“Fuck!” I slam on the brakes, but I’m too late. Whatever ran out in front of us crashes into the car.Chapter 15“Are you okay?” Ruby’s hand lands on my shoulder. The airbags didn’t go off, but I know I hit something.
I feel an instant pain in my neck from whiplash, but other than that, I’m fine.
But I hit something. Something that was tall, tan, and human-ish in shape.
“Yeah. You?” I scramble to put the Jeep in park.
“I’m fine. What the hell was that?” Ruby’s eyes are wide. “Shit, it’s coming back!”
I look up just in time to see a scrapper demon racing toward the Jeep. Blood drips from his head, and its yellowed fangs are bared.
“Oh, hell no!” Ruby braces herself for impact right as the scrapper hits her door.
“You picked the wrong night to mess with me,” I say through gritted teeth, undoing my seatbelt. I open the door despite Ruby’s protests and conjure an energy ball. “Hey, fuckface!” I yell, tossing the energy ball up into the air. The scrapper demon lets out a gargled growl and takes off, jumping over my Jeep and denting my hood even more than it already is.
“Fucker,” I say and throw the energy ball at its chest. It hits and sinks in, burning him from the inside out. The scrapper screeches in pain, stumbling backwards into the weeds on the shoulder of the road, collapsing into a pile of goo.
Ruby gets out of the car, eyes still wide. “Was that…a…a…”
“Scrapper demon,” I finish. “Yeah.” I let out a breath and look at the woods next to the road. “And where there’s one, they are usually more.”
As well as another more powerful demon. Scrappers follow in the wake of higher-level demons, eating their leftovers, which is how they earned the nickname of “scrapper demon.” I do not have fucking time for this.
The Feast of the Blood Moon is tonight and I’m leaving for Florida in a few days. If there are any fucking demons out there, they’ve got another thing com—
“Help! Help!” A desperate scream comes from the woods.
Dammit.
Conjuring another energy ball, I take off without so much as a second thought. Ruby follows right behind, racing through the overgrown weeds and emerging into the woods. Another scrapper demon is bent over an injured human, and even I can smell the strong scent of blood in the air.
I throw my hand out, telekinetically throwing the scrapper away from the injured human. It flies backwards, hitting a tree hard and smacking its head against the thick trunk. It falls to the ground, motionless.
“Oh my god,” Ruby pants, seeing the human on the ground, two others are crouched behind him, hiding next to a fallen log. “Are you okay?” She shakes her head as soon as the words tumble out of her mouth, Obviously, this guy isn’t okay.
“Phone,” I whisper-yell to Ruby. “Do you have your phone.”
“Um, I, um, yeah.” She’s frazzled but, again, surprises me by how fast she’s able to act under pressure. She pulls her phone from her crossbody bag and turns on the light. She hurries over to the guy on the ground, and I take a quick look at the wound on his leg.
It’s a bite wound, and it wasn’t the scrapper that did this.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” Ruby tells him, and the two people hiding slowly lurch forward. “Is anyone else injured?”
“I…I think we’re okay,” a girl says. Her hands are shaking, and she can’t be any older than sixteen. There are empty beer cans littering the forest floor. We’re not far from the estate, and I wonder if these kids came out here with the intention of sneaking into the abandoned house to party, not realizing it’s been under construction for a few months now.
Something rustles through the woods behind us, and the scrapper demon on the ground starts to stir.
“Callie,” Ruby says in a hushed tone.
“I hear it,” I tell her. “Don’t worry, I got this.” I close my eyes and call for Binx. He’s close enough he can easily hear me, and I’m going to need him to do a quick sweep of the woods. I whirl around, conjuring strings of magic around both my hands.
The scrapper on the ground starts to get up, making a weird chortling sound, signaling something to the others.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I tell it and throw out my hand, sending a wave of energy to blast into its chest. Instead of sizzling through its thick flesh, the scrapper absorbs the magic, just like they did when the scrappers were getting power boosts from the crack in the Ley line. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. I thought we killed all of you hulked-up motherfuckers.”
It bounds toward me, and I brace myself, fueling myself with my own powers. I kick it hard in the chest and then send a wave of telekinetic energy at it. It stumbles back and Binx slinks from the dark in shadow form, grabbing the scrapper and twisting its head clean around. The scrapper slumps to the floor and Binx drags it back, taking the body out of sight to be burned later.