Samson hopped off his chair, but was blocked by Rohan. The other Rasha, including the bartender, had slipped out. Samson tried to knock Rohan aside, but Rohan wrenched Samson's arm up his back, planting him facedown against the table.
"Going somewhere?" Rohan asked.
Samson's eyes darted to the door, being locked shut by Drio.
The source of the chanting, Drio held a small blade, using it to trace a complicated pattern in the air.
"Hey man, I'm not into Satan shit." Samson laughed as he struggled against Rohan's grasp.
Rohan's eyes met mine, twins of the doubt I felt. Why wasn't Samson's form changing? I was positive that after our encounter in his trailer that I'd correctly pegged him as a demon. Had we gotten his true name wrong? If so, we were screwed. We'd never get another chance to get close enough to do this ritual.
"You know, if you didn't like the terms of the recording contract, you could have just said." Samson was way too blasé.
Rohan slammed the blade of his middle finger through Samson's palm. Samson howled. His face flickered, revealing black charred skin.
I exhaled.
Rohan held the demon down as he struggled.
Closer and closer Drio came, chanting and tracing the pattern. The demon's skin rippled and bubbled. Tendons strained in his neck. An eyeball bulged out. His teeth ground together trying to fight his transformation.
Rohan yanked his blade from Samson's palm. The demon snapped upright, clearly not of his own volition.
"Hear me, Adramelech," Drio said. "Before me now, I use your name, demand your form." Drio slit his own palm with the ritual blade. Blood dripped onto the floor.
Samson's glamour fell away, leaving a humanoid creature covered in ruined, burned flesh. Not unexpected for a sun-demon. But he also had a gorgeous peacock's tail, rising six feet high, and swaying behind him in a vivid swirl of iridescent greens, blues, and golds.
"You think you can take me, Rasha?" the demon sneered. He turned a look of unadulterated loathing on me. "Puppet."
He didn't know I was Rasha. That was a refreshing first. Before I could enlighten him, there was a resounding crash of breaking glass. I looked over at the window, confused. Logan, Samson's flunky, had just burst inside. Glass dotted his skin, blood streaming from a dozen cuts.
Drio grabbed the demon's tail, lifting the blade to plunge into the base of his spine.
Logan flicked his fingers and it felt like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room. Drio's knife clattered to the floor.
I doubled over, gasping, my lungs burning. My head was being squeezed in an invisible vise. Drio coughed, swearing, which snapped my attention up.
Samson and Logan were gone.
I looked over at Drio, who held a handful of peacock feathers, and blinked. There was Drio, but I stood next to him. I shook my head. That wasn't right. Neither was the stunned expression on my face as I stared back at me.
I pointed at myself. This wasn't my hand. This was too big and too male to be my hand.
Eyes wide, I looked down. "Oh shit," I said in Rohan's voice.
"Shit," he echoed in mine.
The next hour was surreal. While Drio and Rohan, as me, commanded the other Rasha on hunting down Samson and Logan, I went into the washroom to stare at my new face. Planting myself in front of the dingy mirror, I examined every feature of Rohan's with more thoroughness than I ever had, but I couldn't reconcile my brain with reality. Again and again, I touched a fingertip to his nose, his tongue, his lashes, but no matter how much I willed the face to change back into my own, it didn't.
I trailed his fingers over the silver taps. Solid. Cool. Back up along his arm to the reflection staring out at me, sweat breaking out over his skin at the disorientation of being there but not.
I shifted, aware of a pressing on my bladder. Were these insides still mine? Unbuckling his jeans, I gripped his dick. So freaking weird, feeling his hand and his cock at the same time. I pointed it at the toilet but that felt wrong too, so I ended up sitting down, giving his dick a firm yank to shake it off. I tucked it back in his jeans and washed his hands.
Bad enough walking back into the bar that I had to find my balance, learn how this body moved, I kept having to adjust his balls because the jeans pinched. How did men get anything done?
"Are you wearing butt floss?" Rohan's words said in my voice, stopped me in my tracks, every Rasha in the bar swinging his head my way. The bartender even halted the phone conversation in rapid Czech he was having.
So. Dead. So not answering him.
I marched over and swiped Rohan's bottle of water away. "You don't eat or drink anything until we've switched back." I was not having Rohan wipe my ass.
He glowered at me. Wow, I gave really good glower. I tried to glower back but hadn't perfected the movement with these facial muscles so I'm not sure what the overall effect was.