by Deanna Chase
“Is that why you took Grandma too?” I watched him closely, hoping he’d betray her location.
“Of course not. She was bait. But she’ll be good for experimentation too. I’m always looking for ways to improve my imps. Hybrids, you see. I’ve never fused an imp with a witch.”
My stomach churned. We had to stop this sicko. But how do you kill a creature that can’t be killed?
Vald checked his watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go collect on a bet.” He winked.
Dimitri’s sisters.
Naked, unarmed and clearly insane, Dimitri shoved me backward and launched himself at Vald. Holy hell. I was about to lose my lover, my grandma, my power and my ever living soul all in the same day.
Chapter 22
Vald moved faster than anything I’d ever seen. He shoved Dimitri into the aquarium and both of them crashed to the floor in a wave of shattered glass, ice water and white scaled dragon creatures. The monsters bit into Dimitri like a teeming wave of piranha. I clutched a glass shard in a lab towel and stabbed everything I could, dragging the creatures from Dimitri’s body. They hissed and bit at me as I cleaved heads from bodies. Their blood, like hot steam, burned my hands and arms. Dimitri impaled four of them on the leg of an overturned dissection table, their bodies sizzling on the linoleum floor.
Then we both got wise and started hurling them up into the energy web on the ceiling. White scaled creatures collided with the pulsing imps in an explosion of screams, scales, fur and blood.
“Enough!” Vald yelled. The energy field crackled and died, shrouding the room in shadows. The remaining aquariums glowed, the white scaled creatures writhing and twisting against the glass.
Dimitri curled sideways from the toxic bites raging through his body. I reached for the crystals in my belt.
Vald stalked straight for me. “That’s it. Your soul is mine.”
He reached for me and fire shot up my arm as soon as he touched me.
“Son of a bitch!” Vald retreated, his hands smoking.
My head swam and my knees buckled and I hurled right there on Vald’s shoes.
“Impossible,” he said, inspecting his blackened hands. “I cured that.” He snagged a towel hanging from one of the u-shaped lab faucets.
Dimitri shook on the cold, hard linoleum. Sweat and blood slickened his entire body. I had to help him. I braced a hand on the overturned dissection table, clutching a handful of crystals, one eye on Vald. I infused the crystals with—think, Lizzie, what it felt like to be with Dimitri that night at Motel 6.
The pure wickedness in his eyes as he’d teased me through the boring white button down he’d found for me because I wanted it. He touched me, moved me, made me feel until I almost combusted with it. He hadn’t wanted to change me or improve me, he’d just wanted to be with me. And what we’d done as a result—I couldn’t think of anything more happy or healthy.
The crystals radiated in my hand as I fought the remnants of a smile. Just thinking of what that man did to me…
I rushed to Dimitri and touched the crystals to the worst of his wounds. The rocks emitted a ghostly yellow light, barely perceptible among the sweat and the blood.
It should have been enough, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t healing. Something was horribly wrong. I’d felt immediate relief when the crystal touched my back. Dimitri hadn’t even opened his eyes. He shivered as I pressed more and more stones to his body.
“Oh my god, Dimitri.” Heal, damn it! Heal.
A metal clamp seized my neck. What the—? Dimitri’s emerald bit into the flesh at the base of my throat. I twisted my fingers around solid steel as it dragged me backwards, away from him.
“Stand up or I’ll make sure he’s dead,” Vald commanded.
Vald forced me through a tiny back hallway, lined with vats of fetid chemicals. I tried to catch a glimpse back at Dimitri, to see if he was okay, but Vald’s grip never let up. He led me through into a small room. The faint smell of blood and urine surged the instant a heavy door closed behind us. A closet of a room sprouted from the main chamber and I almost gagged when I looked inside. A pair of bald, tattoo laden identical twins, very dead, and sewn together at the heart. No question about it, this room was used for torture.
Vald followed my gaze. “Rock stars. Scraggly looking things. They said they’d do anything, so I took them at their word.”
