They could certainly stay there, but then we’d all go down in a bruising, bone-breaking tangle.
Julia could have her thin neck snapped like a twig. Any dragon attacks used against me would also hurt her.
“All or nothing!” Starving, my magic low, I fed what I had left into my Demon Wings tattoo. I didn’t notice anything and Julia wouldn’t either, being touch with me, but to those on the ground, trying to intercept us, it would look like we’d simply ghosted away into nothing. Our smells would be much hard to pick up, especially at this speed. They might hear us whooshing in, but by then, it would be too late. So they couldn’t anticipate my timing with an educated guess, I pulled up a little and used the change in my wings to catch air and slow down.
Blinking in confusion, the full dragons stomped forward, as if to consult with the officials. Thinking better of it, they simply launched their attacks. Buried roots from nearby trees burst into view, reaching, thrashing across the sky. However, my shit of timing and altitude left them clutching in the wrong area. The Green’s earth magic failed. The black, a shadow dragon, roared at me, a cone of darkness spewing forth. His aim, too, was off. I heard the officials telling them to get back in position so I could sneak into the gate that was preprogrammed to take me back to earth.
Too late!
Wings coming in, folding protectively over most of Julia, made her squeal in surprise. We dropped like a rock. Julia clutched my neck, strangling me as the ground rushed up. We were behind the Green and Black. The cone of shadow swept over us, blacking out the statue. But I was oriented on it, my over-sized dragon feet leading the way. It hurt when I hit, momentum dragging me to the portal. I skidding through, knowing this by the blue-green light of transit that bathed me.
I came slamming out of one of the confessionals of Our Lady of Perpetual Motion.
Several patrons were knocked off their feet. I skidded to a stop, groaned, and loosened my wings from around Julia. “You all right?” I asked, letting go of the Demon Wings spell that was draining me.
“Yeah.” She pushed off me, standing. “Can we do that again?” The people I’d brought down were cursing and stabbing me with angry glances. Julia looked at them. “There’s a child present, you know?”
I don’t think she knew that her human eyes had gone dragon with vertical pupils.
Several of the small, hooded attendants swarmed us, helping us to stand. I needed it, feeling wrung out and hungry enough to devour my weight in McDonald’s fries. I wavered on my feet, needing Julia to steady me.
I didn’t want to get banned from portal use, so didn’t shoot my way out of the angry crowd. I did something rare for me; accepting responsibility. “Really, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. Please accept my apology.” Then I lied to gain their sympathy. “I didn’t know the kidnappers would follow us all the way back.” I pulled Julia into a dramatic hug. “At least my poor daughter has been rescued from those monsters.”
She looked up into my face. “I have?” Catching on, she spoke more emphatically. “I have, I have! Oh, daddy, thank you ever so much for saving me. You’re my hero!”
I waved off such sentiment. “Any loving parent would do the same for their child.”
Some of the patrons I’d tackled looked suspicious, but the gathering crowd beyond them seemed to buy the act. Really, they owed me a lot, bringing a little drama into their stale, trifling lives.
Julia wiggled free and picked up one of the little, robed fuzzies. “Oooo, how cute. Can I keep him?”
“That’s not a pet,” I said. “Put him down. All beings are worthy of respect, no matter what they look like.”
She set him down and looked back at me. “Yes, Father.” And then her glance slid past me and she froze, mouth dropping open.
As the crowd around us dispersed, I turned, wondering what I’d have to deal with next. Aggie stood there, red hair piled high, jeweled with rubies, her indigo eyes piercing, locked onto me like she was going to tear my heart out and eat it.
My inner dragon said, Bad idea. She’s wearing a cream-colored linen pantsuit. Our blood might never come out of that.
Yeah, that would teach her, I thought.
Julia moved between us to protect me. I put my hands on her shoulders, keeping her there so Aggie couldn’t just snatch the child back and go.
Aggie spoke, voice hard as her stare. “Caine, what the hell do you think you are doing?”
