by Angie Fox
And while I was wishing for things, I said a small prayer that this plan would actually work.
Roxie emerged from the cabin, wearing a mass of pillows and blankets. A woman with gray dreadlocks chased behind her, fluffing her padding. It had to be Neal’s other flower-power buddy. I’d give them points for enthusiasm.
“So there you are.” Roxie gave me the stink eye.
Yeah, well we needed less grumbling, more magic portaling. Although I supposed the other slayer deserved a break. She’d made it this far.
“Hold still while I banish you to the other side of the field.” And get rid of that dreg.
“Hold up, Lizzie!” Dimitri called. He’d grabbed a torch and headed for the landing zone.
Sticks and dirt now topped the mattresses and pillows.
“Oh hey, Lizzie!” Pirate called as Flappy dragged an entire tree across the field. “I taught him to fetch!”
That would require Pirate having the upper body strength to throw a tree. But I didn’t have time to explain it to my dog. Pirate had been much better at “keep” than he’d ever been at bringing things back.
“Take the sticks off the pile,” Dimitri said, pulling some of the bigger ones off himself.
We needed to get moving here.
Pirate ran in circles around him. “But sticks are crunchy and soft. You can use sticks. It’s like a nest.”
“Pirate,” I admonished as Dimitri pulled the last of the logs off the landing zone. He wouldn’t be able to do much about the dirt. It clouded in puffs around him as he worked.
Roxie frowned. “You need to get a better handle on your animal.”
If she only knew. “Hush up and let me throw horse poop at you.”
Hmm…perhaps this would be fun after all.
“Ready?” I asked the witches as Roxie moved into position over an “X” on the ground.
Dimitri gave me the thumbs up as Flappy and Pirate trundled into the woods, off on another adventure.
The witches backed away. The smart ones stayed behind me. This probably wasn’t the time to tell anyone that I stunk at softball.
The bandages didn’t help either – or the burns.
“One,” I said, testing the weight of the portal charm.
“Two.” I drew back to fire.
I focused hard on the pile of softness at the end of the field. Thoughts of Dimitri crept into my consciousness and I immediately shut them down. No. Think about the spot at the end of the field. The soft spot. The spot where Roxie must land. See it. Feel it. I could almost taste the dirt on those mattresses.
“Demons out!” I hit Roxie smack dab over the heart and she hurtled backward. Wind tore at my hair and the kickback sent me flying.
I landed on my butt in the dirt. Roxie hit halfway between me and the mattresses. She rolled sideways, in obvious pain as the dreg spun out into the night.
“Catch it!” I scrambled to my feet.
The dreg skipped sideways like a tiddly-wink. No telling what it could do to one of the witches – or to Roxie if it entered her a second time. I couldn’t touch it.
Dimitri raced for the dreg, jar in hand. The plastic disk caught in midair as if on an invisible wind. It heaved and morphed into a flying insect.
Oh heck.
It dive bombed straight at Dimitri. He met it halfway, jar in hand as it zagged around the trap and burrowed into his neck.
He gave a hoarse cry.
I started running.
“Lizzie, no!” Grandma hollered, hot on my heels.
I couldn’t touch it, but I had to grab it somehow. I couldn’t let that thing take Dimitri.
He dropped to his knees. I watched in horror as Dimitri dug the creature out of his own flesh. Wide eyed and panting, fingers bloody, he mashed it into the jar and twisted the lid.
“Dimitri!” I fell to my knees next to him, examining his wound. It was raw and ugly. “Are dregs poisonous?” I asked Grandma. We knew what they did to demon slayers, but what would happen to a griffin or a witch?
Grandma tightened the lid on the dreg. It screeched and flung itself against the glass. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything in Evie’s diary about it.”
“But you didn’t read Evie’s entire diary,” I said, probing the wound.
“Ouch,” Dimitri pushed my hands away. “I feel fine.”
