Demon Lord 3: Blue Star Priestess (31 page)

The
dark queen turned her head toward Audumor.  “Bring in the last twenty.  We need to finish this.”

I moved down to the next pillar, crouching halfway to the front of the temple now.  Selene knelt at my feet, a hand on my thigh.  She looked up into my face and mouthed the words:  “Last twenty what?”

I tossed my head in the direction of the Knives as half of them hurried through a side door I hadn’t seen.  I heard screams of fear.  Female screams, and clanking chains as twenty females, some as young as twelve, were dragged from a side room, up to the altar.  A few of the captives were dragged on their knees, passively fighting the horror they knew was coming.  Who knows how long they’d huddled in misery, listening to the falling knives, the shrieks of death, smelling the accumulated blood, its sick stench tainting the stale air.

Well, the humans had chosen to live in demon society.  You get the government you deserve.

Audumor had the females freed of the common chain going from leg shackle to leg shackle.  The girls were left with wrist manacles.  The girl at the head of the line had lovely black hair and frightened eyes. 

She struggled as they heaved her onto the altar and held her in place.  “No, nooooo!”

“Don’t do this,” Lauphram begged.  “They’re innocent children.”

“They’re leverage,” Audumor said.  “Give us the Cup, or they die.”

Selene risked a whisper that I barely heard, even with my dragon hearing.  “Do we try to save them?”

“No.”  I didn’t need to think about it.  Even from here, I could feel the dark energies of the queen’s sapphire.  Its blue was light from within by the souls of the slain.  She had more than enough power to crush me and my shadow-magic reservoir.  And then there was the muscle and magic of her Knives.   True, I had a high resistance to lightning, but this just wasn’t the moment; I need to wait until Lauphram broke and pulled the cup from whatever pocket dimension he was hiding it in.  Something told me that the queen couldn’t be beaten until I had that cup, and maybe an idea of how it worked. 

Lauphram slumped in dejection.  “You’re going to kill them anyway to feed your power, keep your secrets, and bring your hell-god to Earth.  Giving into you won’t save them”

“That’s true,” Audumor said, “but you can see that they find an easier death.  Death can come quick and clean, or agonizingly slow and needlessly cruel, which, as you know, is my specialty.”

Lauphram glared at the leader of the Knives, at all of them, the fire of a king in his eyes.  “Why are serving her.  Your duty is to me.  Her dark-god will devour the souls of demons and humans alike before it’s sated.  Nothing will be left.  It’s madness!”

The leader of the Knives grinned.  “Yes, but there will be a new pantheon in this world.  We will be demigods; the new princes of the creation.  The rest of the world will fall to us.  Enough blood, enough souls, and our god will reign supreme.  And he will need servants, or what’s the use of conquest?”

Lauphram’s eyes narrowed.  His voice deepened.  “There are dead hell-dimensions with solitary demon-gods lost in endless silence, endless darkness, who eventually ran out of things to kill.  You don’t understand the hunger even a dark-god can feel.”

“I am getting bored,” the queen said. 

Hah, more like tired.  Being a pregnant cow takes its toll.

The torturer stared down on the king.  “The Cup, now, or I rape her with this knife.”  He held an obsidian blade to her naked crotch.  The captive screamed with the full force of her lungs though not yet cut.

Selene’s hand on my thigh tightened, nails digging in.  I looked down at her, my dragon DNA kicking in to give me a very clear image in the indoor gloom.
  Her eyes were shining pools of blood, alight with magic.  Alight with anticipation.  I had to wonder if—in all the time he’d played with her—Audumor had taught Selene the joy of fresh blood.

That’s not good.
All of me agreed on that.

I looked down into Selene’s eyes, “If it’s easy to kill, then where’s the fun in it?”

Lauphram held grimly silent, his jaw clenched shut.  He’d picked the wrong woman, but he didn’t lack balls.

The queen went to the far side of the altar, standing at the base of Triton’s statue.  The star in her forehead tinted the girl blue with its light so she looked like a demon child with blue skin.

Audumor said, “Fine.”  He wrenched the knife through the girl, slicing her pussy to collarbone.  Blood spurted into the air, splattering freely.  Even I had to fight not to jump in and kill the bastard.  I had to fight even harder to relax my jaw.  Her screaming died with her.  He reached into her chest and cut out the heart.  He held it in front of Lauphram’s eyes.  “See what you made me do?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Lauphram promised, “slowly.”

