I set the pillow aside and sat up on the bed. “So Karen isn’t throwing us out?”
Cooper smiled at me; a bit of tea and food had seemed to do him a world of good. “Of course not; my brothers can’t go anywhere right now, and if nothing else, she needs us for diaper duty.”
He closed the door behind him and sat down beside me on the bed, an eyebrow cocked. “I thought the news would cheer you up more than this. What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” I was incredulous. “I’m zombifying stuff with my tongue. I taste death. I went DEFCON 1 on poor Ginger for no good reason, and for the briefest second there I was thinking of killing her. For real.”
Cooper scratched his goatee thoughtfully. “But if you killed her, then you could lick her … people would probably pay good money to see that.”
I smacked his arm. “This is serious!”
“Honey, seriously, it’s just garden-variety necromancy blowback. You absorbed a lot of spiritual energy from the Goad, even more from the Virtus, and it’s bound to leak out in all kinds of weird ways. We’ll figure it out, don’t worry. And Ginger will forgive you, once she stops whimpering quietly in the corner, muttering ‘Rosebud …’ ”
I laughed despite my worry. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’ll be fine. Ginger’s cool, she knows you’ve been through a lot and you’re not yourself right now.”
“No, I mean about this being garden-variety stuff. Because …” I trailed off.
“Because what?” He butted my shoulder playfully with his forehead as if he were a big house cat. “C’mon, talk to me.”
I took a deep breath. “I didn’t lose my hand in your hell. I got the diabolic fire, yes—but I lost my hand the night you got sucked through the portal. Your little brother Blue sloughed all his bad emotions off into a soul-shard that turned into a demon when it escaped the hell and came to Earth—”
“Blue generated a Wutganger? Huh. Kid’s got some issues.”
“Gee, you think? Anyway, I took care of the Wutganger, but it bit my hand off and burned out my eye. It put some kind of poison in me. The zombie meat thing—the Wutganger could animate and control dead flesh. I’m a little freaked out that I’m showing some of its powers. I’m worried all this will … get worse. I’m worried that I’m becoming some kind of monster.”
He gave me a hug. “Yes, it’s a legitimate concern, but. Agonizing over this won’t make it any better, will it? You’re made of sterner stuff than … well, me, for instance. I don’t know how you survived your fight with the Virtus. What you did to kill it—that should have killed you, too. I can’t imagine how anyone could have survived absorbing its energy like you did, but here you are.”
I gave him a look. “So basically, you’re saying that I’m some kind of freak of nature? Am I supposed to find this news comforting?”
Cooper made an exasperated noise. “What I’m saying is, you’ll survive this, too. We’ll survive. We just have to stay calm, stay positive.”
He touched my left hand. “Can I take a look at this?”
“Sure.” I pulled off the satin glove and held my flame hand between us.
He held my arm by my elbow and frowned at the fire. “I … wow. This is really different. It’s giving off a vibe like it’s a curse, but not. I thought I could figure out something to do about this, but now that I’m looking at it, I’m kinda stumped. Er. No pun intended, there.”
“Yeah, right.” I gave a snort and slipped the glove back on.
“Hey, what did you do to your other hand?”
I looked down; my knuckles were bruised black and blue. They looked much worse than they felt. “Oh. I, um, hit the Warlock. Kinda lost my temper with him earlier.”
“He does have that effect on people.” He took my flesh hand in his and whispered an ancient word for “heal.”
“Is that better?” he asked, massaging my palm.
“Yes, much. Thanks, sweetie.”
He kissed my knuckles and scooted around behind me on the bed and began to rub my shoulders. “You’re still way too tense. You’ve got more knots back here than a ship’s rigging.”
“Arr,” I replied, pirate style.
He slipped his hands up under the Hello Kitty T-shirt I’d borrowed from one of Karen’s teenagers. His hands were like velvet on my skin. I felt my nipples go hard.
