by Angie Fox
Give me the power to save them and to save myself. Give me the power to make a difference.
The pain ebbed and for a moment, I thought I was dying. It wasn't as unpleasant as I'd imagined—almost a way out of an impossible situation.
At least I still had my soul.
Suddenly, my arms and legs crackled to life. They tingled as if they'd been asleep. I pumped my way to the surface and burst through. I spit water and inhaled sharply, ready to choke as I scrambled for the safety of a wall. I couldn't stop shaking. I was half standing, hands braced against the white swirling wallpaper when I realized I was breathing normally.
"Son of a gun," I murmured, feeling a raw burning in the back of my throat, the only indication that I'd been practically breathing salt water.
The door to the outside rattled on its hinges.
Correction, it was mostly off its hinges as Dimitri cursed up a storm on the other side.
"Hold up!" I called.
I glanced up and down the deserted corridor. The hallway felt clear. For now.
Legs tingling, I tested each step on my way to let Dimitri into the hallway. Grandma had looked terrible when I handed her over to him. Fingers numb, I felt my face and inspected my skin. My arms looked sunburned, the water at my knees sizzled, and my dark mark positively glowed. I touched it to the door lock and heard a sharp intake of breath on the other side.
I did what I had to do.
The situation had gone from bad to completely terrifying. Still, I didn't regret using the dark mark. Dimitri may not like it, but this was the supernatural gift I needed to help us survive hell. I'd be a fool not to use it.
I'd barely turned the lock when Dimitri exploded into the murky hall, running straight into me and sending up a wave of water.
"Lizzie." He gripped my shoulders like he wanted to pick me up and drag me back to Greece with him.
"How's Grandma?"
"She woke up right when everything went quiet with you. What happened?"
She woke up when the demons died. There'd be more. "We have to get out of here." I looked past him and saw Grandma braced against Sid.
Her mouth sagged and dark circles ringed both eyes. "They'd been hitting the wards all day. Typical. Like a raptor testing for a weak spot. I don't know how they found one."
I nodded. "Can you walk?"
We sloshed our way down the hallway reviving witches, most of them still in their rooms. They'd all suffered severe energy drain, but at least they were alive. Dimitri kicked in doors in a way that was both scary and efficient. After being held back by the dead bolt in the hall, he was enjoying himself a little too much.
White streaked his hair. We had to put a stop to this, before I lost him entirely. If he'd been whole, a dead bolt wouldn't have held him back. He'd have shifted in the maintenance closet and burst into the hallway, a huge utterly majestic griffin. The only reason he didn't do it today, I feared, was because he couldn't.
He was fading. It wasn't just his eyes anymore or the white in his hair. I could see his magic dull along with the emerald he'd given me. His protective necklace had morphed into body armor when I needed it, tied me to a tree when I didn't and had even offered butt protection during my foray through Uncle Phil's living room window. Now, twice when I'd been under demon attack, it had remained utterly still. I fingered the teardrop-shaped stone that used to be warmed by Dimitri's magic. It still tied him to me. And I felt, I knew, that it still protected me. Still, it was a painful reminder of what had happened to him—to us—as it lay cool and lifeless around my neck.
Because I couldn't stand to watch him a second longer, and well, because Pirate needed me, I sloshed down the hallway to my room.
"Hey, doobie." I listened for Pirate's clawing as I slid Grandma's key card into the door. "Pirate?" I opened the door to a disaster. The television had exploded, along with the light sockets and every other electrical gadget in the place. And worse—no Pirate.
Panic flooding through me as I searched the remains of our room. He wasn't under the bed, in the bathroom, or behind the drapes. My chest tightened as I tried to think of other places he'd hide during a storm.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes. What good was it to sense every demon from here to Hoover Dam if I couldn't find the one little guy who depended on me to protect him?
"Lizzie."
Dimitri-the-door-basher stood in the entryway, cradling Pirate. Blood seeped from my pup's left leg, his coat stood on end and his ears dangled lifelessly.
