by Angie Fox
“Brave and stupid.”
“Like father, like daughter.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “In that case, I have some cutters for you,” I said, sliding them out from my hip.
He hefted them before clipping them to his pants.
“And a crystal.”
He shoved it in his pocket and held up his neutralizer. “Ready?” he asked, offering me his hand. I took it and he squeezed tight. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Eighteen
I’d expected sifting with a minor angel to be like flying. Or maybe like passing through a warm, inviting curtain of air. Instead it was like a big sneeze.
“Hold on,” Dad cautioned.
No problem there. I clutched his hand and covered my weapons as the pressure built. I wasn’t about to let my neutralizer or anything else fly out of my possession and into the abyss. Not this time.
“Brace yourself,” Dad said, “Aaa…”
Boom!
We slammed to a knee-rattling stop inside a pitch black chamber. The smell of sulfur was enough to knock me sideways. Definitely a demon’s lair.
My eyes watered and my nose tickled and I let out a sinus-rattling, “Aaa-cho!”
Dad gripped my hand tighter.
“I got it,” I said, attempting to extricate myself. His fingers closed around mine in a vise grip.
What? Was he losing his nerve?
“Let go.” I forced myself out of his hold.
No doubt Zatar knew we were here. He’d be barging in at any moment. I tossed my crystal to the floor, watching it shatter into brilliant blue spheres of light.
We were in a round chamber with gray stone walls and a ceiling that stretched higher than the light afforded by the crystals. There was one door to my right, zero windows. It wasn’t the best defensive position. If I had to guess, I’d say we were probably in one of the turrets.
Zebediah Rachmort sat tied to a heavy wooden chair. His white Einstein hair burst into an even bigger mess than usual. His hands bent at an unnatural angle behind the wide back of the chair and blood dried on his fingers and crusted around the chains at his wrists.
“Keep your back to the wall,” I told Dad. I’d learned that one from Max.
I approached Rachmort carefully, aware this could be a trap.
“Who is it?” He struggled to turn. “Get away from me!”
My mentor wore a dirty gold waistcoat over a formerly white shirt and rumpled brown pants. His eyes were dull and glassy. I’d never seen him like this. Rachmort was the kind of guy who always looked like he was about to tell a joke. Of course I’d never seen Rachmort in the clutches of a demon.
“Hush, it’s me,” I said. His shoulders sagged in recognition. “Hold on. I’m going to see if you’re wired.” I ran my hands over him, looking for magical traps.
He strained to see me. “You have to get out of here. The demon wants you!”
“I know,” I said, speaking low, purposefully calm. “Believe me, we won’t be wasting any time.”
He was clean.
I grabbed Rachmort around the arm. “Sift us, Dad. Now!”
Dad braced his hands against the gray stone, fear written on his face. “No,” he shook his head. “Not yet. I need more strength.”
“What?” He had to be kidding. That wasn’t part of the plan. “How long?”
“A minute,” he insisted, “at the most.”
Yeah, well I didn’t know if we had that long. I couldn’t believe Dad didn’t warn me about a sifting delay.
“At the most,” I warned him.
I reached for the cutters at my hip. Maybe I could get us out of here. If I could get Rachmort unshackled, he could open up a portal.
“Lizzie,” Rachmort said, struggling to see me, “this whole thing is a trap,” he insisted.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that,” I said, working my saw into the bands at his wrists. Maybe Zatar would get cocky and take his sweet time.
Or maybe he’d attack us any second.
“Did you know these cuffs are made of a titanium alloy only found in purgatory?” Rachmort asked, excited and a little breathless. The professor was back.
“Tell me later,” I said, struggling. Dang. If these cutters were the sharpest around, I’d hate to see the dullest. Or maybe we were dealing with enchanted metal. Cripes. “If I get one hand loose, can you zip us out of here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he nodded sharply.
Now where was my Dad? I spotted him against the wall.
“We need you over here.”
Rachmort cleared his throat. “You do realize that I trained you so you could stay out of this place.”
