My Big Fat Demon Slayer Wedding

I fell asleep within seconds of reaching my room. When I woke, Dimitri was gone. He’d helped me shower before putting me to bed, and I hadn’t even gotten to enjoy it. My head pounded and the skin on my chest and arms felt tight. Diana sat by my bedside with a glass of water and a Tylenol.

She gave a slight smile. “Try this.”

I leaned up, taking them from her. “A little conventional, don’t you think?”

“Never underestimate a good pain killer.”

I looked down at my chest and arms. They were slightly pink, like I’d gotten too much sun, but they were whole. “Where’s Dimitri?”

Diana flattened me with one hand. “He’s out patrolling the grounds.”

“In his condition?” I hadn’t seen the extent of his injuries, but if he felt even a fraction of what I had, he should be in bed next to me.

He was in no shape to shift or fight.

We didn’t even know who’d wanted to kill me, or why.

Yes, I was a demon slayer, but that meant I had hundreds of enemies. How was I going to even begin to know where this attack had started? And worse, how to stop it.

“You try keeping a two-hundred-pound griffin inside,” Diana said, clearly worried as well. “Dyonne is downstairs, routing the griffins a new one. Someone has to know who poisoned the dress.”

“It may not have come from one of the griffins,” I said. Yes, we hadn’t had great luck with the clans in the past, but it didn’t mean the Artemae were guilty by the sake of their blood. Besides, I smelled sulfur. This was demonic.

There was a knock at the door. Grandma pushed her way inside, followed closely by Creely.

“The wards were never breached,” Grandma said, by way of greeting.

“How is that possible?” I asked. “Nobody can sneak poison from hell past your barriers.”

Creely exchanged a glance with Grandma. “You shouldn’t,” the engineering witch grunted.

“What the hell does that mean?” Diana barked.

Creely crossed her arms over her chest. “Shit. Beats me. I’d say whoever booby-trapped the dress came from inside the wedding party.”

Grandma glared at her. “Makes sense,” she said grudgingly.

There was another knock at the door. What was this? A fricking party?

My mentor, Rachmort, poked his head around the door, and if I didn’t feel like death warmed over, I would have rushed over to hug him. The wrinkles around his eyes and the angle of his cheekbones gave him an air of jocular authority.

He removed his black top hat and ran a hand thorough his mop of white hair. If anything, it made his wild white locks stand up even more.

Zebediah Rachmort was a necromancer, a legendary demon slayer instructor and a cursed-creatures consultant for the Department of Intramagical Matters’ Lost Souls Outreach program. Today he wore a brown dress jacket, an olive green waistcoat and brown pants with pinstripes.

His white hair reminded me of Einstein’s, while his Victorian-era clothes, neatly clipped sideburns, and large gold watch fob looked like something out of a Dickens novel.

It was impossible to tell how old he was. The man seemed almost timeless.

He was my sounding board. My rock.

“Ant Eater told me what happened,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a blue nugget of what looked to be a chalky type of gem. He handed it to Grandma “A little something extra for the wards.”

She and Creely left to go use it as Rachmort ambled toward my bedside. He sat heavy on the chair that Diana had vacated and watched me, elbows resting on his knees.

He fiddled with the humongous gold and copper ring on his middle finger. It looked more like a compass than a piece of jewelry. “It’s good to see you. Alive.”

“If you look at this as a fun learning opportunity, I’m going to slap you,” I told him.

He merely grinned. “I’d hoped to talk to you about so many other things.” He dropped the humor, gave a slight shake to his head. “I don’t think any of your wedding guests are trying to hurt you.”

“But you heard what Grandma and Creely said.” No one came in from the outside.

He shook his head, watching me carefully. “Regretfully, I believe one of your guests is possessed.”

It took me a second to process that. But damn. It made sense.

Diana frowned. “How could they get a demonic poison past the wards?”

In typical Rachmort fashion, he embraced the discussion like a professor with a pupil. “The biker witches protect against threats from the outside. Strangers. They don’t protect against good people, or invited guests who happen to carry dangerous weapons.” He held up a hand while he used the other to root around in an inside jacket pocket. “If that were the case, I’d have been zapped for carrying my hell fire.” He gave a slight grin as he produced a round globe with a searing yellow and orange flame inside. “Pretty, isn’t it?” He held it up for us to see. “It could send you straight to hell.” He set it on the bed.

Diana and I both shrank back.

Rachmort didn’t notice.

“Oh, and I forgot I had this.” He drew a cackling insect from his jacket. “Not to worry. Theodore is trained. You should see Petite Ice Nymphs in the wild. Nasty buggers.”

“Can you put that away?” I asked.

He seemed surprised at that. “Oh, sure.”

Diana took another step back. “Why do you even have that stuff?”

“I counsel the black souls of purgatory,” he told Diana. “This makes me easier to relate to. You have to know your audience. Anyhow, back to our problem, I can tell you unequivocally that dangerous items can make it past the wards.”

“Yes,” I said, “like Cerberus slobber.”

“So what got in here?” Diana asked. “When did it start?”

I tried to think back. “I don’t know. I took some grave dirt on the way here, but I’m not possessed. And it wasn’t evil.”

“You have to invite it in,” Diana said.

“Unfortunately you don’t,” Rachmort said, regret coloring his voice. “There must be a pathway however. That’s what makes it tricky.”

How was I supposed to find a pathway when I couldn’t even count on my demon detector senses working? Think. “If we don’t know ‘how’ then we need to figure out ‘who’.” I sat up on my pillows, glad no one tried to stop me. My head was feeling better and my voice was, too, now that I was using it. “The only demon who is after me—at the moment—is the Earl of Hell.” At least that was the only one I knew about. “We locked him up, though.”

“Don’t rule out your Earl,” Rachmort said. “Zatar isn’t one to stew for centuries.”

I reached out with my demon slayer senses, tested the space around us for as far as I could reach in my weakened state. “I can’t feel him,” I said, “even before the dress incident. I didn’t sense any demons. I’d know if someone is possessed. I’m a slayer.”

“Except that you didn’t see it coming,” Rachmort said. “Did you?”

“No,” I whispered.

He was right. My powers had been compromised.

Hadn’t I known in, in some way, from the minute I stepped on this property?

“Can you help?” I asked Rachmort.

“I don’t sense demons,” he said, “but I will work to see if I can determine which of your guests could be stricken.”

“What do I do?” How could I fight this evil if I couldn’t even sense it?

A boom went up outside, and I heard biker witches cussing.

Boots tromped up the stairs and the door flew open. “Rachmort, can you get down here?” Grandma asked.

He nodded, and stood to go. “Be careful,” he told me by way of parting.