Chapter 4

4

The full moon illuminated the night sky as we cruised through downtown Philly in one of Jax's sleek black SUVs. The streets were alive with people enjoying their Saturday evening, unaware of the human and supernatural unfolding around them.

"Can you believe this guy?" Kendra gripped the steering wheel tightly. "I mean, what kind of skip has an address in a skyscraper? Not exactly the criminal we usually go after."

"Maybe he's compensating for something." I snarked, grinning at Zara, who sat beside me in the back seat.

She looked excited, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. She was so eager to take the lead. "Either way, I can't wait to get my hands on him."

I gave her a wry look. "Remember, you don't want to hurt him. Just subdue him, and we'll get him down to the police station."

"Fine, fine." Zara sighed dramatically. "But if he tries anything funny, I'm taking him down."

"Agreed," Kendra and I replied in unison, exchanging amused glances.

We finally arrived at the impressive glass-and-steel skyscraper, its many windows reflecting the moonlight like a beacon in the dark cityscape. Parking in the underground garage, we noticed the luxury cars surrounding us. This guy had money.

"Eleventh floor," Zara said as we stepped into the elevator. "Must have one hell of a view."

"Let's hope it's the last view he enjoys before we catch him," I said.

"Remember." Kendra's eyes met Zara's in the mirrored walls of the elevator, "no matter what happens up there, we've got your back."

Zara consulted the paperwork Kendra had brought along. "Apartment 1113."

We found the right apartment, but something wasn't quite right.

"Here goes nothing," Zara said.

"Ready when you are, fearless leader," I said.

Zara knocked hesitantly, and without warning, the door creaked open on its own, revealing a dark, empty space. My instincts screamed at me to turn back, but we were in too deep now. We stepped cautiously over the threshold, our breaths held and senses on high alert.

"Hello?" Zara ventured into the darkness, her voice wavering slightly. "Anyone here?"

Before any of us could react, the world around us vanished. With no warning, we were outside the building, hanging onto the exterior for dear life, eleven stories above the ground. Fear gripped my chest as my fingers dug into the cold metal, desperately clinging to the edges.

"Wh-what just happened?" Kendra stammered, her eyes wide with panic.

"Did we just teleport?" Zara gasped, her grip on the edge threatening to slip.

"Hang on!" I shouted, the wind whipping around us, making it difficult to hear. "Kendra, can you make a portal or something to get us back inside?"

"I'll try." Kendra's face contorted in concentration.

She closed her eyes and muttered an incantation under her breath. Her hands glowed with a faint blue light, but despite her efforts, no portal formed.

"Damn it, why isn't it working?" Kendra cried, frustrated.

"Maybe whatever brought us out here is blocking your magic." I tried to keep my panic in check.

Zara groaned. "Now what do we do?"

I racked my brain for any inkling of how to get back inside the building or down to safety. We weren't near any windows. Zara and I could climb up or down, but what about Kendra? She didn't have the physical abilities we did.

The wind continued to howl around us, and the ground below seemed impossibly far away. Though we were trained for many situations, none of our experiences had prepared us for this particular predicament.

"All right, ladies," I said through gritted teeth, "we're going to have to figure this out together. We've been through worse. We can handle this."

"Right." Determination replaced her earlier panic. "Maybe we can inch across this tiny ledge to a window."

"Let's just hope we don't end up as pavement pancakes," Kendra said.

Before I could even really process the impossibility of our situation and how we'd get back to it, the skyscraper itself seemed to come alive. In a matter of seconds, the entire building transformed into a massive, quivering mass of gelatin. As if on cue, we descended slowly through the wobbly substance.

"Is this happening? Are we actually sinking through a skyscraper made of gelatin?" Zara asked incredulously before our heads were covered up.

"Seems so." I struggled to maintain my balance as the gelatin shifted beneath me.

Soon the gelatin was over our heads, and it occurred to me that Kendra needed air. I turned my head and maneuvered a pocket of space around my mouth. "Kendra, can you breathe okay in there?"

"More or less," she gasped, her face contorted with the effort of taking shallow breaths. "Not exactly how I envisioned spending my evening."

"Join the club." I exchanged a bewildered glance with Zara. I couldn't believe that our simple mission to track down a skip had taken such an absurd turn.

"Have you ever encountered anything like this before?" Kendra sounded strained. She was starting to panic. It wasn't easy talking in this mess.

I shook my head, racking my brain for any hidden knowledge that might help us navigate our way through a giant gelatin skyscraper, other than slowly descending. Unfortunately, I came up empty.

Zara grumbled, words unintelligible as she tried to say something.

The neon lights of the city below shimmered and twisted, warped by the layers of translucent gelatin between us and the streets of Philadelphia. It was a distorted, surreal sight left me even more disoriented than I already was.

Kendra's eyes were wide as she tried to wiggle her head around to take another breath in the wobbly substance.

Our descent had become increasingly challenging, the wobbling gelatin hampering our movements and forcing us to carefully navigate our way down. The longer we were stuck in this strange reality, the more desperate I became to find a way out.

We had to speed this up. Kendra's face was pale, and the panic was intensifying. I knew she couldn't hold her breath much longer, and we still had a ways to go before reaching solid ground.

We fought our way downward, our eyes fixed on the increasingly clearer view of the streets below. Our progress was slow, but each inch we descended only bolstered our resolve.

"Almost there," I tried to tell Kendra, noting the fear that still flickered in her eyes. I was fairly sure she'd heard me.

I rolled my eyes at the absurdity of our predicament as we continued to descend through the gelatin. Seriously, who ends up sinking through a skyscraper-turned-dessert? Quite the hilarious anecdote to share with the family, assuming we survived.

