I thought of the Goadlets I’d slaughtered by the dozens in Cooper’s hell. It looked like at least one had escaped my blade after all. Crap. It’s coming out of the hellement whenever I go in.
“That does appear to be a reasonable hypothesis.”
My eyes were finally starting to focus again. The first thing I saw clearly was the scary appendage that had erupted from the stump of my left forearm. Two black blades had burst out from the remnants of my ulna and radius bones. The blades merged approximately where my wrist should have been in an exoskeletal joint that separated into five flattened claws: four fingerlike and the fifth a thumblike one that could oppose the others. The claws were jointed enough to curl into a cruel-looking rake, but I couldn’t make a fist with them. If I straightened them out and closed the claws, they scissored cleanly together to form a flat, hard blade like a broad spearhead or narrow axe.
“Jesus. That’s nasty,” I slurred.
Cooper apparently thought I meant the grue in the bucket. “Sure is. Do you think you got it all out?”
The death-memories had largely subsided. I nodded. “I need to brush my teeth.”
Cooper stood and rummaged through the drawers under the bathroom sink. He found a pink Oral-B, a tube of Crest, and a floss dispenser. “The brush looks clean, but I think it’s been used once or twice.”
I grimaced. “Considering what I’ve just had in my mouth, do you really think I could possibly care about that right now?”
“Right. I guess not.” Cooper handed me the brush and paste, then turned away to dump the bucket in the toilet.
I brushed my teeth as best I could while I took a shower; the claw wasn’t good for anything more than holding a bar of soap, so flossing was sadly not an option. As I was lathering the murder off my skin, I discovered several scratches and gouges on my body and left leg. They looked like they’d been inflicted when whatever had possessed me had pulled off all my clothes.
I had toweled myself dry and was blotting my wounds with a paper towel moistened with hydrogen peroxide when somebody knocked on the door.
“It’s just me,” Cooper said. “I have your clothes and the Warlock’s healing crystal.”
“Come on in.”
Cooper entered with my backpack and boots and my clothes in a neatly folded stack. He handed me the crystal. “I saw that you’d cut yourself up a bit.”
“Thanks, honey.” I started running it over my wounds to seal them.
“Your hat and your T-shirt were completely shredded, and your bra and panties were ripped, too, but Rudy had some needle and thread and I got them fixed. The pants and boots were okay.”
Cooper handed me my clothes; he’d sewn up my torn underwear with thick blue thread in simple backstitches. The repairs looked like they’d hold. Instead of my borrowed Hello Kitty shirt, I now had a cream-colored souvenir tee emblazoned with the outline of the state of Texas with the words “Cuchillo, Texas” arced around it. A little red star sat off-center in the middle of the state outline, presumably to mark the location of the town.
“So do you remember what happened?” Cooper asked as I got dressed.
“Some. I got death-memories from the blood, so I know what my body was doing before I came to, and Pal told me some of what happened, but I’m still missing a lot.”
I paused, staring at Cooper’s face. His eye was blackened and his lip swollen under a freshly sealed split. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
Cooper shook his head. “The meat puppets you killed rolled up on us in some big hybrid SUVs and came at us with baseball bats and stun guns when we told them we weren’t going anywhere with them.”
“Stun guns?”
“Enchanted, by the vibe of them. The meats seemed intent on bringing us in alive, but clearly their master wasn’t going to mind us having broken arms and busted jaws if it came to that.”
“I’m guessing their master is this Miko creature? Does Rudy know anything about her?” I sat down on the toilet lid to put on my socks and boots.
“Not much,” Cooper replied. “Just that she’s pretty much drop-dead everything. And if she actually is some kind of kuro miko, I’m curious to know what she’s doing so far from her native land.”
Japanese witches weren’t exactly my forte, so I couldn’t begin to guess what she might be doing