“Or survive it.”
“He’s here!” Rachmort shouted.
A second later, Zatar, Earl of Hades shimmered through the door. Showoff.
The photograph in Dad’s book had been spot on. Zatar had the scaled body of a lizard and face of an angel. Silver and white wings of an angel sprouted from his leathery back.
He was flanked by six lesser beings on each side. They looked human, but I knew better.
Zatar gave me an intimate, smoky look like that of a lover. His wild golden hair fell across one eye and I almost forgot what he was.
Then he smiled, showing sharp bloody teeth. “Impeccably done.”
I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my sifting or Rachmort’s job as bait. Either way, we weren’t going to stick around to find out. Dad had frozen a few feet away. I ran straight for him, the neutralizer slapping at my belly. I grabbed Dad’s hand, then snatched hold of Rachmort’s arm, still chained to the chair.
“Now!” I said, bracing myself for my Dad to angel us the frick out of there. I hadn’t even fired a shot. Who cared? We were leaving.
Why weren’t we leaving?
“Dad?” I pleaded, panic rising.
His eyes were wild. “I can’t sift. It’s not working.”
Wrong answer. “Make it work!”
His mouth gaped. “I can’t.”
H-e-double-hockey-sticks.
I couldn’t fight Zatar. I’d barely made it out of a fight alive with a lesser demon and that was when I had my switch stars.
Zatar grinned like a school boy. “This is so much more fun than a dreg.” He lowered his chin and shot green darts out of his eyes.
My dad screamed.
The demonic darts shimmered with an unearthly energy and streaked straight for my neck.
I reached deep down and put on the brakes, slowing the moment enough to get a good look. I’d seen these things once before – in my bathroom when I first learned about my powers.
Grandma had called them vox, part of a demon’s energy. Zatar’s vox shone like large, thick glow sticks. And they were sharp on the soul as broken glass.
I reached out and touched the closest one. It sizzled on the end of my fingertip. Hot, like touching a stove.
Sweet switch stars. This was going to hurt.
I winced as I grabbed the vox around the middle. Then I fired it lawn-dart-style at Zatar’s head.
“Biiiiittttch!” The demon screamed as I fired another and another.
He threw one of his minions out in front of him. The vox smashed into its temple and it exploded into a million flecks of light.
Another blasted apart on the wall behind Zatar as he twisted to the side.
My hands seared with pain as I fired and fired, catching more minions, but not Zatar. The demon was too fast.
My arms sizzled from the energy in the air and every hair on my body stood at attention. My mouth tasted like sulfur and no doubt my hands had already begun to blister.
Zatar frowned. “Damned demon slayer.”
I fought the urge to collapse. Okay. That was something. My body throbbed in protest, but I’d done it – I’d ticked off the demon.
It was a small victory for my sanity. I had to bury my fear, my hurt, my utter terror that this thing could not only kill me but trap my soul forever. Because if I thought on that to
o long, I’d be just as frozen as Dad.
“Your dregs didn’t work either,” I shouted over the buzzing in my head.
Two humanoid creatures lay dead at his feet.
Make that three. The last body teetered toward Zatar and he shoved it away. “You’re the one,” he said as his bodyguard fell in a lifeless, soulless heap. “Excellent.”
He fired again, and this time the vox flew faster, blazing white at the tips.
This time, I couldn’t slow them down.
Holy hell. I ducked the first one.
“Dad, watch out!” I hollered as the second nearly clipped him.
We couldn’t keep doing this.
“Unchain me!” Rachmort demanded.
Oh sure. Why not? It’s not like I was doing anything.
I caught the third one, searing my hand.
“Ow, ow, ow!” I aimed straight for Zatar’s head. The remaining minions opened up with their own and I dove to the floor, knocking Rachmort’s chair over with me as red vox sailed over our heads and burst into the wall behind us.
Rachmort grunted as he slammed into the floor. “Unchain me!”
