devil 03 - tween hearts fire and devils delight (32 page)

I’ll try to avoid killing any of the good little folk but it would be best if they would vacate.

I’ll try to get word to the king.

Allow me, I have a way.

I shrugged and returned my attention to the fighting fairies in front of me. They seemed oblivious to my plight. I tried to get the attention of the nearest light fairy. “Hey, pssst.” He ignored me as he battled a dark fairy who was considerably larger than he was. “Pssst. Hey you. Can you get rid of this string for me?”

He threw a glance at me and suffered a cut on his chest for the effort. “Be still, Tweener. I’m busy.” He returned his attention to his foe and swiftly delivered the killing blow. Then he buzzed over to me and cut the string around my throat.

“Look out!”

Without hesitation he completed the arc of his sword and swung round, using the momentum to plunge his sword into the throat of the attacking fairy. He turned back and cut one of my wrists loose.

“Duck!”

He dropped to one knee in the air and tucked his sword backward under one arm as I screamed. His sword found his opponent’s chest with unerring accuracy. Before the dead fairy’s dust cleared my tiny rescuer was slicing through the string binding my other wrist.

Then he stopped and looked at me. “Aren’t you going to scream at me to watch out or something?”

I shrugged and grinned. “There seems to be a lull in the action.”

He nodded and turned to the string on my ankles.

“Watch out!”

His wings became a blur as he suddenly rose straight up, past my face, a wide grin on his handsome face. He flipped in the air and spun like a top, his small, compact body tucked into a fairy ball with only one protuberance.

That protuberance pierced the cheek of an attacking dark fairy as he connected and I thoroughly enjoyed the confused look on the small bug’s face just before he exploded into fairy dust.

My rescuer blew on his sword and smiled at me.

“That was frunkin’ cool. What’s your name?”

He gave me an elegant bow. “Kheelan Aelfdene at your service, ma’am.”

I nodded my head at him, honored that he had offered me his name. “Kheelan. Aptly named, that means warrior doesn’t it?”

He lowered his head in a nod, silky golden hair falling over buff and sweat glistened shoulders. “You are indeed wise, Tweener. It was my pleasure to serve you.”

“Right back atcha Kheelan. You might want to get the Hades out of here now. I have a black dragon coming to help.”

His sparkling blue eyes widened in pleasure. “Sweet!” Then he bowed and flew away, tapping his fellow warriors on the shoulder as he passed. They fell into his wake without discussion and soon I stood alone in a sea of dark fairies.

They realized that just about the same time I did.

I looked at them.

They looked at me.

I frowned.

They smiled.

The south wall exploded inward.

“Fairy weenie roast!” I screamed, then I plowed into the crowd of evil fairies nearest me as Zerphor melted a few thousand of them with a single breath.

Sometime later Zerphor and my merry band had worked our way through the rest of the dark fairies. We stood panting in the center of the room, our clothes and feet coated in sparkling fairy dust. King Aelfric’s troops hovered above us on whirring wings, looking both weary and exhilarated.

I was searching through the bodies, looking for several faces that I prayed I wouldn’t find, when a loud whirring sound approached from behind. I looked up. Kheelan Aelfdene stopped in midair in front of me, bowing elegantly from the waist, his sword tapping his tiny forehead. “My people have searched the dead as you requested and have found no children, nor women of the description you gave us.”

I closed my eyes briefly on a sigh of relief. The child we’d rescued from the streets and her mother, were apparently safe. “And the Venusians?”

He shrugged. “We saw no creatures with strange, yellow eyes among the dead.”

I nodded, reassured. Dr. Lee and her people must have gotten out. Knowing that man of hers they probably took a few Royals down before they left. “Thank you, Kheelan. That is very good news.”

Flick soon joined me, shaking his head. My father and Myra joined us a few moments later, their faces grim. We’d found no sign of Emo, Dialle, or Torre.

My mother and Prince Nille were gone too.

I looked at my father. He didn’t look happy.

“As we suspected, this was apparently a trap, meant to distract us.”

