Devil Sent the Rain - D. J. Butler Page 0,5

dropped the chord and grabbed the MAC-11. Twitch stood up, and Mike and Eddie faltered in their playing. Their wall of rock and roll sound slammed once against the back wall of the room and then stilled. The pounding of the rain on the windows became gigantic.

A beer glass, knocked to the floor, shattered like thunder.

Then Adrian realized what he’d forgotten, and plucked the Third Eye from his pocket. It was a lens, a bit of old natural volcanic glass that had been polished into a monocle and worn by generations and generations of sorcerers, pinched into their eye sockets. This was his prize possession—most of the rest of what he did magic with was bits of string and wax, chalk and hair made potent by the knowledge he’d stolen from his uncle, despite his uncle’s curse, his threats and the constant fear in which Adrian had lived.

He’d stolen the Eye, too, because it was a powerful artifact. When he looked through it, he saw invisible things. He saw spells that were invisible to the naked eye but that existed as tangled lines of power. He saw through arcane disguises and illusions. He could also focus spells through it, which made them more powerful but tended to make them unpredictable, too, a little trickier to control. He thought he could use it to see even more—maybe much more—only he didn’t know how to use it.

He’d stolen it, after all. Plucked it from its hiding place and then used it to blast its real owner into oblivion. He didn’t even really know what it was called; his uncle had always called it the Eye of Agamotto, but that was obviously a joke. It was a joke Adrian didn’t really know how to untell, until he could find a better name for the thing.

He squinched the Eye into place and almost immediately dropped it. Inside the dancers he saw worms. Tall, eyeless, limbless things, limp and boneless but muscular, and the worms wrapped around the spines of the dancers and made them move, like hands inside felt puppets. He saw lines of power, too, a web of many overlapping spells and wards splattered along all the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

He also saw Mouser struggling with the big Swede; he was worm-filled, but she was not. She slapped him with her palms and clawed at him with fingernails, but he only laughed.

Then the first of the dancers exploded. Adrian nearly dropped the Third Eye fumbling it back into his pocket, and was just in time to see several more explode behind the first. Ribbons and shreds of flesh erupted in all directions as the human beings came apart and collapsed like bloody, discarded cocoons. What emerged from each flaccid heap of flesh bore no resemblance to a worm; they were pure monster, vaguely humanoid with hooked talons and a third set of limbs between arms and legs, that looked like it could function as either. Around the gaping maw of needle-like teeth, Adrian couldn’t see anything that resembled a face or even a head. They scuttled forward like praying mantises, four lower limbs propelling them while clawed hands groped to the attack.

“We’re in trouble!” Adrian yelled, realizing he was way, way too late. A wave of fatigue swished over him like a slow tide of warm chocolate, lulling him to dark oblivion. He bit his own tongue, hard, right through the wad of stimulant gum in his mouth. The flavor instantly changed from peppermint to blood, but he stayed awake.

“No shit!” Eddie shrugged out of his guitar strap and swung his Fender Toronado like a real ax, slamming the red body of the instrument into the snapping teeth of the foremost of the creatures. Jim bounded past him to hook one of the monitors with the toe of his boot and fling it into the onrushing mass of beasts, pummeling one of them in the chest and knocking it sideways.

In the back of the hall, the Swede exploded and fell away like the meat disguise that he was. The demon inside grabbed Mouser with four limbs, cutting off her shriek instantly.

Adrian raised the MAC-11 and fired.

***

Chapter Two

“The girl!” Adrian shouted. There wasn’t any good reason for him to care about her, except that she was the only other human in the room. Heck, she’d distracted him with her toys and her sexual fascination, and that wasn’t likely to have been an accident. She’d lured him in. He ought to hate her,