Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2) (55 page)

Its steps paused.  I didn’t need to turn to see her, to know she watched me with green-fire eyes, her fur igniting, dancing with green flame.

I stood and turned.  The mud sloughed off, leaving an under layer that took on the qualities of cloth.  The fallen mud crept up my toes, my foot, and formed boots to protect me.  No sword hung at my side, but the land was my weapon, my partner, my lover, and would wither after a time without me.  I was now a lord in two worlds.  And very pissed.

“All right, bitch, you want a piece of me?” I yelled.  “Come get some.”

A fey warrior stepped out from behind the bear. 
Her brother-in-law, the Autumn Court fey.  His deadening magic kept me from sensing him.

“That’s what we’re here for.” He stepped out past the bear, and made a throw.  Silver glittered between us.

I moved the staff I held.  The knife
thunked
into it.  I pulled the knife out of my staff, and dropped the stick.  Knife in hand, I examined the blade. 
Good workmanship.  Expensive
.  Also expensive was the Zombie Apocalypse suit the bastard was wearing, the one he’d stolen from my basement workroom in Malibu.  The suit was covered with guns, knives, grenades, and a small, round mirror over the chest protector.  I hoped he didn’t know its purpose.

A sleepy, surfacing part of my soul cried,
Mine! 
It was like ice had melted over hidden depths.  I could feel a second nature deep within.  An entity that both was and wasn’t me.  Awakening, it wanted out to stretch, to live, to grow, to fight, and kill!

What the hell!

The fey marched to meet me.

The bear tried to stop him, but her paw was intercepted by tree limbs coming to life, coiling around her with rubbery resilience, crushing, choking, as green flames ate into them.  The bear thrashed, her scream of fury a blow to the ears, but she’d have to wait.  I had a fey warrior to kill.

My left hand brushed debris away and I found what I wanted, what I needed: a foot-long mirror, a silver glass showing my smiling face.  The frame was rope-patterned, gold, with antiquing in the cracks.  “Thanks,” I whispered, grateful for the land’s gift. 

I plunged my knife into the mirror.  I wanted this mirror to act like the charmed ones I had at home, and so it did.  My hand and the knife sank into the glass as if it were water, but without a ripple or splash.  I looked up at the fey.  He was five steps from me, and I saw from the bunching of his muscles that he was about to spring across that distance in hope of crushing me with surprise.

He skidded to a stop as his knife and my hand poked out of the mirror on his chest. 

Steal my Zombie Apocalypse suit will ya?

I bent my spatially displaced elbow and rammed the knife through his eye, into his brain.  He died on his feet, and slumped forward to lie at my feet, face down, as I reeled back, my hand and the knife coming back out the mirror on the ground.  The fey warrior rotted to bones, flesh blackening to a kind of ash that fed the fury of the wind.  Lords of corruption, they were its final victim.  Soon, even the bones would be gone.

The earth sank under the mirror, pulling its flatness into a bowl shape.  The reflective glass turned liquid, expanding to fill the depression to its rope-patterned brim.  The odd little pool would make an interesting curiosity for anyone who finds it after this.

I stood in the howling winds that echoed the bear’s grief.

The trees shed gold-brown leaves that fluttered against me, plastering to my body.  The leaves fused, layer upon layer, hardening until a rough kind of armor encased me, flexible at the joints, hard as iron elsewhere.  The land—
my land
—was reacting to the lingering threat of the bear.

She’d stilled in shock, then all her fire burst out, blasting her free of the tree branches that caged her.  Bigger than sin, she ambled straight for me, unbelievably fast.  I’d just raised an earthen wall against her—when she burst through, her jaws snapping shut on my shoulder, her massive arms hugging my armor, clawing at its protective shell.

Why the hell isn’t my protective shield working?

I heard the material creak from strain.  Then there were a few small pops like firecrackers, as cracks began to spread.  Her fangs went through the shoulder’s armor, piercing flesh, and we were falling.  She slammed me to the ground.  The knife bounced away from my hand.  My armor caved in a little, making it hard to breathe.

