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“I don’t have any choice. I’m not going to sit around and rot.”

“How can I help?”

We go outside. I take out the black blade and kneel on the ground.

“Keep your eyes open. If anything weird comes at us, let me know.”

“Weird?” she says. “What’s your standard for weird here? Someone riding a bicycle made of tits and assholes?”

“Definitely let me know about that. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

With the blade, I cut a magic circle into the ground. I don’t have a map of the place to use as a reference, so I’m going to have to use some extra-elaborate hoodoo, which is going to tire me out and take a lot longer to set up.

A gentle wind blows through the forest, passing through the bone curtains and making them rattle like bamboo wind chimes.

I’m on my knees trying to carve intricate mystical scripts and sigils into the ground and it’s not working. Everywhere around here is covered in the bone carpet we walked to get here. Cutting it is easy, but it’s too soft to hold the hoodoo forms I need. I’m going to have to dig down until I hit dirt and start over. This is going to take forever.

I’ve gouged out a couple of clumps of bones when the wind stirs and the curtain rattles again.

“Stark!” yells Candy.

Something bursts through the hanging bones, something we didn’t see earlier because it too is bones. It’s ten feet tall, with a head like an elongated fish skull. Its entire body is made out of smaller animal skulls, some with jutting horns and antlers. It moves quickly and quietly, knocking Candy flying with the back of its arm. Over its head, the bone mountain holds a cleaver that’s as long as I am tall. When it swings the blade down at me, I know I’m fucked. My bad leg is too far gone for me to move quickly. All I can do is roll away and hope for the best. The little skulls on its back giggle and guffaw at me.

I get lucky with the first blow and it misses. The cleaver goes in so hard that the ground shakes. It takes it a couple of tries for it to pull the thing free.

“Hijruun!” I shout.

If he hears me, he doesn’t care.

The moment the cleaver comes free, Hijruun swings at me again. I can’t move out of the way this time and my injured arm isn’t going to stop a blade that weighs as much as a narwhal. Without thinking, I reach out with my prosthetic hand—and catch the cleaver. The impact just about knocks me over. While on one knee, I grab the top of the cleaver with my other hand and spin my whole body. There’s a loud snap as Hijruun’s hand breaks off at the wrist. He falls to his knees, howling and cackling with laughter.

Candy jumps on him from behind, holding her knife to his throat. She’s gone full Jade, so I wave with both hands to get her attention.

“Hold on. It’s Hijruun. The one we’re looking for.”

I look down at him. He nods and the little skulls titter.

“Kill me quickly, Hell beast,” he simultaneously laughs and howls. “That’s the only favor I ask of you.”

“Calm down, you bony fuck. I didn’t come all this way to kill you.”

“Liar!” he chuckles. “I remember you from Azazel’s stable. You’re the slim one. The monster who kills monsters.”

“I haven’t worked for him for a long time. In fact, I’m the one who killed him.”

“Then damn you for that,” Hijruun chortles. “I have been without decent access to the Hellion court since he died.”

I put away my knife and tell Candy to do the same. She does and transforms back into her human form.

I say, “There is no Hellion court anymore. The place is a shambles.”

“So I understand,” says Hijruun. “The war that shredded the place, was it your doing?”

“Not entirely. But I helped.”

Hijruun rises to his full height. His one bony hand holds on to his broken wrist.

“If you’re not here to kill me, might I retrieve my hand?”