The Librarian pointed me at the fleabag motel at the edge of town where Bernal had been staying. Nothing looked wrong with his room when I broke in, good thing no one was in there, but I got a bad vibe off the place.
Having not learned my lesson from that time I cast a spell in the Havana night club and would have died without Huddie’s nude magic party I tried to focus on picking up any kind of sensation I could. That was not a good idea.
I tried to sever my connection since unease was growing in my head like a tumor but it was too late. I was flooded with sensations of pain, despair, fear, and death. I could feel a cold rush of ice water inside my flesh.
If you want to give me any credit, the reason I screamed is that I was feeling what someone else felt. I’m a stone cold bitch that isn’t afraid of anything obvs. Hate more than everything else, sadistic pleasure, an intense desire to cause pain. Also surprise. Terror.
I saw a phantom afterimage of the room spattered with blood and torn apart, bullet holes in the walls. I saw a man, I couldn’t see clearly could have been Bernal, on his knees trying to gather up his guts like a character in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. For a split second I saw the screeching face of a creature something like a bat and a lizard and a bear mixed together, blood and saliva flying from its maw.
The eyes stuck with me long after the rest faded. Sparking pale blue eyes like a jewel. They were so beautiful. Mesmeric maybe.
As the vision lingered I stumbled back out of the room and fell on my ass in the parking lot. I sat there having a panic attack for a little while. Someone came to try and help me or ask if I was okay and I pushed/threw them to the ground. Which was a dick move. I was freaking out.
I got back in my car, promptly sideswiped a Lexus, and drove like a bat out of hell even though I had no destination. Did I mention I was freaking out? I stopped in an abandoned industrial area much like where I had been meeting with the Investors to try and get my shit together.
That’s when the creature appeared. Shit like that shouldn’t happen during the day. It should happen in the shadows. I think movie snobs call that daylight horror.
I wish I had any artistic talent so I could sketch what I saw. I’m even worse at drawing than I am at describing things. Not that I got a great look at it anyway.
It seemed huge but part of that is probably because I was sitting in the car and it was standing outside the car. Still I bet it was at least 8 feet high. Its build was like a gorilla only with long legs. Not bulky like a person who’s roided out, just fucking big.
It was scaly like a lizard but it had hair too. I know I saw an animal like that on a nature show but I can’t remember what it’s called. Like an armadillo but not that. I remember a tail for sure but not a thick tail like a lizard, it was like a monkey tail only scaly.
Mostly what I remember is the claws and the hand/paw/whatever. They were like gator claws maybe. They didn’t look super sharp but they were. I know they were sharp because they slashed though the left side of my body without any trouble. I thought it might have ripped my tit off. I also thought that my left arm would never work again if it didn’t fall off.
I think the only thing that saved me is that the path of the attack went through the frame of the car. I think that absorbed enough of the force to keep me from literally being ripped into two pieces.
I noclipped the fuck out of there and then thought about how I was going to die anyway. I was too badly hurt to heal myself. I was too badly hurt to cast the spell to make the pain go away so I could concentrate enough that I could heal myself. Is that irony? It’s a fucker whatever it is.
The only thing I was able to do was to transport myself out. It doesn’t take much energy. Even though I’ve never been able to force myself back where I want before I thought really hard about a hospital. I figured if I popped up in a Chinese restaurant again at least maybe they could get me to a hospital before I bled to death. If I dropped out in the middle of nowhere I was still going to die.
I did not expect to find myself in the shitty breakroom behind the magic door at Steve’s All-Nite Diner.
