He was smiling.
This was wrong on so many levels, I didn’t know where to start.
He kept smiling and shrugged out of his jacket.
Add another level to the wrongness.
I raised my gun and took a step back.
“You need to stop.” I backed up another step. “There’s an easy way to avoid this whole confrontation—or whatever it is you have in mind. You step aside. I leave. Simple.”
He stopped smiling. Not because he was any less happy, but because his mouth was changing, along with the rest of his body—at least above the waist. If there was anything going on below the belt, he was still wearing his pants, so thankfully, I didn’t have to see it.
His arms lengthened and became serpentine as if his bones had melted. Other appendages sprouted from his shoulders and sides.
Tentacles.
The bottom half of his face writhed and snake-like tentacles emerged like a fleshy beard.
Oh yeah, this was definitely wrong.
And it sure as hell wasn’t human.
The gunman was a shapeshifter.
A type of shapeshifter I’d never seen, heard of, or had a nightmare about. Though I’d be rectifying that last one tonight, if I lived through this.
The squid guy had forced me away from the column. The opening portal was still the length of the garage behind me, but it wasn’t nearly far enough away.
I aimed for the spot right between his eyes. “Stop or I’ll shoot.”
He didn’t stop.
I fired.
The bullet hit him right between the eyes—and made a dimple. Then the flesh beneath rippled and popped the bullet right out. It landed with a metallic plink on the concrete.
I didn’t get a second shot.
A tentacle shot out like a whip around my legs and swept me off my feet.
I landed hard, hitting my head on the concrete. I saw stars and heard my gun clattering away from me.
Ian had been training me in hand-to-hand combat, not hand-to-tentacle combat. I couldn’t win against two arms, let alone six tentacles. And if this guy got on top of me, I was toast.
The tentacle continued to constrict like a python around my legs until I couldn’t feel them anymore.
I rolled sharply. At least that’s what I tried to do.
My gun was out of reach.
I had a knife inside the top of my tentacle-wrapped right boot. My other knife was at the small of my back.
I twisted, scrambling wildly to get at it. Another tentacle shot out and wrapped around my waist, as he started dragging me toward the portal.
A portal that was now open to the width of a car.
I couldn’t see through to the other side, but I could make out restless shadows shifting and passing across the opening just over the threshold.
One shadow stood still on the edge of the portal where it met and melted the dark.
I’d seen it before.
It was waiting.
I didn’t need three guesses to know for whom.
I didn’t believe in coincidences. I believed in traps. And I was being dragged toward one.
The squid had two tentacles wrapped around me and the other four were flailing around my squirming self, trying to get a hold. If he dragged me across that threshold, I was worse than dead and I knew it.
I panicked.
I got my knife in my hand, stabbing and sawing frantically at the tentacle wrapped around my knees, black blood soaking my hands. I gripped the knife harder. It was all I had and I couldn’t lose it.
My whimpers turned to enraged screams. They could have been girly screams for all I knew. I didn’t care. Screaming tapped my primal self, the terrified animal that kept me cutting and fighting with everything I had.
I cut through the tentacle’s tough core and through the rubbery flesh on the other side, freeing my legs. I drove the heel of my boot into my attacker’s knee, simultaneously hooking the toe of the other boot behind his ankle. One sharp pull and he went down. I stabbed the knife’s blade into the tentacle at my waist and started sawing. The thing’s high-pitched keening echoed through the garage.
It went well with my screaming.
If something was trying to mug you, rape you, kill you, or drag you through a fiery portal to your eternal doom—make noise. Help could be just one good shriek away.
The tentacle tightened around my waist, and I sawed faster. The squid thing was still keening. My screams had turned back to frantic whimpering.
I severed the tentacle, slicing into my numbed waist before I could stop. Black blood pumped from the tentacle’s severed stump, the end of it still wrapped around my waist and constricting as if unaware that it was no longer attached.
With a keening squeal, the squid dropped me, staggering toward the portal, its remaining four tentacles cradling the stumps of the other two. I desperately pushed against the blood-slicked concrete with the heels of my boots as my hands scrambled and clawed for a hold to pull myself away.
At least I tried.
In my mind, I was making all kinds of progress getting away from that portal. In reality, I couldn’t move. Not one muscle.
I didn’t have to move to see the portal. The squid demon was gone, and the shadow standing silently beyond was still silent, but he had moved. The shadow had become a silhouette of a man. Tall and thin. Long fingers flared like a fan and my whimpers froze in my throat . . .
And my blood froze in my veins. Not from the paralyzing effects of what must have been a spell launched from the other side of the portal, but from the knowledge of who had done the launching.
Sar Gedeon’s murderer. The thing that had held the elf still while a class-five demon had cut out and eaten his heart—then his soul.