Felix stepped out into the harsh daylight, hoodie half-zipped, eyes still heavy from the nightmare visions..
The Motel 6 parking lot was the same cracked, chaotic mess it had always been.
And of course, the usual crowd loitered nearby.
Two men in oversized jackets leaned against a busted car by the curb, black and mild smoke exhaling from their mouths. One of them was twitchy, wiry, and far too eager.
He pushed off the hood and swaggered over to Felix.
"Yo," he said, voice low and greasy. "You need anything? Weed, oxy, coke, fent, I got all of it. First-timer discount."
Felix didn't even look at him. "Piss off."
The man froze for a second, like he wasn't sure he'd heard right. Then he laughed, flashing a gold tooth. "The fuck you say, homie?"
His friend joined him, bulkier and slow moving, eyes already narrowing. "You got a death wish, bro?"
Felix turned his head, annoyed now. "You really don't want to do this. I'm not in the mood."
The skinny one pulled something from his waistband. A Glock 26 pistol, dull and scratched, aimed straight at Felix's head.
"I got a mood fixer right here," he said, grinning. "Let's see how tough you are with a bullet in your brain, homie."
Felix's eyes snapped red.
He reached up and grabbed the barrel of the gun.
The metal hissed violently in Felix's grip. Smoke curled from his palm as the gun began to glow red-hot, the barrel warping under his fingers like softened plastic. The weapon sagged and slumped, dripping molten steel as it peeled apart in his hand.
The thug screamed, high and shrill, stumbling back and clutching his scorched hand like it might fall off.
"Yo what the fuck, homie?!"
His friend didn't wait for an explanation.
The second thug yanked his pistol and fired twice. Muzzle flashes burst in rapid succession.
Both bullets hit their mark. One struck Felix dead center in the chest, the other ricocheted off his collarbone with a metallic ping.
Felix looked down slowly.
Unimpressed.
Smoke curled from the torn edges of his shirt. With a low hiss of heat, the bullets pushed themselves out of his skin. They fell to the asphalt with a faint clink, clean and unmarred, like the gun had fired blanks into a furnace.
The thug's jaw dropped. He barely had time to take a step before Felix moved.
In a blur, Felix closed the distance, grabbed the man by the throat, and lifted him clean off the ground. His feet dangled. His gun dropped. His mouth opened, but no sound came.
Felix's eyes still burned red.
"I warned you," he growled, voice low and guttural.
That was when Lawley's squad car screeched into the parking lot, tires shrieking against the pavement.
The driver's door slammed open.
She jumped out, weapon halfway drawn. "Felix! What the hell are you doing?"
He turned his head toward her, still holding the thug in the air like a sack of meat. "They shot me."
Lawley froze for just a second.
She took in the scene. The puddle of melted steel. The first thug groaned and burned on the ground. The second one twitching in Felix's grip.
"Jesus Christ. Put him down, Felix."
Felix let him go. The man hit the pavement with a dull thud and didn't get back up.
Lawley stepped in, already pulling out her radio. "This is Detective Lawley. Backup requested at the Motel 6. Two suspects down. Shots fired. One unconscious. One injured. Scene still active"
Felix's eyes faded from crimson to hazel. His hoodie fluttering with movement.
"We need to move," she said, voice sharp with urgency.
"Yeah," Felix exhaled. "Let's go."
He yanked the car door open and slid into the passenger seat.
Lawley didn't wait. She slammed the door, threw the vehicle into gear, and peeled out of the lot just as sirens began to scream in the distance.
The squad car tore down the road, tires humming, and radio crackling in the background.
Felix stared out the window, his expression unreadable. The red glow in his eyes had faded, but Lawley kept glancing over from the driver's seat like she expected it to return at any moment.
Her fingers flexed around the steering wheel, knuckles tight, jaw set.
For a while, the only sound was the low hum of the engine and the occasional squeak of old suspension.
Finally, she spoke.
"What the hell was that back there?"
Felix didn't respond right away. His eyes stayed on the passing blur of buildings and cracked sidewalks.
"I told you," he said quietly. "They shot at me."
"You melted a guy's gun with your hand. You lifted a grown man up off the ground like he weighed nothing. That's not self-defense, Felix. That's assault and battery."
"I warned them."
"You didn't just stop them," she snapped. "You choked one of them into unconscious. You expect me to just wave that off?"
