Demon Lord 6: Garnet Tongue Goddess (18 page)

Make that a horrifically terrible feeling.
  “Go on.”

“I thought I’d help you out with a few modifications.  Minor touches, really.”

“How minor?  What did you do?”

“Your Red Lady dropped by.  She had a few ideas, too.”

Sharing the blame?

For some reason, guns loaded with exploding ammo magically popped into my hands.  “What did you do?” I screamed.

He stood, his body licked by black shadow flames that formed smoky armor over his vital points.  He rightly assumed I
would
shoot him for messing with my stuff.

The Old Man scurried off.  “You’d better come and see for yourself.”

1

EIGHTEEN

“It’s common sense; a warrior needs

man-toys the way a bitch needs slapping.”

                                                 —
Caine Deathwalker

The floor was concrete, the walls painted haze grey.  Our steps echoed ahead.  Chandeliers with LED bulbs added a touch of elegance to what otherwise looked like a set up for a gun show. 

We didn’t need guards tagging along everywhere in the Clan House.  The Old Man and I strolled alone through the basement armory, past numerous tables.  One of them was loaded down with
Final Fantasy
swords, Tasers, and gun-swords.  Collectables, not everything here was risked in actual combat.  Another table had various types of exploding ammo.  The rounds were in jackets that had been spelled not to explode in the gun, but upon impact. 

Safety is important.

My adoptive father loomed in a most ridiculous fashion, but then he always did, over-large for most settings.  This didn’t annoy me as much as his chaotic randomness. 

“What else of mine did you move here from Malibu while my back was turned?” I asked.

“Just your liquor.  It was just sitting there, not getting used—while you’re going through the clan house supply like drunkenness is a sacred virtue.  I simply reimbursed myself.”

“Drunkenness
is
a virtue, damn it!  Sometimes, it’s all that keeps me from the indiscriminate slaughter of the stupid.”  I gave him a sharp glance that he ignored, as fucking always. Well, at least he’d stopped smacking the back of my head weeks ago.  That habit had finally been put in a coffin and buried deep. 

I said, “This is my clan now.  That means it’s my booze, too.  You don’t get reimbursed anymore—for anything.  In fact, maybe I need to start charging you rent.”

“As long as we’re on the topic of finances, you need to make some administrative decisions to generate more cash flow or you’ll be drinking water.”

“Don’t even joke about such a thing.”

There were wall displays and tables laying out a vast array of weapons: everything from swords, spears, bows and arrows, tridents, handguns, rifles, missile- and grenade-launchers, to whips and chains.  There was an iron mallet with a collection of maces.  I saw wooden swords with shark-tooth edges, Klingon bat’leths, and ninja smoke bombs.  Beyond sets of pearl-handled machetes and Native American tomahawks, I found my suit being worn by a charcoal gray manikin with only the barest of facial features. 

Any living person, but me, putting the suit on would trigger a magical GPS, letting me track down the stolen gear.  A remote system would also allow me to trap the thief inside.  The sleek suit was matte black with gold triad stitching that made it fashionably chic.  The compressed demon-spider silk with micro carbon-fiber lining made the damn thing tough as hell.  A magically enhanced nano-tech system let it regenerate damaged sections, slowly but surely. 

Twin short swords were still harnessed on back, but the clip-dispenser on the spine—for rapid reloads of handguns—was gone.  I now pulled my guns and ammo directly from my armory, through the ether.  The shoulder holsters with the spare Berretta PX4 Storms were gone too. 

New elements to the suit included spiked knuckles and a crimson cod-piece to protect the family jewels, Selene’s work.  I wouldn’t put it past her to stop time in the middle of a fierce battle for a bit of rough sex.  She’d want my, uh, equipment accessible.  Little did she realize the bright red cup against the black of the suit stood out like a bullseye.  I made a mental note to paint the cod-piece black, too.

