Angie Fox - ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

The place reminded me of a high school chemistry lab, if your teacher happened to be Dr. Frankenstein. A web of blue energy crackled above the cluttered dissection tables and industrial countertops. Scattered across it—ohmigod—weasel-faced imps twitched as if they were being broiled alive. They couldn’t be. Please. Because they’d each been chopped into bits and reassembled, some more precisely than others. My insides squelched at one pieced-together imp in particular, the right half of its body plump and covered in mottled black fur. The other half, thinner, graying and not quite joined at the head. Brain matter jiggled inside the raw wound, oozing with every tremor of the electric current. I drew my right boot across the floor and felt a slippery squish.

“Step back,” a crisp voice commanded.

Vald. I knew it in my demon-slaying gut.

I braced myself at the sight of the fifth-level demon. He looked human—his sandy hair slicked back as he hunched over his notes in the far corner of the room. He’d buried his work nook behind swords in various states of decay, half-assembled switch stars and giant, free-standing aquariums full of creatures like the ones I’d seen behind the ice. Xerxes hissed from on top of an aquarium next to the doctor, spittle clinging to his chin. I reached for my last switch star.

Vald tossed his chart on the counter and eyed me like one of his experiments. “What did I just say?” He wore a pressed white lab coat freckled with burn holes and blood. The slight wrinkles on his forehead deepened as he frowned. “Impatience. The curse of youth.”

“Vald?” I demanded.

“Ah, Lizzie. I know you. You know me.” He reached into his coat pocket and fed the snarling Xerxes. “And I know you’ve met my demon,” he said, rubbing his fingers over the creature’s snout.

My breath caught in my throat as Vald strolled leisurely toward me. “I almost feel sorry for you. You obviously haven’t researched or you wouldn’t be down here.” He stiffened. “And you,” he said to Dimitri, who had been silently making his way behind Vald, his ancient bronze dagger in hand. “You need to stop taking everything so personally.”

I’d like to see that dagger buried in Vald once and for all. I didn’t know how much time we had to save Dimitri’s sisters, but it wasn’t much. Then we had to find Grandma’s soul somewhere among the shelves of chemicals and metal pens carpeted with noxious growths. “Release Grandma and end the curse on Dimitri’s family, or I kill you right now.”

“You don’t have the power.”

I cast a switch star straight for Vald’s heart. It had to kill him. Please. If he exploded into a zillion Valds instead…

The star sliced the demon’s head clean off. Hallelujah…holy hell! Xerxes leapt at me and I dove behind a giant aquarium.

The switch star zoomed back to me—too late. Xerxes tackled me and it zipped clear over my head. His weight suffocated me. His sulfuric breath burned me as he reared back to attack. I struggled like an overturned June bug.

Dimitri hollered somewhere behind Xerxes. Now!

The sub-demon buzzed like a defective television and disappeared with a pop. The air sizzled with energy, numbing my fingertips and—as soon as I tried to speak—my tongue. “What the…?”

Dimitri yanked his bronze knife back. He turned and thrust it into Vald’s chest. Dimitri twisted the jeweled handle and shoved hard, burying it to the hilt.

Vald’s head lay under an autopsy table several feet away, unblinking and—if I didn’t know better—hacked off.

Dimitri stood over the dead demon, his back muscles pulsing like an athlete’s after competition. Black sludge bubbled from Vald’s chest. I could taste the sulfur in the air.

I moved to stand next to Dimitri, not quite knowing what to say. I wrapped my arm around his bare hip and took comfort in the feel of skin on skin.

“You okay?” He smoothed a tangle of hair back from my face and kissed my forehead.

“Did we get him in time?” I asked, leaning into Dimitri’s strong frame as he folded me against him.

Dimitri tucked his chin against the top of my head and nodded. “I think my sisters are going to be all right,” he said, as if he could hardly believe his own words.

Dimitri’s chest heaved against mine as he reached up to wipe his eyes in relief.

Ding dong the demon was dead.

And that’s when I felt a reminder, against my abs, that my delicious griffin was, in fact, naked. My face warmed, perhaps from the adrenaline coursing through my body. “Come on,” I told him. “We gotta find Grandma.” And maybe an extra lab coat. I had nothing against Dimitri in all of his glory, but I also needed to focus.

Dimitri paused over Vald’s ruined body, an unbelieving grin tickling the side of his mouth.

Just when I thought things might actually turn out all right, Vald groaned and sat up.

He located his head, twisted it back into place and yanked the knife out of his chest with a grunt. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand the human psyche.”

“Impossible.” Dimitri tensed, every muscle in his body stiff from shock.

“That’s just what Lizzie’s Great-great-great Aunt Edna said. Before I killed her.” Vald eyed us like a couple of annoying houseguests before he strolled over to a plastic tub full of clear liquid. He tossed the knife inside and watched it hiss, bubble and melt into a lump of dissolving metal. “It took you ten years of your life to find that, didn’t it?” Vald popped a crick in his neck and contemplated the remains of Dimitri’s dagger. “At least ten. There’s only one place to get a Slayer Sword and the mistress of Achelios doesn’t part with them lightly.” He raised a brow. “The last I heard, she was demanding sexual favors,” he said, unable to hide a smirk. “I’d be fascinated to learn more. If I thought you’d answer.”

“Shut up, Vald.” Dimitri pulled me behind him.

“Case in point,” Vald said, rifling through his lab coat pocket.

I twisted out of Dimitri’s reach. My last switch star lay under the aquarium behind us. I needed to retrieve it quickly, in case the white-scaled creatures could break through glass as easily as they could through ice. “So why isn’t he dead?” I asked. “That thing should have killed him, right?”

A timer went off near one of the cages. Vald pulled two vials of boiling acid from his coat pocket and studied them against each other. “Switch stars no longer concern me. I’ve learned to do many things in the century and a half since your ancestor trapped me down here. Like your mother would have taught you, Lizzie. If she’d been around. If hell gives you lemons, you find a way to suck out their souls.”

The creature inside the cage screamed when it saw the vial in the demon’s hand. “Excuse me,” he said, popping the top with his thumb. “That’s the trouble with experimenting on the damned. You wouldn’t believe the noise.”

I refused to believe my weapons were useless. The alternative was unthinkable. I scrambled under the aquarium, grasped my last switch star and hurled it at Vald’s heart, burying it in the exact same place Dimitri stabbed. The vial flew out of Vald’s hand, sloshing acid and burning holes in his lab coat. I held my breath. Okay, the switch star didn’t zip through the demon, but it did penetrate. If the sword was defective, this could do it. Vald blinked twice and inspected his torn, smoking lab coat.

“Oh now this is rich. You already killed my demon.” He yanked the switch star from his chest. “Well, not really. Once he finishes romping through the third dimension, I’ll send a trio of imps out for him.” He held up the switch star. “In the meantime, I’ll keep this.” He tucked my switch star into his lab coat.