Angie Fox: ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

Grandma had already dragged Pirate out front to fit him for his riding gear. I stuffed his food and bowl into my purse, checked the back-door lock and dashed through the living room toward the front door.

“Akkk!” Pirate dashed circles in the yard while Grandma chased him with a black leather contraption that looked like she ordered it straight out of the Ozzy Osborne Pet Gear Catalog.

“Damn it all.” She tossed the contraption to me. “You try it. Lucky Bob built it for his late ferret, Buddy.”

Pirate went still with shock. “Why late? What happened to Buddy?”

We didn’t have time for this. “Pirate! Sit!” I said, summoning up the voice I learned in doggy obedience classes.

“Like hell!” He took off in a dead run.

“Pirate! Ditch the drama before Grandma zaps you in the butt with one of her demon spells.”

He dug in his front legs to stop, but his back legs kept going and he flipped over. Pirate popped back up, shaking with doggie indignation. “She’s going to tie me up! Look at that thing. It’s a doggy straightjacket!”

Grandma loomed over him, fear burning in her eyes. “If we don’t get on this bike in two minutes, you’ll be wearing your intestines as a necklace.”

Pirate released his bladder. I didn’t blame him.

Grandma wound her thick hair into a bun and stuffed it under her helmet while I fought to untangle the black leather straps of the carrier. The Harley roared to life. She pumped the engine until the kickback rattled my teeth. “Lord help us,” I mumbled as I finagled Pirate’s hard little noggin through the ferret carrier. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I yelled, trying not to breathe in any of the choking exhaust billowing from Grandma’s chrome pipes. I hoped Pirate could hear me over the deafening roar. He lashed his head back and forth. I tried to summon the tone I used with my preschoolers. “It’s snug, but that just means I can hold you close and keep you safe.”

“Bullshit.” Pirate yelped, half in, half hanging out of the carrier.

I heaved us both up on the pink Harley with silver flames shooting up the sides. “Hold still,” I ordered as I lowered both terrier and carrier over my head. Not an easy task, considering he’d decided to escape. His stubby legs grasped for traction as they dangled out of the baby carrier.

Grandma secured her bag of jars. “Strap him in!” She growled impatiently. “We need to go. Now.”

“This is humiliating!” Pirate lamented to Grandma’s back as I wedged him in tight and fastened the straps around his tummy, his stubby tail poking me in the stomach.

Grandma reached around to tighten the straps. “Cut the chatter.”

I adjusted my helmet and tried not to think about the deep scratch marks that marred its dull, black surface. How many wrecks had this lady been in? Maybe we could stop somewhere for an extra-heavy-duty helmet with a face mask. While we were at it, maybe we could rent a Volvo.

Grandma wore a sleek silver helmet. Hers didn’t have a safety mask either. What? Would it have broken some kind of biker code to fly down the highway at head-smashing speeds while wearing full protective gear? She eyed me as she pulled on a pair of riding goggles.

“Hold on to my waist,” she hollered over the engine. “Lean when I lean and for God’s sake turn your helmet around. You’ve got it on backward.”

My fingers dug into the strap under my chin. I didn’t know how I was going to survive this odyssey when I couldn’t even buckle a helmet right. And talk about crummy instructions. Lean when I lean . How far? How much? I chewed at my lip. If we crash, please don’t let it be my fault . I felt so helpless.

Grandma eyed the blue smoke curling out from under my locked front door.

“What if Xerxes tears apart my neighborhood?” I asked, wrapping my hands around Grandma’s thick waist. I never really met my neighbors. They never seemed to venture outside of their houses, but still…Pirate squirmed, his legs flopping in the air. All three of us lined up on Grandma’s hog like a warped version of the Three Musketeers.

“No worries, babe.” She reached in her pack for a mossy-looking Smucker’s jar wrapped in masking tape. She yanked off a section of tape, shoved it against my face and yanked it back.

It stung like blazes. “God Bless America!” My hand flew to my right eyebrow.

Grandma spit on the tape that held way too many of my eyebrow hairs. She stuck it back against the nasty-looking jar. “ Confuto aggredior! ” She fired the jar at my house and it shattered on the front porch. Glass flew everywhere and greasy slime oozed down my top step and onto my red brick walk.

“They’ll be following us now.” Grandma gunned the engine, and my back slammed against the safety bar as we peeled out into the gathering dusk.

“Yell if you see Xerxes or any of his hell-raisers,” Grandma said at the first stoplight we reached. “We’ll make Evel Knievel look like a pussy.”

“Urgle.” I nodded, stomach churning. Two blocks and my butt throbbed from the vibrations. Maybe in another two it would go blessedly numb.

“What? Why’d we stop? Did someone say stop? Pup-per-roni, we were flying! Wind in my face, wind in my ears, wind in my toenails. Wind whipping all up in my…”

“Pirate! If you keep whamming me in the gut with that tail, I’m going to heave.” Yeah, blame it on the dog. Nausea climbed up the back of my throat. I fought to ignore the smushed stinkbugs on the windshield. And the gas fumes from the cars surrounding us. And the pulsations that rattled every raw nerve in my body when I just wanted to lie down. Why did I ever think this would work? I could barely ride bumper cars without yarfing all over the place.

Pirate’s tail pounded my fragile stomach. “Your problem is you got no sense of adventure. Green light!”

Grandma stomped on the gas and we lurched from zero to five hundred in two seconds flat. The wind stung my face and arms. Pirate flung his legs out in the air. “Eyyah! I’m king of the world!”

“Car!” I screamed as we slammed toward a Toyota Prius.

“Yyy-yes!” Grandma swerved at the last second, zigzagged between lanes and gunned it out onto the open road.

I am going to die . What was worse? The road ahead of us or the demons we left behind? At that moment, I wasn’t sure.

Thanks to small miracles, we made it out of Atlanta alive. We zipped over the Georgia/Alabama border near Bowdon and caught the back roads from there. Alabama had plenty of quiet side roads where we could still rumble at butt-breaking speeds without risking detection on the open highways.

In the darkness, the trees on the side of the road formed an army of shadows, breached occasionally by the light from a house. I breathed in the warm night air. It was a moment to savor because—sure as Grandma’s Smucker’s jars—our luck had to run out sometime.

It almost didn’t seem real—the demon in my bathroom, my biker-witch grandma, any of it. And now we were out on the road with no more than a change of clothes and a doggy bowl. This was so not me. I didn’t like to leave for the grocery store without a typed shopping list and my color-coded coupon file.

Worry about things you can control, like …

Darned if I could think of anything.

Okay, fine. I could still have a moment of peace. I tuned out the droning roar of the bike and focused on the good in my life. I nuzzled my little dog, his prickly hair warm against my cheek. It reminded me of when he was a puppy and used to like to curl up on my chest and listen to my heartbeat. I felt myself relax. Pirate too. He fell asleep somewhere after Talladega, his little legs dangling out of the ferret carrier.