On her own smaller dais, another woman stood out, mainly because she sat upon an ivory-lotus throne in a sapphire-jeweled dress with a raised collar behind her head made of peacock feathers. Her face was bare, beautiful. Her skin was dusky. Her hair was piled, a rich, lustrous black. She wore a gold band around her head. Delicate chains dangled across her brow. A ten-carat ruby occupied the center of the band.
Mine! I told the dragon, I saw it first.
As if.
A large man—by human standards—stood beside her throne. To me, he was an action figure. Living ebony, he was carved from wood. His hairless polished chest was bare, as was one of his arms. The other arm had a gold snake-like armlet winding down it. His pants were baggy with a dropped crotch look, cinched with a crimson sash. Encircling the sash was a wide leather belt studded in brass. The belt had brass chains on it from which swung a scimitar in a red velvet sheath. A turban capped his head. He stood there, expressionless, arms crossed like a genie waiting to hand out wishes.
The ebony man saw me first.
He leaned toward the woman on the throne and spoke softly.
There was a laugh on her lips that stilled though the smile remained as she turned her face my way. Her stare was dark as the outside sky. It hit my legs and scraped upward, finishing the inspection at my face. Her smile widened. “Interesting.”
The ebony man didn’t think so; he eased his sheath around and began a slow draw that I guess I wasn’t supposed to notice.
I huffed at him, and let my glance slide from the dais. I took my time looking around, projecting complete disregard for the possibility of any threat here. Off to the side, and back a ways, lay a deep pool. I caught the flash of silver bodies in the water, giant fish of some kind. Big enough to actually be a meal for me.
Yum. My mouth watered.
The pool was fed by an aqueduct that came in from the far gloom. In the murk, there eddied an underground river lined with thick reeds. I saw a crocodile. It stared back a moment and floundered into the stream, running for its life.
Sensible animal.
The woman spoke a slippery, slithery word that pulled my attention back to her. Whatever she said, the carved man fully sheathed his blade and let the scabbard swing freely again. The hard press of his lips let me know he didn’t like the order he’d been given.
Gee, over-protective much?
The babble among the women clipped off after a few gasps and one choked sob. I looked at them. They sat motionless, staring at me like they’d never seen a dragon before.
The woman on the throne lifted a graceful hand and beckoned.
I saw nothing, but felt bands of iron close around my limbs and neck. Raw power burnt the air, seeping into me, pooling—an alien presence that burned, as if my own lightning were chewing its way out of my heart. A crushing force dragged me forward and slammed my head into the stone floor. I struggled to breathe, my thoughts fuzzing over from the impact. Invisible chains dragged me to the small dais where the enthroned woman waited.
“You have kept me waiting,” she said.
I would have faked sincerity and apologized, but even a cough or grunt was beyond me.
She said, “As dragons go, you aren’t a bad specimen, but I think I prefer you the other way.”
The ebony man said, “He’d look good dead and roasted on a spit. If you’d like, Padma, I can—”
She turned a cold glance on him. “You are forgetting your place, Kaliya. Do not intrude upon my fun. What I make, I can unmake.”
He bowed. “As you command.”
She stood and drifted closer, her jeweled dress rippling, the stones gleaming. Though small before me, she radiated a force of gravity like a black hole. My dragon eyes couldn’t break away. She was making me pay for my earlier disregard.
She whispered a word of command, “Change.”
The fire she’d put inside me exploded. A scream shuddered in my mind. My body shook. Knives cut to the bone. Bones splintered. Muscles snapped. Every nerve burned to ash, grew back, and reignited. I thought I knew pain, its many flavors and shadings. This was worse because it folded in upon itself, strengthened, becoming the sum of every agony I’d ever known.
I felt my body changing, shrinking, compressed in the fist of a goddess, one who didn’t care that the transformation shouldn’t be this fast, that sanity couldn’t survive it. I bit my tongue and tasted blood. I choked on it as the stone under me webbed and collapsed, collateral damage. I lay on a bed of broken brick, my skull cracking, my dragon flesh charring away.
