TW: mild gore

 

Panicked shrieks erupted behind them. Kenzie whirled around, scanning the ocean of asphalt, shiny cars, and protesters for the problem.

 

Then Kenzie spotted the man from the day before. The seven-foot-tall man wearing a black top hat wove drunkenly through the crowd. His face was painted white, and he wore a black suit with coattails and black and white spats. A smile drawn in red clown makeup stretched from ear to ear. A black and white swirl painted around each eye mimicked the look of an old cartoon character. His height and his disproportionately long legs made him look like a stilt-walker.

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Kenzie understood why the crowd had screamed. A menacing air vibrated around the man. His looming presence and blood red smile made the Kenzie’s skin tingle with fear. The bad vibes of a twisted or malfunctioning spell slammed into Kenzie’s face, like the stench of a rotting animal.

 

Moriah grabbed Kenzie’s arm and tugged. “Let’s go.”  

 

The man burst into gibberish: “Goline adamia? Corporous noctunous!” Then a red pitchfork materialized in his hand. He ran the pitchfork through the nearest woman, picking her up with a single jab and holding her body high in the air as a macabre canapé, a bite of food on an enormous fork. She screamed and twitched, dropping her sign and kicking one of her shoes off.

 

“Corporous noctunous!” The man hurled her to the ground. She bounced once against the pavement, blood flying from her wounds, and lay still. The crowd burst into more shrieks. People stampeded in all directions, squeezing between cars or fleeing across the street without looking. Some of them threw their signs down while others clung to them.

 

Moriah bolted toward the Anderson Science Building.

 

However, Kenzie couldn’t move his legs. His body seemed to turn to granite, having decided that staying perfectly still was his best chance of survival. Meanwhile, on the inside, his mind was screaming, Move! Do something!

 

The man spun to face the street, revealing that he wore a long, red, pointed devil’s tail, curved as though a wire on the inside gave it structure. “Goline adamia?” he shouted at the crowd. “Goline adamia?” He gave chase, stabbing at a Black man.

 

That broke Kenzie’s paralysis. He flipped over into fight mode, teeth baring in a snarl. “Stop it!” With both hands, he grabbed at the UV rays beating down from the sun. He packed them all into a dense ball of light that shifted from red all the way into green as he wove his spell. Then he threw it, and it slammed like a laser blast into the man’s back at the speed of light.