I remembered the last words I’d exchanged with Emo, his final No! just before the Agar attacked me and realized now that his scream might not have been directed at me. I suddenly felt weary. So weary of the whole thing. “She’s won another round.”

“Worse than that,” said my guardian as he met my gaze with his nondescript brown eyes. “Now she has Darma.”

I looked around my little group and, sure enough, my sister was missing. “Shit!”

* * * * *

She floated, cross-legged in a circle of candles at the center of the room, the candles’ flames dancing softly in a prophet-imposed wind. Her blonde, wispy hair flew away from her face and shifted around her emaciated shoulders. This time her swirling silver eyes were open…and trained on me.

“And so the dragon fighter claims the vital offspring of the black, to save a quickly dying race and bring the magic balance back.”

The fat, baby dragon in my arms looked up at me with bright, curious eyes and said, “Bleurp?”

I just shrugged. “How the hell do I know? Prophets talk funny.”

Glynus giggled and her little wings flapped softly, tickling my arm in a not unpleasant way.

“You shouldn’t swear in front of the child.”

I frowned. “Really? Why not?”

The prophet shrugged. “I’m not sure but I think they repeat everything they hear.”

I looked at Glynus. She looked at me. I frowned again. “She doesn’t say anything except, ‘bleurp’.”

The prophet shook her head, sending her dandelion seed hair into rhythmic spasms on the air. “I’m just sayin’.”

I shrugged. “Whatever. You called?”

“I did.”

“Does that mean this one’s on you?”

She cocked her wispy, blonde head. “Not at all. You have one visit left.”

“But that’s not fair. You summoned me.”

“It’s a follow-up visit from the one you initiated. Those count as an initiated visit.”

“But I wouldn’t have asked for this visit if you hadn’t summoned me, so it shouldn’t count against my lifetime limit.”

“But I wouldn’t have summoned you if you hadn’t visited me before.”

I scowled at her, she stared at me with swirling silver eyes, Glynus looked from one to the other of us and said, “Bleurp?”

Finally I shook my head in disgust. “This system needs some work. Anyway, I hope you’re gonna tell me how to fix this mess. The human race is seriously in trouble here and the Serpent now has all but three of the conduits he needs to lock the veil into place. Things are not going well down there.”

“Please, sit.”

I complied, lowering myself to a mound of cushions on the floor a few feet away from the prophet’s hovering knees. Glynus flapped her tiny wings once I settled into the cushions and toddled off.

“Don’t char anything,” I instructed her.

She gave me a baby dragon grin and vibrated her wings, dipping her head and tapping my knee with her short, stubby tail. I realized there was a whole body language thing I was gonna have to acclimate myself to if we survived the next few days. For the moment I was gonna assume that meant “yes ma’am” in baby dragon speak.

I watched her toddle unsteadily around the room, sniffing things and, occasionally, flicking her long, pink tongue out to taste. I was finding that I enjoyed watching the baby dragon and it disturbed me. I had certainly never considered myself maternal. But this particular baby tugged at my heartstrings. And she was very entertaining. I smiled at her.

The prophet’s next words ripped the smile right off my face.

“The Devil Prince dies.”

My head whipped around. “What!”

“He turns to his dark side and it is killing him.”

I sucked in air. “The veil pulls at him.”

“Yes.”

“What can I do? I don’t know how to stop the Serpent from locking the veil into place, other than keeping the conduits from him. And I haven’t been doing very well at that so far.”

The prophet gave me a small, knowing smile. “Things sometimes seem one way when they are another.”

I scowled at her crankily. “Do you ever just want to…I don’t know…shoot yourself? Can’t you speak clearly for once?”

The prophet cocked her head at me, a secret smile on her thin lips. “The words themselves are conduits to reality, they need only be interpreted.”

“Interpret this!” I murmured.

Suddenly the prophet’s head dropped back and the swirling silver gaze slid behind pale, pink-edged lids. She began to twitch.

“Shit. Here it comes,” I told Glynus, who had just toddled up and was carefully sniffing the air around the floating prophet.

“The choice must be made by he who unites. Death may seem the only end. The conduits cannot collaborate to stop the twisted magic but neither can they toil at odds. The magical plague festers and grows, calling to the special gift. All rests on those who wield it.”

