Demon Lord 3: Blue Star Priestess (17 page)

We waited for about a minute. Quig returned
, phasing through one of the door’s locking mechanism. Imari opened the now unlocked door. I followed her in, Kona moving close behind me. We were trampling pressure plates, but due to Quig’s work, no alarms sounded.

“Quig,” I said, “scout ahead for ambushes.
”

I touched my mic control to send word to Team One and Two: “Way is clear. Alarms are off. We’ll rendezvous in the Greek section as planned. Over and out.”

I stopped just inside the museum. “Listen,” I said, “I’m going to activate a magical kind of vision that will let me see traps, as well as any transition points installed by the enemy so they can’t pop in and surprise us. Along the way, if we find one of the museum’s own transition points, and it’s not booby-trapped, we’ll use it to cross over. I want to pop in over there and catch them with
their
pants down for a change.”

“Long as I get to kill something soon,” Kona said.

Imari growled low in her throat, seconding that emotion.

I braced myself for the pain of activating my
Dragon Sight
tattoo, not that it ever helped. I fed energy into the ink of the dragon blood tattoo. It warmed. And Piranha filled my stomach, trying to eat their way out. Sweat dampened my brow. I suppressed the urge to hurl, and masked the pain I felt with iron control. The pain subsided.

Imari
peered at me intensely. Her voice came out a near whisper. “What the hell?”

“What?” I said.

She said, “I’m good at reading micro-muscular tremors. You just absorbed a truckload of pain from nowhere.”

Explaining might win me some of her sympathy, an emotion I could use to manipulate her. I shrugged. “My brand of magic has every agony flesh can endure as its price. Don’t ask me why. Don’t know.”

“Are you alright now? Can you make it?” Imari asked.

I gave her the Japanese word for unendurable honor that is carried never-the-less: “
Giri.
I always do what I must.”

Her gaze brightened with interest. “I think being strong enough to handle that much pain is
kinda sexy.”

I grew aware of Kona’s craggy face peering at me as well. His eyes slitted. “You are not
the chicken-hearted fuck the First Sword paints you as.”

I
chose to ignore the statement, for now. “C’mon, we’ve got some ass to kick. This way.”

I led them toward the elevator. “We need to cover the central space from the second floor balcony.” I hit the call button and as we waited, my demon guards kept an eye out. I used the time to squat down and open my weapon bag. I took out my sniper’s rifle with the scope already attached. The empty bag was folded
over my belt so it hung at my side. I had extra rounds in a pouch on my opposite hip.

The door opened. I peered in to make sure there weren’t any nasty surprises. Kona went in first. I followed. Imari brought up the rear, backing in as I fantasized about
her
rear. It was the easiest side of her to drool over without getting caught, and having her fry my balls. The elevator moved upward. I noticed a transition point on the back wall of the car. It had none of the enemy’s dark magic around it.

“Perfect, here’s our way across to the pocket dimension. As soon as we reach the second floor, and the doors open, I’ll activate this. While I do, you guys should expect an attack.”

Imari smiled at me with more warmth than I’d ever seen from her. “On it.”

“Solid,” Kona grumbled.

The doors opened. I poured the golden haze of my raw magic over the vertical pattern on the elevator wall. The transition point swelled to fill its wall, its acid green gears and runes moving within the two outer rings. Because my
Dragon Sight
was active, I noticed that my golden light was tagged as Imperial magic, very high level, while the dragon tattoos on my body were tagged as a separate type of dragon magic, a lower level type.

A thought hovered in my head, a dazzling revelation
not quite in focus—then the transition pattern spewed a green slur of light over me, chasing the thought from my head. I cursed, sensing I’d just lost something very important. The green light dimmed, and we were in an altered space. And there were enemy ifrits there, creatures of wind and flame and doom. Their wings gusted us with flame. Additional fire blasted off their hands, a furnace heat that tried to overwhelm us.

