demon slayer 05.5 - the tenth dark lord a leaping Page 2

  He tested both walls near the door. “No lights,” he said, his voice low.

  “Hold on.” Grandma fished down the neck of her red sweater and yanked out a necklace of sorts. Only instead of a pendant, several Ziploc bags dangled on safety pins from the chain. Inside, living spells hovered and twirled like sugar-laden six-year-olds. One spun itself in a series of corkscrews before zipping straight for the room, trying to take the bag and Grandma along with it. She popped the bag and tossed the spell into the room like she was bowling. It broke into pieces of light, scattering into the darkness. One by one, light bulbs in the room flickered to life, even the ones that had broken in their sockets. They illuminated the remains of a 1950s ski lodge gone biker.

  The wood interior would have felt like a cozy retreat if it weren’t for the cheery reception desk, which was now a bar. The square slots of wooden cubby behind held whiskey bottles instead of tourist postcards. An assortment of dirty rags hung from the key rack. The antique luggage rack cradled a dented silver keg.

  Cuckoo clocks on the wall had been broken open. Their birds sagged out of their innards. One poor fowl had even been blindfolded and given a last cigarette. The deer and elk heads had fared no better. Their antlers had been decorated with beer cans and their lips done up in red lipstick. A stuffed bear in the corner looked like it might have survived, until I saw the large, ahem, endowment they’d added. Hung like a bear took on a whole new meaning with these Dark Lords.

  I set one foot inside. Then the other. The bristling wards felt like needles against my skin. The place was laced with heavy-duty protection spells. I was overcome with the urge to run, to flee and never look back. I ignored it. There was no choice.

  The biker witches packed in behind us, and when the door closed I felt claustrophobic, trapped. Dimitri appeared to be thinking the same thing. He looked restless under his heavy leather jacket.

  “So where are they?” he asked, moving toward the stairs. A half-dozen biker witches covered him.

  I sheathed my switch star. I didn’t know. I opened up my demon-slayer senses and got…something. It roiled like an ugly black hole, and it was entrenched, almost as if it was a part of this place.

  My boots crunched over discarded peanut shells as I inspected the tables downstairs. They were strewn with half-played card games, money still in the pot. Whiskey on the table.

  But no bikers. No weapons.

  It was downright creepy.

  Get out. I felt it like someone had whispered it in my ear.

  Ant Eater stood as still as I’d ever seen her, as if the air itself could tell us something. She took in every inch of the place, like she needed to assess what had changed and what hadn’t. “Anybody feel that? I think the wards are starting to recognize us again.”

  I wasn’t feeling the least bit welcome. “Don’t tell me you’ve been here too.” I didn’t like to think about anybody spending more than five minutes in this place, at least not now.

  She grinned, showing off her gold front tooth. “The Dark Lords used to fight over me.”

  Great. A creepy hideout filled with biker witch ex-boyfriends.

  “If the Dark Lords aren’t here, then where are they?” I asked as Dimitri gave me the all-clear sign from the top of the stairs.

  Frieda let out a loud sniff. “It’s all wrong.” Grandma ignored her, but Frieda kept going. “I don’t know why they’d just leave their place open in the middle of a hang-out, unless maybe something happened to Bruce.”

  A tall biker witch named Creely placed a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t know that,” she said, sounding anything but convinced.

  I was just about to suggest we get out of there when Pirate dashed out from behind the stuffed bear. Snow clung to his wiry coat and ears, as if he’d found the only patch and managed to roll in it.

  “They’re up the hill,” Pirate said, his tail whipping back and forth.

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d left my dog at home. “What are you doing up here?” How did he even get up here?

  “I was lonely,” he said, shaking the snow from his coat. “And I had Flappy.” Pirate quirked his head to the side. “We were going to come on in, but you shut the door, and anyhow, I smelled a cookout.”

  “Did you see any Dark Lords?” Oh, jeez. “Tell me you did not steal their food.”

  Pirate blinked. “Not yet. We went to the top of the hill, and they’re in this creepy rock house! Come on. I’ll show you. We can sneak up on them!” He turned and disappeared behind the bear.

