Free A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency) by Jus Accardo

agree. The stench was enough to induce yakking. Lukas sidestepped the demon’s reach and sprinted for the tree line. The thing followed.
    Unfortunately, this particular Dirt demon was smart. Well, as smart as a walking pile of festering mud and gunk could be. It must have caught a whiff of the cleaner, because it pulled up a few yards short of the circle and whirled on me. A hacking sound, followed by a sick kind of slurping, and the thing spit a glob of foul smelling black mucus in my direction.
    “Craps,” I cursed and danced to the right, skirting the globule without landing on my butt. I was thankful. The Dirt demon?
    Not so much.
    It let out a garbled roar and charged. I was no fool. I ran like my butt was on fire. Over the park bench and around the right side of the lake. Every few feet another black glob hit the ground, each time getting closer and closer to my sneakers. If it hit my bare skin, I’d be paralyzed. They were kind of like spiders. Incapacitate their prey, then suck out the gooey insides. I liked my insides just fine where they were.
    “I’m coming, Jessie,” Lukas shouted. A second later, his footsteps pounded the earth behind me.
    It was times like this that I was thankful Mom made me start running a mile a day. I raced across the field and rounded the lake to the left with the intention of circling back around to where I’d made the circle. It was a solid plan, but I didn’t make it.
    Lukas let out another yell, and as I came around the last corner at the edge of the lake, I saw him leap. He crashed into the Dirt demon from behind, taking them both onto the grass. He had the open bottle of bleach in his hands.
    Oops. I’d never explained what happened when these things came in contact with bleach. Lukas wrestled the thing for a second, gaining the upper hand, then raised the bottle.
    “Don’t—”
    Flipping it upside down, he jammed the nozzle into the demon’s mouth. The thing made a horrible sound and began to thrash. I tried to get away, but I was paying too much attention to Lukas and planted my foot directly into a puddle of mucus, sending me inelegantly to my knees.
    “I got it!” Lukas exclaimed with pride as the thing stopped moving. He got to his feet, beaming, just as the body of the Dirt demon convulsed once, then exploded. A blast of fetid air blew through the clearing and gunk torpedoed me in the side of the face as a long piece of something—the demon’s arm—crashed into to my right. It was a damn good thing I had a strong stomach, or I’d be losing more than just cookies.
    “Well,” I said, choking back a gag and flicking liquefied demon mush from my hands. The field was a mess, patches of Dirt demon scattered everywhere. Bits of it even made it into the trees to our right. “I guess that could have been a lot worse.”
    Thankfully, Lukas shrugged off his slime-covered jacket and let it fall to the floor with a grimace before reaching out to help me up. “Do I dare ask how?”
    I ignored the subtle increase of my pulse when our hands touched—he had a way of doing that to me by simply being near—and skimmed a chunk of goop from his chin. With a grin, I said, “ I could have had my mouth open.”
    He turned his back to me, ever the gentleman, and spit out a mouthful of demon guts. When he faced me again, his lips pulled downward at the corners. “That’s a very good point.”
    I grabbed the empty bottle of bleach from the ground and started back to the tree where I’d dumped my bag. There wasn’t much we could do about the demon bits—they’d dry up and blow away in an hour anyway—but Mom would feed me to demon dogs if I left litter on the ground.
    “Jessie,” Lukas called, following me across the field. I slowed my pace. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
    “Talk?” I asked, nervous. Talking was never a good thing. When someone said they wanted to talk to you, it was usually followed by bad news. Or, in Mom’s case, a good ass