"Oh my god. Is he… ?" I took his scruffy body in my arms.
"No," Dimitri said quickly. "He's fine. He's just beat."
I buried my face in his wiry neck and felt his heartbeat against my palm. Relief whooshed through me. Through the cold, matted fur, I could feel an undercurrent of warm, doggie heat.
As if he knew what I was thinking, Pirate curled into me and buried his wet nose in the crook of my elbow.
Mmm… wet dog. My wet dog. "I'm gonna get you out of here. I promise."
In fact, we had to get everyone out. Pronto.
"What's the latest on the witches?" I asked Dimitri.
"All stunned but alive. Seems like you interrupted the succubi before they could finish."
Or they'd attacked the witches in order to trap me. Sure, I hadn't announced my presence in town, but I had slaughtered one of their sisters last night in the basement of the old prison.
The war was on.
I was suddenly glad to have the dark mark. It might have been the thing that kept me alive tonight. Still, I wasn't about to let Pirate and the Red Skulls get caught up in another round. "Let's get everyone out of here. Now."
"No." Dimitri stopped me with cool, steady hands on my arms. "The Red Skulls are already on top of it."
"You're kidding." I never thought I'd see the day when the Red Skulls had a plan.
The tiny lines around his eyes crinkled as he tugged me toward him. "Come here, sweetheart."
My insides melted at the idea of letting him hold me. I could use a little comfort right now, to close my eyes, sink into his arms and let someone take care of me for a change.
I forced myself to stiffen and pull away, ignoring the hurt that flashed across his strong features. He might have been the one for me, but not now. Just because I wanted him, didn't mean I could have him. I couldn't let him drain me or feed the demons that had their claws in him.
"We don't have time," I said gently. "So tell me. What's the plan?"
His features hardened, making him impossible to read. "Battina and Ant Eater are working on a new ward," he said. "It won't hold forever. In fact, they'll drain it even faster once they realize they'll need to send more than three demons to finish us off. But it'll do until we decide where we can go."
My first instinct was to .get the heck out of Dodge. Dimitri hadn't been the first one to feel what it was like to sink down into the hallway. Something had turned the warm water into a dark ocean. Freezing droplets still clung to my skin.
I wanted to argue, but curse Dimitri, he was right. There was nowhere we could go that the she-demons couldn't follow. Our best bet would be to create our own safe place here until we could figure out what to do.
"You sure Battina and Ant Eater are up to it?" I hadn't gotten a look at either one of them, but if they'd gotten hit half as bad as Grandma, I didn't want to count on them.
"I heard that, Miss Permit." Ant Eater's voice, weak but still annoying, echoed from the hall.
Okay, so maybe she was feeling better. "You're welcome," I answered. "You know, for me saving your life."
Ant Eater leaned her head inside the door. Her gold tooth sparkled, but her eyes had lost their hellfire. She'd wrapped her arms around half a dozen recycled pickle jars. Inside, the greenish brownish sludge took on a life of its own.
One side of her curly hair was mashed to her head. "Yeah, well you could have gotten here before those twits gave me the magical hangover of the century." She grinned, despite herself.
<
br /> "Anything I can do?" I asked, eyeing the sludge.
"Stick to demon slaying," she said, smashing a jar at my feet and taking great delight in watching me jump back.
"Lovely," I said, wrinkling my nose at the slime oozing across the carpet. It smelled like moldy basement and feet.
"A G-bomb a day keeps the demons away," she said, standing next to me, surveying her work. "Just make sure you keep it wet and out of the sun. Also, try not to look directly at it."
"Sure," I said. "Is it a ward?"
"It's not an air freshener." She clapped me on the back.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" I didn't think I could handle another demon attack right now. We'd barely survived the last one.
"For a while," she said. "It's not like we ever used to fight 'em. We'd spell and run. Battina and I keep a stash of emergency wards. Otherwise, you're never going to get enough turtle knees on such short notice."
"Sure," I said. I was all about planning.
