by Angie Fox
“Why am I following you anyway?” I asked. If the dreg didn’t come from my dad, I should be following my own instincts.
The zombie rope banged harder. “See?” I said, pointing at the jar. “Look who agrees with me.”
Max balked. “You’re going to take the advice of that thing over me?”
I considered it for a moment. “Yes.”
Even though we’d made it to Pasadena, I couldn’t seem to get a direct lock on my dad. I tried to sense the burning from before, but near the busy street, I was only coming up with car exhaust.
“This way?” I asked the zombie rope, turning left.
The zombie rope banged his head on the top of the jar.
“Over here?” I asked, doing a full 180.
The zombie rope danced.
We might be onto something. “No kidding? He’s that way?”
“You can’t be serious,” Max groaned.
“I’ve never heard you whine before.”
“Keep it up and I’ll be forced to do it a lot more.”
The rest of the gang made it through the light and I gunned my engine. “This way,” I said, heading across the parking lot and down a back alley.
The rope led us through the alley and back up Mesa Avenue. He took us through a maze of crowded streets flanked with strip malls, drive-through banks and at least twelve In ‘N Out Burgers. Every time he banged his head against the glass, I knew we’d taken a wrong turn.
Finally we exited onto a narrow, tree-lined street. Pale stucco houses lined up behind immaculately kept lawns. If an angel lived in Pasadena, I could see him living here. The neighborhood was gorgeous.
Of course now I didn’t even need the zombie rope to tell me which house belonged to my dad. A lonely brown house cowered at the end of the street. Paint peeled from it in small sheets. It sat on a hill held up in part by a concrete retaining wall. The near side had rotted completely, leaving rusting metal rods. The lawn was brown. The bushes on either side of the front walk had died and it was a wonder no one had called the city and reported the awful stench of burned hair and sulfur.
The only color – heck, the only thing that remained whole and untouched – was the blue front door. It stood in stark contrast to the rest of the house.
Even the zombie rope shuddered.
I shut down my bike.
“This isn’t where we’re supposed to go,” Max said behind me.
“This is my stop,” I told him, getting off.
I’d never seen anything like it. It was as if death radiated from this place.
“It’s not worth it, Lizzie,” Grandma muttered, pulling off her riding gloves.
“It is to me.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Dimitri said, heading straight past us.
Zap!
The moment his booted foot crossed onto my dad’s front lawn, an unseen charge hurled him back to the street.
“Dimitri!”
He landed flat on his back and barely missed cracking his head on Frieda’s bike.
I rushed up to him. “Are you okay?”
He rubbed at his head. I helped him up, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead. He felt hot.
“It’s solid,” he muttered.
Which meant Max had to try it.
Zap! The unseen wall threw Max flat on his back a few feet away.
H-e-double-hockey-sticks. I half expected my dad to come to the door and see what the commotion was about. But the curtains in the windows didn’t even sway.
“Don’t I get a kiss?” Max dug his elbows into the dead grass and struggled to sit up.
In his demon-hunter dreams.
“Let me try something.” Grandma dug at the chain around her neck. A Ziploc bag dangled on it, held up by a safety pin. Inside, living spells twisted and curled, practically falling over themselves as they vied for her attention.
They were like living pulses of energy, flattening, lengthening, and twirling as the mood saw fit. One lime green spell kept leap-frogging the others, as if it knew she’d pick it.
Grandma eased open the bag and picked a hot pink spell.
I watched it curl under and try to rub up against her fingers. “What does it do?”
“Oh this is just a simple, ‘get your butt to dinner’ spell. Good for when Battina wanders off looking for wild lavender.” She winked. “It’ll also tell us what we’ve got going here or at least who can get in.”
She flung the spell at my dad’s house and it zapped up against the invisible barrier. The spell flew back and smacked Pirate in the chest.
“Now what was that all about?” He paused for a moment, stunned. “You know I could go for a burger? Maybe three. With mustard and cheese and more cheese and crispy bits.”
“Nothing can get through,” Max said.
“I don’t buy that.” I was called here. I drove three thousand miles of fairy paths to be here and I wasn’t about to just walk away.
There had to be an explanation.
Dimitri came jogging around the side of the house. “The entire place is warded.”
“Are you sure?”
He glanced back. “Unfortunately.”
“Stand back, Lizzie,” Pirate said, kicking up brown grass with his back legs. “This is a job for a dog.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said. “Stay.” Before he could protest, I walked straight into it.
I made it partway through until my switch stars hit the barrier and a giant electric shock slammed into me and sent me reeling onto my butt. I landed hard on the sidewalk, my teeth rattling.
“Ohh…” Pirate rushed up to lick my face. “Are you okay? I told you I’d go too. Did you know you didn’t get zapped back as far as anybody else? I saw that. In fact, I saw you didn’t get zapped at all until your belt hit it. And then whammo – goodbye, Lizzie. Lizzie?”
I brushed him aside and stood. “Did anybody else see me go through?”
Dimitri stood with his arms crossed, a thundercloud of mistrust.
“You saw it!” The only thing that snagged me had been my switch stars. I could go through.
If I surrendered my weapons.
