The Accidental Demon Slayer

Chapter Two

He bowed his head and cackled low in his throat, sending a shiver straight down to my toes. Run! My mind screamed in horror. My blood pounded in my skull and my hands flopped helplessly. Run! I dug my heels into the tile and managed a pathetic half circle. Oh my God. I was going to die right here on my bathroom floor.
Grandma whipped her hand forward. “Go to hell, Xerxes!” she screamed, sending a wave of energy shrieking over my head. Her turquoise choker glowed around her neck. The air itself vibrated. Xerxes didn’t even blink. Instead, he lifted a skeletal finger and pointed it at me. I wanted to cry. Keep it together.
Grandma clasped both hands around her necklace. She began to chant, her raspy voice repeating a single word, “Digredior. Digredior. Digredior.” Xerxes snorted and the acrid smell of sulfur seared the air.
I stared down at my own fingers, steaming on the tile. Run! Impossible. It was like my body was trapped in a thick sludge. I fought back a wave of panic. If I couldn’t escape, I had to think. I puffed the hair out of my face and focused on the geometric white tiles in front of me. Be logical.
Somewhere, there existed a reasonable explanation for what was happening. I just had to find it. Had I inhaled some of the sanitizing spray? Naturally. Yes. That could explain a lot. Please. This had to be a warped Purple Prairie Clover head trip.
“This is a hideous side effect,” I pleaded with everything I had. Life seeped back into my arms and legs. I sniffed, wiped at the sweat tickling down my face. “Monsters do not, not, not exist.” My whole body shook as I ventured a peek back at my toilet bowl.
Xerxes hissed, spittle clinging to his blackened lips. Vapor swirled through his fingers and gathered into a thick smoke. It loomed toward me, a wave of ash, boiling upon itself. Stale, dead. My heart slammed in my throat. I fought the urge to gag. This was real.
Grandma focused, heart and soul, on the beast. “Digredior. Digredior…”
I had to get out of here. Grandma too. Whatever she was saying to that creature, it wasn’t working. And just because she was crazy enough to face him didn’t mean she deserved to die. My body ached as I inched toward the doorway. I prayed he didn’t notice. But who was I kidding? I could taste the dark mist approaching, feel his red eyes burning into my back. I had to turn. Had to look.
Xerxes’s claws clickety-clacked as he snaked down from the top of the toilet. Shock drilled through me, pinning me to the floor. Xerxes bobbed his head once, twice. One side of his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Stay, Lizzie,” he said slowly, his Greek accent punctuating each word as his dark cloud embraced me.
“How did you know my na—? Hmm.” Warmth washed over me. Oddly enough, I found myself smiling at him. This can’t be right. But darned if all my concerns didn’t seem to be—whoosh—falling away.
I stifled a giggle. Time to axe the Cheshire cat grin, if only for Grandma’s sake. She’d aged a century in five seconds flat.
Strange. I hated him. He was evil and foul and he smelled like rotten cheese.
But I liked cheese, especially with crackers.
He lowered his head and hit me with the sweetest smile. His cracked skin showed character. It molded to his sleek, muscular frame. I wanted to touch him.
My grandma said something or other.
The pupils of the demon’s eyes began to shift like a kaleidoscope. Fascinating. So that’s what he was. A demon.
I stumbled. “Would you look at that?” I didn’t even remember standing up. I found myself strutting toward him, closing the space between us. “Xerxes, I’ll bet you are just the Brad Pitt of the underworld.”
Then Xerxes did something quite rude. He shot darts out of his eyes. It’s so uncomfortable when you meet someone and five minutes later they invade your personal space. Even more frightening, the shimmery green darts headed straight for my neck. What was this guy trying to do? Chop my head off?
The old lady behind me, whatshername, started wailing.
Not good. I slowed things in order to get a good look at the darts. They shone like miniature glow sticks. I touched one and it sizzled on the end of my fingertip. Warm, but not painful. I pulled it out of the air and it hummed in my hand. I gingerly touched the tip. “Ow!” Sharp as broken glass. “The trick is to grab ’em by the side,” I said to myself. I gathered them up like I was plucking tomatoes off the vine.
“Whaddaya think about that, Mr. Xerxes?” I held out a handful of green sizzly things.
The demon seemed almost frozen in time. My grandmother stood with her eyes transfixed, her mouth gaped open.