I found Grandma hunched on the bed nearest the door to our room, the phone to her ear. I was about to ask her what she was doing when I caught an unusual sight out the thirteenth-floor window.
Gargoyles circled the top of the Luxor, screeching and pounding their leathery wings. Even the smaller ones were about the size of a German shepherd. I dragged the curtains shut. I couldn't take any more weirdness.
"I need as many rollaway beds as you can find," Grandma ordered into the phone.
She nodded at my upshot eyebrows and did a curlicue with her finger. "Wards are safer in these three rooms."
I plucked the receiver from her ear and slammed it down. "We can't stay. In fact, I need you to think. Where is a safe place for you and the witches?"
"Lizzie Brown, what has gotten into you?"
"Into me?" I'd saved her life. I'd rescued the whole coven.
Never mind the fact that I seemed incapable of saving the one man I might actually love. I could hear myself growing angrier with each and every word. "You have to get out of here. These succubi don't want you. They want me." And I had a feeling they'd follow me until I fought them—all twenty-two of them.
Make that twenty-four. Damn. They must have used the witches' power to draw two more out of hell. I could never destroy them all—not at this rate.
Grandma stiffened. "What I meant, sport, is how did you kill the phone?"
I stared down at the crumpled heap of plastic on the nightstand. Sure enough, I'd slammed the receiver down into the phone. A rivet of shock ran through me. The beige plastic split open like I'd run over it with my Harley.
"Dimitri says you wasted three demons." She glared at me, her body sagging but her mind as alert as ever. "You're not trained to kill that many."
I wasn't? "Well, that's just great!"
"What the hell happened to you?"
What indeed? I clutched my marked palm against my skirt.
Her eyes narrowed. "We came here because we're in this together."
Not when "together" meant floating unconscious in the hallway. "I just about got killed tonight trying to save your butts. You're not helping. You need to leave. Don't even tell me where you're going."
If I couldn't protect them by being with them, I'd do the next best thing—get them as far away from here as possible.
"News flash. You need the coven."
"That might be true." I'd certainly needed them in the past. But it wasn't about what I wanted. It was about knowing in my gut what was right and what was wrong—and then doing something about it.
She flung the broken phone on the floor. "This after we protected you, we trained you, we accepted you as one of our own."
"Some training," I scoffed. "When were you going to teach me to kill three?"
"When you were ready!"
"Yeah, well I think I'm ready."
"You can't handle everything!"
"Yes. I can." The dark mark burned into my skin. "I killed the fifth-level demon that chased you around the country for thirty years. I killed one last night. Three today."
She let out a string of curses that would have burned my adoptive mom's ears clean off. "You can't do this alone. You probably don't even know how you killed three just now."
A sudden fear snaked down my back. She was right. I had nothing going for me but my instincts and my God-given skills. Grandma hadn't shown me what to do during a multiple demon attack. She'd never told me that Max, a half demon, half human could even exist, and she certainly hadn't shared how to keep from being marked by a demon. "You didn't teach me jack."
Her face blazed red. "You think I can teach you a lifetime of lessons in two weeks? People want to be lawyers, they spend three years in law school. You want to be a vet, you go to eight years of medical school. You skip thirty years of demon slayer training and you want to learn it in two weeks, half of which we spent on the run from a fifth-level demon and the rest we spent trying to get here to save Phil's sorry ass. There's no easy way. I taught you what you needed to know to survive."
Well, it wasn't enough. The only thing I did know was that I wasn't going to be responsible for the coven getting wiped out.
"I'm the only one who can slay a succubus. So I'm staying and you're going."
"You need me," she said, biting off every word.
"No, I don't," I retorted, sad, angry and very much alone.
If I could have slammed a door in knee-deep water, I would have. Instead, I slogged down the hallway, avoiding dead fish. I rubbed at the 6-6-6 that had etched itself deep into my palm, the edges burned black.
Someone splashed up behind me. It wasn't a demon, so it could have been Mary Poppins for all I cared. I had to think.