The prophet jerked one last time and then her silver eyes slowly lifted open. I watched as she pulled herself back to reality and the present time. Finally, she turned to focus that disturbing gaze on my tiny dragon and her mouth opened, I waited for the finale, expecting her to say, “The dragon is the key”, or something equally frustrating and obtuse.

Instead she said, “You shouldn’t let her eat that.”

I looked at Glynus. She was happily munching one of the prophet’s candles, the flame still dancing softly on its top.

Well hell.

Glynus stuffed the whole candle in her mouth and then burped, a tiny cloud of smoke wafting from her tiny maw.

I sighed. Motherhood just sucked. And I was
so
not cut out for it.

“One more thing,” said the prophet, “you must ask yourself, why do the angels heal?”

“Huh?” I frowned at her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“That is all,” responded the prophet. “You may leave now.”

Chapter Eighteen

A Lift from a Dragon

Alas our maiden’s in distress, her booger is pure trash,

But never fear the dragon’s here, to set her on her ash.

I pounded on the instrument panel of the air booger and swore as the flaps dropped instead of voice command engaging as I’d requested. The booger slowed and wobbled, threatening to stall. The mist was thicker than it had been just hours earlier and it seemed to be weighing heavily on the piece-of-shit engine in the piece-of-crap air vehicle.

With current visibility there was no way I could fly the booger visually anymore. If the vehicle’s directional system failed I was dead. I sat there stewing for a minute, running through my options.

I glanced at Glynus, suddenly wishing she was big enough to carry me if I had to abandon the booger.

The little dragon was hanging upside down from the back of the passenger seat flapping her wings and crooning musically. Every once in a while she would burp and smoke would come out of her mouth.

Apparently the candle wasn’t agreeing with her.

I sighed and programmed my destination in manually, vowing to order that new Air Knight as soon as I finished saving the world.

Glynus suddenly flipped up into the air and was hanging there, flapping her little wings and smiling at me. I was pretty sure that was the first time she’d ever held herself up for any length of time. “Bleurp!”

I grinned at her. “Good job!” Then I squinted at her wings. Did they look a little bit larger? I shook my head. Impossible. She couldn’t be growing that quickly.

The booger jerked once in the air and then stopped as if it had hit an invisible wall. I reached out and caught Glynus before she slammed against the windscreen. I held her in front of me and started slamming buttons on the panel, cursing inventively.

Glynus flapped her tiny wings and said, “Haaaaa-d-eeees!”

I stopped pounding buttons. “Oh shit!”

Glynus burped, “Cheeeiiiitttt!”

“Sh…sugar! You’re talking!”

Glynus flapped her wings harder, rising a few inches into the air with the effort and started crooning again. I bit my lip and watched her, realizing for the first time just how much my life was going to change with a baby dragon in it.

Suddenly Glynus stopped flapping her wings and her bright little eyes narrowed slightly as she drifted to the floor between the seats. From deep in her tiny chest a rumbling sound emerged and her little body went rigid, her wings spread straight out from her sides.

The interior of the booger darkened suddenly as if a cloud had closed over the sun and I looked up. An enormous face, filled with large, sharp, white teeth, filled the entire width of the windscreen.

It was a black dragon.

I pulled my power forward and thought about how best to use it. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to blast the thing through the windscreen and leave a gaping hole in the booger. If I missed it would be fairly easy for the monster to reach into the disabled booger and grab us through the hole.

I glanced up. Maybe I could open the moon roof…

Greetings, dragon fighter.

It was the enormous black we’d encountered on the way back from Olympus.

Glynus’ father.

Not good. Zerphor wasn’t there to protect us. I frantically started pushing buttons again but the booger didn’t even quiver in response. Glynus’ rumbling had escalated and seemed slightly frantic now but she hadn’t moved a scale. She still stared stiffly at the big black in the windscreen.

You guard my child well?

I um…
Clearing my throat I tried a smile.
I’m doing my best, sire. She’s very busy.

The black’s rumbling laughter filled my mind,
She comes from active stock. I myself went through two hundred watchers as a child.