The sphinx nodded along with me. This wasn’t turning out to be a hard sell at all.
I slapped a look of genuine sympathy on my face, master deceiver that I am. “I can help you. All you need is the garnet tongue of a goddess.” Or the stone tongue from an idol that someone just left lying around for me to steal. My hand caressed the leather-wrapped knife hilt in my thigh sheath. “I have it right here.” I eased the knife from the sheath and slowly brought it into view between us. I held it by both ends. “See how pretty it is? Feel the magical energy it has—naga energy. Fix you right up.”
Her gaze clung to the knife. Her eyes smoldered. Hunger burned there. Naked. Deep. She hesitated. Distrust is an awful thing. Of course, we had been trying to destroy her up ‘til now.
“Why did the elephant take his laptop fishing?” I asked.
Her gaze shifted to my face. Her paws were limp like her wings. I had her whole attention.
I gave her the punch line. “He wanted a byte.”
Holy and Shiva were off somewhere, groaning at my efforts. Bitches.
But the sphinx had become more of a living thing. Her stone lion’s body was shifting texture, developing real fur. The woman’s face warmed, living skin replacing polished stone. The tits I’d shot off were regenerating, filling in, and getting nice and bouncy, I couldn’t help noticing.
Gimmee, gimmee! My cock said.
I often amaze myself. Geez, I can put you anywhere, can’t I?
The sphinx inched closer, her gaze back on the garnet tongue again. The tongue full of poisoning magic. I held it in one hand while slowly reaching inside the cage. I placed my right palm over the lion’s heart and rubbed the fur soothingly.
“Such a pretty monster, you are.” I half way sung the words.
The sphinx rumbled, something like a purr.
My hand went wandering all on its own, feeling her up, and softly tweaking her nipples.
Osamu softly called to me. “Focus, Caine-sama. Time and a place.”
I wanted to keep the sphinx for a pet, but couldn’t risk it. Who knew what might eventually wander out of the altered space in the brass ball. No, she had to be destroyed. But maybe if the tits survive… Focus. Focus. One more push.
“Why did the elephant cling to the slice of lime?”
“Lhimm. Lhimmm.”
I gave her the answer. “So he wouldn’t fall into the Margarita.”
She looked at me blankly.
“It was a pygmy elephant. At a bar.”
She opened her mouth wide. Then wider. An open invitation.
Sadly, I release her tit. I pulled my hand back, and put it on the knife. I rotated it so it pointed back at me. “Here you go.” I stuck the butt of the knife in her mouth, pressing it in. I saw the back of her throat brighten with the murky green light of the blade. The knife fused in place, becoming hers.
I stepped back.
The stone went fluid. It rippled. The knife point flicked at me. It hung down past her chin, like she was eating someone’s tie. Her mouth closed to a thin slit. The poisoned tongue jerked as she struggled to speak. The garnet prong shriveled, resizing itself. A moment later, it was in scale to the woman’s head. And the green light in her mouth shone much brighter. She said, “What’s pale and cold and covered in blood?”
I knew the answer. Me, once our conversation was done.
I smiled.
She stiffened. Her eyes turned green. Her skin turned green. Her fur turned green. Her wings turned green. Even the brass cage took on that sheen. The woman’s head jerked. A spasm twitched her face. Her paws fell from the grill, dangling limp and useless. I could hear her heart pounding in furious distress.
“Fuh-fhu-fhu—”
I helped her say it. “Fuck.” I backed away some more. “I know it hurts. Sorry.”
The Old Man pounced on the cage. His hands gripped the brass grill.
Lightning dancing over her fingers, too, as Holy walked up and grabbed the grill in another spot.
Shiva came over and touched the driveway. It went liquid. The spider legs sank into the softened pavement. The pavement hardened again, trapping the yantra. Osamu joined them, his demon sword a black streak at the core of crackling red demon energy. He slashed the side of the ball, damaging the grill. At some point, like a slashed circuit board, the brass would fail to be a gate, and the world would be safe from the altered space inside.
