The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers (19 page)

"All stunned but alive. Seems like you interrupted the succubi before
they could finish."

Or they'd attacked the witches in order to trap me. Sure, I hadn't announced
my presence in town, but I had slaughtered one of their sisters last night in
the basement of the old prison.

The war was on.

I was suddenly glad to have the dark mark. It might have been the thing that
kept me alive tonight. Still, I wasn't about to let Pirate and the Red Skulls
get caught up in another round. "Let's get everyone out of here.
Now."

"No." Dimitri stopped me with cool, steady hands on my arms.
"The Red Skulls are already on top of it."

"You're kidding." I never thought I'd see the day when the Red
Skulls had a plan.

The tiny lines around his eyes crinkled as he tugged me toward him.
"Come here, sweetheart."

My insides melted at the idea of letting him hold me. I could use a little
comfort right now, to close my eyes, sink into his arms and let someone take
care of me for a change.

I forced myself to stiffen and pull away, ignoring the hurt that flashed
across his strong features. He might have been the one for me, but not now.
Just because I wanted him, didn't mean I could have him. I couldn't let him
drain me or feed the demons that had their claws in him.

"We don't have time," I said gently. "So tell me. What's the
plan?"

His features hardened, making him impossible to read. "Battina and Ant
Eater are working on a new ward," he said. "It won't hold forever. In
fact, they'll drain it even faster once they realize they'll need to send more
than three demons to finish us off. But it'll do until we decide where we can
go."

My first instinct was to .get the heck out of Dodge. Dimitri hadn't been the
first one to feel what it was like to sink down into the hallway. Something had
turned the warm water into a dark ocean. Freezing droplets still clung to my
skin.

I wanted to argue, but curse Dimitri, he was right. There was nowhere we
could go that the she-demons couldn't follow. Our best bet would be to create
our own safe place here until we could figure out what to do.

"You sure Battina and Ant Eater are up to it?" I hadn't gotten a
look at either one of them, but if they'd gotten hit half as bad as Grandma, I
didn't want to count on them.

"I heard that, Miss Permit." Ant Eater's voice, weak but still
annoying, echoed from the hall.

Okay, so maybe she was feeling better. "You're welcome," I
answered. "You know, for me saving your life."

Ant Eater leaned her head inside the door. Her gold tooth sparkled, but her
eyes had lost their hellfire. She'd wrapped her arms around half a dozen
recycled pickle jars. Inside, the greenish brownish sludge took on a life of
its own.

One side of her curly hair was mashed to her head. "Yeah, well you
could have gotten here before those twits gave me the magical hangover of the
century." She grinned, despite herself.

"Anything I can do?" I asked, eyeing the sludge.

"Stick to demon slaying," she said, smashing a jar at my feet and
taking great delight in watching me jump back.

"Lovely," I said, wrinkling my nose at the slime oozing across the
carpet. It smelled like moldy basement and feet.

"A G-bomb a day keeps the demons away," she said, standing next to
me, surveying her work. "Just make sure you keep it wet and out of the
sun. Also, try not to look directly at it."

"Sure," I said. "Is it a ward?"

"It's not an air freshener." She clapped me on the back.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" I didn't think I could
handle another demon attack right now. We'd barely survived the last one.

"For a while," she said. "It's not like we ever used to fight
'em. We'd spell and run. Battina and I keep a stash of emergency wards.
Otherwise, you're never going to get enough turtle knees on such short
notice."

"Sure," I said. I was all about planning.

I found Grandma hunched on the bed nearest the door to our room, the phone
to her ear. I was about to ask her what she was doing when I caught an unusual
sight out the thirteenth-floor window.

Gargoyles circled the top of the Luxor, screeching and pounding their
leathery wings. Even the smaller ones were about the size of a German shepherd.
I dragged the curtains shut. I couldn't take any more weirdness.

"I need as many rollaway beds as you can find," Grandma ordered
into the phone.

She nodded at my upshot eyebrows and did a curlicue with her finger.
"Wards are safer in these three rooms."

