devil 03 - tween hearts fire and devils delight (3 page)

I fired another jolt at the thing and it shifted away in the blink of an eye. This time I anticipated the evasive maneuver and shot another jolt immediately, about a foot to the left of my first one.

I was gratified to hear the demon scream in pain as my beam of power sliced about two feet off the end of its body.

Rearing up, it struck back before I could move away, sinking its fangs into me and leaving two large holes in my thigh. I bit back a scream and pulled my power forward, shifting to the left of it and then shooting a jolt of power into its slit of an eye before it could react.

The head whipped around and it struck toward me again but this time I was ready for it. I leaped over the whipping oblong head and landed on the other side, shooting another jolt into the frantically thrashing body. I managed to tear a fist-sized hole in its thick body just behind the head. Black blood ran from the hole and sizzled upward in a wide arc from the whipping body.

I jumped away from the acid-like substance and it landed just in front of my boots.

The demon struck again, this time catching a five inch long tooth in the top of my boot and ripping the soft leather all the way to my ankle, digging a deep gouge out of my shin on the way down.
Shit! Why do they always go for the boots?

I raised my hand to blast a hole in its head just as it grabbed what remained of my boot and threw its head upward with a violent jerk, pulling me off my feet and causing me to miss its head with my power arrow. I heard wood splinter behind the demon and smelled smoke.

I sailed over the snake demon’s head, hanging in the air long enough to twist my body before I hit the wall so that I slammed into it with my back instead of my head. The impact knocked the wind out of me but I stayed conscious, which was what I’d been hoping for.

I slid down the wall and landed on something soft that smelled like raw meat. My horrified gaze slid to the man at the top of the pile. The demon had apparently been hungry because a large portion of the man’s chest was missing.

I gagged and leaped back to my feet. I looked at the demon and met its cold, red gaze for just a beat before it occurred to me that there was nothing between the door, which I suddenly noticed had a huge hole in the middle of it, and the demon.

The demon’s wide snout opened in what looked suspiciously like a grin and it surged toward the door, aiming for the hole in the center.

I panicked, pulled as much power as I could gather, including engaging the daemon hickey on my neck that tapped into Dialle’s power, and shot it all at the demon.

He exploded into several pieces just as he reached the door, the pieces slamming against the splintered wood.

The walls of the room shook from the force of impact.

“To Hell with thee fool, for God hath tired of you,” I gasped.

I leapt to my feet and ran toward the door, yanking it open I looked for the small priest. He was lying on his back several feet from the door. I prayed fervently as I ran to him. If I’d inadvertently killed him with an errant power arrow I’d never forgive myself.

I knelt beside him and felt for a heartbeat. It was beating strong, really strong, as if he was running on an adrenaline cocktail. His eyes shot open as I checked his body for holes or gouges. Finding none, I reached under his scrawny shoulders to help him stand.

He groaned a bit as I helped him to his feet but he seemed unharmed. I turned him away from the door. “Don’t look at any of the debris until I’ve had a chance to examine it. I need to find and extinguish the eyes.”

He nodded, not asking the obvious question, which told me he had known all along what was behind that door.

The air shifted behind me and I turned to find Flick in his robes. “I got them all out.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “Least I could do.”

The little priest was staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Flick. Finally he reached out a small, gnarled hand and Flick took it. “I am truly blessed in your presence,” said the little man.

Flick blushed. He wasn’t used to being worshipped. He really wasn’t all that powerful.

I grinned and jerked my head toward the mess in the hallway. “I’m just gonna pick through this gore and find the demon’s eyes. Why don’t you two go have a cup of tea or something.”

Flick’s eyes widened in horror and I couldn’t help laughing.

He tried to pull his hand away but the little priest held on tightly.

“I’ve always known you existed but I never dreamed I’d get to see you. Thank you for protecting me all these years.”

Flick blanched and his brown eyes flew to me. I shrugged. It was against the Big House rules to reveal another guardian to a human, so Flick could hardly explain that he wasn’t the one the little priest should be thanking. But his innate goodness made him feel guilty for taking credit for someone else’s hard work. Finally he just smiled and laid his other hand over the priest’s. “You’re welcome. Go in His name.”

