The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers ds-2

by Angie Fox

  Praised be. “We can do that?”

  He shot me a look that made me want to rewrite the entire book on demon slaying. “What do you think we’ve been doing for the past week?” He returned his full attention to the creatures. “This could mean we’re getting close,” he said, thinking out loud. “I’m not sure they like it.”

  Dimitri reached into the back of his jeans and drew out a bronze dagger. Confident and strong as he gripped the blade, he reminded me of an ancient Greek warrior. Oh Sheboygan. Now was not the time to get turned on. Shoulders back, his focus never wavering, he strode directly for the hellhounds.

  The creatures roared and hissed, their spittle dripping from rows and rows of yellow teeth. They were going to be on him like Sunday dinner. I flipped the trash can upright and stuffed Pirate inside, despite his protests. I couldn’t fight with a dog in my hands. Then, switch stars at the ready, I followed Dimitri’s lead.

  He was almost on them, graceful as an athlete and intense as a gladiator, watching them as if he were trying to anticipate which mouth full of teeth would attack first. Keeping my breathing even and my concentration tight, I had his back. Then one of the hellhound heads drooped its ears and dipped toward the floor. Then another, and another, and, “What the heck?” The beasts curled and whimpered at Dimitri’s feet.

  Son of a gun, Dimitri’s eyes glowed orange. He’d better know what he was doing. Dimitri’s full attention remained on the creatures he’d somehow conquered. His nostrils flared. “Go,” he ordered. “Now.”

  I retrieved Pirate and hurried for the stairs, hoping like anything Dimitri would be along shortly.

  We sent Ezra ahead to make sure our escape route was clear, then hustled back down the purple hallway that led to the back exit of the club.

  Pirate craned his neck backward as we put some distance between us and the hellhounds. “I changed my mind. I don’t think you’re evil,” he said, as if he’d finally decided for himself. “But I’m not so sure about Dimitri.”

  “Thanks,” I said, refusing to look back again.

  Pirate squirmed out of my arms and took up the point position, his toenails clacking on the cement floors as he zipped back and forth in front of us, nose to the floor.

  Halfway down, Dimitri joined us. He looked like he’d been wrestling the things. At least his eyes were yellow again. Oh geez.

  “There’s no way to get rid of the hell dogs, is there?”

  Dimitri guided me in front of him. “No,” he said, his breathing rough.

  Because we didn’t have enough problems.

  “What happened in there?” I asked Ezra as he zipped overhead. “Did you see my uncle?” The other ghost said he’d be there tonight. “He’s short, round—”

  “Smells like a Cinnabon store,” Pirate said.

  “I’m sorry.” Ezra’s eyes traveled from Dimitri’s bronze dagger to the powerful shoulders showing through his torn black shirt. “He left with a dark-haired woman while you were downstairs. You shouldn’t have tempted the hellhounds.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Phil is the common denominator in all of this,” Dimitri said, shoving open the back door. “I’m sorry, Lizzie, but we’re going to have to do some things differently.”

  Shocked, I stared up at him.

  Was he really going to sacrifice my fairy godfather?

  I scooped up my doggie and held him close. “You know what Serena said. She’s going to kill Phil. But if we go after him, she’ll also take his soul.” I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t make that decision about someone else’s eternal damnation.

  Dimitri reached for me. His eyes hung with what? Regret?

  I ducked away and tore down the back steps of the club.

  “We have to stop this. I wish there was another way, Lizzie, but sometimes the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. No matter how much we care about a person.”

  My boot crunched over a broken beer bottle. Easy for Dimitri to say. It wasn’t his fairy godfather in immortal danger. I gripped Pirate so tight he yelped. “Sorry, bub,” I murmured into the wiry fur of his neck. I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.

  Ezra cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to point out the obvious, but we have no information where they’ve taken your uncle. I’m sure the succubi are well hidden. Or do you have some ideas?”

  I cringed. “Not where to look, but…” I didn’t even want to think it.

  Dimitri, blast him, finished what I’d been too reluctant to say. “We need to channel him.”

