The Last of the Demon Slayers (25 page)

I dove for my dad and dragged him across the room. I could barely move him. It was as if he suddenly weighed five hundred pounds. His shoulder gave way with a sickening pop. I tried not to think about it as I yanked him toward safety.

“Caladai taniom abberaat!”
Rachmort opened a second portal in the floor. His turned-over chair teetered on the edge and I tackled him, sending Rachmort through, still half tied, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other grabbing my Dad’s hand. I didn’t let go.

We fell headlong into the blazing hot abyss. I closed my eyes tight against the punishing winds. It was like being inside a tornado, but I didn’t care. I’d never been so glad to get out of anywhere, no matter where this portal took us.

Chapter Nineteen

We hit the ground hard, rolling over mounds of earth and sandy soil until we smacked into a tree trunk. Dad flew one way, Rachmort skidded another and I got showered with dry pine needles.

I brought a throbbing hand up to my shoulder and then thought the better of it.

Everything hurt. Maybe I could just stay under this sad excuse for a tree. I didn’t want to face what was out there.

      
I squeezed my eyes shut, then forced them open again. Rachmort might be injured. Dad, too. Then there was the issue of finding out exactly where we’d landed. The only thing I could tell so far was that it was night.

“Onward and upward,” I groaned, scooting on my elbows until I could lurch to my feet. My hands were raw. They were already starting to blister.

The moon hung low, illuminating Rachmort as he lay in a heap of chair a short distance away. There were no other signs of civilization, only acres of scrub.

“I’m coming,” I said, brushing pine needles away, forcing myself to block out the throbbing in my hands. I did a quick search of the ground around me. Cripes. I’d lost my neutralizer.

My dad sprawled between me and Rachmort. He was starting to come around.

I tried to hold my head steady, hoping it would help the ringing in my ears. It didn’t. “You okay?” I caught a whiff of the ammonia and sulfur of purgatory on him. No doubt I stunk too.

He winced as I helped him to his feet.

“I’ve been better,” he groaned, holding his dislocated shoulder.

No kidding. At least both of us were upright. That was progress.

I made it over to Rachmort, realizing too late that I’d lost my cutters.

Rachmort lay on the ground, still bound to his chair, bracing himself with his free hand. I bent down to help steady him. “Are you okay?”

      
“Your cutters are in the Joshua tree.”

      
“How do you-?” I began. “You know what? Forget it. I don’t want to know.

I made a bee line for the Joshua tree. And there, at the base, I saw a pasty white butt, a silver ponytail and, “Oh my God,” I spun away, covering my eyes.

“Hey, get your own – Oh wow, it’s Lizzie!”

And that was Neal.

I didn’t dare look again, even though I was pretty sure who was with the flower-powered menace.

Grandma chuckled. “It’s the most natural thing in the world, Lizzie.”

No it wasn’t. Not when it was my grandmother, at the base of a tree, en flagrante.

“Can you stop making out?” We had problems here.

She didn’t even have the decency to be embarrassed. “We weren’t making out, we were making love.”

“Too much information.”

“Besides, you were the one who ran off. Looks like you did good. Hey, Rachmort!”

“Gertie!” The necromancer waved his free hand. “I was aiming for you. I figured you’d be somewhere fortified.”

Oh please. “Get dressed,” I barked. “And hand me those cutters.”

“No wait!” I corrected myself as Neal began to stand up. “I’ll get them myself.” I reached into a high branch for the gleaming silver shears.

I still couldn’t believe Grandma and Neal had been doing the horizontal pokey while we fought for our lives in purgatory.

Grandma had no business being out away from camp, especially with an aging hippie who couldn’t keep his Birkenstocks to himself.

There were banshees on the loose for heaven’s sake! Deadly cutters flying through the air! Although, frankly, I was more annoyed by Neal.

Not that I’d seen anything truly gruesome. It was dark. But the thought, the hint, the notion of Grandma doing
that
or anything leading up to it was a bit more than my brain could handle.

While Neal put his peace sign back in his pocket, I knelt beside my mentor and tried to focus on something I could control, like freeing him.

