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

“I’m giving you the chance to truly levitate.”

“Or fall on my head.” It was a good thing I couldn’t see exactly what was down there.

“Trust yourself,” he said, tracing a hand down my cheek. “The battle is about to begin. I can feel it.”

I could too, like a promise in the air.

“I know you’re ready,” he said. “You need to feel it too.”

“Or die trying.”

But I knew he had my back. In this last test, before the ultimate showdown, I had a griffin to catch my fall. And that gave me the courage to make the final leap.

I shimmied out until I was sitting with my palms grating into the broken stone and my legs dangling over the rock cliff. I took a deep breath, lifted a booted foot over the abyss and pushed myself off into thin air.

As the wind rushed past and the ground surged up to meet me, I didn’t think about falling. Instead, I focused on floating. I gave in to the weightless feeling, the surety that I could and would do this. I was a demon slayer in charge of my own destiny. The air caught me, and inch by inch, foot by foot, I lowered myself to the ground.

As my toes met the sharp rock, I couldn’t help grinning. Ever since I’d gained my powers, I acted on instinct. Today felt like a choice.

My favorite griffin landed beyond the old stream in a tangle of wildflowers. He was a sight for the ages—his raw power and strength under a full moon. He immediately shifted again, his feathers retracting, his body remolding itself, but not before I spied his jeans and T-shirt tied to his back leg and the laces of his combat boots hooked around an immense lion’s paw.

The rock crunched like broken glass under my boots as I made my way for softer ground.

“Taking cues from your sister?” I asked as he slid the jeans over his hips.

“Don’t tell,” he said, reaching for his shirt, “or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

We cut through the gardens and found Rachmort outside the stone armory, inspecting an enormous heap of bronze armor with an instrument that could best be described as superlong binoculars. The immense griffin breastplates, shields and gauntlets were stacked like an American Indian tepee with an engraved griffin helmet at the top.

Rachmort nudged a finger into the pile. “There,” he said to a spiky-haired biker witch with a blowtorch.

Oh no. It was Hawk.

She liked to blow things up.

“No explosions!” I hollered, breaking into a run. We were too close to Dimitri’s house and gardens and…

“Chill out, demon slayer.” Hawk lowered a pair of silver welding glasses as she fired up a hot blue flame. “We’re constructing, not destructing.”

That was debatable, to say the least.

Hawk put the torch to the metal and went to work, sparks flying. That’s when I saw the Greek sun of Vergina on Dimitri’s family crest. Holy moley. It was the Helios clan armor.

Using a breastplate as a kettle was one thing—destroying it was quite another.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, too far away to stop them as generations of griffin armor went up in sparks.

“Final touches on the cave of visions,” Grandma said, trotting up to me, her headlamp nearly blinding me. She held up a ripped piece of cardboard. On closer inspection, it was the side of a case of Southern Comfort. “See?” she said, pointing to a set of crude drawings. “We’re building it like a tepee.”

It looked more like a mess.

I groaned as Hawk began melting a priceless engraved neckpiece into a lump of mortar.

Dimitri placed an arm around me. “My ancestors infused those weapons with ancient griffin magic. They hold power that has only grown stronger in the generations since. Why wouldn’t we want to use that now?”

“ We ? I was thinking more like you. ” I stared as Hawk began slicing a door through a battered shield with ancient Greek writing. It had to be at least a thousand years old.

Dimitri didn’t flinch. “They’re materials, Lizzie. Tools. We’d be crazy not to use them right now.”

“Says the man who did not grow up in a house where we weren’t even allowed to use the good hand towels.” My adoptive mom would have had a fit if she’d seen this.

I forced my eyes away. I couldn’t look. Besides, we had bigger problems.

Grandma and Frieda took over the task of making the hulk of metal leakproof, while Dimitri and I took Rachmort aside. We told him about the other demon slayer. The old necromancer’s eyes widened as I explained how the evil one was connected to me.

“A doppelgänger,” he whispered, almost to himself.

“What do we do about it?” I demanded.

“Finish sealing the cave,” he ordered as he flung open a shield at the front of the pile of armor. It smacked up against a breastplate with an audible bong .

I stole a final glance at Dimitri. “You can do this,” he told me.

“Of course,” I replied. The only other time I’d attempted to commune with my destiny in the cave of visions, I’d been taken prisoner by a soul-stealing she-demon. This time had to be better, right?

Hawk slammed the door and started up the blowtorch on the other side.

“You’re not sealing us in,” I protested.

“Nah.” I heard a muffled voice from the outside. “Just saw a crack.”

Lovely. I breathed the metallic tinge of flame-broiled heirlooms and methane.

Moving away from the door, I tried not to focus on the sparks dropping onto the ground behind us. A few faint streams of the coming dawn filtered into the structure, but for the most part, we were in the dark.

“Come,” Rachmort said, sitting down cross-legged in the center of the structure. “I fear an attack is imminent. I’ve emptied my evil-creatures trap twice today.”

“Imps?”

“Pixies.”

I settled myself on the ground across from him. I’d never actually seen a pixie, and that was fine by me.

He took my hands and gripped them tight. “Let us see exactly what is behind this other demon slayer.”

“We can do that?” I asked.

In the near dark, Rachmort reminded me of a wizard, his eyes burning with excitement, his white hair wild about his face, his pockets glowing with heaven knows what. He drew me closer. “We can do so much more than you ever imagined.”

I didn’t doubt it. In the short time I’d known this man, he’d helped me focus my powers, taught me how to levitate and informed me I must be uncomfortable in my own skin before I could grow. I must have been growing out of my supernatural hide right about then.

An otherworldly breeze touched us as we focused our powers. I almost hated to ask, but…

“Where’s the goat skull?” We always had Grandma’s dead goat in the cave of visions.

“You do not need any necromantic touches with me,” he murmured, eyes closed.

“Goldfish?” I asked.

“You are not alone, Lizzie. We will protect each other.”

Good point. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced my worries about Dimitri’s home, the destruction of the Skye stones and my own future out of my mind. Instead, I focused on the power of this place. I let it seep through me, work its way inside me, until I was filled with possibility.

That’s when the temperature plunged. Goose bumps skittered down my arms. The frigid air chilled me as my breath quickened and every hair on my body stood on end.

Rachmort uttered a low sound. “Do you see her?”

“No,” I said, my own breath warm against my face.

“Look harder,” he murmured.

I focused everything I had on the woman from the woods, how the mere sight of her made my heart drop and my skin crawl. She was evil incarnate, and as the veil dropped in my mind, I saw her.

She wore a twisted smile, along with my purple prairie clover bustier and black leather pants. And she stood in my room . My eyes flew open “Pirate!”