"Hold up!" Sid hollered.
I'd forgotten he was even there. Still, I kept walking, despite a string of fairy curses.
"Excuse me? Hey, lady. I'm risking a crab up the pants, so you need to park your ass and listen."
I sighed. "What, Sid?" I turned around to find him struggling to shake a tangled string of seaweed from his fingers. He was shorter than I was, and the water reached halfway up his thighs. His brown trousers held a pocket of air that made him look even rounder.
"I should be asking you the same thing," he said. "What happened here? We've never seen succubi attack like this, and they don't usually go for females. What'd you do?"
"Nothing," I said. "Obviously, the witches had something they wanted." Like life energy. I shivered despite myself. "Sid, we need to get the survivors out of here. Does the DIP have a place they can stay?"
He furrowed his brows. "Maybe." He wiped his hand off on his sleeve and pulled his phone from the pocket of his tan striped shirt. "They don't normally like to get involved, but I think they're going to have to make an exception here." He dialed in a text message. "Call me a softie, but a full-scale slaughter won't look good on my performance review. Besides"—he gave me a quick once over—"you're about to have bigger problems."
That's right. Fairies could predict the near future. "So what's going to happen?" I asked, a bit too breathlessly.
"Demons. What else?" he said, far too flippantly for my taste.
"Soon?" I asked.
"Soon enough. Me and the Red Skulls are making it out. You, I'm not so sure about." He shrugged at my utter shock. "You can't do anything about it. Except you'd damned well better ask for help when you need it. Capiche?"
Not help from the witches, I hoped. I couldn't risk them like that. "Tell me everything I need to know," I said.
"I just did." He tapped something else into his phone. "Geez. See, this is why I don't tell people things. They ask for details that I don't have." He took a closer look at a message on his phone. "Says here we've been able to confirm your report, at least so far as there's some weird shit going on."
"Hallelujah."
Sid wrestled a handkerchief out of his back pocket, found a dry spot, and used it to mop his head.
He shot me a disdainful glare as he dug something out of the pocket of hi
s loose brown dress pants. "I'm going to regret this, but…" He held a small vial of glitter. The clear contents churned and sparkled with energy. "Fairy dust," he explained, "Mine. Just don't go summoning me during any demon attacks or I'll kill you myself."
"Wow," I said, "thanks." I had a feeling this didn't happen every day.
The fairy scowled. "Yeah, well if you screw up, I'm allowed my quid pro quo. You know, restitution. And I will take you up on that."
"I shudder to think," I responded. As for the fairy dust, I held it up watching it cluster thick in places where my fingers touched the vial.
But it wasn't the fairy I was worried about.
Excerpt from The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers:
Gargoyles are a good measure of the evil threat in an area—both demonic and otherwise. These horned creatures resemble giant bats and are attracted to the negative energies. Gargoyles will eat any evil that wanders too close. It's good in the short term, but a bad sign overall. Too many gargoyles in one spot means they've found a place to feast—and to breed.
Chapter Seventeen
Wouldn't you know it, Sid and the DIP actually came through. Less than an hour later, he'd found accommodations outside of the city for all two dozen of the Red Skulls. Grandma lay on her bed, resting up while the rest of the witches packed.
"You mind if I ride with Bob?" Pirate asked. "He found me a special helmet in one of the gift shops. It has racing stripes!"
"Go ahead." I scratched him between the ears. I'd be glad when they were safely on the road out of town.
I was about to check on the witches when the door to our hotel room flung open. Pirate and I both jumped an inch.
Witches crowded the corridor outside as Max hitched himself out of the knee-deep water in the hallway and strode into the room like he did it every day.
He looked like the devil himself, in black leather pants and a red club shirt. Hell and seduction seemed to press around him. How did he even find us?
"I need you," Max said, his eyes flicking over me.
Naturally. "Well, take a number."
I had my own problems to solve. As soon as I marshaled the witches and Dimitri out of Vegas, my biggest challenge involved a giant war with two dozen succubi.
