by Angie Fox
“Friends,” he mused. “Enemies,” he added with a slight turn of the mouth. “Each one is connected to a scroll you see here, and each one lives on inside me. My own personal library of souls.” He leveled his gaze at me. “You can learn to like it, Elizabeth.”
“You’re sick.” He’d had one thing right. I never would have imagined this. Not in a million years.
I involuntarily took a step back, then another.
He kept advancing. “Once I was strong enough to have a choice, I went after the most unique and powerful individuals I could find. I wanted a biker witch,” he mused, the corner of his mouth jerking up, “that is, until I saw you.”
“You were trapped in Ant Eater’s old family house,” I countered.
He grinned. “Not trapped. Oh, Elizabeth, how you love to believe my stories.”
Holy Hades. He’d been lying this entire time.
Speaking of it excited him. “Waiting for you, Elizabeth. You can be my crown jewel.”
I sidestepped him. “We can work something out,” I told him. “Maybe I could do a job for you.” Something moral and upstanding.
As if this guy even knew what that meant.
He seemed delighted at my offer. “Some of my favorite souls tried to bargain.” His voice hissed through the room like rain on a sidewalk. “Some tried to flee. The strongest tried to fight,” he added, as if that excited him most of all. His face flushed and grew more transparent. The souls opened their mouths in silent screams. “No one can withstand me for long. I knew all their weaknesses, and now I know yours, Elizabeth Brown-Kallinikos.”
As he spoke my name, his breath whispered through the room, creating a swirling gust of wind. It tickled my hair against my face and seemed to blow straight through me.
He drew close enough to kiss. “If you had only stayed on the other side, you could have at least bartered for your own life. But you came to me instead.” He lowered his head and gazed up at me through thick, pitch-black lashes. “Now I will have all three of you. A half-angel demon slayer and her griffin-fathered twins.” He licked his lips. “You’re all so incredibly powerful. You will be the finest additions to my collection yet.”
Holy crap. He had my number. And my power. And if I didn’t play this right, he’d have my children and my immortal soul as well.
My father must have felt my panic.
Don’t get caught up in his games. Just do it!
Right. I needed to get this party started. Only I had no idea how.
I grabbed up a switch star, willing it solid and deadly in my hand. It whirled to life, and before I could think, before he could read my mind and act, I jammed it directly into the spirit’s chest.
Or I would have. A moment before contact, he vanished. My switch star passed through air and disintegrated from my hand.
He reappeared less than a foot in front of me, his hand around my throat. “That’s it. Fight.” His eyes twinkled. “It makes this much more fun.”
Apparently he didn’t realize I had more than one switch star. This one sliced right through his chest and up through the back of his head before he dissolved into nothingness.
The contact seared my arm and chest, like holding a live wire. I gasped and fell back.
He rematerialized on the other side of the room with a laugh. “You are fast,” he said, like a parent praising a child.
Damn. That hurt. My heart pounded, and my entire body thrummed. I couldn’t be risking electroshock while pregnant.
Had it even made a difference? I searched for damage. The spirit appeared whole.
That didn’t mean I hadn’t done some damage. I had to try again. Only my hand was numb as I reached for another switch star.
“You want to fight?” the spirit taunted. “We’ll fight.” A man appeared in front of him, dressed in furs and carrying an intimidatingly big ax. “Try your luck with a berserker. I’ve got plenty of souls who obey me.”
Damn. I shook my hand out, desperately trying to get the feeling back. I didn’t have time to take on his menagerie one by one; I needed to cut my tie to him now. Before I could figure out a way to get around him, the burly, ax-wielding maniac screamed and charged.
The emerald necklace vibrated, as if it couldn’t quite get a move on.
Great.
Nothing worked in the spirit realm.
I let out a yell and hurled a switch star that slammed into the berserker’s chest and stayed there, grinding. He kept charging.
The emerald necklace went liquid. Molten metal flowed down my arm and formed a saber.
