But instead I used my grip to swing my legs around and wrap up her neck and shoulders. My ankles found each other and I squeezed Baigujing with every ounce of strength I had left.
I was ripping a page from Quentin’s playbook. Judging from the demon’s howl, it was a good one.
She clawed frantically at my face but couldn’t reach. My body was simply too long. I had her locked up with all the time in the world.
What did Quentin do next to the Demon King of Confusion? I wondered, my thoughts surprisingly cold-blooded. Oh yeah. This. I took hold of Baigujing’s skull with impunity and began cranking her neck.
“Aaagh!” she hissed. “Ugly girl! Ugly, ugly girl!”
Really? We were going to do that now?
“Yeah, well . . . you’re overdressed,” I said. I squeezed tighter and heard something crack.
Through the cloud of adrenaline fogging my brain, an idea slipped through like a ray of light. I closed my eyes and reopened them with true sight on. Baigujing was a skeleton once more, her muscle and skin invisible under my X-ray vision.
“Where’s Red Boy?” I bellowed. “Tell me, and I’ll spare your life!” I didn’t know if I was strong enough to dictate either way; but it sounded like the type of thing you said when you had a monster in a headlock.
Baigujing froze. But only for an instant. She began trembling in my grasp and making the most hideous noise. I almost let go out of fear before I realized she was simply laughing.
“I’ll never tell you,” she said. “Nothing you can do will ever make me tell you.”
There were no lie bubbles. Either she didn’t know or she really wasn’t going to say. So much for my idea.
“Spare my life?” she sneered. “You don’t have what it takes to end me. The instant you slip, I’ll find that child and rip the meat from her bones!”
Still no bubbles. “Come again?” I said.
“I’ll kill her and every other miserable human I get my hands on! I will turn this town into a sea of corpses! You will swim to me in dead flesh!”
The air was clear. If I let her go she’d do her best to make good on her threat.
“I can’t be killed by the likes of you!” Baigujing roared. “Do you hear me? You can’t kill me!”
Bubble.
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” I said. I arched back and snapped her in two.
Unlike the Demon King of Confusion’s slow melt, Baigujing burst into ink and nothingness like a popped balloon. I nearly hit my head on the floor as a result of her body’s vanishing act. I flailed and spat away the black inky liquid that I thought would be covering me, only to find that it was already gone.
I closed my eyes and shook the true sight out of my head. With it went all the rush that had been keeping me afloat.
It felt as if I’d been run over by a dozen trucks. My body hurt where I’d been hit, sure, but I also seemed to have self-torn every muscle fiber I had.
One down, ninety-nine to go, I thought to myself. If the remaining bottles of beer on the wall were going to be similarly hard, then I did not like my chances of emerging unscathed from this mess.
I staggered over to Quentin, who was only now coming out of his daze.
“Way to be useful, chief,” I deadpanned, slapping my hand on his shoulder. I kept it there for support, so I didn’t topple over in the next breeze.
Quentin scrunched his eyes. “I could see you two, but you were always just out of reach.”
He draped my arm over his neck and dragged me to the stairs. We took each step slowly.
“To think you beat her completely on your own,” he said. “You were amazing.”
“I was lucky. You have got to teach me wushu. I can’t handle not knowing what to do in these situations.”
“I keep telling you, I don’t know any formal martial arts. If you want these fights to get any easier, we should work on shape-changing you back into a staff so I can wield you like I used to.”