And I’ll help you keep that promise, Old Man.

The rest of the girls went quickly, desperate scream after scream, until they were all used up.  And after each death, the star sapphire glowed brighter, hazing the queen’s face so its details were lost. 

The queen lifted an arm.  All eyes were on her, except for the corpses piled off to the side.

I pulled Selene on with me past several more pillars until we hid behind the last one.

The queen’s entire body glowed.  Coils of blue energy wreathed her raised arm.  Every strand of hair lifted with static, fanning over her head as she tilted her chin up, gazing into a universe only she could see.  Power flowed up from her a steady stream.  And anchored to that flow, I saw the ghostly images of murdered souls, rising into a new-born star that chased off the shadows, filling the temple with the promise of hell.

A hole in space, edged with blue fire, opened like an eye.  And in that twenty-five foot gap, I saw a hideous, monstrous obscenity, something so awful that even my mind was repelled.  A dark-god howled its hunger.  Its claws gripped the edges of the hole, forcing it wider, wider.  Soon, the hell-gate would be large enough for the demon-god to come through.

THIRTY-TWO

“Half a god is better than all

of one, though not by much.
”

                                       —Caine Deathwalker

The dark queen’s gem continued to pour out the energy, an umbilical cord composed of all the souls she’d murdered.  The rippling lash of blue fire kept the hell-gate anchored and open.  She shouted at Lauphram.  “The Great Corruptor is coming.  I am all that can control him, but I need the Cup to do so.  Give it to me, my husband, or Atlantis dies.  Is that what you want?  More needless death and suffering?”

“Bitch,” he yelled.  “How could I have ever thought I loved you?”

“The Cup!” she caressed her belly to draw his attention.  “If I die, so does your child, your innocent child.  Will you fail him, too?”

From behind the pillar, I watched the demon-god release the edges of the hell-gate.  I think it was close to figuring out what the rip was.  Three hunter-green stalks shoved out into our space.  The stalks were pliant as tender plants breaking soil, and thorny.  The ends of the stalks held magenta balls that bobbed nodding approval of this new dimension.  The balls had black vertical lines on them.  The lines divided down the middle, separating so that the eyeballs under the lids could be seen.  The fields of the eyes were coral pink, the irises iris blue.  The pupils were vertical as well, umber-black edged with yellow-brown.  Misshapen roots of topaz spilled out of the hole and turned rubbery, barnacle-covered, with a mist around them that hardened into baby-blue armor plating. 

I didn’t think any of what we saw was its true nature, just compromises it was shaping out of itself so it could adjust to the natural laws of our reality.  Those that had given it life in its altered space wouldn’t be anything comprehensible to physicists of coming generations.  If Einstein or Tesla were here, I think they’d join me in saying “What the fuck!”

The queen’s Knives weren’t looking so sure of themselves anymore, backing away, hands on their weapons.  Only their leader stayed with the queen, and
Audumor, his robes befouled with blood, more of it dotting his face like measles.

“The Cup, damn you!  Give me the cup,” the queen railed at Lauphram, but he smiled, standing up, unheeding of the armored tentacles dangling lower, as if seeking out the blood on the altar, or the source of power drawing it to this world.

The Young Man said, “Better Atlantis dies than such a monster be unleashed upon the world.”

Yeah, that was the Old Man I knew: intolerably honorable, yet ruthless, always able to see the big picture.  I sometimes thought he’d have been better off getting born an ancient samurai or something.

The tip of a tentacle swung past him, grazing the yoke.  The god-power of the tentacle drained the violet magic of the yoke’s printed runes. They turned black, smoking. The corruptor’s touch aged the wood, crackling and withering it with a blight of mold and rot.  Lauphram flexed his shoulders and arms, straining, and the yoke exploded in a powdery way that caused dust fragments to rain around the king’s feet.

Audumor
backed away and used the queen as his shield, ducking behind her swollen belly and skirts.

The leader of the Knives lunged at Lauphram, drawing a knife for each hand.

“C’mon,” I tugged Selene behind me, hoping that the heat of battle would pull out her other self, bringing on a transformation.  With a demon-god trying to crash reality, a red dragon was

Going to come in handy.

I hope.

Lauphram and the head of the Knives were going at it, wailing the tar out of one another.  The rest of the Knives still dithered, until the queen pointed at me and Selene, screaming, “Get them!  I need their dragon-souls.  You want to rule the world or not?”