On second thought, that might not be the best idea. I chewed at my lip, studying the house. It didn’t look as if anyone lived here.
“My dad has to be here,” I said.
Dimitri frowned. “Because the zombie rope said so.”
The zombie rope and I had come to an understanding of sorts, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Dimitri. Not right now anyway.
We didn’t travel this far not to check it out. “I know it’s crazy to go anywhere unarmed.” Some days I didn’t even want to shower without my switch stars. But extreme situations called for extreme measures. “You’re going to be right out here.”
“Where we can’t get to you,” Dimitri said.
“And you’ll have your weapons.”
“Which we probably can’t fire through your dad’s wards,” Grandma said, lining up next to Dimitri.
Hells bells.
“He may be hurt in there,” I told them.
“Or it could be a trap,” Dimitri said.
But they knew I’d already made up my mind.
Grandma dug through her leather bag. “Take this,” she said, handing me a jar of brackish yellow sludge. “Throw it.”
“What will it do?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Grandma,” I warned.
She shrugged. “It might singe his lawn. Look. The point is to see if you can get a spell through the barrier.”
“Fine.” I launched the jar, cringing as it sizzled past the barrier and exploded onto my dad’s lawn, leaving a Pirate-sized crater. None of the dust or rocks made it past the wards, which was really creepy.
“Good,” Grandma said, rummaging through her bag as if we hadn’t just launched a small explosive at my dad’s house.
“If you’re going in there, take this.” She handed me a jar of red sludge.
It felt sl
ippery. I held it with two hands. “This is a death spell.”
“You walked through a death spell before,” she reminded me.
I wasn’t worried about myself.
“I can’t use this on my dad,” I protested. “Haven’t you always said I shouldn’t carry a weapon if I’m not willing to use it?”
Grandma planted her hands on her hips. “Oh for Pete’s sake, Lizzie. What’s the difference between this and a switch star?
I wedged the jar under my arm as I unbuckled my utility belt and handed it to Grandma.
Dimitri frowned. “Bring the spell, Lizzie.”
“Does this mean I have your blessing to go in there?”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
I didn’t know how to answer that. This wasn’t a committee. This was me saving my dad, or at least finding out what kind of trouble had him contacting me after thirty years of silence.
“Okay. Let me get organized.” I took the jar with the dreg and the poor cowering zombie rope and shoved it into my right pocket. Then I wedged my flashlight down the front of my pants.
Pirate jumped up on my leg. “You can do it!”
“Thanks, doggie,” I said, picking him up for a quick head rub before handing him off to Dimitri. No way I wanted my dog following me in there, even if he could make it through the barrier.
And I wasn’t about to put anything past Pirate.
I picked up the death spell. Butterflies danced in my stomach. “Here goes nothing,” I said, closing my eyes as I stepped into the ward.
This time, it felt like walking through warm butter.
I looked back to Grandma, Dimitri and the biker witches. They couldn’t help me now.
It was me, the red jar and the zombie rope.
I clutched the death spell, praying I didn’t have to use it, as the blue door creaked open.
Chapter Eleven
God. Everything was dead. My boots crunched over wilted weeds still reaching out from between the flagstone walk. Abandoned birds’ nests hung crookedly from bare trees. I wanted to see a bug, a leaf, anything. But nothing lived in this yard.
We’d see about inside.
I’d never felt the absence of my utility belt as I did right then. It was like going in without a part of me. I missed the familiar weight of it, the unspoken energy.
As the air touched my skin where the belt usually hung, I hoped I’d done the right thing. My dad would never harm me. I hoped.
I clutched Grandma’s spell jar.
My mother had been less than trustworthy when I’d met her. But that had been early, when I’d first become a demon slayer. She’d sought me out to warn me and when I didn’t take her advice about quitting the job, she’d grown insistent in her own creepy way.
This was different. It had to be. My dad called me. He needed me.
Maybe he even wanted me.
My boots echoed on the concrete porch. This place was eerie in its silence. I knew the biker witches were behind me, watching. Their silence was disturbing to say the least. Since when were the biker witches the quiet types?
“Here goes,” I said to myself, just to hear something, anything, as I pushed open the blue door.
“Dad?” I stepped onto the straw welcome mat and felt a movement underneath. “Yak!” I almost fell over backward as the mat skittered away. It moved like it was on legs, but that was impossible because it was a straw welcome mat with strawberries and blueberries and birdies on top and straw mats did not move.
Heart pounding, I surveyed the rest of the small entryway. A brass stand held a sturdy looking black umbrella. My adoptive parents would approve.
Be prepared and you’ll never come up short, Cliff used to say.
Boy did he have a thing or two to learn about the supernatural world. As it stood, I just hoped the umbrella wasn’t alive. I half expected it to take flight in front of me.
“Dad?” I called, not really wanting to venture any farther. He had to have heard the explosion on the lawn. If he was here.
“What do you think?” I asked the zombie rope. He curled around the bottom edge of the jar. “I see you’re not as gung-ho as you were.” He didn’t say anything, just lifted his frayed end and sniffed the air.
