by Angie Fox
“So what do we do with it?” I asked.
“Test it,” Dimitri said to Grandma.
She blanched. “I can’t touch something that evil.”
“Then what do we do?” Ant Eater asked.
I watched the creature attack the lid of the jar. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Eight
“Lizzie!” Pirate dashed through the crowd of witches and jumped right onto my leg, nailing me with a prickling pain.
“Baby dog.” I let him nuzzle under my arm and sniff Grandma’s jar on the table next to me.
“That’s it? That’s the bug? Shoot. I’ve eaten bigger bugs than this for dessert. You want me to chomp it?”
“Thanks for the offer,” I said, “but not this time.”
I’d spare my attacker from death-by-dog. I wanted to observe it, learn more about it. Besides, Pirate didn’t need to be eating enchanted creatures.
It was bad enough he’d adopted a dragon.
“He looks crunchy. I like crunchy bugs,” Pirate said. “You change your mind, you tell me. ’Cause you know I’ll eat anything.”
Did I ever.
“Ho-boy.” Pirate scrabbled against me. His whole body quivered as he attempted to slather every inch of the jar in dog nose. “You didn’t tell me it was magic!”
“What are you talking about? It’s not -” Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the mule. “Grandma. Take a look at this.”
My attacker was no longer a red insect. It twisted upon itself, chest heaving, wings collapsing. It bent and flattened until it morphed into a fleshy, plasticky lump. It reminded me of the silly putty I used to play with as a kid. But this thing was hard. It shimmied against the glass, sounding like a wobbling penny.
Frieda, Sid and a half dozen other biker witches scooted back. Grandma, Dimitri and I moved closer.
She whistled under her breath. “Pressure bugs can’t do that.”
Dimitri watched it as if he’d cornered a viper. “That was never a pressure bug.”
A bad feeling crept over me. For the love of Pete. “I can’t believe it’s worse than a demonic bug.”
The rope cowered as the bug-turned-blob gained momentum and began slamming against the side of the jar.
I stood to get closer, trying not to wince as pain shot through my thigh. As long as the leg didn’t buckle, I’d be okay. If I was going to be a big, bad demon slayer, it would look better if I didn’t wipe out on the floor.
Grandma pulled out a pair of reading glasses with rhinestones clustered in the corners and went nose-to-nose with the jar. “I hate it when Dimitri’s right.”
“Then what is it?” I asked, wanting – no, needing – answers.
Grandma lowered her glasses. “Dunno. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Wonderful. We were now testing the limits of biker witch knowledge.
Grandma spoke slowly. “We spent thirty years dealing with everything Vald had to throw at us from the fifth level of hell. I thought I’d seen everything.”
“What? Could this be from a deeper level?” I asked, sharing a glance with Dimitri.
He didn’t like it. I didn’t either.
“If it is,” Dimitri said, “we need to know what level it’s from so we know what we’re dealing with.”
Ant Eater looked as shaken as I’d ever seen her. “If we’re up against anything over five, we need to go into bunker mode.”
“Or if we’re facing a two, we need to keep on to Pasadena,” I reminded her. We had no reason to jump to conclusions. “How far is Las Vegas?”
“What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” Ant Eater demanded.
“Max is in Vegas,” I answered.
“What?” Dimitri thundered.
“Now?” Grandma balked.
“Oh please.” I thought we’d called a truce.
I watched the middle of the creature pulse into a flat disk.
This thing was evil and Max knew evil.
Max Devereux was the only person I knew who made it his life’s work to navigate the murky waters between heaven and hell. “He’s been killing demons longer than I’ve been alive.”
“That’s not hard,” Grandma muttered.
“Sid,” I said, locating the fairy over by the window, “you have any fairy paths that can take us through Las Vegas?”
Sid looked at me like I’d asked him to tap dance across broken glass. “We can take Gooey Gumdrop Lane.”
Grandma tapped a silver ringed finger against the jars at her belt. “Lizzie, you have to admit Max is a long shot. And the guy’s not completely right in the head.”
This coming from a biker witch.
