A Tale of Two Demon Slayers (19 page)

The front lawn was not only covered with tarps, but Sidecar Bob was roasting turtle knees in an array of heirloom griffin armor. I cringed and hoped the pieces were darned near indestructible. In any case, the damage had been done. Bob had lined the priceless shields and breastplates with tinfoil to make crude roasting pans. He’d set them in fire pits all along the front drive.

He made his way up the line, stirring them with a new—and expensive-looking—brass kitchen spoon. A scraggly witch followed him, carrying a baby-shampoo bottle, now filled with muddy sludge. She muttered to herself, her gray dreadlocks covering her face as she measured out capfuls of the slop.

Of course that was nothing compared to the giant planks that Creely the engineering witch was pounding into the villa’s front door. She was too busy hammering to even notice me as I came up behind her and tugged on her brown leather pants.

“Lizzie!” she called to me, her green-streaked hair swaying with every pound of the hammer into Dimitri’s pristine home. “It doesn’t look like much, but this sling is going to be a beaut.”

“Sling? You can’t pull back a sling into Dimitri’s house!”

“Sure we can. I’ve already got two going in the back.”

Exactly how much of his family’s villa did she intend to destroy?

“This is simply the base structural support,” Creely said, motioning with her hammer. “The strongest joints are on the support beams near the door. We’ll be on the roof with the actual slings.”

Peachy.

“Is this necessary?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

“Always,” she said, pulling nails out of her pocket and planting them on the side of her mouth.

I turned back from the witch pounding on Dimitri’s house and almost fell off the side of the porch in shock. Two figures strolled up the lane.

Dimitri and Amara.

It wasn’t that I didn’t expect to see him come home. I did. But I sure has heck hadn’t pictured them walking with their heads leaning together, discussing
something
of intense interest to them both.

Griffin business, no doubt.

Well what did I expect? He’d just spent several days with his own kind—a griffin clan like the one he’d been hoping to build. And now he couldn’t. I was no griffin.

Amara laughed at something he said, her voice ringing over even the incessant racket of the Red Skulls until she saw me and the joy on her face died.

At least one person looked glad to see me. “Lizzie!” Dimitri rushed for me, taking the front porch steps two at a time. He wrapped me in a bear hug. “I missed you.” He nuzzled my neck. “I wished I could have called, but the Dominos clan is old-fashioned.”

“No phones,” Amara said over his shoulder. She just
had to be a part of our homecoming. Then again, maybe she played a bigger role in his life than I’d ever realized, a shadow behind everything he did and said.

“Did it go well?” I asked, leaning into him, relishing the pleasure of having him close.

Dimitri hesitated. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“That bad?” I asked.

“No,” Dimitri said.

“Yes,” Amara corrected.

“Which is it?” I asked.

“We didn’t need their help anyway.”

“Yes, we did,” Grandma said, walking up, hands on her hips. “What’d you do? Did you piss ’em off?”

As if she were the one to talk.

Dimitri sighed. “The Dominos clan feels it’s too risky to send their people over here, not until we know what we’re dealing with. It doesn’t make sense that our Skye magic is fading. We don’t understand who is attacking.” For a moment, he looked lost. “I didn’t even tell them about the green sky.”

“Or the protective magic we lost?” I asked.

He hadn’t. I read it on his face.

Amara’s gaze slid over Dimitri. “They were much more willing to help when Dimitri was going to be a future member of the family, so to speak. There doesn’t seem to be much point anymore,” she said, her comment directed at me.

Oh great. So let’s see. I’d taken his pure griffin heritage, his ability to lead a normal, non–demon slayer life, and now he couldn’t protect his home because of me.

Of course one of Creely’s biker witches picked that moment to start tossing boards off the roof.

“Duck!” I hollered, making a mad dash off the porch as Dimitri attempted to shield Amara with his body.

I stood in the front yard, shocked.

Yes, I could take care of myself.

Perhaps she leaned into him first.

Maybe he knew she was a helpless jerk.

But he still stood there with his arms around her—protecting
her
.

Something in me snapped. “This is wrong. All of it.” The witches on the roof and all over the lawn and Rachmort saving ants, while Pirate hid a dragon in the house. And when it came down to it, he went with her. He protected
her
.

I needed him. Hell, I loved him. But it was obvious he didn’t even know what he wanted—or needed—anymore.

I wasn’t going to ruin his life, at least not if I had anything to say about it. Tears stung the back of my eyes.

As much as it crushed me, I was going to have to walk away and let him be a griffin. It was either that or I was going to destroy him.

“I can’t do this.” I tried to say it out loud. I tried to be bold, but it came out on a whisper.

“Lizzie.” Dimitri walked over and cradled me to him, the same way he’d done with Amara. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop it.”