To use against an ax-wielding maniac.
But I took the hint. I let out a yell and charged, meeting him halfway, sliding down onto my knees as soon as I came within striking distance and stabbing him in the gut.
He didn’t even try to defend himself. The sword slid cleanly through his stomach. There was no blood, no guts, and after a garbled yell, he vanished into a ball of light that shot back into the belly of the spirit. It glowed upon contact and was swallowed up.
“Not the finest of Odin’s warriors,” the spirit said, his amusement evident. But I was already drawing a switch star and firing on him.
He disappeared again, and my switch star passed through the wall and into oblivion.
Damn.
“Why don’t we try someone more magically inclined?” the spirit’s voice crooned, from every direction at once.
I smelled smoke. I whirled around and saw an old man, gnarled wooden staff in one hand, a tiny pot of blue flames in the other.
What fresh hell was this?
Instead of throwing the pot at me, like I was expecting, he poured it over his head. Brilliant blue fire engulfed his body, so hot I could feel it from across the room.
“To an honorable death, demon slayer,” he said then attacked almost faster than I could track him. The flames trailed him like a cloak, and it was all I could do to remember that I could levitate. I swooped gracelessly into the air, barely missing getting tagged by his burning staff.
“Oh, don’t be coy, Elizabeth.” The spirit’s voice surrounded us. “Go down and fight like a slayer. You won’t let a simple shaman get the better of you, will you?”
There was nothing simple about this guy. Still, if his magic worked here, maybe I could pull this off.
I focused, thought hard about the sensations of my baby food spell jars, the weight of them in my hand, the coolness of the glass against my skin. I reached for my pouch again, and this time, I hit pay dirt.
Yes.
I grabbed a jar and hurled it at him, not even bothering to check what was in it.
It turned out to be an anti-energy spell, which broke against the shaman’s head and poured over his face, cooling the fire as it went. By the time the drips reached his feet, the shaman wasn’t just doused, he’d begun vanishing from the top down. After another few seconds, he popped into a ball of light and returned in a rush to the belly of the spirit who held him captive.
I barked out a laugh, half victory, half sheer, soul-deep relief.
“Clever.” The spirit didn’t sound so sanguine now. “But not clever enough. Let’s see how you fare against your own kind.”
19
My own kind? “You’ve killed other demon slayers?” I hissed.
He grinned. “More than I can recall.” The scholar turned psycho pressed the tips of his fingers together. “Not all of them had spirits worth taking, but some were fierce enough to add to my collection.”
And I would be forced to fight them all.
I was already breathing hard, my arm numb.
Not one, not two, but three new figures flashed into existence.
The first, a Japanese woman in a formal kimono, took a challenging stance with her naginata at the ready. The second looked like she’d stepped out of the Old West. She wore brown pants, a denim shirt, and a beat-up old bowler hat. Her hips cradled double gun belts, but she was way more deadly with a switch star in each hand. The final slayer was tall
and muscular, with thick black dreads down to her waist. She carried a mambele, a huge half-knife, half-axe with a deadly curved blade at the front and a spike at the back. It crackled with lightning energy.
Oh my god. How was I going to survive them?
Lizzie… My dad’s voice sounded faraway, weak. I don’t know how much longer I can hold you.
I shifted just before the gunslinger’s first switch star struck. Acid orange sparks exploded to my left, and I winced as a few of them burned me. I threw my star at her and swore as she ducked and dodged it.
The naginata swung in an arc toward my head, but my necklace surged up and into a helmet a nanosecond before it made contact. The racing metal stung, and the strike rang me like a bell, but it gave me time to throw another baby food jar. This one was a doozy—green and white, it went straight for the age-old slayer’s throat. She grasped at her neck, eyes bulging as she began to choke. I grabbed another switch star and prepared to finish her off—
My necklace moved fast, but not fast enough to cover my leg before the mambele arced into it. I moved fast, but the tip grazed my thigh, and I shouted bloody murder as I chucked another switch star at the third slayer. It sheared through several of her dreads but didn’t do any more damage, and she scowled at me as the mambele boomeranged back into her hand.
