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

He touched my shoulder. “I’m trying to let you in, Lizzie. In the past, I’ve wanted to do things on my own. I was alone. Now I want to include you.”

And Amara. I didn’t say it, but he knew what I was thinking.

“I’d ask you to come,” he said, “but it would be unwise for you to leave the estate right now. You’re needed here.”

“I know.” Not to mention the fact that the Dominos clan would probably be about as eager to meet me as Amara had been. They were the ones who had arranged for those two to be married.

“You have to go. With her. I don’t like it”—that was the understatement of the year—“but I understand.”

Now it was up to me to keep his estate in one piece when everything seemed to be coming down around my ears.

He kissed me long and deep. “I love you, Lizzie.”

I felt him down to my toes. “I know,” I said, scrunching my fingers against his black T-shirt, watching it fold up under them. “I wanted this to be our vacation, a time for us to get to know each other better.”

“We’ll have our time. Soon,” he rumbled against my fingers.

I wished that were true, but I didn’t know what to count on anymore. I had my whole life planned out before I became a demon slayer. Now I was grateful to make it through an afternoon.

But I could depend on Dimitri—strong, loyal Dimitri. If only I could spend a week with him without someone’s life being on the line. Could we even be a normal couple? Where would a guy like him take me on a date?

What would it be like to simply talk?

I tilted my head up. “We’ve spent our entire time together running from one disaster to the next.”

He nodded. “And now it’s followed us.”

“Do you realize we’ve never even been on a date?”

He thought about it. “What about the time I cooked dinner for you at the Hairy Hog biker bar?”

He’d turned hamburger patties and mac and cheese into a poor man’s version of pastitsio. It had actually been delicious, eaten on a picnic blanket out back. But that wasn’t a real date or any real time alone.

“Our life is what it is,” he concluded. “It’s not as if we don’t know each other. It’s not like I don’t feel what I feel for you.”

I couldn’t argue there. The man had ignored his estate in order to battle demons with me in Las Vegas. He’d gone to hell and back with me. Now I come to find he’d compromised his relationship with the only clan powerful enough to help him save his family.

“You are my world,” he said, drawing me into his arms. “But I have to go. The Dominos council is assembled and waiting for us.”

“How long will you and Amara be gone?” I asked, his chest warm against my cheek.

“Not long—I hope.”

Me too.

Dimitri lowered his mouth to mine for a toe-curling kiss. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered, nipping at my lower lip.

With a twinge of regret, I realized I hadn’t appreciated Dimitri enough lately. Everything he’d done since I met him had been to help me or someone else, yet it always seemed like somebody wanted more.

Well, not this time.

I’d let him go with Amara. I refused to be jealous. Instead, I’d spend the time training to be a better slayer. I’d help him save his home and I’d try to look at things from his perspective.

It was about time I put him first.

“Lizzie!” I heard a voice call from outside. There was a banging at the door.

Oh geez. It was starting already.

I opened it and was about flattened by a blast of rock music. “Heaven’s on Fire” pounded through the house.

No kidding.

Frieda stood outside. “Lizzie, your dog is looking for you!”

“I have to go anyway,” Dimitri said.

Yes, but did it have to be now?

He kissed me briefly once, twice. I shuddered at the thought of letting him go. I sank into him as he ran a thumb along my chin, tilting my head back for a kiss that left no doubt he’d be thinking of me, that night and every night.

Dimitri broke away slowly and, with a nod to Frieda, left the library.

I followed him out as Pirate dashed out the back hallway, skidded past the staircase and ran paws first into the back of my knee. “Ow!”

Pirate continued his assault on anything he could reach. “Lizzie! Come quick—it’s alive!”

“What’s alive?”

Pirate danced like he was on a hot plate. “My momma always said, ‘You’re a dog. You have instincts.’ And I knew something was up with that egg. I just knew it.”

This sounded like something I didn’t need. “Egg?”

“Go,” Dimitri said, his lips brushing mine one last time. “They need you here, and so do I.”

“I love you,” I said as he walked out the door.

Pirate yipped. “Now don’t tell me you don’t remember because you’re the one who said to be gentle with it and I was gentle with it and it’s a good thing because it’s alive!”

Holy smokes. “Where?”

“Follow the bloodhound!” he said, dashing out into the foyer.

“You’re not a bloodhound,” I said, trying to keep up.

“I always thought I had some in me,” he said, nose to the ground as he made quick work of the foyer, then bounded up the stairs two at a time and dashed down the second-floor hallway. To Pirate’s credit, he did not stop for crumbs, biker witches or the flickering rays of colored light cast by the stained-glass sconces lining the hall.

“This way!” he said, leading me straight to the door of our guest room.

Oh no.

I opened the door to my room to find it blessedly intact, save for the sticks and grass littering the area in front of my bed. Then I noticed the smooth yellow rock inside my brand-new backup pair of silver Adidas cross-trainers.

“What did you do?” I asked, lifting the tennis shoe. I thought we were beyond destroying things.

“I tried to make a nest like a mama bird, but I figured your shoe would be warmer.”

“Nest?” I repeated, my mind working on the problem. “For a rock.”

My instincts had led me to a rock on a cliff face. Not an egg or a nest or whatever Pirate thought I’d found.

He’d lined my shoe heel with mud-caked grass and twigs and—

“What is that smell?” Like burned rubber and gasoline.

The rock shook and I nearly dropped the thing. Holy cow, it was alive.

“See?” Pirate scratched at my legs. “Bob taught me a new word, wicked cool , and I’ll say it right now. That egg is wicked cool.”

“Stand back,” I said, depositing the shoe on the ceramic-tile floor between the bed and the dresser. I’d found this thing the night we’d gone out searching for threats. Just because my demon slayer radar had gone off didn’t mean it was evil. In fact, I wasn’t detecting any malice right now, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

I pulled out a switch star.

I’d had enough things try to kill me in the last month. It paid to be cautious. Of course, Pirate didn’t listen. He danced in circles around my abused tennis shoe, the tags on his collar jingling.

Smoke curled from the egg where a white claw began peeking through. “It’s not a beak,” I said, taking an extra step back.

“It’s a tooth!” Pirate said, beside himself with excitement. I hadn’t seen him go this crazy since the time I’d baked him a dog-biscuit cake for his birthday.

Pirate was right. A full set of teeth poked out, followed by a slimy head, a scaly ridged back and a set of wet, folded wings. Pirate rushed for it, his nose inches from the thing’s head. “It’s a lizard!”

“I think it’s a dragon,” I said, more than a little shocked as it flopped out of my tennis shoe. I don’t know why anything should have surprised me at that point.