I screamed. The sound broke, and wavered, thinning. The scream became the wounded howl of a man, and through it all, her sweet smile never wavered.
I was only roughly human, a slashed bag of skin, pierced by my own broken, protruding bones. Raw muscle exposed in searing patches. My own blood soaked me. Internal organs were twisted, crawling back to where they needed to be. I still had dragon wings, but scaled down, and terribly mangled, the membrane tattered, fluttering in a scream of wind that sounded like every soul I’d ever killed.
And still I stared at her perfection. A single word ripped free of my tortured throat. “Beautiful.”
The darkness of her gaze filled my eyes, my world, my thoughts, and my soul. Her voice reached me from across great distance.
“Kaliya, it suffered so nicely. Once it rests, let us…” the voice guttered out a moment, distorting.
Out of silence, a deep voice surged back, “Yes, Mistress. It will be done.”
With only a glimmer of lingering consciousness, I felt myself lifted and carried. Then the flying spark of my awareness was extinguished completely.
Piercing the cotton stuffing in my skull, bearable pain brought me back, pain; my dear friend. This pain didn’t tear my mind down to particles of thought. Sure, it felt like molten lead filled my lungs. My back felt filleted and yes—I still had the dragon wings. They felt as folded as origami, but not in the proper pattern.
Probably a mercy I can’t see them.
My heart beat with slowness, not surrender. Deep cold made my breath cloud. Without that numbing, I hated to imagine how much worse I’d feel. I smelled bile, blood, and piss. My nerves shrilled complaint.
Yet all this was nothing compared to what she’d put me through. Mercifully, my brain blotted out the details, making it possible to unclench my mind. Good to be alive. At least, I hoped I was still alive. Just being conscious was no guarantee of that. I was dealing with a goddess here, a power that had dropped the weight of a universe on me and danced across my soul just because she could. A lesser demon lord would have been shattered forever.
There was silence in my mind, an aching absence. I called out, Dragon, are you there?
A whimper echoed in the distance.
I said, Okay, stay there. Hide. Do what you need to. I’ve got this.
But what exactly was this?
The world flickered, the darkness warmed, and my dragon vision kicked in. Details sprang sharp-edged to my perception. My night-sight had been MIA since the revenant poisoned me in the city under the lake. In tearing me down and back again—wrenching me from dragon to human faster than my cells could keep up—the goddess had stripped away the poison energy in me, losing it somewhere.
I need to thank her. With a bullet to the brain.
I heard the soft metallic grind of chain-on-chain, and studied my situation. Swinging lightly, I hung in a vault where heavy curtains of chains dangled from the ceiling. They were black, encrusted with dried blood, and formed a kind of demonic aurora borealis to every side. And there seemed to be four-inch hooks on many of the chains. Some of them held corpses, not all of them intact.
A pig. A chicken. A cow, oh my! I seem to have died and gone to a butcher shop.
My slow heart picked up a lot.
I lifted my hands into view. I’ve seen worse. The palms were intact, the fingers less so. The skin and meat of the fingers had been peeled back, revealing white bone that should have been covered. My h
ands hurt, but that was just a drop in the sea of agony I did my best to ignore.
The mind creates its own horizon. Pain is illusion. Pain is a dream. Pain is pleasure when I need it to be.
You are so fuckin’ badass…
“Dragon? That’s you?”
Last time … I checked. What in the name of the First Egg happened?
“We got put through a divine meat grinder and turned into sausage.”
No, seriously.
“I am serious.”
Oh.
“The main thing is to not let it happen again.”
Good plan.
I looked up, cocking my head and neck for a better view. Two of the blood-encrusted chains stretched up from immediately behind my back, reaching to a massive wood beam near the ceiling. The huge beams were like a false ceiling, supporting all the chains. The top of the chains also hung on hooks.
I looked down and tried to kick my feet into view. One of them showed up. The other seemed to be missing from the knee down.
I sighed. “And I liked that leg.”
Dragon said, I’ll grow it back later.
