A Tale of Two Demon Slayers (2 page)

Fingers stiff with anticipation, I lifted the lid.

Lavender velvet cushioned the inside of the box. Three loops made of the same material lined the bottom, supporting—nothing.

“It’s empty,” I said, surprised, confused and—I’ll admit it—a bit relieved.

“No it’s not,” Grandma said, huskily. “Touch it.”

“Touch what?” I brushed my fingers over the velvet insides of the box. Down lower, close to the empty holders.

“Touch it.”

I did. My breath caught in my throat as my fingers scraped a smooth, invisible bar.

“What is it?” I asked, gathering the courage to touch it again. It wasn’t any longer than my hand. Round, from what I could gather. It felt like glass, only slicker.

“Is it hot?” Grandma asked.

“No.”

“Cold?”

“No. It doesn’t feel like anything.”

“Or smell like anything,” Pirate said.

Grandma whistled. “I think it’s a training bar. Your mom used to use one with her instructors. Your Aunt Serefina too. Only theirs I could see. Usually.”

“But I don’t have any instructors.” I didn’t even have Aunt Serefina. She’d died trying to save the coven. “I just have you.” Sure, Grandma did what she could, but she seemed as much in awe of this thing as I was.

“Yeah, well that’s about to change too,” she said, unable to keep a smile out of her voice.

I flicked my eyes up to find her looking at me like it was my birthday. “Now?” I’d been asking for this kind of training for weeks, and she picks now.

“Of course. You had—what? Two days off in Vegas while we planned this trip.” She said it as if she couldn’t imagine what I’d been doing.

“I was recovering from an almost-Armageddon.”

“With your hot, sexy griffin.”

“We slept most of the time!”

“Oh come on, Lizzie—you’re a demon slayer. What’d you think it would be? Sunshine and cupcakes?”

“No. But I could use a week off.” Or even one more day.

“Time off is for pussies. I wrangled up a kick-butt instructor for you. Better than the entire team your mom had. Formal training begins in Greece.”

Dimitri would love that. “And this is for training?”

“Maybe.” She looked inside the box. “I don’t know. I didn’t plan this part. But there’s a way you can find out.”

I didn’t want to know.

“I saw your mom do it. Serefina too. Hold it. Wrap your hand around it and it’ll tell you what you need to do next.”

Sure, why not take advice from an invisible bar that had once belonged to my crazy mother?

Problem was, it played to my weakness. I love to know exactly what’s going on.

“So this will tell me what I need to do in terms of training?”

Grandma rubbed at the phoenix tattoo on her arm. “For you, probably yes. For your mother, it foretold the attack on our coven.” She dropped her hands. “It predicted her sister’s death, but hell, it also predicted mine. You don’t see me going anywhere, do you? Nobody can tell exactly what is going to happen. Free will is always in play.”

Yeah, except for the smoker she’d spelled.

I ran a finger along the bar and felt nothing.

“Try it,” Grandma said. “For me. I want to be here when you use it for the first time.”

Oh geez. I rubbed Pirate on the head and let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

“Okay.” I might as well figure out what I had to do next. There would be brainstorming to do, lists to write. Dimitri had a laptop, which meant I could even type my lists. This was sounding better all the time.

I eased the bar out of the velvet loops and paused for a split second before wrapping one hand around it.

Grandma’s breath brushed my shoulder. “Clear your mind.”

I did. At that moment, I let go of everything and focused all my energy on the smooth glass in my hand. It
felt solid, comforting. Warmth flooded my palm and crept up my arm. My breathing quickened as a door opened in my mind. I gasped.

“What is it?” Grandma asked.

“Wait,” I said, catching glimpses of a hazy picture. I squeezed my eyes shut and reached for an image just beyond my grasp. I gripped the bar tighter. It was like I was an inch away from opening another door.

“What is it?” Grandma held my arm.

