I put a hand to the door and pushed. It was not interested in moving.
Swearing, and trying to breathe as little as possible, I snaked my arm all the way through the crack, then put both my hands on the door and pushed. It gave the slightest bit, and I forced myself through further. I had enough room to get one foot partially out now.
I leaned back against the other door trying to force it to move enough that I could get my ass into the space and push. It resisted.
Groaning with strain, I closed my eyes and pushed with every ounce of strength I had. I wriggled my body and managed to get my whole left leg out the door.
But now I was held in a vice grip. My arms were already tired, and the doors continued trying to shut, squeezing me and forcing the air from my lungs.
“Sassy, are you okay?” Ash asked.
“No!” I grunted.
But I didn’t have time to tell him anything else. I couldn’t waste any breath speaking, and I could smell the gas getting closer.
Sinking my hips to get more leverage. I flattened my palms against the door in front of me and pushed hard with my butt. Slowly, the door gave way.
I continued pushing until my elbows were locked open. For a moment, I stood there, half bent over, my arms and legs shaking with the strain.
Then I shifted my weight to my right foot and launched myself out into the hallway. The doors closed quickly behind me, but they remained unable to seal. My shoe still had one of them jammed.
I had no idea how much gas would eventually flow out into the hall or what it would do to me if I inhaled it. I had no desire to learn the answer to either question. I crawled back to the door, grabbed my shoe, and yanked it free. The doors closed softly and sealed with a final hiss.
I rolled onto my back and gasped for air. Somehow, I’d managed to escape. Now, I had to get the hell out of Dirk McCray’s mansion before his goons found me.
“Sooo,” a husky, female voice drawled. “This is the mighty N’Chai Toroth.”
Too late.
I pushed myself up into a sitting position. Stormy Williams stood a few feet away. Oh, shit.
“Heh,” I said, feigning confidence. “That figures. As soon as I saw it was a setup, I should have realized you were behind it.”
“Please, Miss Kincaide, you’re supposed to be the destructor, the prophesied destroyer come to sunder the magical world,” she said. “We can’t have that.”
Since she seemed content to monologue like some comic-book villain, I took the opportunity to get to my feet. No sense giving her any more advantages than she already had on me.
“No, my little naïve death-bringer,” she continued, “you cannot be allowed to fulfill your destiny.”
“Aww,” I said, feigning concern. “What’s the matter? Is the big, bad dragon afraid of a little human girl who didn’t know she was special?”
Stormy the Succubus laughed. She probably meant it to sound like some sort of maniacal villain laugh, but instead she just sounded like a snarky Mean Girl.
“D’Krisch Mk’Rai has nothing to do with this,” she said.
A bad feeling set up shop in my stomach. If the dragon wasn’t behind this, then he hadn’t been the one who hired The Guild of the Blade to kill me. That meant someone else had done it. Did Scott know? If he did, he’d been lying to me about how killing Mk’Rai was the only way to secure my safety. Maybe Ash was lying too. Shit.
“D’Krisch doesn’t know any of what’s happening tonight,” Stormy went on. “He has no idea you and I are down here, no idea I moved the Jeweled Dagger of Constantinople, and is clueless that I deactivated the security system on the vault to get you in.
“My fool of a lover is just bait. The Order was already irritated with him and wanted something done. And The Prophecies say that the N’Chai Toroth will find her powers while slaying a dragon. It was the perfect way for them to bring you in, convince you to attack D’Krisch in his home, and allow me to set a trap for you.”
Real panic was starting to swim in my stomach. I was right that this whole thing had been a setup, but I hadn’t imagined it was all done just to catch me. Were they planning to kill me? Was I going to be dissected in a lab somewhere? Would I ever see Ben and Felicia again?
Oh, Felicia. I’m so sorry I hurt you. If I find some way out of this shit, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.
“Who the hell are you working for?” I asked, trying to get some handle on the situation. “I thought you were with The Order.”
She chuckled.
“Yes, The Order thinks that too. And as for who I really work for, you’ll find out when you meet them.