“No, you don’t.” His eyes looked glassy and he was still breathing hard.
I reached into my utility belt for a healing crystal. Closing it in both hands, I thought about his strength, his love and the devotion this man had for me. The clear stone glowed with pure light.
He closed his eyes, his jaw working as I touched the stone to the wound at his neck. It radiated with positive healing.
“How do you feel?” I asked, amazed as the raw wound began to heal.
“It’s better,” he said, wonder in his voice as his warm chocolate eyes opened and he touched his fingers to mine.
Roxie towered over us, holding her arm. “I’m fine, by the way.”
“Are you?” Grandma asked.
“No,” she grumbled. “Lizzie broke my arm.”
“Come here,” I said, “I’ll fix it.” I had another crystal. Although I wasn’t sure where the happy thoughts would come from.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, backing away.
Fine. “I was aiming for the cushions,” I said, resisting the urge to apologize. I’d done my best. And it had worked. She was free of the dreg. She could try to be grateful, especially after what had happened to Dimitri.
I didn’t know how he was going to defeat the multiple dregs that Zatar was sure to be carrying. Even if we could banish the demon to another dimension, were we doing the dark earl a favor, releasing all of his dregs at once?
“Help me up,” Dimitri ordered, trying to stand.
“Sure,” I said, taking one side, Grandma on the other. He was at least two-hundred-and-fifty-pounds of pure muscle. I knew. I’d made it my mission to explore as much of it as possible – as often as I could.
We helped Dimitri over to a picnic table by the main cabin. He slumped down onto a bench, not looking like anyone who could face a bunch of dregs in – oh, about an hour.
What were we going to do when Zatar got here?
“Huddle up,” Grandma said, as she and the witches took seats and gathered in around us. She slammed the jar on the table, the dreg still battling with the glass sides. “I see one big problem.”
“That this thing almost killed Dimitri?” I asked.
“No,” she answered, torch light deepening the lines and shadows of her face, “you didn’t get your fake Zatar to hell.”
Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. “I focused on the target area. I know I did.” The only time my mind had wandered even slightly was to think of Dimitri and I certainly hadn’t flung Roxie on top of him so I was pretty sure that was a moot point.
“Then why didn’t I go far enough?” Roxie called from the end of the table as Frieda worked to splint her arm with a wooden board and several lengths of gauze.
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “What were you thinking?”
“About killing you,” she spat.
“Perfect!” Neal clapped. “That’s exactly what a demon would be thinking.”
“Who invited him?” I demanded.
“Pipe down,” Grandma ordered. “Everybody. Now listen. We know Lizzie didn’t get enough power on her throw. It’s probably because she throws like a girl.”
“Hey -” I began. Oh frick. What was I saying? It was true. “You think that’s the problem?” If so, I didn’t know what we could do about it.
Grandma planted her elbows on the picnic table. “Evie’s portal notes don’t say you have to do the throwing by hand, so,” she said, like a sergeant rallying the troops, “we build you a sling shot.”
“You think I’d be better with a sling shot?” This is what I got for spending my childhood throwing tea parties for my stuffed animals. I had absolutely n
o outside skills.
I turned to Creely, the engineering witch. “Can you build a sling shot? One that I can use?”
She opened her mouth and closed it, nostrils flaring. “Goodbye,” she said, rushing out of the circle.
“If you need help, the dragon can haul wood for you!” I called after her.
Heavens to Betsy. I was getting a sling shot.
Rachmort burst into the circle. “I’ve been testing the demon dust you and your father acquired in purgatory.”
“And?” He was talking too slow.
“It’s fake, laced with fillers. It won’t hold a demon. The best it will do is slow him down.”
“Okay, well then we’ll sprinkle it around the target area.” I needed all the help I could get. “Now what do we do about Dimitri?”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” he grunted through the pain. “I told you I’d do this.”
Yes, well, wanting to do it and having the physical strength were two different things. I’d just demonstrated that myself.
