Her words sent more creepies down my spine. Around us, party-goers, some in feathered masks, danced, screamed, showed their breasts in return for a twenty-five-cent strand of beads, drank, vomited on the sidewalks, and swayed into and out of danger of collision like zombies. I took a moment to make sure they weren’t zombies, and came away satisfied they were just stoned. The smell of marijuana was ripe on the air, and mixed with the other scents it was both heady and rank.

Not as rank, though, as a rotted-meat stench that didn’t so much waft as thunder down the street. I automatically held my breath, and somehow the smell got worse, burning my eyes with its power. I coughed, wiped my eyes, and glanced over peoples’ heads in search of the smell’s source.

Sadly, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Something taller than we were was coming up on our right, and I say something, not someone, because it had horns. I knew at least one guy with horns, and he was a someone, but this fellow also had gills. And scales. And a spreading hood, like velociraptors had. A demon velociraptor. Great. I’d gotten yanked into another world where vampires were real and demon velociraptors stalked the streets. Not just demon velociraptors, but demon velociraptors who hadn’t had a fashion update since the 1980s, because the thing’s flared hood was streaked in vibrant neon shades of red, green, blue, and yellow.

It saw us at the same time we saw it.

The smell was coming from it. Whatever it was. It stank of brimstone, rotten meat and the worst body odor I’d ever encountered. Yet the partying crowd didn’t seem to notice, just opened a space in front of him. It. And closed behind, never noticing the stench or the creature bearing it. I drew an eighteen inch vamp-killer with my left hand and pulled the M4 with my right. It was loaded for vamp with silver fléchette rounds, but if I got in a neck shot, it would kill most anything. If I could do that without collateral damage. Killing civilians was not in my contract or my moral code.