Grandma, Dimitri, and the rest of them had never liked the hunter, and for good reason. Max was half-demon. He wasn’t what you’d call trustworthy. And he was on the edge of giving into the dark side himself – if he hadn’t turned already.
He was a cambion, a half demon, half human I’d met during a succubi invasion in Las Vegas. Max was on our side, mostly. I never knew what he was going to do, but he did get a kick out of killing demons, so we had that going for us.
Okay, so Max wasn’t Dudley Do-Right. “You didn’t even have to watch him eat a demon.” I’d never forget it. “Still, he’s a hunter, which is as close as we’re going to get to another slayer. He’s survived for a century on his own and if anyone can tell us where this thing came from, it’s Max.”
Nobody looked happy.
Dimitri looked fit to be tied. He knew I was right and it was killing him. “Let’s go,” he ground out. “I hate the bastard, but I’ll go.”
“Thank you.” I knew he’d stand by me. Dimitri always did. Now we just had to convince the rest of the group.
Or go it alone.
”What if you hole up and it gets you anyway?” I asked. “We don’t know what level of hell this is from or what it’s capable of doing. This is life or death, people.”
Sure Max was dark, dangerous and sexy as hell (not that I’d admit that last part to Dimitri). Max was also the one person who could help us.
I needed to be a leader here. I finally knew what I was doing and nobody wanted to listen. My preschoolers used to listen to me. Mostly. Pirate listened. Sometimes.
Why couldn’t I just make them understand that this is the way it had to be?
“Our answer is in Las Vegas,” I said, as sure as I’d been of anything in my life. “We need to go. Now.”
No one moved.
Dimitri turned his back on me and walked away, through the crowd of witches. The front door creaked as he held it open. His dark eyes caught mine and held them. “Come on, ladies. Sid. Let’s hit the road.”
***
As soon as the last biker had left the hotel, it reverted back to a crumbling wreck. Flappy sniffed at the rotted-out porch as we climbed onto our bikes.
Even though I’d gotten my way, I couldn’t help but fume over how it went down. They followed Dimitri out the door. Not me. He wasn’t even part of the Red Skulls.
I knew what it was. I’d come into this group with no knowledge of my abilities and no experience in the magical world. We’d fixed that. I’d grown into my powers. Sure I still had some things to learn but I knew what I was doing – especially when it came to Max. Still, it seemed like I’d always be seen as the newbie.
Maybe that would change after they saw what was waiting for us in Vegas. And maybe Ant Eater would braid my hair and tell me a bedtime story.
We took Nether Wallup Way to Greeny Bits Drive up to Gooey Gumdrop Lane. I found myself in awe each time Sid swung open a new fairy gate.
The paths were similar in that they let us travel at ungodly speeds. Most of the time, my bike tires didn’t even touch the ground. Yet each of the trails had a personality of its own. Nether Wallup Way felt like old Ireland. We sped over a cobblestone road, past soaring cliffs and fields of emerald green. We turned left at a low stone wall – heaven knew how Sid could distinguish it from any other.
Ther
e Sid eased away a section of stone to reveal Greeny Bits Drive. Just like that, we were speeding over sand and seashells. Palm trees swayed, colorful macaws sang and I could taste the ocean on the breeze.
It was to the point where I almost expected a candy store when Sid opened the gate to Gooey Gumdrop Lane.
Instead, large pink and yellow mushrooms sprouted as far as I could see. They even covered the road. Sid broke off a chunk of the nearest one and stuffed it into his pocket.
“And that is?” I asked.
“None of your beeswax,” he shot back.
We fired up our engines and took off down the lane.
As night fell, Sid pushed open the bamboo gate that opened onto Las Vegas Boulevard. A few tourists paused outside, expecting a show as we roared our bikes out of a row of palm trees and past the Treasure Island Casino pirate ship.
If they only knew.
It wasn’t the first time I was glad non-magical humans couldn’t see large scaly dragons.
Sid closed the gate with a grunt as Dimitri pulled up next to me.