I plucked the receiver from her ear and slammed it down. "We can't
stay. In fact, I need you to think. Where is a safe place for you and the
witches?"

"Lizzie Brown, what has gotten into you?"

"
Into me
?" I'd saved her life. I'd rescued the whole
coven.

Never mind the fact that I seemed incapable of saving the one man I might
actually love. I could hear myself growing angrier with each and every word.
"You have to get out of here. These succubi don't want you. They want
me." And I had a feeling they'd follow me until I fought them—all
twenty-two of them.

Make that twenty-four. Damn. They must have used the witches' power to draw
two more out of hell. I could never destroy them all—not at this rate.

Grandma stiffened. "What I meant, sport, is how did you kill the
phone?"

I stared down at the crumpled heap of plastic on the nightstand. Sure
enough, I'd slammed the receiver down
into
the phone. A rivet of shock
ran through me. The beige plastic split open like I'd run over it with my
Harley.

"Dimitri says you wasted three demons." She glared at me, her body
sagging but her mind as alert as ever. "You're not trained to kill that
many."

I wasn't? "Well, that's just great!"

"What the hell happened to you?"

What indeed? I clutched my marked palm against my skirt.

Her eyes narrowed. "We came here because we're in this together."

Not when "together" meant floating unconscious in the hallway.
"I just about got killed tonight trying to save your butts. You're not
helping. You need to leave. Don't even tell me where you're going."

If I couldn't protect them by being with them, I'd do the next best
thing—get them as far away from here as possible.

"News flash. You need the coven."

"That might be true." I'd certainly needed them in the past. But
it wasn't about what I wanted. It was about knowing in my gut what was right
and what was wrong—and then doing something about it.

She flung the broken phone on the floor. "This after we protected you,
we trained you, we accepted you as one of our own."

"Some training," I scoffed. "When were you going to teach me
to kill three?"

"When you were ready!"

"Yeah, well I think I'm ready."

"You can't handle everything!"

"Yes. I can." The dark mark burned into my skin. "I killed
the fifth-level demon that chased you around the country for thirty years. I
killed one last night. Three today."

She let out a string of curses that would have burned my adoptive mom's ears
clean off. "You can't do this alone. You probably don't even know how you
killed three just now."

A sudden fear snaked down my back. She was right. I had nothing going for me
but my instincts and my God-given skills. Grandma hadn't shown me what to do
during a multiple demon attack. She'd never told me that Max, a half demon,
half human could even exist, and she certainly hadn't shared how to keep from
being marked by a demon. "You didn't teach me jack."

Her face blazed red. "You think I can teach you a lifetime of lessons
in two weeks? People want to be lawyers, they spend three years in law school.
You want to be a vet, you go to eight years of medical school. You skip thirty
years of demon slayer training and you want to learn it in two weeks, half of
which we spent on the run from a fifth-level demon and the rest we spent trying
to get here to save Phil's sorry ass. There's no easy way. I taught you what
you needed to know to survive."

Well, it wasn't enough. The only thing I did know was that I wasn't going to
be responsible for the coven getting wiped out.

"I'm the only one who can slay a succubus. So I'm staying and you're
going."

"You need me," she said, biting off every word.

"No, I don't," I retorted, sad, angry and very much alone.

If I could have slammed a door in knee-deep water, I would have. Instead, I
slogged down the hallway, avoiding dead fish. I rubbed at the
6-6-6
that had etched itself deep into my palm, the edges burned black.

Someone splashed up behind me. It wasn't a demon, so it could have been Mary
Poppins for all I cared. I had to think.

"Hold up!" Sid hollered.

I'd forgotten he was even there. Still, I kept walking, despite a string of
fairy curses.

"Excuse me? Hey, lady. I'm risking a crab up the pants, so you need to
park your ass and listen."

I sighed. "What, Sid?" I turned around to find him struggling to
shake a tangled string of seaweed from his fingers. He was shorter than I was,
and the water reached halfway up his thighs. His brown trousers held a pocket
of air that made him look even rounder.

