Demon Lord 3: Blue Star Priestess (32 page)

Two tendrils stabbed me in midair, one through my left thigh, the other through my right side, just above a kidney.  My shadow sword collapsed.  For a split-second, separate parts of me fused.  I felt whole.  Massive swords appeared in each hand, an almost-black red with cracks of gold fire.  I sheered the tendrils off.  The swords faded as fast as they’d come, freeing my hands to yank out the strand tips that writhed like they wanted to bore straight through me.  I threw the pieces away. 

I landed and the feeling of wholeness vanished, leaving a mental impression, two figures crowding close, a sensation of love and warmth.  My parents? 

Never mind, figure it out later.  Focus on now.

With any luck the gate would implode before the island tore itself apart.

No such luck.  The air filled with spectral demons and humans, soul from across the city, circling the shuddering walls of the temple, flying rings up against the storm clouds that were now thick overhead.  I had to do something to stop the queen’s gem from feasting upon the souls drawn here by the energies unleashed.  If the star pulled in all these souls, the hell-gate would be wrenched open so wide the demon-god could rush through all at once.  We’d no longer have the advantage of fighting it through a bottle-neck. 

The elements raged now with a life of their own, and Lauphram was getting ready to guzzle down yet another draught from Poseidon’s Cup.  I didn’t know how many times he could do that before all that power escaped control.  He wasn’t as adept at magic as he’d be in the future. 

The loose souls were now circling in a sloppy vortex.  The blue flame of the queen’s sapphire was calling them, urging them closer, closer, like moths to a candle.  If the queen had her way, those souls would die a second time in service to her power.

There was only one thing I could do, one weapon that could cut the umbilical to the hell-gate, but first, I turned my thoughts inward to my inner dragon. 

I need your wings
. 

Nothing, not even a snide comment.  He was being sulky. 

Look, second time’s the charm, right?  Okay, okay, I’m sorry I busted them up the last time, but, hey, you want to look good in front of your mate, right?

My dragon had rushed to claim Selene.  Me?  I have a duty to womankind to spread myself around.  Not everyone is meant for monogamy.

I drew my demon sword. 
About fucking time
, my sword said.

Now you’re giving me attitude, too?

The change came on in a heated frenzy, muscles writhing on my back, growing along with bone spikes from my shoulder blades.  And pain, of course.  Forever a price…

THIRTY-THREE

“Yeah, uh, sure.  I’ll call you.
”

                                       —Caine Deathwalker

I worked the
golden dragon wings, getting their feel, adjusting to new sensory data from the nerves.  I’d flown on dragon wings before, sorta.  This time I needed a little more control. 

Here, let me.
 
The wings went into a kind of auto-pilot as my dragon side took over.

I got six-feet up when ropes of sludge spun out and coiled around my legs.  I slashed with my blade.  The strands severed.  My wings jerked me higher. 

My sword bitched. 
Eeeeeck!  That tastes nasty.

The strands I’d cut withered, blackened, and rotted as they dropped.  Thereafter, the sludgy tendrils avoided me, going out of their way to pick other targets. 

My targets were the souls whirling around the ruined temple, filling the sky overhead.  A mass of them were peeling off from the flight pattern, arcing in toward the blue star priestess.  I flew into the soul stream, my sword in both hands, and became a lightning rod of sorts.  The sword drank thirstily. The human souls lost their appearance, each becoming a silvery-blue nebula around a bright, white core.  The demon souls went through a similar change but their nebulas were red with a pink-white core that strobed, pulsing erratically.

The nebulas dissipated as my sword sliced their cores.  The sword glowed purple as red and blue energies merged.  A bottomless well, the sword drained the souls steadily, too busy feasting for once to offer up scathing repartee. Unrelenting hunger from the demon sword backwashed into me, as soul after soul was consumed.  That hadn’t changed.  I wondered if the hunger could ever be dimmed, even with this many souls.  Power came, invigorating strength, as the sword shared what it had consumed.  

Seeing what I was doing, the queen screamed profanities, almost foaming at the mouth.  I banked toward the umbilical, ready to slash the conduit that fed the hell-gate.  My sword fought me, refusing the souls held in thrall by the blue star priestess.  My swing went wild, missing as I swooped out of range.

What’s your problem?
I asked the blade.

If
she stops, all these souls will escape.  How will I eat them then?

There will be other battles, other souls
.  I knew the argument was weak when I made it.  A chicken in the coop isn’t equal to several on the barbeque.  I could try to force the blade to do what I wanted, but I’d run the risk of it turning in my grip and taking a piece of me.  My soul would be just as tasty as any other.  No, I needed my sword halfway cooperative.  That meant I had to let the gluttonous thing eat its fill.

