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

“Thirty-seven,” Ant Eater said, making eyes at the fairy.

Oh please.

“We’ll find you a spot,” Dimitri said, ushering them into the house. “Now follow me if you want to eat.”

That did it. The biker witches paraded into the villa with the couth of a gaggle of five-year-olds on a field trip. I almost wished Dimitri had thrown them a picnic outside. Ant Eater tested out the banister on the main staircase and I cringed. Those snarling griffins carved into the ends had withstood decades of Dimitri’s family’s trauma. But surviving Ant Eater would be another challenge entirely.

“Stay away,” I told her, just as Frieda bumped a pink leather-clad hip against the potted fig by the doorway, sending it crashing to the floor.

Dimitri kissed me on the top of the head. “I love you,” he whispered, his breath tickling my ear.

“Why?” I asked him. We’d only known each other for a few months. I had a longer relationship with my sneakers, and now my whacked-out family was about to destroy the home he’d fought so hard to preserve.

He was a sacrificing individual, loyal to a fault. So far, I’d tainted his royal blood, replaced his steadfast griffin fiancée, whose family could no doubt help him through this crisis better than I could, and now Battina the witch was sliding down the banister of the grand staircase.

“Stop! Watch the—!” Too late. My head pounded as the moment seemed to freeze in time. Battina decapitated an antique griffin hand-carved by none other than Sir Nikkos Kallinikos. “Oh my God.” I buried my face in my hands. “Dimitri, I—”

“We’ll fix it,” he said, leading me and my nutso family deeper into his home. He deposited them in the dining room, where they feasted on MoonPies, Mountain Dew and pork rinds. Don’t ask me where Dimitri found it all.

“I’m so sorry,” I said as we watched Jan the Library Hag spit Mountain Dew out of her nose. “I was thinking of myself when I invited them here.”

I’d been thinking of myself way too much lately. I needed protection. I needed training. This man had given those things to me and I still wanted more.

My fingers found the emerald at my neck. It had become so much a part of me that I’d barely noticed it unless I wanted its protection. I was taking Dimitri—and everything else he’d given me—for granted.

The worst thing was, I had no idea what to do about it.

Ant Eater’s voice dragged me out of my thoughts. “Hey!” she called from the gardens. “I think I found a spot.”

We piled outside to find her pointing to a stone building beyond the rose garden. I’d barely noticed it before, as it was covered in vines. The building was made of the white stone common on the estate, with bronzed accents that had turned green with age.

Dimitri cleared his throat. “That’s the original house.”

“It’s nice,” Grandma murmured.

“No one has lived there in years,” Dimitri said, as the witches began milling around the building. “Half the rooms are underground, it has no kitchen and it’s most likely infested with brownies.”

“It sounds perfect!” Frieda squealed. She clapped her hands together as Grandma and Ant Eater started clearing vines away from the door.

“If you think this will work for you,” Dimitri said, helping them, “I have the key inside. We’ve been using this to store our family weapons arsenal.”

Ant Eater grinned. “This keeps getting better and better.”

Sidecar Bob piloted his wheelchair past me, with Pirate on his lap. “Come on, this’ll be like Sturgis in ’83.”

Pirate danced on his front paws. “I’ve never eaten Sturgis!”

“Do you really want to let them in there?” I asked, following Dimitri as he headed back to the house.

“They’re family,” he said, meaning tingeing his every word. “I have a responsibility.”

“Responsibility my foot,” I said as I watched him go.

He was about to have a garden full of holes.

I crossed my arms over my chest. Was that what I was to him as well? A responsibility?

Come to think of it, most of our relationship had been based on a certain tit for tat. He needed me to help his sisters, and I had. Now he owed it to me to find the dark-haired woman. Give some here, take some there.

But what about after that? Did we have anything else in common?

As if proving my point, a half dozen biker witches stomped through the rosebushes with Amara hot on their tail. I admired her dedication.

Somebody had to keep this estate in one piece.

“You’re right,” Ant Eater said to the three witches behind her. “There doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.”

Amara dug a rock from her sandal, her cheeks pink from exertion. “It’s a sundial fountain, symbolizing the marriage of sun and sea.” She pointed to a bronze, sixteenpointed sun at the top of the fountain. “The sun of Vergina is for the virgin goddess Athena, pure until she mates for life. The trident,” she said, dipping her fingers into the bowl at the base of the fountain, “is for the sea god Poseidon. He was one of the original caretakers of the oracle at Delphi, and hence, many sea griffins possess psychic abilities.”

Amara might as well have been speaking Chinese.

Ant Eater shook her head. “It’ll have to go.”

That’s when I noticed Amara’s dress was still snagged on her pink bra. Her black hair frizzed around her face and she looked about as on edge as I felt.

Amara drew up to her full height. “This was an engagement gift from my family.”

Ant Eater shrugged. “It’s also in the way.”

“Of what?” she pleaded.

“Demon slayer training,” Ant Eater said proudly.

Oh no. We did not need to train in roses that had been here since Jason got together with the Argonauts.

“This is the perfect spot,” Ant Eater said, yanking on the pergola. “What is this? Twelve feet?”

“You can’t tear that down,” I protested.

The witch looked at me like I was the crazy one. “Of course not. This is where you learn how to pass your levitation test.”

She had to be kidding. “I’m not getting up on top of that.”

“Well, not right now.” Ant Eater shrugged.

“Look at this!” Grandma emerged from the stone house with a medieval battle-ax. She gave it a swing, taking out the tops of two rosebushes and nearly blowing Sidecar Bob’s tire. “Isn’t she a beaut?”

No. This was getting out of control. “You could chop an arm off with that thing!”

“Oh, more than that.” Ant Eater grinned, her gold tooth glinting in the sun.

“And how did you get in?”

“Magic.”

“You should have waited for the key. This is Dimitri’s home.” This was his life. He’d risked everything to make a place for himself here.

I glanced back at the porch door. Just where is Dimitri, anyway? It couldn’t take him that long to find the key. He was probably hiding the breakables, stowing the liquor and wondering what the heck he was thinking by bringing us here.

I stalked down the porch and through the rose garden, determined to save as much of the place as I could.

“Well geez, Lizzie. Don’t you want to be trained?” Grandma asked.

“Yes,” I said. Of course. I needed all of the control I could get right now. Still, I didn’t think we needed to tear apart the estate. “We need to put this back in—oh Sheboygan.” I ducked into the white stone house and found an arsenal.

A huge wooden rack of sabers, war hammers and swords lined one wall, with another entire wall for shields and armor. I sneezed. The place reeked of metal and dust.

Scale armor lay in heaps on the floor next to immense bronze breastplates and leg plates. No doubt they’d been meant for griffins. I also counted two catapults, a war scythe the size of an ox and even a battered iron cage. And that’s only what I could see. There were hardly any windows in the place.