“Biiiiitttch!” The demon screamed.
Like he was one to talk. “How would you like it if I tossed magical lawn darts at your head and called you names?” I launched the barbs back at him.
They crashed into his forehead and he exploded into a million flecks of light.
I shielded my eyes as the world ratcheted back into focus. Grandma’s scream pierced the haze in my head.
“Ak!” What had I done? My arms sizzled from the electricity in the air, and every hair on my body stood on end. The room itself tasted bitter. Grandma and I gaped at each other for about a half a second. Then she snapped her mouth closed and dashed out into the hall.
“This is real,” I said to my wild-haired reflection in the bathroom mirror. What a terrible thought.
Grandma hurried back juggling a half-dozen ziplock bags full of heaven knew what. “Get out.” She shoved past me, dumped the bags on the floor, and drew a circle on the tile with ashy, gray chalk.
“What?” I choked. Handprints—my handprints—burned into the countertop like a brand. I stared at my palms. There wasn’t a mark on them. My fingers throbbed like they were asleep. I rubbed them on my dress to get the circulation going again. “Are you going to tell me what just happened here?” I grabbed the bathroom towel to wipe snot, tears and heaven knew what else from my face.
She paused, chalk quivering. “Yes. But first I’m going to slam the door on these bastards. Xerxes only wanted a look at you. There’ll be more.”
A look? I didn’t believe that for a second. “In case you didn’t notice, he fired green pointy things. At my neck!”
She slipped on a pair of silver-framed reading glasses with rhinestone clusters in the corners. “You’re right. He did decide to kill you.” She began rifling through a collection of glass vials. “Demons can be impulsive.” She harrumphed. “Like yo-yo grandchildren who touch what they shouldn’t.” She chose a vial of olive-brown liquid and stuffed it into the front pocket of her jeans. “I don’t know what you were thinking, grabbing his fulminations.”
“Fulma-what?”
“No time,” she said, rifling through her bag again. “But don’t think for one second that you’re off the hook, slick. I’m gonna ride you ’til next Sunday.” She handed me a Smucker’s peanut butter jar filled with a canary yellow sludge. “Can the questions. Keep this with you. And for the love of Laconia, let me work.”
“Okay…” A demon wants me dead, so I get a Smucker’s jar. Shouldn’t we be running? Hiding? Where, I didn’t know, but Grandma’s Harley was sounding better by the second. Even if we ended up some place like the Laconia motorcycle rally. My fingers slid over the greasy glass of the jar and I darn near dropped it. What was I supposed to do if another demon showed up? Throw this at his head?
“Ey-ak!” I squealed as she popped open a ziplock bag that smelled like a dead mouse. She ignored my distress and began rubbing tiny circles of mush onto my bathroom floor. “Tell me that isn’t poop,” I said, as she ground the foul substance into my grout.
“Raccoon liver. Now get out!” my grandmother ordered without looking up from the mess on my bathroom floor.
“Gladly.” I had no idea what had just happened and I was not at all opposed to getting as far away from her as possible. I tripped over Grandma’s animal-hide bag and what had to be about a half dozen Smucker’s jars in the narrow hallway outside the hall bathroom. They were filled with various brackish liquids, plants, and at least one possum tail. Roadkill witchcraft. Fan-frickintastic.
I slumped down at the kitchen table and buried my face in my hands. “Face facts, Lizzie. Xerxes the demon just tried to chop your head off.”
What would Cliff and Hillary have to say about that?
I didn’t know what to think anymore. That thing was real. No question about it. He came for me. And he would have killed Grandma too.
An hour ago, I wasn’t even sure I believed in hell. Now it was after me. Xerxes probably tracked me like my grandmother had. Worse, he’d gotten inside my head without even blinking. How could I defend myself against a creature who could control me like a Muppet? I had no idea what he—or my grandma—could possibly want from me.
When my grandma had called, I figured she was interested in what I’d been doing the last thirty years of my life. I’d tell her about my friends, my teaching job at Happy Hands Preschool. She’d tell me about herself and her family. Make that my family. At last, I’d learn about my mom, any brothers or sisters, who I was, where I came from.
Now I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I could be dead right now. Killed by a demon in my very own bathroom.
Claws scurried across the ceramic floor in the hallway.
“Grandma!” I leapt from the chair, on instant high alert.
