Demon Lord 6: Garnet Tongue Goddess

by Morgan Blayde

  Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t pull away. “That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

  “And here I thought you loved me for more than my huge endowment.”

  She draped her arms over my shoulders, leaning in, her lips coming a breath away from mine. “Don’t you dare try to make this about somehow being my fault, you half-pint dragon!”

  First time she’s ever thrown my height at me in an argument. She must be hurting.

  I forced a sympathetic expression on my face and did what a man needed to in these circumstances: I lied. “I’m really sorry for hurting you.”

  She pulled back, slipping out of my hold, and threw a wild punch at my head. I’d been expecting it. I leaned away, caught her wrist, and pulled it to my lips. I kissed her pulse. “How do you expect me to fuck you if you can’t be civil?”

  Oddly, I clearly heard my cock speaking though he was underwater. We’d let that stop us? Since when.

  She jerked away from me, pushed off the bottom, and swam over to the steps. I watched her bare, white bottom wiggle, beads of water turning to ice. She went to a bench, grabbed a towel, and scraped off the ice clinging to her. It softly hailed to the marble tiles.

  The water around me rewarmed quickly. “Izumi, where are you going?”

  “I’m calling your friend Red and seeing if he can come over for dinner tonight.”

  I had a bad feeling about this. “Why?”

  “Why do you think? He put your tattoos on you, he can take one off.”

  “He’s very busy. Probably won’t be available on such short notice.” I hoped he wasn’t.

  Izumi dropped the towel and slid into a fuzzy robe. “You two had a falling out not long ago, right?”

  “So?”

  “So what do you think he’d say if I asked him to come over and cause you intense pain, and that you’d pay him for it?” She smiled, walking to the edge of the pool so I had a better view up her robe. “I think he’d leap at the chance.”

  I suddenly remembered someplace I needed to go. I pushed off the bottom and swam toward the stairs.

  “Uh-uh,” Izumi said. “You’re staying here, where I know I can find you.”

  There wasn’t time to reach the stairs. I stopped swimming and gathered my feet under me. I crouched low and leaped, streaming water. I left the pool—mostly—jerked to a stop by the thick ice that suddenly bound my feet, making me another statue in the pool.

  “Izumi,” I called. “This isn’t funny. Enough is enough. I’m a wounded man. Have some pity.”

  She scowled fiercely. “If you know what’s good for you, you will still be here when I get back with Red.”

  Not likely. I never do what’s good for me; just what feels good to me.

  She stormed away without looking back, stepping over the sealed threshold, vanishing into the hallway.

  That went well.

  Fortunately, I had options besides my tattoo magic which was still a bit erratic after my poisoning. This was fairy, a mercurial world that answers to its lords, most of the time. My land loved me. All I had to do was reach out to the tie bonding us, and a wave of power would come to break me free.

  With my feet going numb from the ice, I hurried, reaching out with my spirit, calling with a flash of golden magic that flapped off my hand like a falcon, streaking toward the door and the hallway beyond. The golden fire carried my imprinted commands, a form of magical texting. The golden fire hit a wall over the threshold and burst into nothing.

  WTF!

  Ah! The seal of Solomon that Selene put on the threshold. Intended to provide magical protection for naked frolicking, keeping threats out, it was keeping my magic in. Why? I didn’t know, but if I had to guess … the seal was designed to also conceal my presence from seers and magical scrying. Selene had been a little too thorough for my taste. Knowing her sense of humor, I wondered if she’d done this on purpose. Selene lived outside of linear time; she’d know if there was a future need to undo my Safe Sex magic.

  I stared up at the red jasper dragon adorning the pool’s central pedestal.

  The red dragon seemed to be smiling.

  I flipped her off. Bitch! No one is messing with my balls—in a non-sexual way.

