“Run her ragged,” Selene said.
“That’s what I said. Hey, anyone got some pants for me?”
“Here.” Selene looked at me. There was a shimmer of red. Then I wore pants. With no shirt to get in the way, grew my dragon wings out, enjoying the fact that it no longer took two or three minutes.
Colt gasped as he saw the partial transformation. “Hey, I want to try that. No one told me we could go just part way.”
Selene gave a little laugh. “My future memories tell me you’re hard enough to catch running around the fortress on two feet. Pulling you off the chandeliers would be way worse.”
Time to go. I leaped, wings flapping hard as I climbed. A moment later, I heard more flapping. Colt pulled up beside me. He had dragon feet and wings, his sword stretched out before him, a black blade wrapped in red demonic aura. He seemed to be arguing with the sword.
Welcome to my world.
Colt said, “I know shadows don’t have souls, doofus. But a goddess does. She’s in one of them.”
As close as we’d come, it loomed ever taller. Or maybe it was growing bigger.
Selene fell in at my right, standing relaxed on a spell circle that floated under its own power, carrying her along. It had an encompassing ring of red light with three smaller rings inside. The small circles had different runes around them that spun as all three circles rotated as well.
Talk about a spell in motion.
“I’ll go first!” She pulled away from Colt and I, streaking toward the central shadow man. Selene flew straight at the shadow man’s chest. It reached for her with outstretched hands, clawing the air. Treating the spell circle like a surfboard, she fell ninety degrees to the side, bringing the horizontal pattern vertical. Bending her knees, she rode the magic disk inside the shadow man’s reach, flashing between its arms.
Right before impact, she swung her head away, kicking with her feet, swinging the spell circle so its underside slammed into the chest of the shadow man. The magic circle flared and burned its way inside the silhouette, vanishing. Selene slowly fell toward the ground as if gravity had gone half-force.
Bending at the waist, the shadow man swept its big hands at her. I heard no sound, but the shadow of its body puffed like an over inflated balloon, as if an explosion had detonated at its core. A web-work of red cracks spread over it like a rash. The lines glowed, stabbing the air with red blades of force. The shadow creature scattered everywhere, reduced to a flurry of shadow flakes that spun themselves ever smaller, dissolving.
One down, four to go. And no goddess inside.
Reforming her floating spell circle, Selene rode it back into the air.
By then, I’d waved Colt to stay back, swerving to take the next shadow on the left. Focusing raw, golden magic, I fed it into the titanium katana. The sword burned yellow. I could have added shadow magic to the weapon, but Bella would only have taken the power from me, making her stronger. I knew better than to try and match her shadow to shadow.
Gliding on golden dragon wings, I flew sword-first at my target. The shadow man reached. Its hand closed around me, trapping my golden fire. But that fire thinned the shadow, weakening its solidity. Like swimming a black river, I shot inside the arm, entering the torso. I lodged in its heart, or, where it would have had a heart if it truly lived. There, I used the sword to slash the mystic lines of the Dragon Fire tattoo I’d once worn. As a firestorm bloomed next to me, I spun and drew the lines of my old Dragon Pressure tattoo that once rode over my bellybutton. The fire I’d ignited raged as the second spell activated. Its pressure waves took the fire and flushed it violently through the back of the shadow man, creating a massive exit would that I was also thrown out of. I rode a tongue of fire to the ground, landing with a flutter of wings.
I turned and looked back at the shadow man I’d been within. His back was gone. The rest sprayed the air as shadow flakes, adding to the ashy blizzard.
Selene hovered above me, looking down through her floating pattern of red lines. Once she saw I was all right, she whisked herself away, onto the next shadow man.
Except Bella had learned from watching us; the remaining two shadow giants slumped to the ground, washing about like tsunami waves. The waves broke, solidifying into an army of much smaller figures. These shadow men were twenty feet each, a mob that split in two directions to attack Selene and I.
Bella’s hidden even better; she could be inside any of them. Or none of them. Nothing actually says she has to be here. She could be pulling puppet-stings from anywhere in the blackness of the sky.
I lifted myself into the sky, heading for Selene. I called to her, “Bring the red moon into orbit.”
“Against Bella’s home court advantage? That will take most of my strength.”
“It will burn through a lot of hers, too. Trust me. We need this.”
She burned crimson, the light blotting her out.
Sensing something special was coming, the shadow men flung themselves our way at a faster pace. Colt appeared, red-copper light dancing around him as he plunged bodily through several shadow men at once. Flooding my sword with golden jags, I cut a swath through the air, creating a crescent of golden fire that spun as it flew, piercing three of the shadow men, breaking them down into more dark flakes.
This isn’t fast enough.
I yelled at Colt. “Cover me. I’m going to try something.”
He flapped over to me, “I won’t let them hurt you.”
His sword took that moment to try jumping free of his hand so it could impale me. The sword had always wanted my soul in its collection, but it couldn’t break Colt’s grip. He pulled it away from me and stared at it with red-copper eyes that stabbed like stars. He told his sword, “Try that again and I will break you in half.” The utter conviction in his nine-year-old voice cowed the sword; I felt the recession of its hunger as the demon aura dimmed.
