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

Afterward, he held me for a long time as we lay in the soft grass and watched the stars.

“I can’t believe we did this,” I said, tracing the outline of his chest. “Here.”

He chuckled. “I can’t think of anything more life affirming.”

“Mmm…you could call it that.” I found myself enjoying the quiet camaraderie. “Magical too.”

Dimitri kissed me on the head. “This is a place of old power, a site of great importance that we call the Callidora.”

My stomach clenched. Heart pounding, I remembered the prophecy.

She will be lost at the Callidora, the first time in joy, the second time in death.

Sweet heavens. I bolted upright. “It’s coming true already.”

Dimitri leaned back on his elbows, a few stray twigs in his hair giving him the wild-man look. “Haven’t you listened to anything I said?”

“Of course I did.” I was in control of what happened to me. I could choose where to go, how to act. “And then you said ‘Callidora.’ ”

One word and I was back on a collision course with destiny.

I stood, straightening my dress and brushing the dried grass from my arms and legs. I still ached from where he’d entered me.

Dimitri rose as well, not even bothering to cover himself. “Are you going to believe me or something you read in a dead woman’s journal?”

Oh, so Alana was dead too. It didn’t seem like people lived too long around here.

“I’m going back to the house.” I turned to leave, stumbling over a section of buried ruins and more than one ugly rock/future Skye stone. I didn’t even bother with the Maglite as I made my way over the uneven ground. I’d be much safer after I left the Callidora.

A small animal skittered into the underbrush as I found the trail. The air was thick with insect calls and the earthy scent of thick trees and scrub. Dimitri joined me, tugging on his jeans as he caught up. He didn’t say anything as we walked. Worse, his belt hung open and he’d left his top two buttons undone.

He held the Maglite near his waist. In the reflected glow, I could see his well-muscled stomach and the narrow strip of hair that trailed from his navel all the way down to the promised land.

Some might have thought it was sexy. And it was. Except the whole situation had me on edge. Well, that and the fact that a part of me wanted to button those pants all the way. Leaving anything half-done drove me a little bonkers.

“Talk to me,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “Okay, but no more advice about what I should do. I have to work this out my own way.”

He nodded. “Of course.” I knew what this was costing him, which made me appreciate the company even more.

I wanted to learn more about the threat against me. Perhaps then I could do something about it. I had a feeling I could gain even more from Alana’s journal, if I could only pinpoint how else to use it.

“Was Amara’s mother powerful?” I asked.

Rocks crunched under my sandals. Dimitri had taken a keen interest in the path ahead of us. His flashlight bobbed over the trail. “From what I’ve heard,” he said, the words coming slow, “Amara’s mother had a gift.”

“I see.” It made sense. These things were often passed down, and Amara had sure known enough to get out of the way of those imps.

“Lizzie,” he said, as if he knew where my mind was going. “A threat has no power. Things have been trying to kill us from the first moment I met you. Remember that mercenary water nymph? What about the angry werewolves? The sex-crazed she-demons?”

“Not to mention the hellhounds.”

“And yesterday’s imps. We could have died many times over and we didn’t.”

Okay, he had a point. Still, it was as though all of the pieces were coming together. “What if this is the time they get us?”

“What if it’s not?” he demanded.

I shook my head, wishing I could explain. My demon slayer senses might not be going off, but there was a palpable danger around us. I couldn’t quite picture what was going to happen next. We didn’t have enough information. But I knew it was going to be big—and bad for me.

Dimitri, in true male fashion, wanted everything to be black-and-white. If it hadn’t been obvious from the way he walked, shoulders back, head raised, I could just as easily have heard it in the way he ground out each and every word. “I don’t believe in prophecies,” he said. “I believe in free will.” He stepped in front of me and I nearly ran straight into him. He stood looking down at me, a thunderstorm of determination. “If I’d listened to prophecies, my sisters would be dead. They were fated to die and I did something about it.”

“You don’t believe at all.” It was more of a statement than a question.

“The danger in any kind of oracle is when we make it our only possibility. It’s not. Our fate is in our hands, Lizzie. Not in someone else’s.” He took me by the chin. “You of all people should know that.”

Frankly, I didn’t know what to think. Dimitri had changed his family’s fate. He’d stood up for his sisters when no one else could, and he’d been willing to go to hell and back to do it. I admired his courage. I was darned glad to have him on my side now, but at least he’d had an enemy to fight. He knew he needed a slayer to defeat Vald, and he’d found me. I, on the other hand, didn’t know what I was up against or where the danger would come from.

I was about to tell him when a powerful dread hit me. I reached for my switch stars.

It was coming from directly above us. The black sky shimmered with stars.

I screamed as a searing pain tore through me, forcing me to my knees.

“Lizzie!” Dimitri caught me before my face hit the ground. I dug my fingers into his sides as fire burned me from the inside.

Lightning ripped across the sky, and thunder boomed. I held tight to Dimitri, fighting through the pain.

“Theoi!” Dimitri dove sideways with me as lightning struck the ground to our right.

The resounding boom nearly deafened me. I clutched him with everything I had as energy raced down my arms. It hurt to breathe.

“I’ve got you.” Dimitri grated, surrounding me, a rock in the storm. I pressed my cheek against him and gave in to it.

It took everything I had to simply survive.

I don’t know how long I held on to him before the horror began to fade. I braced myself against him and pushed my sweat-soaked hair out of my eyes.

“Lizzie?”

I swallowed, trying to find my voice.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

Dimitri didn’t say anything. He just held me as we watched a pea green vapor leach across the sky. It advanced like an invading army, obliterating everything in its path.

An empty chill bled through me. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Dimitri rested his chin on my shoulder. “I’m not going to let anything get you,” he said.

I pressed even closer to him. “I think it already has.”

We sat that way for heaven knows how long as the sky melted into brownish green sludge. It blocked the stars and the moon, throwing us into an eerie darkness. Worse. Even as I regained some of my strength, I felt something shift inside me.

“They used it,” I said, the enormity of it burning in my chest. “They used that piece of me.”

Dimitri gripped me tighter. “I know.”

I pushed away from him before he could start blaming himself again. We didn’t need introspection. We needed action. If only my body would cooperate.

Legs wobbly, I stood and placed a shaking hand on my switch stars.

I had to do something .

It was as if I was about to tip over the edge into the abyss and was powerless to stop it. I had to wait, stomach churning, head light. My enemies had struck and there was still no one to fight.