The sphinx closed her green eyes tightly in pain. Her mouth writhed, not quite as paralyzed as the rest of her.
I said, “What’s pale and cold and covered in blood?”
Her eyes opened. They sought me out, full of reproach.
I said, “The hands of the Red Moon Demon.”
“Closer, closer,” Teresa screamed. She ran up beside me. Her camera guy had a portable. He circled like a shark, looking for the best angles.
I sighed. “People never listen to me when I say keep back. It’s like they can’t stand to be safe.”
Teresa looked at me. “What?”
The sphinx smiled. Its tail lashed. The end morphed into a snake’s head that flashed fangs. The sphinx was turning chimera, trying to assimilate the poison energy I’d given it. Not good.
I yelled, “Hurry it up guys.”
The chimera tail stabbed out through the brass grillwork. Fangs caught the camera man in the chest. He dropped the camera. Teresa stared at the possibly damaged camera in horror. The camera man crumpled to his knees, the snake still attached. His face went white, then green. He shuddered and died.
Shiva grabbed Teresa by the shoulders and forced her back to a safe distance.
Osamu danced over and slashed. The snake head was severed from the rest of the tail. The tail flailed like a rampaging cock, spitting blood that splattered the pavement, making it smoke.
I pulled Osamu back, keeping him safe. Good combat butlers are hard to find.
A few more steps and I was back at the head of the woman. Her tongue was stiff and jutting, back to being my knife again. I reached in and grabbed the blade, my fingers bled. I knew the knife had discharged all the energy it had taken from me, and I knew how to refill it. As long as I held on, the poison energy in me would flow into the knife, and from the knife—into her.
You want to be a chimera? Let’s see how much poison you can take.
The wounded tail reformed its snake head. The tail struck at the Old Man. He was forced to let go and leap backwards. The tail jerked back inside the ball and launched again. Holy was forced to release the grill work she’d been attacking in order to catch the new snake head. She struggled to control it. Dhal moved around and slashed with his silver sword. Another snake head was severed.
Learning its lesson, the ass of the creature sprouted seven tails, all of which grew snake heads of their own. Sphinx had become chimera, and was now on the way to becoming a hydra.
My inner dragon said: An ugly trend is developing here. It’s becoming a nagi goddess. I don’t think destroying the brass part of the yantra will help anymore.
I muttered. “It’s never easy.”
Better let me take over.
“Monster to monster? Sure.”
In my mind, his golden eyes flared with outrage. Hey! A dragon is the pinnacle of creation. Not a monster.
“Depends on who you ask.” Seeing its wings ripple, its paws slightly flex, I knew it was fighting off the paralysis, the poison. I pulled on the knife and ripped it free. I’d gotten all the use from it I was going to for now. I backed hastily away and raised my voice for everyone to hear. “Keep it busy but don’t get to close. It’s getting stronger.”
The spider legs wobbled at the knees. The brass grillwork ball jerked up in the air. The yantra swayed, straining, but the pavement held it. The woman’s head hissed. Its mouth opened and it grew a new tongue—no, my mistake. Having decided talking was overrated, it had a snake stabbing out from its mouth. The rest of its snakes poked out of the grillwork, seeking prey.
I backed away even more, n
eeding a lot of space. Once I started changing, I’d be vulnerable until the change finished. Already, I could feel muscles warming with golden energy. Bones softened. My joints went wobbly. I was forced to move off the drive, onto the brown grass. I wilted and waited, my skin starting to scale. Pain came, sharp, tearing, like a trillion razor blades were cutting me open from the inside. A red haze obscured my sight. Oddly, my ribs no longer hurt.
Always a silver lining.
The change fused the fractures closed. The cloth-wrap around my ribs burst away. The vertebra of my spine popped like firecrackers. My tailbone lengthened, becoming a true tail. Fresh muscle and blood filled in around it.
I grimaced as newly grown nerves protested existence. The changes went cell deep. My shoulder blades grew bone spurs that lengthened, growing joints, fanning into a new kind of ribbing. The space between the ribs filled in with tissues, muscle, and a circulatory system for blood supply. Leathery wings completed themselves, as piece by piece, my human shape twisted into otherness.
