Free A Cursed Moon: A Weird Girls Novella (A Penguin Special from Signet Eclipse) by Cecy Robson

in the stomach. I lunged at them but failed to move anything but my arms. My body jerked viciously and my muscles strained from the effort. I remained stuck, watching and helpless to stop the devil’s version of Martha Stewart from taking on my friend.
    What the hell?
    Celia and the freak rolled around me, toppling the patrons now frozen in place. And they weren’t the only ones brawling to the death. Misha’s vampires battled bare-ass-naked women whose skin alternated from shades of brown to dark blue. Despite their malevolence and thirst for blood, the spirits’ exotic beauty proved hard to ignore. Their lovely faces drew me to them, and so did their aroma of sin and sex. Whatever they were had the same power to lure me, just like the one Celia had stopped from going down on me.
    Instead of kitchen utensils for legs, the vamps’ opponents kicked with backward facing feet. Their long hair whipped around as they wrestled and clawed at the Catholic schoolgirls. The vamps grunted and screamed. Their opponents chirped like exotic birds. It was all kinds of hot and would’ve made one hell of a porn. Too bad these porn stars wanted to munch on my soul like pretzels.
    Edith Anne, the Catholic with the crazy long tongue, let out a scream and slammed one of the spirits into the floor. She straddled her and hammered her fist repeatedly into the spirit’s skull until black blood smeared her white shirt and the spirit’s body buckled inward.
    The vamp with the librarian glasses cleaved into another spirit’s stomach and yanked out rows of decaying bowels. I continued to catch portions of the action as the vamps bashed into the entities. They held their own and then some. Thankfully, so did my girl, Celia.
    The freak Celia fought tried to kick her with her wooden limb. Celia was ready for her. She locked onto the leg with her arm and belted it with the heel of her foot. The spirit shrieked. A loud snap followed by splintering wood signaled the abrupt loss of her bizarre and creepy-ass appendage. It also provided Celia with one hell of a weapon. She lifted the cracked piece and stabbed it through the spirit’s chest. The spirit bolted up, releasing a flow of gray foam from her mouth and slicing her wicked nails at Celia. Celia scrambled behind her, yanking back the entity’s hair and using her claws to sever the spirit’s head.
    Blood the color of concrete splashed me across the face and bare chest. Celia held the head of her opponent, scowling at me.
    “What?” I asked defensively. “I’m numb from the waist down.”
    Celia gave Little Bren a quick glance, her voice less than patient when she spoke. “That’s not what it looked like to me.” She tossed the demon’s head aside just as Misha’s vampires hurried to her. “Did we get them all?”
    The naughty librarian/even naughtier Catholic schoolgirl wiped her bowel-smeared hands on the back of some guy’s shirt. “Yes. The trance should lift soon.”
    Celia watched the mist recede into the spirits as their bodies bubbled and frothed. “What were those things, Agnes?”
    Agnes adjusted her cleavage before she began rebraiding her long pigtails. For a vamp, she had her priorities straight. She motioned behind her to where the body she had fun disemboweling had begun to disintegrate. “Ciguapas. They’re Dominican. They’re said to lure men into the forests to have sex with them.”
    I shrugged. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
    That earned me a smile from Agnes. “No, but then they kill them afterwards.” Her smile widened. “Slowly. Sometimes even over weeks.”
    Celia pointed to the one with the leg found in the culinary section. “What about that one?” She jerked back when the abandoned head popped, fizzled, and crumpled inward.
    Agnes eyed the cracked limb as it began to char and crumble. “That’s La Tunda. She’s Columbian and downright nasty.”
    Celia shuddered. “Yeah. That wooden leg is hideous.”
    “It is,” Agnes agreed, stepping back