I made it. The door fell open and I saw Dimitri. He knelt among the ruins of a great stone building in the middle of a forest. Sweat coated his broad back and glinted off his olive skin. He turned to me, his hands covered in blood. I sucked in a breath. This wasn’t real.

“Lizzie!” he called, his face twisted in anguish.

Please don’t let it be real.

My heart raced and I fought the urge to go to him.

This isn’t real.

And then I saw myself lying on the ground, my chest ripped open and my head twisted at an impossible angle.

“Enough!” I smashed the bar onto the floor and heard it shatter.

Grandma yawped. “Damn it, Lizzie!”

I didn’t care. My eyes flew open. I braced my hands against the airport bench and forced myself to take deep, even breaths. I was back.

Grandma’s worried eyes met mine. “Whatever you saw, you don’t have to do it, Lizzie. You hear me? You don’t have to do it.”

“I know,” I said. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want Dimitri to have to watch, or find me later, or whatever had happened. I had no idea what I’d just seen. I’d never
used an object like the bar before. For all I knew, the thing was cursed, damaged, on the fritz.

“What’d you see?” Ant Eater crouched in front of me.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” It was a twisted vision. It didn’t mean anything.

Besides, no good could come of Grandma and Ant Eater analyzing a prophecy of my death. Grandma had said herself it wasn’t always right.

Still, I couldn’t get the horrible image out of my mind. Being a demon slayer was dangerous work. I knew that. And yes, people had tried to kill me before—but I’d never had to see, in high-definition detail, exactly what could happen.

This bar had predicted the death of the demon slayer before me. Now it was supposed to tell me what the near future held for me.

Mouth dry, I stared straight ahead, willing myself to focus on the travelers rushing past.

“Stop.” I told myself. I was at the airport. I ran my hands up my arms, over my unbroken chest. I was fine. Dimitri was handling paperwork instead of my blood and guts. He would be meeting me at the gate soon. “Stop it.” Think of something else.

At least the bar was gone, reduced to a million invisible little pieces.

“Um, Lizzie?” Ant Eater stood and began backing away slowly, her motorcycle boots treading light, as a chorus of tiny shards began crackling all at once. It sounded like an ice storm on a tin roof.

“What’s it doing?” Grandma demanded.

“How should I know?” I stood, one hand on my switch stars.

“Hold up,” Grandma cautioned. “You draw a star and every TSA agent, police officer and security guard is going to be on you like a chicken on a June bug.”

Pirate growled. “I’d attack it, but I don’t see it. Now that ain’t right.” He paced back and forth next to me. “I thought you said we were going to take a vacation from all of this hoodoo.”

My thoughts exactly.

We all watched the off-white floor as if we’d suddenly be able to see my family’s supernatural gift, one of the many that hadn’t quite worked out for me.

“Well,” Grandma said, “you couldn’t have opened the box if you weren’t ready.”

“Naturally,” I replied, wondering how the heck I was supposed to handle this one.

We never could tell if the bar managed to find all its pieces or how it fit itself back together. But I felt it as it rolled up to me and rested against my right foot.

Pirate aimed a harsh bark in the general direction of the training bar. “That’s one crazy game of fetch you got going on.”

“You can’t just leave it here, Lizzie,” Ant Eater said.

I dug my hands into my hips. “I know that,” I said, wishing I could.

That magical aberration had shown me a vision of the man I loved kneeling over my broken body, and now I had to cart it along on my trip as if I actually planned to take it out of the box again. I rooted around in my purse for a tissue and picked the thing up like it was a roach.

“I still say you were ready,” Grandma said, eyeing Ant Eater.

Like I was ever ready for half the things that happened lately. I placed the box on the chair behind me and eased the training bar back into the velvet loops. Then I wound an extra tissue around it, as if it were a miniature mummy. Pirate braced his front paws up on the seat next to me and watched.

“Keep your enemies close…” I began.

Pirate growled low in his throat, “…and your batcrazy supernatural bar in plain sight.”