Death and sulfur. It was about the worst combination you could have. I’d also detected it on the night I’d first seen my father, but it was stronger in here.
They say animals know things. While the zombie rope didn’t necessarily qualify, I didn’t miss the fact that he’d been excited as heck to get here and not so happy once we’d arrived.
Things had gotten worse, I knew it. The question was – what kind of evil were we looking at?
Believe me, there were degrees. I’d witnessed that myself.
The place had very few windows to begin with. With the curtains drawn, it seemed like twilight. I switched on my flashlight.
My dad still hadn’t come out to greet me. Was he even here? Was he alive?
Even worse, had he turned?
“Okay, bub.” I patted the jar. “Onward and upward.”
Or merely forward, which was going to be hard enough. The rope curled into the back of the jar. I could see his point. I really didn’t want to go farther into this house, either.
Still, we’d come this far. I needed to learn more about the man who’d had me, the important things, like how I could save him, and the not-so-important things like how he met my mom, how he spent his time and why he decided to let me go.
On our left, we came to a small living room shrouded in quilts and desperation. Books and journals littered the floor and side tables, their pages spilling open with symbols and colorful diagrams.
Letters scrawled across the walls in dripping dark sludge. I winced. The room held the coppery tang of blood.
Subvenio arranagnato Zatar unum levis letum
I took a deep breath. You didn’t need to be a supernatural genius to know the good guys didn’t scrawl their prayers in blood.
The word Zatar dripped from the side of an oak bookcase, the ceiling above me and – I realized in horror – slashed into the door I’d closed behind me.
Who was this Zatar?
I edged into the room, careful not to touch the books, or step on them or even look too long at any one of them. I could feel the power radiating from them. It sizzled up the walls from the words scrawled with hideous affection.
Gold script scrolled across the pages. Demons danced with the damned in blackened wastelands. They tore at their captives, shredding skin and emptying bowels as they laughed and cavorted. They ate the flesh and drank blood from gold cups.
One demon in particular made me pause. He had the scaled body of a lizard and face of an angel. Handsome and strong, with a crown of golden hair, he must have been magnificent before his fall. The silver and white wings of an angel sprouted from his leathery back and I froze when I realized this was not a drawing. It was a photograph.
Inscribed below it were the words Zatar, Earl of Hades.
Goose bumps shot up my arms. Just who was my dad hanging out with? And why was he asking me to save him from hell when he was calling these people into his living room?
I glanced at the book again. I couldn’t help myself. Zatar, commander of sixty-six legions of dark angels.
Hell.
Here I stood, without my switch stars, holding a death spell that would only work on a mortal – my dad, who had been calling demonic royalty into his living room.
Any help I could hope to find was trapped outside behind the strongest ward Grandma had ever seen and frankly, that was saying a lot.
As much as I wanted to save my biological father, this was too much. The place was too horrible and too wrong, and I wasn’t about to walk around a corner and face a demon.
“I’m leaving,” I said to anyone who might be listening. “Come on, buddy,” I said to the rope, who had curled up into a teeny tiny ashen ball.
I backed out of the room slowly and just as my heel hit the hardwoo
d entryway, a voice threaded from the back of the house. “Wait.”
My throat caught. It wasn’t Zatar. I’d be able to feel it if a demon entered the house. Still, the voice sounded wrong. It echoed, detached from humanity.
“Who is it?” I asked, taking another step backward.
“It’s me, Lizzie,” the disembodied voice echoed, “your dad.”
My heart caught in my throat. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
My hand wandered down to where my switch stars used to be. What I wouldn’t give for one now. Even if this wraithlike voice did belong to my long-lost dad, I didn’t want to face him without protection – not with the company he’d been seeking.
“Come out here,” I said, two feet from the front door. I could run if I had to. I’d never been the fastest kid in school, but minions from hell can do wonders for your speed and agility. Well, that and a few new demon slayer powers.
“I can’t. Lizzie, please.”
“If you can get out here to write on the walls in blood, you can come out now.”
I was answered with silence.
“Dad?”
Nothing.
“I’m out of here,” I said, wincing. I hated to leave him, but I wasn’t crazy. I couldn’t follow him farther and farther into a house with demonic incantations scrawled in blood on the walls. I may read a lot of novels where the heroine does brave and reckless things but in real life, those things are beyond stupid and I refused to be killed or damned because I wasn’t bright enough to stay out of an obviously hellish situation.
“Goodbye, Dad.” I turned the knob on the door behind me.
“Lizzie.” He shuffled around the corner.
Holy heaven.
He hunkered under a dirty bathrobe caked with dried blood. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He’d lost at least twenty pounds and clutched at the wall as if he’d fall over if he let go.
Roaches skittered across the floor. It was everything I could do to lift my eyes away from the advancing insects and to this shell of a man who called himself my father.
“What happened?”
He folded his lips over his teeth like an old man unable to speak.
“Answer me,” I said. If these roaches were enchanted I was going to be ticked.
I advanced on the nearest insect, a brown one at least two inches long. I stomped it with my boot before it could scuttle closer. I felt a satisfying, cringe-worthy crunch and lifted my boot away. At least it wasn’t magical.