In the next room, chains wound around a cafeteria table stained with blood. Cuts and gouges streaked the plastic. Dark scars had settled in the grooves, like cleaves on a cutting board. Hack saws, rusty screwdrivers, pliers and worse hung from a pegboard on the wall.
I dug in my heels grabbed hold of the door jamb and held on with everything I had.
“Come on, now,” Vald said, using both hands to pry me inside the room. “I’m not going to torture you. Yet. This is for my imps. I’ve been finding ways to make them meaner. There’s a fine line between piercing an animal enough to make it vicious, but not so much as to harm the muscular or skeletal systems. I’ve also learned to razor the teeth for maximum sharpness while maintaining core strength.”
He kicked open another door and in the hallway outside, Grandma’s motionless body lay on a gurney, her silver hair tangled and her eyes staring at the ceiling. I fought back a wave of panic and focused on what I had to do.
Vald dragged me into a soaring room with glass floors, a twisted version of the stacks at City Library. Instead of a patchwork of hardback books, glass containers by the thousands stacked the rows upon rows of shelves. In almost every one, a living soul fluttered near the lid.
“What is it with you people and jars?” I inched my fingers into my belt, the third pouch on the right, and dug out a crystal. I infused it with death, destruction, everything I felt for this evil creature who had stolen Grandma’s soul. He left Dimitri to writhe and die on the floor while toxins ravaged his body. He’d systematically sucked the life from every woman in Dimitri’s family. He’d stolen my grandmother. He’d attacked the Red Skulls, kept them on the run for thirty years. He wanted to drain me dry, kill me and use my powers to go all medieval on millions of innocents.
I’d kill him first.
I hurled the crystal straight for Vald’s forehead. It smacked him right between the eyes and bounced off.
He gave me a sour look. “I really wish you’d quit doing that.”
Everyone was depending on me, damn it. I hurled the next crystal straight for his heart. He stepped aside in a blaze of motion and my crystal burst through row after row of glass jars. Souls screeched as they darted, collided and knocked over shelf after shelf. Glass flew, the souls screamed like a thousand fire alarms. In a wave, they bolted for the ceiling like trapped birds. Shit. One of those was Grandma. “Grandma!”
Vald’s eyes blazed for a moment, before he stomped down the emotion. “You try a demon’s patience.” He said, fighting to even the tone of his voice. “You’d better hope she doesn’t singe herself on the florescent lights.”
I strained to catch a glimpse, any sign of Grandma among the thousands of souls dancing around a series of hot bulbs encased in wide set metal brackets.
“How about this?” he asked. “I’ll retrieve your grandmother and you hand over your power.”
I couldn’t do it. He was too dangerous.
“Well what if we include the rest of Dimitri’s family?” asked the fifth level demon, far too reasonably.
My eyes had grown dry from staring. I could save Dimitri, his family, Grandma. But I didn’t want this monster walking the earth. Or, if I let my mind go there, I didn’t want any part of his demon slayer experiments. My mom was right. We should never have come down here. We’d only made things worse.
Vald twisted the clamp around my throat. “What if I do this?”
My body flooded with pain, as if he’d dropped me in a vat of acid. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
As soon as it began, it ended. My body tingled, hyper sensitive to the static electricity racing up and dow
n my arms.
“Was that effective?”
I didn’t know what to do.
“What about this?”
A cramp seized me between the ribs. My breath caught in my throat as Vald drew a spider web thin line of blue energy from my body. He teased it out, unraveling my powers like an old sock. I felt myself grow weak with every pull. My head fuzzed, and my mouth grew dry. When he finished teasing out a length of my shimmering, demon slaying essence, he dropped the thread to the floor.
“This way takes longer,” Vald grunted. “And now I’m going to have to untangle it. An interesting choice you’ve made.”
My rapidly numbing fingers dug into the case at the back of my utility belt. I prayed that the last tool in Great Aunt Evie’s bag of tricks would be enough to cap Vald’s ass for good. I inched my finger underneath the lid to find the mysterious creature I’d glimpsed on the deck of the Dixie Queen.
Ouch! Damn the thing. It bit me. I shoved my finger deeper. If the little degenerate thought its razor-pointed teeth could stop me at this point, it had underestimated this particular chewed-up, spit-out, not-going-take-it-anymore demon slayer.
