A Tale of Two Demon Slayers (23 page)

But if I didn’t kill her now, if she gained the power from this place, there would be no stopping her. This was my last chance.

Sacrifice yourself.

I’d never wanted to do it. I wanted to have a life—with Grandma and Dimitri and Pirate. I finally had a real family.

Now, here at the Callidora, I had to sacrifice what I loved in order to save it.

“Lizzie!” Amara broke through the imps. Our eyes met for a brief second and I saw through to her soul. She loved this family as much as I did. Maybe she would survive this. The thought of it warmed and chilled me at the same time.

Hell and damnation.

I fired.

At the same moment, my double let loose with her arsenal of switch stars. I consciously slowed time as they hurtled for my head, my neck, my chest. I’d had this power. I’d only used it once before, locked in my bathroom. But now I felt it. For the first time, I deliberately used it.

It wasn’t enough.

The barrage of switch stars hurled toward me and anywhere I could even think of moving—or levitating. I could see the impact of each one, the twisting blades, and there was nowhere to go. No time to escape them all.

Amara shouted to my left. At least there would be someone left who could love Dimitri.

Maybe Diana and Dyonne would survive. Maybe the clan could go on.

I did my best.

In that split second before the end, my eyes locked
with Amara’s. I saw her terror, felt her rage. This was a woman who had also been betrayed.

At least I’d seen this before, in my vision. It would be over soon.

I braced myself and waited for the crush.

Amara dove forward with the speed of a griffin. Precise and deadly, she leapt into the hail of fire and took the switch stars meant for me.

“Amara!” I shouted, stunned as the blast shoved her backward onto me. Her blood smeared my chest as several of the switch stars broke through her body.

I grabbed the nearest one and fired it at the doppelgänger. She’d already thrown up her hands in victory.

Amara slid away from me as I watched the switch star tear a hole through the doppelgänger’s chest.

The monstrosity howled and fell to the ground dead.

She will be lost at the Callidora.

It had been about the doppelgänger. I’d seen death through her eyes, not mine.

I gulped, tears threatening. I was saved, but
Amara
. I touched her lifeless shoulder.

And what about the others?

The battle raged on all sides. I raised my head to see Diana and Dyonne reach the altar with Grandma at their side. They were surrounded, outnumbered as the imps surged forward. Grandma was out of weapons. Instead she clasped both hands around her turquoise necklace and chanted.

“Digredior. Digredior. Digredior.”

It slowed them, but it didn’t stop them.

I scrambled for a switch star as Talos fell from the sky, crushing the mass of imps at the ruins. Diana and Dyonne clutched at the altar of their ancestors, pushing, focusing, fighting for their life and their powers.

Dimitri kicked away the body of Talos and landed next to his sisters. Grandma shot out defensive fire as he lowered his head and shifted.

I hurled a star, beheading an imp as two more took its place. The limestone altar glowed under the sisters’ hands as they chanted, desperately trying to draw even a fraction of the generations of power from the rock.

“Dimitri!” I yelled over the crash of battle. “The jewelry! Get it off them!”

He broke the coral from their necks and dropped it, smoking, onto the ground.

Dimitri stood in front of his sisters, fending off the imps with a bronze sword while Grandma’s magic deflected the cursed arrows.

But for how long?

I took out another imp, but we had no hope of defeating the mass that continued to rain down from the sky. The Dominos army was too fast, too powerful. And they wanted the sisters. I lost sight of Grandma and Dimitri as the blackened mass closed in.

Holy Hades. Just what good had it done to defeat the doppelgänger if I couldn’t save what remained of my family?

Diana and Dyonne clung to the ancient altar, fighting like wild women as they held the remains of their legacy.

A wind blew the imps back, and they struggled for
their footing as raw cerulean power shot from the rocks. Their hair blew and the skies above us thundered as the magic poured from them.

Diana and Dyonne channeled it into the altar where the women of their line had been initiated into their Skye magic, and where those same women—before they succumbed to the curse—had given the last of their strength, their power and their love at the Callidora.

Their magic rose out of the very stones and into the twins. Until the altar itself shot out streams of light. With a rush of heat and hot white energy, the limestone slab transformed into lustrous blue Skye stone.

Diana raised her arm, pure energy flowing from her as she decimated the horde of imps.

They fell in writhing piles, taking out trees and at least one cannon. The witches scattered as the creatures fell, turning the grass, weeds and fallen bodies to dust.