Colt shot me a sheepish grin. “Sorry, Dad.”
I nodded, concentrating on the tattoo pattern that had once tied me mystically to my armory. I pulled a little shadow magic just to the surface of the skin over my heart. It lay there like a blotch of spilled ink. Inspired, I bled a little golden dragon magic around it to protect the pattern from Bella’s influence. Finally, I willed the shadow to take on the form of the tattoo I imagined.
If this works, I can essentially give myself any magic tattoo I need, as long as I can see it clearly in my mind.
There was a sensation like ants walking across my chest. I looked down. The familiar tattoo was back. I focused on my armory, sensing it like a new body part just sown back on. A lot of weapons were available to me again: machine guns, machetes, pistol, swords, axes, grenades, and magical relics. I pulled a long bow to me along with a jury-rigged arrow I’d made once when very bored, and very drunk. I think I’d been thirteen at the time. The bow was fey-crafted, made out of an elastic blue glass with silver wire wrapping for a handgrip. I’d unwound a little of the silver wire to tie an Atlantean power crystal to the arrow tip—my version of a flaming arrow.
While I held the arrow, my thumb on the crystal, supercharging it with raw dragon magic, from the corner of my eye, I registered heavy jags of red-copper lightning jazzing across the broken city landscape. Colt was doing his job, buying me time. I looked up. Selene had done hers as well; her red moon now hung in the sky above Tartarus. Not firmly in this dimension, it was a little ghostly around the edges, but shed a wan radiance down on the black planet.
The sky was no longer an unrelenting black but had turned a very dark crimson. Against the new backdrop, I saw a floating sphere of darkness, a bubble that had to be Bella’s hiding place. I aimed for the center of the bubble. I thought the bow might break under my dragon-strength, but a shimmer of Selene’s red power ghosted over the glass, and it held.
I shot the arrow and waited.
Selene had been right about the drain on her power. The red glow she’d put in the ground was returning to us, chased by black shadow as Bella’s powe
r retook the countryside, and then the outer streets of the city itself.
Selene brought her open portal near, so we could make a last second dash for it if needed.
I looked at Colt. He approached, having dispatched the last of the walking shadows. I pointed at the portal. “Go. We’ll be along in a minute.”
He stared back at me. “You promise?”
“For what it’s worth.”
He took that as a yes, and flew to the red disk, passing through to wherever it might lead.
I don’t think Bella saw the arrow coming. It covered the great distance swiftly, and the red moon doubtless distracted her. She probably thought we were going to smack her world with the moon as a final option, when all I’d wanted was its light coming from space.
There was a blast of silent gold that destroyed her black bubble. It imploded and was gone from the sky. At the same moment, a few blocks away, I saw a black hole appear in the black rubble. The black shadow-pool lying on an oily black street was only visible because it spilled golden radiance up into the air. Out of that radiance, Bella rose on wings of shadow that beat fitfully and failed. The shadow pool closed under her, cutting off the gold light. She dropped to the street.
I flew to her, wanting to get there before Selene did. The Red Lady might decide to just finish off her rival. We got there nearly together, descending to where Bella lay sprawled on the stone, her back against a fallen chunk of masonry. My arrow stuck out of her side. Her skin around the wound looked like cracked purple glass. Bella’s eyes were open, staring into nothing. She breathed heavily, face lined with agony.
My inner dragon stared with golden eyes: Hell of a shot.
I lie to other people, not myself. “I got lucky.”
I knelt by Bella, grabbed the arrow, and pulled it out in one quick motion. There was no arrowhead. Half of the shaft had been dissolved by the released energy. I think the energy had exploded from inside Bella. Divine beings had died from less. I know. I’ve killed several.
Selene knelt beside me. She held the mask of Cronos in front of Bela’s pain-filled eyes, saying, “I could put this on you and leave you here to die. That would solve one of my problems.”
I wasn’t so sure the mask would let her. It had a thousand-year curse that needed fulfilling. This was probably a bluff on Selene’s part.
She put the mask under her arm. “I’m going to keep this in case you come to Earth, or the red moon, trying to take what’s mine. Don’t give me a reason to regret my mercy. Close your world off. Play with your disobedient children. Enjoy the monsters I’ve left you. And in a thousand years, we’ll have coffee and laugh about all this.”
Selene stood and walked toward the red portal. She spoke over her shoulder. “Say goodbye, but don’t keep me waiting too long.”
I looked down at Bella. Her eyes were on me. Tears ran down her face. “I just wanted to love you.”
I smiled at her. “No one’s telling you not to. You just can’t be selfish about it. Your love shouldn’t cost me my destiny. Come look me up in a thousand years. I’ve never fucked a purple goddess. I look forward to it.” I kissed her very sweet lips and accidently groped a tit while I was at it. “There will always be a place in my harem for you.”
I stood and walked away, knowing her power would soon revive enough to heal her, and seal this dimensional behind me. She’d survived loving me; that could only make her stronger.
I fluttered my wings and lifted into the air. A short flight brought me to Selene and the final portal. I took her hand and together, we left hell behind.