I wheeled, landing on the altar, just as Selene kicked Lauphram in the gut with enough dragon strength to lift him several feet in the air.  Gasping for breath, dropped on his knees back on the altar.  A smile of pleasure stretched her face.  She said, “thank you, demon scum.”  The cup was in her hands now, the open top beaming blue light with purple streaks into the air.  She lifted it to drink.

“Selene, give me the cup.”

She paused, the cup at her lips, staring at me over the brim.  The power of the cup would be a good kick-start for her on the road to ultimate power as the Red Lady.  If nothing else, it was going to be a hell of a rush.  This was godhood in a swallow, and maybe sudden death, too.  I was asking a lot.

I smiled, holding out a hand.  “Please?”

The cup lowered.  She smiled back.  And I knew she was insanely in love—with the emphasis on insane—when she handed me the cup like it was nothing.

Storm magic and red dragon magic filled the Cup, nothing else.  I was changing that now, drawing forth my lifeforce which had just been flushed with power from the demon sword’s feeding.  I projected that energy into the Cup to amplify it.

Lauphram pulled himself up, using me as a ladder.  He reached for the cup.  “Don’t.  Demon energies will tear a human apart.  You can’t drink that.”

I did.

The dragon blood tattoos all over my burned gold.  Then blue.  My head felt filled with thunder.  Wreaths of lightning circled my limbs, blasting Lauphram and Selene off the altar.  The altar itself cracked in half, taking the brunt from the energies boiling out of me.  As my wings lifted me, I dumped as much power as I could back into the demon sword.  Roaring inside my brain, my inner dragon ingested his share of the energy, taking more of the pressure off.  I no longer felt my body was about to splatter in all directions. 

I stabbed the sky with my sword and bared my teeth at it.  All right, you soul-sucking vampire-wanna be, eat your feel.

A flight of souls had spiraled in and was being devoured by the queen’s gemstone.  Her feed to the hell-gate instantly strengthened, blazing a brighter blue.  The gate doubled in size.  A purple-gray, horned head poked into our world.  The demon-god peered around curiously.  His yellow-green eyes glowed with a sour light that burned the air.  From all around the temple’s perimeter, a half dozen more soul-streams arced in.

The point they converged toward was no longer the dark queen, but the sword I held.  Its red glow became a pyre, washing over me, as if to eat me, too.  The blade cackled with joy. 
That’s it, come to me.  Come and fill me, all you tasty souls. 

The soul-streams entered the red blaze and just kept coming, a dozen souls, two dozen, a hundred, hundreds more as the island shuddered and the sky roiled.  The sword went silent in my head, intent on consumption such a feast as it had never imagined.  The feedback of power from the sword shoved into me, turning my thoughts into an ecstatic wash.  My heart hammered with adrenaline.  Full to puking, I shunted all that power back into the cup, starting the next cycle of amplification. 

Time became hazy.  I endured until the influx relented.  The air was clear of souls.  The red blaze snapped out.  Dormant, the demon sword might as well have been ordinary steel, its hunger an evaporated memory. 
First time I’ve ever seen the sword blissed out of its ever-feeding gourd
.

The earlier demon-god-slush that had spewed out of the hell-gate had failed to adapt to the laws of this reality.  That part of the Corruptor was now lifeless and rotted, growing quite rank.  Entropy had bitch-slapped extra-dimensional evolution.  The eye stalks, tentacles, and the burrowing trunk that had rooted deep in the island: all these were breaking down, filling the air with reeking gasses that had an acrid bite in the throat.  The exception being the armored growth that still coiled around the dark queen.

The version of demon-god now assaulting the too-small gate had taken humanoid form, scaling itself down in size from whatever immensity it had attained eating its own reality.  Or maybe, this form was a miniature clone of itself being born in our space.  That very adaption was a weakness, and I knew how to exploit it; in other words, I had a crazy idea that was just too fucked-up not to try. 

I rose on golden wings, their leathery
whu-whump
loud in my ears as I pushed for speed.  I breathed shallowly, grateful for the storm winds that swept most of the sulfur-tasting fumes away from the temple area.  And there I was, hovering close to the horned head of the demon-god, dumping all the power I’d drank back into the Cup I held.  Baleful, yellow-green eyes focused on me.  The god-thing roared—a sound like a breaking world. 

Yeah, fuck you, too. 

This thing had responded to attacks.  That meant neural sensitivity, pain receptors.  That meant it could be manipulated by one of the oldest tricks in the book: throwing a drink in someone’s eyes, a blinding distraction.  I held onto the Cup and made a tossing motion.  All the power that had been cycling in the cup streamed out, splashing its eyes.   Such an affront had to seem impossible to it, adding to the shock.

