by Eve Langlais
Usually, Elsie was the type to preach about turning the other cheek. Forgiveness. And all kinds of other stupid bullshit.
Not tonight. Apparently, it only took a glass of liquid courage for Elspeth to embrace her dragon roots. To show herself capable of meting out destruction and throwing herself at a man.
Last Babette saw, Elsie had her mouth plastered to his. She didn’t need to see anything after that. Bleached eyeballs hurt and did nothing to erase the memories. Babette knew this firsthand because she’d tried after catching Nana in the act.
As she was pouring the liquid into her eyes, Grandmother had claimed sex at her age was natural. Meanwhile, the sight of all that wrinkly flesh left Babette scarred for life.
“A man? What man? Dear God, I thought you were going to keep an eye on her. Do you know what happened to the last man she went off with?”
Everyone had heard. The shifter ended up in traction, babbling about how Elspeth had just about ripped off his dick.
Pussy. Wasn’t Elsie’s fault she had a lusty appetite in the bedroom.
“Don’t worry, Auntie Klarice. This one seemed pretty sturdy.”
“The one she put in the hospital three years ago was seven feet and three hundred pounds. He’s still in rehab.”
“Humans,” she scoffed.
“He was a Kodiak bear shifter.”
“Obviously, a runt.”
“Does she at least have her medicine with her?”
“What meds?” Babette frowned. She’d not heard anything about Elsie being sick. She wandered into the bathroom and noted a bulging makeup bag. She unzipped it and eyed the many bottles.
“Elspeth has certain—” Auntie Klarice paused. “—challenges when it comes to reality. The medicine helps her not get distracted.”
It was also probably why she didn’t drink. Zipping up the bag, Babette decided there was no need to let Auntie know about their visit to the bar. Elsie would be fine. “I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.” Maybe.
“Obviously not, or she wouldn’t have gotten involved in that tavern fracas. And don’t think we didn’t hear about it. It’s all over the news. We’ve got a tech cleaning crew trying to erase her part in it as we speak. I can’t believe she was drinking. She knows how it affects her.”
And now, so did Babette. It was awesome.
Odd how finding out that Elspeth wasn’t always perfect increased her fondness for the girl.
“Elsie is fine. Nothing wrong with getting a little wild and blowing off some steam. Happens to all of us. I’ll let you know if you have to cough up bail money. As for that guy she hooked up with, I don’t think we need to worry. He’s not human.” Not by a long shot. As a matter of fact, he smelled downright exotic. If he had a sister, Babette would be all over her.
“Elspeth is a good girl, unlike some other people I know.” Auntie’s insinuation didn’t insult.
Babette was well aware of her rightly earned reputation. “Don’t worry. I’m working on her. By the time she comes home, she’ll be new and improved.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We both know she missed out on the arrogance gene.” Poor thing was handicapped in that area. She even believed in sharing. Made a girl wonder exactly what Elspeth hoarded. Because every dragon had a hoard. Most tended toward a collection of items they thought precious—Babette was partial to tootsie rolls as a portable hoard, but she had a cousin who collected chocolate bar wrappers. Only one of each type. She travelled around the world to find them and kept them inside the set of the Willy Wonka factory that she’d had custom replicated inside a derelict building.
What did Elspeth treasure?
“Don’t you dare mess with my girl!” Auntie yodeled. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Then why don’t you come here since I’m so incompetent?” Babette snapped. “I’m doing my best. It’s not as if Elsie came with warnings.”
Auntie uttered a sigh, and her voice softened. “Sorry to yell. I’m just worried about her. You need to find her. Elspeth is naïve when it comes to people. Especially men. And she needs those pills.”
“She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.” Especially after a shot of vodka. That right hook had been impressive.
A growl vibrated the phone. “Don’t make me crawl through this phone line and throttle you, Babette Silvergrace. I allowed the king to send Elspeth on this mission with you because I’d heard through the winevine”—because grapes were for humans—“that it was a nothing mission. Just those green heifers looking for attention on account of the king and his brother never having looked in their direction before choosing their mates.”
“Actually, I think something is going on,” Babette replied. While the missing dragons had supposedly returned, the humans hadn’t. Not one. And of even more interest, all those taken were female. Young. Attractive. Petite females.
As a giant, Elspeth would be fine… Erm…maybe. “Um, I gotta go. Just remembered I have to, um, change my tampon.”
“Find my daughter, or your mother will be looking for you at the bottom of the ocean,” were Auntie’s final words before she hung up.
Leaving Babette to wonder if perhaps she shouldn’t have handed Elsie off to a stranger so quickly. The man did have an odd smell about him.
And he’d seemed rather miffed at Elsie cock-blocking him.
But they kissed.
Perhaps that was how he lured the women to his lair!
“Well, hot damn, Elsie,” Babette muttered aloud. “And here I thought you were just being your annoying self, when all this time, you were laying a trap.”
Brilliant. It kind of made Babette wish she’d thought of it, but then she might have had to kiss a man.
