Glamour Bites

Several hours and a dump truck full of shit later, the boys of Teeth and Claws sat with me on the sidewalk, downing bottle after bottle of water. We still had a good half of the building left to go, but weren’t in any hurry at the moment.



I looked up at the sun and saw the sun moving toward the horizon and knew we had a little less than two hours before the sun set. We had to be finished before the sun set because whoever had started the fire had obviously started it before the sun had come up.



I stood and brushed some soot off my jeans, having had Harper make a run to my house to check on Cassi and get me some more comfortable clothes. “Sorry, guys, break’s over. We have to finish before the sunsets, or we’ll have a load of vampyres on us. They would love to think that Glamour Hunts was out of business.”



With a groan, Ian and Gabe went to the right, while Harper and Matt went to the left. I went into the middle of the debris and listened to the boys as they lifted a piece of wall, looked it over, and tossed it to the waiting dump truck workers. It was a system we had developed over the last few hours that seemed to go faster. The dump truck workers weren’t too thrilled over the fact that I was only letting Ian and the guys touch the debris.



It had taken me nearly twenty minutes to explain to the workers that the fire had been magical in nature, which had been proven when I was the only one who had been able to put it out, and that the guys were psychically linked and could feel where anything magical had occurred. They didn’t like it, but they let us do all the work, laughing at us the entire time.



I cleared the hallway in front of mine and Karma’s offices within minutes and stopped, frowning as my hand brush the door to my office. I dropped to my knees and started to brush the ash and soot off the door in desperation, praying that what I had felt had been a figment of my imagination.



Gabe was the first to notice me pulling at the pile of debris. He ran over, calling to Ian and the others, before sliding to his knees beside me. “What did you find, Alexia? What do you need me to help with?”



“Give me your hand.” I grabbed Gabe’s hand and laid it on the wood. He yanked back his hand with a gasp and looked at me with horror in his eyes. “That’s all I needed, Gabe.”



“What the hell is that?”



“Demon magic. Help me get this door up so we can find out where the point of origin is.”



The two of us started to dig through the pile, tossing extra wood out of the way, as Ian, Harper, and Matt made their way over. Without question, the three other guys started to grab at the debris until we had a spot clear. A collective gasp went up through our group and I fell back on my heels.



Where my client chairs used to be was a demon symbol, charred into the carpet. It looked like a Star of David, but was enclosed with a circle, demon words for envy, greed, wrath, loathing, torture, and death above a point. In the middle of the star was the symbol for fire.



Angry welled inside me as the tears came to my eyes. Only two creatures could do demon magic, vampyres and demons. Vampyres wouldn’t dare delve in the power of the magic that lay in front of me. I could have done it, but I was not willing to sacrifice my soul to hurt someone like this.



I used my anger and clasped my hands together into a giant fist and brought it down on the symbol. Pain shot up through my arm as the demon magic broke through my psychic shields, but I kept hitting it, over and over, until the floor was a shattered mess at my knees.



The uneasy feeling that demon magic gave me disappeared, and I realized that I could smell my own blood. I looked down and watched a drop of blood fall from my hands onto the middle of the broken star, equalizing the demon magic with blood magic, which was more powerful.



I heard movement behind me and turned to see Ian, Harper, Gabe, and Matt lying in some rubble at the front of the dump truck, looking at me with worried as well as scared expressions on their faces.



It didn’t take me long to figure out that I had thrown them into the pile of rubble when my magic met the demon’s. I had let the horror of the demon take over me and had not warned them of the consequences beforehand. My anger had fed on the demon magic and caused me to possibly harm people who cared for me.



I stood and took a few steps toward them, but the dump truck guys, as well as my boys, moved away from me. The truckers locked themselves in their truck. Ian and the other guys remained in front of the truck, but looked around ready to run.



“What’s wrong, Ian?”



“Lexi, baby, you need to find a mirror. I mean … I don’t know what I mean. Just go look in a mirror, honey.”



I frowned and looked around the rumble at my feet, having seen a mirror fragment earlier. I spotted it a few feet away and made my way over to it, noticing the slight flinching of the boys as I moved closer to them. I picked up the mirror and nearly dropped it at what I saw.



My normally tanned skin was a rich deep crimson and I had dainty horns coming from my forehead just below my hairline. My eyes were a black with crimson red streaks through them, and the fangs I worked so hard to hide were longer and more vicious than usual, making me look feral.



I stared in the mirror for a few minutes until the laughter boiled out of my throat, spilling from my lips. Dropping the mirror, I watched it shatter on the ground as I laughed harder, unable to stop myself.



I opened my mouth to talk, but the only thing I could get out was, “Grandfather … came back … haunt me.”



I felt heat rise up at my feet and was suddenly surrounded by fire, though it didn’t burn me or anything around me. I glanced up at Ian, no longer laughing, and watched as he disappeared, shrouded in a cloud of black. Or maybe I was the one disappearing. I just had to figure out where I was disappearing to.