A living shield,
Kona took the brunt of the attack. Fire curled back off his red Kevlar and legs. Some of that fire was his own. As a creature of fire, he laughed at the attack. “Is that all you got?”

Imari
climbed his back, went over his shoulder, and showed no discomfort leaping out into the midst of the ifrits. Her nails lengthened into six-inch, flame-wreathed claws. Having to look past Kona, through a wall of flame, details were sketchy, but I got the impression of a flurry of slashing motions and I heard loud, masculine screaming.

A moment later, Kona strode forward and stomped two ifrits that were writhing on the polished green floor.

Kona spoke over his shoulder at me. “You coming or what?” The door tried closing on him. He lashed out with a forearm, slamming the door back into its recess. By then, I had my weapons bag open, extracting the H&K PSG-1 sniper rifle. It had a sleek, sci-fi look like a weapon of the future. I’d customized it by shortening the barrel to a mere foot, adding a suppressor. The front handgrip had a release for tripod legs. The best feature was a green laser sight paired with an ultraviolet digital scope, and a side-mounted digital mini-screen with target-lock display—magically enhanced—to tell where the bullet would hit. The digital scope also had an X-ray feature allowing me to sight on digital images through walls. With so much fire, I kept the ultra-violet function off.

I had other weapons in the long bag, but what I held would be enough for now. The rifle felt perfect like a hot
, wet slut ready for action.
Ah, baby, it’s been too long…

The door tried closing again. Kona hit it again.

I tucked my rifle close to my body, ran out of the elevator, and stopped by the clear, polyurethane wall that kept people from falling off the balcony. I stared out across the open space, to the left of the hell-beast display. The Greek items were on both the first and second floor. It didn’t look like anyone was searching them yet—or the enemy had already taken the Poseidon’s Cup, and we were wasting our time. Either way, I had to act as though our mission were still achievable.

I pointed at a section of the balcony wall. “Kona, kick that out. It’s in my way.”

He lumbered over, squinted at the polyurethane panel, and gave it a stomp that webbed the surface with cracks. A small, follow-up punch sent the whole thing raining down to the first floor, creating the gap I needed so I could lie on the floor and use my weapon’s tripod.

Kona grinned at me like a puppy seeking praise.

“Good job.” I didn’t try to pet him; the demon might have bitten my hand. “Now make sure I’m not distracted by things trying to kill me.”

“Gottcha,” he rumbled.

Lying near the lip of the balcony, my bag against my side, I popped on a fifty-round drum full of spiral-etched, tungsten bullets. Drums of the experimental ammo were a thousand dollars each, but the rounds could bore clean through a tank and hit a guy on the other side.

I extended the tripod legs and peered through scope and digital screen. The display changed as I swiveled the muzzle between first and second floor and tracked toward the intersection of the halls. The exhibits on this side of the transition points was different from those the general public saw. The dinosaur skeleton on the first floor seemed to have put on living flesh, growing curling demon horns. The hell-beast’s spiked tail wagged in irritation or interest. The cobalt fire of its eyes glowed with—hunger? He was looking around sniffing the air.

I saw Zero-T slink past the chained beast, his team moving behind him in a close knot. They had to have found an inside transition point like I had, or I wouldn’t be seeing them. I scowled. Zero-T obviously wasn’t used to leading troops.

No, you idiot, spread them out. You make too big a target bunched up like that.

Someone must have agreed because a flight of harpies dropped from the third story skylight, dive-bombing them with cruel beaks open to rend, talons spread to grasp and tear.

So where are the snakes?
I wondered.

“Uh, oh,” Imari said.

I rolled on my side for a quick look down my balcony. And saw the pythons, coming straight on, slithering with blinding speed.

SEVEN
TEEN

“I am never defeated, just

temporarily pulverized.”

                                     —Caine Deathwalker

One disaster at a time...