“I’m,” ignoring the searing pain in my hands, I dug for the neutralizer, “busy!” What I wouldn’t give for a half dozen switch stars.
“I told you, she’s mine!” Zatar shouted, shooting his vox and frying the demons on his left. They fell into a sizzling heap.
I used the momentary distraction to grab my cutters off the floor.
“Slice at a right angle,” Rachmort ordered, head cocked around his shoulder.
“Do you ever stop teaching?” I asked, making my cuts clean and quick.
I got his left hand out and stuck the neutralizer in it.
He got off a half dozen shots. They bounced off Zatar. Two creatures to his right went down. But not Zatar.
Never Zatar.
Dad cowered against the wall.
“Shoot, Dad!”
Zatar let loose with a blaze of vox.
Rachmort threw up his hand. “Caladai taniom abberaat!”
A fiery silver portal sprang up between us and the demon. The vox slammed into it, blazing scarlet. I didn’t care if the portal swallowed them or destroyed them or sent them to Santa Claus as a Christmas gift. We were leaving.
I dove for my dad and dragged him across the room. I could barely move him. It was as if he suddenly weighed five hundred pounds. His shoulder gave way with a sickening pop. I tried not to think about it as I yanked him toward safety.
“Caladai taniom abberaat!” Rachmort opened a second portal in the floor. His turned-over chair teetered on the edge and I tackled him, sending Rachmort through, still half tied, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other grabbing my Dad’s hand. I didn’t let go.
We fell headlong into the blazing hot abyss. I closed my eyes tight against the punishing winds. It was like being inside a tornado, but I didn’t care. I’d never been so glad to get out of anywhere, no matter where this portal took us.
Chapter Nineteen
We hit the ground hard, rolling over mounds of earth and sandy soil until we smacked into a tree trunk. Dad flew one way, Rachmort skidded another and I got showered with dry pine needles.
I brought a throbbing hand up to my shoulder and then thought the better of it.
Everything hurt. Maybe I could just stay under this sad excuse for a tree. I didn’t want to face what was out there.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then forced them open again. Rachmort might be injured. Dad, too. Then there was the issue of finding out exactly where we’d landed. The only thing I could tell so far was that it was night.
“Onward and upward,” I groaned, scooting on my elbows until I could lurch to my feet. My hands were raw. They were already starting to blister.
The moon hung low, illuminating Rachmort as he lay in a heap of chair a short distance away. There were no other signs of civilization, only acres of scrub.
“I’m coming,” I said, brushing pine needles away, forcing myself to block out the throbbing in my hands. I did a quick search of the ground around me. Cripes. I’d lost my neutralizer.
My dad sprawled between me and Rachmort. He was starting to come around.
I tried to hold my head steady, hoping it would help the ringing in my ears. It didn’t. “You okay?” I caught a whiff of the ammonia and sulfur of purgatory on him. No doubt I stunk too.
He winced as I helped him to his feet.
“I’ve been better,” he groaned, holding his dislocated shoulder.
No kidding. At least both of us were upright. That was progress.
I made it over to Rachmort, realizing too late that I’d lost my cutters.
Rachmort lay on the ground, still bound to his chair, bracing himself with his free hand. I bent down to help steady him. “Are you okay?”
“Your cutters are in the Joshua tree.”
“How do you-?” I began. “You know what? Forget it. I don’t want to know.
I made a bee line for the Joshua tree. And there, at the base, I saw a pasty white butt, a silver ponytail and, “Oh my God,” I spun away, covering my eyes.
“Hey, get your own – Oh wow, it’s Lizzie!”
And that was Neal.
I didn’t dare look again, even though I was pretty sure who was with the flower-powered menace.
Grandma chuckled. “It’s the most natural thing in the world, Lizzie.”
No it wasn’t. Not when it was my grandmother, at the base of a tree, en flagrante.
“Can you stop making out?” We had problems here.
She didn’t even have the decency to be embarrassed. “We weren’t making out, we were making love.”