She shot out of the bathroom as I realized my would-be attacker was, in fact, my Jack Russell terrier. Pirate was mostly white, with a dollop of brown on his back that wound up his neck and over one eye. He scampered around the corner into the kitchen, slid three feet and nearly thwacked his head on the side of the refrigerator.
“Pirate.” The tension oozed out of me and I about collapsed on the floor in front of him. He leapt into my arms and licked wherever he could reach. I hugged him close, his wiry hair tickling my nose. “Where have you been, boy?”
His entire body wriggled with excitement. “Alone! Locked in the backyard! Alone! But I dug under the fence. And then I ate through the screen on the front door. And I’m here now! I’m here! What’d I miss?”
My blood froze. “Oh no, no, no.” I scrambled away from him like an oversized crab. “There’s a demon in my dog!”
Pirate danced in place. “Are you kidding? It’s me! I burrowed, I ate screen, I ignored Mrs. Cristople’s tabby cat. I’m here to save you!”
Grandma scrubbed her hands on her jeans, leaving an oily smear behind. “Pirate is fine. A little impatient.” She grabbed a vial of silver powder from her back pocket and uncorked it with her teeth. “I told you to keep quiet until I had a chance to speak with Lizzie.”
Pirate let out a high-pitched dog whine.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, eyeball-measuring a bit of silver powder into her palm. “Now, Lizzie. I have to finish this containment spell or we could have another Xerxes on your toilet bowl.” She gave a worried snort. “Or worse…” She disappeared back into the bathroom.
I stared at Pirate, who promptly began licking himself.
“Stop it.”
He ignored me like he always did.
“Well hallelujah. At least some things don’t change.”
But, oh God, what had just happened?
I didn’t feel any different. I did a quick once-over in the mirror above the living room couch. I didn’t look any different. But there had been a demon in my bathroom. And he knew my name. I wasn’t up on my demon lore, but something told me that wasn’t good.
As for Pirate, I didn’t know what to think. I took a deep breath, counted to three. There had to be a logical explanation for all of this.
“Hey.” Pirate ran his cold nose along my ankle. “How ’bout you feed me? I swear I haven’t eaten in a year. And screen door doesn’t count.”
I stared down at Pirate, who spun three times and sat.
He cocked his head. “Why the face? Am I drooling? Oh geez. It’s the doggie pellets. I think of doggie pellets, I drool.”
“What?” I stammered. What are you? That didn’t sound polite. I rubbed my temples.
Get a grip.
“Why, Pirate?” Each word was a battle. “Why are you talking to me?”
“Because,” he said, mimicking my stilted tone, “I am hungry.” We stared at each other for a long time. “Now.”
“This isn’t happening,” I said. I turned back to the mirror and started shoving my hair back into place. I needed something to be normal. Anything. Even if it was something as trivial as a hairdo.
“Come on, Lizzie.” Pirate licked my leg. “Lighten up. And hey, if you don’t want to feed me that dry stuff, I’ll take the fettuccine from last week. Back of the fridge, to the left of the lettuce crisper, behind the mustard.”
Yeah, right. Instead, he got dry kibble and a fresh bowl of water. Then I set about canceling my thirtieth birthday dinner. I didn’t know what I was going to tell my friends.
Sorry, guys. I couldn’t wait to celebrate with you. Believe me. But then my long-lost biker grandma locked me in my bathroom, a demon tried to kill me and now my dog won’t stop yapping.
I dialed my friend Yvette and settled for a simple excuse instead.
“A problem with the dog?” Pirate harrumphed after I’d hung up the phone. “You owe me one.”
  
When Grandma finished closing the portal to hell, or wherever Xerxes had come from, she took a chair opposite me. She’d perched her reading glasses on top of her head like a tiara. Slicks of oil smeared her T-shirt and a bit of brown gunk had caught under one of her rings. She folded her hands on my sunflower-print tablecloth. “Would you like to talk about what happened?”
“Sure,” I said. She had to be kidding. “Where would you like to start? With the crazy green bars of light or with the fact that my bathroom is now glowing?”
And I didn’t mean glowing from a great cleaning job. As I spoke, a purple haze spilled out from the bathroom and into the narrow hall off my kitchen.
“A mange spell. Wards off demons, gremlins, succubi. Good against black magic too.” She flicked a small piece of I-didn’t-want-to-know from under one of her fingernails. “The black lords don’t usually recognize demon slayers so quickly after the change. And they’re never this bold.” She arched her brows as if I should nod and understand. “But there have been unusual happenings lately.”
