Angie Fox - The Last of the Demon Slayers

“Now that it’s short, I can’t keep my hands off it.”

“I look like Frenchie from Grease ,” I protested.

“From Greece?” he asked, letting me go as far as I could stretch the space between us, and then drawing me close. “Do I know a Frenchie?”

I bent to search near another dry and crumbling wooden monument. “Forget it.”

Two seconds later, I ended up back in his arms. I’d give the man points for persistence.

“You don’t look like this Frenchie,” he murmured. “You look like a wild woman.” His mouth claimed mine in a hot, wet kiss. “And I would never,” he nipped my lower lip, “never leave you.”

“Dang. We gotta find a flower.”

“Because…?” he said, nibbling my ear, knowing he was driving me crazy.

“Because then we have a few minutes alone.”

Grandma said she’d send up a red flare when they needed me. In the meantime, I needed to gather my strength. Right?

“There’s a flower,” Dimitri pointed.

Holy moley. White flowers carpeted the hippie cemetery behind us. Their tiny white petals bloomed full and lush in the moonlight.

“Looks like hippies really do believe in free love,” Dimitri said, leading me over to a small copse under a scraggly pine tree.

“I can’t believe dead people are helping you get laid.”

He nibbled my chin. “It’s more than that and you know it.” The space between us practically sizzled. “Open yourself up to magic, Lizzie. You say you believe in it. Now let it touch you.”

I snorted, not sure if I was touched or turned on.

Tears welled in the corners of my eyes. He wanted to be here with me, in this broken-down hippie commune with a demon on the way. He’d rather argue with me in a cemetery than sit on the veranda of his villa in Greece. And he’d helped me find the magic to bring me to him.

He loved me.

Dimitri pulled me down into the flowers with him. On top of him, legs straddling him, he caught me in a searing kiss. His hands slid down me, drove us together, rocked me against him. I poured all my love, my fear, my sheer desire for him into that kiss.

He made a low sound in his throat, raw and wild, as he rolled me under him. Dimitri never did anything halfway and I loved him for it.

And he loved me.

Not because we understood where this was going or how it would work, but because he needed me. I needed him.

Oh God, did I need him.

I reveled in the feel of his weight on me. He was hot and sleek as I stripped him, peeling the black T-shirt over his head, my mouth closing over his nipple, feeling him tense and shudder.

Breathing hard, he flicked open the button at the top of my leather pants and eased them down my hips. We were done sparring, finished pretending that we didn’t know what we wanted.

We’d stripped away our excuses, gave up our defenses. There was only pure need and desire.

“Now,” he said, driving into me. I looked into his eyes, the intensity in his expression raw and wild. Muscles tight, breath coming in pants, he drove into me over and over again. I wrapped my legs around him and urged him harder, deeper.

Yes. I threw my head back.

Ribbons of pleasure spiraled through me and I savored the sheer, rich pleasure of the moment, of being with this man. Of taking what I needed with no excuses, no regrets. No thought of what should be, reveling in what was real and good and mine .

Afterward, we cuddled under the weathered pine at the edge of the cemetery.

My head rested on his bare chest. We’d dressed again, but I’d asked him to forgo the shirt. Not that I needed another one. I just liked the skin-to-skin contact for as long as I could have it.

“You really think I can do this?” I asked, twirling the soul flower in my fingers. Grandma’s signal should come at any time. When she sent up a red flare, my time with Dimitri here would be over.

He ran his knuckles across my collar bone, down my arm. “Yes, you can,” he murmured into my hair, “I’m just waiting for the day when you expect it too.”

I tipped my head up for a perfect kiss.

“Oh for the love of Pete,” Grandma hollered, barreling across the field, kicking up a small dirt storm behind her.

Like she had room to talk.

“I sent up the flares ten minutes ago.” Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t even want to know why you didn’t see fireworks going off.” Her jaw dropped when she noticed the carpet of soul flowers covering the grounds. She shook it off. “Pick a flower. Any flower. Roxie’s ready. Evie’s ingredients are in place. We just need you.”

I grabbed a handful, just to be sure.

The witches had been busy.

Grandma led us past the buses and back behind the cabin. Red lanterns blazed alongside torches set into the ground every few feet. An open field stretched at least fifty yards, ending in a hill filled with rusting hippie sculptures and scraggly clumps of grass. Torches scattered over the hillside as well, illuminating it in circles of light and valleys of shadow.

Frieda jogged toward us, holding her torch like it was the final lap of the Olympic relay. “You all set, Lizzie?”

Frankly, I had no idea. “I have the flower, I said, holding it out to her.

Plus about a dozen spares.

“I’ll take that,” Ant Eater plucked it out of my hand and stuffed it into a big, messy ball she was carrying.

“What is that?” I asked, trying to see. The gold-toothed witch hadn’t bothered with light.

“Your hand looks like shit,” she replied.

No kidding.

Chessie, the medical witch, rushed up to me.

“Don’t tell me you know about vox burns.” The woman had an incredible store of random knowledge, but this was pushing it.

“Doesn’t matter what caused it,” she said, opening up a tube of something with her teeth. “It’s how you treat it.”

She slathered ointment onto my hands while the witch behind her cut bandages and tape.

“Listen up,” Grandma said, turning me toward the field. “We have Roxie setting up over by the weed barrels.”

So it was marijuana!

“You plug her with Evie’s portal device. The same time you do it, you focus – really focus – use every thought you have to send her where you want her to go.”

“Which is?”

”Here!” Frieda said, jogging out across the field. I had no

idea where she was going until she stopped over a large pile of mattresses and pillows. “We didn’t want to put torches too close to the bedding,” Frieda called, “but just aim.”

“Okay,” I said, fixing the spot in my mind. “So I wing Roxie into the pile of fluff. What do we do when the dreg comes flying out?” If we didn’t have light, we wouldn’t be able to see it or capture it.

“I do pretty good in the dark,” Dimitri said, “I’ll set up next to the landing zone.”

Which meant I really couldn’t miss.

I flexed my bandaged hands. They felt a lot better. “Thanks, Chessie.”

“I’ll stand by with torches,” Frieda added. “I have a whole committee.”

“I can’t believe we don’t have more flashlights,” I mused. Until I lost it, I’d kept my Maglite with me at all times.

“Yeah, well we don’t have time to go to the store,” Grandma said.

“And,” Neal piped up from somewhere behind me, “flashlight batteries aren’t good for the planet,”

“Neither is a demon invasion,” I shot back.

Grandma interrupted before I could show the hippie a close-up version of a switch star. “Just be glad we had time to throw together your portal recipe.” She turned, “Now where is that portal recipe? Battina?”

The library witch shuffled up, her orange Kool-Aid hair pinned up in a loose bun. She held out a handkerchief-wrapped stink bomb.