I held on. I rode the storm. My heart thundered in my ears. It felt like an actual dragon lived deep inside me, compressed to a really small size, but had finally awakened—bursting forth, growing … growing. The red mist cleared from my vision. The world was smaller. My head was high off the ground, at the end of an impossibly long neck.
My mind was muscled back as my inner dragon took over body-control. He screamed in battle fury. Lightning spilled from my mouth. I turned my great mass, looking for trouble.
And saw Christie climbing out of the van, holding another camera. I grinned, showing her my fangs.
Better get my good side.
1
THIRTY-FOUR
“Things are never so horrific they can’t…
Oh, fuck, I’m sensing a theme.”
—Caine Deathwalker
It didn’t seem like I was needed: the yantra’s legs were whacked off. The brass grill was grounded, Shiva and the Old Man had pulled the ball apart, making it flat again in a crumpled kinda way as Ryella continued to soften the metal with a spray of fire from a flashing citrine amulet. The many snakes were iced over. Surprise, surprise, Izumi was here in a clinging white body stocking, white leather boots, and a silver tiara on her head. The lion-woman part of the creature was iced-over as well.
I padded over to get a better look, adapting to being a four-footed beast myself. Being the size of a bus, I needed fewer steps than I had before.
Izumi saw me—how could she not?—and blew me a kiss. I guess she was over being mad at me. Osamu bowed respectfully. Dhal and Silf turned white as a Klan rally. Almost dropping their swords, they ran over to Ryella, hiding behind her. Her eyes narrowed in thought. I think she was wondering if she was still sworn to me while I was a dragon.
Shiva looked up at me, as did Holy. They were my people; like the Old Man, they knew what I was. The girls stared at my dragon form, but didn’t freak out.
Teresa freaked big time, falling on her butt, rolling, coming up without her high heels. She ran for her life. Holy eyed the abandoned pumps greedily. Ghosts hadn’t fazed her. The monster zombie hadn’t. The snake people hadn’t. Why a dragon. My sheer size?
All that remained was the ripping out of the central grillwork, cutting off what it represented from our reality. I figured my claws could that, then my lightning breath could finish slagging the metal gate.
Everyone cleared back from the yantra, giving me plenty of room. I stopped, crouched over the brass work and the frozen whatever-it-now-was. I lifted a gold scaled paw with black claws and brought it down—into nothing. I felt nothing. I felt the damp winds of an altered space. My paw went through the brass yantra, sinking up to the wrist. A yellow-green glow infused the brass with a spectral presence; the ghost-light now possessed the metal.
I tugged my paw but it wouldn’t budge. The badly rumpled yantra had fused to the pavement, becoming a true doorway. An open door inviting me in.
Holy crap!
I roared lightning around my wrist, letting the electric force crackle and dance. I hoped deforming the metal might release me and close the doorway. The lightning warmed my scales but didn’t hurt me, it was my own lightning after all, the power of a royal dragon. The iced-over creature exploded into fragments. Chunks of woman, snake, and lion hailed in every direction, some of it bouncing off my chest. The rest of my people scattered, getting even further away from the destruction I handed out.
I kept the lightning breath going as long as I could spit it out. Then, as the discharge cleared, I examined my work. My paw was still in another world. The gate was still open. The brass yantra itself was slag that puddled in the countless craters. The yellow-green spectral energy was still there, etched into the damaged pavement, looking whole only when stared down upon as I was doing. The ghost-light had become a new yantra, replacing the old.
Same old problem, brand new source.
The dragon currently operating our body seethed with white-hot rage. I felt his stress in the tension of our muscles. His tail thudded the pavement, cracking the drive. His head turned to the old school as if it were to blame. I knew what he was about to do and said nothing.
My dragon lungs filled. My head turned. I spat lightning at the massive, rotting structure that should have been condemned years ago. A wave of concussive blasts trailed the lightning as I directed it across the building, then back again along the second and third floors. The parts not initially vaporized ignited, setting the rest on fire. Floor collapsed onto floor. Soon I had the world’s biggest pyre and no marshmallows to roast.