Once more, I did the unexpected. I told the truth. “I’m tired of Red sulking and avoiding me. I want my friend back. He needs to man up and make things right between us again.” I looked down at Julia. “This is to encourage him to do the right thing, now as opposed to fifty years from now.”
“You could have just asked me to help you. I was intercepted on the way to Julia’s school with the news that she’d been abducted by a demon. You know what that did to me?”
I looked her in the eyes. “I’m sorry you were hurt, but I’m like God; I give and I take away. And I am a demon—in spirit anyway. This is how I’m supposed to act. Besides, Julia is as much mine as yours. I have a right to see her, and that wasn’t going to happen as long as Red had his head up his ass.”
“You have a point. All right, take her for a few days.” Aggie moved closer. She stuck a finger in my face. “Just don’t ever do this again. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She said, “I will go impress on Red the urgency of him making amends.” Aggie bent and kissed Julia on the forehead, telling her, “Try not to pick up any bad habits hanging out with riffraff.”
Julia said, “Yes, ma’am.”
With a last glare at me, she turned and walked away.
Julia turned under my hands and faced me. “You’re afraid of her?”
“Am not!”
She smiled at me. “It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.”
“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” I turned toward the “church’s” entrance and led the way. Julia walked along with me, humming what I assumed to be the theme song to some anime. We went out, much to the relief of the staff escorting us, and passed he statue. She, too, wore a lightly disapproving frown.
As Julia and I went down the steps, I asked her. “How’s the finger?” During her brief kidnapping by the Blue Star Priestess, she’d had a finger cut off and mailed to me.
She held up her hand. “Aggie had some healers grow it back. You can barely see the scar.”
“Good. I’d wondered.”
We walked in silence along the street until we came to my Mustang. I deactivated my alarms, and we climbed in, buckling up. Minutes later, I located a McDonalds. We pulled in, parked, and bailed out. “Keep a sharp watch,” I told my car. “I’m expecting trouble.”
“Red?” Julia asked.
“Yeah. He’s been unkind to me so I’ve had to kick him in the teeth.” I opened the door for Julia.
“Using me?” She stopped by the display that showed various happy meal toys being offered.
“Uh-huh. Got a problem with that?”
“Depends.” She pointed at the toy of her preference. “Can I have that?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, then I forgive you.”
We got to the counter. A perky high schooler smiled at me. Her name tag said Sandy.
“Hi, what can I get for you?”
“Five cheeseburger happy meals, a different toy in each one. A milk with that, and I’ll have the Sirloin burgers, one of each type, with three large fries, a chocolate shake, a large soda, and a couple of apple pies.”
“To go?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, we’ll eat it all here.”
She looked at me like I was crazy, but rung up the order. I paid and took my order number. She gave me the empty cup for my soda. Julia followed me over to get it filled. “I can’t eat all those cheeseburgers,” she said.
“I know. I was planning to help you out there, out of the goodness of my heart.”
“Yo
u are too good to me.”
I sighed dramatically, proud of her growing knack for sarcasm. “I know. What can I say? I’m just a hell of a guy.”
Shut up and feed me, my inner dragon said. You know how many calories I burned up for you?
Don’t worry about it. It’s all in service to my growing legend. A fearsome reputation will someday mean less of this bullshit. People and things will get so they won’t dare mess with me.
Crazy violent sociopaths get left alone.
Or locked up.
I nodded. Yeah, that’s the down side.
ELEVEN
“What is this damn obsession women have
with bad boys? It’s enough to get me laid.”
—Caine Deathwalker
I slowly woke up the next morning on the couch in my suite in the Clan House. Light poured into the room from the windows—much too much light. Izumi had stayed over, commandeering my bedroom for a sleepover with Julia. I had not been allowed to join in. Lying with one arm across my eyes, I vaguely wondered what time it was. I was dressed in the sweats I’d slept in. They must have been magical sweats because the fabric over my stomach was levitating, letting in warm breeze.
No, wait. That’s someone’s warm breath. Izumi? No, her breath is cold. Always.
