The Last of the Demon Slayers (3 page)

I shot it a dirty look as I stumbled over a root in true horror-movie style. I was going as fast as I could with only the light cast by the wall of flame ahead. Heaven knew I had no reason to take it slow. It’s not like I had much time. I glanced at my watch. Four more minutes. I’d make it out in three.

The glop on my head began to itch. I was never late for anything. And truly, if I was going to be on time for doggie day camp and my manicurist, not to mention my last root canal, I was sure going to be there for Frieda to finish her fix-it spell on my hair. I checked my watch. Three minutes.

As we approached a break in the trees, the bird dropped to the ground. It landed in a ruffle of feathers before tottering the last several yards into a small clearing. I stayed a safe distance behind.

A wall of orange fire fanned out from a bluish-purple center. It towered high into the night, snapping and spitting. I raised my hand in front of my face, expecting more heat, but the air around me remained cool. A tingle ran up my palm and my throat burned from smoke, even though I couldn’t see any. I squinted into the blaze of the fire, amazed that the flames didn’t touch the trees or even char the ground.

The zombie crow shrieked as it broke the barrier of the flames and lumbered toward its master. It nuzzled up against the leg of a dark-haired man at the center of the inferno. He wore jeans and a white button down shirt. And although his strong features put him at about fifty years old, you wouldn’t know it by the way he held himself. He opened his hands to me, demonstrating that he was unarmed. Like that was going to make me trust him.

I stopped at the edge of the clearing next to a fallen log and resisted the urge to wrap my arms around my chest for warmth. I needed to be able to unhitch a switch star. Fast.

“Who are you?” I demanded. Faint traces of sulfur hung in the air. If he wasn’t demonic, he was close to it.

“My name is Xavier,” he said, as if I should recognize him.

“Xavier the demon lord?” I usually killed the spawn of Satan before I learned their names.

“What?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “No.” He straightened. “I’m not a demon.”

Yeah, well he didn’t look too far off. “Fine. Whatever. ‘Shady character of the underworld.’ Either way…” I didn’t have the time to argue vague semantics.

I sighed. Since time was ticking and I didn’t really have enough of a reason to kill him, I began backing up, feeling my way through the woods. I could very well trip and end up on my rear, but I was not about to turn my back on this guy.

His eyes widened. “Wait!”

“No.”

“You have to understand, Lizzie,” he said as if he were my teacher or something, “I can’t hold this portal open much longer.”

He knew my name. Peachy.

“Too bad,” I said, continuing my backward walk. “Normally I’d love to stand outside on a cold night and chit-chat with a guy inside a fire wall who may or may not have semi-demonic tendencies,” My watch alarm beeped. “But I’m busy right now.”

If he wasn’t going to kill me, then he could move to the back of the line.

At the moment, all I wanted was a normal head of hair, followed by a night on the town without biker witches, zombie crows or entities who got their kicks standing around in towers of flame, gobbling up my time.

He grinned. “You are absolutely gorgeous.”

That stopped me. “Are you hitting on me?” That was new. I reached for a switch star. Maybe I’d give him a warning shot.

He laughed. “It’s…” He swallowed hard, grinning. “I know I’m screwing this up, but it was such a shock to actually see you. Lizzie, I’m your father.”

That stopped me cold.

“Xavier,” he said, as if that explained anything. “Your mom never told you about me?”

“No,” I drew the word out, shocked to the core. To be fair, my birth mom and I hadn’t been able to discuss much.

“Nothing?”

Like where he’d been for the last thirty years?

He stood looking at me as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

“No.” The one time I’d met mom, she tried to kidnap me. There hadn’t been much of a discussion.

He ran a hand through his hair, almost giddy. “I knew she was going to have you. But I just found out about this,” he said, indicating my switch stars.

At least one of us found this amusing. I planted my hands on my hips. “It was a surprise for me too.” I hadn’t known anything about demon slayers until I became one this past summer. Chalk that up to another discussion I needed to have with my mom. She’d shoved her powers off on me and split.