The head ducked back into its hole, horns and all, including the tentacle still grasping the queen.  She and the soul tether popped out of our universe.  Whatever reality she found over there, caused a burst of panic that exploded the link of the gem to the hell-gate.  It imploded shut.

Hah, made you flinch!

The sad thing was, it wasn’t in time for Atlantis to live.  I saw the certainty of annihilation in Lauphram’s eyes.  That and a flash of relief that his wife was gone, and not by his hand.  The loss of his child would be a deep ache he’d never tell to me about.  I’d had to do this.  The integrity of time required that the queen and her son somehow survive the sinking of Atlantis, a time-out letting them leap centuries before returning to our world. 

Lauphram’s son—and bitch of a wife—would one day be back with a vengeance.

Lauphram held up his hand as I descend toward the powdered-rock floor of the temple ruin.  All the pillars were fallen and broken like the roof and altar.  Strangely, the most together remnant was the head of Triton, falling but whole, laying on one ear.  The hammered off features were back.  A god’s face, serene, blind eyes staring at nothing.

I tossed Lauphram the empty Cup.  Somehow, it was unharmed by having channeled more energy than I’d ever seen unleashed.  That had been enough energy to throw me back to the future.  Now, how was I going to get home?

The demon sword began to glow again, a harsh radiance that blurred its lines.  I held the blade, afraid to sheath it, knowing the sheath would probably spontaneously
combust. 
What happened
? the sword asked. 
What did I miss?

Everything,
I said.

Selene rushed into my arms, hugging my neck, crushing the breath from my lungs.   

My one-day-in-the-future father stared at me.  “Just who in Tartarus are you?”

“A traveler in time from the far future.  And your son.”

“My son.”  He looked up in the air, as if the hell-gate were still open.  The clouds still churned, lightning leaped across their bellies, and a cold rain fell like the tears of the damned. “My son?”

“Not that one.  Centuries from now, you will take in an infant and raise him to be your heir.  And you will stand by me in combat against your other son and his mother.  It will take them a while, but they’ll be back, and you’d better be ready.”

“That shadow magic of your?”

I nodded in the cold rain, all of us acting like it was nothing as the next tremor made us stagger and fight for balance.  It seemed to me that the hill under us dropped a couple feet.  Lauphram stood as if nothing could ever move him again.  He reached out to keep Selene and me from falling.   His hand stayed on my arm, as if testing my reality. 

“It’s too incredible a story not to believe,” he said.  “How will you get back?”

Stricken, Selene stared into my face.  “You’re leaving me?”

“I have to.  I’m not of this time.  But you will find me again.  I need you to do something for me.”

She tightened her grip.  I felt my spine about to break.  “You’re hurting me,” I said. 

Startled, she let me go, but her face hardened with determination.  “Take me with you.”

I shook my head no.  “In time you will save me.  You must get ready for the Night of the Red Moon.  Build your strength, grow your power, and become a frickin’ cosmic power.  Only then will I will return to you.”

She lunged to wrap arms around me again, but Lauphram caught her from behind, and held her back as she struggled.

The island shook worse than before.  I fell to my knees, looking out to sea.  A wall of water rose high against the sky, coming to pound the island of out of existence. 

Out of time.

“Caine Deathwalker,” a new voice called my name.

I looked at the statue of Triton.  It was talking to me.  “You have done a favor for the gods, and to me in particular.  They who desecrated my holy place have been driven into the arms of Chaos.”  A hole in space opened, a disk edged in gold fire.  Inside was crystal blue water, none of it spilling out.  “Here is the gate that brought you. Return to your place.”

I scrambled up and went to the gate.

The wave hit land and grew even bigger.

One step from home, I turned to face Lauphram
.  “Take care of Selene for me, Father.  Get her to safety.”

Lauphram nodded like it was no big thing.  “How the hell do I wind up with a dragon son?”

“Half dragon, half human.”  I glared for dramatic impact.  “Don’t fail me,” Old Man.

The term etched surprise across his face.  “I promise.”

I turned into the gate and gave myself over to its currents.  The history I knew couldn’t be wrong.  I had to have faith that the people I cared about were waiting for me back in my own time. 

The only doubt I felt came from the fact that this was me in the middle of this mess, and I fuck so many things up.

It’s a gift, really
, my sword said.

Shut up.

I held my breath.  My lung burned.  Eventually, I exploded out of a pool, golden wings fanning as I landed in the courtyard I’d started from.  Drake and Kinsey stood there as if only a moment had passed, which might well be true.  They looked very surprised to see me.  Of course, my tattoos were still glowing slightly, and I did have golden dragon wings growing out of my back, as well as a heavy stubble on my face.  Water dripped down my body, forming a puddle.