demon slayer 05.5 - the tenth dark lord a leaping (3 page)

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 strength 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.”

And it would. I had a feeling whatever these guys were doing was designed to open up a can of evil.

Tears rolled freely over the blond witch’s cheeks. “Shit.” She glared daggers at the scene below. “Dark magic or not, I won’t let them kill my son.”

Grandma didn’t budge. “This isn’t some Pollyanna, plastic Hollywood drama. Good intentions don’t give you the license to be stupid.”

Frieda swallowed and shook with the effort to remain calm. “You don’t know how hard this is,” she said like a warning.

“You’re right,” I told her. “We don’t.” I didn’t have a child. And I was willing to bet Grandma had never been in this situation. “But we are here for you, and we’re going to do everything we can for you and Bruce. Right?”

She nodded and looked to the sky.

The circle inside the rocks had gone quiet. Cripes. We’d been too loud. I braced myself, trying to calm down, breathe steady as I peered through the rocks. Baldie stood at the front, with the crowd’s attention focused on him. Thank God. Grandma scooted down a rock and found another gap.

He raised his leather-clad arms. “One will be selected to die.”

“It’s going to be Bruce!” Frieda hissed. She rushed over to my rock. “He’s always had the gift of sight. My baby knew. He knew!”

“Don’t worry,” I said, taking her arm for comfort and to keep her from bolting out there. “We’ll stop this.” I hoped.

The leader turned and threw a powder into the potion over the fire. A mustard-colored flame burst from it. The stench of it—pure sulfur—made my throat sting and my eyes water. The blaze died down and we watched in horror as a sickly yellow flame danced by itself over the cauldron. It took flight, like a possessed ember.

It was choosing.

It paused over a meaty-looking guy who hadn’t even bothered to wear sleeves on his jacket. His beefy arm showed an angular sun tattoo lit up with goose bumps as the flame studied him. He let out a choked breath as it moved on.

It paused, hovering over the scared blond kid I’d seen earlier. Oh no. Only this time it didn’t just pause. It flickered over his head and grew brighter.

Marking him.

Okay. Now. We had to do something now. I wasn’t sure what.

I drew a switch star, but I knew I couldn’t start killing these people. Yes, they were ready to murder one of their own, and it was sick, and I was willing to bet they weren’t the nicest guys on the block, but that didn’t warrant a death sentence from me. If I could even murder them all, which I couldn’t.

I glanced behind me. It would be nice if we could get some support right about now. Dimitri didn’t need to get every flipping witch off the ski lift, and even if he did, the early rescues could get off their butts and join us. It wasn’t as if we’d left them far behind.

With a jolt I realized I’d forgotten about Frieda. I turned back and considered it a gift that she was still with me, watching the ceremony.

“We’ll save him,” I told her. Somehow.

She leveled a steady gaze at me and seemed unable to speak for a moment. She licked her lips. “That’s not Bruce.”

It took me a second to register her meaning as we watched the blond kid walk toward the cauldron. He was shaking, his lips pressed tight, his shoulders drawn back like a soldier’s. Anybody could see he was scared out of his mind. Damned if he wasn’t going to go through with it. Behind him walked a woolly mammoth of a guy with gold hoops in each ear and a Grizzly Adams beard that hid most of his face. They both stopped in front of the leader. He nodded.

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion.

Maybe he really did care. Of course it wasn’t going to stop him from killing his so-called brother.

This was sick. I didn’t care if it wasn’t Frieda’s son. We had to find a way to stop this.

The woolly mammoth guy said something low to the leader and the boy. The kid’s eyes bugged out, and even the leader gave a pause.

“You don’t have to…” Baldie began.

Woolly mammoth shoved the kid aside and stepped forward, hands raised as he addressed the coven of Dark Lords. “I’m taking his place. This is a willing sacrifice.”

Frieda gave a small scream. The mammoth looked straight at her and locked eyes with his mother.

CHAPTER FOUR

The leader didn’t even look at us. “Get ’em.”

A dozen Dark Lords charged up the hill. I grabbed Frieda to keep her from pulling a mamma bear and sent us both stumbling backward. We needed to run, hide, but we were on the top of a crag with nothing but the wind and a broken ski lift at our backs.

This situation was going from bad to downright impossible.

Grandma seemed to be thinking the same thing. She drew a spell jar, clearly reluctant to use it. Her gray hair tangled around her shoulders. “Shit. Okay. Skull was a reasonable enough guy. Most of the time. Maybe we can talk to him.”