Demon Lord 3: Blue Star Priestess (27 page)

The head bounced, nodding as it dangled.  The lax muscles of its face tightened.  It said,
“Yeah, that’s the guy who killed us all.  Get me closer.  I want to bite him, hard, Tartarus take him!”

Damn, and I thought I held a grudge.

The Knives chanted and I felt power building up in the air, the dame kind that had just hit me.  They were going to do it again.  And again.  Until I was dead.  If only they didn’t kill me, I could take advantage of being their prisoner to learn all I needed.  But I was just some stranger to them.  No one of value.  Unless…

I stared at the man holding the head who seemed in charge.  “You really want to kill me?  I thought dragons were important prisoners to you people.”

“Shut up,” the head yelled.  “You weren’t supposed to tell them that.”

The Knife-dude standing over me tossed away the head.  It bounced and rolled, cursing up a blue streak.  The leader squatted low and tugged my sleeve up my arm.  He studied the dragon lotus tattoo on my arm and smiled.  “The Queen will want to play with you.  You will wish we’d given you a clean death.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

“I cried when my school councilor told me

being an ass-hole wasn’t a paying profession.”

                                      
—Caine Deathwalker

Slowly, I opened my eyes,
trying to take inventory of the dungeon I was in.  There were no windows.  The only wall I could see was the one I was chained to.  A throbbing headache got in the way of my observations, but I deep-breathed, using a trick of meditation to slow the pounding.  It became a waning pulsation, then faded altogether.  The limestone against my back felt ice cold.  The floor was probably just as cold, but I couldn’t feel it since my feet didn’t quite touch.  The wall held me completely.   I’d been sleeping vertically against it.

The door to my cage was open.  Someone had a lot of confidence that I wasn’t going to wander off on my own.  Beyond lay a hallway, then another row of bars, more cells with their depths swallow by darkness.  It was as if these two rows of cells and the hall between were all that occupied some lightless hell-dimension.

Just outside my cell stood a dark-wood table holding my guns, and clothes, what was left of my damaged Kevlar vest, and my Muramasa—also wrapped in chains.  No cell phone though.  I grinned; someone had tried to draw the sword, to search the blade for mystic runes.  It was a sure bet they’d died instantly, their soul devoured.

I shifted position and looked through the bars that separated my cell from the next one over
.  The adjoining cell had a spell-circle on its floor, too, but with minor differences.  That cell had a woman chained to the same wall I was, but sitting on the ground.  Young, very hot, very naked, but not the one I’d seen captured earlier.  This one’s face was covered by a fall of dark red hair.  She hugged her knees, modestly hiding her places of interest from everyone’s eyes.  My chains were attached to wrists, ankles and waist, holding my torso pressed to the wall. Her chains had a lot more slack and were only on her thin wrists. 

I gave my own bindings a closer look. 
My wrist cuffs had spell circuits etched on them in patterns I’d never seen. 
No, wait a minute, damn it.  I have seen something like this—on the yoke the Old Man slapped on me in the Great Hall
.  I pulled up the memory of the broken pieces lying on the floor after Izumi freed me. 
I should have paid more attention to the damn thing.  Father had been trying to forewarn and forearm me.  Why hadn’t I seen it?  Never mind.  Crying over spilt blood never helps.  What’s here that I can work with?

I looked closer at the
limestone floor.  It had the same kind of circuitry and writing as the cuffs, but in a more traditional spell-circle, except it had an odd depth, as if it were three-dimensional, and maybe four or five.  And some of the weird writing and symbols within the double-circle were moving.

That’s some high grade shit.

Some of the symbols I knew or could guess at.  I started putting the spell’s pieces together in my head. 
Judging by placement, distance, size, and inter-locked positions, I can reverse engineering all this.  In time.  If I have enough time.
  The multi-dimensional quality made it harder, but I hung in there, thinking, hypothesizing, and after what seemed like hours, I got the gist of it: the spell was designed to bind the powers of a dragon, and the dragon form itself, so only the human shape could manifest. 

So complex
… but what’s meant to hold a dragon might not function so well against a half-breed. My human blood and knowledge of demon magic can’t have been anticipated.

