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Jodie couldn’t believe what just happened. The cars behind her honked as she stepped on the gas and headed for home. Jodie pulled her car into the driveway, she put the top up and turned it off. She sat there, still in shock. She looked at her windshield wipers, or what was left of them.
“I’m drunk, that’s it. A short chubby man ripped off my wipers. The demon part was a drunken hallucination that’s all,” she said out loud as she tried to make sense of what had happened.
She was shaking. While she looked for her purse, she realized that all that was left of the wipers were twisted metal nubs. She took hold of her purse and opened her car door. As she got out, she looked at the hood of the Nova. It was dented. She’d really hit a man - no, a demon. She shook her head, she blinked. As she reached to touch the dent, her phone went off in her purse, which made her jump. Her purse fell to the ground. She cursed, bent down to get it, and fished out her phone.
“Hello,” she said into her phone.
“Did you make it home okay?”
Terry took off his shoes.
“Yes.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not okay?”
“No, I’m totally fine.”
She cleared her throat. Terry’s brow arched; he didn’t buy one of word of what she was saying, but he wasn’t going to push.
“Well, I was checking on you, making sure you got home okay. Remember what I said. Don’t over think the book... just sit down and start writing. Who knows what you’ll come up with?”
Jodie wanted to laugh, because it was that simple.
“Right, don’t overthink it,” she said while she walked into her house. Boston was there to greet her. He wagged his tail and barked out a hello to her. Jodie said her goodbyes to Terry and ended their call.
Before she closed the front door, she went to the back door and let Boston out. She had a doggy door; he’d outgrown it pretty quickly. As she waited for him to come back in she stood in the doorway thinking about everything she’d seen today. She felt like she’d seen those demons in the sky and the one that she hit before. She couldn’t place it. Maybe in a movie or something like that. Yes, that had to be it. Once Boston was done and came inside she closed the back door and decided to try and give her brain a rest. She put on some sweats and an oversized t-shirt. She sat down on the couch, turned on the TV, and got comfortable. Before long she was sound asleep, with Boston laying on the floor next to the couch.
***
Skull pulled Jax’s bleeding body into the alley and realized the shell that held his form was going to give out.
“Damn these fragile fucking meat suits.”
Skull kicked open a door in the alley that led into a large museum under construction. Once inside, he put Jax’s body down and closed the door. A pool of crimson leaked from Jax’s body. Skull wasn’t sure how to get him out of that body. He knelt in the blood and heard Jax take his last breath. Skull cursed, worried this was the end of his friend. The human form melted off Jax like watery gelatin. Skull made a face as he saw Jax laying there in his demon form.
“Well, I guess that’s our first test run. We need to pick human bodies that can handle a good impact, but I think that might be a tall order for humans when they can’t even hold their breath without turning blue and passing out. Sad.”
Skull made a tsk-ing sound. Since they were in a safe place, Skull turned back to his demon form. He stood straight up and felt his bones crack and pop.
“I don’t think I can handle going back in that form.”
His large demon form was overly cramped in that short human body. Skull wondered if his powers still worked in this realm. He closed his eyes and a light that was a light purple like the color of lilacs poured from his chest. When the light faded, and he opened his eyes, there was a table with a laptop on it.
“Well, I’ll be a damned.”
He was shocked it worked. He found an old crate to sit on and pulled it to the table. He remembered the words for these things from his reading. He opened the laptop. Lucky for him, all the knowledge the human had in his body Skull now had, so he knew how to work a laptop and the internet.
He used his magic to make something called Wi-Fi work. He wasn’t sure how humans made this kind of magic, but he was glad when the laptop browser worked. Such odd names for things.
“Now to find the Google.”
He tried talking to the laptop like his human memories said could be done. Nothing happened. Skull growled and looked at the laptop.
“How do you work this thing?”
He put his clawed hand on the mouse pad and was shocked as it moved a little arrow around. After a good twenty minutes of growling at the laptop he figured out how to type using the keyboard and found Google. He got lost in his research and didn’t notice Jax waking up.