“Too much information.”
“Besides, you were the one who ran off. Looks like you did good. Hey, Rachmort!”
“Gertie!” The necromancer waved his free hand. “I was aiming for you. I figured you’d be somewhere fortified.”
Oh please. “Get dressed,” I barked. “And hand me those cutters.”
“No wait!” I corrected myself as Neal began to stand up. “I’ll get them myself.” I reached into a high branch for the gleaming silver shears.
I still couldn’t believe Grandma and Neal had been doing the horizontal pokey while we fought for our lives in purgatory.
Grandma had no business being out away from camp, especially with an aging hippie who couldn’t keep his Birkenstocks to himself.
There were banshees on the loose for heaven’s sake! Deadly cutters flying through the air! Although, frankly, I was more annoyed by Neal.
Not that I’d seen anything truly gruesome. It was dark. But the thought, the hint, the notion of Grandma doing that or anything leading up to it was a bit more than my brain could handle.
While Neal put his peace sign back in his pocket, I knelt beside my mentor and tried to focus on something I could control, like freeing him.
My hands shook with pain, but I held the cutters as steady as I could and sliced the last bond from Rachmort’s wrist.
“How long do you think before Zatar tracks us?” I asked, helping him uncurl his wrist from the back of the chair.
Rachmort sagged to the ground, his white hair stark and bright against the brown soil. “Not long.”
I got to work on the bands at his ankles.
Rachmort ran a dirty hand over his face and back into his hair. “How long have you been able to -” He winced as I nicked him with the cutters.
“Sorry.”
“How long have you been able to handle a demon’s vox?”
I cringed as his ankle bonds snapped and the kickback made my cutters vibrate against the burns on my hands. “It came with the powers.” Grandma had locked me in my bathroom to undergo the change. I’d been mad and scared. “A few seconds after I turned into a demon slayer, a demon showed up on the back of my toilet bowl, spitting vox. I’d killed him with it.”
Rachmort broke out in a smile and for the first time that night. He looked like
his old self. “Splendid, Lizzie. Well done.” He scooted away from the chair, his legs free.
Well it’s not as if I had much of a choice. “How long have you been able to summon portals?”
He flicked his hand. “It’s a common necromancer’s trick,” he said, massaging at his freed wrists. “I’ve never met a demon slayer who could touch vox, much less hold it,” he said, barely containing his excitement. “And you threw it back!” He made a tossing motion. “Pow!”
“Yeah.” He made it sound fun, when in reality it was downright terrifying. “You mean I’m not supposed to do that?”
He shook his head wildly. “No. It’s completely baffling. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I wasn’t so sure. “Should I keep doing it?”
“Of course.” He touched my arm, his expression more like a father’s than I’d ever known. “You have gifts, Lizzie. It’s your moral duty to use them well.”
Grandma sauntered up to us, boots grinding against the sandy earth. “My turn to interrupt the love fest.”
“Your shirt’s on backward,” I said.
She snorted. “Stop being picky. I had to do something while you were off saving the world.” She straightened the silver rings on her fingers. “You said we had problems.”
“Right.” Rachmort scrambled to his feet, brushing the worst of the dirt from his brown trousers. “Zatar is going to be able to use that portal to track us.”
“I don’t know,” I said, ignoring the pounding in my head as I stood. “I may have bought us some time. You see I had one of Grandma’s jars left-”
“You stole my jars?”
“Borrowed,” I corrected her. There was a difference. Maybe. “Anyhow, it broke and I felt Zatar fade.”
“E-yah!” Grandma slapped me on the back. Grandma planed her silver ringed hands on her hips, coming as close as she ever had to beaming. “You unloaded an all purpose jar back there? That’ll hold him back for three hours. Maybe four!”
“Then let’s prepare,” Rachmort said.
I nodded. “Okay, listen up.”
Dad and I explained what happened in purgatory. Well, I did most of the explaining. Dad sat down against the Joshua tree. He’d gone pale and weak.