I pulled at the chains full-force.  It did no good; my more-than
-human strength was undiluted, but the metal was unnaturally strong.  I hit a wrist-cuff against a limestone wall, then on some chain.  The sound and weight told me I was dealing with a magic-forged alloy.  If I could have activated
Dragon Sight
, I’d have known more. 

One thing I did figure out:
It can’t stop natural biological abilities, only magical ones, but, yeah, that’s still a problem.

I tried talking to my other side. 
Hey, dragon?  Can you hear me?

Nothing. 

I tried again. 
C’mon wake up.  You’re a damn Gold.  Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

For all I knew, he was speaking to me, but the spell-circuits were keeping his thoughts
from touching mine.

I had one more test to try.  I pulled on my raw magic to warm my tattoos.   I use dragon magic in ways unlike any other dragon.  Maybe… 

I felt burning pain pierce my guts like a red hot fireplace poker.  The tattoos on my ribs flickered with a weak glow that died out.  The pain stopped with no benefit.  None of my tattoos showed an interest in stirring to life. 

Maybe the other prisoner had some answers for me.  She’d certainly been here longer.  I
knew that from her air of hopeless dejection.  “Hey girl, what is this place?” 

I didn’t even get a flinch out of her, but a blue Atlantean demon walked through my door.   Skinny, bug eyed, he smelled of blood.  His blue skin blended well with the blue silk padding poking out from under his black leather armor.  Blue silk ties held the pieces together as well.  His long, white hair looked strange on such a young face.  His teeth got my attention: sharp, long, stained red with blood.  His armor looked first-grade.  Attached to his chest plate, the shoulder plates winged out.  The half-skirt leather gapped in front.  The leather leg-guards and gauntlets were thinner.  Small details in the armor told me it was just for show.  The emblem over his heart was far too expensive to endanger in battle.

He said, “It’s no use, dragon-born.  I broke her some time ago.  What’s more important are these things you carried.”

“
And who the hell are you,” I asked.

“Pardon my rudeness, I am Audumor, Dungeon Master of Atlantis, and I am in a hurry.  Our dark queen has tasked me with ripping your secrets out of you, and patience is, alas, not one of
her beautiful virtues.  Now, shall we start?”

He stepped on a flagstone on the threshold of my door.  That stone lifted from the floor, floating up to his hand.  He touched it several times, like a couch potato with a remote, and a light beamed down from the ceiling, illuminating the table holding my gear.  He touched the control-stone again and the patch of wall behind me glowed. 
I found that the light prevented me from moving anything but my head. 

The section inside my bars moved forward, taking me along until I hung in a much smaller cell.  The dungeon master was a lot closer now.  I looked at the spell-circle on the floor.  It had adjusted to the new space, becoming smaller too, glowing with increased power.  I heard chains moving on the cell next to me, too low for most people to hear but it got my attention.

She’s shaking, and stinks of fear.  And needs an immediate shower.  I think she peed herself.

Audumor touched the control-stone again.  A set of flagstones near his feet, in the hallway,   glowed aqua-blue.  A wave of light pulsed up from those stones as they rose to the demon’s waist.   The floating tablet flipped over, but otherwise stayed put.  The new topside revealed a selection of tools and blades.  For an ancient civilization these guys had some nice implements of torture.

“Tell me, dragon-born, is it truly necessary to use these?” Audumor waited for an answer.

I gave nothing.

He sighed rather heavily.  “Even if you are a rare one, what the Queen wishes for, she will have.  If it costs your life, or sanity, that is a price you must pay gladly.”  He paused theatrically.  “What are these tools, you wonder?”  He picked up a piece of wood with a web of rope attached.  Spikes were woven into the webbing.  He put the thing around my index finger and turned the wood.  The loop of web around my finger tightened.  The spikes pricked my skin.  He kept turning the wood, cutting my skin deeper. The pain felt negligible.  I wondered when this jerk-off would get serious. 

I stopped smelling fear from the girl.  As a full-blood dragon, her sense of smell put mine to shame.  She had to smelling my blood.  I wonder if she’d think it was tainted, like my dragon relatives did.  

I said nothing as Audumor turned the wood again.  The spikes hit bone.  I barely flinched. 

