Cursed

by Sue Tingey

  As soon as I saw the villa in the distance I knew Jamie was right; this was not some bolt-hole or hiding place. It was a mini palace. Kayla was obviously not as afraid of her psychotic father as I was.

  The villa was quite beautiful; a vision of midnight blue marble and gold. Had I been Kayla, I would have been happy to live out my days in such tranquil surroundings. So why did Baltheza think she would leave such an idyllic place to live in a fortress and be saddled with a position that would very likely get her killed? She had forsaken court for over twenty-five years to be with me, she had left Vaybian to be with me—these were not the actions of a woman hell-bent on becoming queen. And if nothing else, knowing this made me fear for her safety even more.

  “I think we were right,” I said, as we walked through the marble hallways and past a huge swimming pool filled with water the color of amethysts.

  “Right?” Jamie said, turning to look at me.

  “I don’t think Kayla left here by choice.” In my heart I knew she hadn’t, but if Baltheza hadn’t taken her, then who had? I felt totally miserable. Kayla and I may have had our quarrels recently, but I still loved her as my sister; we had spent so long together.

  Jinx nodded in agreement, but his mind was elsewhere. He stopped and turned full circle. “This place has recently seen violence,” he said.

  My heart skipped a beat. If anything had happened to Kayla …

  “There’s no blood,” Jamie said. “If she had been taken there would be blood. Her guard would have defended her to their last breaths.”

  “Blood can be washed away,” Jinx said.

  “Jinx,” Jamie warned and looked my way, his brow creased with worry.

  “There’s no point hiding this,” Jinx said, “the air reeks of hostility.” He turned to Jamie. “Can’t you smell it; feel it?”

  Jamie gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Come on,” he said, “let’s search the place.” So that’s what we did, even Pyrites trotted around sniffing and snuffling like a little bloodhound.

  “Here,” Jinx called. “What do you make of this?”

  Jamie hurried to his side and I followed as Jinx pointed at a spot about waist high on one of the marble columns. We both leaned in close to take a look.

  “It’s been chipped,” I said.

  “Hit by a sword,” Jamie agreed.

  “Judging by its color, it’s quite recent,” Jinx said, running his finger along the blemish.

  Pyrites made a mewing sound and when we looked his way he started to paddle from foot to foot in agitation.

  “What is it lad?” Jinx asked.

  Pyrites pawed the floor then sat back on his haunches waiting for us to come and see. We all crossed to where he sat and as soon as we joined him he jumped back up onto his feet and once again began to paw the marble slabs.

  Jinx crouched down beside him with Jamie opposite. “I can’t see anything,” I said, peering over their shoulders.

  Jinx squinted at the floor. “We can’t see it, but Pyrites can smell it. Is it blood boy?” Pyrites made the mewing sound again.

  “Let’s check the bedrooms,” Jinx said to Jamie and me. “They would have come at night.” Both men got to their feet and together we went looking for the bedrooms.

  The master bedroom was another expanse of dark blue marble; the bed took up most of the far wall and was big enough to sleep a small army of bodyguards, which it quite literally did. At last count Kayla had seven, though this could have changed.

  The bed had been freshly made with clean, silken gold sheets and pillowcases. Jinx picked up one of the pillows, sniffed it and threw it down, repeating this action with all of the others.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He picked up a fifth pillow and lifted it to his nose, his nostrils flared and he ripped off the case. “Look,” he said.

  I moved a little closer and gave it a tentative glance, scared at what I might see, but there was nothing. “I … I can’t see anything.”

  “Smell it,” he said holding it out to me.

  I moved closer and he shoved it under my nose, so I did as he said and took a tentative sniff. “It doesn’t smell of anything much.”

  “Exactly,” Jinx said.

  Jamie gave him a puzzled look and took the pillow from him and he too sniffed the fabric. “It’s new,” Jamie said. “As in: never been slept on.”