  Fine. I just had to deal with the ice and walk out. Surely I had enough dragon-born strength for this. I squatted, not wanting to risk bending over and maybe flailing about, possibly breaking an ankle. Almost sitting on the ice spur, my ball-sack tightened, feeling the cold. I knew I looked ridiculous, but it couldn’t be helped. Once I got free, vengeance would be mine. Like a martial artist about to break a cinder block, I rolled my fingers into a tight fist, held it by my ribs, chambered like a bullet in a gun.

  I concentrated, visualizing the blow I was about to make. In my mind’s eye, I saw the punch shatter the ice and free me. Just as I imagined, I threw the punch. A small crater appeared. The ice webbed with cracks. I smiled in triumph.

  I stopped smiling as the ice healed itself, reforming even thicker. I wasn’t fighting just ice, but ice magic as well. This was a new trick I hadn’t seen before. I should have known magic was involved from the way the ice was standing up to the steaming water’s heat.

  Considering my next step, I growled deep in my throat. Fine. Let’s try some dragon flame. Sluggishly, my magic flowed through my body. A haze of golden light swirled under my skin. I frowned. Was that a hint of sour green in the color from my poisoning?

  Never mind. I’ve got to press on.

  I drew that power to my Dragon Flame tattoo, kindling the magical ink in my skin. Pain came to pay for the spell. It felt like my body was spun—except for my frozen, encased feet. They stayed put while the rest of me violently detached. The blinding wash of agony faded out and I was left with no actual damage, just the memory of it.

  Hot golden flames surrounded my hand, making it a torch. The flames whirled off me as writhing sheets, baking the air. And imploded into nothing as the tattoo ran out of magical juice.

  I screamed. And screamed some more. “Izumi! Just for that, I’m not going to fuck you.” Let’s see you have my kid by Immaculate Conception. Harsh, I know, but you need to suffer for this.

  I thought of just one more thing to try. I looked at the red dragon statue and the female form captured in the coils. “Uh, Selene, sweetie, if you can hear me, I could really use a little help. “C’mon, you love me, right? I’m suffering here.”

  I waited. And waited. And waited.

  “Selene, you slut! Get your ass here, now!”

  The red dragon no longer seemed to be smiling.

  She’ll come to kill me, or save me. One or the other. How can she not?

  Much later… How could she not? How could everyone have betrayed me like this?

  My inner dragon yawned, opening golden eyes that still weren’t burning at full strength. He answered my question. Karma?

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Watch it. You don’t have too many friends left.

  “What the hell am I going to do?”

  Suffer through Izumi’s plan, then use a condom like everyone else.

  “I happen to like riding bareback. Condoms diminish sensitivity.”

  It’s only until you knock Izumi up. After that, she won’t care if you get the tattoo reactivated again. Really, bite the bullet and be a man about this. You might actually like having a kid, since you’re not the one that has to push it out.

  “I know, but all the early morning feeding, the crying and slobbering.” I shuddered from the horror of it. “And since I’ll have a kid to raise, she might start pushing me to get rid of the harem—be a family man.”

  It was the dragon’s turn to shudder.

  I saw movement at the door. There were three elves there. They wore midnight purple and gold. Their eyes were lit from within by a white haze that made them look like blind men, except one of them was female. She wore a tiara of silver inset with amber and had a long violet cloak. There were numerous amulets on silver chains. The
y hung between her b-cup breasts.

  My dragon used my eyes to study the group. He said: I don’t think they’re here to help.

  I sighed. “Storm Court assassins. I thought I was done with them. The fey don’t like me being a lord Under-the-Hill, but I thought they’d at last grudgingly accepted it. I killed enough of them on the field of battle so they should have.”

  My dragon sighed. Should have killed more. Mercy never pays.

  “Listen,” I said, “you got any lightning at all you can spare me?”

  Huh? Oh, the ice. Let me see what I can do.

  In my mind, I watched golden jags wrap around his coils, leaping, bridging the gap between his wings. I burned from the inside out. The ice exploded, shedding frozen shrapnel. Pieces of ice cut through the warm mists and splashed into the pool. Other pieces clattered onto the white marble tile. I felt myself broken free. And falling.