  A rock settled in my stomach. We weren’t so good at channeling. When we’d done it in the bathroom at the Paradise, we lost Phil. The time before that, Grandma ended up in the first layer of hell. Besides, if we wanted to have any shot at living through the debacle without ending up in purgatory, hell, or floating around in a parallel dimension somewhere, we needed the very people I’d been trying to distance from all of this.

  We needed the Red Skulls.

  Heaven help us.

  “We sent the Red Skulls away.” I cringed, tempted to borrow a dollop of strength from the mark.

  Dimitri laughed out loud and I felt the knot in my stomach unravel a bit. “Do you really think they went?”

  “Of course not,” I replied.

  Still, I didn’t relish the idea of putting them in danger again.

  Dimitri smiled. “Question is, how do we find them?”

  Unfortunately, I knew.

  We hurried down the back stairs to my bike, hidden in the shadows. For a moment, I let myself smile at the idea of Dimitri riding behind me for a change. Pirate leapt up on the flat leather seat while I dug into my pocket for our one-way ticket to the Red Skull’s new hiding place.

  My fingers closed around the vial of fairy dust, given to me by Sid. He said I could use it to call him if I needed him. “Anybody know how to summon a fairy?” I asked, watching the clear contents sparkle and churn inside the small glass tube.

  “You’ll want to be careful with that,” Dimitri cautioned, pulling Pirate’s harness out of the saddlebag. “Clear your mind. Use only a pinch. Dust it over a patch of open ground and focus on Sid.”

  “Got it.” The dust felt rough, like sand between my fingers as I drew a mental picture of the short, balding fairy with the foul mouth. “Now’s the time, Sid.” I released the dust onto the dirt at my feet.

  The earth churned and swelled. I stepped back quickly, feeling the vibrations in my toes as the small clearing buckled. Crabgrass and weeds flew as a full-sized fairy sprouted right out of the ground. Sid. And he was pissed.

  “Eyow! Argh!” He tossed off chunks of earth. “Aaak!”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was fighting off a swarm of bumblebees.

  “Get it off!” He swatted at his arms, his back, his knees as each emerged from the earth.

  “Hey, hey!” I inched as close as I could with him waving and flailing. “Keep it down.” I hitched my thumb toward the club. “We got a possessed singer in there.”

  If anything, Phil raised his voice. “I swear to God, lady.” He staggered up and out of the ground, kicking something out of a pant leg. It flew across the pavement and pinged on the concrete behind me.

  Dimitri wasn’t pleased. He retrieved the object and held it up between his thumb and pointer finger—a shard of barbed wire.

  I winced.

  “Open ground, Lizzie,” he said as if I should have listened better, which I should have.

  “Oh, wow, I’m really sorry, Sid,” I said to the fairy, who was busy shaking another barb out of the other pant leg.

  He shot me a dirty look. “Gee, thanks. Now the barbs in my underwear don’t hurt so much. Maybe next time, you can summon me over a pile of broken glass or maybe a vat of used hypodermic needles.”

  “I didn’t realize open ground meant—”

  “Save it. What do you want?”

  Dimitri towered over the fairy’s squat frame. “We need you to take us to the Red Skulls
.”

  “Already?” Sid riffled a chink of barbed wire out of his wiry black hair, sighed heavily and dug his cell phone from his back pocket.

  “What?” I asked. “You’re going to call them?”

  He shot me a stink eye. “Unless you want to saddle up your dog, I need transportation.” He spoke with Gossamer Cab Dispatch and a cab pulled up within minutes. The door swung open and out slid a pudgy, muumuu-wearing fairy with stacked red hair and way too much blue eye shadow.

  “You look like shit, Fuzzlebump.” She nodded at Sid, ignoring us.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about another fairy along for the ride. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry long. With a loud pop, the red-haired fairy morphed into a firefly. Her empty dress floated to the ground as she fluttered off into the night.

  Sid wadded up the dress and stuffed it in the backseat. He looked back over his shoulder, his round bottom holding open the cab door. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I muttered, heading for my bike. Dimitri, blast him, had climbed onto the front seat of my bike. Why did men always have to drive? But my heart softened when I saw he’d harnessed Pirate onto his chest. I had a thing for men who wore baby carriers, especially when this one happened to hold my dog.