  I followed and caught his rump and tail as he left through a small cat door. Leave it to Pirate to find the only other way into this place.

  I turned back to Dimitri and Grandma. “What do you think?”

  Before they could answer, Pirate poked his head back through the door. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “We are,” Grandma answered, heading out. The biker witches followed her.

  Unbelievable. Dimitri walked beside me as we brought up the rear. “Quietly,” I reminded them. At least until we knew what we were dealing with.

  “You bet,” she said. “Ant Eater?”

  “Got it,” the other biker witch replied. She dug in her pocket and produced a zip-up coin purse. She rifled for a moment, fighting back a blue spell that kept trying to escape, until her fingers closed around one so tiny I couldn’t see. She let it loose over the group, and I still couldn’t see it. I only felt a slight chill, almost like a cool mist coming down.

  “Cloaking Spell,” Dimitri said, wincing slightly as it hit the back of his neck. He’d never been overly crazy about magic. “They used one on me when I came after you in Vegas.”

  “Right,” I said as we stepped out onto the porch. Thank goodness for that. It had been a hellish trip. Literally.

  “Be careful if we find the Dark Lords. The Cloaking Spell isn’t a hundred percent,” he said as we circled around toward the back of the cabin, “but it does make us harder to see.”

  “I don’t think that’s our biggest problem,” I said, staring up at the dark, rocky peak behind the building.

  “Right there!” Pirate said, meeting us halfway.

  Dimitri wasn’t fazed in the least. “Pirate flew with Flappy. I can shift and fly you. The rest will need to find another way up.”

  “Wait, wait!” Pirate said, snow kicking up behind him as he bounded through the brush. “There’s another way. I’ll show you.”

  We made it to the back of the house and found Pirate standing beside an ancient ski lift. The thing was still running. Sort of. The ropes holding up the carriages creaked over wheels and pulleys that probably hadn’t been inspected in decades. And naturally a sheer cliff dropped off under the entry area.

  “It’s wooden,” Dimitri said, as if that was all we had to worry about.

  “My baby’s up there?” Frieda asked Pirate. Before the dog could even answer, she’d grabbed the next chair.

  “Frieda!” I tried to stop her, but she was already lifting off.

  I cursed under my breath and launched myself at the next chair.

  Dimitri took me by the arm. “Goddamn it, Lizzie.”

  “Come on,” I said, immensely thankful when he jumped up onto the chair next to me. I half expected him to yank me off the lift, but that would have sent us both tumbling down the hill. Damn. As soon as my butt hit the creaky wooden seat, I was almost wishing he had.

  His eyes were hot. “What the hell are you doing? I said I could fly.”

  “They’re not going to wait.” I wouldn’t either. I looked for a safety belt and didn’t find one. “What kind of people build a ski lift without anything to keep you in the seat?”

  “You’ve never been skiing, have you?” He shoved his hands through his hair, spiking it up, not even worried that we weren’t strapped into this thing. He looked over his shoulder at the biker witches piling onto the lift behind us. “If this thing goes, I can’t save everyone.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to,” I said with more confi
dence than I felt.

  He shot me a look.

  Yeah, yeah. He was probably right. Dang. We were getting high over the gorge below. I gripped the fragile-looking outside handrail until my knuckles were white.

  Flappy swooped ahead of us, with Pirate riding on his back. The mottled gray-and-white dragon was the size of a truck and couldn’t fly a straight line to save his life. I didn’t know if he was just young or overly creative. I tried not to look down at the sheer drop below us. When had I stopped even trying to lecture my dog on the dangers of dragon flight? Probably the fiftieth time he didn’t listen to me.

  Dimitri stared straight ahead, still mad. Or maybe he was just trying to use his excellent griffin vision to try to see into the copse of trees at the top. “They’d be picking us off already if it wasn’t for the Cloaking Spell,” he muttered.

  “Thank you for that.” I knew the dangers. We didn’t need to dwell.

  The ski lift shuddered. I grabbed his arm as the entire thing lurched and stopped. Our seats swung ominously over a sheer drop. We had to be a half mile up.

