bedeviled & beyond 03 - bedeviled & beleaguered (3 page)

A snake demon
, I told Flick.

He didn’t respond but I could smell his fear from where I stood.
Don’t tell me, you hate snakes.

I do, yes. They terrify me.

Awesome.

Writing him off completely as being any help at all, I figured I could always call Emo if I needed help with the thing and settled into a battle stance.

The snake demon, known as the legendary Basilisk in human legend, was actually not the hundred foot long creature that had been portrayed. It was a relatively small demon of only about thirty feet or so. It couldn’t kill me or any magical creature with a glance but it was true that it could kill humans just by catching their eye.

I shuddered as I thought of the humans outside the door.
Flick, go tell them to evacuate the school. Now!

He hesitated. I knew he was reluctant to leave me with the demon, despite his fear of it.
It’s okay. I can vanquish this thing. But it might take me a while and I don’t want to risk it getting through those doors. Go tell them, okay?

A silence of a few beats throbbed between us and then he said simply, “Okay.”

I waited until I heard the door open and close and then gathered my power. The jolt I fired at the demon pinged harmlessly off the tile floor. I’d forgotten how fast the damn things were.

It was almost on top of me before I realized and I threw myself backward, landing on my hands and springing back to my feet to stay between the demon and the door. It stopped a few feet away from me, raising its huge head and testing the air with a long, forked tongue. I knew it was trying to sense my fear but I was ready for it. I had a deep respect for Basilisks but I’d bested worse and I had no intention of letting it slither out that door.

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

I was gratified to hear the demon scream in pain as my beam of energy 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 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, catching a five inch long tooth in the top of my boot and ripping the soft leather all the way to my ankle. It dug 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 flung its head upward with a violent jerk, pulling me off my feet and sending my power arrow harmlessly into the wall behind it. Wood splintered behind the demon, followed by the acrid scent of 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. The monster fixed me with a cold, red gaze. I held that gaze for a moment, trying to figure out what it was thinking. That was when I realized there was nothing between the door and the demon.

And the door had a huge hole in the middle of it.

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

I panicked, pulling as much power as I could gather into my fingertips. The energy cocktail sizzling in my palms included power I’d grabbed from engaging the daemon hickey on my neck, tapping into Dialle’s power. I flung out my hands, flinging every bit of my accumulated energy 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.

Dropping to my knees from exhaustion, I gasped, “To Hades with thee fool, for God hath tired of you.”

I leapt to my feet and ran toward the door. Yanking it open, I peered through a fog of smoke, looking 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.

Kneeling beside him, I felt for a heartbeat. Fortunately, 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’d 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.

Once 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 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.

I added that subject to my mental list of discussion topics for the afternoon and climbed out of the Viper, striding 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. Particularly in juxtaposition to my current task. I was about to confront her for having some kind of relationship with a Royal Devil Prince, when all she’d done was chide, nag and generally make my life miserable over my similar relationship with his brother.

The idea of talking to my older sister about her love life wasn’t very appetizing. Fighting nausea at the thought, 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 and a contemplative look in her eye. Darma 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 real 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.

Nodding, I grabbed a larger and sturdier mug from the cabinet. I programmed a strong, black cup of coffee into the drink valet, 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, hiding behind her cup. “It was none of your business.”

I arched a dark red eyebrow at her. “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 logical to ask which
you
he treasures, the real you or the you that’s been made up in your head.”

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

I barely resisted the urge to offer her a smart retort. There was 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 feeling vulnerable.

The world must be ending.

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.”

My gaze shot 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 fae and rubbed at her eyes before meeting my gaze 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, the long fingers tapping together. 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.

Darma’s gaze jerked in my direction. Instead of answering she pinched her shoulders upward again.

Darma appeared to be undergoing some kind of life altering change that had the potential to make my life easier in the long run. But somehow, looking at her miserable face, I couldn’t quite celebrate the change.

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. But that was changing too. Sighing, 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...