The little man, thinking himself both blessed and dismissed, let go of Flick and shuffled down the hall, looking a bit shell-shocked but happy.

“Good thinking,” I told Flick with a grin.

He shrugged. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up before anybody sees it.”

Chapter Two

You Can Never Go Home Again

The monster grabbed her from the sky and flung her toward the ground,

But our young miss spat in his eye and turned the tables round.

I dropped the Viper into hover on the pad next to the Phelps fortress, still perplexed as to why my sister had moved back home to live with our father. She’d always had a fiercely independent streak, which had pushed her out of the nest as soon as she was old enough to support herself and had kept her away over the years since.

Since she’d left, she’d seemed almost reluctant to return to the huge, castle-like home on the cliffs overlooking the Angel City River, as if the act of visiting would somehow take something away from her independence.

Then, a few weeks earlier, out of nowhere, she’d announced that she was moving back. It was something I’d been dying to ask her about but my life being what it was, I hadn’t had much time for chatting lately.

I added that subject to my mental list of discussion topics for the afternoon and climbed out of the Viper. I strode toward the door to the house. The raging river below brought back childhood memories that made me smile. While many things in my life seemed determined to keep changing in a breathtakingly kaleidoscopic fashion, a few things would forever stay the same.

I remembered Darma and me playing on the rocks along that river when we were growing up. It had been a simpler life then, for us anyway and I cherished those memories. Now here I was ready to confront her for having some kind of relationship with a Royal Devil Prince, when all she’d done up to that point was chide, nag and generally make my life miserable over my similar relationship with his brother.

I sighed. I was so
not
looking forward to talking to my older sister about her love life. I rubbed at a spot on my inner left wrist that had been aching for the last couple of days. The air around the house was heavy with moisture and almost sparked in the light of the day. It smelled like magic but not quite. I frowned at that thought and opened the door, entering my father’s cool, dimly lit castle.

Darma was in the kitchen. She was sitting at the long, heavy wooden table in the center of the room, in front of one of the castle’s twelve fireplaces. She had a cup of tea between her hands, resting before her on the table and a contemplative look in her eye. She barely looked up when I walked into the room.

“Where’s Father?”

She shrugged and sipped from the cup. I recognized it as one of our mother’s favorites, delicate elf-made porcelain, with gold rimming the edges. “He’s at work.”

“Work” was Darma’s euphemism for divine business. To my sister magic and magical creatures did not exist. This might seem like a strange mindset for someone who was born of the union between a Seraphim from God’s right hand and a Princess from the Royal Devil Court, but hey, nobody ever said my sister was logical.

I nodded and grabbed one of the sturdier mugs from a cabinet. I programmed a cup of coffee into the drink valet, strong and black and then carried it to the table. Sitting down across from my sister, I stared at her until she slid her blue gaze reluctantly to mine. “Talk to me, Darma. Why are you with Torre and why didn’t you tell me?” Unspoken in that question was the one about why she’d been sitting in supreme judgment for months over my relationship with Dialle while cavorting with his little bro.

She shrugged and hid behind her cup. “It was none of your business.”

I arched a dark red eyebrow at her. “Oh really?”

Her response was a glare. “I found someone who treasures me for what I am. I don’t need your permission to date…anyone.”

“And what exactly are you, Darma?”

Her head shot up in surprise. “What an odd thing to ask me, Astra.”

I shook my head. “Not really. You’ve been denying your heritage since you were old enough to recognize it, so it seems very logical to ask which
you
he treasures, the real you or the made-up you in your head.”

She scowled at me for a long moment and then, amazingly, she shrugged. “I’m not sure actually. I’m still figuring it out.”

I opened my mouth to give her a smart ass retort but then saw something in her eyes that I couldn’t remember ever having seen before and I just couldn’t do it. My bossy, bitchy older sister was vulnerable. Amazing.

Finally I sighed. “Do you love him?”