I lifted my arm and looked to see a young hand holding up my sweatshirt. My visitor’s head was hidden, but I could see her body. The Old Man had been happy to have Julia visiting, and had sent a special ops team out to procure cute jammies and assorted items of clothing for her. Julia hadn’t brought a whole lot with her since she hadn’t known I’d be kidnapping her. The jammies were pink and purple.
“Julia, what are you doing?”
She spoke without taking her head out of my shirt. “Osamu is making pancakes. They’re almost ready. Izumi wants you to help her with her shower. I offered to wash her back for her, but she says she likes the way you do it.”
“Julia, I’ll ask again, what are you doing? What’s the great fascination under my shirt?”
The shirt came down. Julia looked at me with fixed determination in her face. “I want a tattoo. A magical one like yours.”
“Red would kill us both if I let you.” I held up a finger. “One, he’d get pissed if he didn’t get to do the work himself.” I held up another finger. “Two, he won’t do the tattoo because you’re a minor and your body I still growing. If you got a tattoo now, by the time you stopped growing, the ink could get distorted, ruining the artwork.”
She straightened and took a few moments to think about what I’d said. “What about a temporary tattoo?”
I thought about it. “Theoretically, it could work. But I don’t have any pure dragon blood to mix with the ink.”
“All your tattoos use dragon blood?”
“Not the Demon Wings tattoo. Old Man volunteered a pint for that one. “After breakfast, why don’t you go see if he’ll make you a temp tattoo? Just call him grandfather, and he’ll fall all over himself to spoil you rotten.”
She nodded emphatically. “Okay. I’ll give it a shot.”
I sat up and swung my feet to the floor.
Osamu called from the kitchenette. “Julia-chan, come get your breakfast. Let Caine-sama pull himself together.”
“Coming!” Julia called. She leaned in and gave me a good morning hug and peck on the lips, then ran to the kitchen. I stood, stretched, and headed into the bedroom, locking the door behind me. Adult showering wasn’t something Julia needed to see. She was precocious as it was. I wondered about the tattoo. I’d given her a gun, and I knew she went to the dump to target practice regularly on the scurrying rats. Maybe she felt insecure and wanted more protection. That would be consistent with what she’d been through. I hoped she’d get what she wanted out of the Old Man.
A quick glance showed me an empty bedroom with a rumpled bed. The bathroom door was ajar so that a slash of light split the gloom. I peeled out of my clothes and let them fall. Against one wall was my magic mirror, throwing back my image. Chiseled muscles, a small frame, dark hair and eyes; one of them shimmering with pinpricks of gold. The tats all over my body contrasted against numerous faint scars. I looked middle to late twenties, half my true age. That was the dragon blood in my veins.
I had only one mirror, but it occupied three points in space, serving as a mini-portal between here and Malibu. My Mansion’s armory and bedroom each had a manifestation of the looking glass. That reminded me; I needed to set up a similar system between tying the clan house to Santa Fe where we now had demons loyal to us. Cactus demons. They were currently providing security for Lysande, the jeweler making my crown. The last element I needed in place for my coronation to come off.
That meant Julia, Izumi, and I were heading to Santa Fe today. I needed to let Izumi know.
I went through the bathroom door. The air was cold, but not icy. I went to the shower and slid the glass door open. Izumi was inside. The spray was full on hot, but sleeting off her body, it turned cold—just bearable to me.
As an ice fey, she had antifreeze for blood, and easily passed as a Japanese snow woman, her most comfortable disguise. She no longer needed the cover, having made peace with her mother the queen, but this was a comfortable identity for her, and it was the one I’d met het under. This was how I knew her, Asian eyes, perfect, pale skin with long straight black hair. Her eyes were large, pools of black. Five-foot nothing, maybe a hundred and five pounds, all of it wet and slick and bouncy as she lathered her luscious body, humming a soft song.
Her back was to me, suds dripping down her sweet bubble ass. I stepped into the shower and took what was mine, pulling her against my hard erection, sliding my hands past her ribs, and up to maul her tits. She leaned back into me, saying, “About time you got here. I was about to start without you.”