Another new element was a wristband with a steel ring attached.  I went forward and pulled on the ring.  It pulled away, trailing a diamond saw band that could strangle like a garrote, or completely detach a head with a little more effort. The suit’s outer arms had half-inch razors attached for blocking attacks and slashing the enemy at the same time.  There was a new black helmet with built in comm system, and a tinted visor that was only tinted from the outside.  The visor looked clear from the inside with a computer-driven graphic display enhancement.

“It can stop bullets, swords, knives, chainsaws, and has a fire retardant treatment that can stand up to your own dragon fire—at least for a while,” the Old Man said. 

I fingered one of three red-crystal cabochons implanted in the chest plate.  “Selene added these, too?”

“Magic stones.  In smoke and fire, or underwater, the stones will keep your blood magically oxygenated.  Each stone has a half-hour air supply.”

“That will come in handy if the naga attempts to lose me in the lake again.”

“That’s quite a woman you have there.”

“Yeah, nothing more impressive than an insanely powerful beauty with no moral compass.”

The Old Man knuckled a tear from one eye.  His voice shook just a little.  “She called me Dad.  You’d better treat her right, hear me?”

I am so screwed.

“I suppose you invited her to your wedding?”

“Well, of course.”

“Did it not occur to you that with most of my harem attending, violence becomes inevitable by adding a rogue goddess?”

“You’ll just have to tell everyone to behave.  Surely, we can all act like adults for one evening.”

I began to untangle the suit from the manikin.  “Not fucking likely. With any luck, Selene will still be gathering intelligence from the Slayer Village dimension.” 

I can always hope.

I noticed there was an empty sheath strapped to the suit’s the upper thigh. 
That’s new
. 
Why a sheath but no knife? 
A thought hit me.
 
I knelt and jerked up my pants leg.  Underneath, protruding from my right steel-toed boot, was the wavy garnet tongue I’d taken from the nagi temple.  Thorn had said I’d need it—eventually.  I drew the knife-life, rippling length from my boot and slid the blade into the empty sheath on the suit. 

Fits perfectly.  Why am I not surprised?

I stood and, suit in hand, headed back toward the Great Hall with the Old Man beside me. My demon security should be assembling, loaded down with weaponry.  We needed to get back on task soon.

“About the upcoming wedding?” I said.

“Yes?”  He slanted me a look to show interest in my thoughts, a rare event.

“I know how we can save some money.  Call it off.  We both know my cousin doesn’t want to marry you.  She’s being forced by the dragon emperor.”

“If I call it off instead of the emperor, it will be seen as an act of disrespect.  Your mother’s family will have to declare vendetta against us, or suffer loss of respect among dragon-kind that will invite others trying to step on them.”

“We should offer to hit the emperor.  It’s a win-win situation.  The marriage is called off, and we make money.  And with the loss of an imperial head, the dragon world will be preoccupied for a long time with in-fighting, so we can take our time getting around to them on our list of enemies.”

The Old Man sighed.  The sound went on forever—his new way of irritating me.  Seriously, old people need to get a life.  He said, “You haven’t thought it out.  An assassination would plunge us immediately, deeply, into dragon politics.”

“How so?  And when did you put this elevator in?” 

I pushed the call button and the door opened.  The car had been waiting.  We stepped on and he pushed a button on the control panel.  We rose.

“You need to cultivate a deeper habit of paranoia and always assume your underlings are idiots. Pay attention to little things.  If you don’t run the clan, it will run you.”

“One day, we’ll talk without you falling into lecture mode and I’ll crap my pants in sheer surprise.”

He continued to lecture—because he could.  “To answer your question; you don’t seem to realize that your cousin is from the cadet branch of the royal family, as is the emperor.  Your mother is the true heir of the main branch.  It can be argued that your own claim supersedes that of the emperor as well.”  The doors opened and we emerged on a back hallway of the Great Hall.  The Old Man led the way toward the throne room.  He said, “From the time you were discovered to be in my care, the emperor has plotted your death. Failing that, he’s planned how to neutralize you so he can keep a throne that isn’t his.   Had you been pure-blood, other dragons would have connived to force you on the throne as a figurehead.  Everybody likes power.”

