle, and it only got worse with every passing second.
He twisted, snakelike, to his feet and meticulously dusted himself off, his eyes dry and his face unmarked. Was there a flicker of red deep in his eyes, or was it just the light? I couldn’t tell.
“Was that really necessary?” he asked, rubbing ineffectively at a smudge on his lapel. “You’ve ruined my jacket.”
His matter-of-fact tone snapped me out of the fear. Confused, I looked down at the pavement but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Had I imagined the lava tears? I was no stranger to hallucinations, but I didn’t feel sick. Besides, there were burn holes in my shirt, and the skin underneath sizzled. It was the kind of feeling that promised lots of pain to come, once my nerve endings decided to spring the ambush.
“No matter. I’ll make you pay for it anyway,” he said when I failed to respond. “Would you like to scream for help? I’ll take your friends as well if you’d like. The Master would be most pleased.”
“Master?” I knew I sounded like an idiot, but I was having a really hard time figuring out what was happening. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was drunk. But I hadn’t had anything stronger than Coke because of my meds. Maybe the doses were off. Maybe I’d taken the hallucinogenic painkillers instead of my anti-rejection meds. That would explain it. I felt a huge wave of relief.
“You’ll meet him soon enough. He’ll drive you buggy.” The man’s eyes widened with maniacal glee. “That’s a joke.”
Okay, I might have been hallucinating the lava, but this guy was still super creepy. I began rolling backward, evaluating my options for escape.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, trying to buy time.
“Mmmm. Well, you can’t blame me for trying. Shall we get on with it, then? Without a Relic, you’re as good as dead. There’s no need to draw it out; I can’t deal with tediousness.” He rubbed his eyes irritably. “I don’t have the patience for it.”
“Maybe you have me mistaken for someone else?” I took a deep breath, intending to yell for Kyle. I’d never get to pee by myself again, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe I just had to come to terms with the fact that this was my life now.
The man’s hand flashed out before I got out a peep. All I saw was a white blur of motion as he grabbed me by the neck and threw me to the ground. The landing knocked the breath from my body, and I skidded over the pavement, pebbles and bits of broken glass imbedding into my flesh.
He was on me in an instant, straddling my chest. A haze of panic completely obliterated all the techniques I’d worked so hard to learn in the dojo. I bucked and squealed as he slid down my torso, leaning over to mash his mouth against mine. I could feel his lips writhe, and something unspeakably vile tried to worm its way past my clenched teeth.
My neck felt like it was on fire.
I groped wildly at my skin, hoping to wipe away the man’s flaming tears. But there weren’t any. Only the delicate silver chain of my lucky necklace.
When I touched it, my hand went instantly numb. It felt like I was holding a bolt of lightning; the shock of it blazed up my arm. It burned; I had to get it off me. I yanked it off my neck and threw it blindly into the air, hoping against hope that it would distract him enough so I could get away.
Suddenly he was gone.
There was no weight on my chest. No pressure against my lips. I cautiously opened one eye and saw no one.
I scrambled up onto my skates, ignoring the sting of my abraded skin. The nape of my neck prickled; I knew he was watching me. It was impossible to look in every direction at once, but I tried.
“Rollergirl …”
The voice came from nowhere, floating bodiless in the air and tickling my cheek in an obscene caress.
I panicked.
I flew down the alley toward the Pi Kapp house, skating at full speed even though there was nothing behind me but a hint of mocking laughter on the breeze. Wild screams built up inside me, but my throat was so tight that I could only manage a series of little panting squeals.
When I rounded the corner, I smacked into a frat boy. We tumbled along the cracked driveway and landed with me facedown in a pile of old mulch and the guy sprawled heavily across my back. He rolled down my injured legs, grinding bits of glass farther into my skin, and thumped onto the ground.
“Ow,” I said, wheezing.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” demanded the guy. “You could have hurt somebody.”
His voice was instantly familiar. Out of all the frat boys to crash into, of course it would be him.
Rachel’s ex-boyfriend Dylan stood up without giving me a second look, straightening his gold Elvis jumpsuit with furious, jerky movements.
“Hey!” he snapped. “I’m talking to you.”
I gaped, trying to regain control of my voice. No luck. He wasn’t even paying attention; he had opened his mouth to berate me further, when he finally looked at me.
“Oh my God! Casey?” he asked. “Is that you?”
I nodded, rolling over and struggling to my feet.
“You’re hurt.” He turned, yelling toward the house, “Somebody get a first aid kit!”
“Dylan?” I wheezed. “Find my sister? She’s at the kissing booth.”
His eyes went wide, but I was beyond caring. I could see a tall spike of white hair bobbing through the crowd that was gathering at the end of the driveway, gaping at me like I was a bald-headed leper. And when Rachel emerged from the throng with Kyle in tow, both of them breathless and red-faced from pushing their way through, I let myself cry.
“So can you tell us what happened, miss?” asked the ruddy-faced police officer.
