Chapter 19

"Vera, darling," Faustus crooned. "I should have expected you. Although maybe it is you who should have expected me."

A little seer humor. Cute.

Vera stood as the goon gang circled her. I, unfortunately, wouldn't be standing to join them. The room was spinning slowly, and it took effort to keep my eyes from rolling back in my head.

I might have pushed my abilities too far.

Faustus, realizing I wasn't a threat right now, kept half an eye on my limply sprawled self as he regarded Vera and her full backpack. "Is it safe to assume you have stolen from me?"

"This shit's mine," she snapped.

"I am afraid we disagree on that."

"You can't be pissed that I took back what's mine."

His smile sharpened. "I can be, I am, and I'm sure you are aware of what happens to those unfortunate enough to land on my ugly side."

From where I sat, every side was an ugly side with this dude.

"Chucky," he said to the orangutan-like cook, "would you like to do the honors?"

The man stepped forward, looked her up and down, then gave his boss an inquisitive look. "Right now?"

"Afraid, Chucky? She's just a seer. While it is a useful ability, she has no real power."

At this particular moment, neither did I. I'd used up my psychic juice and I needed a couple minutes to recover enough to save my ass, especially if I had to target this entire collective of slime-ball mythics.

The orangutan turned his palms upward and fire ignited over his hands. Did Faustus have his enemies burned alive like Salem witches?

Vera's eyes widened, her darting gaze searching for an escape—but there was none. The pyromage raised his arms, flames streaking toward the ceiling. Furnace-like heat washed over me even from my table in the corner.

I shoved upright in my seat. "What about a trade, Faustus? My information is worth more than our lives—and Vera's goodies."

Faustus gestured at Chucky to wait, then rotated to face me. "I rather doubt that."

"The stolen Cerberus artifact. I know where it is."

He went still. "Impossible."

"Implausible," I corrected. "But I do know, and I'll tell you as soon as Vera and I are safely out of here."

The three-point smile returned. "I'm no fool, Kit. You will tell me before you or Vera set foot outside this establishment."

I pushed to my feet. The room didn't whirl like a theme park ride, and I was calling that a win. "Then we'll tell you from the door. How's that for a compromise?"

He considered it. "Agreed."

The goon squad uncircled Vera, and her wide, frightened stare bored into mine as we retreated to the door. She grasped the handle, ready to pull the door open for our escape. With my back to the exit, I faced Faustus where he stood between his telekinetic beast and pyromage ape.

"Where is the artifact, Kit?"

I swallowed. "A secret group of psychics led by KCQ's guild master stole it. It's locked in a vault in one of their offices."

"KCQ?" A greedy, manic light sparked in his eyes. "Their GM is dead."

"Yep. Almost everyone who knows about the vault and the artifact has kicked the bucket." I arched my eyebrows. "So it's finders keepers at this point."

Faustus's shiver-inducing smile bloomed over his face, and Vera yanked the door open so we could make our getaway.

Or she tried. The door didn't budge.

She wrenched on the handle. It wasn't locked. Why wasn't it opening? I grabbed the handle above her hands and pulled with all my strength. It wobbled but didn't open.

Faustus laughed.

I whipped back around—and noticed that the telekinetic beast had one hand extended. He was holding the door shut with his powers, and he was so strong that Vera and me combined couldn't overcome his mental pressure.

"I would have loved to collect you, Kit," Faustus murmured. "But it was not meant to be. Kill them."

Flames returned to the pyromage's palms, and the other men raised their hands, produced artifacts, or withdrew weapons from under their clothes.

Vera whipped something the size of a coaster out of her backpack. "Ventos!"

Wind burst from the artifact. The howling gust knocked the entire boys' club back on their heels and singed the eyebrows off the poor bastard standing immediately behind the pyromage.

She launched at the startled men. Her front kick slammed into the pyromage's chest, sending him sprawling into the two nearest lowlifes. Whirling, she smashed her knuckles into another man's nose. As he staggered back, a gap opened in the wall of mythics—a path to the kitchen and the unguarded back door.

Good. She had her escape route. I was using the front door—which was right behind me.

I grabbed the handle and the door swung open. A rainy breeze tasting of freedom swept over me, and I leaped across the threshold.

An invisible force clamped around my torso and hauled me backward. I flew through the air and smacked into the chest of the super-sized telekinetic. His Lou Ferrigno arms banded around me, crushing the air from my lungs. My whole skeleton creaked from the pressure.

Eyes bulging, I locked onto his mind and dropped a hallucination into his brain—the vision of flames bursting to life all over my body.

He bellowed and flung me away from him. I crashed into another guy and bounced off, unsteady on my feet. A glimpse of movement—Vera sprinting for the kitchen door.

I launched through the gap she had created, dropping my shoulder into the ribcage of a random grease-monger who got in my way. Footsteps thundered after me, and a fireball whizzed past my head.