  And then the ice was back like an ice dragon’s claw, closing around me, crushing out my breath. I was horizontal now with an ice-wrapped torso. My head poked out, and my lower body. My back to the pool, I stared up at the distant ceiling tiles, and at the red and gold jasper dragons.

  Both of them were smiling.

  “You know,” I spoke to nobody in particular, “living barely seems worth it some days.”

  The fey lady outside the door staring in at me, her thin face an alabaster mask lacking expression, her eyes enhanced with purple shadow, her lips daubed with pink. With poufy hair, she looked like she could have fronted for an eighties glam-rock band. A silver chain crossed her torso, anchoring a scabbard behind her. She swung it around and drew her weapon. I expected a sword of some kind. What she had was a petite war hammer. The leather-wrapped shaft was ash. The head had a flat hammer on one side and a curved spike on the other.

  The two fey assassins at her feet stared at me as well.

  “What?” I yelled. “Never seen a demon lord on the rocks?”

  She looked down and spoke harshly to them. They jerked as if lashed and returned to what they’d been doing. As best as I could tell, they held a mirror—probably the magic variety. They rotated the mirror so the glass faced the threshold, turning its power back on itself. The male fey held the glass steady as the woman stepped over.

  Once inside the bathhouse, she smiled coldly and stalked toward me. Her voice rasped like she’d burnt it out with cigarettes and whisky. “I will give you Death’s restful darkness—at the end of my hammer!”

  1

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Dropkicking dragons will

  never catch on as a sport.”

  —Caine Deathwalker

  “I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

  She stopped dead. Suddenly, the tough little warrior chick looked like she wanted to cry. “You killed my mother!”

  “Did I? Was she trying to kill me at the time?”

  Using her war hammer as a pointer, she punctuated her words. “You can’t excuse what you did! You broke her into pieces.”

  “Terrible.” I remembered. A storm fey assassin had ambushed me outside my Malibu home. My inner dragon had taken over, swallowing the lightning thrown at me, crushing the storm mage, pounding her into stew meat across my car. “You lost a mom, I lost a Mustang. That balances out pretty much equally, don’t you think?”

  The two guys had put the mirror face down, leaving it on the threshold. They’d stepped over and were now coming up behind their mistress to watch her vengeance achieved.

  Fuck! Just sell tickets.

  She screamed incoherently and threw her hammer. I saw it was going to miss me.

  Chick throws like a girl.

  The hammer hit the ice. There was a deafening boom! The ice shattered under the impact of her storm magic. I fell free and bobbed in an ice floe. The magic ice reformed around me, solidifying even more of the pool’s water. This left my head and shoulders jutting above the frozen surface.

  I stared up at the fey warrior as she caught her hammer’s shaft, the thunder returning it to her.

  “Damn!” I said. “Who’s your daddy? Thor.”

  She stepped off the marble tile and walked across the ice. She stopped, looming over me, staring down with a tight smile stretched across her clenched teeth. She lifted the hammer, rocking her hips in a prelude to a swing. I suddenly knew how a golf ball felt.

  My inner dragon looked out my eyes, turning my head toward the red dragon statue. He used my voice: “Goodbye Selene, I love you.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I tightened my neck and shoulder muscles, bracing for impact.

  The war hammer blurred, coming in fast.

  A red wall crashed down and smashed the storm fey through the ice. No, not a wall, the red jasper dragon. She’d come alive, her eyes red crystal jewels full of hellfire. The dragon’s mouth gaped, dribbling dragon fire that fell and ate into the ice, clinging like napalm. Great, ragged cracks spread in ice that miraculously didn’t reform. Selene’s dragon magic had pimp-slapped Izumi’s ice magic out of existence.

  Fractures in the ice freed me. Knowing there were still two storm fey at the edge of the pool. I gulped a breath and ducked under the water. The heat that should have been near the bottom was gone.

  I so wanted to sip cocoa in front of a raging fire.

