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Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

Page 66

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I’d made my way downstage until I was behind Dark Snow, who was bumping and grinding to beat the band with his ’57 Custom Les Paul Black Beauty electric guitar. Could I have ever dreamed I’d think Snow was the Super in the white hat and way more wholesome than this hell-bent CinSim doppelgänger?

As the groupies starting boosting each other up to climb onto the stage and reenact the bad scene from below the Inferno, Quicksilver came loping in from stage right. An oversize wolf at full power run, silver fur riffling in the spotlights, is a vision to behold.

The audience screamed encouragement when Quick spotted Anger in his sequined flame-covered costume, Lilith’s green eyes just starting to inhabit his while he beat the hell out of the drums.

It felt like we were all tumbling around in a thunderstorm.

Like lightning, Quick took them both down, Anger and Lilith. His ferocious leap set the percussion instruments rolling off the stage into the overexcited audience. Entering with a shrill chorus of arfs behind Quicksilver came … Asta, gray all over with black markings. As in his movies, the noisy canine turned coward and dove for shelter among the scattered drum set, ass-up and tail down.

What an animal act!

Where had Lilith shifted to? The possession-drained band was losing its force, and I was running out of Sins to expel Lilith from. Wait! Envy, with her green dress on, was a natural for Lilith’s next victim. The rocker’s eyeballs were looking like kiwi-jam-slathered toast when a huge white tiger took her down with velvet paws before she could make another move.

Me, I’d had no idea how powerful my rock-star black leather and silver-studded catsuit could be. I hip-butted Sloth into the mosh pit with my wrist mirrors flashing—leftovers of Lilith’s possession dying in his eyes at first physical contact—and surveyed who … and what … was still standing.

Grizelle. Huge again? And Asta onstage? They couldn’t both occupy the same space, unless …

Before my wondering eyes, Light Snow appeared from stage right to riotous applause and shouting. He grabbed a guitar from the rack in front of the upset drums and strode straight toward Dark Snow, rocking into a dueling guitar act.

Of course. Lilith now occupied the CinSim Snow.

The crowd was ecstatic. Man, that was way too much demonic possession, hard-rock leather and shaking going on. The frenzy generated by the Seven Deadly Sins battling an ancient soul-sucking demon would be a sure sellout ticket on any tour.

Grizelle, again her own formidable human self, was pacing the stage’s rear, awaiting the chance to pounce on Lilith/Dark Snow.

I squinted beyond the houselights, trying to spot my friends at the Inferno bar.

No luck.

Wait a minute.

We had me, Quicksilver, Grizelle, and Real Snow onstage.

Light Snow was playing his white Stratocaster as if he were alone in the universe engaged in a duel with the devil. Maybe music was his magic. It was sure almost deafening me even though the Sins had gone quiet.

I glanced at the mosh pit. All the ravening groupies from below were back in place, squeeing and screeching and jumping up and down but staying put, competing for the black scarves Dark Snow lofted into their midst … scarves that were turning whiter than snowflakes as they fell.

Was it all reverting to normal? Did Lilith finally have no handy soul to possess next? Grizelle and I were not easy takeover options. Even as I watched, I again spotted my Lilith mirror image, my badass but so far purely human double almost crowded out and lost among the groupies. I’d first seen her there from the Inferno bar. She’d led me into the mirror and this control-freak battle with her big bad namesake.

As the possessed Dark Snow bent to commune with screaming groupies, my Lilith’s white hands grabbed and climbed the color-changing scarf, her own freaky living black tattoos doing the kind of silver-familiar jig up her forearms I experienced.

Lilith was boosted from the shoulders of the fans right onto the stage.

I zeroed in on Dark Snow’s black leather back, wondering if the same whip wounds were now tormenting Lilith. Something was. The CinSim’s entire figure stiffened, then demonic Lilith’s head and face came swiveling around to face me, a whirlwind of long black hair whipping her savage features.

Oh. So Exorcist. And me with only a Catholic school education to deal with her.

And a mirror-twin sandwich.

I tried to wrench off a mirror wrist cuff to toss to my Lilith, but the demon snarled to show an Alien maw striking snakelike from her icy cover-model features.

Too much horror-movie imagery. I angled my arms and wrists into a tortured configuration that bounced a reflection of my Lilith into my other wrist mirror and zinged the demon right between the eyes. Don’t it make your green eyes bloodred?

Blinded by the light, the demon screamed as she deserted Dark Snow to the piece of animated vintage film he was, and turned her seductive femme fatale form toward the mosh pit, fleeing to the ever-easy groupies.

Not now.

Her mirror-me namesake stood there, a solid barrier between the demon and her enchanted flock, leaving the demonic Lilith totally on her own, without a home, like a rolling stone … and not the rock-band sort.



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