The Supernaturals Page 7

  “You two don’t be shy,” I said to Mina and Inky. “Go ahead and get to it. And make it look good. I’m gonna make myself scarce.” With a gesture, I raised a bubble of magic around me in a veil that both hid me from sight and masked my scent and any sound coming from me. Malwar wouldn’t be able to sense my presence when he arrived, although my senses remained unaffected.

  Inky approached Mina hesitantly. Part of his reticence may have had to do with him still being a bit afraid of her. More likely, I thought, it was because he was gay (and all his gay desire was strictly for Draven). Just as I’d never thought it possible for Inky to fall in love, it had never occurred to me that he was a sexual being at all. I didn’t think of him as gay or straight or bi, per se. He’d gone hot and heavy with both guys and gals, but as far as I could tell, that was no different than a hungry human pulling out pots and pans and firing up the stove. It was just something necessary for him to do in order to feed himself.

  Mina closed the distance between them in two strides. They stood practically toe-to-toe, with perhaps only six inches of space between their bodies. Inky towered over her, and despite his obvious advantage in size and strength, he was clearly intimidated. Where was all his lusty swagger and confidence now that we really needed it? The two of them would have to put on a convincing show to draw Malwar in and keep him from suspecting our ambush.

  “Be gentle,” Mina said in that flat, dry way of hers. She waited a moment, but Inky just stood there, looking down at her. She tipped her head to one side. “The guy usually makes the first move,” she whispered. “In your case, however, once someone’s under your spell, that person pounces on you in uncontrollable passion. Okay, I’ll accommodate.”

  There was a shift in Mina’s being, so subtle I couldn’t even be sure of what I’d seen. I switched to MagicVision and realized she had grown, standing nearly as tall as Inky now. Her breasts, hips, and butt had gotten rounder, giving her the kind of curves that would definitely turn a straight guy’s head. Her clothes had changed too. The hoodie and linen pants had gone from black to indigo, and they clung tightly to the more voluptuous proportions of her body. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I suspected she had somehow allowed one of her other souls to take over.

  She flipped back her hood, and the lust in her eyes was ghastly, as hungry as the looks I’d seen Inky give his victims. Inky blinked once, and I could see a shiver start in his hands. Before that shiver could even work its way up his arms, Mina grabbed him. She crushed his body to hers in a grip that made me wince.

  “Ravage me!” she snarled in a deep, commanding, frightening voice.

  Inky was in no position to comply. I think he was going to scream, but that was before Mina clamped her lips to his mouth. Even at a distance, I could see her cheeks hollow as she shoved her tongue between his lips. One hand slipped around the back of his head, clamping on and making it impossible for him to pull away. She slid her other hand down and grabbed his butt in a single, ferocious move. She went from deeply kissing him to licking at his ears, and from licking at his ears to biting at his neck so eagerly I wondered if she’d become a vampire. Inky just hung there, helpless in the grip of her consuming passion.

  That passion should have put Mina in jeopardy. Inky should have been feeding on it, draining it from her like a kid sucking soda through a straw. It seemed to me the reverse was happening. Inky looked as if he was drowning. The show they were putting on was convincing enough to keep Malwar—if he showed up—from being overly suspicious of Mina suddenly dropping her personal wards on this roof. But I was getting worried about these two performers.

  There was a flutter overhead, followed by a tiny giggle, barely perceptible against the swish of the soft wind. I looked up in time to catch a silvery flash of motion between me and the dark gray cover of the clouds. With my MagicVision still open, I quickly found the thing that had flown by. It made a swift pass high over Mina and Inky, swinging back in a wide arc to circle above them.

  The air sprite slowed its flight, apparently so it could assess what it was seeing. The sprite was female and very small, about the size of a raven. It was dressed in some gauzy substance that floated about its body without seeming to touch it. Its insect-like wings radiated a subdued, silver light. Neither Mina nor Inky, preoccupied as they were, seemed to notice its presence. The sprite made three complete circuits, studying them from a variety of angles. Then it rose up in a swift arc and disappeared in a high dive over the edge of the roof.