The party still raged on outside, but I sat on a ratty sofa in the middle of the frat house common room with Rachel’s arm slung over one shoulder and Kyle’s over the other. Dylan might have been a sock-stuffing dorkwad, but he was also a fourth-year premed student who worked at the local urgent care center in his spare time. He finished tweezing the last of the glass out of my leg and started to wrap it in layers of filmy gauze.
“Thank you,” I said, gritting my teeth against the burn. At this rate, the only part of my body that wasn’t going to be scabbed over was my right eyelid. My only defense was to joke about it, because otherwise I might start crying again. “I appreciate the help, Dylan.”
He looked surprised, like common courtesy wasn’t something he encountered very often and he wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Oh. Sure,” he replied.
“Miss?” the officer prompted, tapping his pen on his clipboard to get my attention.
“There was a man in the alley. He … I had to go to the bathroom. He jumped on me. He burned me.” My hand fluttered up to skim the scorched circles dotting the front of my jersey, and I forced it back to my side. “I think he wanted to kill me.”
Kyle muttered a long series of swear words, his fingers tightening on my shoulder.
The cop nodded, looking me over clinically. “Flicked a lit cigarette at you, did he? Okay, go on. How did you get away?”
I debated correcting him. But really, there was no way to say “the guy was crying f
ire” without sounding like a complete nutjob, so I didn’t.
“Casey has a black belt in ninjutsu,” said Rachel, squeezing my shoulder gently. “You probably kicked the crap out of the bastard, didn’t you?”
“Something like that,” I mumbled. I felt ashamed more than anything. I was a black belt, for God’s sake, and ninjutsu doesn’t require a lot of muscle strength. By all rights, I should have kicked that guy’s ass, but did I? Nope.
The cop’s attitude shifted a little; he looked at me with something like respect. “Good for you, kid,” he said. “So you think you could describe the guy for me?”
“Tall, thin, wearing all white. Pale skin. Dark curly hair.”
“Could it have been a wig?” he asked. “Halloween costume?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Approximate age?”
“Not too old. Late teens, early twenties, tops.”
“Good, good. Anything else?”
He cried fire, I thought. But I shook my head.
“We’ll have you come down to the station tomorrow to make an official statement, okay?” the cop said. “But for now, I’ll drive you to the hospital. Unless you’re happy with Elvis here?”
I looked over at Dylan. “I just need some Band-Aids, right?”
“You should go to the hospital,” Kyle said. He threw his hands up when I shot him a glare. “Hey, I know I’m overprotective sometimes, but this is common sense. Remember when I burned myself on those fireworks and my hand got infected?”
I did. It had been too gross to forget. To this day, the word “pus” made me shudder.
“Could you do anything for them, Dylan?” I pleaded. “They’re just little burns.”
“I don’t know if you’d be comfortable.…” Dylan shifted awkwardly. “I mean, you’d need to take off your shirt.”
“Just give me something to cover up with.”
“I’ll grab you a blanket.” He dashed out of the room.
“See, Casey? I told you,” Rachel said. “He’s not such a jerk after all, is he?”
I nodded. “Yeah. He’s been very nice.”
A police officer with a long blond braid entered the house and walked over to us. Long hair could be used as a handhold in a fight; even before the radiation, I’d always kept mine short. Although it didn’t seem to have done much good. I’d just gotten my butt kicked, and I was bald.
“Find anything?” the first cop asked.
“Just this.” The blonde opened her hand.
My lucky necklace sat coiled in her palm.
I remembered the day Rachel had given it to me. I’d developed stage-four graft-versus-host disease after my marrow transplant, and even my eternally optimistic doctor had had to admit my survival chances were pretty slim. It got so bad that my parents even called in a priest to perform the Anointing of the Sick, and Rachel brought the little silver katana pendant for him to bless. He’d balked at blessing a sword, even if it was miniaturized, but she could be awfully persuasive. I could remember listening through a narcotic haze as the priest prayed over me. All three of my IV trees kept beeping because the alarms on the damned things were so sensitive. It sounded like the priest was being censored, and even though the situation wasn’t funny at all, I kept biting back hysterical laughter.
When Rachel gave me the katana, though, I almost cried. I still remembered how it spun and glittered in the glare of the hospital fluorescents. I think that necklace might have saved my life because it helped me remember I was a fighter.
“Recognize it?” the ponytailed cop asked.
I blinked myself back to the present. The guy in the alley. The necklace had saved me twice now.
“Yeah, that’s Casey’s.” Rachel held out a hand for it.
“The chain’s broken. You’ll need to get a new one.”
“I’ll take care of it.” My sister stuffed the necklace down her bodice because her costume didn’t have pockets. She and Kyle exchanged a look that was all too familiar. I was about to be coddled again, and I wasn’t entirely sure I didn’t deserve it. “Are we done now? I’d like to get her home so she can rest. She’s been sick.”
The officers exchanged glances and nodded.