“Aw, come here.” Grandma wrapped me in a giant hug. “You just do what you do best—take care of yourself, accept the universe.”

“Okay. Thanks.” The hug felt nice, but I had to get away before she started giving me a lecture on the Three Truths of the demon slayer: Look to the Outside, Accept the Universe, Sacrifice Yourself. And one I wanted to add—Keep Closed Boxes Closed.

I shook Ant Eater’s hand and, ignoring the box on the chair behind me, reached down to open Pirate’s pet carrier. “You ready, buddy?”

Pirate drew his ears back. “Are you kidding? I’ll turn that box into kindling. You want it in five pieces or twenty million? You know, I can count now.”

“I meant, are you ready to go?” We still had a plane to catch.

His ears drooped back. “No attacking?”

“Not right now,” I said, “although I’m sure you’d do a fine job of it.”

“Oh yeah, I could take that bar. I could eat that bar with a side of crackly wood box. That box might even taste good. Like the doorjambs back home.”

“I told you, no chewing on doors.”

“Oh I know.” Pirate made a lap around the doggie carrier, his eyes on the box. “It’s just hard to stick to a diet
all
the time. Speaking of eating…” His tags jingled as he shifted his focus to the Burger King a few stores down. “I hear the Double Whopper is quite meaty and cheesy.”

Instead he got my last Schnicker-poodle and a trip through the security line.

The TSA officer, her jaw as tight as her sleeked-back bun, didn’t bat an eye at my switch stars or the ancient box I carried. Instead, she set her sights on a tube of Bengay that I’d forgotten in my purse.

Yes, the pungent cream made me smell like one of the
biker witches, but my back had been killing me ever since I pulled it doing a few celebratory gymnastics with Dimitri. It had been worth every twinge. And caress. My body warmed just thinking about it.

The TSA agent cleared her throat. “You must forfeit the item if it does not fit into your one-quart Baggie.”

Which I knew it wouldn’t, because I’d bought the set of plastic bottles with the Baggie, and everything fit perfectly. And yes, that made me very happy in an incredibly dorky way.

“Let’s lose it,” I said, watching her toss the Bengay into the trash. At least I had my switch stars.

With the medicine safely in the garbage and my weapons intact, Pirate and I made it to the departure gate with barely two hours to spare. I let out a sigh of relief and plopped us down in the chair with the least gum on the side.

The sun was beginning to set outside the terminal, and Pirate gave a wide yawn. I pulled him out of the carrier and snuggled him close. Dimitri liked to fly internationally at night. That way, he could start the day in a new place.

An airport cart beeped past us, its yellow light flashing. A few travelers looked up. Most didn’t.

Pirate curled up in the crook of my arm and fell instantly asleep, as only dogs can. I hoped I could sleep after what I’d seen.

Shake it off.

The creatures—not to mention demons—I’d met over the last two months had probably wanted to do much worse to me. I just hadn’t been able to see it in 3-D color before. I settled back into the chair. No sense borrowing
trouble from an invisible bar. I’d take each day as it came.

It was easier said than done.

Dimitri—in his usual daring fashion—arrived less than an hour before takeoff.

I turned too fast and almost woke up Pirate. I eased the little guy into his carrier, and before I knew it, Dimitri’s solid weight pressed against my back.

Mmm…he smelled like rich amber and pure man. I ran my fingers lightly over his olive skin. “Missed you,” I said, thankful for once that his griffin nature let him move a hair quicker than other men.

“Good,” he rumbled against my back. The sound of his voice, the crisp Greek accent, made me glad to see him all over again.

I smiled up at him. He grinned back, his angled features softening. He wore a crisp, blue shirt cut to fit his broad shoulders, and black dress pants. Everything about him was polished, except for the way his thick, ebony hair curled around his collar.

A ribbon of pleasure trailed down my spine when his eyes swept over me. I’d waited thirty years for a man to look at me like that.

His hand lingered on my shoulders. “Your back still hurting you?” he asked, with a trace of guilt.

