“You two are clinically insane,” Olivia mutters, but she takes the lighter.
I dodge a swipe from the Vorfaluka and land a blow to its shoulder. The Khallumite bites deep, sizzling. The thingscreeches and backhands me across the chest. Pain explodes through my ribs, but I roll with it.
The music screams louder. A double bass drum kicks in.
The fire ignites.
A ring of flame bursts into life around the dance floor, cutting the creature off from the fleeing crowd. The flickering blaze casts everything in infernal gold. The Vorfaluka shudders, shadows twisting around its feet like it means to vanish—but it can’t.
Not with the sound. Not with the fire.
It’strapped.
I rise from the dirt, bloody, grinning.
“You’re mine now, monster.”
The Vorfaluka lunges.
I meet it head-on.
I stab forward again, the Spiritslayer flashing green fire in the night, and this time the Vorfalukableeds. Not normal blood—this is something else. Thick, black, and glittering with rot. It hits the dirt and hisses like acid.
It stumbles. Just for a breath.
I smell it then—fear. Real fear, like rusted steel and old fire. The beast is weakening. The music, the fire, the fury—it’s all working. I can feel it start to turn.
One more blow.
“YOU STOLE IT!”
The shout comes from behind me, jagged and echoing with madness.
I spin, and the stench hits me first—sweat, rot, something chemical underneath, like burning plastic and old meat left in a sunlit trunk.
Then I see him.
Calvin Hobbes.
Or what’sleftof him.
His suit hangs on him like a corpse’s borrowed skin. His tie is askew. One shoe is gone. His hands twitch at his sides like they’ve forgotten how to be human. Veins glow a sickly green beneath translucent skin, pulsing like they're filled with liquid poison. His eyes blaze—not metaphorically. Literally. They shine with unholy emerald fire.
“The Spear!” he shrieks, eyes locking on mine. “It wasmine! It chose me!”
My grip tightens on the Spiritslayer. “You touched it,” I growl. “You let it inside you.”
Calvin laughs, a high, broken sound. “Itwantedme. The power wanted me! And you—you—you were just the delivery boy!”
He hurls himself at me.
The moment he moves, the Vorfaluka moves too.
Itfeelsthe shift. Seizes it.
I see it through the smoke—both heads snapping toward the break in rhythm. The ring of fire flickers as Calvin barrels through it, and the Vorfaluka’s malformed feet slip into the gap before the blaze can catch hold again.
“NO!” Olivia screams.