But Dimitri was our only option. None of us could handle a dreg. Now he was going to get hit bad. I didn’t know what to do about that.
“Come on,” Grandma said, breaking up the meeting. “Zatar will likely be here within the hour. Frieda, go see if you can help Creely, even if that means keeping the rest of us out of her hair. Everybody else – we need more jars.”
“Let’s get you back to the bus,” I said to Dimitri. At least he could rest up and recover there. “No need to be the hero right now.” He’d be one soon enough.
“No,” he said, wrapping his arms around his chest as if he were cold. A chill – or something worse – passed through his body and he cringed. “I have to stay close in case something happens.”
I wanted to argue, but he was right. We needed him. “Okay, well sit tight. I’m going to double check the portal charms.” Plus I could tell Dimitri didn’t want to be babied, which was hard because there was nothing more I wanted to do than hold him close.
Men.
Out near the field, Bettina opened her cooler of portal charms and I inserted soul flowers into the center of each. We had six shots, which would be more than enough.
There would only be time for one.
Creely hunched in the middle of a circle of witches holding torches. She hammered a length of wood, barking orders to at least three more witches who were doing the same. It didn’t look like a sling shot. It looked like a weapon.
More witches added torches at the edge of the field and sprinkled salt from large burlap bags. Normally, salt is used by witches to ward off evil. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that those things wouldn’t make a whit of difference to a demon like Zatar.
He was an Earl of Hades, demonic royalty for heaven’s sake. I remembered the sheer power and evil he’d thrown at me – and that was before he knew I could toss it back.
I watched as Neal helped my father past the cabin. It seemed Dad didn’t want to miss this. Well, maybe it was for the best. This could very well be my final battle.
Chapter Twenty-two
Neal deposited Dad at an empty picnic table before beating a hasty retreat. He’d found Dad a pair of baggy jeans and a green Bob Marley T-shirt.
I slipped onto the bench next to him, our backs to the table. “How are you doing?”
It was a loaded question. Anyone who took one look at him would know he was fading fast. His eyes were red and his body hunched. Shadows formed under his hollowed out cheeks and blood trickled from his nose. He clutched the wooden bench like he was about to fall off.
He was even worse than when I’d found him half-dead by the altar to Zatar.
Dad motioned me closer. “The demon is coming,” he said in a garbled voice. The bench under him began to shudder.
“I know, Dad.” I reached down and touched his bony shoulder. “Try not to talk.”
The last thing we needed was a zombie picnic table.
I took his hands in mine. They were cold and shaking. “I will save you.” He had to believe that. I needed to as well. “We will beat Zatar. We have a plan.”
It was a shaky plan at best, but we’d do what we had to do. We didn’t have a choice.
This was the dark time before the dawn, but the sun would rise. It must.
Dad nodded, tears in his eyes.
“It’s time,” he mouthed.
He was right. I could tell from the expression on Frieda’s face as she jogged straight for us. “Break time’s over, girlie,” she said. “Creely needs you at the machine. Battina is unloading the portal charms and Roxie looks like she’s the last pea on the plate.”
I squinted at her. “I don’t even know what that means.”
She shrugged, white plastic earrings swaying. “Then follow me.”
This was it. “Bye, Dad.” I kissed him on the head before following Frieda out to the field.
On the way out, I saw Max and Roxie emerge from the cabin – laughing. The light from the door fell full on his face which held pure emotion.
It stopped me because I didn’t think I’d ever seen Max genuinely happy. I didn’t know he was capable.
No question about it, Roxie had powers that went beyond slaying demons.
Frieda nudged me. “Whatcha stopping for?”
“Nothing.” She was right. We needed to keep moving. “We have ten minutes according to my watch.” I wouldn’t bother Frieda with the seconds.
Twenty-eight - in case you were wondering.