“I told you, it was worth it.” I’d never made love on the back of a Harley before. We hadn’t planned on that, but things tended to get out of hand with Dimitri.

Of course, I loved every minute of it.

I rubbed my spine, releasing a waft of Bengay. Dimitri noticed it too. He tried to hide it, but his nose wrinkled slightly at the pungent odor.

“It has to get better,” I said. “TSA took my drugs.”

“Praise be to national security.” He handed me a Diet Coke and pulled a Hershey bar from his pack, my two feel-good foods. Did I say the man was a keeper?

I unwrapped the chocolate and bit into it, savoring the creamy texture. I’ve never been crazy about flying, but somehow being here with this man made it all worth-while.

“My sisters can’t wait to meet you, Lizzie,” he said, smoothing a lock of hair behind my ear.

Pirate let out a grunt that turned into a loud doggie snore. Dimitri couldn’t stop grinning, although I didn’t know whether it was due to Pirate or the anticipation of going home at last. “Diana has already unearthed pictures of my more awkward years, and Dyonne is most eager to tell you the story of my first shift into my griffin form.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“Not long enough ago for them to forget,” he said wistfully.

Dimitri stole the corner of my Hershey bar and slid it into his mouth. “The first shift happens during puberty,” he said, “and—like everything else at that time—it can be awkward.”

Was my big sexy griffin blushing?

I cocked an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

“Suffice it to say, a few parts didn’t make the transition.”

I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed myself to him. “Seems all there now.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you want to double-check,” he said, his voice rough against my cheek.

“Let’s get to Greece first.” I gave him an extra little rub, just to tease.

Dimitri booked us first-class seats, which thrilled me to my toes because I’d always flown coach, and usually with a super-saver ticket, which meant I was in the last boarding group. The bin space, blankets and pretty much everything else were usually gone by the time I got to my seat. No more.

I even asked for double snack mix.

“They’re not serving food yet,” Dimitri said against my ear as he fastened his seat belt.

“I know,” I said, adjusting the window shade. I couldn’t see much besides the lights of the airport, but it was still a window seat. And I was happy. “I figured they’d want to know early.” I eyed Pirate’s doggie carrier underneath the seat in front of me.

“He’s doing pretty well for his first flight,” Dimitri said.

“Yeah, well we haven’t taken off yet.” And Dimitri hadn’t witnessed Pirate’s first ride on a motorcycle. Suffice it to say, Pirate didn’t always take well to new modes of transportation.

But Pirate was the least of our worries. “Take a look at this,” I said, retrieving the box from under the seat in front of him. I showed him the bar and leaned in close to tell him what I’d seen.

He nodded thoughtfully. Worry clouded his eyes. “We’ll take it under advisement,” he said simply.

Whatever response I’d expected, that wasn’t it.

“You sound like a lawyer,” I said, hurt he wasn’t taking my imagined death more seriously.

Dimitri kissed me on the head, his warm breath lingering on my forehead. “What do you want me to say? That I’m scared every day something is going to happen to you?”

I pulled back, surprised to find him as tense as I felt. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I burrowed against him again.

He squeezed my hand. “Look at me, Lizzie.” His sharp features were almost too sincere. “I’ll protect you. I promise.”

My modern woman sensibilities wanted to protest. I could take care of myself. I was a demon slayer. Besides, I think that on some level, every one of us needs to believe we can hold our own against the monsters in life—especially the ones we were put on this earth to conquer.

Still, I loved Dimitri for wanting to swoop in and rescue me. I ran my fingers down his strong jaw. “Thank you.”

Of course, now that I had him warm and fuzzy, I had to figure out a way to tell him I’d not only complicated his homecoming with visions of my own death, but now I was adding biker witches and demon slayer training. In the end, I figured the direct approach was best.

“Grandma is coming,” I said, running my fingers down his arm. “She wants to start my training on Santorini as soon as she arrives.” I’d give us less than a week alone. Tops.