“No.” I didn’t want to discuss it, not when my emotions were this raw. “Later,” I said, knowing he deserved an explanation and a private breakup.

It was going to be awful living here with him until his sisters were strong enough to defend the house and until we recovered that stolen piece of me, but this wasn’t about comfort. This was about doing the right thing.

“I just need you to leave me alone right now,” I said, ducking out of his embrace and heading for the house. “Please,” I said at the door when he tried to follow me.

I didn’t look back, except for one time. From the window at the beginning of the hallway, I saw Amara slip a hand over his shoulder.

That night, I ignored his knocks on the door. It wasn’t easy, considering the ruckus Pirate and Flappy made each time Dimitri came by. The darned dragon took up most of my room. If he cooed at me one more time, I was going to scream. But between my close encounter at the Callidora today and then almost getting my head chopped off, my emotional cup runneth over.

I lay in bed, Pirate snuggled against my chest. The fur from the back of his neck prickled my cheek as I cried silent tears. It was better this way. Better to feel hollow inside than risk anyone I loved. Just because Dimitri was willing to sacrifice everything didn’t mean I had to let him.

He deserved a better life than this.

When I had no more tears left, I dreamed of a pair of radiant Skye stones. They shimmered with a light all their own, glistening like unearthly jewels. I touched them, reveling in the spark of power that flowed into me. They were unique, priceless, and they had to be destroyed.

I tried to fight off the wave of malice as I gathered up the stones. The hate was so raw I could taste it like metal in my mouth.

Diana and Dyonne must be eliminated.
The Helios house would
not
stand.

I felt trapped in a body that wasn’t my own as I carried the stones deeper into my dark fortress and laid them on a wooden table with moon symbols carved into the surface. Then my hands closed around a sledgehammer and in one blow, I crushed the first stone. Shards of rock flew. I smashed the second stone.

I gathered the pieces and beat them until they were dust on the floor.

I awoke to the unsettling feeling of a hot and squishy dragon nostril under my hand. “Pirate,” I mumbled, cracking my eye to find Flappy curled up in the crook of my body and Pirate nowhere to be seen.

Of course Pirate never went missing for long.

“Here I am!” He popped up at the end of the bed. “Flappy needed more covers. He gets cold at night.”

“Probably cold-blooded,” I said, rolling away from the dragon and rubbing the grit out of my eyes.

Pirate pawed the bedsheets. “That’s not nice. What has Flappy ever done to you?”

“Hush,” I said, not because I wasn’t up to teaching my dog about the reality of owning a large lizard-type creature, but because I heard something ominous downstairs. A woman’s voice spoke in strained tones, although I couldn’t make out what she said.

Dawn had broken, so I doubted it was the biker witches. They’d been up late with the wards.

The agitated voice was met with deeper male protests. It sounded like bad news.

Pirate cocked his head. “Want me to see what it is?”

“No,” I said. “You stay here and think of what to do with Flappy.”

Pirate’s ears drooped.

Yeah, well I wasn’t the one disobeying orders and keeping dragons in the house.

I dressed quickly while Pirate tucked Flappy into my bed. Lucky for him and his pet—who was now curled up in my blankets—I had bigger things to worry about.

Buckling my switch stars, I headed out. My boots echoed down the ceramic-tile hallway. I wished they’d quiet down so I could hear the voices again. Lo and behold, my feet began to move silently.

I about tripped. Hello, new demon slayer power.

My feet moved as gracefully as a cat’s, and as soundlessly. Not that I had ever been awkward, but stealthy was a completely different story.

I couldn’t help grinning. As abilities went, it was a good one. I tried to make noise again and I did—my heels echoing down the stone stairway. I hit the silencer again and presto!

This was really nifty.

I allowed myself a brief little jig at the bottom of the stairs before I focused on what had brought me downstairs in the first place. By now I could tell it was Diana and Dyonne in the kitchen. Then Talos’s voice popped up. And Amara’s. Heavens. It was the griffin club. No wonder I hadn’t been invited. Well if there was something important going on, I had a right to know.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know how it happened,” Diana wailed.

“You’ve compromised us all,” Talos snapped. “To think I could have ever considered marrying you.”

“Zip it, lover boy,” Dyonne said.

I rounded the corner into a large Mediterranean-style kitchen. “What’s going on?”

“Lizzie.” Diana looked relieved to see me. Dyonne looked like she wanted to slap Talos. And Dimitri stood fuming in the middle of it all.

“We’ve made an unwelcome discovery,” Dimitri said, crossing the room to drop a kiss onto the top of my head. His touch was brief and distracted. “Both of my sisters’ Skye stones have been taken and crushed.”

A rock dropped in my gut.

“Crushed?”

He nodded. “By someone who knew how to do it. They were placed on an ancient altar and smashed.”

