by Angie Fox
“Dad?”
Nothing.
“I’m out of here,” I said, wincing. I hated to leave him, but I wasn’t crazy. I couldn’t follow him farther and farther into a house with demonic incantations scrawled in blood on the walls. I may read a lot of novels where the heroine does brave and reckless things but in real life, those things are beyond stupid and I refused to be killed or damned because I wasn’t bright enough to stay out of an obviously hellish situation.
“Goodbye, Dad.” I turned the knob on the door behind me.
“Lizzie.” He shuffled around the corner.
Holy heaven.
He hunkered under a dirty bathrobe caked with dried blood. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He’d lost at least twenty pounds and clutched at the wall as if he’d fall over if he let go.
Roaches skittered across the floor. It was everything I could do to lift my eyes away from the advancing insects and to this shell of a man who called himself my father.
“What happened?”
He folded his lips over his teeth like an old man unable to speak.
“Answer me,” I said. If these roaches were enchanted I was going to be ticked.
I advanced on the nearest insect, a brown one at least two inches long. I stomped it with my boot before it could scuttle closer. I felt a satisfying, cringe-worthy crunch and lifted my boot away. At least it wasn’t magical.
My dad fought for every word. “I’m being punished.”
“No kidding,” I uttered, my last word ending in a squeak as the roach I’d smashed began waving its spindly legs. Its body snapped into place and it began waving its antenna.
Oh my word. “Zombie roach.” I was going to be sick.
“Zatar wants me,” he said, his voice ending in a dry cough as a new flurry of roaches pattered across the floor. “Help me.”
I stood, stunned. “You’re calling up dead things. I stared so hard my eyes dried out as the coffee table in the living room began to splinter and crack. “It’s trying to move!” A woolen sock flip flopped on the carpet next to the bookcase.
Anything that was ever alive or could be alive was starting to move.
“I am a harbinger of death.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, and resisted the urge to say yes, you are.
I blinked, still not quite able to believe it. “You’re calling these things back to life.”
“Help me.” My father clutched the wall, eyes wild.
“Did you send a dreg after me?” I demanded.
“No. Of course not.” He shook his head. “Zatar is building an army.”
That demon? That lizard with an angel’s face? “For what?”
My dad hacked out a cough, and the entire bookcase shuddered. “The final revolution.”
Oh no.
Why couldn’t this be a simple case of a semi-demonic father? Oh who was I kidding? I didn’t even know how to solve that and now we were talking about a revolution in hell?
My father’s haunted eyes fixed on me. “He’s killed the slayers. Now he’s coming.”
I stared at the bloody curses on the wall. “Aw, hell.” This time last year, I was a preschool teacher in Atlanta. Now I had to take out the Earl of Hades. It didn’t add up.
“I can’t do this by myself,” I said, overwhelmed and more than a little scared. I didn’t think adding a griffin, a hunter and a few dozen biker witches would help, either.
“You must,” my Dad insisted.
I took a deep breath. “What does Zatar want? Besides you?”
He shook his head.
I knew he was afraid to use his voice, and with good reason, but he had to help me out here.
“Do you know?” I asked.
“Save me,” he said, struggling over every word. “We can stop Zatar together.”
“Like a father-daughter kick-butt team?”
He grit his teeth.
“How do I help you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Just do.”
“Okay.” I could figure this out. I’d solve this. Somehow. “Hang tight. I will help you.”
I couldn’t fail. I refused to let this Zatar have my dad. Something big was going down. “He’s not going to use you.”
It tore me up to think this may be the only version of my father that I’d ever meet.
“After this is all over, you’re going to take me out for ice cream.” At least that’s what I thought dads and daughters did. I wanted to have a real conversation with him, get to know him – and myself. The alternative was unthinkable.
Chapter Twelve
So what do you do when Zatar the demon is after your dad?
Plan. At least that was my approach. I needed to come up with a strategy, a way to beat Zatar that wouldn’t hurt, kill or (God forbid) damn my dad. Luckily, I had a demon-slaying expert out on the front lawn.