Knives came out with knives in hand.  I headed for the altar, drawing my PPK, squeezing off shots into the eye stalks.  The eyes flinched, dipping, rising, swing wildly to evade my fire.  My gun ran empty.  I heard Selene’s bare feet pattering on stone, the sound converging on the Knives.  Near naked, just a woman like so many they’d killed, she must have looked like easy meat, unfortunately for them, they hadn’t considered her dragon’s heart, strength, endurance, or savage rage, or they might not have run so swiftly to engage her.

Her human throat unleashed a petite “Roarrr!” 

Absolutely adorable
. 

I holstered my gun and warmed my
Dragon Fire
tattoo.  Crushing pressure surrounded my torso.  The pain was so real I might have been caught in a big fucking…  I looked down as my feet came off the flagging.  One of the tentacles had me, having thinned itself down to get more reach.  The pain of my ribs breaking had hit the same moment as a similar ghost pain that paid off my debt to invoke magic. 

Weird.
 
Weirder still, how come my body hasn’t been corrupted by the demon-god’s touch?  I haven’t been turned into decayed, putrid road-kill the way so many of my old girlfriends hope.

I think the devil-god was wondering something along those lines as well as he dangled me in the air so two of the three eyes could get a look at me.

I pointed a flaming palm at the closest eye and threw out a torrent of dragon flame, holding nothing back.  One doesn’t pull punches on demon-gods.  The eye caught fire and jerked away, bubbling, dripping a kind of waxy pink slag on the floor, with blue mixed in from the iris.  The coil loosened and I dropped to my feet but didn’t stay on them, falling, rolling to a stop. 

By this time,
Audumor had determined that the better part of valor was hauling ass, only he was trying to drag the queen with him and she wasn’t going.  She rounded on him suddenly, drawing a knife from his belt and plunging it into his heart.  Face a study of shock, he crumpled up and died without near enough suffering. I desperately wanted to run out and get a necromantic spell to raise him from the dead, just so I could kill him properly.

Nursing my ribs, I gave myself a minute to recover a little, and used the time to see how things were going.  The head of the Knives had Lauphram by the hair, using the grip to bash his face into the blood caked altar.  A shift of perspective and I watched Selene, her clothing entirely ripped away now.  Her hands were dragon claws and had brought bloody ruin to many of the Knives.  Several were on the floor, lying in growing pools of their own blood.  Selene looked like—at one point—she’d tried to roll in all that blood, painting her skin.  She had a knife hilt in her back and seemed to be fighting on one lung instead of two.  Her breath was labored, wheezy, and she was spitting up blood.

The dragon in me was proud, saying,
The Red Lady indeed
.

The tear in the air had been pulled lower on the queen’s tether as she’d been half dragged off.  More tentacles spewed out, these with spiral cones at the tips.  The drill-bits spun, chewing into the temple floor, scattering shattered rock freely.  Reaching dirt, the drill section folded back, bearing toothy maws that bit at the ground, slinging soil, digging out a few feet.  That task accomplished, the tentacle-ends grew webs of roots that writhed down out of sight.  It had anchored itself, determined to come and take this world that was defying it so strongly.

The battles in the temple had paused as combatants watched the spectacle.  The struggles restarted, as if on cue.  The head of the Knives picked Lauphram off his feet and body-slammed him onto the bloody altar.  That took a lot of the fight out of him.  I carefully got to my feet, about to lurch over and save the young king when waves of blackness ringed out from the burrowed roots.  The flagstones cracked and went to powder, crushed by some enormous pressure.  The damaged continued to expand.  Cracks ran up the pillars on both sides of the temple.   The Knives all died on their feet, rotting to putrid corpses, flesh and muscles dripping off, spoiled organs sloughing to the ground where their decay continued.

Why I didn’t die was easy to understand:
You can’t corrupt what has no virtue, well that and the fact that my shadow had an affinity for the darkness and had washed out of my
Dragon Wings
tattoo, covering me in shadow of my own.  Selene had a revved up gift for superfast healing.  She slumped in agony, but wasn’t dying from the corruption of The Corruptor.  The demon-god was being careful not to hurt the dark queen and sever its tie to this dimensional plane.  One of its coils had scooped her up with the utmost gentleness, holding her above the fray.  That just left Lauphram’s survival to ponder.  The only thing I could figure was that he
had
been slammed onto the altar, a thing consecrated to the demon-god.  Also, all that blood there might have acted as mystic insulation.  And his feet happened to be off the ground.