“Look,” I pointed to a billboard, “Dale Fiehler is building a new mega casino.” He was the Donald Trump of Las Vegas, only with better hair. The twenty-foot-tall Fiehler smiled down on us, not knowing just how close we’d come to having no Vegas at all.
Dimitri revved his bike. “Let’s keep moving.”
I knew Dimitri wasn’t happy about being back in Las Vegas with Max. Worse, the last time he’d been here, he’d nearly been consumed by she-demons. Succubi look at griffins the same way Pirate sees pork chops – the ideal snack. I’d exterminated them, but it didn’t make for happy vacation memories.
We eased into the traffic on The Strip. Cars streamed up and down, honking over the sound of tourists calling out to each other. Bright lights from dozens of casinos and restaurants flashed up and down the street.
I wouldn’t have dragged us here if I’d had a choice, but we needed to know what level of demonic creature I was carrying around. The jar on my belt rattled as the plasticky creature threw itself at the glass. Vicious little beast.
“Max could be anywhere,” Dimitri said.
“I know where to find him,” I said.
“You do?” He didn’t sound happy.
“I know where he lives.” He’d be there, unless he was out hunting. If that was the case, we’d just have to wait. “Follow me.”
Dimitri and I took the lead. Grandma and Flappy moved to the rear of the line. My bike shook and rumbled. Asphalt under my tires felt strange and slow after the speed and exhilaration of the fairy paths. Sid was going to spoil us.
I glanced back at the line of biker witches behind me, and to the dragon chasing the swooping spotlight on Paris Hotel’s Eiffel Tower.
We snaked down Las Vegas Boulevard in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Flappy dove low over New York, New York, clipping the top of a skyscraper with his big toe. “Rrr-eek!”
Oh geez. I winced as bits of plaster rained down.
Flappy didn’t notice. He’d perched at top of the Empire State Building to inspect his stubbed toe.
He was like a snaggle-toothed, naked King Kong. Without the girl. Which was good. I didn’t need to find any more dragon eggs.
“Hey,” Pirate called from Sidecar Bob’s lap, “maybe I should ride with Flappy.”
I took one last look at the dragon, whose face lit up as soon as he noticed me watching. “Not on your life.”
We turned onto Highway 70 out of Vegas and followed it until the neon and strip malls ceased and we were instead surrounded by desert scrub and emptiness.
The headlights of the other drivers became scarcer and disappeared completely when we turned off onto a lonely side road. We cut through the dry, cool desert night until we came to an abandoned prison thirty miles outside of Harrison.
I’d known exactly where it was. I could feel the demons.
Gray metal guard towers loomed above rusted fences. Barbed wire twisted along the tops, its loops capturing Styrofoam cups and fast food wrappers. Weeds littered the ground and sprouted between the concrete basketball courts in the yard. A dented sign read South East Nevada State Women’s Minimal Security Correctional Center.
I’d never forget my first and only other trip here, mainly because I’d hoped it would be my last.
We parked our bikes along the side and I fought not to choke as the pungent stench of sulfur burned the back of my throat.
“This place is wrong,” Grandma muttered, tugging off her riding gloves.
“It only gets worse,” I said, dread seeping through me.
Dimitri held open a cut in the fence and we slipped inside.
“Set up a guard around the perimeter,” Grandma said behind me. “Ant Eater, Frieda, you guys take point. Pirate, see what the dragon can sniff out.”
“Aye, aye, captain!” My dog exclaimed with enough get-up-and-go for an entire platoon.
I couldn’t believe she was giving him a job. Then again, he always wanted to be a guard dog. And it would keep him out of the way. The real trouble lay inside those walls.
The biker witches scattered. Soon everything was silent.
I stopped for a moment, taking it in. No crickets chirped, no night animals called. It was as if anything that could walk, crawl or slither away had long abandoned this place.
I didn’t blame them. The deadness here made me want to sprint back to Vegas. The prison crouched like a half-eaten husk, an unnatural blight on the endless desert beyond.
A chill sent goose bumps skittering up my skin as my memory traced back to the last time the silence of a place had swallowed me whole.