“She told me,” he said with a slight edge to his voice. Dimitri and Grandma hadn’t always seen eye to eye. “In light of the circumstances, I can’t think of a better way to spend our time together.” A slight wariness entered his voice. “Did she mention what I was doing when she interrupted me?”

“Surprisingly, no.” Grandma wasn’t the best at keeping secrets.

He seemed relieved. “Okay, well then it’s best I explain when we have some time in private.”

Wait a second. “So it would be okay to tell me if Grandma already spilled part of it? What did she catch you doing?”

He fiddled with the airflow knob above us. “I’ll explain later.”

“Lovely. Can I at least have a hint?” All I knew was that it was important enough to keep him from going to the airport with me.

He made sure his tray table was in the upright and locked position. “Everything has checked out so far.”

“Famous last words.” I hated when he tried to take care of things for me. And I had a feeling that whatever this was, I wanted to know. “So are you going to tell me or…oh!” I gasped and gripped his arm. “There’s a creature on the plane,” I hissed. “Th ere!”

I pointed to a small, brown, scaled
thing
scrambling in circles on the cockpit door. It was a lizard with immense pointed ears and a tail as long as my arm. Its feet were like a monkey’s, complete with tufts of brown hair at the wrists and—holy cow—the creature turned to stare at me, its weathered face breaking into a crooked sneer that showed off a set of jagged teeth.

I gripped the seat in front of me and craned my body up for a better look as I reached for a switch star.

Dimitri stilled my hand. “Hold it, Lizzie. It’s only a gremlin.”

“What, like that
Twilight Zone
episode? ‘Nightmare at Twenty Thousand Feet’?” We hadn’t even made it off the runway.

“You do realize you have a flair for the dramatic,” Dimitri said, keeping his eyes on me while the creature wiggled its eyebrows at us.

I looked around the cabin. The other passengers were still settling in, some of them grazing the monster as they passed. It gave them slimy kisses and reached into their pockets.

Dimitri leaned closer. “Gremlins like to cause trouble, especially with electrical systems, but they’re not going to bring a modern plane down. They sneak onboard all the time. And believe me, you want them here rather than on the ground switching around your luggage tags.”

The stewardess brushed right past the creature as it stood on the cockpit doorknob and began what I could only describe as a most obscene dance.

“She’s not going to do anything?”

“That’s right,” Dimitri said, as if he understood what I couldn’t possibly comprehend. “You haven’t flown since you gained your powers.”

“I’ve been busy,” I snapped.

“She can’t see him,” Dimitri said. “No one can. Well, unless they have magical tendencies. Even so, one would have to be looking for problems.” He made sure to emphasize that last part.

“Well excuse me.” Yes, I was a demon slayer, and so far, it had brought me nothing but trouble. Now with this added death threat, I’d be crazy not to keep an eye out. As much as I would have liked to make this a private vacation for just me and Dimitri, I was glad Grandma would be there to begin my training. Maybe then I’d know more of what to expect.

The creature popped its head out of the galley. It ripped open a bag of snack mix and began chomping it loudly, with its mouth open.

“Of all the nerve.” That was probably my snack mix.

“Don’t interact with it too much,” Dimitri cautioned, “or it might follow us.”

“Onto our connecting flight?”

“They like cars too, although not as much as planes. It’s basically anything mechanical.” Lovely. The last thing I needed was a gremlin on my Harley.

I yanked my gaze off the creature. Instead of giving in to the urge to take one more look, I took a small notebook from my purse and focused on a new entry in what I was hoping would become a guidebook for demon slayers. So far, I had way more chapters than I’d ever planned.

To be added to
The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers
, Volume Two, subsection C: Magical creatures, benign.

What the gremlin lacks in aggression, it makes up in its unflagging desire to sabotage and disrupt. Teeth are long and jagged, although the one creature I’ve witnessed seems to prefer biting into Gardetto’s Original Recipe snack mix as opposed to anything else. His striking blue eyes and