I growled, turned her in the spray, and gnawed at her throat. My hands continued to roam, tweaking nipples, sliding lower, back behind her to grip her ass, pressing our lower bodies together. She seized my cock and squeezed its iron hardness. My lips found hers. They locked. Our tongues battled as we shared a breath. She pumped my rigid length. “I need this, Caine. I need you!”
“I aim to please.”
Her hands were on my shoulders, clenching wet flesh, icing the water so that a thin sheet of ice crept down my back. The hot spray of the shower softened the ice and made it fall at my feet. There was nothing soft and tender about what followed. My inner dragon bugled encouragement. I used his strength to lift her off her feet and let her legs encircle my waist. Her back pressed against a wall of the shower. Her huge tits were in my face, begging to be mauled.
“Take me, take me now!” She was Winter Court fey, begging for the thaw of spring, for the breaking of earth and the sowing of seed. I plowed into her, a hard thrust that buried my length. A shrill sound of exultation fell from her lips. “Oh, yes, yes! Fuck me!”
I licked a nipple, then the other, then nibbled with my teeth. Then I got serious about pounding myself into her. The sound of wet flesh slapping together was loud. The water on my back burned with heat. The bitch riding my cock burned me with cold. If not for the raw gold magic protecting my erection, it would probably have snapped off like an icicle—a tragedy for the whole female world.
She screamed incoherently, throwing her head back. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her vagina clamped down on me. Pulsing contractions milked my cock. I followed her over the edge of ecstasy with an explosive release. Long after I was done, her body quaked in rapid-fire aftershocks until she grew limp against me, needing my support so she wouldn’t fall and hurt herself. She wrapped her arms around me, her legs unwinding. I held her against me, letting the water bath us, clean us.
Her eyes opened and found mine. She looked exceptionally serious for a change. “Isn’t this good, Caine?”
“Hell yes.”
“Then why do you need anyone else?”
Monogamy? From a fey? I hadn’t expected this. I could have lied. It would probably
have been better, but I’d been experimenting with adding the truth to my lethal repertoire. I gave her the truth. “My dragon nature is my dominant side, uncomplicated by morality due to my demon upbringing. To a dragon, it’s not what you have that’s important, but what remains to find, steal, or conquer. The pussy yet explored will always have a dreadful fascination, but it doesn’t mean you aren’t a precious possession.”
She stared into my eyes.
I saw no heat of anger in her. Her eyes were dark mirrors, hiding emotion. Being fey, from a culture that celebrates multiples partners, I thought she could handle the truth, but her silence made me nervous. My relaxing cock slipped out of her, disconnecting us. She seemed to move a thousand miles away.
“Izumi?”
She pressed into me, sliding sideways so she was by the shower door.
“Izumi?”
She licked my nose and ran for it.
I yelled at her. “Izumi! You know I hate that.” Yeah, paybacks are always a bitch. A sexy, playful bitch.
I caught myself at the bathroom door and didn’t go out. My heightened dragon nose smelled munchkin. And pancakes. And bacon. Julia was out there despite the fact that I’d locked the bedroom door.
Izumi went, “Eek!” as she discovered this. She said, “I thought you off playing somewhere.”
“You’re naked,” Julia said.
“Well,” Izumi sounded flustered, which was really strange for a fey. She’d been in the human world way too long. She said, “I’ve been taking a shower. Of course I’m naked.” I heard her hurrying feet as she went to my closet for clothing she kept there. I hoped she remembered to bring me some clothes too.
Julia’s voice had an odd tension in it and a touch of cloying sweetness. “Did you have a nice shower? It sounded like you did.”
Damn. The kid had the same heightened senses I had. She knew very well what went on in the shower. Playground gossip would have already done much to educate her. Fuck it with spurs on! I went and got a towel, wrapping it around me, and went out.
“Don’t tease Aunt Izumi,” I said.
Demon Lord 5: Silver Crown King Page 9