  “Hey, Lizzie.” Pirate’s legs pawed at the handlebars on my bike. “I got taller.”

  Hitching my leg over the rear of the bike, I settled up against Dimitri’s firm backside. There were worse ways to travel. I slid my hands up under his leather jacket and around the waist of his Levis. For the first time, he felt cold. I shoved myself against him and for the first time since we’d been in Vegas, didn’t feel my energy seeping away. I didn’t know what had changed, but I knew it was bad.

  Sid Fuzzlebump drove like a fairy possessed. He flew down Highway 95, weaving in and out of traffic with otherworldly precision. Served me right for hacking him off, although I had a feeling Sid would be no ray of sunshine in even the best circumstances.

  Dimitri took to the shoulder to stay with Sid, which made for a teeth-rattling ride. It’s like the man tried to hit every pothole and anthill.

  We drove at butt-numbing speeds, veering off the highway and onto a series of smaller roads. Finally, we ended up on a dirt path leading to—according to the beat-up wooden sign—Rancho Verde. I’d believe it when I saw it.

  The bike lurched and jarred behind Sid’s aquamarine cab. And, phew, there was no escape from the massive dust cloud Sid’s cab hurled at us. From the slight cotton-candy taste, I’d say he’d made it as large as he could. I closed my eyes against the grit and buried my head against Dimitri’s back.

  The bike jerked to a stop outside a series of rough wooden buildings. Moonshine Bart’s Old West Town lay straight ahead, dark and silent. The Critter Corner Petting Zoo, lit with red and white holiday lights, veered off to the right, past a wooden bridge that looked like it belonged on a playground.

  I yanked off my helmet. “Are you serious, Sid?”

  The fairy leaned his head out the window, “Past the petting zoo and the Wild West restaurant.”

  Dimitri wrapped my hand in his. “Come on.”

  Pirate struggled against his doggie carrier as we jogged past clucking chickens, the fattest pig I’d ever seen, and an armadillo. Some zoo. Off a side path, we saw light coming from a series of low-slung wooden cabins. Horses whinnied in a pasture behind them. Other than that, I couldn’t see much—except a certain witch barreling toward us, her flashlight bobbing in the dark. Ant Eater. She’d tried to kick my butt on several occasions—and nearly succeeded. That was before I drew a demon attack on the coven. Not that it was my fault, but coolheaded logic was not one of Ant Eater’s strong suits.

  “Before you say it—” I didn’t have time to deal with her WWE people skills.

  She lobbed the flashlight at my head and frowned when it whistled past my ear. “What the hell do you want?”

  I swallowed down my annoyance and tried to look at the bright side. At least she hadn’t kicked me in the shins. “I need to see my grandma.”

  She looked at me like I’d told her I wanted to eat the woman. “Screw you. She’s busy.”

  Prickles ran from my marked hand up my arm. I found it easier and easier to feel the power from the mark. Not good.

  “Can you just tell Grandma we’re here?” I asked, fighting the urge to rub my hand up and down my leg.

  Ant Eater planted her hands on her hips, her wide face twisting into a sneer. “You got about ten seconds to run—not walk—run back to your bike or I’m spelling your skinny ass to West Texas before this place blows up, too.”

  “You listen to me,” I said, my finger bouncing against something hard and fluttery. I shoved it back at Ant Eater and she jumped sideways. That jerk had tried to sneak-spell me.

  Quicker than I’d ever moved, I grabbed her hands and pinned them behind her. “Don’t.” I tightened my grip. “Screw. With. The demon slayer.” I twisted her pinkie fingers, in case she hadn’t quite gotten the point.

  Ant Eater groaned. “Son of a bitch,” she gasped. “Your left ball finally dropped.” She flicked her head at the dirt path behind her. “Go.”

  I eased up and she stepped back, shaking out her hands, her eyes lingering on my devil’s mark. “Third cabin from the right. Your grandma’s brewing up some stealth technology in the bathtub.”

  I nodded. The tingling had grown worse, like my entire arm had fallen asleep. Dimitri fitted his hand into the small of my back. I could tell he sensed something was up. Bless him for letting me handle it my way. Together, we made our way toward the cabins.

