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

I shook off his grip and crossed my hands over my chest. He’d better feel like a rotten jerk when I turned up dead in a forest clearing.

“Do you have a limestone building on the estate? Preferably in the middle of the woods?” I asked.

He thumbed through the book, not answering. It didn’t matter, anyway. I could be killed anywhere. Dimitri, on the other hand, was as stubborn as they came. From his rock-hard head down to his size-twelve shoes.

“You’re not listening to me,” I said.

“You think so?” he asked, clearly frustrated. Well, he could join the club. “Tell me, Lizzie. What else did you have to say?”

“That was it.” If he didn’t get it by now, he never would.

“So I listened,” he said, as if that answered it all.

No he hadn’t, or he’d have realized I could be in real trouble here. I didn’t know what was coming after me, only that it wanted me in pieces. Heck, I’d seen it with my own eyes, thanks to my mother’s crazy bar. Now part of me was missing on the grounds, we couldn’t find it and I couldn’t get the man who was supposed to love me to take it seriously.

I felt so alone.

He placed a warm, strong hand on my leg. “Here’s what you need to do about this.”

Oh fun. Solutions. “Can you just listen and admit I’m in real trouble here?”

“Do you want to know what to do about it or not?”

I so wanted to say not . “Lay it on me, Merlin.” Not that I was going to like it.

He slid an arm around my waist. “Trust yourself.”

I sighed, refusing to lean against him the way I always did. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. “You’d better be glad I don’t have my switch stars.”

His fingers tightened on my hip. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

I turned to look at him. “How long have you known me?”

Okay, so it had only been a few months. Still, we’d been through a lot.

Dimitri nodded. “Very well.” He released me and stood. “I have something to show you,” he said, irony tingeing his voice as he reached into his dresser drawer and pulled out a Maglite. “We’re going on a field trip.”

I won. A grin tickled my lips. “Let me go get my switch stars.”

Dimitri grabbed his jeans.

We made our way through the darkened house to the even darker outside. Dimitri flipped on his light as we descended the thick, white steps at the front of the house. The Mediterranean air blew warm against our faces and the waves pounded the rocks below.

“This way,” he said, shining his beam onto a white rock path that wound away from the cliffs toward a break in the trees at the other side of the house.

The white stone soon gave way to the island soil, rocky and strewn with bits of shell and pumice stone. High trees rose on either side of us, their lean trunks built to sway in the harsh coastal winds.

We walked for several minutes, listening to the buzzing of insects and the tree branches swaying in the night. Abruptly, the trees ended, and we stood in a large clearing. Woodland rose up on all four sides and the moon shone down on the ruins of what looked to be an old church.

I stopped cold. I’d been here before.

This was the place from my vision.

Broken stones had tumbled until only the portions of the walls remained. Dark pink flowers and weeds grew from the crushed limestone benches, and trees had begun to invade the walls.

I’d seen the horror that would happen here.

The stones themselves seemed to glow with a light of their own.

Right now, it was a wildly beautiful place, arresting in its simplicity. But I knew.

“This is the clearing I saw,” I said, my voice hoarse.

Dimitri ran a hand down my back, lingering at the curve of my hip. “I was afraid of that.”

My heart began to pound, readying for battle.

“My family has held this land from the very beginning of time,” he said, as if he were talking about the Holy Grail.

“You have to be kidding,” I said, still trying to believe I was there, on the very spot I’d seen. Granted, I hadn’t caught a lot of detail while I watched myself, my chest torn and bloody, but I knew enough to be very, very scared.

“This is our gathering spot.” Dimitri walked toward the ruins and I followed. The moonlight slid over his back as he moved among the rocks. “The Helios clan is tied to the sun and sky,” he said, “but we are rooted in the earth of our home as well. This is a sacred place.”

I took care on the uneven ground. I could feel the power and the magic. It surrounded us. Important things happened here.

Yet if it was so vital, I couldn’t help wondering why it had been abandoned.

As if he knew what I was thinking, Dimitri said, “This was once an exquisite temple. This section here,” he said, leading me to a section where stones jutted out, fighting the encroachment of a cluster of bushes, “this was the base of a massive tower with a bronze bell that gleamed in the sun.”

He stood looking to the sky. Hundreds of stars shone above us. “I wish I could have seen it.”

“You never did?”

“Drawings. Pictures from the past,” he said, stepping closer, touching the rocks as if they might fall to pieces in his hands. “This building crumbled as my family did. When the curse came all of those years ago, we lost the ability to maintain our magic. This is not merely stone and plaster, but the heart of our family. With the death of my sisters, it would have collapsed to dust.” He paused, deep in thought, and then said almost on a whisper, “Now we have a chance.”

I kissed him on the arm.

He turned to me, his lips brushing mine. Dimitri was so strong, so determined.

“You’re not going to die, Lizzie.” He drew his fingers down my cheek. “You’re going to prosper. Here. With me.”

I wanted to believe that.

“We have a choice,” he said, studying me. “We decide.” He stood tall, gazing over his family lands. “Do you believe this place can be beautiful again?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said. This man could do anything.

He pulled away slightly, his hands cradling my chin and cheeks. “Why is it so easy for you to believe in me, and not in yourself?”

Heat snaked up my body. I didn’t know. I broke away and almost stumbled against a cool slab of stone that seemed to have weathered the ravages placed upon Dimitri’s family. “What is this?” It lay close to the ground. No weeds grew around it. It looked to be a small altar, whiter than the rest, with a carving of a sixteen-point sun etched into the front.

Dimitri crouched next to me. “This is a domato , which means home. We dedicate our power here.”

“So this is the source of your strength?” Here, in the open?

I wasn’t overly familiar with magical families, but that seemed strange even to me.

“No.” The sober weight of the word hung between us. “This is a place of sacrifice. It is also a place of great love. For generations, each member of my family has come here to receive their own portion of our Skye magic. These rocks around us,” he said, standing in the middle of all of them, “these are Skye stones.”

I felt myself frown. The jagged gray rocks littering the ground didn’t look anything like the beautiful aquamarine stone Dimitri kept locked in his office. The portion of his mother’s Skye stone had appeared as flawless as an uncut jewel. It was a wedge of power and possibility. These were just…rocks. Dirty ones.

Dimitri chose a stone and hefted it in his hand. “I should say that these will become Skye stones,” he said, placing the rock on the altar. “When a female member of my family reaches the age of six, she comes to this place. In the past, generations of our clan would gather and watch as the Argillos would choose a stone.” He paused. “Roughly translated, argillos is clay, something to be molded and perfected, turned into something more than it is. You understand?”