Angie Fox - ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

Oh great. Kill me to get to some guy I’ve never even met before.

Frieda tugged at her soot-stained corset top. “You okay, babe?” she asked Ant Eater, who nodded, face red, as she hunkered over to catch her breath. “Come on inside. Both of you. You’ll feel better after a shower and a change of clothes. Andrea and some of the wolves headed to the Goodwill in Monroe City.”

While Ant Eater shuffled inside, I turned to Frieda. “I’m sorry about these,” I said, rubbing at the leather pants she’d lent me. A hunk of gravel dislodged from the pants and clattered to the deck.

“Well,” she said watching the gravel bounce under a petrified towel, “like the saying goes: it’s not what you lose, it’s what you do with what you have left.”

“Who said that?” I asked, following her through the screened door. “Maya Angelou?”

“Oprah.”

Amazingly, the red smoke had whooshed away as fast as it had appeared. But dang, we’d sure made a wreck out of the place. Frieda helped me hoist the saggy brown couch upright. We planted Ant Eater on it. Frieda and a few of the younger witches helped me clean up the broken glass, then headed out, leaving me with a sleeping Ant Eater. I was about ready to take a break myself when Andrea the Annoying banged on the screened door. I don’t know why she bothered because she barged right in before I could invite her…or tell her to scram.

She stepped her high-heeled boots daintily around an overturned coffee table. “Heard about your accident.” She tried to contain a snigger but couldn’t. “Pity power struggles are always so messy. I wouldn’t want to end up on the wrong side of one. Bloody, bloody, bloody messes if you ask me.”

“Thanks for the sentiment. Now leave.”

“I brought you some new clothes. Alpha’s orders,” she said, dumping a bag on the floor.

I wondered what was behind the personal delivery.

She flipped her platinum blonde pageboy hair. “Good thing you didn’t kill Ant Eater,” she said, breezing over to the couch with a paper shopping bag. “We had to make a special trip to Leather Up for her. My boss has a thing for the ladies.”

Oh, this was getting old. “Pack up your fake boobs and your fake hair and your fake attitude and scram before I show you what I did to Ant Eater.”

Andrea opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again.

“Now,” I said.

“Enjoy your new clothes,” she grumbled, the trailer door banging on its hinges behind her.

I picked my way past broken glass to retrieve the bag. All things being equal, I would have rather collapsed in a chair and slept for a week. But I did need to get cleaned up, and we had a lot bigger problems than my lack of sleep. I had to learn everything I could once Dimitri hauled his butt back here. I’d given him power over me. It was as real as the teardrop emerald I wore. Now it was time for him to do something in return. He knew more about my powers than I did. It seemed like everybody did given the afternoon I’d had. And we’d need every power we possessed to get Grandma back.

At least I’d gotten something out of Ant Eater’s rampage. When I stopped worrying about myself and focused on the problem, I did get better at fighting her. Look to the outside .

An uncomfortable thought struck me. Perhaps Dimitri had been right to leave me on my own this afternoon. He’d given me a powerful instructor—me. I’d learned to trust my instincts. It was an unspoken kind of learning, a feeling that can’t be taught from the outside.

Accept the universe . I toyed with the plastic handles of the bag. I did get help in the form of a power I didn’t even know I had. And even though I still couldn’t pry it off, the helmet had come in handy against Ant Eater’s sword. While I was feeling brave, I looked inside the bag. Eek.

Inside, I found a pair of chewing-tobacco-stained men’s cleats and what could best be described as a mumu.

“What am I, Mrs. Roeper?” I griped to myself. Nobody else was listening. I held the nylon day dress out in front of me. Yellow birds paraded, beaks open, over a loud green-and-blue checkered background. It would have made an ugly tablecloth. As a sack-shaped dress? It was the most hideous thing I’d ever seen. Andrea had gotten the last word.

The last item in the bag—much to my relief—was a pair of granny panties. Those I could wear.

But I had bigger things to worry about than fashion. I took a shower and donned the mumu. It fit like a Hefty bag and was almost as attractive. I paired it with the scarf Frieda had used as a face mask. Lovely. At least the scarf around my waist gave me a hint of a figure, even if it was eerily reminiscent of a twist tie. I swung my arms. At least I could move in it.

I tugged on the cleats, along with the men’s gym socks I’d found rolled up inside. They were certainly more comfortable than my ruined oxfords and besides, they might help with my training. Athletes wore cleats when they threw baseballs. I’d wear them to hurl switch stars. Andrea, the tarnished angel of mercy, had actually given me a pretty good demon slayer outfit.

Pirate lifted his head. “Dimitri’s back.”

“Now how could you possibly know that?” I asked, moving toward the window.

“Doggy intuition,” he said, following me.

Darned if he wasn’t right. I pulled the dusty curtain aside and saw Dimitri and Scarlet pulling up in the Shoney’s parking lot. Well thank goodness. We had work to do.

I caught up with Dimitri—yummy in a clean black T-shirt and a pair of Levi’s 501s, having coffee at Shoney’s with a man who could have been Mr. T’s evil twin. The guy wore stacks of jewelry, and his foul temper made me want to take three steps back.

Dimitri raised a brow at my outfit. “Lizzie, this is Fang. He’s the alpha of the Blue Moon Pack.” He shook a packet of sugar into his coffee and stirred it, as nonchalant as if he were catching up with an old friend. I didn’t buy it for a second.

Fang, huh? So this was the wolf Rex needed to beat. Yikes. I hoped Fang held on to power long enough for us to rescue Grandma and get the heck out of Dodge. The large werewolf looked me over like I’d escaped from the loony bin. I hoped it was the outfit. “This is the slayer, huh? Not what I expected.” His eyes narrowed.

“I get that a lot,” I told him.

Dimitri patted the seat next to him, and I slid into the booth. This had disaster written all over it. If the Red Skulls didn’t need this guy’s protection, I would have been out of there faster than you could say “dead demon slayer.”

Fang leaned his meaty arms on the table. “The black souls hovering around here are a threat to my pack. Get rid of them by midnight tomorrow, or all bets are off.” He glared at us, clearly expecting a challenge.

Dimitri merely raised a brow. “Fair enough,” he said. His hand found mine and gave it a squeeze. “You ready, Lizzie?” I nodded, eerily unsure of what I’d just agreed to do.

Well thank God and hallelujah. I slipped two fingers into the delicately carved holes of the switch star. Think of it as a tricked-out Frisbee . The switch star was flat and round, about the shape of a small dinner plate. Five blades curled around the edge. They’d been dull in Dimitri’s hands. When I touched them, they glowed.

Dimitri guided my shoulders into position, his grip firm. “Remember your stance.”

The evening breeze whipped a few loose tendrils of hair into my face, tickling my nose. I resisted the urge to scratch and instead studied the target, a fifty-gallon plastic drum that had once held Grade A Lard, or so it said in industrial block letters on the side. Cliff and Hillary’s tip-top arteries would have clogged at the sight of it.