I went back to levitating in a hurry, pulling spells from my pouch and throwing them as fast as I could. My leg bled freely—not blood, which I’d been expecting, but drops of light.
That scared me more than anything.
It didn’t hurt the way a wound like that should.
And every drop drained a little more of my energy. It was as if my life force was seeping out of me.
What did you do? my father’s voice screamed in my head. Your spirit is falling away. You need to finish this fast!
“I can’t,” I panted, hurling a Paralyzing spell at the kimono-clad warrior. It hit her in a shower of silver sparkles, and I finally managed to nail her with a darn switch star.
She vanished in a burst of light.
What the fuck? I couldn’t kill anybody. But they could drain me!
“I’m outnumbered!” I shouted at Dad, at the world. “He has too many ties for me to cut!”
Then just cut yours!
How? Where? There was no clear path, no simple way. In fact, it was becoming clear to me that if I wanted to escape this master spirit, I needed to get rid of every connection he had.
It was just as clear that I’d exhaust myself long before I managed that.
I needed help.
These slayers should be on my side, not his. “Who are you?” I demanded, dodging the axe end of the dreadlocked slayer’s mambele. “And why the hell are you fighting for him?”
The gunslinger hurled a switch star at my head. I raised a hand and blocked it with my star. The impact threw me back against the wall, knocking the breath out of me. Sparks erupted as her star dropped away.
She glared at me, rivulets of sweat streaming down her face. “He has our names.”
What? “That doesn’t make sense.” The dreadlocked slayer looked ready to take my head off when I said that.
“Read the scrolls,” she hissed then cried out as her spirit captor struck her from behind. She fell hard, and in that moment, it all became clear to me.
The gunslinger shoved a switch star at my head. I levitated up; I shot to the ceiling, still incredulous. “You don’t own your names.” They were on the scrolls. “You’ve been erased.” That was why I’d never heard of any of the other demon slayers. That was why no one told stories. The spirit owned them and their names and their entire identities. Without an identity, they were forgotten, lost to the ages.
I reached for the nearest scroll.
“Attack!” the spirit screamed.
Both slayers shot toward me.
“Atticus of Carthage!” I shouted, then shot down to the floor as switch stars and a mambele impacted the wall near where my head had been mere seconds before.
Metal rang out against stone as a red ribbon fluttered to the ground and a gleaming white soul shot out of the ancient scholar.
I had to read the names!
Hundreds of them.
I had to find my own.
Holy Hades.
“You can help me!” I hollered as the dreadlocked slayer’s axe head caught my wrist. Light flowed freely—my life force.
“We cannot,” she hissed, rearing back to strike again.
I hurled a switch star and she ducked. I shot to the other side of the room. I’d never survive long enough to find my name.
I searched desperately for someone, anyone. This was the spirit plane. Just because we were in a room that belonged to the spirit that had brought me here didn’t mean there weren’t others around. And if I’d ever had friends looking out for me on the other side—which I did—now was the time I needed them. I had to get to a window.
I threw a switch star at the slayer with the mambele, making her use it to deflect, then dodged right over her head toward the nearest slender window. It trembled, like it wanted to close in on itself, but I was fast. I groped for my pouch, yanked out the spell I thought would work best—and it hadn’t escaped my notice that here all my spells worked way better than they did in the real world—and hurled it out the window.
The compulsion spell vanished into the nothingness that surrounded the room, but I felt it release its energy out there. It would call my friends to me if they were close enough and had my best interests at heart.
Not that I wanted anyone I cared about to be near this crazy spirit or this hellhole, but if there was a chance…if anyone was looking for me, well, now I’d lit a fire under their tails.
I just had to survive long enough for them to get here.