  He placed his hand over mine. “Shh…I’ve got you.”

  I held my breath. Dimitri’s muscles were tense. I glanced behind me. An entire line of biker witches dangled over the gorge, trapped.

  Slowly our lift began to tick to the side, as if the supports were going. Oh my God. We must have had too many people on this thing. Or maybe it was going to fall apart anyway. He placed a hand in front of me, as if that would stop the whole thing from crumbling to pieces. The cables creaked as we swayed over the ravine.

  “What do we do?” I pleaded. I didn’t think there was a spell for this. My switch stars wouldn’t help.

  “Stay calm,” he said, appearing anything but as he shrugged out of his jacket.

  Oh, no. “Dimitri…” I half asked, half warned. He slipped his shirt over his head, which caused our seat to swing even more. Then he went to work on his belt buckle. “Do not leave me alone up here,” I ordered, as if I hadn’t been perfectly willing to hop onto the thing without him. “You stay here. For better or worse, remember?”

  He kissed me on the cheek. “Trust me,” he said, before he jumped.

  My chair swung wildly, and I was left holding his pants as he spread his arms and legs, free-falling down. His beautiful back bent as claws erupted from his hands and feet, and thick lion’s fur raced up his arms. Red, purple, and blue feathers cascaded down his back and formed wings as bones snapped and his body expanded. And still he dove, until his wings were fully spread, and then he soared.

  It would have been poetic—if I hadn’t been about to plunge to my death.

  Flappy’s knobby head poked out from the trees on the other side, his pink nose huffing. Flappy was an adolescent dragon, the runt of the litter, and not all that bright. He let out a wavering screech and a puff of smoke. Yes, we’re in trouble, I wanted to tell him. Please don’t make this worse.

  The young dragon tipped off the edge of the cliff and chugged toward us. Yikes.

  Dimitri flew in close to my chair, and I felt the breeze. Then he pulled up close, flying slow under me as he let out a sharp eagle’s cry.

  Ahead of me I saw Frieda getting off on to Flappy. Egads. She wasn’t the most coordinated person on a good day. But the dragon had her on his back. Grandma hollered for him, and he made a clumsy circle around us.

  Frick. I could do this. Maybe. With shaking hands, I wadded Dimitri’s pants and stuffed them into my shirt and shrugged his jacket on over mine. The next time Dimitri came back around, I was ready. He’d catch me if I fell.

  “Catch me. Catch me.” I said it like a mantra as I left the lift chair. I dropped terrifyingly fast. My heart raced. My throat choked up and by the grace of all that was holy, I landed hard on his back. My teeth rattled, but I didn’t care. Thank heaven. I got a steady grip on his wide back and planted my feet on either side of it, winding my fingers into the short, rough hair at the back of his neck.

  His massive wings beat in a steady rhythm, sending a gust of air against my cheeks on each downward stroke. I held on for my life and left my stomach somewhere over the gorge as he soared up to the high hill. A year and a half with this man and I still couldn’t get used to the flying part.

  We landed in a scraggly tuft of grass, half blocked by a snowdrift. I slid down to the ground, my legs weak as a baby deer’s. Griffin flight always did that to me. I braced my hands on my knees, glad to be upright.

  Dimitri lowered his head and let out a low rumble, then looked back at the trapped witches on the lift. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before deciding.

  “I know,” I told him. He knew what he had to do, and so did I. “Stay safe.”

  He gave me a long, hard look as if daring me to do the same, then flew back to save them. He understood I’d keep moving, just like I understood that he couldn’t leave our friends behind.

  “Lizzie.” Pirate jumped against my leg, nearly knocking me over. “Hey, Lizzie. Why are you just standing there?”

  I pulled Dimitri’s pants out and shrugged off his jacket, leaving both on the brush, where he could hopefully find them, and forced myself to get moving. “Where’s Frieda and Grandma?”

  “Already gone,” he said, leading me to tracks in the snow. “Frieda couldn’t wait, which I totally get, because you know how hard it is to wait.”