It might have been just in my poor, abused head, but I could swear I heard the woman inside the bear laughing manically at me.

I felt like an M&M being crunched in teeth.  Bear teeth.  Not a good thing.  In a moment, my armor shell would burst around me and my tender flesh would be thoroughly mauled.  The bear was done with slow lingering death.  She now wanted my death anyway she could inflict it.  The land—think of a name for her—tried to save me, becoming a bog.  Muck engulfed my legs.  The bear’s too, I think for she grunted in surprise, easing off on her bite.  That was good.  My shoulder felt like it was close to tearing off.

The bear ignited green flames all around me, searing the earth, baking it hard.

I stopped sinking.

My armor fractured and flew off in pieces.

The bear pulled back, cranked her jaws wide, about to bite my head off.

Time to die.

That buried deep part of me, that was anything but human, disagreed. 
No
.  It rose from my inner depths, a crushing wave, an exploding darkness that wrapped up my senses, sending me off to dream as it took over.

FORTY

“Some things even I never see coming.”

                       
                   
—
Caine Deathwalker

Born naked into fury as the sky raged, as a beast sought my life, my blood burned.  My heart pounded.  All that was human drained from my thoughts.  I screamed, a shrill savage spike that pierced the bear’s own scream, silencing her.

She blinked, mouth gaping. 

I shoved her back.  Her paws left the ground.  She flew across the small clearing, landing spine-first against one of the massive trees.  I took a step after her, and staggered, stumbling.  Walking on four feet was a new experience, strangely difficult, until I stopped trying to control the process and let my body work it out.

The bear had hit and slid to the ground.  She took her time getting up, shaking off the toss.  It seemed she was also dwindling in size.  I looked down at myself.  My skin was now a gold-scaled mesh.  My hands looked mostly human, but were scaled as well, with black nails.  Further down, my torso and stomach had lengthened.  My feet were much larger than the human prints I’d left behind.  Actually, my feet were now bigger than the prints I’d made struggling with the bear, and I’d acquired a bone spur coming out of my heels which gave my feet better grasping.

I looked back at the bear.  She was smaller yet.

No, I’m getting bigger, stronger
. 
So hungry.

Pain doubled me over.  My back muscles writhed, shifting, as bone spurs pierced my skin, branching off of shoulder blades.  The new bones dripped blood, waving tatters of skin and muscle.  Studying my backside so easily drew my attention to a neck that had grown quite a few more vertebras. 

The bear charged, smelling my blood.  Assuming distraction, if not outright debilitation on my part, she flung herself at me, but I’d grown at least twice her size.  And my speed was still climbing.  I rolled the fingers of my right paw into a fist, swinging it across her face like a club.  She shook her head, by which time my hand returned, palm open, claws raking her face.

I kicked out, catching her in the midsection. 

She tumbled away.

New pain tore a scream from me.  My ass was on fire, my tailbone throbbed, growing heavier, and heavier.  My long neck shot back over my shoulder, taking my head along.  I saw a tail, long, gold-scaled, stretching well away from me, and ending in a scimitar made of bone.  I also noticed that I was seeing my lower face which had lengthened into a snout.  I swung my head around and found a bowl in the forest floor that was filled with water.  I studied my reflection, opening and closing my mouth.  I had a pointy snout, a mouth with a lot of sharp teeth, and eyes that showed no whites because the black-rimmed, gold-flake irises were very large.  I knew in that moment what I was.

Dragon
.

Protruding from my back, the ribs of bone grew muscles to work them.  Wrapped in new, gold-scaled skin, the wings were fed blood through new-grown arteries.  Scaled membranes filled in between the ribbing, anchoring in strips down my back.  Somehow, I knew I was not as other dragons that lacked the flaps attached to the back.  They would have less than five fingers, and my color—gold—that was special too, though I didn’t know why.