The bodies of Stuntman and El Monstro lay on the floor. There was a sweetish scent of flesh starting to decompose. Added to that was the stench of the rotting food on the buffet. The smell of death and corruption. It seemed the perfect analogy for what had formed the foundation of Baba Yaga’s kingdom. Franny choked back bile.

Baba Yaga grabbed a napkin off the buffet table and wiped Vaporlock’s ooze off Baldy’s face. She then threw a pitcher of water in his face and started slapping him. The heavy jeweled rings cut his face. Baldy groaned and came around. There was a tense conversation in Russian. Baldy nodded and dabbed at his bleeding cheeks with his tie. He clambered to his feet and they were back in motion again.

Franny forced himself to look at Stuntman’s face as he passed. One side was unmarred. On the other his eye hung grotesquely on his shattered cheek and his skull was depressed.

I’ll see you home. I promise.

He fought down the urge to kick El Monstro’s body. If not for the joker he and Jamal would be back in New York safe, drinking, and maybe not fired by the NYPD and SCARE.

Franny followed the old woman and her two guards down a hallway to a heavy metal door. She unlocked it and they stepped out into a garage. There was a van with New York plates parked in the docking area.

There were also four thugs waiting for them. Gunfire echoed off the concrete. Baba Yaga’s guards were controlled and icy as they double-tapped, firing at the mob competitors, but there was enough lead flying that some of it found its mark. Baldy went down again and this time it didn’t look like he was going to get up.

Franny was hugging the concrete. Baba Yaga’s slippered feet went past his face. He looked up in time to see Stache shoot one of the two remaining attackers. The other received a spray of spit from Baba Yaga right in the face. He began to scream, clawing at his eyes. Then his head stretched, widening and elongating. His eyeballs popped from their sockets and burst, blood and intraocular fluid running down his deformed face. His arms jerked behind his head, and fused together while his legs did the same. His screams were punctuated by the sharp crack of breaking bones. His body stretched and widened until he was a tall rectangle. The blood and fluid from the burst eyeballs now stained the face of a clock.

Franny scrambled back toward the door. This was a fucking nightmare—Jamal’s death, the violence at the hospital, and now this. Could he really stay in the company of this murderous old bitch? Baba Yaga and Stache walked past the dying man. He must have still had vocal chords because inhuman cries were emanating from the cutout moon that decorated the face of the clock. As she passed she put a hand against the deformed and suffering figure and shoved. He went over with a crash as the transformation concluded.