“Let’s make sure there is a later. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need working hands. Can you pull off a partial change, giving me dragon paws, then roll the change back so I have human hands that are healed?”
We’re weak. Haven’t eaten in a while. Changes need fuel.
A door opened and a rectangle of light appeared. Soft yellow-gray light splashed in past the chains and the bodies on them. I gauged the distance: twenty feet. A nagi in half human form balanced on her tail in the doorway. She carried something flat and long, pushing in, parting the chains with her movement. She stopped a few feet from me and I saw she had bonefish. Blue-white, a triangular fin on top, it looked like blown glass. The round eyes were black, staring as she hung it on a nearby hook.
Turning to go, she paused and stared at me.
I kept still, as if dead or lost in inner madness. I kept my focus vacant as she leaned in. Her forked tongue flicked between us. “You were tasty.” She reached out and gripped my cock. “I can’t wait for more.”
No, don’t eat me! my cock begged.
There’s a first, I thought.
She licked her cruel, smiling lips and released me. Turning, she left the way she’d come. The door slammed shut, cutting the light.
“I guess I know what happened to my lower leg now.”
We are no one’s prey! my dragon said.
“Fuckin’ right.” I kicked my good leg a few times, building up a swing that brought me to the bonefish. My mangled hands caught it, which hurt a lot. I ripped the fish free and managed not to drop the slippery sucker. Which hurt a lot more. Swinging, hugging the fish to my chest, I bit into it, ripping open scaly flesh. I fed. It wasn’t neat and pretty, but I filled my stomach. The bones crunched in my teeth, were grinded, and swallowed. The brain was flavorsome. Little was left by the time I finished. I dropped the remains and turned my thoughts to my inner dragon.
“Your turn.”
Fine.
My hands warmed under my stare. Pain came with the alterations. I laughed at it now, having acquired a higher threshold. I watched the bone tips literally melt into blobs and reform with black claw tips. Old, torn skin crumbled away. New tissues grew in: muscles, nerves, arteries, and veins. Ligaments and tendons reattached. Scaled skin closed the wounds. I flexed fingers that were thicker and stubby, and very strong. The change went from dragon to human. Minutes later, my hands matched the rest of me and were fully functional.
Your turn, my dragon said.
I reached over my head, rocked, and managed to grab both chains that were anchored in my back. Switching back and forth, from hand to hand, I pulled myself higher, then spun so I hung inverted, looking down at the cold gray floor. I jerked in place, bouncing midair like a vibrating spider.
I sang to myself. “The itsy-bitsy spider … climbed up the meat hook chain…”
The weight of the chains and my aerial maneuvers pulled the hooks from my back. I’d freed myself, a necessary first step toward the vengeance to come.
I straightened, hanging from my hands, also a childhood memory. I kicked, swinging, and reached forward for a new chain, snagged it, swung again, playing Tarzan. Chains smacked my face and arms. They rattled and danced as I moved closer to the door.
I was almost there when the door opened again.
1
THIRTY-SEVEN
“My turn!”
—Caine Deathwalker
The yellow-gray light wasn’t strong enough to blind even after the cold room’s darkness. I had no problem seeing the nagi maiden entering, and she had no problem seeing me. But she was used to seeing bodies in the chains, and this wasn’t the same nagi as before who knew where I was supposed to be hanging. Her gaze passed over me, and she studied the many swaying chains I’d set in motion. Her brow furrowed in puzzlement.
I pooled golden magic under the tattoo that bonded me to my armory. I’d used the link across worlds before, arming myself in Fairy. Without my soul being poisoned, I had every reason to think I could pull something to me in this pocket of altered space. It was worth a try anyway.
I let one hand take my full weight, which eased me sideways as I freed the other hand. I tried to do this smoothly, slowly, but I drew the nagi’s attention. She turned back to me, still holding a baby goat in her arms. I couldn’t risk the noise of a shot, so I summoned a straight katana. I held the wrapped hilt the way you’d hold a knife you were stabbing downward with. And that’s how I stabbed. The blade materialized over her head, pointing down at her heart with longing. I shoved it into her chest with my half-dragon strength. Her heart was pierced. And probably several other useful organs. She became the sheath for my blade, her eyes wide with sudden horror and pain.
