My Big Fat Demon Slayer Wedding

It was the ghost. She lay chained to the black altar, arching away from it as the dark mark churned under her like a saw blade. It caught her back, sucking her down. She screamed as her body changed from solid to ghostly. I watched as the dark mark devoured her whole.

I shot to my feet, every instinct screaming for me to turn away, to run, to try and save her.

I am the virgin sacrifice. Free me.

“How?” I pleaded.

Holy hell. The ghost’s soul was powering the markers. I had to free her. I had to end this.

You are the final sacrifice.

What? I turned away, the shock of it ripping me from the vision. No! “Wait. Hold up.” I didn’t understand.

I turned back toward the flame, stumbled when I almost stepped on the bag of crickets. I shouldn’t have bothered. They were all dead.

My time was up.

Forget it. I needed to break through. I could not fail. But it didn’t make any sense. The ghost powered the portal, not me.

Unless…

She thrashed again against the power of the dark alter, her agony and death on a constant loop.

My throat was dry, my voice hoarse, as I asked the most important question of all. “If I die, what happens?”

The dark marks churned, black magic sizzled, a violent storm ready to unleash itself on everyone I loved.

Then I saw Zatar, Earl of Hell.

He had the scaled body of a lizard and the face of an angel. His features were striking, beautiful. He must have been a heart-stopper before his fall. His hair was long and golden and he wore the silver and white wings of an angel.

“You—” I began, shocked. I’d locked Zatar away. There was no way he could touch me.

Unless he did it through someone I loved.

“Who did you take?” I demanded, ready to bargain, to force, to do anything I could to get answers.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. His voice was like music and the wind, haunting and beautiful. It was like nothing I’d heard before. I had to force myself to stand my ground. “I have you.”

A blast of power knocked me off my feet.

I hit him with a switch star, then another, then another. They barely slowed him down as he reached for me.

Holy mother. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was in hell. For as long as I lived and breathed.

Which at this rate…don’t think about it.

There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

I dropped my switch stars and drew deep down inside myself. I needed more. I was half angel, a detail most people, including myself, overlooked. Angel power didn’t come with nifty weapons or a gang of biker witches, but it did come with something else.

I let it build inside me, trusted it even as the Earl bore down on me, I focused every bit of light and goodness I had and blasted him backward, straight through the stone wall and back to hell where he’d come from.

Shocked and shaking, I remained rooted in place as the air warmed around me. The candle crackled, and for the first time, I dared to look upward. The storm doors had been blasted completely off. Stars shone in the night sky.

“Okay,” I said, knees still a little too wobbly to attempt a climb. Still, I knew what to do. It may be crazy, and it may get me killed, but at least I had a plan.

Chapter Twenty

I climbed out of the cellar and stalked past the startled witches.

“What did you see?” Grandma demanded, grabbing my arm. I shook her off.

“Zatar.” My worst nightmare. I hadn’t been able to beat him before. I’d thought it would be enough to lock him away in hell.

Fat load of good that had done.

Creely grabbed a spell jar, ready to attack. Only we didn’t have an enemy. Not in the flesh.

“Lizzie—” she began.

I didn’t hear the rest. I needed to focus. “I think I’m onto something,” I said. If what I had planned would even work…

Frieda moved to block my path. I dodged her.

I opened the door to the kitchen and let it slam behind me, knowing they’d follow. I didn’t have time to spell it out. I had to get the necklace with the grave dirt. Somehow, I had to free the ghost and disable the marks before the demon got his claws in me or anyone else.

Now that I was on to him, he’d move fast. I didn’t know how much time we had.

I stalked down the hall and up the stairs, my mind tumbling over itself. Looking back, there had been a reason why I’d felt compelled to grab the grave dirt. Sometimes, I just knew. Hadn’t the necklace clung to it? It had actively fought me when I’d tried to take my only connection to the ghost and dump it out over the ocean. It was still protecting me.

If I’d been thinking that way, I would have realized something was up when Pirate hadn’t been able to see the dead bride. Pirate loved ghosts. He played with them. But we weren’t dealing with a soul who was free to strike up a game of Parcheesi. The woman was trapped, and Pirate had lacked the connection to the locket, and the grave dirt inside.

I touched my fingers to my bare throat. It was no mistake the specter hadn’t appeared since I’d given up the pendant. At the time, I’d been worried about hurting Dimitri by breaking our bond. Now, I could see it was a lot worse than that.

Twisting the doorknob to my room, I said a quick prayer, made my way over to the dresser. I opened the drawer and gasped.

There was an empty place where the necklace should have been.

Yes, I’d feared it, maybe I should have expected it, but it stunned me to the core. The emerald was pledged to me. Mine. I couldn’t even throw it off a fricking cliff. It was wholly and totally bound to me.

Unless Dimitri was compromised.

He was the only one I knew who could touch it like I could.

By all that was holy, if he had taken it, I didn’t know what I’d do.

It was clear someone had been in my dresser. My underthings had been neatly folded. As always. Now they were scattered as if they’d been caught in a storm. Bottoms mixed with bras and slips and, oh hell.

I dug through the mess, hoping, praying it was still there. I tossed panties, socks, everything out onto the floor.

There was no good way for the search to end. I’d felt it deep down in my gut.

The necklace was gone.

“Fuck!” I slammed my hand down on the dresser, staring down at the empty drawer.

Dimitri’s door opened. “What’s the matter?” he asked, no doubt startled by my outburst. Oh, no. I wasn’t ready to face him yet.

He wore a blue t-shirt and jeans. His hair was mussed from sleep, and it was clear he still felt the effects of the earlier battle downstairs. A half-dozen witches crowded the hall as well.

There was no hiding my discovery. I tossed a stray bra off the dresser. “Someone stole my emerald,” I said,