“Great,” she continued. “I’m going to go light a fire under Dylan’s ass. Kyle, can you run to our house and get my car? You sit here and rest, Casey. We’ll get you fixed up and I’ll take you home. You’re safe now.”
She put a cool hand on my forehead. Safe. I touched the burn holes on my shirt again and tried like crazy to believe it.
“How’d it go?” Rachel asked from her seat in the dingy police station waiting room the next morning. It smelled like old socks marinated in air freshener, and she had her sleeve pulled up over her nose to block out the reek.
I shrugged.
“You know, Casey?” She shook her head in mock exasperation. “Sometimes I wish you’d just shut up. You talk too much.”
“Har har.” I pushed the door open, the abrasions on my legs pulling and stinging with each stride. My muscles had tightened up; I felt like I’d been shoved into a dryer with a couple of bricks and left to rattle around for a few hours. “There’s nothing to tell. Detective Johnson showed me a bunch of pictures, but none of them was the guy.”
“So if it wasn’t such a big deal, why are we running like the hounds of hell are about to pounce on us and devour our gizzards?”
“Dude, people don’t have gizzards. That’s chicken.”
“Whatever.”
Rachel pulled out her keys and pressed the button to unlock the doors to her Mini Cooper. We got in and immediately rolled down the windows. It was already warm even though it was still midmorning; the air felt soupy and on the verge of rain.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got to tell you something. It’s driving me nuts.”
“All right.” Rachel folded her hands and put on her best listening face, which normally made me want to laugh. Normally. “Spill.”
So I told it all, starting with the disembodied voice and ending with the … well, the disembodied voice. And then I waited for her to call me a lunatic.
“You sound like Dad,” Rachel said.
Our father believed in everything. His reality included things like men in black, alien abduction, spirit animals, demonic possession, voodoo dolls, Kyrilian photography, leprechauns, poltergeists, Ouija boards, reincarnation, pyrokinesis, subliminal messages that could be blocked by the generous application of tinfoil, and the theory that dolphins were really Atlanteans in disguise. The fact that some of these beliefs were incompatible never seemed to bother him. Frankly, he didn’t even appear to have noticed.
“I know.” I hung my head. “But I don’t know what to think. At first, I figured maybe I’d gotten my meds mixed up. But I would have noticed that, right?”
“I’d think so.”
“So …” I didn’t want to say what I was thinking.
“It’s the only logical explanation, Casey. He flicked a cigarette at you, just like that cop said, and you hallucinated it was tears. I mean, stranger things have happened. One time when I came to see you in the hospital, you were so doped up you thought I was Lady Gaga. And I wasn’t even wearing my meat dress that day.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You sound less than convinced.”
I threw up my arms. “Well, this sucks! I don’t know what was real. Maybe the guy didn’t look at all like I thought. Maybe he was an albino midget with only one arm. How do I know I’m even telling them to look for the right freaking person?”
Tears threatened to spill down my cheeks, but I wiped them away ferociously. I hated feeling scared, and things like this, inexplicable things, terrified me. Because there was another explanation I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud. That stupid voice at the back of my head kept squealing, Brain tumor! It’s a brain tumor! It was only a matter of time! I tried to tell myself the voice was full of crap, but if I hadn’t dorked up my meds, it was the only other logical expla
nation. I was hallucinating for no reason. That couldn’t be good.
“I hear what you’re saying.” She sighed. “But getting all worked up over it is only going to make you red in the face, and with the no-hair thing, you’ll look like a tomato on a stick.”
After a shocked moment, I started giggling. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“Me either.” She flashed a grin, but it faded fast. “All joking aside, though, this pisses me off. It’s like, we almost lose you once, and then some crack-smoking douche bag comes by and almost kills you in an alley? I’m seriously not okay with this.”
I sighed. “I’m fine, Rachel. It was scary as hell, but I’m okay.” What I needed was to go to a hospital, but I wasn’t ready to face it yet. I could hide my head in the sand for just a little while.
“Did you tell Detective Whatshisname the whole story or the edited one? You need to tell him everything, even if it makes you feel stupid.”
“I left out the parts that made me sound like a total lunatic. Can you blame me?”
“You need to tell him, Casey. If you don’t, how can he get the job done?”
I looked at the squat building and envisioned walking back inside, through the sock-scented waiting room and into Detective Johnson’s grotty little cubicle, and then admitting I’d been hallucinating last night. It was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I’ll call him later,” I said. “He seemed kind of busy.”
“You better. No one messes with my little sister. We’ll find the guy and hang his balls from my rearview mirror.”
“Eeeeew.”
Rachel finally put the car into drive and sped out of the parking lot like the hounds of hell were in fact following us, despite our lack of gizzards. Not that she was reckless; she just ran at a higher speed than the average human.
I braced myself against the armrest as we flew around a corner, and then I checked the dashboard clock. “Think you could drop me off at the dojo? It would do me some good to get out of the house under circumstances that don’t involve any burning.”
Demon Derby Page 3