Lovely. I wanted her to leave. I wanted to forget this whole thing ever happened.
She tsked. “If only your mother were here.”
My voice caught in my throat. “Where is my mother?” The day I was born, she’d given me up for adoption. I’d never known anything about her.
She threw me a guilty look. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you. But for now, we need to hit the road.”
“Where?” I asked, afraid to know.
“Well, we got kicked out of the coven in Westchester. I’ll let my buddy Ant Eater tell you about that one.” She chuckled to herself. “We aren’t always the best houseguests. But hell, life is short. Nothing like the freedom of the open road.”
“Open road?” I said, starting to panic a little. Okay, a lot. “I’m not like you. I get carsick, train sick, plane sick. I get dizzy watching the kids swing at Happy Hands.”
“Um-hum,” Pirate agreed. “Don’t forget the time you yarfed up your hot chocolate all over Brian Thompson’s toboggan.” Pirate studied the look on my face. “Oh, but I didn’t like him anyway. He had cats. Three cats. The brown one, I called him Thor, he had pointy teeth. And another brown one, I called him Tuna Breath—”
All the homeless dogs in the shelter that day and I had to pick the motormouth. “Pirate, level with me. What made you start talking?”
“Me? I always talk. Why’d you start listening?”
“Enough!” Grandma clamped my hands in hers. “We’re hopping on my Harley whether you like it or not. The coven’s holed up outside of Memphis right now. It’ll be a good spot to teach you. You need to learn your hexes from your horny toads. Magically speaking.”
“I need to get back to normal. I have a job, friends, a cute guy I just cancelled on.” I slipped out of her grasp and saw my French manicure had melted away.
“Holy ship anchor!” I gaped at her.
“Like I said, there’s a lot you need to know. And Xerxes will be back—with a bunch of bloodthirsty creatures. Time’s up, Lizzie. Unless you can come up with a better idea, we need to hop the hog and get out of here.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, eyeing the lumpy remains of my polish. She reached out her hands, but I wasn’t about to let her near me again. “Back off. You can’t hit town on your Harley, lock me up, introduce me to Xerxes and turn me into Lizzie the road warrior. I deserve some answers.”
She sighed. “You’re right, Lizzie. The truth is, what you did in there was…unique. I know I’ve never seen it before. Your nail polish was consumed by the demon’s vox because, frankly, most things…heck, most people would have been. You, Lizzie, are special. Whether you want to be or not.”
Not. “So most people get hit by the green thingies and they die. Instead, I pluck them out of the air and they ruin my manicure?”
“The nail polish was not of you.” She touched her fist to her heart. “This. The power you have inside. This is of you.”
“Okay…” I said, bobbing my head one too many times. “But you have”—I glanced at my glowing bathroom — “magic. You can handle a demon, right?”
Hands clasped, she leaned across the table. “I run from demons. You can kill them.”
I didn’t even like to kill June bugs.
“I know it’s a lot to swallow. That’s why you have to plant your pretty butt on my bike. Other demons will come.”
“Why can’t we leave each other alone? Live and let live?”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way, Lizzie. You come from a line of powerful women. Every third generation, we are honored to produce a demon slayer. You.”
But I didn’t want to be a demon slayer.
I also didn’t want any more demons showing up in my bathroom. Or at sushi night with the girls. Or at the Happy Hands Preschool where I worked. That last thought chilled me to the core. I couldn’t imagine what would happen to my class of innocent three-year-olds. I had to stay far away from them until I could get rid of Xerxes, and anything like him, for good.
“If I come with you,” I began, “will you teach me how to get rid of any demon complications, once and for all?” I needed to learn how to have my normal life. Let Grandma have her voodoo-hoodoo. As long as I could get this thing under control enough to teach preschool.
Her bracelets dangled as she leaned toward me, resting her chin on her hands. “I will show you everything you need to know. But I’m not telling you anything else until we get to Memphis. It’s not safe.”
Not safe? Try mixing me with a Harley.
I pounded my fingers on the table until they tingled. “If I do go with you to Memphis, will you tell me what to do about Pirate?”
I followed her gaze to the Jack Russell sniffing her Smucker’s jars. “I’m here to teach you magic, Lizzie. The dog is your problem.”