It wriggled its sand papery body far down into the bottom of the pocket until it disappeared completely. Impossible! I wanted to holler as I dug my bloody finger into the bottom of the leather case. Then again, what the hell did I know?
Back to the third pocket from the right. I reached for my last crystal and jerked back in pain as it burned my fingers. Vald’s pile of power had grown into a tangle of threads at his feet. I no longer had enough energy to use the few tools I had left.
My stomach sank. I couldn’t beat Vald even when I had my powers, much less now. He tossed me a maniacal grin. He was going to kill me and Dimitri—if Dimitri wasn’t dead already. Then Vald would walk the earth again.
As if he could read my thoughts, which he probably could given the grip he had on my life force, Vald said, “It will be important to wipe out the coven. And of course any trace of you, just in case you have a twin. I’ve learned to be meticulous. When I exterminated Edna, I gave in to celebration too soon. Her sister Evie escaped. A very difficult slayer indeed. I’ve regretted it, my lack of attention, for many, many years.”
I felt the two halves of my soul fluttering in my throat. I wondered what Vald would do to them—to me—after I died.
Vald jolted, shocking me out of my haze. Dimitri stood next to my pile of power, holding up a purple Transport Spell.
Sweet happy puppies! Ant Eater had shoved that purple noodle of a Transport Spell in my pocket on board the Dixie Queen. I didn’t care when or how Dimitri had taken it. God love my crafty, demon busting boyfriend.
“Cut it, Vald,” Dimitri said, displaying the Transport Spell, “or you’re headed for the third layer of hell.”
Vald stopped, his face twisted with annoyance and—praised be—doubt. “If you release that spell, you’ll also send Lizzie to the third layer of hell,” he said, wiggling the thin line of energy that connected me to the fifth level demon. “I doubt she’d fare as well as I would.”
Dimitri drew the spell back like a weapon. “Yeah,” he said, his voice colder than the ice cliffs, “but I get rid of you.”
I hated it when Dimitri was right. He might be bluffing, but I hoped he wasn’t.
Even though I was rapidly losing my powers, I was still a demon slayer. And we lived by the Three Truths. Look to the outside. Accept the universe.
Sacrifice yourself.
“Do it,” I told Dimitri.
Vald stiffened. “Don’t be premature, griffin,” he said quickly. “I’ll let you have your sisters if you take them and leave now.”
“I think he’s telling the truth,” I said to Dimitri. “He hasn’t had time to kill them yet.”
Vald cocked his head toward me. “Lizzie’s taken more time than I’d expected.”
The demon nodded toward a row of jars at the far edge of the room. “Open the one with the blue lid. The curse is there.”
A bolt of silver danced inside.
“Will you know?” I mouthed to him, lacking the energy for words.
Dimitri nodded. He backed toward the far shelf. Eyeing us, he popped the lid, reached his hand inside and crushed the curse. His eyes blazed with relief for a split second before they hardened again. “Stupid, demon,” Dimitri said with a smirk. “I still have the Transport Spell.”
Vald launched a switch star at Dimitri. It sliced through his beautiful chest and into the wall behind him. I watched in horror as Dimitri stood for a moment, an awful steaming hole in his chest, disbelief etched on his features, before he pitched forward onto the floor. Blood flowed from him in a sickening, widening pool.
“Stupid griffin,” Vald said. “I had a switch star.”
It was the single most helpless moment in my life. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t even hold him.
Vald’s pale blue eyes twinkled as he grinned at me. “Ah, switch stars. They’re quite useful, you know,” he said, returning to the slow task of killing me. “You can’t throw a curse from fifty feet.”
Numb, hard shock gave way to pure, blind rage. Dimitri could have used the Transport Spell to save himself. He could have popped it the moment he knew his sisters were safe. But he’d stuck around to help me and I’d be damned if I was going to let him lie there in a pool of blood. I was a demon slayer and I had to start acting like one.