“Speaking of which, that gas was supposed to knock you out. Pity you made things difficult by managing to escape the vault. But I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
She raced towards me. Instinctively, I dropped into a fighting stance. But that damned too-tight skirt made it impossible to set my feet far enough apart. Stormy the Sex-Demon was on top of me before I could react properly. She drove a boxer’s jab straight at my face. I managed to slap it aside with my lead hand, but I was still off-balance and only redirected it into a glancing blow to my chin. With my feet too close together and spinning to get away, I ended up going down.
Fearing a follow-up blow, I rolled away from her. A second later, I came to the end of the hall, blocked from further retreat. Stormy laughed.
“Some fighter you are,” she taunted. “You hit the deck after only one punch, and you’ve left yourself no way out.”
Keep talking, bitch. While you waste your breath, I’ve got a plan.
I ripped the removable strip of my skirt off. It came away easily, attached by Velcro. What was left of the dress barely covered my ass.
“Mmm,” Stormy said. “Yes, I do like the little preview you’re offering.”
Her eyes fell to my crotch. I was wearing panties, but with me on the ground, she had a good view up my dress. I got to my feet.
“Back at the bar you were imagining throwing me down on the bed upstairs,” she said. “You wanted to take me roughly, make me yours.”
I blushed. She knew that? Had she been in my head? It occurred to me I’d never asked Ash about his powers. Just what else could a succubus do besides hit you with a heavy wave of pheromones?
“You like to be in charge, don’t you, Cecily Kincaide? You like to be the girl on top, holding your partner down, forcing her to take pleasure.”
“None of your damned business,” I said.
“Oh, sure it is,” Stormy drawled, advancing slowly towards me. She arched her back to accentuate her breasts. “I’m a succubus. I thrive on your sexual desires. I need them to survive.”
My resolve was softening. This woman wanted to kill me, but she was turning me on. What the hell was happening? How could I be focused on those perfect breasts, the soft lips that curved up in a wicked smile? My brain screamed at me to wake up, but my heart wouldn’t listen.
“Maybe I could show you what it’s like to be the sub,” Stormy said. “You’ve tried so hard your whole life to be in control. Maybe what you really need is someone to take that control from you, force you to submit, force you to take the pleasure.”
She was close to me. I could smell her perfume and her musk. She leaned in close.
“I can please you in so many ways,” she whispered.
“Why don’t you start by getting the fuck away from me?” I said.
I stepped in and drove a butterfly-palmstrike into her chest, knocking her away. She staggered back and to the left.
“Why, Cecily,” she said. “If you wanted to feel me up, you just had to ask.”
“Fuck you!”
“Not yet. Think of this as foreplay.”
She darted towards me again. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, like I couldn’t keep up. Was it the fear? Was it the pheromones? How could this crazy-ass sex-demon be besting me this easily?
She feinted for my centerline then brought a hook-punch to
the side of my head. I had my guard in the wrong position, and she drilled me just above my ear.
I staggered a step to my left and turned my head away. Desperately, I threw a whipping backfist at her. It was stupid. She could have done any number of bad things to me by getting ahold of my arm. “Look at what you’re hitting,” Kai liked to say, mainly to protect himself from out-of-control students, but it was good strategy anyway. If you weren’t looking, you could miss. Or worse.
But I got lucky. Despite throwing a desperation blow, I connected. The back of my fist made solid contact with Stormy’s face. I felt bone crunch.
She cried out and was driven back. I took the opportunity to square up and reset my stance.
Stormy was a few feet away. Both her hands were holding her face. She dropped them, and I saw blood all over her.
“Yew bwoke my nwose, yew bitch!” she screamed.
Her eyes, once sexy, burned with fury. Her beautiful face was a mess. A second later, it got worse.
For a moment, her whole body shimmered. Then her skin turned red – not sunburned red, bright red, like, fire-engine red. Her blonde hair turned black. Her fingers grew sharp claws, a pair of black horns sprouted from her forehead, and large, black batwings emerged from her back.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“You’we gowing to wish that gas had knwocked yew out,” she said.