My hands shook with pain, but I held the cutters as steady as I could and sliced the last bond from Rachmort’s wrist.

“How long do you think before Zatar tracks us?” I asked, helping him uncurl his wrist from the back of the chair.

Rachmort sagged to the ground, his white hair stark and bright against the brown soil. “Not long.”

I got to work on the bands at his ankles.

Rachmort ran a dirty hand over his face and back into his hair. “How long have you been able to -” He winced as I nicked him with the cutters.

“Sorry.”

“How long have you been able to handle a demon’s vox?”

I cringed as his ankle bonds snapped and the kickback made my cutters vibrate against the burns on my hands. “It came with the powers.” Grandma had locked me in my bathroom to undergo the change. I’d been mad and scared. “A few seconds after I turned into a demon slayer, a demon showed up on the back of my toilet bowl, spitting vox. I’d killed him with it.”

Rachmort broke out in a smile and for the first time that night. He looked like his old self. “Splendid, Lizzie. Well done.” He scooted away from the chair, his legs free.

Well it’s not as if I had much of a choice. “How long have you been able to summon portals?”

He flicked his hand. “It’s a common necromancer’s trick,” he said, massaging at his freed wrists. “I’ve never met a demon slayer who could touch vox, much less hold it,” he said, barely containing his excitement. “And you threw it back!” He made a tossing motion. “Pow!”

“Yeah.” He made it sound fun, when in reality it was downright terrifying. “You mean I’m not supposed to do that?”

He shook his head wildly. “No. It’s completely baffling. Isn’t that wonderful?”

      
I wasn’t so sure. “Should I keep doing it?”

“Of course.” He touched my arm, his expression more like a father’s than I’d ever known. “You have gifts, Lizzie. It’s your moral duty to use them well.”

      
Grandma sauntered up to us, boots grinding against the sandy earth. “My turn to interrupt the love fest.”

      
“Your shirt’s on backward,” I said.

      
She snorted. “Stop being picky. I had to do something while you were off saving the world.” She straightened the silver rings on her fingers. “You said we had problems.”

      
“Right.” Rachmort scrambled to his feet, brushing the worst of the dirt from his brown trousers. “Zatar is going to be able to use that portal to track us.”

      
“I don’t know,” I said, ignoring the pounding in my head as I stood. “I may have bought us some time. You see I had one of Grandma’s jars left-”

      
“
You
stole my jars?”

      
“Borrowed,” I corrected her. There was a difference. Maybe. “Anyhow, it broke and I felt Zatar fade.”

      
“E-yah!” Grandma slapped me on the back. Grandma planed her silver ringed hands on her hips, coming as close as she ever had to beaming. “You unloaded an all purpose jar back there? That’ll hold him back for three hours. Maybe four!”

      
“Then let’s prepare,” Rachmort said.

      
I nodded. “Okay, listen up.”

Dad and I explained what happened in purgatory. Well, I did most of the explaining. Dad sat down against the Joshua tree. He’d gone pale and weak.

      
Grandma whistled under her breath. “How long did the demon have you?” she asked Rachmort.

      
He tugged at his goatee. “What month is it?”

      
She raised her brows. “March.”

      
“Two months then.” He blew out a breath.

      
Wow. He’d been taken almost the moment he’d left us in Greece.

      
He waved off our concern. “There’s no time for that. Although I will thank you, Lizzie. And you, Xavier, for rescuing me. That was a fine piece of work. Most impressive.” He winked. “Now.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “The demon wants you dead, Lizzie. I heard him talking. He’s made it his mission to eliminate the slayers.”

      
Thanks for the reminder. “Roxie and I figured that out.”

      
“Roxie?” He beamed with surprise. “She’s alive?”

      
That’s right. He didn’t know. “I’m not the last demon slayer.” To see his expression you would have thought it was Christmas morning, Easter and his birthday wrapped into one.

“There are six others,” I told him, “including Roxie. They went into hiding.”

“Brilliant!” He beamed. “I knew I trained them well.”

Yeah, well training only got you so far. “We have a problem. Roxie’s infected with a dreg. She’s afraid she’s going to pass it on to her sister.”