Dyonne raised a hand to the sky, sealing the estate.

A great thunder clapped over head, followed by an eerie silence.

We stood for a moment in a haze of smoke, charred bodies of imps littering the battlefield. Witches chanted softly. At least one wept.

“Lizzie!” Dimitri knelt among the ruins of the Callidora, near the broken body of the doppelgänger Sweat coated his broad back and glinted off his olive skin. He turned to me, his hands covered in blood.

“Lizzie,” he called out, his face twisted in anguish. Bloody wounds streaked his chest and sliced across his neck.

Talos lay in human form, dead at his feet.

“I’m here!” I said, choking on the relief of it. “I’m not hurt.”

Dimitri broke out in a dead run for me. He swept me into his arms for a crushing kiss. “Thank the heavens, Lizzie,” he murmured across my cheeks, into my hair. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“It was Amara,” I told him, easing away, showing him the place where her body lay.

She lay crumpled on the ground, fear etched on her face, so alone. I cradled her in my lap, easing her hair away from her face. My throat tightened as I closed her eyes.

“She died for me,” I said, as Dimitri wrapped his arms around me and touched his forehead to my shoulder.

“She gave her life to restore what her family took away.”

The shock of it surged through me—joy for those of us who had survived, horror for the ones who had not. And a great ache for the ones still unknown.

At that moment, Grandma let out a mighty war cry. She climbed the sacred ruins to the topmost portion of the wall and stood. “Eeeeeya!”

The witches answered with a chorus of shouts. A cannon rang out.

“Give me a minute,” I said to Dimitri, trusting him, letting him watch over me while I touched the training bar in my pocket.

My heart raced as I prayed there would be enough life left in the psychic.

I dusted my fingers over the glassy surface of the training bar before gripping it tightly.

Like running through a tunnel, I rushed toward my vision, throwing the door open on Amara. She lay in my
arms, her chest a mass of blood and her beautiful black hair plastered to her forehead.

“Thank you, Amara,” I said, tears wetting my cheeks. “You did it. You set things right.”

Her eyes opened, glassy and distant. She smiled faintly. “Tell Dimitri I did it for him.”

“I will. You helped save his family, Amara.”

“No…” She shook her head weakly. “His sisters did that.” She patted her hand over my wrist. “I saved his soul.”

And with that, she left me.

I looked out over the battlefield strewn with bodies, weapons and debris. We defeated them. We won.

But what did we have to sacrifice in order to gain that precious victory?

When Amara’s family didn’t want her back, we buried her next to the pergola in the garden. The witches said incantations over her as we willed her body to the place she’d loved most in life. A place that in her vision, she knew she’d never leave.

Later, we gave Talos to the Aegean, the waters of his ancestors, although with less fanfare and no tears.

Diana, for her part, had inherited a cat. The fancy white Persian took an immediate liking to Flappy.

The Dominos clan refused to acknowledge what had gone on that day, insisting that they were longtime allies of the Helios and always would be.

I only hoped most of their imp army had been destroyed.

We didn’t need another rendition of hell on earth to know that they would remain vigilant, ready for another chance to seize power.

In the meantime, we cleaned up as best we could, toasted the dead and vowed to conduct ourselves in a way that would honor the sacrifices they had made.

Some of us even remembered to smile again.

I carried an ice-cold Diet Coke out onto the patio under the slightly charred pergola and joined Dimitri at a wrought-iron table. Sidecar Bob grilled weenies to the tune of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Darned straight.

The witches played lawn darts in the remains of the rose garden. Pirate and Flappy chased bees with the tree nymphs, and Zebediah Rachmort chuckled and made his way up the gray slate stairs.

Somewhere along the line, he’d found a pipe. “The hell-bent-creatures trap is empty and I have a negative-three reading on the protective wards.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Right?”

I glanced at Dimitri, who merely grinned.

“It’ll keep out the Dominos clan,” Rachmort grunted, taking the seat across from me.

Dimitri let Ant Eater pour him something brown and foamy. “We’ll have to keep an eye on the Dominos clan,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll look at this as a failure, only a setback. And they’re more powerful than they were before.”

“But we beat them once,” Ant Eater added, urging the glass closer to Dimitri.

“You’re seriously going to drink that?” I asked, thinking of the way she’d laid Talos out flat.

Dimitri brought it to his lips and took a long swig. “Best root beer I ever had.”

