Devil Sent the Rain - D. J. Butler Page 0,8

Dream-Adrian didn’t know anything about it.

Dream-Adrian was trapped.

Books leered wetly at Adrian from sagging shelves on the walls, flapping their covers open and shut suggestively and chanting in a collective whisper.

Silence, silence, just between us!

“Of course we can.” The wolf smiled, tongue bouncing on his chest.

“Now?” Dream-Adrian’s heart hammered so loud it almost drowned out the books.

“In a bit.”

“What about some combat magic?”

The wolf’s eyebrows launched off his forehead in skeptical mockery. “Fireballs and death touches, you mean?”

Dream-Adrian nodded. Run away! Adrian screamed. This wasn’t exactly a memory, it wasn’t a particular scene through which he had ever lived, but it was the epitome of a thousand scenes from his childhood, and he knew how it had to end. “Or maybe something smaller. Like a stunning spell?”

Uncle-wolf frowned, retracting his tongue slightly into his mouth. “Traditionally, masters don’t ever teach apprentices combat magic. Combat spells are things a wizard teaches himself, when he is a man of full powers and mature understanding.”

“I didn’t know you only did things the traditional way.” Dream-Adrian’s jibe was so flat and understated, even Adrian couldn’t be sure it was really an attack. It was the most passive aggression possible, surrender with a joke so subtle it wasn’t even obviously a joke. Adrian cursed his own weakness and wished he could look away.

Silence, silence, this is the way of the wizard!

The wolf patted his knee and slid his wet, pink tongue out to its full length. “I can only do for you what has been done for me,” he purred, his voice low and husky.

Dream-Adrian edged closer to the wolf, muscles in his lower back tightening. “Can you teach me everything?” he asked. No, run away! Adrian screamed, tears flowing down his cheeks even though they didn’t. “I want to be a great sorcerer, like my father. Even better than my father.”

The wolf took Dream-Adrian by the wrist and drew him closer. “I know you miss your dad,” the wolf said. He smiled, but his tongue dangled so bright and long out of his mouth that it made the smile horrible to behold. “I’m your dad now. I’ll teach you everything you need to know to be a wizard. Then you can become like me.”

“Will you?”

No!

Uncle-wolf drew Dream-Adrian down and onto his lap. His tongue lay wet and heavy across Adrian’s back and neck. “Yes,” he promised. It’s a lie! “And I’ll teach you everything you need to know to be a man, too.”

Silence, silence, who is there to believe you, anyway?

* * *

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Adrian jerked awake, spluttering. His eyes felt red and puffy as if he’d been weeping, but they also stung from the splash of alcohol he’d just taken in the face. The vaporous sting of it filled his nostrils.

“Son of a bitch!” he spat.

“If you say so,” Twitch agreed amiably. “Now get up.”

She was in her man form, which was a bit physically stronger than her woman shape, and she pushed a shoulder under his arm as he dragged himself up the bar to his feet. He was splattered with green goo and had to kick aside the bodies of two six-limbed monsters to get up. When he did manage to clear his eyes and stand, he found Mouser, holding his MAC-11 with a defiant stare in her eyes.

Adrian heard howling wind, pounding rain, demons squealing, and guns going off, but the space around the bar was the eye of the storm. He looked down at the second monster corpse and saw that its head had been sawn clean off by a string of bullets.

“Good job,” he said.

Mouser nodded.

“Clip empty?”

She shrugged.

He wiped various kinds of moisture from his face and handed her the taser. “Take this, just in case. You’d be surprised what can get taken down by a good jolt from a taser.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about our boy Adrian,” Twitch told the club gopher. “He’s a bottomless well of surprises.” The fairy slid up onto the bar and crouched there, ready to leap or fight, a wooden baton in each hand.

Adrian snorted and pulled his candle stub from his pocket.

“You’re going to fight with a candle?”

He did his best nonchalant shrug. “It’s a very specialized style of kung fu. And I never learned tablet fighting, like you did.” He pointed at the mangled device, scratched, cracked and covered in slime, where it lay on the floor.

She giggled, with a slight manic edge to her voice.

“What’s the situation, Twitch?” Adrian asked. He shoved bullets into the spare Ingram clip as