  Tension snaked up my spine and into my neck. Time passed, but I was too nervous to keep track of how much. Mina forced Inky down until they were sprawled on the roof. Her body was on top of his, her hands moving all over his body so frantically she appeared to be trying to disassemble him piece by piece as she continued sucking at his face. She had become something horrific herself. Now I was definitely worried about Inky. Mina scared the shit out of me.

  My concern grew to the point that I was about to drop my veil and put a stop to the whole plan. We’d just have to come up with another way to save Draven’s mother. As I was about to lower the veil, I heard a scratch to my left. It was so soft, I almost dismissed it. I turned in that direction, and what I saw made me hold my breath.

  A massive, clawed hand held on to the edge of the roof. Then a second huge hand appeared, reaching out, its claws digging into the gritty shingles. A sleek, shadowy, gruesome form hauled itself over the raised edge and onto the roof. It crouched there, waiting, yellow snakelike eyes shining as it stared at the writhing forms of Mina and Inky. Then it rose slowly to an astonishing height, a silhouette of pure malice.

  The dark face of the thing split apart, displaying an array of curved white fangs. Malwar the Grendel Kid smiled.

  Nine

  IN MY relatively short time, I’d seen some pretty frightening supernatural beings: manticores, griffin, yeti, zombies, even other Grendel Kids. In Russia, I ran across a werewolf that, when shifted into its full lycanthropic form, was as big as a sedan. And there was a harpy haunting the Greek islands who was so huge and fast she snatched men from the decks of cruise ships at night and bit off their heads in midflight.

  None of those creatures was as hair-raising as Malwar. Malwar would make my nightmares have nightmares.

  He was easily the largest manlike being I’d ever encountered. Ten feet tall, he towered against the sky only a few yards from where I huddled in hiding. His appearance was long, sleek, and distinctly leonine. He wore no clothes; he didn’t need them. His limbs and torso were covered by a short, smooth pelt of shiny black fur. His broad head, neck, and shoulders were swathed in a thick, ruffled mane, also black but without the sheen. The deadly fangs in his wide mouth were at least six inches long, backed by muscular jaws that undoubtedly had the biting strength of a great white shark. The muscles in his arms and legs bristled with vicious power, enough that he could rip a man limb from limb with less effort than it would take a mean kid to pull the wings off a fly. The claws on his hands and feet were like steel hooks, the edges so sharp they would cut flesh with the neat precision of a scalpel. Most horrible of all were those golden-yellow eyes, glittering with sadistic delight. This was a creature designed for just one purpose—to inflict tortured death.

  The monster Malwar strode forward, moving away from my hidden position and toward the spot where Mina and Inky lay. He moved with a formidable, silky grace, exactly like a lion, the tufted pads of his feet making virtually no sound against the rooftop. Inky was barely moving at all now, and Mina seemed to be totally absorbed in an effort to climb inside his clothes with him. Neither of them appeared to notice the hulking menace striding their way. I resisted the panicked instinct that suddenly urged me to scream a warning. With a silent curse, I got ready to drop the magical veil and warp myself onto the broad back of the huge Grendel Kid.

  Then, when the walking death had closed roughly half the distance between them, Mina snapped her head up and looked right at Malwar. That look of hers stunned me yet again.
Her face was twisted with more raw passion than I had ever seen in any living being. She grinned at the sight of the monster.

  Apparently, Malwar was just as stunned by the way Mina looked at him as I was. He stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Back again, ugly one?” Mina said, her growl of a voice as horrible as the expression on her face. “Let’s dance.”

  What came next is hard to describe. It happened so brutally fast. Mina got to her feet in one quick move. She ran toward the monster, her arms swept back, her head thrust forward, a wild, awful smile on her face, her eyes alight with fervor. Malwar crouched low as he charged to meet her, his clawed hands extended in such a way that they would drive straight through the girl’s chest. With a screech of laughter, Mina leapt into the air, hurtling over the Grendel Kid’s head. Malwar reacted instinctively, raising himself up, twisting with the trajectory of her leap, reaching out in an effort to snatch her from the air.