Blerg. She’d let Elsie do the dirty work. However, she’d have to locate her and swoop in just in time to reap the glory.
Elsie wouldn’t mind because sharing was caring.
Chapter Nine
The dream began as it always did with the moment Luc realized his father was a coward.
“What are you doing?” barked Beelzebub at Asmoneus, his mate.
She whirled and hid Lucifer with her frame, not an easy feat given how gaunt she’d become—the once thickset woman now little more than skin and bones. “I’m doing nothing.”
“Will you compound the matter with lies? Have we fallen so low?” Beelzebub asked.
His mother sneered, her lip curled high over her teeth, pride hinting through the grime and despair coating her skin. “We are held prisoner because of our own naivety. We cannot fall any lower.”
“Remember our history lest we fall prey to the sins of our ancestors. Their lies and deceit led to—”
She interrupted. “Led to us being prisoners in our own dungeon.” She swept a hand and gestured to the stone block walls, dark and cold. The barred door through which they received sparse sustenance.
“Unlike our ancestors, we remained firm in our beliefs.”
“How can you not see it? We were cowards,” his mother spat. “Our ancestors are turning over in their graves, ashamed of our cowardice. We should have fought.”
Beelzebub folded his hands in his sleeves, a male who’d once appeared larger than life to a little boy. Now…Luc had nothing but disdain for the man who’d let his people down. And continued to betray them. “Violence is not the answer.”
“Neither is starving. Or allowing ourselves to be taken without protest.”
“By fighting, we are no better than the suzerain and her people.”
“People! They are not people. They are dragon mages, ousted from their world for crimes against their kind. Criminals! And you allowed them free rein.”
“They were banished like we were. Over time, I’d hoped they would adopt our ways.”
“Yet, instead, they chose to study the forbidden texts and then used them against us. We gave them the keys to our destruction.”
At the time, Luc didn’t completely understand what hi
s mother meant. But he did later on. Understood that the dark magic they’d harbored was ultimately their death knell.
“Perhaps we should have destroyed the ancient books.”
“What we needed to do was fight,” his mother exclaimed, pacing the cell, the tattered length of her robe swaying with every step. “By fighting, maybe we would have had a chance! Perhaps our son could have had a future.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You’ve said enough and done even less.” Asmoneus held herself tall, her bearing regal despite the rags she wore. “You asked what I was doing. Giving my son, our son, my portion of food.”
“Asmo, you mustn’t. You’ll starve.” Father appeared stricken.
But his mother didn’t care. Luc had never seen her so angry. “What if I do starve? What of it? I am old, Bez. My time in this world is almost done. His, though…” She cast a fond look at Luc, a youngling who’d yet to see any stubble on his jaw. “He might still have a chance if he can escape.”
“Escape to where?” His father spread his hands. “There is nowhere to go on this plane where she won’t find him.”
“There are other worlds.”
“We both know the suzerain has drained the life from all the portals. There is no escape.”
His mother remained undaunted by Father’s excuses. “For now. The alignment of the original world approaches.”
“We are forbidden on that plane.”
“I care not what people long dead decreed,” his mother spat. “We are dying, Bez. How many of us are left?”
Too few at that point. They no longer had the numbers to fight even if they wanted to.
“Perhaps it is for the best.”
The scary part was that his father truly believed they deserved to die. Deserved to have the suzerain sweep in while they slept and imprison them all. Then slowly suck the life from each and every one of them until only a few were left.
She’d kept him and Father and Mother alive the longest. Voadicia needed the knowledge in his parents’ heads because, despite centuries of learning, she knew there were still secrets to be discovered. But eventually, hunger won out.
The day she’d come for Father, Mother had tried to intervene. She’d beat on the corpulent guards with her fists, to no avail, while Father did nothing.
Beelzebub held out his hands to be shackled and said, “I go in peace. Fare thee well, my mate. Fare thee well, my son. We shall meet again if the fates decree it.”
And then Father was gone, leaving Mother to sob and call him a fool. Leaving a young man to wonder how long before he was next.
It was a while… The suzerain was determined to stretch her last meals. But, eventually, they came for his mother.
She didn’t go quietly. She cursed and kicked and screamed. Despite having never transformed because of their laws, in a fit of desperation, she managed to let the beast out.
The horns on her forehead emerged, stubby and black. Her teeth turned razor-sharp. The mighty wings at her back unfurled as she attacked.
She took the guards by surprise, especially since she was the first of their kind to finally fight back. To say “no!” to fate.
Lucifer ran to aid his mother, his fists pummeling at the guards’ thick girth.
One of them, Maedoc, grabbed Luc then lifted him and held him in front of his mother, a knife at his neck. “Enough,” he said softly. “Don’t make me kill the boy.”
Mother stilled. Her black lips peeled back to bare her teeth as she hissed, “Don’t you dare hurt him.”
“If you want to save him, then you will come with us quietly.”
“Why? So you can kill him tomorrow or the next day?” She sneered, a mighty expression full of disdain. “Perhaps it would be best if you killed him now rather than allow Voadicia to suck him dry.”
