Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) Read Free Page B

It might've been a trick of the light, but I thought I caught sight of fingers on that bit of meat, as if a thick, human arm had been set to roast.
    Ultimately, I spotted the little black box on a makeshift altar. It was off to the side, about twenty feet away from my present position. It would have been a simple thing for me to rush over and take hold of it, except that, with so many sets of eyes in the area, there was no way my approach would go unnoticed.
    And then it happened.
    From behind, I felt a strong push. Two hands met my back and shoved me forward, so that I fell into the grass and out into the open.
      Shit .
    I wasn't particularly frightened at this point; all I'd seen so far was a bunch of sexy babes chanting and carrying on like loonies around a fire. I sprang up and balled my fists, preparing to deck whoever it was that'd just pushed me.
    And then the chanting stopped.
    All eyes were on me.
    The hands that'd pushed me down belonged to a kid. The kid, about twelve or so years old and scrawny, just didn't look right. His eyes were too big, his skin too pale. He was dressed in rags and stared me down with a vacant intensity that chilled me to the bone. He was human in shape, but, at the risk of sounding crazy, I admit he seemed anything but.
    What happened after that, well, is more than a little hazy. Things moved quickly from that point. I could have handled myself a little better, maybe even escaped, but I didn't truly sense the danger of the situation until it was far too late.
    I went to grab the kid's raggedy collar, but when I threw him down to the ground, he suddenly disappeared into a cloud of black cockroaches.
    I shit you not.
    His skin, like the exterior of a pale balloon, was torn away the instant he met the grass and then a thousand cockroaches simply erupted from the space he'd occupied like he'd been some kind of infested pinata.
    I didn't have a whole lot of time to process the colossal mass of writhing insects in the grass before me, because in the time it took me to loose a groan of disgust and turn around, I noticed that the entire group of women had stopped what they were doing and were now running straight for me.
    Believe me when I say I'm a dick. To lick it in this line of work, you have to be a bit of an ass. Still, I'd never hit a woman. I was raised better than that, and the thought of doing so makes me cringe a little.
      Those women-- those things -- that were running at me just then, though?
      I had positively zero problem letting my fists marry their faces. I'd have let my fists write their own vows and everything, in fact, they were so damned hideous. In a split second, something had radically changed in their appearances. They were no longer young, gorgeous women, but hags. Crones. There is literally no word in the English language that can sufficiently encapsulate the distinctive mixture of antiquation and inhuman repulsion that these creatures possessed in spades. I wanted to give them the beat-down, defend myself as they bum-rushed me, but if we're being honest I also didn't want to touch them.
    I got knocked around good and proper by the throng of women as they got within arm's reach. I say “women”, but I should really refer to them as what I now know them to be: witches. In film, witches tend to be represented as something silly; impotent foes that can be dispatched with a bucket of water.
    There wasn't enough water in the whole of Flint to fuck their shit up, though. I felt confident of that. They took turns stomping the hell out of me, some of them still muttering in that deep, throaty language that's so grating to my ears even now, in reminisce. I fought to stand, seeking out the two-by-four I'd dropped, but couldn't even get to my knees. They were too strong; unnaturally, unbelievably strong for beings so undoubtedly old. Their shapes were frail, their frames were bereft of developed muscle, but they knew how to throw a punch. It was like getting whacked by Iron