Despite being horrific, like metal grinding on concrete, her voice sounded ridiculous. Apparently, even demons sound stupid when they try to speak with a broken nose.
Regardless, all that desire she’d been building up in me vanished in a heartbeat. Ugly-ass demons were not my type.
She launched herself into the air and flew at me. She stretched out those sharp claws, and I barely had time to dive to the side and push her away. Even then, one of her wings smacked me in the chest and knocked me back against the wall.
Stormy landed neatly just before the end of the hall. Jesus, she even had a spiked tail! This woman was a walking, flying cliché.
I bolted away towards the stairs. I wasn’t sure how to fight her in that form, and I didn’t want to be too close to her.
“Yew can’t get away fwom me!” she roared.
I risked a look over my shoulder. She charged me again, flying towards me with claws outstretched and her forked tongue lolling out of her mouth.
A plan leaped into my head. I had no time to consider whether it would work.
I turned to face her and waited until she was almost on top of me. Then just before she could scratch me with those wicked fingers, I went over backwards. I managed to fall just under her, avoiding a leg as it kicked at me.
Then I reached up and grabbed her tail.
It went taut after only a second. The succubus screamed in pain, and then her momentum pulled her out of the air. She smashed down onto the floor and lay there, stunned.
I wasted no time waiting to see if she were dead. I rolled over, crawled up her body and grabbed her hair.
“I,” I growled as I smashed her face into the floor, “have had . . .” I smashed her face into the ground again and again with each successive word. “. . . enough of demons trying to kill me!”
Stormy the Sex-Demon had no follow-up retort. I let go of her and left her facedown in a pool of her own blood. I had no idea if I’d killed her or not. For all I knew, a demon could survive that sort of thing.
“And the name is ‘Sassy,’ bitch.”
Stormy lay there unconscious or dead. I got to my feet and shook as the adrenaline still coursed through my body. I may have been a Kenpo black belt, but the last few days had been the only times in my life I’d ever had to use it for real. It was hard not to freak out.
“Ash,” I said. “Please tell me you’re still there.”
He didn’t respond right away. Cold panic crept across my mind.
“Ash!” I practically shouted.
“I’m here, Sassy,” he replied. “Are you okay?”
“I’m alive. Stormy set us up. She just tried to kill me. I’ve taken care of her.”
“Sassy,” he said, his tone grave. “You need to get upstairs right away.”
Thirty
S omething in Ash’s voice told me things had gone to shit upstairs worse than they had down in the vault. I grabbed my shoes and the remnants of my skirt, and without knowing why, raced up the steps.
I didn’t slow down when I got to the first basement. I bolted dead ahead, focused on getting up to the main floor before Ephraim could really fuck us over.
But when I had nearly made it to the stairs, a guard came out of the control room. He was moving quickly too, and we nearly collided as we both arrived at the staircase. At first, an apologetic look came over his face. But when he realized I wasn’t one of his teammates, his mien shifted to one of surprise and suspicion.
“Hey,” he said. “Who are you?”
I drove a spearhand into his throat. His eyes popped open wide, and his hands went to his neck as he tried to suck in air. I made it harder by kneeing him in the solar plexus. That bent him over, and as his body seized up, I brought my best axe kick down on the back of his neck. He hit the floor in a heap and didn’t move.
“None of your damned business,” I said.
It’s possible I’ve seen Die Hard too many times. John McClane is the Platonic ideal of one-line quips after taking out a bad guy.
Leaving McCray’s stooge dead or unconscious, I practically flew up the stairs, taking them two at a time – not a bad feat for someone with short legs.
When I got to the main floor it was utter chaos. People were screaming and running in multiple directions. Fortunately for me, no one was coming my way. Whatever was happening, they were trying to get out of the house instead of deeper into it. That couldn’t be good.
“Ash, which way?” I said.
“Straight ahead. When you get to the main room, move past the bar, then head down the hallway to your right. And be careful.”
