Song for the Dead (Ada Palomino 2)

I get to my feet and try to catch my breath, staring up at the low, grey sky. Perry and Dex are in Hawaii right now, which is total bullshit. I know this was a present from Dex, who did good for once, but I hate that her Facebook has turned into a tropical slideshow while I’m here in the ever-present winter gloom of the PNW.

“You ready?” Max asks, placing a hand briefly on my back. I feel a warm jolt of energy from his palm, energy that starts multiplying inside me. Jesus! What was that?

I straighten up quickly and look at him.

He’s got fucking flames in his eyes.

“Uh, Max,” I say, nodding to him. “Your eyes are like…on fire?”

The flames are nearly taking over the green in his eyes, but he just stares at me. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” I ask warily, taking a step back. “Should we not be concerned about this…” I point at his face frantically.

“Do you feel it?”

I shake my head. Does he mean the energy? “Yes. No. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

“Are you ready?” And I realize he’d just asked me that before all of this weird shit.

“Ready for what?”

He licks his lips, giving me a hint of a smile. “I take it you felt it. Here we go, Blondie.”

“Go where?!”

And then Max raises his palms, swirls them in a swift Dr. Strange type movement, and then the air starts to shimmer, warp, and burn. He’s creating a portal.

“What are you doing?” I yell at him. I didn’t know he could do that! That’s my thing!

But before he can answer, I see it. A person walks out of the portal.

Holy. Shit.

It’s a woman with dark curly hair, wearing a navy business suit, pale with a stern face, and close-set eyes. She looks at Max. Then looks at me.

“Who the fuck is this?” I cry out.

Then she smiles at me.

With pointed teeth. A shark’s smile.

I scream.

It all happens so fast.

The woman lunges for me, transforming before my eyes from a person to an ugly demon-like creature. Her hands turn into claws, suit into a tail, curly hair flattening down her back until it turns into slick black fur. Only her face remains human, smiling with those rows of pointed teeth, about to take a bite right out of me.

Max reaches out calmly and grabs the woman’s head in his hands and twists it around until it snaps right off, blood spraying all over him, all over his face.

Her body falls to the ground, turning back to a woman’s shape in a suit, before disintegrating into a pile of ash.

My mouth is open, frozen in a silent scream, as I watch the woman’s head in Max’s hands, her mouth snapping and snapping, eyes turning white until it too turns to ash and falls to the ground like burned snow.

I can’t form words. I can only stare in horror.

“So you weren’t ready,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Next time.”

“You…Max…what the fuck just happened? You just ripped that fucking woman’s head off?!”

“I had to. You weren’t going to do anything about it.”

He stares at the portal. It’s still open. He’s looking at it like he’s waiting for someone else to waltz out of there.

“Max…” I can’t even find the right words. My mind is blown. “Who was that?”

“I don’t know her name, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Dude, you just…”

“She was a demon, Ada.”

“She was a human! Demons don’t wear business suits.”

“They don’t?” Max says to me, his forehead creased. “We both know that’s not true.”

Right. Michael. Dex’s older brother who was taken over by a demon at some point in his life. He wore a suit. He killed Max. He killed my mother. And he tried to kill me. I know what it was like to have that thing in my body, trying to take over.

“Think fast, Ada,” Max says, and I look to see another person exiting the portal. This time it’s a young male, maybe fifteen, the type that should be carrying a skateboard, long blond hair that gets in his eyes. He gives me an easy normal-toothed smile and raises his hand in greeting.

I quickly eye Max, not knowing what he’s going to do. What if he’s wrong and this is just a kid who got lost? I don’t know what portals can do, if they can suck normal people in by accident.

“Do it, Ada,” Max warns me.

“Do what?!”

I stare at the kid. The kid stares at me.

And he starts walking toward me.

Still smiling.

And his teeth change, long, jagged, and sharp.

“Oh fuck!” I scream, and my first instinct is to turn around and run like hell. Cowardly, maybe, but you try being in this situation.

“Do it, Ada!” Max screams at me.

He’s never yelled at me before.

It snaps some sense into me.