Shane pulled a map from his pocket. It was covered in writing. Some areas were crossed out, others were circled multiple times over, and the border that Alec currently controlled was outlined as a black, scratchy border around multiple states.

  He pointed to one of the circled areas.

  “This is the church closest to us,” he said. “Which is why we’ll go here.” He moved his finger up to a circled area much farther away.

  “The Reverend will know what we’re doing, so it’s gonna be a game of chess between us and him. We can’t go where he’s expecting us or we’ll be swarmed by marked men.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Enough talking. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  I grabbed a Honey Bun, and then we got the fuck out of there.

  Shane took off into the air, flying low, leading the way. Mickey smashed the window out of a car and started hot wiring it for Caleb, but before he could even finish cutting the wires with his teeth, Caleb zipped by us on the back of one of his pets.

  “I still fuckin’ hate those things,” Mickey said with rubber between his teeth. He took off running, and I whipped up the cruddiest looking horse the world has ever seen and followed behind.

  There we were: a teenager riding a fucked up worm monster, a man with skin wings flying through the air, a bum on a sludge horse, and a good ol’ fashioned crackhead all running off to battle. The streets were empty and we were free to go as fast as we pleased, which was fast as shit. Shane had to do some fuckin’ Blue Angels diving maneuvers to gain enough speed to stay ahead of us. Mickey took the opportunity to show us what new power he unlocked when a turned over mack truck blocked the road ahead of us. Caleb and I had to go around it, but Mickey ran straight for it. His body turned blurry, and the son of a bitch went right through the thing, carving a Mickey-sized tunnel through the entire bed of the truck and spilling hundreds of gallons of Coke onto the road.

  I hope he can’t do that through a sludge shell. Shit, he probably can.

  I wanted to snap Shane’s fucking wings off when we got to the church.

  We got on the roof of a nearby house to scout the place out, and it was filled with assholes. I didn’t count them, but it had to be in the dozens.

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  “Something tells me you weren’t the fucking captain of the chess team in high school, were you?” I said.

  “What did you expect?” Shane replied. “You guys have made it clear that sending one or two men after you isn’t going to cut it. Their only mission right now is to find you two — and me. This whole state is going to be packed with marked men now. There are no great options, but trust me, this one sparsely populated compared to the other churches around here, I’m sure. Plus, you guys need to kill as many men as possible as quickly as possible.”

  “You guys? What about you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I can’t help you fight. Not directly, at least. If I hit one of them, I’ll get a cut of their souls. We can’t split it three ways. It’s got to be you two.”

  “And me,” Caleb piped up.

  “Yeah,” Shane said dismissively. “You too.”

  Caleb’s worm monster whipped its head at Shane, baring its sharp teeth an inch from his face. He didn’t flinch.

  “Gus, can you conjure anything aside from… whatever that is?” He gestured at my horse.

  “Yup. Can mold this shit into just about anything I can imagine, it seems,” I said.

  “Perfect. Fortunately, what I have in mind doesn’t take too much artistic prowess — just make a copy of yourself.”

  “That seems harder than making a horse.”

  “…yourself in a sludge suit.”

  I patted him on the back, half to convey the message that he was a smart motherfucker, half to remind him that I could snap him in half if he kept talking to me like I was a bitch. I‘m pretty sure he got the message.

  “I think I can do that,” I said.

  “Perfect. Mickey, Caleb and I will tag along with the decoy. We’re going to make an opening for you, Gus. Make it count.”

  I nodded, though I had no earthly idea what I was going to do. I got to work on forming the horse into something that vaguely looked like me and tried to think of something. I was a bad motherfucker, I know, but what could I do to turn the tide in our favor against ten, twenty, fucking thirty marked men?

  The second the sludge was sufficiently me-shaped, Shane crunched himself down to the size of a child and skittered off, and Mickey and Caleb walked away with the decoy. It stumbled along like a baby giraffe, but I didn’t think that would give it away too quickly; they’d realize what happened as soon as I came at them from behind anyway.

  They were long gone, on the ground and halfway to the church. I whipped up some sludge boots and jumped off the roof. Hiding behind houses and cars for cover, I slowly made my way to the side of the church opposite of the rest of the gang. Mickey and Caleb were specks in the distance, holing up in a small house right next to the church. There wasn’t such a convenient shelter on the other side, but there was a car parked on the street not too far away. I crouched behind it and peered into the church windows.

  It was worse than I expected. It looked like a fucking tattoo convention in there — at least half of them were marked.

  Little Shane skittered over to Mickey and Caleb, said something, and skittered away. A minute or so later, Mickey and Caleb — with four man-sized creatures — came out of the house, the decoy trundling along behind them.

  “Hey assholes!” Mickey shouted towards the church. “Looking for us?”

  Whelp. Guess it’s fucking showtime.