I rubbed at my eyes as a wave of exhaustion rolled over me. It was my body’s reaction to stress, calm and now more stress. Either that or it was the fact that we were going on nearly twenty-four hours with no sleep. My watch read 4:36 a.m.
The witches lit so many torches it looked like daylight had already come to the field behind the main cabin. A steady wind whipped at the flames.
Dimitri, Max, Grandma and an entire gaggle of witches stood to my right, positioning dreg jars and going over strategy. Another platoon of witches maintained the torches. Max and Roxie had their own pow-wow going farther back in the shadows.
I stopped short as we came up on Creely. She hitched up a red cowboy boot onto the bottom of her latest contraption. The witch never did things halfway, but this was impressive even for her.
The engineering witch gave me an ear-to-ear grin as she stood in front of a wooden creation the size of a mini van.
“I call this the Charm Flinger 3000,” she announced, her green-streaked hair swirling about her face.
It looked like a medieval catapult but there were no wheels. She’d built it on the spot.
The throwing mechanism reminded me of a large spoon. Only this one was basically a blazing sun on a long colorful piece of wood.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, running my hand along it. I knew I’d seen it before. The memory of it tugged at a corner of my brain.
“Don’t ask,” she said, moving my hand from her precious piece of engineering.
Oh my word. She’d swiped the totem from the cemetery.
Then again, this was war.
“Simple to use,” Creely said, beckoning me to the controls. She pulled a rag from the back of her brown leather pants and wiped her hands before she touched the machine. “Pull this latch,” she said, giving a fake yank at the wooden stick, “and it releases the rope.”
“Which fries the demon,” I said. “Now how do I aim it?”
She shook her head. “You don’t,” she said, scratching her nose. “I didn’t have time for a navigation system.”
“Well then what good is a spell that misses?” I hated to break it to her, but we probably had one shot.
“Look, we’re winging this,” Creely explained in the understatement of the century. “The demon is going to show up because we’re here. Then we just need to get him in place.”
Get him in place? “Have you ever battled a demon?”
She glared at me. “You know I have. Now can it. This will wo
rk. Roxie needs to lure the demon to the spot I marked in orange.” She pointed out ahead of us and I strained to see an orange beach towel spread over the grass.
“I hate to tell you, but your target can get blown away, or moved, or used to sop up a spill.”
“It’ll stick,” Creely said. “Ant Eater used stakes. We don’t have time for anything else. Then your friend Rachmort sprinkled demon dust to help stick Zatar to our spot.”
I didn’t like this. It was too complex. Simple plans seemed to work best in situations like this.
For example: my favorite - see a demon and then shoot a switch star at its head. Not a lot can go wrong there.
Okay, that’s a lie. There were all kinds of things that could go South (and often had) but the basic plan was solid.
For the eight hundred and twelfth time, I wished I could kill Zatar myself and be done with Evie’s formula. I didn’t like trying to hit it with a charm that needed to be thrown perfectly for it to work. I didn’t like having to rely on Creely or Roxie or a machine, or anything else for that matter. And I didn’t like knowing that we had one shot at this – one – before the Earl of Hades was on top of us.
Creely slapped at my arm. “Stop stewing. We’re going to pull this off.”
Cripes. If I had my way, Creely and the rest of the witches wouldn’t be anywhere near here when Zatar showed up. Of course this was not The Battle According to Lizzie.
Our choices were limited.
“Roxie knows about this?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about using the other slayer as bait. Zatar was amazingly fast. I’d had seconds after he started shooting vox at me down in purgatory. What would happen to her if the demon opened fire?
“Roxie!” I called from across the field.
We didn’t want to count on her catching vox like I had. According to Rachmort, it was a rare gift. He’d been her instructor. He’d know if she had it. Then again, he’d trained me too.
Roxie stumbled up next to me, wiping her brow with her good arm. Her platinum hair fell across her dazed eyes. “I don’t feel right,” she said, her voice scratchy.