Band after band of dark energy slithered out of the temple, many of them hundreds of feet wide.  The flat, black rings were heading into the surrounding city.  It occurred to me that a vast number of humans and demons were about to die—very badly.

This is it, the beginning of the cataclysm that’s going to sink the island and wipe everyone out.  I’m so lucky to be here to see it.  Hey, what the hell is Lauphram doing?

He stood on the altar, his nose broken, dripping more blood ‘cause we just didn’t have enough.  His hands were cupped in front of his heart.  His eyes were glowing electric blue.  I couldn’t hear him, but I saw his mouth moving.  Forming a spell?  An aqua-blue star appeared between his hands, its light feeble at first, but gathering strength.

I walked toward him. 
The Cup.  He’s summoning it to him.  Why the hell now?

The queen shrieked like a mad woman in the tentacle of her demon-god, her eyes on her husband.  “Yes, yes, give it to me.  It’s mine.  Mine!”

Lauphram said, “All I can do for my people now is to give them a clean death before the contagion sweeps consumes them.”  He looked up at his wife, unborn child, and the demon-god bulging out of the hole like industrial sludge.  “Let it all end now.” 

The air around his eyes crackled with lightning.  Electrical fire spilled into the cup.  Clouds wrapped around him.  A hard wind whipped up and dragged the clouds into the cup as well.  A burst of thunder shook the building.  The blue glow of his lifeforce danced around the cup, sinking into it from his touch.  He up-ended the Cup and drank.  Another blast of thunder hit the temple.  Small stones fell from the ceiling.  More and more of his power went into the vessel.  And once more, he drank.  And now lightning was dancing around his limbs.  His glow was filling the space, his power increasing exponentially. 

That’s when I got it.  The cup was an amplifier.  Whatever power went in was returned at ever increasing levels.  This wasn’t a Cup of the gods, but a cup to make you one. 

“Noooo,” the dark queen screamed.  “That power should be mine.  It belongs to my child.”

Lauphram raised a hand toward the hell-gate.  Massive jags of raw electricity peeled off his body, slamming the foul stuff pouring out, burning it to ash, slashing through many of the tentacles, but not the one holding his wife.  And now the entire island shook.  Great chunks of masonry dropped around us.  The sludge of the demon-god splattered, truckloads of glop connected to the rest of the demon-god and other clumps by writhing filaments.  They were bristling like nests of snakes, weaving through the air, searching.

Lauphram ignored the danger, cycling his power to ever greater levels while spinning part of it off as an attack against the hell-gate.

I leaped onto the altar, a sword of shadow hardening in my left hand.  I slashed at the filaments that undulated too close, keeping them off the man who would one day be my father.   With my right hand, I blazed across the proto-mater of the demon-god, not wanting to give it time restructure into something even harder to deal with.

And then Selene was on the altar as well.  She clung to Lauphram instead of me, and reached out, putting a hand over his.  Her magic and the force of her life mingled into the cup.  I did what I could to drive back the ever-encroaching demon-god. 

Lauphram drank the cup down, and the earthquake intensified.  Sheets of lighting bleached the world for endless moments, followed by explosions of sound.  Half the roof crashed down.  Acting reflexively, the Corruptor flailed out and sent the masonry tumbling away, inadvertently protecting his enemies, too.  The statue of triton broke into fragments, kicking up dust as they tumbled around the altar.  I used a floating hand of shadow to deflect a piece of barnacled shoulder that was heading for Lauphram.

He looked at me then for the first time as more than just a piece of the general chaos.  “Thank you, but what in Hade’s realm was that magic you used?”

“Shadow magic, the substance of emptiness.  You should pick it up.”

“I just might, if I live through this.”   

Seeing an opening, I leaped into the air, rebounding of an armored tentacle, then another, and stabbed both remaining eyes on their stalks.  My final leap brought me near the queen.  With a thought, I softened my shadow sword to the consistence of wet cloth, and bitch-slapped her face in passing.  This distracted her from the fact that I liberated her crown, tossing it off to the side where I could reclaim it later.  I like getting paid for my work.  My efforts had another effect; breaking her concentration to the point where the stream of energy from her sapphire turned ragged.