“I thought you were living a normal, happy life,” he said, almost to himself. “Phoenix never said…” The words seemed to be coming faster than he could manage. “You have to understand. Your mother is…different.”

No kidding.

Hope flared in his eyes. “But you’re not.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. If he didn’t consider a demon slaying preschool teacher to be different, I wasn’t about to argue.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I saw your mom this morning. For the first time since we broke up. And she told me what she did to you.”

“Okay.”

He was saying these things as if it was all so wonderful, but my brain felt like cotton. I tried to wrap my head around it. My parents had kept track of each other. They still talked, at least they had this morning. My dad was magical.

But I could still smell the sulfur.

What did he want?

My wrist watch dinged. I touched a button on the side. 5:20. “Time’s up.”

My dad didn’t notice. “Your mother and I were never meant to be. But you? I would have given anything to have you in my life.”

The tingling on my head eased into a slow burn.

It was too much.

“How do I even know this is true?” I asked. I had to get out of here.

”How do I know you aren’t some demon in disguise, telling me what I want to hear?”

He dipped his head. “Your mom said to tell you it’s okay about the portal. Although she misses her white heels.”

Shock zinged through me. Mom had been wearing white heels the day she’d tried to drag me through a portal and away from my destiny.

He was telling the truth. He was my dad. My body felt like lead. “Where were you?”

“I was,” he searched for a word, “busy.”

Oh help me, Rhonda.

“She thought she was hiding you. For your own good,” he added. “But she was wrong. I know you need a dad.”

I couldn’t say anything around the lump in my throat.

My dad wanted me.

He found me.

His eyes were glossy with unshed tears. “And now I need a slayer.”

Hold up.

“I went to your mother. She was supposed to be the Demon Slayer of Dalea. Then she told me she’d passed it on to you.”

Very convenient. “How did you find me?” Was the disturbance I felt from him? Or from something else entirely?

“Lizzie, I got mixed up in something bad.”

“Demonic?”

He cringed. “In a manner of speaking.” The zombie bird circled his legs like a cat. “But it’s not what you think. No deals with the devil or anything like that,” he said sheepishly.

“Just come out with it.”

He barked out a laugh. “Over an insecure transmission?” He saw my face and lost the attitude. “I need you to come see me in Pasadena. Will you help me? We can fight this thing together.”

Heavens to Betsy. “We just got here.” And I barely knew him and I had no reason to help him.

His expression was earnest. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. But that’s in the past now. Lizzie, I need you. I want to get to know you.” He gave a sad smile. “We’ve lost too much time as it is.”

I wanted to say yes. I really wanted to.

“I don’t know.” It was too much too fast. I needed to think.

His gaze touched my switch stars and a corner of his mouth turned up. “You’re the last of the demon slayers.”

He would have to say that.

My mentor had already told me I was the last of my line.

If my dad truly needed a slayer, I was it.

"Please." He lifted his shirt sleeves away from his wrists.

Holy cow. Someone had burned a mark of the demon into the tender skin above the bend of each wrist. I’d had to get rid of a similar curse. The charred skin formed three swirls, in almost a floral pattern. Squat sides together, lines reaching out to form 6-6-6.

I let out a slow breath. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the mule.”

He pulled a thin silver lariat from the back pocket of his jeans. With practiced movements, he tied it into the shape of a hangman’s noose. “Take this,” he said, hand shaking as he held it out to me. “It will lead you to me.”

Tempting.

He certainly knew my weakness – I loved to know exactly what was going on. Then I could plan, which I enjoyed way too much.

I wanted to take my father’s silver lariat. Badly. Which probably meant it would either strangle me or poison me, if it didn’t fling me straight to hell.

After all, I didn’t trust my mother. Why should I trust my father?

He was surrounded by evil.

But was it his fault?

I couldn’t be sure.

When I didn’t move, the crow took the silver rope and broke the barrier with a screech. It scurried up to me, my dad’s present in its beak.

“Drop it,” I said.

The bird’s milky eyes lolled back in its head as it deposited the rope at my feet. It dipped its mashed head sideways before trotting back to the fire wall.