  “Another thing,” Ant Eater hollered, still flexing her fingers. “Don’t touch the door frame.”

  Of course not.

  Since I knew better than to ask questions that I really didn’t want answered, I made my way to see Grandma.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I opened the door to a third-rate hotel room decorated in contemporary biker witch. Silver thumbtacks bit into the brown paneling on the walls, supporting long swaths of dental floss that crisscrossed the room like party lights. The floss sagged with the remains of a colorful quilt, butchered into long strips, hanging in jagged rainbows, dripping, well, who knew what. The place reeked of mildew and cherry Kool-Aid.

  Covering my head, I ducked under the wilting jangle of sorcery and went to find Grandma.

  It wasn’t hard. I could hear her singing a Prince song from the bathroom.

  “Grandma?” I desperately hoped we weren’t walking into a Pretty Woman moment.

  I exchanged a glance with Dimitri. His green eyes twinkled as he dodged a low-hanging string. Leave it to Dimitri to be amused.

  Not to mention my dog. “Pirate, stop dancing.”

  Grandma began humming the melody and I heard something else—growling.

  She’d better not have summoned any creatures in there. “Grandma.” I banged on the door, leaping sideways as a scalding drip caught me right in the forehead. “Son of a mother!”

  “Lizzie!” Dimitri rushed for me, rubbing the acid away with his bare fingers. “Are you okay?”

  “Are you?” I asked, trying to get a grip as the pain subsided into a dull throb. “I’m fine,” I said, when I realized he wasn’t going to stop inspecting me.

  Dimitri planted a swift kiss on my forehead. “Step back.” He leaned against the old brown door, ready to force it when it flew open on its own.

  Grandma stood with a drafting pencil tucked behind her ear and a towel bar under her arm. Chunks of drywall clung to each curved end of the bar. She’d tied reddened quilt strips to her wrists like poor man’s sweatbands and had even fashioned a homemade necklace out of the things. “You’re late,” she said, ushering us into the tiny bathroom with peeling cowboy wallpaper and an extra toilet bowl propped up against a 1970s yellow tub. It had to be at least ten degrees hotter in here—and muggy. I don’t know why we always had to end up in the bathroom.

  “Now where are my barriers?” Grandma muttered, di
gging through the cabinet under the sink. She peered into the bottom of a pink and brown crocheted tissue holder. “I had some dry ones…”

  Pirate stuck his head under the sink with Grandma, while I worked my way past their protruding behinds and next to my agile, yet admittedly smushed griffin. He tried to make room for me and accidentally stepped on the furry red tail of a fox. The animal screeched and darted behind a stained wicker trash can.

  “Argh.” Grandma handed Dimitri the towel bar and went digging for the fox. “I need the toenails of a happy fox, which is hard enough because foxes hate having their toenails clipped.” She bent down and wrangled the animal into her arms. “That’a boy,” she cooed, stroking the fox. “Yes. You’re all right, Zippy.”

  “Zippy?” Pirate tilted his head.

  Grandma rubbed her fingers into the downy white fur under the fox’s neck. “Yeah, well the gal who runs this place is a little zippity-do-dah herself. But I ain’t complaining, seeing as the DIP office gave us a place to stay while we clear out some of the gargoyles.”

  “Gargoyles?” I instinctively checked the high corners of the bathroom. No gargoyles. Just lots of flaking paint.

  “Well, yeah. You can keep a few to ward off the evil spirits, but the things breed like rabbits.” Grandma scratched Zippy under his chin and he started growling again. Or, I supposed, purring. “Believe me, we’re taking our time. The longer this place is shut down, the better. You know how hard it’d be to spot a demon in a Wild West town full of tourists?”

  I shuddered to think.

  Dimitri inspected the tub. “Mind telling me what you’re brewing, Gertie?” A pale red liquid filled the lower third. In it floated tree bark, some kind of flowers and, I assumed, fox toenails. He dipped a finger into the gunk and held it up to the light, his features clouding as he took stock of Grandma’s scowl.

  “No time, Sherlock. We gotta get you protected.” She tucked the fox under her arm and hauled an old trash can full of quilt guts from under the sink.