He glanced at her, just once, then looked away again.
"You gonna book me for assault," he said, "or thank me for not killing them?"
Lawley exhaled hard through her nose. Her grip on the wheel tightened even more.
"I'm serious, Felix. I can't keep covering for you if you keep pulling this shit in public. People saw what happened."
"No one's gonna talk."
"Bullshit," she shot back. "You don't get to walk away clean forever. That kind of thing doesn't stay quiet. Someone is going to get it on video. Or worse, someone's going to end up dead. Then what? You gonna hurt the whole damn city to cover your tracks?"
Felix's fingers twitched slightly in his lap.
"I don't enjoy hurting people," he muttered.
"But you can," Lawley said. "And you do. I saw the look on your face. You seemed like you were enjoying it."
He said nothing.
Lawley glanced at him again. This time her voice came softer, but it still carried weight.
"You're not a monster, Felix. But sometimes, you sure as hell play one."
Felix looked back at her, eyes tired.
"You say that like I get a choice."
Lawley sighed through her nose and turned her focus back to the road.
They drove in silence for another moment before she said, quieter this time.
"You're lucky those guys were scumbags."
"Yeah. Lucky."
The squad car cut through the streets with purpose, engine humming, tires eating up the road.
Felix sat low in the seat, arms folded across his chest, eyes still flicking between what he saw outside and what was burned into his mind. His face was tight, jaw locked.
Lawley glanced over. "You're quiet. Which is never a good sign."
"I saw it," he said flatly.
She looked at him. "What do you mean you saw it?"
"In my head. A vision," he replied. "It wasn't just a dream or some twisted nightmare. It was real. Or it's going to be. I saw Lily."
Lawley frowned. "Lily Miller?"
Felix nodded. "She's the witch. Something's using her. It promised her she could get her father back."
Lawley's fingers tightened on the wheel. "You mean like resurrect him?"
"Yeah," Felix said. "And Ana Cruz and her little posse? They were just easy marks. They made her life hell at school, so it was a no-brainer. The demon didn't have to dig deep to find the hate inside of Lily."
Lawley's lips parted like she wanted to deny it. But she didn't. "How do you know all this?"
"I go where the visions send me. Something bad was coming. I saw Lily crying. I saw blood. I saw Harry. She has him."
Lawley blinked. "She what?"
"She has him. I saw him in that place, wherever the ritual's happening. We don't have much time."
Lawley pressed harder on the gas. "Where?"
"In the vision… it looked like a junkyard. Rusted cars, fences, oil stains. Moonlight overhead. It felt... old."
Lawley's face changed.
"Ben's junkyard," she said, almost to herself. "He owned it before he died. No one's touched it since he hung himself."
She gritted her teeth and floored the accelerator.
"I know exactly where it is."
JUNKYARD
The car skidded to a stop outside rusted fencing.
Weeds pushed through cracks in the pavement. Bent metal parts and crushed cars cast warped shadows under the sky.
It was exactly how Felix had seen it.
He stepped out slowly, scanning the dark shapes ahead. The air felt wrong. Heavy. Too still.
Lawley holstered her sidearm. "We split up. Cover more ground."
Felix raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Wow. Solid plan. Let's split up. What could possibly go wrong?"
Lawley rolled her eyes and walked toward the gate. "Next time I'll bring Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine. Are you good on your own?"
Felix smirked and cracked his knuckles. "If you hear screaming, it's probably just me having fun."
They both disappeared into the junkyard, each step carrying them closer to whatever waited in the bones of the junkyard.
Felix moved through the maze of scrap metal and twisted car husks, each step crunching over gravel and rust flakes. The deeper he went, the worse the air felt. Thicker. Oily. A sharp screech cut through the stillness.
Felix stopped.
Something was moving.
The air thickened around him, like it was pressing inward from all sides
Then he saw it.
It dropped from the shadows between two stacked cars. A creature twisted and impossible, its body a grotesque fusion of things that shouldn't exist together. A bat's leathery wings flared from a humanoid frame, its skin stretched too tight over exposed bone. Long, taloned feet scraped the ground like knives on glass. Its single red eye pulsed in the center of its face beneath a jagged horn that curved like a broken crown.
The damn thing floated six feet off the ground, silent now, just watching him.
Felix blinked once. "Oh, you're one ugly son of a bitch, aren't you?"
