Demon Night

the same way they do. So I reckon it’s worth another shot, at any rate.”
    “With my blood this time?” Charlie asked.
    Ethan shook his head. “If there was nothing, we might have the same questions, wondering if you just didn’t feel it because it’s your own. Jake?”
    “Mine,” Jake agreed.
    “All right, Charlie,” Ethan said as soon as the spell was up again. “You let me know.”
    She leaned back against the solid warmth of him, and almost choked the instant his Gift thrummed into her. She pulled her mouth away.
    “It’s different,” she gasped. “You’re there, but it’s not just you.”
    She thought shock held him motionless for a second before he dropped his head low to look at her. “What is it, then?”
    “It must be Jake, right? It’s…it’s…all over the place. The force of it is solid and steady, like yours, but the register much wider. But also broken, like it has missing notes.”
    Ethan’s brows lowered, and he shook his head. “I can’t…I have no idea what you’re hearing, Charlie. I’m not getting anything like that. Can you try to project it?”
    She automatically took a huge breath, expanding her lungs and tightening her diaphragm before she realized what she was doing. She couldn’t have sung something like this, anyway—she couldn’t have hit most of the notes.
    She filled her head with the sound instead, and thought it as hard as she could.
    Ethan blinked. “Well, damn. That feels like Jake—though a hell of a lot less juvenile than he usually lets on. But I ain’t getting a noise, Charlie.” He met her eyes, and she could almost see him puzzling it out before he said slowly, “Maybe it’s psychic then. You get that as sound; I get it as scent or touch.”
    “Can you use that with your Gift? Project it somehow?”
    He looked away from her, toward the open door. “Let’s see.”
    The percussion wave hit her, and she gripped his hand to steady herself. A discordant, jagged noise accompanied it; Ethan, projecting—though she could barely hear him beneath the sharp sound.
    He lifted her and walked them forward, reached out. His fingers stopped on a plane even with the line of the door, curling as they hit the shield. He shook his head, and the noise faded.
    “It wasn’t the same as Jake’s,” Charlie said. “It was too forced, and had too much interference.”
    Ethan’s chest heaved with his sigh, and he turned to lean his shoulder against the invisible shield, as if trying to stare down the symbols scratched into the door frame. Finally, she felt the press of his lips against the top of her hair. “All right then,” he said. “I can’t sing, but you can, so we’ll try that. Only project it as hard as you can directly into my blood, Charlie, so I don’t interfere with it so much.”
    His Gift pushed at her again, and she grinned against his wrist. “You’re a stubborn man, Drifter.”
    “Only because it feels so damn good when you’re biting me like this— Holyfuckingwhoreson —”
    He bent as if he’d been kicked in the stomach, his arm around her waist nearly crushing her, forcing her to curl with him.
    Crimson ran over his skin as she tore her mouth away. “Ethan? Eth—”
    “Harder, Charlie.” His voice was ragged against her ear. “Bite me, and send it to me harder and louder.”
    Blood dripped to the floor beside her feet. Not from his wrist; that was forming a different puddle. Panic and fear rattled her teeth. “Ethan—”
    “Miss Charlie.” He straightened them up, settled heavily against the shield again. “Now, goddammit.”
    Anger replaced the fear. She bit, and filled herself with the sound before imagining it exploding past her lips.
    And then they were falling, Ethan’s weight smashing her into the floor. His harsh swearing rent the air as he rolled, pulled her over him.
    Stunned, Charlie looked up. They were inside the communications room. A tiny click caught her attention; Jake’s toothpick, bouncing against the floor. His mouth was hanging open.
    “Holy shit,” she whispered, and glanced down at Ethan.
    Her heart stopped. She scrambled off him, kneeled next to his head. Blood trailed from his ears; a smear under his nose told her he’d already wiped some away.
    “Oh, my God.” Her hands shook. “Ethan?”
    He smiled, squinted his eyes open. The whites were shot through with red, but the blotches of crimson were shrinking as the broken vessels healed. “You’ve got one hell of a voice, Miss Charlie.