I burst out of the house. “Max!”
My eyes burned with the sudden change from my dad’s darkened house to daylight. No matter. I took the steps two at a time, eager to find Max and to get the heck out of that creep show my dad called a house.
I slowed my pace as the witches drew their spell jars. Squinting, I tried to make out faces in the throng of biker witches forming a semi-circle around the house.
“Hold your fire,” I said. “It’s just me.” I hoped.
Braced for attackers, I turned. The blue door hung open. To my relief, nothing stirred inside. Well, except for the straw doormat.
It flopped out onto the front porch and shuffled sideways until it collided with a flowerpot full of brown hydrangeas.
“It’s just a zombie doormat,” I said.
Nothing to see here.
The biker witches recoiled as a unit.
Tell me about it. I’d sure feel better once we’d put a few miles between us and this place.
I half wondered if the hydrangeas would come back to life. Scratch that. I didn’t want to know.
A large winged griffin swooped overhead, his red, purple and green feathers bright against the blue sky. Dimitri. The man was hard to miss. My eyes adjusted and I cringed as I saw another winged beast in the distance. Flappy. And he had a small knobby-headed passenger. Cripes. If I told Pirate once, I told him a hundred times – no riding the dragon.
I reached the edge of the wards and shuddered as I pushed through the warm, soupy barrier. From this side, it tasted stale and dead. I rubbed at my lips with the back of my hand. Yuk.
Grandma spared me any sympathy. She shoved my demon slayer utility belt against my chest. “What happened to you in there? Did you see Xavier?”
I hitched the belt around my waist, the familiar weight of it soothing my frayed nerves. “Dad’s in real bad shape,” I said, glancing back at the house. “Where’s Max?”
She rolled her eyes. “Gone.”
A sliver of panic stabbed me. “What do you mean gone?”
“He muttered something about unfinished business and took off.”
For heaven’s sake, “we’re supposed to be following him.” We needed to know what the dreg was supposed to do. “You didn’t stop him?”
“And leave you alone in there?” she asked. “No. Besides, you ever tried to stop Max from doing something?”
“Yes.” But I expected Grandma to know a few more dirty tricks.
I rubbed at the dull ache forming along the bridge of my nose. Not now. I needed something to go right. If history was any indication, Max tended to create more problems than he solved.
If only he hadn’t eaten the dreg.
Grandma said what I’d been thinking. “I’ll bet whatever was in that dreg compelled him.”
“Yes, but where?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
A small part of me was relieved that the attack in the desert hadn’t come from my dad. Of course now it likely came from Zatar, the Earl of Hades.
Pirate jumped up against my leg. I scooped him up. “The prodigal dog returns.”
Hope surged in my chest. “Did you see where he went?
“Naw. I was too busy trying to teach Flappy to roll over.”
“In the air?” I lifted him to face me. “Were you even using a harness?”
He tilted his head. “Aw, you know that messes up my fur. Besides, Flappy and I were real careful.”
“Flappy.” I used my sternest voice. The dragon was trying to hide behind a tree. It didn’t work. “You both know better.”
“Snurfle,” the dragon whined.
Yeah, that had better be dragon for I’m-dreadfully-sorry-I’ll-never-do-it-again-and-by-the-way-lavendar-hair-looks-ravishing-on-you.
I let Pirate down and he ran straight to Flappy. I didn’t know what I was going to do with those two.
Grandma wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Come here.” She led me down the sidewalk, away from everyone else. “Frankly Lizzie, Max is expendable. We were more worried about you. That house is alive. I can almost see it breathing. After you closed the door, I got the sick feeling I’d never see you again.”
“I’m fine,” I said, pretending I didn’t know exactly what she meant. “Do you know anything about a demon named Zatar?”
She considered it. “No.”
“Then we do need Max,” I said. Sure I could Google it, but I was willing to bet Max knew things that weren’t on any research sites.