The creature hissed and opened its mouth far too wide. Rows of teeth jutted inward like a meat grinder. Then it shrieked high and violently, launching itself forward like a living missile.
Felix moved fast.
He dive rolled under a rusted pipe jutting from an old engine block, the demon's claws ripping through the air just above his back.
As he came up, he held out his right hand.
A flash of pale blue flame flickered to life, burning upward from his palm like a reverse spark.
From it formed a jagged, obsidian-black dagger, its bone hilt shaped like it had been carved from something ancient and dead. Runes etched along the blade's edge pulsed with dim light.
Felix grinned. "Alright then. Let's dance, freakshow."
The demon wheeled around midair, wings snapping open with a gust of wind. Its horn glowed faintly as it let out another scream and dove again, claws extended.
Felix didn't dodge this time.
He stepped into the strike.
The demon slashed with one talon, but Felix caught the limb on the inside, twisting with the momentum, and drove his dagger into the creature's gut. The blade sank in with a sound like meat tearing through wet leaves.
The demon shrieked in his face, blood hissing against the blade as it tried to pull away.
"Hurts, huh?" Felix said, twisting the dagger deeper.
The creature slammed him into a rusted car behind them. Felix grunted, his back denting the metal, but he held on to the blade, dragging it upward.
The demon broke free with a screech and retreated into the air, bleeding black smoke.
Felix wiped his mouth, tasting copper.
"Round two?" he asked, stepping forward, flames dancing faintly across the sigils glowing through the rips in his shirt.
As the demon hovered above, wings twitching in the dry afternoon light. Its blood hissed as it dripped onto the sunbaked metal below, sizzling against rusted steel.
The red eye in the center of its face throbbed like it was pulsing with heat and hate.
Felix squared his stance, dagger held low, the shimmer of blue flame still dancing along the edge of the obsidian blade.
"You gonna float there bleeding like a loser," he called, "or you gonna make this worth my time?"
The inmortui let out a piercing screech, the sound splitting the air like metal on bone. It dove again, faster this time, twisting mid-air like a broken bird. Its talons gleamed in the sunlight.
Felix barely sidestepped in time.
The creature's claw scraped across his ribs, tearing fabric and dragging a shallow line of blood across his side. He grunted, stumbled, but didn't fall.
Instead, he turned with it.
Felix whipped his dagger through the air. The tip grazed the demon's wing, slicing through the membrane like wet paper. The creature shrieked and lost control for a second, crashing into a pile of scrap with a deafening clang.
Metal rained down in a clatter of old mufflers and brake drums.
Felix didn't hesitate. He charged.
The demon burst from the wreckage in a whirl of wings and limbs, faster than before. Its horn glowed with a sick red light now, and it opened its mouth wide enough to dislocate its jaw.
A blast of concussive sound hit Felix in the chest like a shotgun.
He flew backward, hit the hood of a rusted truck, and rolled off with a thud onto the gravel. His vision doubled for a second. His ears rang. Blood trickled from one nostril.
"Okay," he muttered, spitting into the dirt. "Sonic breath. Neat trick."
The creature shrieked again, triumphant, and swooped down for the kill.
Felix's sigils pulsed, glowing through the rips in his shirt.
His eyes flashed red as he hurled his dagger not at the demon's body, but directly at its single eye.
The blade spun end over end, burning blue.
The demon moved to dodge, but not fast enough. The dagger struck just beneath the eye, burying itself into the ridge of bone.
The creature howled, its screech turning to a warped, panicked wail as it spiraled off-course and slammed into the side of a stacked van.
He raised his empty hand again. With a sharp hiss of heat, the dagger reformed in a blaze of blue fire, snapping back into his grip.
He ran forward as the demon thrashed, clawing at its ruined face.
Felix leapt and landed on its back driving the blade straight into the base of its neck. Once. Twice. A third time, twisting with all the rage and fire in his blood.
The demon convulsed.
Then it went still.
Steam hissed from Felix's wounds as the single red eye of the undead familiar dimmed.
Felix rolled off the corpse, panting, covered in blood and black ash.
He stood over it, chest heaving and blade flickering out in his hand.
"Bet you didn't see that coming, did you?," he muttered.
Behind him, four sharp gunshots cracked through the junkyard.
Felix froze.
Lawley.
The sound was close.
He took off running as dirt and gravel crunched beneath his shoes, heart pounding in rhythm with every step.