Angie Fox: ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

But it wasn’t about me.

Sacrifice yourself .

I covered my mouth with my hand and tried not to choke on the acidic tang of Vald’s blood. I forced myself to relax, eased my throat open and coaxed the fluttering half of my soul upward.

Vald pulled at the thin thread, unraveling the last bits of my power. His chest healed quickly, the black blood thickening, his skin closing over the wound. I captured the adventurous half of my soul like a butterfly, wound it into my palm and shoved it into the rapidly narrowing hole in Vald’s chest.

“You clueless,” the demon strained for a breath, “freak of—” His eyes bugged as he clutched the gaping wound over his heart. Vald fell to his knees as blue fire curled from the gash. He stared at me with pure hatred as the cobalt flame lashed across his body, incinerating him from the inside out.

I should have been relieved, and I was. More than that, I was angry—at Vald for starting this whole mess, at Dimitri for trying to be brave and at myself for not doing more to protect the two people in this world that would have done anything to protect me.

Vald burned hot and fast. I’d heard of spontaneous combustion and this had to be the closest thing to it I’d ever seen. But the blue flame left nothing, not even ashes.

Soul jars burst like popcorn popping. I wrapped my arms around my face and head as souls careened throughout the room. They rushed up, out, in a flurry of beating wings.

My own energy knocked me backward as it rushed back into my body. Heat surged through my veins. On rubbery legs, I started for Dimitri’s pale, lifeless body. He wasn’t breathing. No. My blood froze. It couldn’t end this way. I wouldn’t let it.

A familiar presence landed on my shoulder. Grandma.

I pulled my ever-living soul from Vald’s chest with a wet glop. It dove back into me, which gave me an idea. “Wait here, Dimitri,” I said, hoping he could hear me.

Grandma’s soul on my shoulder, I rushed to find Grandma’s body on the gurney outside the torture room. With a squeal, her soul belly flopped back into her. I thought I saw her eyes twitch, but we didn’t have time to get her off the slab. Not yet. Dimitri could be dying back there. I whipped the table around and drove Grandma back through the broken glass in the soul room, the wheels spattering through Dimitri’s blood.

Don’t think about it .

I clutched Grandma’s hand, Dimitri’s hand. I squeezed my eyes shut and called to Ant Eater, the coven, anybody else who was listening.

“Get us the hell out of here!”

I didn’t even see the portal. It must have snuck up behind us because when the world stopped spinning, we lay crumpled on the floor of a tiny, square-shaped room. The pilothouse. Not that I cared where we were, as long as it didn’t involve the second layer of hell. We’d made it back. Now I just had to make sure we all lived.

Which is why I kept my eye on the orb as it stalked us from the edge of a framed Yazoo River map. “Down, portal,” I told it. The last thing we needed was to go back to hell. Who knew if demons like Vald stayed dead.

The portal darted sideways and hovered by a decorative brass steering wheel hanging on the wall, honoring a certain Captain Clebius Barnam. It dipped and swayed, gathering courage. I gave it the stink eye and it zipped backward, clanging into a brass bell.

Grandma’s eyes fluttered among the mass of long, gray hair tangled in her face. “I’m getting too damned old for this.” She pushed her hair back with one shaking hand and braced the other against the wooden wall, slathered in years upon years of white paint.

“Please tell me you know first aid,” I said, stuffing Dimitri’s borrowed lab coat against his chest wound. The switch star had cauterized part of the wound, but he still bled. Way too much. If he was still bleeding, he was still alive, right? The switch star had cut a hole through the left side of his chest. It had to have hit his heart, his lungs.

The coppery scent of blood hung thick in the humid, night air. Dimitri’s skin, drained of color, had gone bluish around his lips. His pulse felt thready, at least it had a few seconds ago. Now? I couldn’t feel it. “His heart’s stopped.”

No, no, no .

“Help!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Grandma hijacked his wrist while I moved north, thrusting both hands against the artery on his neck. No pulse. “Damn it! Tell me you know CPR or magic or something !”

She shook her head. “I know he’s supposed to die.”

I couldn’t believe it, even though I held the proof in both hands. “What?”

She looked as helpless and mortified and exasperated as I felt. “Back in the Yardsaver shed. I saw Vald plotting to drag you down into the second layer of hell—look what happened when I tried to stop that. And later, I saw Dimitri dying to save you.” She sighed. “It was inevitable.” She wiped a spot of blood from his wrist, ignoring the puddle of blood that soaked her jeans from the knees down.

“So he’s…” I couldn’t say it.

“Gone.” She helped me ease his head onto my lap. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. I know what he meant to you.”

She didn’t know jack. Okay, so he’d lied to me and I was mad at him, but he’d had his reason—a good one. And now he’d never know that I needed him too. He’d shown me that I could be strong. I could break a few rules, wear kick-ass black boots and make love until I screamed. And just when I was ready to let go of my past, Vald had stolen my future.

The portal crackled as I sat there with his head in my lap, unable—no, unwilling—to move. I knew we needed to get out of here. We were free from the second layer of hell, but that orb could send us right back to Vald’s laboratory—or somewhere worse.

Maybe there was nothing I could do for Dimitri. But getting up out of the puddle of blood, letting go of him, I’d never get this moment back again. When I stood up, he’d really be gone.

“Lizzie?” Frieda rattled the pilothouse door. “Oh snot. It’s stuck. Lizzie?”

“Open the goddamned door,” Grandma ordered. “You locked us in with an itchy portal.”

“Gertie? Well I’ll be a buttercup!” Frieda squealed. “Ant Eater! Get yourself over here! Gertie’s back!”

I wanted to smack Frieda for being happy about anything right now. Of course she didn’t know Dimitri lay crumpled and—I forced myself to think it—dead in my lap. I didn’t know how I thought things would end, but it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

He’d been too alive, too sexy and too stubborn.

“At least he saved his sisters,” Grandma said.

I uncrumpled the bloody lab coat from his chest and spread it over his body. He’d have told me it was worth it. But it wasn’t. Not to me.

“He wanted to make this thing between us work,” I said, running a finger along his strong jaw. “I told him when hell freezes over. Guess we were both wrong.” I grazed my fingers over the lips that had kissed away the marks from the black souls, and touched me in ways, well, in many, many ways. Tears crowded my eyes. He’d taught me a thing or two, about switch stars, myself and, heck, what it felt like to be wanted.

“Motherfucking damn it.”

“Excuse me?” I said, eyeing Grandma’s stormy expression through a squidgy window of tears.

“You’re turning me into a pansy-ass,” she said, shoving her hair back from her face with bloody fingers. She puffed up her cheeks and blew out a breath. “We can save him, okay. If we act now. It’s stupid and pointless,” she harrumphed, “and there’s no turning back from it.”

“How?” I asked, hope tickling my stomach. I’d take any chance we could get.