      
“Yes, yes,” he said. You could see the wheels turning in his mind. “We’ll protect them. We’ll make it our mission to stop the dregs and eliminate Zatar.”

      
Dad started coughing. Hard.

      
“Are you all right?” He looked terrible. His eyes had gone glassy, his breathing was shallow and the cuts on his chest had begun to ooze.

      
“I’ll take him back,” Neal slipped an arm under Dad’s uninjured shoulder. “We’ll snap that joint back into place too. Come on, buddy.” The Bohemian bane of my existence was actually quite gentle as he helped my dad back to his feet. Neal didn’t even flinch at the blood or the smell. He gave Dad a reassuring smile. “We’ll find you a comfortable spot on your very own bus.”

      
“I’ll come check on you,” I called after them, grateful for once to have Neal around.

      
Grandma whistled under her breath. “That man has the finest ass.”

      
And I was grateful no longer.

“Okay,” I said to Grandma and Rachmort, “let’s plan our attack here. We need to get rid of the dregs and get Zatar off our backs. Let’s think of a way to do it.”

      
I didn’t know if I was strong enough to kill Zatar, but I was positive I didn’t have a clue about how to eliminate a dreg.

      
“We can do what Evie did,” Grandma said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

      
“How do you know what Evie did?” My Great Great Great Aunt Evie might have been one of the greatest demon slayers of all time, but she died in 1883.

      
Grandma thwacked me on the arm. “Roxie came back here after you went to purgatory without her. She’s pissed about that, by the way. But she brought with her that diary you found.”

      
“So Evangeline was Evie.”

      
I’d hoped, but I hadn’t been able to take a long enough look at the book to be sure. Talk about knowledge. This could change everything. I wondered what my Dad had planned to do with Evie’s diary – and how he came across the book in the first place.

      
“I was reading it when Neal suggested a walk.”

      
Among other things.

      
“Lizzie, pay attention,” Grandma ordered.

“I am paying attention,” I snapped.

“Old people have sex,” Grandma said.

Oh my god.

“Yes, they do!” Rachmort added.

“Please. Stop. Let’s just talk about the diary.”

Grandma huffed. “Exactly. I didn’t memorize the details, but I know Evie could create a portal so specific to a demon that it stripped him of the magic things he had with him.”

Wait. “I thought necromancers created portals.”

      
“We do.” He began polishing his glasses on his gold waistcoat. “In fact, it’s much easier for someone like me to bridge the gaps between the worlds of the living and the dead. Part of the job, you could say.” He held his glasses up to the moonlight. “But it’s not impossible for you. Not at all. I tried to teach Evie portals. Years ago. Didn’t know it took.” He leaned close. “If you can re-create Evie’s portal, you could banish Zatar and force him to release his dregs.”

Hope blossomed. “I can do that? I could eliminate the dregs?”

“It sure sounds like it!” Rachmort exclaimed with no small amount of glee. He grew somber. “Of course, we’d have to catch them.”

      
Great. Dregs on the loose. Provided I could even pull this off. I hoped Dimitri was ready. And still talking to me.

Rachmort put on his glasses and blinked a few times, testing them. “Your great aunt was a feisty one, always trying to improve on things. She exploded my hand-cranked Demon Duster. Kaboom! You should have seen it,” he mused. “She sent my canoe to Hades… But I never knew she’d caught on.” Rachmort clapped his hands, delighted. “Evie was special. Just like you.”

“Ah, so now it’s tradition.” I kind of liked that. And it would be fun to create the kind of portal that could strip Zatar of those dregs and any other magic he happened to be holding.

“Where do you think we should send him?” I asked. “Personally, I’d prefer to impale him on one of the ice peaks of Hades.”

“Excellent idea,” Rachmort boomed. “Drag him deeper than you’ve ever gone.”

      
How could I send him to a place I’d never even seen?

“This is starting to sound more and more impossible.” My brain started to buzz, like it always did when I was thinking about the details upon details involved in pulling off an insurmountable task.

“Just remember the demon slayer truths, Lizzie!” Rachmort said.