  I frowned at him, took the pillow back and turned it over in my hands, then sniffed at it again. It was true—used pillows normally smelled musky, or at least a little like the person who had slept on it.

  “I wonder if they went as far as changing the mattress?” Jinx said as he started stripping off the sheets. He gave a grunt. “Give me a hand turning this.”

  Jamie stepped forward and grabbed the other side of the mattress. Being so large it was difficult to manage, and they struggled to lift it as it bent and flexed in the middle, so Pyrites joined in by stuffing his snout under its foot and pushing upward until it flipped over.

  “Oh hell,” I said.

  Whoever had taken Kayla hadn’t been thorough enough; there was a dark green stain right in the middle of the mattress. Pyrites padded over to take a sniff and gave a little whine.

  “Blood?” I asked.

  “Blood,” Jinx said.

  “Maybe it isn’t theirs. Maybe the bed was already stained. Maybe …” I came to a halt as both my men and Pyrites were looking at me as though I was the village idiot.

  “They must have come at night. Kayla’s guard were overcome and she, and most probably her men, were taken.”

  “Would they have bothered taking Kayla’s bodyguards as well?” I asked.

  Jinx blew air out through pursed lips and lifted his fist to his chin in thought. “Only in as much as they wouldn’t want to leave any signs of violence: if the guards were overcome, either they or their bodies would have been taken. Kayla can’t be both villain and victim.”

  “Do you think she’s … ?” I hesitated, not wanting to say the word.

  Jinx shook his head. “They may well have killed her guard, but I doubt they’d have killed Kayla. What good is a dead scapegoat?”

  “I hate to point it out, but if she’s dead, she wouldn’t be able to argue her innocence,” Jamie said, giving me an apologetic grimace. My fists clenched at my side so hard I could feel my nails biting into my palms—I wanted to believe Jinx, but Jamie had a point.

  “Like Baltheza would listen,” Jinx said. “You know how he is when he gets all of a lather. And this last attempt on his life was too close for comfort; he won’t be happy until he has someone’s head on a spike. If two of his guard hadn’t died trying to save him he’d probably have had them executed for incompetence anyway.”

  “I knew he was insane,” I said, “but it’s like he’s getting worse.” I hoped it didn’t run in the family, though I still couldn’t really believe he was my father and didn’t think I ever would. As for my mother—well, that she was meant to be Kayla’s aunt didn’t sit very well with me either. I couldn’t be totally demon, I just couldn’t.

  “They do say power corrupts, and he’s been ruler of the Underlands for a considerable amount of time,” Jamie said, interrupting my maudlin thoughts. “The power and the temptation to use it for personal gratification have gradually turned him and his court into a hotbed of decadence and depravity. Once on that slippery slope, insanity looms large.”

  “I think he’s paid that price in full,” Jinx said, “he’s as mad as a rat in a cage surrounded by a pack of cats.”

  “So, what do we do about Kayla?” I asked.

  “We carry on searching the place and hope we find something that might give us a clue as to who has taken her—and where.”

  We searched the villa from top to bottom, then the gardens. Pyrites scampered ahead of us, sniffing and snuffling as he went. When he reached an area of lawn he started to grumble again. As I drew nearer, I could see watery streaks of jade decorating the russet blades and the red earth
below. It looked as though the attackers had tried to wash the blood into the grass.

  “Do you think it’s Kayla’s?” I asked.

  Jinx frowned at me. “She’s a royal.”

  “So?”

  “Kayla’s a blue blood. Green is the color of a lesser demon.”

  “When you were wounded your blood was red,” I said to Jamie.

  “Jinx and I are Higher Demon, our blood is red, just like yours.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But that would mean that if Baltheza is telling the truth my blood should be blue?”

  “I suppose it could be purple. I’ve never seen the blood of a demon-human cross,” Jinx said.

  “Purple?” Jamie said.

  “Red plus blue equals purple.”

  “I don’t think it works quite like that, Jinx.”