The mambele swooped in before I could move, slicing off a sliver of my shoulder. I was bleeding freely now. I wrenched my arm out of the window and smashed the side of my heavy bronze dagger square into the dreadlocked slayer’s head. She staggered, dazed, and another switch star finished her off as well.
“Yes,” the spirit clapped. “Well done. I’m so proud of all my souls.”
Two more replaced the one I’d finished—a pair of twins dressed in flowing medieval dresses, like they’d walked straight out of a Caravaggio painting. Both flashed deadly smiles and drew massive swords.
I panted with fatigue, falling back against the wall even as my necklace became a Roman-style shield in front of me.
I had to keep going. My babies needed me—Dimitri needed me. He’d never get over it if I didn’t come out of the Cave of Visions alive.
Don’t think about that, Lizzie, just fight!
“I’m trying,” I gasped, catching the next spear thrust on the edge of the shield. “How are you doing?”
Surviving, came my dad’s answer.
He had to be getting tired as well. This was getting to be too much. I grabbed a spell and threw it at the pair of medieval slayers. It was a Macarena spell, of all things, but it hit one of them square in the chest. She grimaced, her heavy sword clanging to the floor as she began to dance, crossing her arms, swiveling her hips, and hopping away from me.
Thank God.
I reached behind me, my shaking fingers pulling out as many scrolls as I could manage.
Enriquo Vasqualiz! As I read the name, the paper disintegrated and the spirit gasped as a bright soul burst from his mouth and shot up and out the window.
Fingers trembling, I unrolled another and tossed the ribbon. Gretchen Schmitt!
The spirit staggered as the soul burst from his back, right between the shoulder blades.
The spirit had said it: Knowledge is power.
He raised his head, and for the first time, I saw fear.
His features hardened. “End it. Now,” he ordered.
The remaining three attackers closed in around me. Countless others appeared behind them until the library was filled with souls the master spirit had claimed. His chuckle suffuse
d the very air that I breathed.
“This is where it ends, Elizabeth. You did well,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll cherish both you and your babies.”
No! I braced the shield for all I was worth and drew a switch star.
“YEE-AAAW!”
The sound of a blessedly familiar yell broke through the tension, and a second later dozens of spirits poured through the windows and into the room, their swirling forms casting light, forming heads and legs and full-bodied biker witches.
Some of them rode hogs and some of them were on foot, but all of them were hollering to wake the dead. Spells began to fly, and I took advantage of the chaos and grabbed for more scrolls.
“Lizzie McGee!” I shouted.
The gunslinger exploded in a spray of light and energy.
I took refuge behind my shield. “Thank you,” her voice whispered in my ear.
She was free.
I lowered the shield and saw the biker witches in full-blazing glory. I didn’t even know all of them, but the ones I did recognize…there was Betty Two Sticks smashing jars over the heads of any spirits she could reach. I saw Lazy Rita and Lucinda the Lush—Rita threw Paralyzing spells like confetti, and Lucinda tossed Molotov Cocktail spells onto the heads of my attackers. There was Easy Edna and Battina and Carl—
A goth slayer with a tear-drop tattoo tossed switch stars double handed.
“Phoenix?” I gasped. No, it couldn’t be her—my birth mother had given up her birthright and passed her demon-slaying power on to me and was alive and dull as far as I knew. So this had to be…her twin sister. “Aunt Serefina!”
“Lizzie!” she called out cheerfully while bashing the goth slayer over the head with a Mind Wiper. “Good to finally meetcha, kid.”
The goth slayer’s eyes went dull for a moment, then lit up like this was the best day ever.
“I’ve always wanted to be on American Idol!” the slayer gushed as the Mind Wiper filled her head with her greatest fantasy.
“Hold them off while I read the scrolls!” I called to the witches.
Serefina gave me the thumbs-up before tossing another spell. She threw them like they were Frisbees, slicing through spirits left and right. She ducked under a scimitar, slung a spell at a spirit that made it swell up like a balloon, and then said, “On your left!”
