Angie Fox - The Last of the Demon Slayers

He laughed. “It’s…” He swallowed hard, grinning. “I know I’m screwing this up, but it was such a shock to actually see you. Lizzie, I’m your father.”

That stopped me cold.

“Xavier,” he said, as if that explained anything. “Your mom never told you about me?”

“No,” I drew the word out, shocked to the core. To be fair, my birth mom and I hadn’t been able to discuss much.

“Nothing?”

Like where he’d been for the last thirty years?

He stood looking at me as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

“No.” The one time I’d met mom, she tried to kidnap me. There hadn’t been much of a discussion.

He ran a hand through his hair, almost giddy. “I knew she was going to have you. But I just found out about this,” he said, indicating my switch stars.

At least one of us found this amusing. I planted my hands on my hips. “It was a surprise for me too.” I hadn’t known anything about demon slayers until I became one this past summer. Chalk that up to another discussion I needed to have with my mom. She’d shoved her powers off on me and split.

“I thought you were living a normal, happy life,” he said, almost to himself. “Phoenix never said…” The words seemed to be coming faster than he could manage. “You have to understand. Your mother is…different.”

No kidding.

Hope flared in his eyes. “But you’re not.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. If he didn’t consider a demon slaying preschool teacher to be different, I wasn’t about to argue.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I saw your mom this morning. For the first time since we broke up. And she told me what she did to you.”

“Okay.”

He was saying these things as if it was all so wonderful, but my brain felt like cotton. I tried to wrap my head around it. My parents had kept track of each other. They still talked, at least they had this morning. My dad was magical.

But I could still smell the sulfur.

What did he want?

My wrist watch dinged. I touched a button on the side. 5:20. “Time’s up.”

My dad didn’t notice. “Your mother and I were never meant to be. But you? I would have given anything to have you in my life.”

The tingling on my head eased into a slow burn.

It was too much.

“How do I even know this is true?” I asked. I had to get out of here.

”How do I know you aren’t some demon in disguise, telling me what I want to hear?”

He dipped his head. “Your mom said to tell you it’s okay about the portal. Although she misses her white heels.”

Shock zinged through me. Mom had been wearing white heels the day she’d tried to drag me through a portal and away from my destiny.

He was telling the truth. He was my dad. My body felt like lead. “Where were you?”

“I was,” he searched for a word, “busy.”

Oh help me, Rhonda.

“She thought she was hiding you. For your own good,” he added. “But she was wrong. I know you need a dad.”

I couldn’t say anything around the lump in my throat.

My dad wanted me.

He found me.

His eyes were glossy with unshed tears. “And now I need a slayer.”

Hold up.

“I went to your mother. She was supposed to be the Demon Slayer of Dalea. Then she told me she’d passed it on to you.”

Very convenient. “How did you find me?” Was the disturbance I felt from him? Or from something else entirely?

“Lizzie, I got mixed up in something bad.”

“Demonic?”

He cringed. “In a manner of speaking.” The zombie bird circled his legs like a cat. “But it’s not what you think. No deals with the devil or anything like that,” he said sheepishly.

“Just come out with it.”

He barked out a laugh. “Over an insecure transmission?” He saw my face and lost the attitude. “I need you to come see me in Pasadena. Will you help me? We can fight this thing together.”

Heavens to Betsy. “We just got here.” And I barely knew him and I had no reason to help him.

His expression was earnest. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. But that’s in the past now. Lizzie, I need you. I want to get to know you.” He gave a sad smile. “We’ve lost too much time as it is.”

I wanted to say yes. I really wanted to.

“I don’t know.” It was too much too fast. I needed to think.

His gaze touched my switch stars and a corner of his mouth turned up. “You’re the last of the demon slayers.”

He would have to say that.

My mentor had already told me I was the last of my line.

If my dad truly needed a slayer, I was it.

"Please." He lifted his shirt sleeves away from his wrists.

Holy cow. Someone had burned a mark of the demon into the tender skin above the bend of each wrist. I’d had to get rid of a similar curse. The charred skin formed three swirls, in almost a floral pattern. Squat sides together, lines reaching out to form 6-6-6.

I let out a slow breath. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the mule.”

He pulled a thin silver lariat from the back pocket of his jeans. With practiced movements, he tied it into the shape of a hangman’s noose. “Take this,” he said, hand shaking as he held it out to me. “It will lead you to me.”

Tempting.

He certainly knew my weakness – I loved to know exactly what was going on. Then I could plan, which I enjoyed way too much.

I wanted to take my father’s silver lariat. Badly. Which probably meant it would either strangle me or poison me, if it didn’t fling me straight to hell.

After all, I didn’t trust my mother. Why should I trust my father?

He was surrounded by evil.

But was it his fault?

I couldn’t be sure.

When I didn’t move, the crow took the silver rope and broke the barrier with a screech. It scurried up to me, my dad’s present in its beak.

“Drop it,” I said.

The bird’s milky eyes lolled back in its head as it deposited the rope at my feet. It dipped its mashed head sideways before trotting back to the fire wall.

Slow and steady, I retrieved my father’s gift with the tip of a switch star, watching the rope bend and swirl with a life of its own.

My father’s image began to fade. “I won’t be strong enough to reach you again,” he said quietly.

I held his gift out in front of me and watched it try to curl itself around my switch star.

Fabulous. I was a grey haired biker with what appeared to be yet another magical creature clinging to me.

One step at a time. I made my way back to Big Nose Kate’s, holding the lariat out in front of me like a poisonous snake. It kept trying to weave itself around my switch star, taking one shock after another as my weapon repelled it. Whatever my father had given me, it wasn’t exactly friendly – or smart.

The gloom of the night settled around me.

I had a potentially evil pet, a semi-demonic dad and gray hair.

I tried to look at it objectively.

Maybe I could handle my father. I refused to touch the rope. Which left my hair. I’d never been vain, but still – my hair?

What would Dimitri say?

Just when I was starting to feel attractive and confident. Now I was going to have to wear a hat for the rest of my life. Or one of those turbans you see on old movie stars. Somehow, I doubted they made them to go with cute red sweater dresses from the Ann Taylor Outlet.

My only hope was Frieda got it wrong and we had more time.

I clung to the thought until halfway across the parking lot when the spell on my head sizzled one last time and gave a large poof.

It was pretty much the theme of my life as a demon slayer – forward motion and then – poof.