“Permission to come aboard?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. Just … just don’t kiss me. On the mouth, I mean. I know we were kissing earlier, but I feel weird about that right now,” I said. “And don’t pull my shirt off—it might take the glove with it. Mother Karen would be really mad if we scorched her quilt.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
Cooper gently pushed my T-shirt and sports bra up under my arms, planting small kisses across my back that made me shiver in delight. I sucked in my breath as he slid his hands around my sides and cupped my breasts in his hands, squeezing my nipples between his fingers. He pushed my hair to the side and began to kiss the sensitive spot behind my left ear. His goatee tickled my neck. Goose bumps rashed down my spine.
“It feels like it’s been years since we did this.” I pulled away so I could lie back and start to take off my khakis and undies. I wanted Cooper in me as quickly as possible, but in the back of my mind I was aware that the pants weren’t mine, and I suspected I had only one other pair of clean underwear in my knapsack. So the fewer bodily fluids I got on either, the happier I’d be once the afterglow of our lovemaking had faded.
“Last week was work,” he replied, meaning the erotomancy we’d used to call the rainstorm. He nudged my hands away from the front of my pants so he could finish unzipping them himself. “This is me showing my proper gratitude for you coming to rescue me.”
I laughed as he tugged my khakis down my hips. “Honey, that still sounds a lot like work.”
He tossed the pants into the corner and stripped my underwear down my legs. “I think you’ll see the difference once I get started.”
“Then I leave myself in your capable hands.” I closed my eyes as Cooper gently spread my thighs and applied himself with all the dedication and enthusiasm of an Eagle Scout who’d just earned a merit badge in ear breathing.
My anxiety melted away as the sweet tension built and built, a hormonal freight train, fast even for me, but that was okay. Oh God was I ready—
—my thighs involuntarily clamped down on Cooper’s head as the orgasm took me and I arched my back with a sudden gasp, my body rigid—
—a tiny part of me was aware of a sudden coolness on my left elbow and a faint fwap! that might be the sound of a satin opera glove hitting the wall—
“Mmmmph! Et oh, et oh!” Cooper frantically slapped my ass with his free hand.
I released him and opened my eyes. My flame hand was jetting burning purple jelly all over the wall, all over the dresser, all over the ceiling, and the stuff was simultaneously corroding and igniting everything it touched. It looked like napalm from a particularly bad hell, and stank of sex and sulfur. The paint, plaster, studs, even the exterior bricks were flaring bright and burning down to noxious black ash with astonishing speed.
Cooper spoke an old word for “blizzard,” a flurry of snow and ice bursting from his fingertips, but the spell fizzled against the flames. Parts of the wall were entirely gone, and I could see the neighbor’s house through the smoke.
“Oh Jesus, make it stop!” he hollered.
My climax had well and thoroughly ended, but the arm wasn’t stopping, and I couldn’t even feel the jet. It wasn’t part of me. I shook my head, frightened and baffled. “But I’m not doing this!”
“MAKE IT STOP!”
I closed my eyes, focused all my energy on the flames, trying to get them back under my control.
I heard the door bang open.
“What are you doing in here?” Mother Karen sounded like she was ready to kill someone.
“Why isn’t this place fireproof?” Cooper yelled back.
/> “It is!” Karen protested. “This … this is insane, I’ve never—”
“Wow. Incendiary ectoplasm,” I heard the Warlock comment from the hallway. “That’s pretty unusual outside a hell.”
I finally turned off whatever diabolic spigot had been opened in my flame hand, but I’d dripped enough in the process that now the bed was on fire, too, my ectoplasm eating huge holes right through the mattress and melting the steel springs. So much for the quilt. I scrambled to safety, then quickly used my flesh hand to pull my sports bra and shirt back down over my breasts, belatedly realizing it was a completely pointless gesture since I was naked from the waist down.
“I—I didn’t mean to do this,” I stammered. “I don’t know how this happened.”