  “Baltheza told me my mother was Kayla’s aunt,” I said.

  “Hmm.” Jinx and Jamie both pulled faces of disbelief. “I’m not so sure about that,” Jinx said.

  “Me neither,” Jamie agreed. “We’ve been giving it some thought and it doesn’t really make sense that you’re totally demon—for one thing you can shed tears—but then, a lot of the things Baltheza says and does are a mystery, so who knows?”

  “I guess we can give it more thought later, but we have enough to worry about for the moment,” Jinx said, “like finding Kayla.”

  They were right: Kayla had to come first. If it was the other way round, I was sure she’d give everything to find me. I followed the three of them across the grass, Pyrites surging ahead, his snout moving from left to right as he scented the ground and the air. Then we entered a grove of trees and he put on a sudden spurt of speed and disappeared into the undergrowth. I heard a pathetic little whimper and he began to howl, a terrible heart-wrenching sound. Both Jinx and Jamie pulled their swords.

  “Look after Lucinda,” Jinx said and strode through the grove to find the drakon.

  I went to run after him and Jamie grabbed me by the arm. “We wait here.”

  “Jamie, Pyrites sounds like he’s been hurt.”

  “He’s upset ’tis all.”

  “He sounds more than upset.”

  “We wait here until Jinx tells us otherwise.”

  “But Pyrites—”

  “Pyrites will be fine.” I pulled my arm free and hugged myself. “Honestly, he will be fine,” Jamie promised. I really hoped he was right.

  The seconds stretched into minutes, and had there been walls to climb I would have been climbing them. Then Jinx called, “It’s all safe,” and Jamie took my hand and we moved through the trees.

  I didn’t need Jinx to tell me that acts of violence had occurred within the grove. Trees were gouged and green bloody handprints stained the bark, marking the passage of a fierce battle, and despite the heat of the day I felt cold and sick with apprehension.

  The trees gave way to gardens and there was nothing they could have done to hide the evidence of an almighty fight here. Flowers were trampled and bushes and saplings crushed and snapped. More blood stained the flagstone pathway that led out through a gate, and on the other side we found a cliff which dropped away sharply from us.

  Jinx was standing at the edge, overlooking the sea, with his hand resting on the drakon’s head. Pyrites was puffing black smoke and his wings were pulled back tight against his body.

  Jinx turned his head to glance our way. “I wouldn’t come any closer,” he said, his voice bleak.

  “Wait here,” Jamie said to me and walked over to join Jinx, who gestured downward with his head. “Oh shit,” he said, when he’d looked down.

  Jinx uttered a curse, turned his back on the cliff’s edge and went to walk away, then hesitated midstep. “Did you hear something?” he asked Jamie.

  Jamie leaned forward to peer over the edge. “I thought so.”

  Jinx strode back to join him and they both looked down. I moved a few steps toward them, my own ears pricked and listening hard. I wanted to know what was down there, but I’m not good with heights and I couldn’t quite bring myself to get any closer to the edge.

  “There,” Jinx said.

  Jamie frowned in concentration as he listened, then all of a sudden launched himself off the side of the cliff. It was so unexpected I gasped and started toward the edge before remembering Jamie had wings and could fly.

  “What is it, Jinx?”

  “Stay where you are,” he said.

  “Jinx?”

  “They threw their bodies over the cliff,” he said. “I suppose they hoped they would eventually be washed away by the tide.”

  “Bodies? Whose bodies?” I asked, rushing to stand beside him, my fear for Kayla outweighing my fear of falling.

  Jinx grabbed hold of me and pulled me away from the edge. “Kayla’s bodyguards.”

  “Kayla?” I asked struggling to break free of him.

  “No,” he said, “Kayla isn’t down there.”

  I looked up at his face and he gave me a gentle smile.

  “You’re sure?”

  He pulled me to him and kissed the top of my head. “Quite sure.”

  The sound of beating wings had us both looking back toward the cliff edge as Jamie appeared from below.