I pressed my mic button.  “Zero-Brains, look up!”  That was all I could do for Zero-T.  I had problems of my own.  The rock pythons were close.  My fire demon bodyguards leaped to intercept them, throwing a curtain of fire at the incoming threat.  Natural snakes run from fire, but these were naga,
able to turn half human, possessing human intelligence.  They might know pure speed could carry them through the flames without serious damage.

I look up at the automatic sprinklers.  With all the fire, you’d expect them to be going off, but they were state-of-the-art, integrated with the alarm system we’d disabled.  Low-tech sprinklers would have worked better.

Complexity isn’t always the answer.

Appearing f
irst as shadows in the flame, the singed naga thumped to the tiles, two of them breached the fire wall.  Kona and Imari would have to deal with them.  Ignoring the threat, rolled back to position.  I saw nothing in the scope or digital display, but green targeting brackets appeared as if there was something I ought to see. 
Someone in magical stealth mode
.  Trusting my magically enhanced tech more than my eyes, I tracked a target moving toward the Greek exhibit, held my breath, and squeezed off a round. 

S
plashing blood materialized midair.  My round went on to shatter a floor tile. A man popped into view, crumpling to the floor, most of his head gone.

Searching,
I swiveled and released a rapid-fire cluster of shots.  Three harpies dropped like meteors, trailing blown-loose feathers.  I rolled on my side to check on Imari and Kona.  More of the snakes were turned into crispy critters that crumbled.  Big chunks hit the tiles and broke into small cinders.  The fire-wall died down due to my guard’s distraction with their kills.

Before more snakes
arrived, I warmed my
Demon Wings
tattoo.  The sensation felt like a flash-bang grenade exploding in my shorts—intense, agonizing, but mercifully short-lived.  I grimaced and bit my tongue mid-curse:
“
Goat-humping moon-babies!”  The demon magic not only ensured I’d be overlooked, but extended the benefit to my rifle and the long bag against my side. 

I returned attention to my
digital screen as a half dozen snakes slithered among us. 
Too many to ignore.
  One wrapped Kona’s torso.  Another bound his legs.  A second pair went for Imari.  She clawed one along its side as it hurled by, and shoved a fire bolt down the maw of the other, incinerating it from the inside.   The slashed snake exploded from spontaneous combustion before it could circle about. 

That left two
snakes unengaged. Their heads swiveled, searching for me. 

I swung my muzzle until the digital display had a snake’s head bracketed in green, a dot showing where my bullet would go. I held my breath and squeezed the trigger. An inexperienced shooter closes one eye
, losing depth perception.   I didn’t make that mistake.  My rifle sank into my shoulder, but the muzzle didn’t ride up.  This made it easy to swing into my next target and turn a snake’s head into bloody fragments. 

I swung toward Kona and his snakes, but h
eld fire as Imari moved in and blocked my shots.  She gripped the python trying to crush Kona’s ribs, and was in the middle of peeling it away.  She might have thought success came from her demon strength, but the snake looked happy to give her its full, lethal attention.  It came free in a rush, swirling its lower body to take possession of her legs.  With a muffled curse, she toppled.  The snake’s upper body went squishy as putty, widening, absorbing its own scales.  In a moment, the snake had a man’s body from the waist up, his skin brown, muscles heavy, and chiseled.  His bald head gleamed as he grimaced, showing white teeth with fangs.  One of his new hands had Imari by the throat.  He drew back a fist to batter her lovely face. 

I sent a round through
his eye.  Dark blood splattered her.  She cursed a great deal more. The naga slumped in death, becoming fully snake.

By then, Kona made a funeral pyre of himself, hanging onto the last snake
as it thrashed in flames.  The dying creature swung its fangs toward his face.  He caught the snout in one hand, squeezed, and crumpled its nostrils, shattering its face with a loud, brittle pop.