The same way they had been in my dream.

I was going to have a hard time explaining the next part. “Was this a wooden altar, with moon symbols carved over the surface?”

Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto me. I felt their shock and more than that, the growing sense of betrayal.

“How did you know?” Diana all but whispered.

I swallowed. Hard. “I dreamed about it.”

Dyonne’s eyes widened. “Who did it? In your dream. Did you see who destroyed us?”

“No.” I tried to remember, but I couldn’t. “And what do you mean destroy you? Your magic comes from inside.”

Dyonne grunted. “We could barely use our magic with the stones as conductors. Now it’s impossible.”

“Is there any way you can fix the stones or make new ones?” The ruins were still there, along with their power. I knew Skye griffins weren’t supposed to lose their magical tools, but it had to have happened sometime in the past two thousand years or so. They had to have some kind of a backup plan.

For the first time, Dyonne seemed defeated. Her eyes lowered.

“What if you held another ceremony?” I protested. “You have to at least try.”

“We have no other griffins with power that can conduct our clan ritual,” Dimitri said. “My mother helped create those stones. The magic is infused generation to generation. Yes, the power of the stone belongs to the person who calls it, but it is family magic.”

“And without the family…” I said, trailing off, not wanting to follow the thought to its awful conclusion.

“We are the last in our line,” Dimitri finished.

I had no idea what to say to him, to any of them. This spelled the death of their family and their clan. Everything Dimitri had worked for was destroyed. He’d fought so hard to save his sisters. He’d wanted more than anything to come here and protect his family, to preserve this place and this heritage for future generations.

In one night, with one act of evil, it was gone.

While the rest of the group stood in silent mourning and shock, my heart hammered in my chest.

Please let it be my connection to the evil one.

Oh great. Was I really wishing for an unholy bond? Frankly, it would have been better than the alternative.

What if I was the one who had destroyed the stones?

I couldn’t discount anything. Not when this family was at stake.

I’d watched it happen in my nightmare. It couldn’t have been just a coincidence. Not twice. There’d been no reason why I should have known where the stone had been hidden in the garden—but I had, right down to the pomegranate tree it had been buried under.

And now I could see the ancient altar in my mind, as clearly as I saw my own cut and bruised hands.

“I think I know who did it,” I said, breaking the silence in the room.

Saying the next part was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. How do you tell the man you love, the family you’ve come to care about so deeply, that you may have destroyed them?

I took a deep breath and blew it out. “It could have been me.”

My statement sucked the air out of the room for a moment before it came rushing back in.

Dimitri spoke first. “That is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You wouldn’t,” Diana gasped.

Talos took two steps for me, his features unreadable.

“Remember how I found the stone in the garden?” I asked, looking at Dimitri. He had to be my rock right now. I couldn’t quite face the others. “I knew it was there because I dreamed of hiding it. I
saw
where it was,” I said, trying to make them understand. “I was right.”

Yes, it was disturbing and awful and unnatural, but it didn’t stop it from being true.

Tears surged at the back of my eyes. “Last night, I dreamed of crushing the Skye stones. I don’t know why. You have to understand I’d never want to hurt you.”

Heavens, Dimitri looked at me with such love and trust. I had to retreat from him. How could he even see me that way after he knew the kind of thoughts I’d had?

Diana cried softly, her fingers tangled in her lap.

Dyonne studied me. I stood, waiting. She was going to
look at this logically. It was her nature. With a sad twist of her lips, she gave me her verdict. “Lizzie, a dream doesn’t mean you did it.”

She didn’t understand. “I didn’t consciously set out to hurt you. I’d never do that. But I do think I’m compromised.”

“I think she’s right,” Talos said from the corner, his arms crossed over his chest. “Lizzie is the only one with any specific knowledge of what happened last night. The rest of us just found the pieces.”

“Who discovered it?” I asked.

“Me,” Dyonne said. “We’d both dreamed last night that our power had fled. I thought it was only a nightmare, until the stones were gone.”

“You should have kept them more secure,” Talos grumbled. “Once stolen is a mistake. Twice is pure lunacy.”

Dimitri made a move for Talos until Dyonne caught him by the arm. “I’ll fight my own battles, if you please.” She turned to Talos. “We had to keep the stones near us. The doors were locked, as were the windows. Perhaps we should have slept in the family safe or risked a green slime ward every time we got up to pee, but frankly, we were more secure than anyone else in this house.” She glanced at Dimitri.

“My wards were designed to keep out any malicious entities,” Dimitri said.

“Exactly.” I cringed. “They weren’t designed to keep me out.”

For a second, nobody moved.

It made even more sense now. Dimitri’s wards wouldn’t have held me back. I was the only one with memories of
what happened to the stones and how they were crushed.
I’d wanted them destroyed.