Slow and steady, I retrieved my father’s gift with the tip of a switch star, watching the rope bend and swirl with a life of its own.

My father’s image began to fade. “I won’t be strong enough to reach you again,” he said quietly.

      
I held his gift out in front of me and watched it try to curl itself around my switch star.

Fabulous. I was a grey haired biker with what appeared to be yet another magical creature clinging to me.

Chapter Three

One step at a time. I made my way back to Big Nose Kate’s, holding the lariat out in front of me like a poisonous snake. It kept trying to weave itself around my switch star, taking one shock after another as my weapon repelled it. Whatever my father had given me, it wasn’t exactly friendly – or smart.

The gloom of the night settled around me.

I had a potentially evil pet, a semi-demonic dad and gray hair.

I tried to look at it objectively.

Maybe I could handle my father. I refused to touch the rope. Which left my hair. I’d never been vain, but still – my hair?

What would Dimitri say?

Just when I was starting to feel attractive and confident. Now I was going to have to wear a hat for the rest of my life. Or one of those turbans you see on old movie stars. Somehow, I doubted they made them to go with cute red sweater dresses from the Ann Taylor Outlet.

My only hope was Frieda got it wrong and we had more time.

I clung to the thought until halfway across the parking lot when the spell on my head sizzled one last time and gave a large poof.

It was pretty much the theme of my life as a demon slayer – forward motion and then – poof.

Maybe I could keep my muddy, smelly outfit on and wind my new red dress into a turban around my head.

Rather than think about my future as a silver-haired beauty, I banged open the door of the bar and headed straight for my grandma. She was running down a checklist of to-do’s with Ant Eater and a few other witches. Perhaps I was related to this woman after all.

Her eyes widened and she almost dropped her clipboard as I held up my prize.

“What the hell is that?”

“You tell me.” Seeing her, showing her, made it all too real. “It’s a gift,” I said sarcastically, “from Daddy.”

Grandma whooshed out a breath. “Xavier is out there?” She banged her hand on the bar. “Hey, Bob, I need a Critter Trap!”

A ponytailed biker in running pants and a
Ride to Survive
T-shirt dug around in a cabinet below the liquor bottles. He reached up from his wheelchair and sent an empty jelly jar sliding down the bar, Old West style.

“Is Dimitri back yet?” I asked.

“No,” Grandma said, worried.

He’ll be okay. Please let him be okay.

Grandma held the lid open and I dropped the rope inside.

I watched the whole thing with a sort of numb fascination. ”What do you know about him?”

“What I told you,” she said, as if I’d whacked my head on a tree.

That she’d barely known him. My mom had never talked about him. I’d spent years craving any scrap of knowledge, any kind of connection. Did I have the same hair as him? Yes. The same eyes? Hard to tell. Would he be as organized as me? I had to have gotten it from somewhere.

Why had he left me?

I didn’t know any of the important things and I might not find out even if I did help him.

The lariat bucked and hissed as Grandma popped the lid on top.

I watched her. “If it makes any difference, I asked him for a pony.”

Grandma held up the jar and watched the rope attack the glass. “What’s he like?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “He seemed to care about me.”

She patted me on the shoulder. “Buck up. We’ll figure this out.”

That’s what I was afraid of.

Hells bells. It was bad enough my mother abandoned me when I was just a baby. Now my father, who couldn’t even stick around for my birth, just zapped into my life asking for salvation.

“Convocation time, people!” Grandma shouted over my shoulder.

Chairs creaked as the witches clambered off their barstools.

“Wait,” I said, planting a hand on her shoulder as Grandma started to take off.

There was one more thing she needed to know.

“He wants me to go see him,” I said.

She gave a sour look. “I’ll just bet he does.” She shook the jar. “We’re going to find out what that man really wants.”

“You can trace him?”

“Hell, yes.” She grinned.

“He made some kind of bad deal. He didn’t tell me what.” He probably didn’t want to scare me off.

“Dang it, Lizzie,” she said, flat out frustrated. “You ever think of bringing me out there with you?”