Bursting into the kitchen, I grabbed the first thing I saw—a cast-iron skillet coated in grease, sitting beside a sink full of brown water. As the door whipped open again, I swung my weapon. It caught my pursuer—another rando—in the shoulder. He fell into the counter, blocking the doorway for the horde of goons coming in right behind him.

I sprinted deeper into the kitchen. A long counter with a grill built into it split the room in half, and my salvation—the exit—was on the far side.

"Kit!" Vera popped up from behind the counter's butt end, waving at me. "Here!"

I dove behind it, still clutching my culinary weapon. Another fireball flew past the spot where I'd been and exploded against a stockpot. The goon squad was rushing into the kitchen, and we had two seconds before they reached us.

"Can you make us invisible?" she asked desperately.

Maybe—but not for long. Sucking in a breath, I focused on Vera and myself and sent out the invisi-bomb just as the fire-wreathed orangutan rounded the counter. He peered down at the spot where we were crouched with dimwitted confusion.

"Go!" I hissed at Vera, desperately holding the projection with the fumes in my psychic gas tank.

She jumped up, and I followed, my desperation increasing as I realized my vision was going foggy—a side-effect of psychic overexertion I'd never experienced before. We sprinted for the exit.

"There!" someone shouted.

What? But my halluci-bomb was still active, wasn't it?

As I shot a panicked look over my shoulder. Vera did the same. She gasped—and I realized three things at once.

First, I hadn't included the skillet I was carrying in my halluci-bomb, meaning everyone could see it fleeing across the room all on its own.

Two, my vision wasn't going foggy. The haze was caused by the room filling with storm clouds, a bizarre sight that triggered my memory of what a "tempemage" was—a weather mage.

And three, the air was crackling in an alarming way—and I was holding a metal conductor.

"The frying pan!" Vera shrieked, but her warning came too late.

A bolt of electricity struck the pan with a loud crack. Excruciating energy surged down my arm and through my body. My muscles contracted and my jaw clenched involuntarily. After a split second, which felt like a goddamn eternity, my limbs went limp and I sagged backward, the pan clattering against the tiled floor. Vera caught me before I could fall and yanked me upright.

On the other side of the counter, Faustus smiled that creepy, ominous smile, utterly pleased with his indoor thunderstorm. "There you are."

I guess getting zapped had killed my hallucination.

His whole goon force lined the counter, and the pyromage stood only a few feet away, sparks jumping from his clenched fists. The super-telekinetic towered over Faustus, leering eagerly as he waited for the command to drag me and Vera away from the door.

I braced my feet. My brain felt like it had been slapped by a pissed-off gorilla—or maybe like it had been struck by lightning—but I gathered my shredded focus. Fatigue like I'd never felt before dragged at my mind. I'd never stretched my psychic stamina this far before.

And I was about to discover how much further I could go.

I summoned a vision of what I wanted, stretched my powers to engulf every mind except Vera's, and opened a portal to hell.

The refrigerator door morphed into a black tear in the fabric of reality, and from within that darkness, a demon crawled into view. Not a real demon—I had no idea what an actual resident of hell looked like—but my own nightmare-inducing version, inspired by every horror movie and medieval painting I'd ever laid eyes on.

It had eyes that were deep pits made of mucus and octopus tentacles.

Its skin was an oozing, scabby, bloody mess that creaked as it slunk along the floor on six misshapen limbs.

Its saliva was molten lava that leaked between its yellow, dagger-like teeth.

Its overall shape resembled an uncomfortably muscular scorpion with a humanoid body and a six-foot tail dripping venom.

The demon dropped to the sticky kitchen floor with a crunch—and the petrified goons inched backward, their faces pale and jaws slack. They couldn't take their eyes off the monster. Not one of them dared to spare a fraction of their attention to check on the thieves they'd been about to enthusiastically murder.

The only problem—it was taking so much of my shredded, exhausted concentration to hold the Creature Feature projection that I couldn't spare any thought for escaping.

Vera couldn't see the monster, but she must've realized I was doing something. She grabbed my arm and guided me backward. I stumbled blindly, gaze locked on the creature, holding it even as my vision of the rest of the room wavered and doubled.

The monster drew itself up, spreading its limbs. Its chest expanded as it drew in a deep breath. Faustus and the goons went rigid with panic.

Door hinges creaked. The damp breeze hit my back as Vera drew me across the threshold.

Just before my line of sight cut off, I narrowed my eyes, panting with effort. The monster, poised to attack, loosed an ear-splitting roar and belched a spray of magma across the entire kitchen. Every mythic, Faustus included, dove for the floor, arms shielding their heads.

Then Vera and I were out the door. Holding my elbow in a death grip, she bolted down the alley, and I ran after her, my head spinning, stomach lurching, and limbs shaking from the mental and physical drain.

But hey, my demon-monster had been seriously freakin' scary, right?