"I should be asking you the same thing," he said. "What
happened here? We've never seen succubi attack like this, and they don't
usually go for females. What'd you do?"

"Nothing," I said. "Obviously, the witches had something they
wanted." Like life energy. I shivered despite myself. "Sid, we need
to get the survivors out of here. Does the DIP have a place they can
stay?"

He furrowed his brows. "Maybe." He wiped his hand off on his
sleeve and pulled his phone from the pocket of his tan striped shirt.
"They don't normally like to get involved, but I think they're going to
have to make an exception here." He dialed in a text message. "Call
me a softie, but a full-scale slaughter won't look good on my performance
review. Besides"—he gave me a quick once over—"you're
about to have bigger problems."

That's right. Fairies could predict the near future. "So what's going
to happen?" I asked, a bit too breathlessly.

"Demons. What else?" he said, far too flippantly for my taste.

"Soon?" I asked.

"Soon enough. Me and the Red Skulls are making it out. You, I'm not so
sure about." He shrugged at my utter shock. "You can't do anything
about it. Except you'd damned well better ask for help when you need it.
Capiche
?"

Not help from the witches, I hoped. I couldn't risk them like that.
"Tell me everything I need to know," I said.

"I just did." He tapped something else into his phone. "Geez.
See, this is why I don't tell people things. They ask for details that I don't
have." He took a closer look at a message on his phone. "Says here
we've been able to confirm your report, at least so far as there's some weird
shit going on."

"Hallelujah."

Sid wrestled a handkerchief out of his back pocket, found a dry spot, and
used it to mop his head.

He shot me a disdainful glare as he dug something out of the pocket of his
loose brown dress pants. "I'm going to regret this, but…" He
held a small vial of glitter. The clear contents churned and sparkled with
energy. "Fairy dust," he explained, "Mine. Just don't go
summoning me during any demon attacks or I'll kill you myself."

"Wow," I said, "thanks." I had a feeling this didn't
happen every day.

The fairy scowled. "Yeah, well if you screw up, I'm allowed my quid pro
quo. You know, restitution. And I will take you up on that."

"I shudder to think," I responded. As for the fairy dust, I held
it up watching it cluster thick in places where my fingers touched the vial.

But it wasn't the fairy I was worried about.

Excerpt from
The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers:

Gargoyles are a good measure of the evil threat in an area
—
both
demonic and otherwise. These horned creatures resemble giant bats and are
attracted to the negative energies. Gargoyles will eat any evil that wanders
too close. It's good in the short term, but a bad sign overall. Too many
gargoyles in one spot means they've found a place to feast
—
and
to breed
.

Wouldn't you know it, Sid and the DIP actually came through. Less than an
hour later, he'd found accommodations outside of the city for all two dozen of
the Red Skulls. Grandma lay on her bed, resting up while the rest of the
witches packed.

"You mind if I ride with Bob?" Pirate asked. "He found me a
special helmet in one of the gift shops. It has racing stripes!"

"Go ahead." I scratched him between the ears. I'd be glad when
they were safely on the road out of town.

I was about to check on the witches when the door to our hotel room flung
open. Pirate and I both jumped an inch.

Witches crowded the corridor outside as Max hitched himself out of the
knee-deep water in the hallway and strode into the room like he did it every
day.

He looked like the devil himself, in black leather pants and a red club
shirt. Hell and seduction seemed to press around him. How did he even find us?

"I need you," Max said, his eyes flicking over me.

Naturally. "Well, take a number."

I had my own problems to solve. As soon as I marshaled the witches and
Dimitri out of Vegas, my biggest challenge involved a giant war with two dozen
succubi.

Max stood rod-straight. If he was affected by the scene around him, he gave
no indication. He took me in, inch by inch, settling on the darkened emerald at
my throat. "You're flinging slayer energy up and down The Strip. Cut it
out. We're leaving now. I've word that a succubus will be at Coo Coo Lounge.
Get your switch stars."