“There has to be another explanation,” Dyonne protested. “You wouldn’t do this.”

I scrubbed my hand across my forehead, purposely avoiding Dimitri’s gaze. “I’d like there to be another answer. I really would. But I also have to think about protecting you and this house.” If I was a danger to the group, it would be foolhardy to pretend otherwise.

“There is another answer.” Dimitri moved behind me.

“That would be?” I felt an unspoken chill in our little circle.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, as if we’d taken a wrong turn off the highway.

Why did that not comfort me?

Hell’s bells, I’d have left the estate if I thought it would do any good. Somehow I knew whoever—or
what
ever—had a hold on me would not be swayed by a change in location. Nor would it be moved by Dyonne’s sheer unwillingness to accept the only rational explanation.

What had my adoptive dad always said?
You must eliminate the illogical until only the logical remains, and that is your answer, however improbable.
(Yes, he was a Sherlock Holmes freak.) In plain speak, it meant I had to look logic in the face and accept what it was telling me—no matter how impossible it seemed.

I took in the scene in front of me, from the sobbing Diana to the obstinate Dyonne. Talos glared at me. Interesting, since he should have been the least personally affected of all of us.

I turned back to Dimitri and was shocked at the intensity in his gaze.

“We will figure this out,” he said, as if he was stating a fact.

I wanted to wrap myself in his arms and let him tell me again it would be okay. I wanted to believe it more than anything.

Instead, I held my ground as best as I could. “Okay,” I said, sounding more certain than I felt, “what do we do next?”

Dimitri unlocked his part of the Skye stone and spent the better part of the day in a last-ditch attempt to weave what ever protective magic he could over the estate. I watched, feeling helpless, responsible and guilty at the same time. I should have been training to fight this. Only I knew it would be impossible today. The witches shooed me away. They wouldn’t even let me see the work they’d done on the cave of visions and only accepted Rachmort’s help with the wards. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I felt fewer explosions that day.

Diana and Dyonne spent their time out at the ruins with Talos, trying to piece the stones back together somehow. It didn’t work. By the time night fell, we were all exhausted.

We gathered at the bottom of the grand staircase as Dimitri walked Diana and Dyonne upstairs. The sisters would be sharing a room tonight, with Dimitri’s protective magic woven over them.

“I’ll go sit with them,” Amara said, following the sisters up the stairs, pausing to run a familiar hand over Dimitri’s shoulder.

I wanted to slap her away, but I had no right. If he’d only stuck with her, his life would be so much better right now.

“No. I’ll stand watch,” I said, ready to overtake Amara. Diana and Dyonne wouldn’t have been in this situation if it weren’t for me. I needed to talk with them alone.

“Don’t worry about it, Lizzie,” Dimitri said, his eyes on Amara as she sauntered up the stairs.

“You can trust me,” I said. It’s not like anything had happened when I was awake.

“It’s not that,” he said, turning to me, ignoring Talos’s smirk. “Amara is a griffin. She has ways of seeing magic that you don’t.”

My heart dropped into my shoes.

“Hey,” he said, touching my chin. “It’s not like that. I know you have talents. Many talents,” he added, with that slightly devious, heated look I’d grown to love. “We have to pick our battles, and right now Amara is the best person to help guard the Skye magic. Well, her and you,” he said, nodding to Talos.

“I don’t see what guarding them is going to do if they’ve lost their magic,” Talos grumbled.

Dimitri stiffened, and for a second I thought he was going to pin the other griffin to the wall. Instead, he answered in clipped tones. “You are sworn to protect this house. That includes the people in it. Now go.”

They went.

I followed them from a distance and watched them enter the sisters’ room. As the door clicked shut behind them, I felt a familiar loneliness. I’d always been somewhat of an outsider, even with the few friends I’d had back in Atlanta.

I could never bring myself to share enough, to let down my guard enough to be part of a group. And now, when I wanted so desperately to be a part of this family, I didn’t know how.

Inside, I could hear voices murmuring, comforting, as Dimitri wove his love and protection over Dyonne and Diana. They truly were a family.

I leaned my head against the cool stone outside the door. Perhaps I couldn’t help, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave, either. I slid down the wall until my bottom touched the cold tile floor.

My throat tightened as the emptiness threatened to overtake me. I didn’t fit in here, but I wanted it so much that I ached.

The door clicked open, and Amara slid out. Her eyes flitted over me before she turned her back and stalked toward her own room, her heels pounding like hammer blows.

A few moments later, Talos emerged. And just when I realized I’d better get my sorry self out of there, Dimitri followed.

My muscles froze and my blood stopped short in my veins. I must have looked like a complete fool. Panic spurred me to action as I scrambled to my feet. “I was just—”