Page 36 of Wicked Deeds

“So I see,” Damon said slowly. “Now what?” He moved up beside me.

I shot him an annoyed look. “We could start with you leaving.”

He grinned tightly. “Not going to happen, baby. One afrit we can handle.”

The hole stopped growing but another splat came from within and more liquid goo trickled out of the first hole as another one started to form beside it. Afrit might be the dumbest of the demonkind, but this one could obviously think itself out of a trap. Some of its acid goo reached the concrete. There was a tiny sizzling noise and the concrete went white before starting to pit.

So, reallystrongacid.

Perfect.

“We don’t have anything else to contain it,” Maia said. Her gun stayed trained on the bucket.

“No. So. Plan B?”

“What’s Plan B?” Damon asked.

“Kill it with fire,” I said.

Maia grinned approvingly. “Plan B it is. You want to do the honors, or should I?” She started to put her gun away.

“Wait,” I said.

“What?” The gun came back out as though she thought I’d seen something.

“If we’re going to do this, we need water. To put the fire out.”

“Right,” she said. The gun lowered again and she scanned the roof.

“If there’s been window cleaners up here, there must be a faucet or something they use to fill the buckets. They can’t dragbuckets up from inside surely? Maybe on the cooling tower?” I suggested.

She nodded, went back to the pile to grab another bucket, and jogged off toward the cooling tower. “Score,” she called. “There’s a hose connector up here and a valve.”

Something creaked, followed by the sound of running water.

I willed her to be fast. Under the influence of whatever it was the afrit was spitting, the hole in the bucket had widened to about the size of two quarters. As I watched, one long leg extended out. It was covered in short black spines ending in three claws that glistened in the moonlight in a way that told me they were very sharp. And wet.

Claws covered in acid were nothing I wanted to get up close and personal with.

I took a half step back, bracing myself to shoot.

Maia arrived back with her now full bucket and came to stand next to me. “Do you want to be fire or water?” She put the bucket down between us.

“Fire,” I said. I’d never actually managed to call lightning a second time, but otherwise, fire was my thing.

“We want like a concentrated stream,” she said. “Let it burn for a minute or so, then I’ll dump the water on it.”

“Okay,” I said. If a minute wasn’t long enough to kill it, we had a bigger problem and we were going to have to shoot the afrit, no matter what reaction gunfire might bring.

The bucket over the afrit was plastic. It would melt.

I raised my hand. Then paused. The cleaning fluids. Also in plastic containers but the contents were chemicals. And some chemicals were flammable. Or explosive.

I jerked my chin at Maia. “Move that cleaning stuff. We don’t know what it’s made of and I don’t want to make something go ‘boom’ accidentally.” The afrit made another splat and the holegot bigger. The leg wiggled, claws scraping the concrete. The bucket rattled.

“Good idea,” Maia said, “but someone will have to hold that bucket down once I move those.”

“I will,” Damon said. He moved before I could stop him, damn the man.

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