  That was a big mistake on his part. Mina grabbed the hand that reached for her. Combining her own momentum with his, she flipped the huge, hairy creature overhead as she landed on her feet, and she slammed him facedown. The force of that loud impact rippled through the rooftop. I felt the vibration roll beneath my feet.

  Seconds later, Mina threw herself on Malwar’s back like some out of control lover, tearing at his mane with one hand and ripping out big chunks of hair while she dug zealously at his eyes with the other. All the while she was making these grunts that were deep, guttural, almost… sexual.

  Watching all that, I suddenly understood something about Mina. Each of her component souls must have its own nature, embodying a different aspect of her overall personality. The one that had gone wild on Inky and was now attacking Malwar with abandon was an entity of pure, lustful enthusiasm, not just in sex and love but in everything. It was a wild being, primal and dangerous. Whatever this soul did was done with intense pleasure, even attacking a creature out of the worst nightmare.

  Unlike Inky, Malwar didn’t just lie there and take it. He rolled over, flinging Mina off his back as easily as throwing off a blanket. She took a nice-sized portion of scaly skin and part of a shaggy eyebrow with her, but Malwar didn’t seem to mind. Mina landed in an agile roll that ended with her in a ready crouch. She faced the monster, that insane grin still on her face as she dragged the ripped piece of skin down her neck to her cleavage. That left a trail of blood a bit too pale and a lot too thick to be human.

  “Mmm,” she purred deep in her throat, her feral gaze never leaving the Grendel Kid. She smeared the weird blood over her skin. “You’re hot.”

  I was beginning to wonder what kind of fool Malwar was to keep coming after this girl.

  The monster laughed, a hideous, grating sound. The skin around the rip Mina tore above his right eye flowed together, and within seconds the wound was gone with no sign it had ever been there. “I am going to kill you, little kitten,” he said, his voice bestial and deep, as ominous as rolling thunder. “I am going to eat every one of your souls, and when I am done, I will hunt down your mother and your aunts and your grandmothers and make meals of their souls too.”

  Mina tossed aside the flap of skin and crooked the fingers of both hands in a come-hither motion. “Bring it, shadow walker.”

  Malwar charged her again. Mina stood her ground. Her eyes suddenly glowed white, she flung her arms wide, and silvery spiritual force poured out from her body in waves that swept across the roof and down over the sides of the building. Malwar closed on her, feet pounding over the thick shingles. With barely ten feet of space left between them, Mina brought her hands together in a sharp clap. In that same instant, twelve metal storage drums—which must have been stacked somewhere along the outer walls of the warehouse—rose up over the edge of the roof. Each was encased in and carried by pieces of that silver spiritual energy of Mina’s. The hurtling drums converged on Malwar as if he were some huge magnet, smashing against his body one after the other with a mighty clatter.

  The force of those blows drove Malwar back. He threw up his arms to protect his face, and then he began swatting the drums aside, batting them back over the edges of the roof again.

  Mina screeched out a wild, triumphant laugh. “You say you’ll go after my mom, Sceadugenga? My grandmother? How’re you going to deal with them when you can’t even take little old me?”

  This wasn’t going exactly the way I’d hoped. To stop Malwar, I needed him relatively still. This wild version of Mina was fighting the Grendel Kid so savagely there was no way he’d ever slow down enough for me to get at him.

  Malwar staggered backward until the last of those battering drums had been smashed aside. He turned a furious gaze on Mina.

  The Cat-o-Nine put her hands on her hips in a cocky, defiant stance. “Well?” she taunted. “What else have you got?”

  In a move so fast I didn’t even see his knees bend, Malwar leapt twenty feet into the air, arcing across the rooftop. Mina threw herself backward, fast but not as fast as the monster. She escaped being crushed beneath Malwar’s feet as they boomed down to shake the roof, but not the sweep of his claws. His hand tore across the upper part of her chest, just below her collarbones. It was a glancing blow, slicing four neat, parallel slits across the front of her hoodie. There was no blood, so the claws hadn’t reached her skin. Still, the force of the strike was such that it knocked Mina onto her back.