With t
hings stable around me, I rolled onto my stomach and scanned the first floor with my weapon.   Zero-T had a demon down, and most of the harpies wiped out.  But one broke off from the fight—flapping straight toward me.  I shifted the muzzle on the tripod, leading her, and let her fly into a bullet.  It entered her gaping mouth and burst out of her tail feathers.  Her shriek cut off mid-warble.  Her body flipped tail-under-head, crashing to the first floor.

Our two ground-floor teams met and merged, running flat-out now for the Greek exhibit.   I checked the broken skylight
for more harpies.  There weren’t any more of them, but something half crab, half spider—the size of a Humvee—ran upside-down on the ceiling, heading for my balcony.  I yelled over my shoulder.  “Imari, on the ceiling—incoming!”

She ran to a section of
transparent wall that was still intact and gripped the top, looking up.  “What is it?” 

Regretfully, I turned my eyes from her flouncing boobs,
over to the creature.  “Who cares?  Can you handle it or not?”

The thing leaped, flipped over,
and crashed through a polyurethane section a dozen feet away.  Kona tackled it, scooting off the balcony, falling out into space.  “I got it.”  He fell to the first floor, using the spider-crab to break his fall.  His voice floated up. “I’m all right.”

Through my scope, I saw Zero-T fumbling through display c
ases.  He paused, then snatched something up. 

That better be it.

I heard a massive blast that shook the whole building.  Down below, to my left, half-shifted nagas were flooding in, a good fifteen of them.  They were human female from the waist up, snake from the waist down, armed with flashing machetes.  A few naga seized gladiatorial tridents from the Roman exhibit. 

I shot the
clear wall-section to my left.  Imari jumped over my prone body, landed, and kicked out the punctured and cracked polyurethane so my future shots wouldn’t be impeded.  “Thanks,” I muttered.

She grinned.  “No need.  I like breaking things.”

I swiveled my muzzle down and began taking headshots.  Five naga went down before I had to break off fire to avoid killing my own guys.  They swirled in a lethal dance.  Jags of magic singed the air, spells flying back and forth.  I rolled on my side, sat up, and broke down my rifle for storage in the bag.  “We’re done,” I told Imari.  “We need to get the prize out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive.”

“You’d run from a fight?” she demanded.

“Hell, yes, if it means gaining a strategic advantage as well as treasure.”

Zero-T called, his voice in my ear bud.  “Caine, get down here.  We’re bugging out.”

I touched my mic button.  “On my way.  Over.”

I pulled out my custom MP7A1 sub machinegun, sealed the weapon bag, and scrambled to my feet, turning toward the elevator. 
Focused on the action, I hadn’t noticed the elevator going back to the first floor.  As it returned, I swung my weapon up to cover the double doors.  They opened.  Kona stood inside, his hands raised.  “Don’t shoot!  You’ll dirty up my Kevlar.”

I swung my muzzle down and ran
, joining him on the car.  Imari leaped in behind me.  Her body smelled of burnt snake blood.  That did nothing for me, but a dragon voice in the back of my soul rumbled hungry approval. 

She’s an ally, not a snack
, I reminded my other self.

The doors closed
.  Descending, we lost weight.  At the ground floor, full weight returned.  The doors opened, and I activated the transition point in the elevator wall.  The acid green light rolled out past us, engulfing my troops as they arrived in one massive cluster.  The light faded and we were all on the human side of the museum, invisible to those we’d just been engaging.  Now we just had to get the hell out of the building.

As I left the elevator, Zero-T shoved something into my hands.  I looked down at a ram’s horn drinking cup inlaid with pearl and turquoise.  The thing vibrated with raw power.  I didn’t need to activate my
Dragon Sight
tattoo to know this for a relic of great power.  I clutched the cup, pinning it between forearm and abs, trying to read the nature of its power—hoping it would protect me as it protected itself.  “C’mon, around the corner, and out the front; move!”

The area had grown quiet.  Our enemies were in the other version of the museum, looking for us.  The chained hell-beast was there too.  We were left looking at artfully posed dinosaur skeletons once more.   