I wasn’t sure how to be careful with people running like they were in a disaster movie. But I appreciated the warning.
After only two steps, though, a terrible roar echoed through the house. I’d never heard anything like it in my life, not even in a monster movie – deep, dangerous, ominous, angry.
“What the hell was that? I said.
“D’Krisch Mk’Rai,” Ash replied.
Oh, shit. I knew nothing about real dragons. I was only educated on D&D ones. But I didn’t need any sort of dragon masterclass to tell me that if Mk’Rai was making noises like that, he’d shed his human disguise. Oh, shit.
I fought my way through a throng of panicked rich people who were trying to get away from the horrible noise. For the moment, I was heading in the same direction, and it was like trying to fight a giant wave in the ocean determined to push you to shore. I tried to get close to the wall, elbowing tuxes and shoving evening gowns out of my way. But I felt like I was caught in taffy, stuck, barely able to move. The crowd moved me inexorably forward at its own pace. I was terrified they would knock me over and trample me.
At last, I made it to the hallway Ash had directed me to. With a final shove of a rich fifty-something dude whose look of smug wealth had been transformed to abject fear, I dove into the hallway.
Heat washed over me. Was something burning down there? Dragons breathed fire in real life, I’d been told. Oh, shit.
I raced at top speed down the hall. When I turned the corner, the hallway – and the house – abruptly ended.
A dragon – a real fucking dragon – crouched in the remains of what had once been a very ritzy office. Its enormous body had shattered the walls – interior and exterior. The night air was pouring in, and there were tiny fires burning in the carpet where the thing stood.
It looked like every dragon I’d ever imagined playing D&D. It was colossal, with a body four or five times my size. It was covered in dark green, slimy scales. It had a long neck and tail, sandwiching a monstrous body. Thick, powe
rful legs supported the beast, and two smaller but muscular arms emerged from its upper body, with the left one bleeding from a gash just below the shoulder. Sharp, yellow claws extended from its toes and fingers. On its back were enormous batwings, similar to the ones Stormy the Sex-Demon had sprouted, but the dragon’s were green.
But its head was the most terrifying part. Its whole damned mouth was as big as my body. Teeth as long as my arms bedecked a gaping maw, with tiny fires burning on its tongue. The foulest stench I’d ever had the misfortune of smelling oozed from its mouth – like something had died in there and was slowly burning away over several months.
And it had two terrifying, yellow eyes that gazed on me with raw hatred, promising malice. Looking into those golden orbs, I felt every terror I’d ever imagined in my life explode through my brain.
Mk’Rai clutched Ephraim like he was some sort of giant action figure in his right hand. Big Brother Asshole’s chin rested on his chest. He was unconscious.
The dragon leaned its head forward, pushing it close enough to me that I thought I would vomit from the smell of its breath. Its eyes narrowed. A second later, it was obvious it recognized me.
What the hell was I supposed to do? How could I fight something that size? I had no weapon, and even confined, such as it was, to the house, the dragon was so large and armored I had no clue where I would even begin to mount an attack.
“You will deliver a message to The Order,” Mk’Rai growled, his voice rumbling like thunder – not off-in-the-distance thunder; the holy-shit-lightning-just-struck-half-a-block-away thunder.
Then a horror movie leaped into my brain. I saw Mk’Rai torturing Ephraim, burning The Order’s headquarters, people being torn limb from limb, and other scary shit my mind could not begin to process. The sensation was painful, frightening, overwhelming.
I clapped my hands to the side of my head, trying to block the dragon’s telepathy. When that didn’t work, I screamed, hoping to drown out the nightmare.
But the only sound I actually heard was D’Krisch Mk’Rai laughing softly. I had no idea whether he was cackling like some sort of maniacal movie villain, or if he was just delighting in how he had turned me into a puddle of goo. Regardless, the sinister son of a bitch was laughing at the pain he caused. I’d never been touched so intimately by evil. Tears gushed from my eyes.
Sleeping Dragons Page 24