  Malwar jumped again, this time coming down solidly over Mina, his feet on either side of her hips. He bent down, clamped his big right hand over her throat, and lifted her effortlessly into the air. It was a painful thing to watch. I was sure Mina’s air passage had been cut off completely by that terrible grip. Even so, I could tell from the blazing white fury in her eyes that Mina was straining to keep herself from retaliating. The monster’s back was to me, and he had no idea I was there as he raised the claws of his free hand. It was a perfect setup, thanks to Mina. Now I just had to act before those deadly claws fell.

  Laying a curse on someone who is already cursed can get complicated. The older and more powerful the original curse, the harder it will be to place another curse on top of it, especially if the new curse interferes with the function of the original curse. Cain’s curse was extremely ancient and extremely powerful. An older, stronger, more experienced djinn could inflict the curse of Wazim on Malwar with an incantation in a matter of seconds and from miles away. Too bad most of those djinn want nothing to do with their cursed brethren.

  For me, it would require physical contact with the monster, and it would take a lot more time than a few seconds. I’d have to hang on to Malwar, and avoid having my neck stretched or my body clawed, long enough to get the job done.

  Who ever said the life of a teenaged djinn was easy?

  I dropped my magical veil, simultaneously opening a rift with a chop of my hand. Exactly one second later, I was clinging to Malwar’s wide back, my legs locked around his waist, my hands on his head. I dug my fingers through the thick mane to the tough, scaly skin beneath.

  “What…?” Malwar snarled at the sudden drag on his body. He reeled backward, releasing Mina from his grasp. Enraged, he reached over his shoulder to grab me.

  I focused my will, drawing from the power within me to bind Malwar with magic. At the same time, Mina raised her hands and encased Malwar’s arms and legs in that silver spiritual force of hers, adding her bindings to mine. Then, in the ancient tongue of the djinn, I began calling forth the curse of Wazim.

  Caught in the grip of both my magic and Mina’s spirit, Malwar began struggling to free himself. As he did so, Wazim’s curse started to well up around me through the common pool of dark power all djinn share. It flowed into me and through my fingers into the monster.

  Malwar froze suddenly, a stunned expression on his horrible face, obviously feeling the curse as it began to spread through him like poison. “No!” he barked defiantly. He strained in desperation, his face twisting with the effort. For a time, the bonds Mina and I had placed around him he
ld, and I willed the curse to flow faster into him. Malwar staggered drunkenly as the curse started taking effect.

  It’s working, I thought happily and with great relief.

  My happiness and relief lasted a whole two seconds.

  With a horrendous roar, Malwar threw his arms wide, shattering both my magical restraints and Mina’s spiritual bonds. The recoil sent Mina and me flying backward across the roof. I landed hard, my head slamming against the rooftop and leaving me in a daze.

  It took several moments for my brain to clear enough to allow me to sit up. My vision came into focus a few seconds later. Malwar didn’t appear to be doing much better than I was. He stumbled drunkenly, one arm out, trying to orient himself. He shook his head several times.

  Finally he seemed to catch his balance. He shook his head one last time. I thought he would go after Mina, who was lying on her side quite some distance beyond him, struggling to get to her feet. Surprisingly, he turned and looked directly at me.

  His eyes blazed with such fury and hatred, all my insides went cold. He glared at me for what seemed a hundred years, and I knew he was fixing me in his memory. He parted his lips in a snarl that promised me a long, excruciating death.

  Then Malwar leaped over the edge of the roof and was gone.

  Ten

  DRAVEN WAS there when Mina, Inky, and I warped into Inky’s den. Roughly four hours had passed since the three of us left on our little trapping expedition, and we weren’t in the best of shape. Passion Mina was gone, replaced by the less curvy, more reserved Core Mina, who was shaken and bruised, her neck smeared with Grendel Kid blood. I probably had my own collection of bruises, along with a definite sharp pain across my upper back, topped off with a headache that seemed to oscillate from one side of my skull to the other. The headache was so bad I barely wondered how Draven had managed to get here from Mina’s place.