Grandma swore under her breath. Evidently she was thinking the same thing. “He’ll turn up.”
“I hope,” I said. “Maybe he’ll lead us to whatever sent the dreg.”
Grandma crossed her arms over her chest. “Because we need another enemy besides the demon who is after your dad.” She gave me a long look. “If we’re going to be facing down a demon of that caliber, we need to hunker down and prepare. I’ll also put in a call to Rachmort.”
She pulled out her cell phone and hit a button. “Damn,” she said, phone to her ear, “voicemail.”
My mentor had me worried. “He usually answers his phone.”
“Unless he can’t catch a signal. I doubt Sprint has towers in Purgatory.”
Grandma pressed a button and left a message for him to call us back right away.
“Are you sure he’s in purgatory right now?” I asked. He spent the other part of the year in Boca Raton.
“Only the winters,” Grandma said. “Sometimes fall.”
I hoped he wasn’t in trouble. Rachmort trained demon slayers, but he also worked with the semi-damned creatures trapped between heaven and hell. He worked for the Department of Intramagical Matters in the Lost Souls Outreach Program, which was kind of like a supernatural Peace Corps. They didn’t have a lot of necromancers, so Rachmort was up to his knees in spirits.
“Come on,” I said, heading back.
The witches were watching us. They knew something was up. I glanced back at the house. “I used to think dead was dead.”
Grandma grunted. “You also thought dogs couldn’t talk.”
“And fairies were cute.”
“And hell was made up,” Grandma added.
Boy did I wish that last one were true.
Speaking of mythical beings… “Did anyone see where Dimitri flew?” He should have shifted back by now, and found his clothes. Dimitri wasn’t the type to fiddle around.
I walked past Grandma and kept going, through the throng of bikers. “Frieda, have you seen Dimitri?”
She popped a pink bubble and cocked a thumb to a grouping of holly bushes a few houses down. “He ran into another griffin.”
“Lovely. We’re trying to ward off the ultimate evil and he’s socializing.”
But I knew the truth. Dimitri was needed elsewhere. It was just a matter of time. My heart sank as he emerged from behind the cover of the foliage, his face deliberately blank.
He was holding back again, probably because he didn’t want to overwhelm me with everything else that was going on.
I shot him a look that let him know we’d be having a long talk – sooner rather than later.
“Come on,” Grandma said, “Bob’s found us a place to stay. We’ll loosen our boots and I can work up that tracking spell.”
“Spectacular. Where are we going?”
“Someplace off the beaten path. His brother owns it.”
Okay, that was good for any kind of explosive spells the Red Skulls wanted to mix up. And we wouldn’t have to worry about innocent bystanders if something attacked.
“What does Bob’s brother do?” I asked.
Please tell me he’s a banshee hunter, or a dreg exterminator. I’d even take a voodoo mambo at this point.
Grandma just winked and hummed “I Got You, Babe” as she headed for her bike.
“You?” I called after her. “Sonny and Cher?”
Things were about to get weird fast. And in this world, that was saying something.
Chapter Thirteen
We drove up Highway 14 until the city gave way to monstrous hills that jutted straight up out of the desert plains. Scraggly plants clumped over parched soil, like nature going bald. Pockets of housing developments in earthy colors blended with the desert and scrub.
You’re not in Atlanta anymore.
I’d grown up with green - lush fields, magnolia trees and even highway overpasses dripping with bright pink flowers. This place reminded me of an alien landscape.
As we climbed higher and higher, the houses gave way to hot scrub forests, Joshua trees and the occasional scraggly pine. The sun beat harder here. I felt it warm on my shoulders and back.
Max should have been behind me on the bike. Instead, he’d taken off. I wondered exactly where he’d gone, and if he’d had a choice.
We rumbled up the narrow road, climbing a never-ending series of hills, which was an adventure in itself since Grandma and the witches liked to do wheelies at the top. My hair tangled out in front of me as we thundered higher and higher.