“So you’re saying I’ve been left alone, but if I meddle, I’ll be ass-deep in flaming dragon shit.”

“Try not to cuss.  It troubles the serenity of my soul.”

We cut through the kitchen.  The kitchen staff was divided among various duties.  The aroma of mushroom chicken and braised baby carrots filled the air. Many of the demons stopped what they were doing to bow with respect to the Old Man. 

He said.  “You’ll be butt-deep in burning excrement eventually, but unless you stir up trouble now, you can pick when we’ll have to deal with imperials.”

“I hate politics.  It’s much easier to just kill things that piss me off.”

“I think the emperor shares that point of view.  Unfortunately, politics has a way of creeping in when you’re out to conquer the known universe.”

I stopped by a stainless steel counter near a stainless steel fridge.  I’d worked up a stainless steel hunger that needed denting.  I wondered what they had lying around for a quick snack.  

“I want the unknown universe too.”  I quoted my favorite song by Queen: “I want it all and I want it now!”  I glared at a kitchen worker who clutched his hands in front of him, as if about to ward off a blow.  “I want hard salami and Colby cheese on crackers, served with the appropriate wine.”  I considered options. “A German Kabinett Riesling is acceptable.”  The lower alcohol would work better with the salty food.

The attendant gestured toward a prep table with high-rise seats that let one’s feet dangle above the floor.  I scowled at the chairs.  They were too much like a child’s high chair.

He said, “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll see what we can do.”

I went to the table, dumped my zombie-apocalypse suit there, and took a seat.  The Old Man joined me.  “So, about the wedding; I’m still deciding on the menu.”

“I may have some naga flank steaks for you soon.  I hear it tastes just like chicken.”

“It doesn’t.”  The Old Man looked at me and a deep buried, darker version of him peeped out of his eyes.  A shiver, that might have been dread, touched me for the smallest moment.  Here was the sadistic predator that had trained me in martial arts—half killing me numerous times to build my strength.

Kitchen workers slid platters of food before us, offerings to their gods.  The Old Man touched my forearm as I reached for the appetizers.  “Caine, about the naga steaks…”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

As a small child, I’d quickly learned to distrust him, but that didn’t always help me.  My thoughts slid into the past…

We were in Oregon, the middle of nowhere.  There was a road that saw little traffic.  We were staying a few weeks in a rustic cabin on a hill.  Quite the adventure.

In those days, the Old Man used magic to blend in, concealing scars, tats, and blue skin. That made him just another bodybuilder with a shaved head.  In public, people stared, but no one called the police to say a child was going to be eaten by a troll.

He stood near the tree’s base, arms crossed.  I looked down on his shiny head until he lifted his eyes to me.  His eyes burned with smoldering fire as I hung by my hands, clinging to a swaying branch that seemed likely to break at any time.  My branch extended out over a sheer drop.  If I were to lose my grip, I’d fall hundreds of feet onto piled rocks. 

Not my idea; this was just where he’d put me.

“Can I get down now?” I asked.  “I’m getting pretty tired.”

Actually, my hands hurt.  The bark dug painfully into my palms.  Sweat ran in runnels down my arms and back.  The tee shirt I wore clung damply.

He shook his head.  “Give it another hour.”

“But I could fall and die.”

“That would greatly disappoint me,” he said.  “Still, if something like this can destroy you, you’d never make it in the kind of life you have ahead of you.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” I said.

“What’s that?  You say you can do two hours, easy?”

I shut up before he went to three.

“It’s hot out here,” he said.  “I’m going back to the cabin for a tall, icy glass of lemonade.  I’d offer you some but I can see you’re busy.”

“Demons suck,” I muttered.

“I heard that.”

“Who needs you?  I’ll just climb down and go join the circus.”

“Well, you are coming along nicely with the knife-throwing, but don’t think you can leave the tree until I say so—unless you fall and die.  I’ll overlook that.”