Yeah, here’s your fuckin’ pain back. I really like to share.
The baby goat dropped from her hands, recovered, and ran out of the cold room.
Good luck, little buddy.
The nagi died with a gurgle in her throat and a last sigh of breath, sliding off my blade to the floor. Her twitching tail continued to block the door so it couldn’t close. I relaxed the grip of the hand holding me up and slid down the chain to the floor, joining her.
Snakes can bite you an hour or two after death. Their heads are dangerous even in death. I kicked her head, turning it away from me as I pulled off the silk she’d worn over her breasts. Using cut strips of silk braided into rope, I tied the katana hilt to my knee so the blade acted as a prosthetic and a weapon.
Pulling myself upward with a black, gummy chain, I let my good leg take my weight, and experimented, testing the katana. I fell down a few times and spent several minutes finding a way to move that was better than crawling, and hoped I’d adjust a lot better as I went.
I carefully pulled at the nagi and with a hell of an effort, dragged her all the way inside and left her on a hook of her own.
Making my way to the door, I was coated in sweat. I peered out. There was a kitchen decorated with hanging baskets of moss for light. It was silent and abandoned. Not even dishes to wash. The place was tidy, leading me to believe we were between meals, possibly even done for the day. The goat had headed off for parts unknown.
If this place had entered a sleep cycle, I had a good chance of escaping. Of course; Where I’ll go? How I’ll get home... These question I couldn’t yet answer. Maybe I’ll never answer them. Maybe I’ll rot here forever. Can even the Red Lady find me in this little piece of naga heaven? Do I want her to?
Selene was a goddess in her own right, sorta, the self-made variety, hyper-evolved poké-dragon and all. I didn’t know if Selene could beat this Padma. Even Selene could die here. I shuddered imagining her hung on a chain like a certain nagi I’d just left.
I gave myself a mental shake. You’re a demon lord, a fey lord, slayer-spawn, and a fucking royal dragon.
Damn straight, my inner dragon said.
I continued my rant: You are destined to one day rule all time and space, a legendary conqueror. Time to get mean and show the fucking goddess bitch what you can do.
Theoretically, goddesses don’t get into many scraps. They lack experience and skill because they’re used to bludgeoning through every situation with raw power.
Don’t forget that boy toy of hers, my dragon-self reminded me. Take him down first, if possible.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I asked.
My back had stopped hurting, an absence of pain that had crept up on me. I flexed extra muscles. The scaled-down dragon wings worked. They were no longer crumpled, splintered, bloody, and ripped.
“You fixed them.”
You need the speed, and this way, you’ll be harder to hit.
“Great.” I let raw magic swirl under my skin, a golden flame connecting all my tattoos, warming them. Even the Kiss-Your-Ass-Goodbye tattoo. I’d win or no one would. I finished up by pulling a Storm PX4 out of the ether, into my left hand. Into my right, I summoned my long absent demon sword.
It materialized, a bar of blackness with a red demonic aura. Its malevolent intelligence touched my own. It sobbed. I’m sorry-sorry-sorry! Don’t put me back there. I’m starving! What can we kill?
“You will kill what I tell you to, no matter if it kills you, understand.”
Yes, Master. I live to serve, and kill, and eat—all as you command.
The sword had failed me, betraying me in the middle of a duel with a shadow fey queen. He’d thought of himself and his survival, and had almost gotten me killed.
“If I have to put you back in that dead dimension,” I warned, “it will be forever. Every hell-dimension, every reality, will die and collapse into primal rebirth before you ever go free again. You will be very hungry by then.”
You have my word, a binding promise. I will not fail you.
“I’m about to put you to the test in what may be our ultimate battle.”
The black blade didn’t immediately answer, but its red energy brightened, pulsing in time to my heart. Let’s rock!
Demon Lord 6: Garnet Tongue Goddess Page 27