Mother Karen’s face had gone white. “The whole house will burn, we’ve got to get the kids out of here—”
“Try salt water, lots of it. All of you,” the Warlock said.
We did as he suggested, and after a couple of false starts we were able to summon enough ocean water to douse the unholy fire.
The guest room lay in utter ruins; what had not burned was a sodden, stinking mess. Nobody said anything for a long time.
“Well.” The Warlock broke the silence. “I wish Ginger was here to see this.”
“Why?” Mother Karen asked.
“Because I think this illustrates exactly why ancient tribes came to fear the female freak-on.”
chapter
three
Youthful Indiscretions
I stood in the backyard wearing what I’d already come to think of as the Itchy Plaid Wool Skirt of Abject Shame. An olive-drab sleeping roll and a pillow were tucked under my good arm. My left hand burned nakedly in the night air. The ectoplasmic emission had ripped open the seams on my glove, and at the moment Mother Karen and the Warlock were too busy with the guest room to fix it.
“Are they able to repair the damage to the house?” Pal stilted toward me on his rangy legs.
I nodded and tossed the sleeping bag and pillow onto the picnic table. “But it looks like I’m bunking with you tonight, out here where I’m less of a fire hazard.”
He blinked at me. “But surely you and Cooper have enough self-control to avoid further carnal—”
“Wet dreams.”
“Ah. Yes. Those.”
“And probably any old nightmare would do it, too.” I cleared my throat. “The others thought that you should stay up to watch me and wake me up if it looks like I’m having a bad dream. I mean, if you’re up for that. I … I guess you’re not really my familiar anymore, are you? So you’re free to do what you want, but we’d all really appreciate it if you kept me from burning anything else down.”
“Of course. I don’t mind, and keeping Mother Karen’s home safe certainly seems like a worthy cause.”
I bit my lip. “What’s going to happen to you now? It seems like maybe I’m not in as much trouble as I thought, but I don’t know what kind of pull Riviera Jordan has with your jailers.”
Pal scratched his shaggy thorax thoughtfully with one of his middle legs. “Honestly, I have no idea what will happen. I managed to break the binding spells my overseers placed on me, so I suppose the next logical thing for them would be to pursue me directly and take me back into custody. But so far there’s been no sign they’ve implemented that plan. Even if I am exonerated for my actions over the past week, I still have several decades left on my sentence.”
“So what did you do to get into trouble in the first place?”
Pal’s face was still unreadable, but his voice sounded pained. “I was very young, and had an unfortunate interest in diabology, and some nefarious individuals discovered my interest and naïveté, and, well …”
I was dying to know what trouble Pal could’ve gotten into. “Well, what?”
“One thing led to another, and they convinced me to help them bring a manifestation of the ancient god you may know as Abraxas into the largest city of my home planet.”
In the wake of all the chaos, my memory wasn’t what it should have been. “Abraxas … I hate to sound dumb, but I can only remember that’s the name of an old Santana album Cooper’s got in his vinyl collection.”
Pal blinked at me. “The entity is also known as Abrasax. Does the title ‘Demon of the Great Year’ help you?”
My brain pinged on some of my Egyptian studies. “Head of a rooster, snakes for legs, carries a whip and shield?”
“That’s one described manifestation, yes. Abraxas has many recorded forms.”
“But it’s not really a demon, right? I mean, that’s just mundane confusion over the whole demon-versus-devil-versus-god situation, right?”
“Indeed. Abraxas is no mere demon,” Pal replied.
Demons are basically just supernatural servants. Gods, devils, and powerful Talents can create them, sometimes by accident, but usually intentionally. They’re often created from pieces of broken souls, although some golem demons don’t have any soul elements at all (and consequently have all the personality of your average vacuum cleaner). As a group, demons are neither good nor evil, unlike devils, which are typically selfish schemers at best and sadists of the nastiest nature at worst. Devils poke and prod mortals into action and feed off the resulting psychic energies; the best of them are the muses, but even they rarely have any qualms about driving their artists mad to satisfy their own hunger.