Vald’s evil twisted in his heart. I could taste it like I could the black souls as they twined and pulsed in JR’s chest. I leaned forward, pushed toward Vald like I was swimming through water. He yanked me closer, as my essence bled into his hands.
I breathed in sulfur and rot as I laid my hand on his chest. Yeah, well I’d soon smell the sulfuric ting of black, gloopy demon blood. Gritting my teeth, I used every ounce of strength I had left to dig my fingers into his flesh. He hollered and pulled and for a second I thought he was about to fling me away, but I kept burrowing, through muscle and ribs and the goo that jammed under my fingernails and twisted around my wrist, my arm. I grasped his heart in both hands and yanked.
“Enough!” he demanded.
The muscle spasmed in my hand. It curled and pumped, spouting black gore. Alive. Empty. I felt for Vald’s essence, his living being.
“Demons don’t have souls, you raving lunatic.” Vald ground his teeth together, tethered to me by a single thread, my right hand still inside his chest. The two halves of my soul fluttered in my throat. They wanted to be whole again. Tears pushed against the back of my eyes. I’d give anything to get out of here, to be normal. To leave this entire sick existence behind me.
But it wasn’t about me.
Sacrifice yourself.
I covered my mouth with my hand and tried not to choke on the acidic tang of Vald’s blood. I forced myself to relax, eased my throat opened and coaxed the fluttering half of my soul upward.
Vald pulled at the thin thread, unraveling the last bits of my power. His chest healed quickly, the black blood thickening, his skin closing over the wound. I captured the adventurous half of my soul like a butterfly, wound it into my palm and shoved it into the rapidly narrowing hole in Vald’s chest.
“You clueless,” the demon strained for a breath, “freak of—” His eyes bugged as he clutched the gaping wound over his heart. Vald fell to his knees as blue fire curled from the gash. He stared at me with pure hatred as the cobalt flame lashed across his body, incinerating him from the inside out.
I should have been relieved, and I was. More than that, I was angry—at Vald for starting this whole mess, at Dimitri for trying to be brave and at myself for not doing more to protect the two people in this world that would have done anything to protect me.
Vald burned hot and fast. I’d heard of spontaneous combustion and this had to be the closest thing to it. But the blue flame left nothing, not even ashes.
Soul jars burst like popcorn popping. I wrapped my arms around my face and head as souls careened throughout the
room. They rushed up, out, in a flurry of beating wings.
My own energy knocked me backward as it surged into my body. Heat blasted through my veins. Unable to move, I stared for Dimitri’s pale, lifeless body. He wasn’t breathing.
No. I tried to stand. It couldn’t end this way. I wouldn’t let it.
A familiar presence landed on my shoulder. Grandma.
“Stay with me,” I said, as I struggled toward Vald. Holding my breath, I pulled my ever living soul from the demon’s chest with a wet glop. My spirit dove back into me, searing me with its intensity. I caught my breath for a moment, overwhelmed.
It was too much.
I felt my chest. I was whole. But what about Dimitri? What about Grandma?
“Wait for me,” I said, hoping he could hear.
I had to help Grandma while I could.
Her soul on my shoulder, I struggled to stand. My legs felt like rubber as I forced them to move. “Don’t you dare fly off on me, Grandma.”
Head swimming, I put one foot in front of the other until I made it to Grandma’s body on the gurney outside the torture room. With a squeal, her soul belly-flopped back into her. I thought I saw her eyes twitch, but we didn’t have time to get her off the slab. Not yet. Dimitri could be dying back there. I heaved the table around and pushed Grandma back through the broken glass in the soul room, the wheels spattering through Dimitri’s blood.
Oh God.
I clutched Grandma’s hand, Dimitri’s hand. I squeezed my eyes shut and called to Ant Eater, the coven, anybody else who was listening.
“Get us the hell out of here!”
Chapter 23
I didn’t even see the portal. It must have snuck up behind us because when the world stopped spinning, we lay crumpled on the floor of a tiny, square shaped living room. The pilot’s house. Not that I cared where we were, as long as it didn’t involve the second layer of hell. We’d made it back. Now I just had to make sure we all lived.