Betty Two Sticks shot out ahead, with Bob in her sidecar. He pumped his arm up and down, signaling a hairpin turn down a dirt path.
That sounded about right.
We pulled off the main road in a place where two golden-red sandstone formations slanted out at odd angles from the side of the road. If you didn’t know where to turn, you’d miss it entirely.
Low brush in scraggly gold and green clashed with the deep blue sky. We bumped over a country road for at least five miles. Dog-eared plants twisted seven feet tall in places, white flowers scattered among their sage green leaves. Dust tickled my nose and I was glad Pirate had opted to ride with Dimitri. At least he’d be farther off the ground.
The scrub gave way to green vegetable fields, held back by a series of colorful fences. Red, yellow, blue – somebody had a thing for primary colors. An immense sunflower made from recycled scraps of metal dominated the last field. Old pie pans hung from its petals, clanking in the breeze.
The road ended at a tall gate made up of round logs with the tree bark still attached.
Hippie graffiti ebbed and curled across the rough wood. A huge sun shone from the top, over daisies, polka-dot peace signs, rainbows and eyes with long curled lashes. Birds swooped back and forth. Fish curled around each other like yin and yang. There was even a smiling red skull. Coincidence? I didn’t think so.
Wound around two naked mermaids and a sea turtle, bright orange lettering announced our arrival at the Aquarius Ranch.
Why did I get the feeling it should have been called Time Warp?
Betty Two Sticks pulled up to the edge of the gate and Bob grabbed hold of a large hemp rope. He yanked it, ringing a dented cowbell.
These people and their cowbells. I smoothed my lavender hair away from my forehead and back under my helmet. At least I’d fit in here.
Henna-dyed fingers reached around the gate.
“Cowboy Neal?” Grandma gave a whoop. “That you?”
A skinny gray-haired guy in purple sunglasses ducked hi
s head out and waved like a wild man. He swung the gate open and gestured us in, a crazy grin plastered on his face.
Dimitri and I exchanged glances. “This is a first.” I’d never seen the witches so welcome anywhere.
We eased our bikes down a white gravel road flanked by vibrant orange flowers while Cowboy Neal bolted the gate behind us. He gave Sidecar Bob a knuckle bump and a big bear hug before sliding onto the back of Grandma’s bike.
“What the…?” I shot up in my seat as the hippie patted Grandma on the rear. Then he twined his arms way too comfortably around her waist. I waited (okay, rooted) for her to break his bony little arm. Instead Grandma took off down the road, fishtailing her back tire and showing off.
Oh help me Rhonda.
My gut churned with uncertainty. This had better not be what I thought it was.
We drove past a brightly painted pavilion and a half dozen rusting VW vans before coming to a stop near a red stucco cabin. Sunflowers tilted in the breeze and several half-barrel planter pots overflowed with green leafy plants.
I about fell off my bike when I saw just what kind of plants.
Flat serrated leaves reached like fingers from thin stalks. They grew in clumps like my schefflera plant back home. Only this was pot, hemp, cannabis.
“I hope they’re growing that for medicinal purposes.” I’d tried to stage whisper, but it came out as more of a shout.
Dimitri just laughed as he unhooked Pirate.
Yeah, I’ll bet he wouldn’t think it was so funny if this was his grandma’s place.
Pirate’s legs were already moving before Dimitri set him down next to the field.
“Geronimo!” My dog dove into a clump of orange poppies, leaping over tufts of flowers. Pirate loved to run. Unlike me, he didn’t even have to know where he was going.
Meanwhile, this Neal guy had his arm wrapped around my Grandma as if they were at the junior prom. He stood on the porch of the cabin, a firm grip on her as he gave half-hugs and friendly greetings to the rest of the witches.
Oy vey.
Dimitri practically dragged me up the walk.
“Go on inside.” The old man shepherded the witches into the low-slung building. “I’ve got a whole pot of avocado soup in the ice box and ginger tea bags under the counter. Bob will show you.” He high fived his brother, still not letting go of Grandma.