Angie Fox - ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

We stood far back from the village of trailers that dotted the grassland behind Shoney’s. In theory, we were at least a football field away from prying eyes. In reality, several of the werewolves had followed us to the training grounds. They’d pulled up a few ramshackle sofas and chairs and, of course, Andrea perched on the end of the shabby gold divan closest to Dimitri. She wore a leather bustier overflowing with cleavage and had kept busy painting her nails and flirting loudly with every werewolf within a half mile.

Like I cared. She was small potatoes compared to what Grandma was going through. Scarlet had spent the afternoon in the nearest thing she could find to a Yardsaver shed, an empty Dumpster back behind the restaurant. She’d reported Grandma was still trapped in the first layer of hell, holding on with everything she had, fighting Vald as he tried to suck her down into the second level with him. I had to get Grandma out of there.

The witches had gathered in the nearby woods for a purification and strengthening ceremony. Seems I wasn’t invited to that one.

“Give me some space,” I told Dimitri.

I eyed Pirate, sitting obediently on Sidecar Bob’s lap. Pirate liked to holler out words of encouragement right as I was throwing. “And you hush now, Pirate,” I said, drawing back to throw. He wouldn’t last a minute on a golf course.

“Me? I didn’t say a word. Except to wish you good luck. What’s the matter with good luck? You could use some luck right now.”

I brought my throwing arm down, refocused. A little bit of magic wouldn’t hurt either. Look to the outside . Accept the universe. Sacrifice yourself . As much as I wanted to save Grandma, I wasn’t too crazy about that last one.

The star felt weightless in my hand. I can do this . I had to. I was the only one who could kill a demon. Once I figured out my switch stars. I whipped the star back and fired it toward the target.

“Incoming!” Pirate hollered. The witches scattered as my switch star hurtled toward their sacred circle. Blast! I cringed as it crashed right through one oak tree, then another, and another, cleaving the tops right off.

“Watch it!” I yelled as tree limbs rained down on the coven.

The switch star circled high in the air like a boomerang and plunged straight for my head, its razor-sharp blades a whirl of lightning. I ducked. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. The star smacked into Dimitri with a dull thud. I glanced back. He didn’t look happy.

Andrea’s laughter rang out, clear and bright, above the guffaws of the other werewolves.

Dimitri towered above me, my star spinning like a record on his finger. The look on his face reminded me of the perpetual knitted eyebrows of my high school driver’s ed teacher, Mr. Wickler.

Sidecar Bob’s wheelchair crunched over the discarded plastic cups and empty beer cans littering the ground. “You got some distance on that last one.” He shook his head. “They’ll just have to remember, no matter how bad it looks, you are the fated slayer.” He tugged on his gray goatee for a moment. “You are the slayer, right?”

“So they say,” I told him. “You should have been there this afternoon.” If that hadn’t proved I was up to the job, nothing would. I’d shown I could live through a death spell. Of course in the last half hour, I’d also managed to decapitate the Shoney’s Big Boy. No getting around it. Those switch stars were unpredictable. According to legend, I was supposed to be a natural at this. My Great-great, (however many Greats) Aunt Evie had practically popped out of the womb throwing switch stars.

I blew out a breath. Focus .

Dimitri pulled me aside, taking me several yards into the target range. He stood close, his face earnest. “Okay, tell me what you were thinking on that one.”

No doubt, he expected a pithy answer. Well, I was too frustrated to wax poetic.

“Lizzie,” he said intently, rubbing his palms up and down my arms, as if he could draw it out of me. “Reach deep down. You’re hiding.”

He didn’t know the half of it.

Dimitri wrapped a finger around a section of my hair, half-mashed to my head from my exertions this afternoon. He rubbed it between his fingers like it, I, was something special. “You can do it, Lizzie. You just need to let go. Sacrifice yourself.”

Despite myself, I felt his touch wind through my body.

I nodded. I had to get this by tomorrow night. We had to do the job for the werewolves in less than twenty-four hours. Please let me be ready .

Grandma was suffering, and it was my fault. If I’d done their ceremony right and let the witches bind themselves to me and my out-of-control powers, they might have felt Vald creeping up on them. I don’t know how much help I would have been against a fifth-level demon, but they would have had a better shot of getting out of there. As it stood, three witches had been killed and—I shuddered to think—drained of their souls. Grandma could be next. I had to figure this out.

Dimitri, despite his deliciousness, had refused to tell me what else he’d found back at the Red Skull. Or, for that matter, why he’d been so prepared to swoop in and save me from Vald. I pulled another switch star from the hanging plant hook I’d jammed onto my scarf-belt. The switch star’s blades radiated and spun. I clutched my fingers until I felt them dig into the metal holes. I drew back, fired. The star flashed through the air and dropped to the ground like a dead weight. It sprayed a shower of dirt and grass about ten feet in front of me.

I held my breath as a wave of dust blew over us. In the moment’s calm, I distinctly heard one werewolf say to another, “I think she’s getting worse.” I would have been insulted if I hadn’t feared they were right.

Let go. Sacrifice yourself .

I didn’t know how.

“Again,” Dimitri said.

I nodded, and reached for another star.

Scarlet climbed out of the Dumpster after another session with Grandma. Behind her, the sun cast purple shadows over the horizon. Her red hair stuck together, stringy and greasy. Her T-shirt, wet with sweat, clung to her curves and hitched under her bra straps. And, phew, she no doubt smelled like the Deluxe Sanitation Master she’d been calling home lately.

I’d hidden behind a moldy refrigerator, the largest piece of junk I could find among the discarded tires and sinks and other debris crowding the grounds. Scarlet had been channeling the first layer of hell for a good chunk of the day. The witches had been tight-lipped about what she’d discovered. With Ant Eater in charge, I was firmly out of the loop.

I watched Scarlet walk inside the Shoney’s and meet Frieda at one of the back booths, within view of the Dumpster. Blast it. I stretched my cramped legs as far as I could without standing up. The witches’ chicken fingers baskets arrived right away. Frieda must have ordered early.

This was it. I’d have to make do with the time I had.

Back at the Red Skull, I’d never made it into the Yardsaver to confess to Grandma that I didn’t take the potion. Now, I had even bigger problems and no Grandma. I was dying to know what Scarlet had been doing in there. Not that I expected to conjure up whatever these witches did in the Cave of Visions. But if there was a tiny bit of my grandma in there…

I clambered up on a stack of wooden produce flats and slipped inside the rotting Dumpster. If I thought the acrid smell of garbage burned my nose from the outside—jiminey Christmas—try standing on the stuff. I cringed as I sank down to my ankles in the remains of this morning’s Rootin’ Tootin’ Breakfast Buffet. The back of my mouth watered. Don’t heave . I didn’t know how Scarlet did it.