Please, this pain can’t touch what I put myself through just activating my tattoos. 

Audumor left the spikes in my finger and looked over his tools.  His hand hovered over the selection.  I smelled his excitement.  The girl could probably read the scent of his emotions even better.  She’d certainly had longer to practice.  The girl had been still.  Now, she started shaking again, drawing forth a slight chinking from her chains.

Audumor picked up an obsidian blade by its silver wire hilt.  The tool’s cutting edge was half an inch long and incredibly thin.  “You must understand, young dragon-born, I have honed my skills on the girl in the cell next to you for many years.  Her suffering has graced me with great understanding for your kind’s weaknesses.  I know all the most painful areas of your bodies.  How to inflict endless agony an
d entice horrendous screams.”

He smiled, bringing the glass blade to where I could see its perfect lines.  His demon eyes glowed a blue so pale, it approached white—a sign of great pleasure.  He was getting off talking
about himself, the kind of villain that can’t help but monologue. 

Audumor placed the tip of the blade against my naval.  Teasing, he lightly skimmed the knife’s edge to my hip.   And jammed it in, cutting to the bone.  Expertly, he enflamed nerve after nerve working lower.  Warm blood flowed down one leg.  I smelled its iron tang.  After four inches, he turned the blade and pulled it out.  The pain was bad, but nothing close to what

I’d taken from hostile and armed bitches that I’d fucked into submission over the years. 

He grabbed my dick and for a second I almost panicked, but he just moved it to grab my balls, the perv.

“Hey, those are not for you,” I gave him a dead, cold stare. 

He said, “It stops when you tell me what I want to know.”

Slowly, he stuck the blade into my left nut.  I felt like throwing up for a second, but fought off the need, relaxing my body, riding the pain without fighting it as I’d been taught in martial arts.  Audumor didn’t stop till he’d driven the blade’s tip completely through.  He left it there like an ornament on a Christmas tree, and straightened to study my face with his near-white, glowing eyes.

What he saw in my eyes made him flinch.
  He hid his fear, but his face reddened with embarrassment.  His professional pride had taken a severe blow by his inability to shake me.  The muscles of his jaw writhed a moment as he rallied.  “You’re stronger than the others, but I’ll fix that.”  He returned to his floating tablet for a foot-long brass needles with spirals carved around them.  “You must be a unique type of dragon, young one.  I have dealt with the lesser breeds on battlefields, studying them dying.  In those days, I never dreamed I’d possess captive subjects for my research.  Fortune is kind—just not to you.”

He bent and put his left hand on my left knee.  His thumb circled aimlessly, but really with dark purpose.  He wanted to drive me mad with anticipation.  Waiting for torture can be worse than enduring it.  And then his hand dropped lower.  He stuck the needle through the side of my
knee.  The point came out the other side.

I pulled on my chains, making a show of it.  If he knew how much more I could take, he’d start doing some serious damage.  That would make it harder to break free and kill him later.

He visited the floating tablet for a handful of needles.  Coming back, he moved to the other knee.  He looked me in the eye, stared back at one of the new needles, then returned his focus to my face.  He pushed a needle in a little bit at a time, never taking his eyes of mine.  He finished and moved down to my feet, putting a needle through each toe from the bottom, popping toe nails as the tips emerged.  Each time a nail came off, I screamed but cut them off before he could really enjoy my response.

As if I couldn’t take more, I used a strained voice to say, “Fine, I’ll tell you something.  See the small device there?” 
My PPK
.  “The L-shaped one, yeah, use that to ass-fuck your queen till she squirts up a rainbow.” I laughed with the enjoyment my torturer wished
he
was getting.  Sure, the sound was a little ragged and crazy sounding.  That might stop him from going too far, to the point where I might not have the sanity to give any answers.

Nope.  The show was continuing.

He moved over to my right side, put his hand on my bicep, poising the needle above a major nerve cluster by the bone, near the shoulder.  He dragged the tip of the needle over my skin, drawing a circle.  Then he stabbed slowly, getting close to the cluster, but stopping just short.

Holding the needle there, he peered into my face.  “Are you quite sure you won’t be candid with me?”