Dead Harvest

  He said, "You fool. Did you really think that pitiful blade would hurt me? I'm a fucking demon. But don't worry – that's one mistake you won't have long to regret."

  He approached, slowly this time, as if savoring the moment. I backed away. My hip connected with a mahogany buffet, and I tried too late to scramble over it. He backhanded me, and I sailed across the room, toppling a pile of furniture and sending a half-dozen vases shattering to the floor.

  I made for the front door of the shop, but my way was blocked. The demon just smiled. I clawed at the mound of junk that barred my path, tossing anything and everything toward my assailant in a desperate attempt to slow him down long enough to make my escape. I bounced a pearl inlay music box off his temple, but it left no mark, and he just laughed – that horrible, wheezing laugh, like dry leaves on pavement. I heaved a wooden chest to the floor between us, but he simply gestured, and it moved aside. It was clear he was enjoying this.

  I flung myself atop the pile as the demon closed the gap. As I clawed my way to the summit, he grabbed my leg in an iron grip. I kicked at him with my free leg, connecting with his jaw. It was like kicking a fucking tree. But daylight was so close, the shop door just a few feet beyond the mound of junk I lay atop – surely he wouldn't chase me into a crowded street?

  I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that question, but still, I had to try.

  Despite my efforts, he dragged me backward, daylight dwindling to nothing as I slid backward down the pile, loosing a small avalanche of timeworn junk. I grabbed whatever I could and winged it at him – a wind-up clock emblazoned with Mao's wizened face, a cane in the shape of a serpent – but still backward I slid. As he dragged me down to face him, my hands closed on a small ceramic Lucky Cat, the kind you'd find in Asian restaurants the world over, this one chipped and faded and ugly. But I was too late: his eyes, black as starless night, bored into my own, until nothing left of me remained, it seemed. His brittle cackle filled my head as I tumbled toward oblivion. In one last frantic act of rebellion, I brought the cat down hard onto his face. The way I figured it, if I was going down, I was going down swinging.

  Something happened then, or rather several somethings, in such rapid succession it's not clear just what happened when. The darkness lifted, and consciousness returned, streaming in pure and true like first morning light. The demon released his grip, and I fell limp to the floor at his feet. A horrible, piercing shriek filled the air, rattling windows in their casements and setting off car alarms for a dozen blocks around. And, as I watched him stagger backward, the demon grew pale, indistinct – his insubstantial hands clawing helplessly at his torn and shattered face, the sharp edges of the broken figurine slicing through his flesh like so much Jell-O.

  I skittered backward on the floor away from him, pure animal instinct urging me to flee. The demon fell to his knees, and then toppled to the floor – now charred black beneath him as if from fire, though just feet away, I felt no warmth. The shriek died to a whimper, and then fell silent. A voice – no longer connected to the transparent waif of a body that lay before me, but instead comprised of the myriad creaks and roars and scratches and whispers of the buildings and traffic and scuffing shoes and whooshing fabric that surrounded me as I lay on the floor of the dead Wai-Sun's store – called to me, full of hatred and menace and fear:

  You have no idea what you've just done. You've sealed your fate, and the girl's as well. You cannot kill us all, Collector, for we are Legion – and you cannot keep her from us forever. My brethren shall dine on the tender flesh of her soul.

  Then the body before me burst – thousands of horrid, nameless, mewling things pouring forth from it and scattering to all corners of the store, disappearing into the murk. After a moment, their unnatural squeaking had ceased, but still my skin crawled from the sight of them, and my teeth were set on edge. I pushed aside furniture, sure they were still there – watching, waiting – but whatever they were, they were gone now.

  I didn't have a fucking clue what had just gone down, but of one thing I was sure: whatever just happened, I was suddenly alone.

14.