We’re going to get clean away
.

Humidity skyrocketed.  Salty winds whipped past as the air pressure changed.  I heard a distant rumble.  Lightning flashed from the short hall behind the huge skeletons.  Their shadow
s pounced at us. 
Atlantean magic. 
It felt stronger, more aggressive than the Old Man’s.  

“Run,” I yelled, shoving past the surrounding demons, hauling ass for the entrance—hoping I made it.  Glad I’d taken the time to disarm the trap there earlier.

I didn’t need to look behind me to know what was coming.  I’d seen the Old Man in action, pulling a typhoon and water spout out of thin air.  A roaring wall of sea water was about to smash the big skeletal dinosaur, engulfing it on the way to me.  Someone was determined to stop me from getting away with the cup. 

I saw the doors ahead, angling for the right-most pair. 
I can make it.  I can make it.

The roar swelled.  I heard screams from those not quite as fast as me—screams choked off by mouthfuls of water.  Frothy white water scooped me up like a stone in the hand of a petulant child
—a mean child—who sent me spinning into an ocean of pain.  I spun multiple directions at once, holding my breath desperately.

And worse was coming.  Fast.  I had hoped to open the front doors.  That wasn’t going to happen now.  Fighting the water, I tucked in a ball and covered my head, finding this difficult despite my increase in strength from when my dragon-half DNA first kicked in. 

I hit the doors along with the kinetic force of a bomb.  They broke.  It felt like my spine did as well.  Shattered wood and glass surrounded me like a thousand scalpels.  Bricks also tumbled with me as the wall around the doors came along for the ride.  I didn’t feel the full extent of the coming pain with adrenaline flooding my system, but it wouldn’t be long.  The water scraped me over the deactivated spell-trap outside the door.  The tidal wave bounced me off the concrete apron once more, then kicked me down the outside flight of stairs, that stretched on endlessly.  Their edges would leave bruises, making me a mottled corpse if I didn’t do something fast.

Spinning, my body opened, arms and legs trailing loosely.  Massive chunks of masonry as well as a swarm of
smaller bricks and wooden timbers danced with me as my lungs burned.  My air bubbled out.  I clamped my mouth shut to fight the desire to breathe the water.  In my head, the world became gray mist, dimming toward black. 

I wept in the depths of my soul for all the women who would never get the chance to sleep with me.  That thought fuzzed-out as darkness rushed in.  The darkness should have brought release, but I felt renewed pain as the skin of my back tore.  My shoulder blades were melting.  My back muscles writhed like dying pythons.  Open wounds on my back burned with saltwater. 

And then I wrenched myself up into the air, finding the crest of the killer wave and leaving it for the dark sky, gasping as I filled my lungs with fresh, blessed air. 

I tore higher and higher, flipping backwards, the way I’d come.  Water thundered under me, finally thinning.  I was flying upside down, back toward the entrance.  My new
ly grown back muscles weren’t quite in control of my wings.  This much was a miracle; I couldn’t manage a full change yet when I wanted.  I rolled in the air so I wasn’t upside-down anymore, and tried to gain control of my motion.  Just because I had dragon wings didn’t mean I knew how to use them.

I crashed to the concrete and skidded into fresh debris now clogging the vast hole where three sets of doors had been.  Part of the debris was a barricade made of dinosaur bones.  Several of them were broken; much like my right wing.  I swallowed the additional pain
easily since it was an old friend, and just rode out the shock.  Still, getting functional remained iffy.

Lying on my back, one wing folded under itself, a load of brick, bone, and shattered glass sloughed off the jam and half buried me:
Insult to injury. 
A few of my demons were revealed by the collapse.   Stunned, they stared into infinity.  One of them was Zero-T.  His mask was gone.  His X-shaped pupils were dilated with pain.  He’d used his earth magic to create a protective cocoon of debris around him and the closest demons.   Most of them had survived, but needed digging out.