Good servant demons—or daemons, as the more intelligent ones would rather be called—normally go about their tasks with quiet efficiency and are seldom encountered by people they don’t have business with. Accidentally created demons, on the other hand, are usually uncontrolled, destructive, blatant incarnations of strong emotions like hate and anger. Their horrible natures taint the reputation of demonkind as a whole; even I carry a shoot-first prejudice against demons, and I should know better.
“But it’s a telling detail that Abraxas is referred to as a demon,” Pal continued. “It was once a god of creation and destruction, both good and evil, but as the aeons passed and other creators like Jehovah gained followers and power, Abraxas has become more associated with its darker nature. It’s reclusive, mercurial, and nobody really knows what its true intentions might be these days.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.
“In fact, it was not. I am purely fortunate that I only got a few hundred years’ sentence as a familiar. I suffer everlasting dismay that I was duped so very easily, when at the time I prided myself on what I supposed to be my superior intellect.”
“So, why did you help them?”
“They were attractive and knew exactly what to say to me. In retrospect I was surely an easy mark; despite my aloofness I was desperate to belong. They preyed on my youthful conviction that democracy is fundamentally doomed to failure because the populace as a whole lacks sufficient intelligence and moral fiber to make good decisions. A god-emperor, they convinced me, would provide solutions to all our society’s ills. And of course they promised that I’d have some important role in our brave new world under Abraxas.”
“And then what happened?”
“They raised Abraxas—or what they claimed was Abraxas, at any rate—right in the middle of our capital city. To this day I don’t know what it really was, but it was mainly interested in devouring as many of my people as possible. I realized my terrible mistake, of course, and went to the authorities with what I knew. The minions by then had staged a raid on the capital treasury and were long gone with a considerable number of priceless artifacts. Fortunately the authorities managed to banish the entity before the city was destroyed. And, as it turned out, I was one of a dozen youthful Talents they’d recruited for their scheme.”
“Wow.” I was silent for a moment. “Can you ever go back there?”
“Surely not like this.” Pal gestured toward his hybrid body. “They don’t have ferrets on my world, and even if they did, I’d still look nearly as monstrous to my own people as I seem to yours.”
“Perhaps.” Pal sounded supremely doubtful and a bit sad. “For all I know, the Fates have willed this unsightly mash-up to be my true form.”
I didn’t believe in Fate—or didn’t want to, anyhow—but I didn’t feel like arguing the point with Pal. As I pondered the frustrating nature of predestination, I let my flame hand drop too close to my leg. The fire bit right through the wool skirt into my skin.
“Ow!” I jerked my hand away from my scorched thigh. “Christ, I’m gonna have to start carrying a healing crystal like the Warlock. Dammit. Ow.”
“It might be best if Riviera Jordan were to focus her resources on removing your curse,” Pal said. “My current condition does not render me a danger to myself.”
I no longer doubted that my flame hand was some kind of curse. I could barely eat, couldn’t safely get off, and now it looked like decent sleep was definitely off the menu, too. “Well, I hope Riviera can do something about this. I hope she’s not just lying to Mother Karen about wanting to talk things over reasonably.”
The burn on my leg was roughly the size of a business card, and it stung like crazy. I placed my flesh palm over the wound and spoke an ancient word for “heal.” It helped, but not as much as I’d hoped.
Worried anew that I was losing my ability to use white magic, I began to pace around the yard, holding my flame hand well away from my body.
“You should try to get some rest,” Pal said.
“I will, in a little while.” I was absolutely bone-tired, and wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep for the next sixteen hours, but I was afraid of what might happen once I drifted off. If I drifted off.
My flame hand seemed to catch on something. I looked down, puzzled. I was out in the middle of the yard; there wasn’t so much as a tall dandelion nearby. I waved my hand through the empty air. And there it was again, the sensation of an invisible seam.
Shotgun Sorceress Page 3