Dimitri and I had been dumped head first into the wastelands of hell.
He glanced back, as if he were thinking the same thing. Over his shoulder, I saw a flutter of red light behind a darkened window. They were watching us.
We sounded like an invading army as our boots crunched over the crumbling parking lot. Ragged weeds pushed out of craters in the cement. Signs reserving spots for VIPs and visitors lay crumpled and rusting on the ground.
I focused on the building in front of us and reached out with my mind, honing in on the stickiest spots, or basically, anything that might be crouching and ready to pounce. Grandma’s jar clanked against my leg. While I wasn’t crazy about faceless, featureless, Silly Putty minions attacking out of the blue, it was better than skulking around, waiting for them to come to us.
The true horror rested low in the building. I counted at least three demons, twisting and angry, down in the caverns under the prison. No sign of Max – unless he was one of them.
Don’t even think it.
We hurried behind a row of dead bushes at the edge of the parking lot and past an old prison cemetery on the side of the building. I stiffened as a cold presence slid down my back. It was just a ghost – I hoped.
We’d come to Max for answers. I didn’t need any new battles to fight.
Sid tested the padlock on the iron industrial door with a window of chain-linked safety glass. “Houston, we have a problem.”
Grandma groaned. “I’ll go back for the lock eaters.”
“Hold up,” I said, feeling the cold steel under my hand. “Max,” I called. He had to know we were here. “Max,” I repeated.
“He must be out hunting,” Dimitri said.
“Or he’s compromised.”
There was only one way to find out.
Sparks flew as I incinerated the padlock with a switch star. Max always said to act first and apologize later. Let’s see if he’d be glad I took his advice.
We found ourselves at the entrance to a large industrial kitchen. Stale air mixed with the last of the fresh as we eased our way inside. Dimitri swung the door shut and darkness enveloped us.
Grandma stiffened next to me as the scarlet light of an orb hovered near a row of metal soup spoons. It moved between them, causing them to sway as if touched.
“Ignore it,” Dimitri said.
He was right. W
e didn’t need to waste our energy, unless it attacked. I pulled the Maglite out of my utility belt and shone it down, away from the windows.
The beam cut through the night and illuminated a pool of dried blood on the floor.
I caught my breath and followed the blood to a spatter on the rounded leg of a silver counter, and up toward the ladles, serving spoons and tongs hanging over the metal counters on each side of us.
Please don’t let it be Max.
The orb hovered, watching us, as I traced the blood back to a body slung over the kitchen tool rack.
The black claws of an imp shone under my light. The beam of my Maglite trailed up a gnarled hand, along a spindly arm up to a cutting board, where a knife protruded from the creature’s leathery neck. Its weasel-like face snarled, even in death. Its thick, dark hair matted with blood and gore.
“Something is very wrong here,” I said around the lump in my throat.
Grandma whistled under her breath. “You just figured that out?”
I took a step back. “Max would clean this up.”
Unless he couldn’t.
A glance at Dimitri showed he shared my concern.
Number one: imps answered to demons, so if there was one here, we could be walking into a trap. Number two: if Max hadn’t cleaned up the body, he wasn’t just out for the night. He was compromised.
“Come on,” Dimitri said, stepping over the blood. “Let’s see what we find.”
“It can’t be worse than a banshee horde,” I said, knowing that wasn’t true at all.
Focus. I worked to keep my breathing even as we took a left down a deserted hallway. I was responsible for this and for the safety of my friends. They were here because of me, because I needed answers. I’d proven myself as a demon slayer enough to be a target. Now I just had to learn to trust myself, and hope that a little knowledge wasn’t worse than none at all.
“Look to the Outside,” I said to myself, trying to find comfort in the Three Truths of the Demon Slayer. “Accept the Universe.” Okay, we could skip the last one – Sacrifice Yourself.
We hurried down a narrow service corridor, our lights casting strange shadows on the cement block walls. The orb followed, just over my left shoulder. Anger radiated off it in waves. It hovered at the edge of my vision, a constant threat. But frankly, I had bigger worries.