She shrugged again, concentrating hard on her tea. “I’m not sure about that either, Astra.” She looked up at me, her blue eyes suddenly swimming in tears.

I reached across the table and grabbed one of her hands. When I squeezed it gently she squeezed back and gave me a slight smile. “I’m kind of a mess right now.”

I laughed, finding myself unsure how to treat her for the first time in our adult lives. “Finally!”

She stared hard at me for a beat and then, incredibly, she smiled and even chuckled. “I know I’ve been hard on you…”

“Mmm hmm.”

“A little stern at times…”

“A little, yes.”

“But I thought I was doing what was best for you.”

This brought my eyes open wide. “But you don’t think that anymore?”

She shrugged, taking a long sip of her tea. “I…I’m just not sure anymore.”

I stared at her, not believing what I was hearing.

She raised a shaking hand to her head and rubbed at her eyes before meeting my eyes again. “I know now that your…magic…is something you can’t live without. It defines you in some strange way.” Her gaze slid downward and her hands met in front of the cooling tea and starting worrying each other. I almost smiled at the mannerism, which was one I’d seen our father make whenever he was distressed about something. “I might have been wr-wr-wr…” Her lips wrapped around the unaccustomed admission but her throat just wouldn’t let go of the word.

“Wrong?” I smiled.

Her gaze jerked toward me and instead of answering she pinched her shoulders upward again.

I sat staring at the unrecognizable creature across the table from me for a few minutes and then sighed. I didn’t know what was going on with her but Darma appeared to be undergoing some kind of life-altering change that had the potential to make my life easier in the long run. I had the happy thought that, whatever it was, I should be celebrating it. But somehow, looking at her miserable face, I couldn’t quite get to the celebrating part.

I gave her hand a final squeeze and stood up. “Whatever I can do to help.” I hesitated. I was on totally new ground. Darma had always been so self-sufficient and strong. She’d never needed my help before. For anything. I wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed. Finally I just went with my instincts. “You’ll let me know?”

She didn’t look up but nodded. “Thanks.” The word was spoken so quietly it was nearly a whisper. I stood there a moment longer, reluctant to leave her alone. But when she didn’t appear to notice me I decided I might as well leave.

I headed for the office, feeling unsettled. My life had always been so filled with turmoil, so complex and, at times, difficult but I’d always had one thing I could count on never changing. One thing. And now that was changing too. I sighed. I decided I’d adjust to knowing my sister was cavorting with a Royal Prince. I always adjusted. It was one of the facets of my nature that I was particularly proud of. I just wasn’t happy at the moment about having to make that adjustment. Something about the situation just felt…wr-wr…

Suddenly the sky in front of the Viper blackened and we surged sideways on a sweep of violent air. All thoughts of my sister and her state of mind fled as I realized the unnatural blackness of the sky had glistening scales and, when it shifted to stay in front of the Viper, large white teeth.

A black dragon.

“Shit!”

The thing smiled at me through the Viper’s front viewport and swung backward in the air with a powerful sweep of its massive, black wings. I saw the shocking white of its long, scale free underbelly and thick, treelike back legs as the dragon spread its enormous wings, creating a solid backwash of wind. The backdraft nearly stopped the Viper’s forward motion, causing us to hang in the air as we fought to regain our equilibrium.

Cursing colorfully I forced my horrified gaze away from the attacking dragon and started punching buttons on the Viper’s directional panel. Pushing us into hyperdrive allowed the Viper to break free of the wall of wind the dragon’s powerfully sweeping wings were creating and we finally surged upward, passing just over the thing’s, long, elegant snout.

The dragon emitted a scream of rage behind us as we sailed free and I prayed we were going fast enough to outrun it. A sudden horrendous thud on the Viper’s tail end told me that answer was a resounding…um, no. We weren’t going to outrun the dragon. The Viper slowed and began to struggle, whining deep inside its guts at the effort to do what I’d instructed it to do. Finally we stopped completely and the Viper shuddered as something huge and heavy seemed to shimmy up its back.