Angie Fox - ADS 03 - A Tale of Two Demon Slayers

I dug a finger under the strap of my sundress, which had fallen down with the weight of my carry-on, and said a quick prayer of thanks for my ultracomfy Adidas Supernova Cushion cross-trainers.

“You’re not late,” Ant Eater growled off my left shoulder. “You’re two and a half hours early.”

Yeah, well that was late in my book. I always liked to arrive for international flights at least three hours prior to takeoff. Next time, I’d add a half hour for each witch who decided to see me off.

“Well, you can take one more minute.” Grandma cut in front of me and attempted to detour us toward a metal bench with thin gray cushions. “This is important. Vital,” she said, her blue eyes boring into mine.

“No. It can’t be.” I could practically hear my departure gate calling for me. “Why can’t it wait?”

“Loosen your bra straps, okay?” Grandma said, as she led me over to the bench. “I helped save you from a she-demon, you can give me a minute on an airport bench.”

“One minute,” I said, knowing I was doomed.

Grandma took my hands, her silver rings hard against my skin and her palms rough from riding her bike. “Our situation has changed. I felt it on the way over here, Lizzie. I think you’re ready.”

The only thing I was ready for was an in-flight cocktail.

While Grandma and the rest of the Red Skull biker witches took their magic very seriously, they also had a way of practicing the kind of loosey-goosey lifestyle that gave me hives.

“Ready for what?” I asked, hefting my shoulder strap again. The Port-A-Pooch pet carrier was the best on the market. I’d researched it. But the darned thing wasn’t light. Neither was its cargo.

Grandma nodded and Ant Eater reached inside her black fringed bag. Out came a small wooden chest, about half the size of a shoe box.

Oh help me, Rhonda.

Thick iron bands supported the bottom and wrapped around the lid. Studs drilled into the bands. The tips of them pointed out like switch stars, the main weapon of demon slayers like me. I traced a finger over the wood itself—old and furrowed with carving marks, as if the box had been sculpted from solid wood.

“This was your mother’s,” Grandma said, her fingers tracing a switch star. “After your mom left us, I promised your Aunt Serefina that if we found you, if you had powers, I’d give this to you when I thought you were ready.” She placed the box into my hands like it was a piece of fine china. “I think you can handle it now.”

“Oh.” The box was lighter than I’d expected. Smoother. I found the bench and sat with the box in my lap.

I tried to tune out the noise of the airport and take this in, be appreciative. For all I knew, this could be a watershed moment—one I’d look back on for the rest of my life. I wanted to recognize the importance of my demon slayer heritage. Instead, my mind kept wandering back to the words Grandma had used. I think you can handle it now.

Handle what? Everything I’d handled since Grandma found me two months ago, right before I’d morphed into the Demon Slayer of Dalea, had been much more of an adventure than I’d ever asked for—or wanted.

As uncomfortable as it was, if I was truly honest with myself, the only thing I had a mind to handle was the sexy shape-shifting griffin meeting me at my departure gate.

I studied the protective runes carved into the bottom of the box. “What makes you think I’m ready now?”

Grandma took a seat next to me. “I’m not sure you are,” she admitted. “Let’s see if you can open it.”

Oh lovely, and just what I needed—a test.

The box didn’t have a keyhole or a groove indicating where the lid started. In fact, I didn’t see any openings at all. “Should we really try to open this here?” In a crowded airport? “Do we know what’s inside? I’m going to have enough trouble getting my switch stars through security.”

My hand went to my demon slayer utility belt and the five switch stars it held. The stars were flat and round, about the shape of small dinner plates. Razor-sharp blades curled around the edges. The TSA wouldn’t like them, but I had to have them on me at all times.

Grandma sighed. “I told you, we put a spell on your switch stars so nobody can see them. Otherwise, you’d have been arrested by now.”

Ant Eater nodded, her gray curls bobbing slightly as she looked down at me. “You should have let us take care of your jumbo bottle of shampoo too. I don’t know why you insisted on stuffing everything into a one-quart Baggie.”

“Rules are rules.” A fact Grandma and the gang would have done well to remember. Besides, I was worried enough about getting my switch stars through the metal detector. I didn’t need things to fall apart if something went wrong with my Pantene Pro-V.

As for the box? “Please say it’s not something live.”

A nose snorted from my carry-on. “I heard that.”

Ever since I came into my demon slaying powers, my Jack Russell terrier could speak—real words. I was still getting used to it.

Pirate wriggled an ear, then a nose, and finally his entire top half out of the green Port-A-Pooch. He blinked sleepily. Today, I’d followed my checklist for preparing an animal for flight, which had meant lots of exercise to wear him out and hopefully get him to snooze through a good portion of the trip. It had worked, until now.

“You sounded worried,” he said. “But you don’t need to worry, because I am on the job.” Pirate squirmed the rest of the way out of the carrier and shook off, his tags clinking. “Some days, I think I’m part German shepherd.” He sniffed at the box, his little body quivering. He was mostly white, with a dollop of brown on his back that wound up his neck and over one eye.

He gave a full-body sneeze. “No animals,” he announced. “In fact, it don’t have any smell at all. That’s too bad.”

I turned the box over in my hands.

Pirate licked at it. “It’s pretty.”

Sure. Pretty like Pandora’s box. My mom hadn’t exactly been the best influence on me. And she’d proven that I couldn’t trust her. “We’ll check it with the luggage and I’ll open it in Greece.”

“Why?” Grandma asked. “I want to see what’s in it.”

“You don’t know?” I didn’t like that one bit.

Maybe it was a good idea to open it with Grandma and Ant Eater here, in case whatever was in there decided to attack.

I tugged at the teardrop emerald around my neck, given to me by Dimitri. It held an endless source of protective magic, which was good, because otherwise it would have been used up a week after he’d given it to me.

I glanced at Ant Eater. “You still have those stun spells?”

She patted her black fringe purse. And I had my switch stars.

No telling what my mom had left behind in this box. She’d shirked her duty, passed along her demon slayer powers to me before dumping me off on my adoptive family in Atlanta. I didn’t relish the idea of any more surprises from Mom.

Grandma placed a sandpapery hand on my arm. “Open it, Lizzie. It’s part of your destiny.”

Destiny my foot. Since when was I going to get to choose my own life? I’d been forced to go up against a mad scientist demon and then a sex-on-the-brain Las Vegas succubus, and right when I was about to take off on a dream trip to Greece with my hot boyfriend, Grandma wanted me to open a box full of trouble.

“If I open this now, I could get arrested, miss my flight, let a creature loose on the airport…”

Grandma nodded, admitting the possibility. “Or you could gain a powerful tool that you need right now.”

“I don’t need anything right now except sun, sand and a shot or two of ouzo.”

“So you say.”