  I swam under the bobbing ice floes, circled around the central pedestal, using it for cover as I climbed out. I crouched on the white tiles, dripping icy water, considering my next move.

  A male warrior yelled. “Where is he? Where did he go?”

  “Never mind the outlander. Where is Ryella?”

  Ryella, must be the woman’s name. Matter of fact, where is she?

  The red dragon—unwound from the yellow one— swung its polished stone neck, the head searching as well. A few feet from me, a thin arm stabbed up out of the water. The hand fell and gripped the edge of the pool. Another hand appeared. She seemed to have lost her war hammer somewhere.

  Ryella dragged herself up. Bent at the waist, she half sprawled on the tiles. She’d shed her clothes so they wouldn’t weigh her down. She coughed out a little water and turned her face toward me.

  Her bright eyes still burned with bottomless rage, but there was calculation there as well. “Oh, well played. You used yourself as bait to spring the ultimate trap, and I fell for it.”

  “Would you like to sit by a fire and join me in something hot to drink?” I asked. “I can be merciful in victory.”

  She spoke on, ignoring my offer of hospitality. “I should have been suspicious about how easily we broke through your defenses. How long have you known we were lurking on your land?”

  “From the beginning,” I lied. I noticed her sliding a hand behind her so her palm pointed at the frigid water behind her.

  She’s buying time, gathering her strength while trying to lull me off my guard. Like that could happen.

  She surged up, the war hammer magically returned to her hand. The weapon arced down. Its curved spike aimed at my head.

  I side-rolled off hands and knees, across my back and returned to the same position—a mocking smile on my face. The weapon’s spike slammed into a marble tile, splintering it with a wham. I stared up over her head where the red jasper dragon’s head hung. It had found its prey.

  “You may want to surrender now.”

  The dragon head dripped on her. She slowly turned and stared up.

  The dragon’s lips writhed back, baring stone teeth that had dredged up her missing clothes and amulets. Its silent threat needed no paralyzing roar or sinister chuckle to announce doom.

  Ryella’s hand left her war hammer. “I accept your kind offer of a warm fire and drink. My word of honor on my surrender.”

  I saw her men—brave but stupid—running around the edge of the pool toward us. They carried swords. Staring at the animated statue, their faces were white with fear, but on they came.

  I stood slowly, carefully, every inch of me aching, and gestured down to the statue. It dipped its head and let the objects in
its teeth flop and clatter to the marble tiles. After that, I waved the dragon back.

  Slowly, it obeyed, as if not eating the enemy went against its better instincts. Once the dragon was gone, Ryella pulled herself fully out of the pool and sat up. Failure darkened her eyes, relaxing her face. There was no tension in her muscles.

  I said, “Tell your men to surrender as well, if you want them to live.”

  She faced them and yelled. “Dhal, Silf, lay down your weapons. We have failed.”

  Their run became a walk. As they reached us, they stopped and set their arms down, lifting empty hands.

  I sat on the marble, arms draped on my knees. “One question. Were you sent by your people, or are you acting alone?”

  “Alone. We were told not to come, not to provoke you. We were outlawed for insisting on vengeance.”

  “So you have no kingdom to return to.”

  Ryella said, “After avenging my mother, I didn’t care what happened to me.”

  I sighed. “Nor to your men, it seems. You really think your mom would be happy to see you throw your life away?”

  She lowered her head, not answering.

  I looked at her servants. “Go to the showers and bring back the towels and the robe you find there. Your mistress is naked.”

  Their eyes widened as they realized this was true. One of them ran off to get the items I’d mentioned.”

  “Ryella, if you and your men will bind yourselves with an oath, I will take you into my service.”

  She jerked her head up, staring in surprise. “You would take in an enemy?”

  I smiled with an effort, feeling very weary. “No, but I will take in friends if we can manage to forgive one another.” Besides, I knew no fey could directly lie. They’d stand by their sworn word. That didn’t mean we’d roast marshmallows and sing Kumbaya together. It did mean I wouldn’t have to waste this new resource.

  I get half, my inner dragon said.