“You would really stand by and watch as he bleeds?” The tip of the knife pricked, and yet Luc wasn’t afraid. Death was but a new beginning.
“Don’t hurt him.” Mother shrank back into herself, naked and dirty, her body thin, every bony nuance showing through the skin.
“What will you give us if we shield your son from harm?”
“Anything.”
“Anything?” Maedoc leaned forward and whispered something to her. She blanched but nodded. Maedoc demanded, “Swear by the magic.”
Luc hadn’t understood at the time; only later did he realize the bargain she’d made.
She hugged him one last time and whispered words that he barely understood through his grief. But later, replayed.
Mother placed her arms behind her back as they tethered her in chains. She held his gaze and said, “You must be brave, Lucifer. Remember what I said.”
He remembered. How could he forget?
“You are the last of our branch. You are descended from the original Shining One. The only remaining heir to the King of Fierce Countenance. It is up to you to carry on the family name. But not the new traditions. Not this perversion of who we’ve become.” His mother whispered the words his father would have called treason. “I call upon you to avenge our people. To throw off the shackles that bind us. To spill the blood of our enemies and regain control of our world.”
What world?
Once his mother had left, it was just him. For years. Because Voadicia forgot he existed, or perhaps his jailors had lied. It didn’t matter. Luc survived alone in that cell for a long time. Subsisting on the water that eked out from a crack in the foundation. By feasting on the flesh of the rodents that had escaped the fate of everything else.
In solitude, he exercised to become strong. Practiced the magic his mother had taught him in secret. Sometimes, even exchanging that knowledge for outside treats when his captors made their rare visits.
He’d fully expected to die in that cell, failing to keep the promise he’d made to his mother. The magic keeping him bound within those walls was stronger than one demon alone could fight.
The failure burned bitter like the acid the rodents spat when he stepped on their tails before wringing their necks. What also burned was the fact that he owed his freedom to Maedoc and Eogan. The pair who’d kept him alive, had also set him free in the end.
When the door swung open, at first, he’d thought it a jest. A trick, surely.
Yet when they didn’t return, Luc stepped out of his cell. A prison he’d lived in since not long after his conception. He might have rejoiced, except what was there to celebrate?
The mighty castle loomed dark and silent around him. Dusty. Empty. A ghost of what it once was.
He exited the citadel, his step jaunty and excited, only to stagger to a stop as he stared.
The world his mother had described loomed dead all around. The trees but barren husks. The ground dusty. Not a speck of color to be seen. The lushness of their world killed by the dragons that had siphoned every ounce of life from the land.
Luc had never had the chance to see true living color. He’d had to rely on pictures in books. On the vivid recollections of the old ones—who became the first victims to feed Voadicia and her insatiable hunger.
Father was right. There is nothing for me here.
Maedoc and Eogan had freed him to rule over a wasteland. All that remained was the bitter taste and smell of defeat.
But it didn’t have to be the end. Luc didn’t have to be his father and go meekly to his fate. He wanted to be like his mother and fight.
With that goal in mind, despite his inexperience, he followed the tracks of the ones who’d set him free. Followed them to an ancient portal created by those who’d lived in Hell before his people. Large stone arches engraved and tingling with ancient magic. Doorways to other dimensions.
He wasn’t sure he could activate the doorway. It probably involved some intricate ceremony or fancy words.
I can’t escape.
The defeatism in that sentiment froze him. Would he truly walk away without trying? Let doubt guide his hand?
All his life, he’d
waited for a chance, an opportunity to do something. That chance had arrived.
If the dragons could use the portals, then surely he could, as well.
Placing his hand on the stone dais, the cool flow of magic surprised him. He’d not done anything to activate it, and yet the portal reacted, coming alive and powering up.
He snatched his hand away and stared.
The archway turned dark then lightened to become a misty gray. The doorway to a new future. The catch? Once he stepped through…there was no guarantee he could return.
I should wait. Explore. Find supplies. Books. All things that would take time. He stared at the oddly opaque surface of the portal. A doorway out of here.
What if he delayed and the door shut? What if the alignment of the worlds changed? What if he missed his chance?
Then I die here. Alone. Last of my kind. Perhaps that was for the best.
That was a thought Father would have. He aspired to being more like his mother. Shoulders back. Show no fear.
Inhaling deeply, he took a last look at his world.
His dead world.
He wouldn’t dishonor his mother and his ancestors by staying here to die, too.
It’s up to me now to rebuild what was lost.
It wasn’t fear that coursed through his veins as he took the needed steps through the portal, but anticipation.
Finally, he was doing something other than merely surviving.
He was—
Dying!
Lucifer choked as he emerged through the portal into a new land and breathed fresh air for the first time.
The sweetness brought tears to his eyes. The purity dropped him to his knees with weakness. He bowed his head as he finally understood exactly what had been taken from him.
Everything.
Standing on the parapet of the crumbling castle that his ancestors had once owned, he surveyed the land he’d come to. Lush. Green. Alive…
Mine. The dragons had taken everything in his world. It seemed only fair that he return the favor.