  He led me into the trees, toward a tall outcropping of rock. It was lit from the inside, and it smelled of sulfur. More often than not, that caustic odor came with the kind of evil that made my skin crawl.

  “This isn’t just about making sure Frieda’s son doesn’t hurt himself,” I said under my breath.

  “Oh no,” Pirate said, drawing closer to me. “I heard your grandma use the word sacrifice.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Pirate led me to a hill above an outcropping of weathered gray rocks. The whole place was very Stonehenge, except the rocks were shorter and wider, with narrow gaps in between. Grandma motioned me to get my ass over there, as if Pirate and I had been taking a moonlit stroll. She was pale, serious. Her wind-burned cheeks were the only spot of color she had.

  I got down low between her and Frieda. “What’s up?” I mouthed.

  She pointed down to the center, where at least fifty bikers—all men—were gathered around a large cauldron over a fire. No telling what was in it, but these guys were rapt. Each and every one of them looked like they could eat nails for breakfast, from the tall guys with braided beards to the linebacker types who faced out into the night.

  Heavens to Betsy. One shift and the closest guard would be looking straight at us.

  “How well does this cloaking stuff work?” I whispered to Grandma.

  She planted a hand on my shoulder in order to see past me. “It’s a Red Skull specialty. We should be okay.”

  Should be.

  “What did Pirate mean by sacrifice?” I whispered.

  “They’re planning on killing one of their own,” she said tightly.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, glancing over at Frieda.

  She stared down with glassy eyes, her fingers gripping a large rock on the ground like it was the only thing keeping her there. I scanned the gathering of warlocks and could only guess which one was her son. Frieda seemed to be focusing on a man near the back. He was younger than the rest, with straw-blond scraggly hair and almost an innocence about him. Yes, he wore a hard look on his face, but it seemed almost forced. Born of fear more than anything.

  I knew how to stop a demon, but I’d never faced an outright murder. I was out of my element on this one, and we were outnumbered and trespassing on their home turf.

  They bowed their heads as a bald guy at the front lifted his hands over the cauldron. He was seventy if he was a day. His face was weathered, his eyes hooded. “Gather ye, my Dark Lord brethren, past and future, dead and alive. We are pledged to the magic that has driven us for more than thirteen hundred years. We are guardians of the Sacred Trust. Together, we find st
rength and fortitude. Alone, we are wiped from the face of the Earth.”

  He reached down to his belt and untied a leather bag. He pulled open the drawstring and sifted his hand through the contents inside. “To our deaths, to our return to the dirt.” He drew out a handful of blackened earth and scattered it over the cauldron and into the fire. The flames hissed and turned a sickly yellow. He bent to reach inside a bag, and I saw he had the skull symbol for death tattooed on the back of his head. Nice guy.

  “Is that their leader?” I asked Grandma. “The one you used to date?”

  Grandma shook her head. “No. Skull was his lieutenant.”

  He raised up a bottle of rum and uncapped it to dead silence. The men systematically clapped their hands into a hard lock, facing the fire. “To the outlaw in us all,” he hollered. He raised the bottle and poured it into the cauldron.

  Lovely. Death and villainy.

  I drew back, focusing on the entire scene rather than the man at the center. It was as if a shadow hung over the gathering. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it.

  Something was very, very wrong—aside from the fact these men were ritually preparing to murder one of their friends. There was an evil behind this, lurking. Waiting.

  The hardened leader grimaced, showing off crooked teeth, as he drew a long knife out of the sheath at his belt. “To our blood. Our bond of brotherhood,” he called.

  He sliced his palm, and I drew back, running up against Grandma, as he held his hand over the cauldron. Blood poured down over his fingers and into the pot. The gang raised their joined hands with a uniform grunt as he held up his bloody palm.

  What in Hades was driving these guys to murder one of their friends?

  “I’m going in,” Frieda said under her breath. She drew a spell jar and started moving.

  I blocked her like a defensive tackle. “Look,” I hissed into her ear, “you can’t just go in there and put them all on time-out.” I swallowed hard, wishing I could put it into words. “Something bigger is at work here, and it’s nasty. We can’t do anything until it reveals itself.”