  “What in the name of Beelzebub?” Jinx said, and let go of me to hurry to Jamie’s side as he dropped down to land. Cradled in his arms was a demon. A demon I knew only too well: Vaybian, Kayla’s lover.

  “Is he alive?” I asked as Jamie gently laid him down on the grass.

  “Just,” Jamie said.

  Vaybian’s usually deep jade skin had paled to the tone of overcooked peas and was smeared with darker green liquid. A nasty gash scarred his brow and an open wound encrusted with drying blood sliced across the top of his thigh. A similar cut ran across his chest down from his left shoulder to the bottom right side of his rib cage, though to my inexpert eye the thigh wound looked the worst.

  His eyelids flickered, and for a moment I thought he was about to wake, but then his head slumped to one side. I looked up at Jamie in alarm.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “He’s unconscious, that’s all.”

  Jamie carried him back to the villa where we laid him down on one of the couches in the living area while Jamie and Jinx did their best to clean and dress his wounds.

  “They must have thrown him over the cliff thinking him dead,” Jamie said.

  “Considering all the trouble whoever did this has gone to, you’d have thought they’d make sure he was,” Jinx said. “A fall off a cliff won’t kill one of our kind and none of these injuries are fatal.”

  “The others all had their throats cut,” Jamie said and he and Jinx exchanged a glance.

  “Yet Kayla’s lover did not,” Jinx muttered.

  “It’s mighty strange that he’s the only one to survive. If it were I who’d orchestrated this intrigue, he’d have been the first one dead.”

  They were right—it was damn weird. I glanced at the unconscious demon willing him to wake up. We needed to know what had happened.

  “Unless of course, they knew we’d come and they knew we’d undertake more than the cursory search of Baltheza’s soldiers,” Jamie murmured almost as if to himself.

  They both turned to look at me. “I think Lucinda needs her full complement of guard,” Jinx said.

  “Aye,” Jamie agreed, “and sooner rather than later.”

  “We can’t travel while Vaybian’s like this,” I told them.

  “I’ll send a message to Kerfuffle and Shenanigans,” Jinx said.

  “You can do that?” I asked, surprised.

  “We may not have mobile phones and the internet in the Underlands, but it doesn’t mean we live totally in the dark ages,” Jamie said, smiling for the first time in quite a while.

  “Actually,” Jinx said with a grimace, “we do. I was going to send a raven.”

  “A raven?”

  “I have a very good relationship with the harbingers of death.”

  “It fi
gures,” I said with a sigh.

  It was so easy to forget that such a sexy and funny man was a Death Demon; the Death Demon, and I didn’t really like to be reminded of it, though I guess it was better to have him on my side than not.

  That I was apparently “marked” by him, as well as by Jamie, put me in a very unusual situation. I allegedly belonged to them both and any demon causing me harm would be on the receiving end of their very rough justice. Jamie’s mark alone was enough to make a demon think twice, but being marked by Jinx was something else altogether. I had seen members of the court edge away from him as he passed. Whenever we visited the Drakon’s Rest the conversation stuttered into silence and tables cleared to allow us to sit.

  “I’ll go and send the message,” Jinx said.

  I watched him walk out into the courtyard and put his head back to gaze up into the sky. Within moments, several black birds appeared above him and dropped down to land on the flagstones at his feet. They sat there, heads cocked to one side as though listening to him, until he held out his right hand and one flew up to alight upon his outstretched fingers.

  “Will he tie a message to its leg?” I asked Jamie, my eyes not leaving our friend and his little companions.

  “There’s no need. Kerfuffle and Shenanigans will know who’s sent the message and why.”

  “But how will they know where to find us?”

  “The raven will tell them.”

  That made me look at him. “The raven can speak?”

  Jamie laughed out loud. “Of course not. It’s a bird, albeit an intelligent one.”

  “Then how will it tell them?”

  “By leading them to us. They will literally follow the ravens.”