Angie Fox - ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

I delivered a scalding look as I tried to button my white shirt. Hard to do when there were only two buttons left. I hurled the ruined shirt across the room.

“Okay. That’s not true. I admit it. In the beginning, I only needed a slayer. I’ve been training my whole life to defeat this curse, to save my sisters. You have no idea how rare your skills—” He shot me a guilty look. “How rare you are,” he corrected, a little too late. “When I sensed you , I went for you.”

“How long did you follow me?”

“Lizzie, let’s not get into this.”

“How long?” I demanded.

“About a week. I sensed your powers through your grandma. She would have found you sooner, but her emotions blocked her. She cared about you. I only wanted to find you.”

I’d asked for the truth. Too bad I never realized how bad it would hurt. But how could I have really prepared myself for him, or this?

“Vald wants you, Lizzie. Your grandma suspected. It’s probably why he took her.”

So now it really was my fault Grandma was burning in hell. “Well aren’t you full of sunshine and donkey feathers.”

“If a demon can harness power like yours, there’s a good chance he can break out of hell.”

“What? And walk the earth or something?”

“Yes,” Dimitri said.

“So technically, we’d be better off forgetting the whole thing.”

“What?”

I didn’t mean it. I’d said it just to shock him. But after I said it, the truth of it stuck with me. If I did go down there and fail, the world would be in much worse shape than it was now.

And who was I kidding? I probably needed Dimitri down there with me. He’d certainly up my odds of succeeding.

If I didn’t hate him.

I dunked his boxers in the soggy remains of last night’s ice bucket.

“What the hell are you—?” He rushed to rescue his drowning underwear.

“Let’s just assume I’m crazy enough to go and face Vald. How do I know you won’t bolt and leave me down there as soon as we save your precious sisters?”

“You can’t possibly think—”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said, ducking into the bathroom, finding his keys next to his wallet. I stuffed them both into my pants and yanked my hair into a ponytail. The griffin hairpin clattered to the floor and I left it there.

While he went to retrieve the hairpin, I threw his pants off the balcony. Since my shirt was ruined, I took his black T-shirt instead. I regretted it immediately. His musky scent overwhelmed my senses.

Damn the man.

But I wasn’t about to walk out in nothing but my bra. And make no mistake, I was leaving.

I threw my oxfords into the saddlebag and fired up the hog. The motorcycle shook and groaned, as if it was trying to throw me off. I squeezed the handlebars until my knuckles went white. Piece of cake . If I could ice Rex, save JR and battle a demon in my bathroom, I could do this.

Dimitri yelled something as he came tearing out of the room in dripping wet—and hopefully ice-cold—boxers.

Get out of my life .

I kicked the bike into gear. It lurched forward like a drunken horse. Didn’t matter. The only thing that counted was getting away, far away from him.

According to Dimitri, the Dixie Queen was a four-hour ride. Hopping mad, it took me just under three.

He’d lied to me, and I fell for it.

Was I that desperate for affection?

Yes.

If he’d been honest earlier, we might have stood a chance. Now? He could rot back there for all I cared. At least it would be finished tonight—for better or for worse. And if I survived hell, I’d make sure Pirate and I never saw these people again. I wasn’t stupid. There was probably more to Dimitri’s story—which I didn’t want to hear. And I knew there was a lot more to the story about my mom’s death—which I did want explain ed. The witches had known all about my mom and my grandma. You’d think they could have been honest too.

Scarlet stood guard over the entrance to the long dirt driveway leading to the mothballed riverboat. I punched the bike and hurtled past her. Liars, all of them. Pond cypress and black gum branches reached out to snag my arms and swamp maples twined over the road. The marshlands radiated wet warmth and I could smell the river in the air.

If Dimitri had waited to give me any last-minute instructions, he was out of luck. I knew he’d slither his way to the Dixie Queen eventually. But I wasn’t about to wait for him and I’d have a heck of a time listening to him now that I knew he was a two-faced lying jerk. Make that a using two-faced lying jerk. My stomach roiled at the mere thought of that man.

I swerved around a pothole and tried to think. Ant Eater could help set me up for tonight. I’d also duck into the Cave of Visions to try to contact Grandma. I didn’t know how much she’d be able to help me while Vald held her prisoner.

Past a row of overgrown buckeye bushes, the Dixie Queen riverboat lurched on its moorings. The Yazoo River rolled upon itself as it rushed downstream, but not enough to cause that kind of rocking. The boat’s rusted black smokestacks spewed a mustardy smoke and water poured out of the third floor in waves, like a wayward fountain. The clearing smelled like burned hair and dead animals. And—bad sign—the Red Skulls crowded the swampy ground out front. What had they done now?

The witches worked a crude assembly line in front of the boat. Frieda led a group as they scrubbed glass jars in several saddlebags filled with soapy water. Bob, with Pirate riding shotgun, transported the jars to Ant Eater and another group of witches, who seemed to be baiting them like traps.

“Lizzie! I’m here, Lizzie!” Pirate splashed through the puddles and leaped into my arms. I shut the hog off just in time to catch him and bury my face in the crook of his neck. Mmm…wet dog. My wet dog. I squeezed my puppy tight.

“You miss me? I missed you.” Pirate wriggled in my arms.

“What’s with the flooded boat?” I asked.

“Um, yeah. You might not want to mention that. Frieda is sensitive about that as it is. She tried to clear out some of the cobwebs with a wind spell and, well, you know how tricky that can be.”

I had no idea, but I’d take his word for it.

“Lizzie.” Ant Eater jogged over to me, as she unwrapped a fun-sized Snickers bar with her teeth and plunked it into the jar under her arm. “Glad to see you’re not dead.”

“Me too.”

She cocked a brow at my black T-shirt. Make that Dimitri’s shirt. The thing felt itchy all the sudden.

“Don’t ask,” I said.

“Wasn’t going to,” she replied, smacking the black leather cell phone holder attached to her hip.

I should have thrown Dimitri’s phone off the balcony along with his pants.

“Now stop farting around,” she said, heading back to the stack of jars. “We got a problem.”

“What do you mean you cursed the boat?” I asked as we stood at the edge of the Dixie Queen ’s rusty gangplank. The third-floor fountain splashed into the river on our right, tossing splatters of dull brown water that occasionally nipped at our legs and feet.

“Unscrew this.” Ant Eater handed me an airline bottle of Jack Daniels. I watched as she poured the whiskey into the jar with the Snickers bars. “We weren’t planning on coming back. So we booby-trapped the thing. Problem is, we were a little preoccupied.”

“Drunk on dandelion wine,” Bob added. I hadn’t even heard him pull up behind us.

Ant Eater sniffed. “And hell, it’s been twenty years.”

“So we’re not sure exactly what we booby-trapped.” Bob navigated over the bumpy ground between Ant Eater and me. He reached into a bag slung over the back of his wheelchair and pulled out a ziplock bag of—ohmigosh—tails. Ant Eater offered him the jar, and he dropped two tails inside.