Angie Fox - ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

He gripped my shoulders—warm, demanding. “I suppose this would be the wrong time to inform you that you need me. I know you don’t trust me, and that’s fine. I haven’t earned that yet. But it is crucial that you look to me for guidance.”

Fat chance.

Even though Dimitri was a godsend while we were stuck here with a broken-down hog, I didn’t hold any illusions about him. He’d probably aired Grandma’s dirty laundry in order to chip us apart. It burned me to realize it had worked. I did doubt her. Well, enough to learn more.

Grandma’s boots crunched against the loose rocks on the side of the road. She whipped the towel from Dimitri’s shoulder and used it to wipe the sweat from her neck. “I’d say she’s clean enough, buster.”

Dimitri snapped to attention and leveled a steely-eyed gaze at Grandma. He pulled another clean towel from his back pocket. “This one’s for your dog. I think you’d better handle him.”

Pirate jammed his nose into the highway rocks at Dimitri’s feet. He circled, muttering to himself. “You say I never met you, but I know that smell. I could smell a German shepherd drug-sniffing dog to shame, that’s how good I can smell.”

“Pirate!” This time, he leaped into my arms, my cuts burning with the impact.

Pirate made a show of sniffing the air in front of Dimitri as I touched the damp cloth to Pirate’s back. “E-yow!” He scrambled to escape.

It was everything I could do to hold him down. The imps had sliced his back pretty bad. It hurt to look at it. One particularly deep scrape might even require stitches. I cleaned his back as well as I could, pain for my little doggy lodging in my throat. It was my fault this happened. I should have left him in Atlanta.

I looked up and found Dimitri watching me. Something flickered in his eyes. Understanding?

Grandma huffed. “So are we going to stand on the side of the road all night, or are we going to get the hell out of here?” My thoughts exactly.

Dimitri flipped a Milk-Bone to Pirate as my watchdog and I scooted into the backseat.

“Do you have a dog?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Dimitri replied, sparing a glance at my grandma.

The door thwumped closed and silence enveloped us. “I swear this backseat is bigger than my first apartment ,” I said, eyeing the gray leather interior.

“I still say something smells funny.” Pirate devoured the Milk-Bone and immediately began sniffing for crumbs.

Grandma rode with Dimitri in the front seat. If she was a cold-blooded murderer, I wondered what he’d done to get her goat. Something worse? While it was true I didn’t know the woman very well, she didn’t seem like the type to get offended easily. And while Dimitri might have told me one of Grandma’s secrets, both of them still had plenty of their own. Those two were hiding something. Grandma wasn’t surprised enough when he saved our butts. Or grateful enough. What did he have on us?

As soon as he started the car, they fell into a heated discussion. I tried to listen, but Dimitri turned up the radio. The only thing I could hear from the back of the car was Mick Jagger belting out “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Oh no. Not on my watch. I unbuckled my seat belt and shoved between the two front seats. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Grandma huffed. “Except for the fact you need instruction.”

“She needs to be safe,” Dimitri said, his eyes on the road.

“I can keep her safe,” Grandma declared.

“Oh yes,” he said, contempt dripping from his voice. “With troll hitmen after her.” He paused to let that sink in before he continued. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they unleashed the demons.”

Um, like Xerxes? Maybe Dimitri had a point.

Grandma shot me a keep quiet glare. Oh sure. Why shouldn’t I stay out of a conversation— about me?

My involvement pretty much ended the conversation. We tried to use the remainder of the journey to rest up. According to Grandma, we’d need it. The hum of the motor was a treat for my aching muscles. Pirate and I were asleep before Haleyville. We curled together in an easy slumber until the SUV started bouncing through a country side road with more holes than Augusta National.

I opened my eyes, my contacts fused to my corneas, and batted a muddy paw out of my face.

“The coven in Nashville would be a wiser choice,” said Dimitri.

Grandma huffed. “We haven’t been welcome there since Crazy Frieda clogged their pipes with water sprites back in ’92.”

I stared out the window at a small, main street. This wasn’t Memphis. It had to be one of the smaller towns on the outskirts. Worn, turn-of-the-century buildings housed a pawn shop, a barbeque joint and a few junk shops disguised as antique stores. We stopped in front of a bar called the Red Skull. Purple neon snaked up the side of the crimson front door. Beer signs suffocated the windows. The thump-thump of heavy-metal music was obvious even inside the car. Large black crows roosted in the twiggy trees that sprouted from breaks in the sidewalk. I could just imagine what we’d find inside.

“Here we are.” Grandma patted the seat back as she twisted around to see me. “Home for the next month or so. We live on the two floors above the Red Skull.”

“A heavy-metal bar?”

“Buck up, buttercup. The Red Skull is a happening place. Lenny named it after our red hat club.” She frowned. “You know, for gals fifty and over.”

“I thought you belonged to a biker gang.”

“What’s the difference?” She sidled out of the car.

“I smell cheeseburgers!” Pirate jumped over the seat and darted out behind her.

“Stay where we can see you!” I called to my dog, who chased the crows out of the trees. The birds beat their wings and squawked in protest.

When Grandma opened the door to the Red Skull, Iron Maiden’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” blasted us. She ushered us inside the dark hole of a bar. About thirty bikers, mostly women, crowded the pinball machines and pool tables. Cigar smoke burned my lungs.

“Gertie!” Wild shouts erupted and we found ourselves at the center of a group of leather-clad bodies. I stared at Grandma, who now had a cigarette dangling from her lower lip. Grandma Gertie? It just didn’t sound right.

I knew Dimitri stood behind me. I felt him. His presence put me on edge. I didn’t know what he wanted from Grandma or from me. The folks in the bar seemed to give him a wide berth. More than one gray-haired rider nodded solemnly to the man behind me before diving at Grandma with a whoop and a holler.

“Pay attention, princess.” Grandma slapped me on the back. “This is Ant Eater, Betty Two Sticks, Crazy Frieda…” I nodded at the parade of Red Skulls, knowing I’d never be able to keep the names and faces straight. Not tonight, at least. Although I did have to wonder how Crazy Frieda managed to glue rhinestones on the tips of her fake lashes.

Dimitri drew me against his hard chest. Oh my. The man had abs. “I need to see you,” he whispered, his breath hot against my ear. “Tonight.”

“Not until you tell me why.” In the last twelve hours, I’d been taken from my friends, my job, my home. I’d been stalked by imps, a griffin and a demon. Now I was stuck at a Red Hats biker bar five hundred miles from home where a seventy-year-old-plus woman named Ant Eater sat stuffing peanuts up her nose in a disturbingly successful attempt to impress a woman named Betty Two Sticks. I didn’t need to be playing games with Dimitri.

The crowd jostled us as Grandma hugged some friends and thumped others on the arm. I did my fair share of handshaking and smiling as I tried to ignore Dimitri and at the same time, hear something, anything these people said above the roar of the music.