Demon Night

wings!”
    Jake was yelling something, probably that they were going to smash pretty hard against the water if they didn’t let up.
    It’s a boat, Ethan signed. We’ll crash in through the side, get the spell up.
    “It’s a tanker ,” Jake shouted as his wings disappeared.
    “Well, I figure it’s too late to stop now!” Ethan straightened out his body, increasing the speed of the dive, using minute movements of his wings to align himself over Jake’s back.
    “How the hell did you ever become anyone’s mentor?” Despite the bluster in Jake’s voice, fear was cutting through his Enthrallment.
    As soon as Ethan got hold of the kid’s sides, he pulled him in tight against his chest and vanished his wings. A glance behind them confirmed the demon was still coming. “I reckon this is going to hurt real bad !”
    “You think?” Jake screamed back at him.
    “That tanker looks awful big, Jake, and that steel damn solid,” Ethan said, his voice low and dangerous now, deliberately winding up the kid’s fear. “If you don’t want to be scraped up with a shovel and my teeth embedded in your tattooed ass, you better picture us in a real happy place, and you better picture it hard!”
    Then he was twisting, turning, and slamming into a plastic floor. It cracked beneath his weight, but held. Ethan didn’t open his eyes. His head was spinning, nausea churning in his stomach.
    That was the roughest teleportation he’d ever had, but damn if it didn’t feel fine to be on the verge of heaving up his lungs rather than having his stomach laid open again.
    “You did good, Jake. You all right?”
    “Yeah.” He couldn’t hear Jake moving either, but the groan that accompanied the word told Ethan it was for a different reason: utter relief. “I think you’re my hero, Drifter.”
    Well, damn. Ethan rolled onto his back, pulled his phone in, and concentrated on dialing the tiny buttons while his head was whirling. Charlie’s number went straight to voice mail. She’d had her phone on, so that meant she was inside the shield. He left a short message, telling her again to use her credit card, and to be under cover when the sun rose.
    She’d be hungry by dawn, and feeling it bad by nightfall.
    “How is she?” Jake asked quietly. “I heard you flying over the lake, but it sounded like you were having a private conversation, so I stayed behind. Then when I got there the house was burning, and it was just, ‘Fire, pretty’ and I lost it. I saw you take off fighting, but I didn’t think I’d catch up to you.”
    Ethan stared up at the low wooden ceiling. “She’s sucking blood.”
    “God damn.” Jake was silent for a minute, which was about fifty seconds longer than Ethan would have expected. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “That’s just fine.” Ethan clenched his jaw. “Because I’m grateful to you for teleporting us out of there, and what happened to Charlie is my own damn fault, but I don’t reckon I’ll have anything civil to say to you for a day, maybe a week.”
    “All right.” Ten seconds passed. “Was that a demon?”
    “I don’t rightly know.” Ethan stood, keeping his back hunched so he wouldn’t rap his head, and waited for his legs to steady. Unease rolled through him. Life-sized dolls surrounded them, some dressed in leathers and moccasins, some in chaps and ten-gallon hats. Most of them were smiling. “Where in damnation did you bring us?”
    Jake lifted his head and grinned like a fool. “Disneyland.”

    Jane cried for almost two hours. She’d listened quietly as Charlie had told her everything that had happened—then she’d broken.
    After the first bout of sobbing had passed, she’d silently wept while staring out the passenger window.
    Charlie thought exhaustion brought it to an end, because the pain was still deep, steady, and discordant when Jane’s tears stopped. There was too much emotion mixed up in there to hear correctly: grief and disbelief, denial and—even now—what Charlie thought must be love. But that was complicated, too, with its own set of notes, and Charlie was having difficulty sorting through them.
    And it didn’t help that she was starving.
    She’d spent most of the last half hour not thinking of her sister’s pain, but imagining ways of easing the burning need inside her: Pulling off at the next exit and taking a drink from a gas station attendant. From a waitress.
    From Jane.
    They passed a blue road sign advertising food and lodging.