COMING SUMMER OF 2017, THE LAS VEGAS ADVENTURE CONTINUES IN:
MOONSTONE SHIFTER
By
MORGAN BLAYDE
EXCERPT:
Atop a distant range of hazel and twilight-blue mountains, the sky blushed around a setting sun. In another piece of Arizona sky, a pale blue moon took on more definition, its shadows suggesting a female profile; Diana, goddess of the hunt, was watching.
Closer at hand, I saw little more than endless stretches of brush, thistle, and Yucca plants. Young coyotes yipped in the wilds, back past the property line. Molly and her son Dirk had tried to build here. The foundation of their prospective structure had been broken, the building supplies absconded with. Even the plastic, twenty-one-hundred-gallon water tank had been taken. There was a missing shed and a gas generator that had also walked off.
The police had no leads.
Molly had gone crying to her daughter over the phone. Her daughter Clio had come crying to me. In that she was one of the were-kitties I occasionally orgy with, I’d let my arm get twisted. I mean, how do you say no to a hot naked college girl in gold-rimmed glasses whose head is bobbing on your cock?
Not easy at all.
I’d paid some locals to dig around, to see what might be buried around here, if anything. The local Indians and their lawyers called this undeveloped area holy ground. Not anymore. More like desecrated earth. Blood had been spilled here, though not recently. The skull pulled from the excavated trench had a hole in it, the kind made by a bullet. There were more skulls, more bones in what would likely prove to be a mass grave. There was also an empty strongbox. This could have been a falling out of some old outlaw gang, or the work of Indian raiders.
One of history’s mysteries.
Restless spirits of the Old West might explain the shadows always seen at the edge of sight, but not the damage and thefts.
I smelled the kind of spirit you gulp from a shot glass. Whisky. Someone had been through here with an open bottle not long ago. He might not be alive anymore—there were oversized paw prints in the dusty soil. Cat prints. Not small, feral mousers. Big ones. Puma? Cougar? Lynx? Hell, if I knew, but their scent was strong.
Shapeshifters in the area. I wonder what the coyotes think of that. And where are the men who’ve been staying in the rented RV. Some guards they are.
The whisky drinker could have been one of them, but that still left several people unaccounted for.
Another question, why didn’t Cleo mentioned shifters? She’d have known about them, coming from here originally.
I sighed. It didn’t look like I’d resolve this mess any time soon. And it needed to be soon. With the Villager situation resolved, the Old Man was getting on with his wedding. I needed to get back in a few days. The casinos of Las Vegas were my natural environment, not Hellhole, Arizona, population seven hundred.
To get the hell out, I needed some kind of break in the case. The kind of break you get when some noisy person is trying to sneak up behind you with a shovel to bash your head in. I heard him and smelled him. Turning to catch the wooden shaft, gripping the handle tightly, I reduced it to kindling. The shovel’s head flew into the dirt. I grabbed a scruffy tweaker by the throat and lifted him off the ground with one hand.
He twisted, struggling, then gave up. “Okay, you got me. But the ridge-runners will get you, sooner or later. Why shouldn’t I make a few bucks off what’s here?”
“Because nothing here is yours.”
I threw him fifteen feet from me and watched him hit, roll, and come to a limp stop.
Then I heard low, throaty growls, three of them. None were human. I turned and saw the pride. A blend of human and cat, two shifter males had ashen fur. The female had a blue-smoke coat, a ghost cat with sapphire-flame eyes. Around her neck, hung a gold necklace supporting a pale-blue moonstone.
The shifters crouched low, ready to attack—but didn’t. They’d seen my toss. They knew I wasn’t human. They ran.
Fuck, don’t make me chase you!
I concentrated and my back tore open, my coat and shirt shredding. Blood ran down my exposed back as I fanned dragon wings. In the past, I’d need precious minutes for such a partial change. That was before Selene—my Red Lady—made an impromptu improvement to my genetic code. Now, I only need time for the complete change to dragon because so much extra mass was involved.
Flapping furiously, I leaped into the air and w
ent after the were-cats. The ground blurred under me. The cats were fast as well, and apparently used to the terrain. They made use of ridges, washes, and clumps of vegetation to change direction, staying together without word or signal I could detect. But with the extra height I climbed and my sharp dragon-vision, I kept up.
A wash lead them to a dirt road. They stopped there, turning to face me.
Decided to fight, huh? Like you’ve got a chance against a demon lord. My hands splayed open, muscles jumping, nails turning black and long. I’ll put dragon claws up against cat claws any day.
I swooped down.
The female lifted both hands palm-out, a ward-off gesture. She spoke something that might have been a foreign language—or an arcane spell. Glowing like moonlight, a seven-foot ring appeared in the air between us. Inside it was a six-pointed star, the Seal of Solomon. At the center of the star were spiral lines I recognized as the Wheel of Eternity.
Magic user and a shifter. Marvelous.
I back-winged to stop from hitting her conjuring.
Her hands made a pushing gesture at the wheel.
The whole pattern moved, leaping at me. It hit like a brick wall, smashing me back, cold fire that faded out as I fell to the ground. I picked myself up, but by then, they were gone.
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
07- Black Blood Brother Page 30