The dragon cut off the lightning steam and huffed with satisfaction at something done right.
Feel better? I asked.
He just huffed again, looking back at our trapped wrist.
I said: You realize that if the gate gets closed, we might not get our hand back? Of course we could grow another one, but people will call us stubby for a while.
That seemed to make him mad all over again. And there was nothing left to burn except for people and the white van.
He eyed the van.
Rampaging wasn’t helping. I tried reason. Look, be patient. The Old Man will figure something out. He’s … making a phone call?
I used dragon hearing to listen in. “That’s right, six pizza, two orders of honey bar-b-que wings, a chocolate chip dessert pizza, and four two-liters of soda. What kind? Oh, just give me an assortment, and have Thorn deliver it to the old school. No. Nobody else. Tell her I tip big. An hour?” The Old Man looked at me then went back to his call. “No rush. We’ll be here.” He hung up.
I glared at him with dragon eyes. No rush? No rush!
He shrugged. “Look on the bright side. Your paw is plugging the dike. Nothing can come into our world until that changes.”
I hated him for being right.
And so we waited. And waited. And waited some more. This was the most fucked up battle I’d ever waged. Monsters, demons, gangster vampires, werewolves, tax collectors; no problem really. But get tangled up in anything with ghosts!
I’ve always been weak against them. And I bet I don’t even get any pizza.
Christie came over with her camera. She walked around me, shooting, then went to the ghost-yantra that had me trapped. She taped it a while then turned back to me. She held up a thumb, as if I’d done something particularly clever, then walked toward the burning school a little. She panned the camera, taking it all in, and lifted the lens to track the dark smoke and leaping flames into the sky.
Happy, smiling, she walked back to the van.
Holy came by, ignoring me mostly, and tried on the abandoned pumps. They seemed to fit because she kept them.
Ten minutes later Ryella came by. She stared up at me. “If you like, I can cut the paw off. For the right price. I can make you a silver hook to wear. You’d be one stylish dragon.
The dragon opened his mouth wide, revealing many sharp teeth. I felt his decision to take a chomp out of her.
I s
topped him. You can’t. She’s sworn to us, our property. And she’s useful, when she’s not being cruel as fuck.
Just one little nibble.
Piss off the Old Man and he’ll leave us here for a week to teach us a lesson.
The dragon shut his mouth with a last huff. He lifted our free hand and curled in all the toes, leaving the middle one extended in a universal gesture that was wasted on the fey. Oblivious to the meaning, Ryella shrugged and strolled away, humming a jaunty tune.
It’s all right. I promised. Once this is all over, we’ll put our minds to getting every one back. Really, you’d think there’d be more respect for a demon lord.
And a dragon, he added.
Yeah.
Eventually, Teresa came back. She stayed far from me, and haunted the white van. She and Christie were apparently hard at work on the editing. I wondered how they’d spin all this for the show. I didn’t worry about suppressing anything anymore. The images they’d caught could never be believed. It would all be accepted as a CGI blue-screen effect. If Teresa were smart, she’d save the best stuff and come out with a fantasy movie: Curse of the Hell-Spawn, or something like that.
Reading my thoughts, the dragon paused. Who would they get to play you?
Knowing Hollywood, Justin Bieber. I shuddered at my own thought.
The dragon shuddered with me.
Thorn and Malevolence pulled up in my Mustang. That pissed me off, but at least the one who looked legal was driving. Thorn was probably a few decades old, but as a slow-growing fey, she looked ten. Her gold hair fell in spiraling blades. Her pale face added to a washed out look. But all that only contrasted the fierce blue of her eyes.
The girls unloaded the food and beverages, and my so-concerned-over-me troops fell on the food like starving hyena. And I was right; they didn’t offer me anything. The Old Man paid Thorn for the delivery, then walked her my way. Malevolence came along. At my feet, the girls stared like they’d never seen a giant, winged lizard that can breathe lightning.
Demon Lord 6: Garnet Tongue Goddess Page 25
