Page 72 of Demon Hunger
“Ew!”
We all laughed despite the fact that no one could watch the man eat without quickly turning away. However, none of this seemed to bother the crowd. On the contrary, the faster he ate and the bigger the mess he made on his beard, the louder the crowd chanted his name.
At first, none of this seemed to bother Kody, but as contestants started dropping out, he seemed distracted, his eyes constantly flicking in the lumberjack’s direction and the diminishing pile of hot dogs in front of him. Still, in the last few minutes, Kody had solidified his position in the top five, which wasn’t too bad, given the caliber of the competitors.
Next to me, Jenna frowned, looking over her shoulder at the crowd behind us.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She frowned, listening.
I refocused my attention, trying to figure out what had distracted her. A moment later, I picked up on it. The crowd in the back was slowly starting to chant Kody’s name instead of the lumberjack’s. Soon, Benjamin noticed too.
“The tide seems to be turning,” he said.
The wave continued, moving closer to where we stood, the crowd chanting Kody’s name louder and with more fervor. A man a couple of rows behind me was wearing a hat that identified him as a fan of Sam, the Lumberjack.
The fan was pumping a fist up in the air, screaming Sam’s name, which I could clearly read on his lips. Abruptly his chant changed for no apparent reason, and he started calling Kody’s name instead.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked under my breath.
As my eyes followed the row of people down the line, I could see their chants changing from Sam to Kody. My eyes jumped to a woman who was clearly rooting for Sam. As I watched her, a figure appeared behind her for a short instant.
Jophiel!
I caught the flash of his resplendent blond hair as he leaned to whisper into the woman’s ear, then moved in a blur to whisper to the next person, whose chant immediately changed too. He moved in and out, weaving through the crowd, changing the tide, which seemed to have an immediate effect on Kody.
His eyes shone as he stared at the crowd, noticing the shift. Their cheers seemed to spur him on, and he increased his pace, devouring hot dogs faster than ever and quickly moving into fourth place.
As Jophiel moved closer to where we stood, my hand itched to pull out my Queller. My heart thundered out of control as I glanced around, searching for Drevan. He was at my side in an instant.
“I see what he’s doing,” he said, glancing at Jenna as he sandwiched himself between us.
“Is that allowed?” she asked.
Drevan nodded. “Sadly, yes.”
“Shit!”
“What do we do?” Benjamin asked.
Jenna looked up from her phone and held it up. “His latest TikTok video is blowing up too. I bet you that fucking angel did this too.”
It was so easy for Jophiel to manipulate this situation. It hadn’t been this way with Solar Hudson, but things had been completely different then. Very few people involved, and certainly no social media to manipulate. How could we fight against this sort of tampering?
“He’s in third place now,” Benjamin announced.
I pressed forward through the crowd. They gave me dirty looks, but I didn’t care. I wanted to get as far away from the angel as I could. Drevan and my friends followed.
“I won’t let anything happen to anyone,” Drevan told us as we made it to the front of the crowd.
By now, almost everyone was calling Kody’s name. Sam took a small break, looking confused, unable to understand how he’d lost the support of all his fans.
I felt the urge to get out of there, to yell at the crowd to run for safety, but that would only cause chaos, and it seemed that Jophiel had changed his tactics altogether. He wasn’t trying to kill me or kidnap me. He seemed to finally be playing by the rules of the game.
By now, Kody’s counter read fifty-three hot dogs. He was only two behind Sam, who was starting to look sick—either from disappointment or too much food, I could only guess. Kody, on the other hand, was happily chomping down on wieners and soggy buns, looking ready to demolish fifty-three more. My stomach flipped at the thought.
Kody’s name roared in my ears as the crowd chanted in a frenzy. No one seemed to take a breath, and there was more excitement than at a music concert. From the looks of it, they were cheering for the second coming of Freddie Mercury and not a second-rate food-eating competition—worst of all, Kody was lapping it up and using the crowd’s support to propel himself to number one. Not only that, but to get ahead by six hot dogs by the time the final buzzer went off.
