The Demoness of Chengdu

 You materialize unseen in the shadowed corner of the club. An average looking club, well, that seemed the genuine consensus amongst the minds of those present. Jasmine Anh is leaning against the polished mahogany, her pink dress riding up to barely cover her plump ass. Her long black hair, streaked with purple, runs over one shoulder as she tilts her head back, laughing too loudly at something the massive man beside her says. His name pops into your head. Along with anything else you'd ever need to know. Braden Pike... college football player. He's thinking... hmm.. how much he loves Asian chicks. He's dressed in black designer jeans and a shirt stretched tight over his muscular chest and arms. His auburn hair is over-gelled, artfully messy, his blue eyes fixed on rump slices of Jasmine with the malest of gazes. "Oh, you so strong!" Jasmine coos, her voice pitched high with a thick accent. She bats her long, fake eyelashes, running a manicured finger down Brade...

 The box arrived bruised and battered, bound in twine. Ethan found it propped against his apartment door like a little orphan, his name and address in jagged script. His brother’s handwriting. Of course... he kicked the door shut behind him, the package tucked under his arm. Six months since Brian had vanished into Morocco’s sun-bleached alleys. Six months of radio silence, broken eventually by a deranged fucking set of emails and WhatsApp messages about desert d-ja-jinn, stolen artifacts, and arguments with 'bribed officials'. Like, what the actual fuck was he doing out there? Ethan had stopped reading after the third one. He ripped the twine with his teeth. Inside, nestled in a worn Arabic newspaper, was a stone. He was hit by a painfully thick smell that nearly made him toss the thing in the sink. It took a moment to process, it absorbed the light rather than reflect it. It was pocked with tiny, fractal grooves. Smaller than his palm, heavier than it should’ve been. At the b...