They move in a half circle, and I catch sight of something absolutely bonkers on the other side of the ring. A woman with curly brown hair and a duck in her arms. No…arubberduck. She shouts something I can’t hear over the rabble around me, but then meets my gaze. She smiles and waves. I glance behind me, but there’s no one except more of these beastly demons.
Rhazan turns his head and his eyes narrow when he catches sight of me. He’s about to say something when the blue demon surges forward, cracking his jaw with a powerful hit. I gasp at the sucker punch and take a step forward.
“Back,” Rhazan orders and I stop halfway, reaching for him.
The blue demon grins. “Getting distracted, brother? That’s not like you!”
The curly-haired woman waves me forward, and I skirt the circle around the men until I reach her. She sticks her hand out for a shake and I’m too baffled not to accept it.
“Sylvia,” she shouts, then bumps the duck in her arm. “This is Charlie.”
The duck flaps its little rubbery wings and makes a wheezing quack.
“Jade,” I murmur, turning my attention back to Rhazan. “What is this?”
Sylvia leans in. “The coolest fight I’ve ever seen!”
“But why?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Apollo told me we had to come, that his brother needed him. So here we are. We’ve only been here about an hour.”
“They’re brothers? Actual brothers?”
That would make sense given their size, shape, and general likeness in their features, but…they’re different colors.
“Well, in the way that all of God’s angels were brothers,” she says.
The blue demon—Apollo, I assume—jukes around Rhazan’s heavy fist and plants another strike to his ribs. Rhazan pulls his fist back and elbows Apollo in the shoulder. He staggers and leaps out of the way of another strike. They dance around the room, Rhazan on the offensive.
“So, you come here often?” Sylvia asks.
I shake my head. “Second time. I came to help him ward the bar against the skreet.”
I don’t know why I’m telling her everything. Maybe because she’s the only other human here.
“You’re a witch too!”a quacky voice says in my head.
I scowl at the duck. “Was that him?”
Sylvia hoots for Apollo, then looks back at me. “Yeah, he’s got telepathy.”
A rubber duck with telepathy. Okay. One hundred percent the weirdest thing I’ve ever encountered.
“You’ll get used to it,”Charlie chimes in again.
“The skreet,” Sylvia says. “I’ve never heard of them.”
“They’re interdimensional cockroaches,” I say, watching Rhazan.
His form is pure brute force. Every movement is heavy and devastating. I catalogue how he fights, and whether I could put up in a scrap with him. I almost want to find out.
“You own the shop on the other side of the portal here?” she asks.
I nod. “Yeah, just getting set up. The Cosmic Café.”
She snorts. “Good name, given the real estate. Come on!”
Apollo dips under another strike, his fist screaming up toward Rhazan’s gut. Rhazan catches Apollo’s wrist just before impact and pulls him as he twists. The demon stumbles, and Rhazan kicks his feet out from under him. Apollo lands in a heap on the glassy floor with a whoomph that sounds like all the air escaping him. Rhazan puts his knee in his back and steam sizzles from the spot.
