Free The Last of the Demon Slayers by Angie Fox Page A

to fool around.”
    “Lizzie –” Grandma clapped a hand on my shoulder.
           But I was on a roll. “Give me a fast Harley and a belt full of switch stars.”
           “Now you sound like a biker witch,” Grandma said, her gravelly voice ringing with pride. “I hate to tell you that in this case, Sid is right.”
           Oh please. “Did you hit your head on something pointy?”
           “We’re talking about ancient protection here.” She shrugged. “Fairies have been running these routes since George Washington was in diapers.”
    “Try Ramses,” Sid smirked.
    Grandma ignored him. “Every fairy that travels a route deepens the magic. We’re talking generations and generations of strength and protection.”
    Okay, well, Sid hadn’t bothered to explain that part. “Have you done this before?” I asked.
    “Hell, no,” Grandma said. “We never knew where they were. Now we do.”
    Frieda handed us both a glass of tomato juice. “Drink up.”
    I took a sniff. It held the bitter tang of something besides tomatoes. Of course knowing the biker witches, it could mean they’d added anything from vodka to vitamins.
    Nothing could be simple. “Will fairy magic protect us against banshees?” I asked.
    And anything else that might be hunting us?
           Grandma took a long drink, considering the question. “It’ll muddy up the waters, make it harder for them to track us. And hopefully we’ll run into lots of other magical folks who can tell us what’s ahead.”
    When she put it that way, it wasn’t such a bad idea. I could use some extra knowledge about what we were facing, especially after the attack outside, and what my dad had tried to pull.
           Sid threw his stubby hands out in front of him. “Do you trust me, or not? Because I don’t have all day to sit around and decide who’s going to lead this parade.”
           “Okay, fine,” I said, depositing my tomato juice surprise on the bar.
    If Grandma trusted him, so did I. We were heading out into the open, and if the fairy magic could act as a shield, we’d be crazy not to take advantage.
    Besides, I had a feeling Ant Eater would use my head as a bongo drum if I harassed her main squeeze.
    “Let’s leave in ten,” I said, pulling my gloves out of my back pocket. If all else failed, we could always head back to the main highways.
    “No problem.” Sid shook a bit of dust from his sleeve. The map shivered and began folding itself.
    Nice trick.
    ***
           We assembled the witches in less than five minutes, which never failed to amaze me. I strapped Pirate to my chest in true biker dog style and adjusted his Doggles riding glasses.
    “You’d better lay off the puppy treats,” I said, knowing the problem was probably donuts. I scratched Pirate between the ears. He’d eaten two this morning and we were on our last notch on the black leather baby-style carrier.
    He ran a cold nose along the inside of my wrist. “Are you kidding? I can’t pass up a donut. You know anybody that can say no to a chocolate long john?”
    Not my dog.
    “Besides, I’m using them to train Flappy and he hasn’t been getting many of his tricks right. So I have to eat the donuts. Well I do give him some donuts, whether he sits or not, because well, I can’t just eat donuts in front of him.” Pirate’s tail thumped against my leg. “Sometimes Flappy even sits down when he eats them so that sort of counts.”
    Flappy. I craned my neck back at the dirty white dragon licking water out of a battered gutter of Big Nose Kate’s. Good thing only magical people could see Flappy. He wasn’t exactly subtle.
    His snaggletooth dredged entire shingles off the roof.
    According to Dimitri, the dragon’s wings should have been the size of a man and sparkle like glass. Flappy’s were less than half that size and they only sparkled the one time Pirate decided to play dragon makeover and sprinkle them with glitter. Flappy