Zara was too far away. "Give me your hand," I shouted, extending my arm toward her. We needed to stick together, both figuratively and literally in this case.

She grunted, grabbing hold of my hand while balancing herself on the wobbly surface.

"Can't...breathe..." Kendra gasped out, her face turning a concerning shade of red.

I turned back to Zara, wiggling around until I had another pocket in the gelatin to speak into. "We need to push Kendra to the edge so she can get some air."

Zara nodded, her grip on my hand tightening as we forced our way toward the outer edges of the gelatin tower, using our combined strength and agility, hauling Kendra along the way.

She struggled to maintain consciousness. With one final push, we shoved her head out of the gelatin.

She gulped in a desperate breath of air, her face returning to its normal color. "Thank you," she said, then panted.

I shoved my head out, too. "Don't hyperventilate. Let's keep moving before we end up as a vampire-witch smoothie."

My sarcasm earned me an amused snort from Zara.

We continued wiggling our way down, but stayed close to the edge so Kendra could stick her head out whenever she needed to.

As we neared the bottom, the gelatin seemed to become stickier, making it even more challenging to maneuver through. Our progress slowed, and my frustration rose.

"Ugh, now it feels like we're stuck in a giant, sugary glue trap," I complained.

"Tell me about it." Zara fought to free her leg from the gelatin's increasingly clingy grasp.

"We can do this," Kendra said, her breath still coming in quick gasps.

"Right." I gritted my teeth as I forced my arm through the sticky substance. We redoubled our efforts, each movement accompanied by the unsettling sound of suction.

Before I could react, my foot slipped on the treacherous surface, and I plummeted out and downward. Panic surged through me, but Zara's quick reflexes saved me as she grabbed onto my arm, stopping my fall.

"Phew, thanks," I said breathlessly, my heart racing.

"Anytime." She grinned despite our circumstances. "Now let's get the hell out of here."

"Agreed," Kendra nodded, her determination renewed.

With that, we resumed our descent, each step and wiggle a battle against the gelatin's relentless stickiness. But our resolve held strong, fueled by our shared desire to escape this bizarre ordeal and find out what on earth was going on.

It felt like my shoes were glued to the sidewalk as we finally emerged from the gelatin, our bodies coated in the sticky substance. I blinked in surprise at the bright sunlight pouring down on us. Zara, Kendra, and I exchanged confused looks.

"Shouldn't we be...you know, burning or something?" I asked, waving my hands over my unharmed skin. "I mean, it's daylight."

"Maybe the gelatin is a special sunscreen?" Zara scraped some of the goo off her arm.

"Seriously? Forget the gelatin. Why is it suddenly daylight?" My frustration bubbled over. "We went into that building when it was night!"

"Let's just catch our breath for a second," Kendra said. We glanced around, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

"Okay, so we somehow ended up in a crazy gelatin skyscraper, fought our way out, and now it's daytime. Can we all agree that this is beyond weird?" I asked, looking back and forth between my friends.

"Agreed," Zara nodded, while Kendra managed a weak thumbs-up.

"Right. So, how is this happening? What is going on?" My mind raced with unanswered questions.

"Um, guys?" Zara glanced around the street. "Where are all the people?"

"Good question." I narrowed my eyes as I scanned the eerily empty sidewalks. There should have been people out and about, walking dogs, jogging, or grabbing coffee. But there was no one in sight.

"Something's definitely not right here." Kendra looked from one abandoned storefront to another.

"Understatement of the century." I snorted. "But hey, at least we're out of that gelatin nightmare. We just need to figure out what's going on and how to fix it."

"Wait." Kendra held up a hand as she squinted at the building we'd just escaped from. "Is it just me, or does that look...normal?"

"Whoa, what the—" I said as we turned to face the skyscraper. Gone was the jiggly gelatin, replaced by a perfectly normal-looking building. It stood tall, with gleaming windows reflecting the daylight that shouldn't have been there. It looked exactly like it had when we'd first pulled up, except in the sunlight instead of moonlight.

"Did that just happen?" Kendra stammered, wide-eyed and still gasping for air.

"Seems like it." Zara looked between the building and us. "But how?"

"Beats me." I shrugged, my vampire senses on high alert. "One minute, we're swimming through gelatin, and the next, everything's back to normal. Sort of."

"Except for the missing people and the sudden daylight that doesn't bother you two." Kendra peered down at the sticky residue that coated her clothes.

"Let's not forget that little detail." I scraped gelatin off my arm in disgust. "But we can't just stand here all day. We need to find out what the hell is going on."

"Should we go back into the building?" Zara said hesitantly. "Maybe there's something in there that can help us figure this out."

"Or maybe that's exactly what whoever or whatever set this up wants us to do." I tapped a finger against my chin as I pondered our options. "What if this is all some sort of trap?"

"Trap or not, we don't have much choice," Kendra reasoned. "We came here to find our skip, and we're not leaving until we do."

"Kendra's right," Zara said, a determined glint in her eyes. "Besides, you've faced worse before, haven't you? I've heard lots of stories."

I couldn't argue with that. We'd been through some truly bizarre situations since becoming paranormal bounty hunters, but this one was high on the list. With a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and nodded in agreement.

"Well, okay then." I sighed. "Let's go back inside. But be ready for anything, okay?"

Kendra simply nodded, her expression grim but resolute.

As we approached the building's entrance, I worried. What kind of supernatural force could turn a skyscraper into gelatin and alter the time of day? And why had it targeted us?