Ant Eater broke out into a wide smile. “Damned straight.”

“At least we know our enemy now,” I said, as Frieda and Creely launched homemade bottle rockets out over the garden.

“We also have the strength of our ancestors.” Dimitri said.

“And you have us.” Diana bonked him in the head with the feathered end of a lawn dart.

“It’s no fair when you two play,” Ant Eater said to Diana and to Dyonne, behind her. “They control the wind,” she said to us, with more awe than anger in her voice.

“I swear we don’t do it during the game,” Dyonne protested. “Much,” she added under her breath.

I shook my head, enjoying the sun on my cheeks. “Just don’t let Grandma keep score.” The witches used creative math. Between the Red Skulls and Dimitri’s sisters, it should be a high-scoring game.

“Yeah, I heard that,” Grandma said, a shish kebab in one hand and a mess of darts in the other. She looked out over the lawn. “I’m telling you, Lizzie, that has to be the ugliest dragon I’ve ever seen.”

“Are you still going to set him loose?” Rachmort asked.

“Just because he has a snaggletooth?” Grandma protested.

“It’s not because he’s ugly,” I protested. “We don’t have time or space for another pet. I told Pirate—we absolutely, positively, can
not
get another one.”

Grandma shifted her lawn darts to a spot under her arm. “I hate to tell you this, Lizzie, but it looks like you’ve already got one.”

“I know,” I said, reaching for Dimitri’s root beer.

“The dragon would have died on that cliff if you hadn’t taken in the egg,” Dimitri said. “That’s why your demon slayer radar went off. He needed you.”

“It was bad enough when I had a floating dog. Now I have a flying one,” I said, watching Pirate climb up onto Flappy’s back and give the ears-up signal.

“
that’s
how Talos broke into Dimitri’s office,” Grandma said.

“Yes,” I said. “He used water magic to float over the slime.” And Pirate, as always, managed to find the leftovers. Talos had broken in once for my magic, but failed to retrieve the shard of Skye stone in Dimitri’s safe. The imps would have handled the job, if we hadn’t interrupted them.

Grandma scratched her chin with the end of a lawn dart. “I thought only the cheater sisters could use stones.”

Dimitri shook his head. “Talos had stolen enough of their magic that he was willing to give it a try. It might actually have worked.”

“If Lizzie hadn’t whupped the cursed imps,” Grandma added.

There she went, bragging. It felt strange and good at the same time. I changed the subject so I wouldn’t have to think about it.

“So it’s true,” I said to Rachmort, studying the swirling brown liquid in the root-beer mug. “I’m the last of the demon slayers?”

The thought frightened me more than I cared to admit.

Rachmort nodded. “It is your destiny—the one you were born to fulfill.”

I hated to admit this, but…“In case you didn’t know, I was a mistake.”

I was never meant to be a demon slayer. My mother foisted her powers off on me. I was an accident.

Rachmort bestowed me with an indulgent turn of the mouth. “Not a mistake. In your case, destiny rearranged itself. We will consider it a gift.”

He leaned to the side and pulled a scrap of parchment
from his back pocket. Yellowed and crumpled, the paper had seen better days.

“I came to train you, yes, but also because of this. There is trouble brewing in Hades, young Lizzie.”

“Oh no.” I looked out over the gardens, the villa, this place that I could call home, if only for a little while.

“Yes, yes,” Rachmort said, following my gaze. “Enjoy your peace while it lasts, for”—he shook out the paper and lowered his rounded spectacles—

She will be called, again and again,

Until the final victory.

For the accidental demon slayer

Will be the greatest slayer of them all.

My jaw loosened and my eyes shot to Dimitri. Curse the man. He was smiling.

“I knew it,” he said, with no small amount of pride.

“What?” I stammered. “I thought you said to ignore prophecy. I can create my own future.”

“True,” he replied, “but I can’t think of a more worthy future for you.”

I shook my head.
The greatest demon slayer?
I had so much more to learn. Besides…

“You belong here,” I told Dimitri.

His fingers closed around mine, warm and strong. “You belong here too. For a time. And when we are called, we will go.”

“All of us?” I asked, looking out over the witches and their lawn darts, Pirate and his dragon and, of course, the man I loved above all else, Dimitri.

“Yes, Lizzie,” he replied. “All of us.”

Because this was my family.

And maybe I didn’t deserve it, but I knew better than to let any one of them go.