Tina couldn’t help but smile as she realized she was actually doing it. She was going to be able to draw the poison out of Ty! She could be of help.
The next moment, the poison slipped out of her hand and slapped back down on Ty’s chest, opening up a second, long wound.
“Damn it!” Christine said. “If you can’t do this, tell me now. Tell me who to take Ty to.”
Tina swallowed hard at the gruffness in Christine’s voice. It was just because Christine was worried about Ty, not because she was angry at Tina.
“Let me try again,” Tina said. She took hold of the new line of poison and started lifting it off Ty's chest. Again, the poison felt so slippery. It stretched as she lifted it. She was afraid that it would snap off and burrow deeper into Ty’s flesh.
Just before the line broke, Tina gently released it so it wouldn’t slap back down on Ty’s skin and do more damage.
“If I had more time I could do it,” Tina told Christine, though Tina wasn’t certain. “I’m just not a healer.”
“Then send us to one,” Christine said, the impatience in her tone making Tina wince.
“Fine,” Tina said. She put her wand down on the floor, then stood and quickly sketched the outline of a door with her hands. Magic sprang up, filling the space with glistening gray mist. “Alberta will take care of you,” Tina said as she stepped back and looked over to where Ty lay.
Christine had picked up Ty’s body and carried it as if it weighed nothing. “Thank you,” she said. Just before she stepped through the portal, she added, “Sorry for the mess.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean it up,” Tina said. “Go.”
Christine gave her a single, sharp nod, then stepped through the portal.
At least Christine had still trusted Tina to create a portal for her. Though given how Tina’s magic was draining away, she wasn’t sure for how long she’d be able to do even that.
After Christine had left, Tina picked her wand back up again. She needed to clean the carpet now, as well as clear the air of the stench of burning flesh.
However, she merely stood there, frozen, too scared to try.
She could do this. She could clean this up. She could perform this magic.
She waved her wand.
The blood sluggishly lifted from the carpet, as if actively resisting her. It felt as though her arm was fighting to move, as if she’d been rolled in cotton batting and could no longer touch anything.
She could do this. Even if it took her the entire rest of the day and she eventually had to resort to an actual pail and soap and water.
Chapter Twenty
Lars maintained his cool when Sigmund, one of his demon generals, reported the demise of Zemund on the fawn world.
They were meeting in his newly furnished office on the human plane. The desk was a nice piece of industrial metal, made to look imposing. Lars’ chair was also deliberately taller than the visitor chairs so that he’d be staring down his nose at any who came to see him.
It wasn’t a throne. Not quite. But Lars could see a throne in his future, how he’d be promoted to be one of the princes of Hell when he managed to pull this off.
He hadn’t started decorating the walls with heads yet. He had put up some of the maps, showing the various worlds in an artful pattern. They weren’t really that close to one another, as most pocket worlds existed in their own plane and were only accessible through portals.
Lars had color-coded the maps. Red meant the attack plan was already in the can, as it were. Yellow worlds indicated those that the corruption plan had just begun.
Then there were the green worlds. Not green like grass or new leaves. No, a brown-green.
Troll green.
Lars hadn’t gotten around to stashing the armies he’d accumulated on those worlds yet.
Seemed as though the time had just arrived.
“Tell me again what your minions reported to you,” Lars ordered Sigmund.
“I don’t know where they came from,” Sigmund said gruffly. “It wasn’t on my watch.” Sigmund and Zemund had been brothers and shared many of the same physical attributes, such as the bright red skin, fire breathing abilities, and their speed. Sigmund, however, had been the smarter of the pair of them.
Lars didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that the more intelligent of the two brothers had survived. This meeting would determine Sigmund’s fate—if Lars would give him another cushy assignment like the fawns or send him against fighters likely to take a lot of lives, like trolls or orcs.
Lars made a rolling motion with his hand, indicating for the demon to just get on with his story.
“According to the minions preparing the fire, two mighty warriors came at them.” Sigmund sighed. “Or at least, I think it was two. The first reports were that it had been over a dozen.”
Lars nodded. That was the nature of all demons, to exaggerate their foes. Particularly when one of them had been beaten.
“One was a were-something, some sort of lap dog,” Sigmund said. “Black, with a huge sword.”
That would be Ty, the demon hunter, if Lars guessed right. Ty, who had been on Lars’ tail. Had that been what had drawn Ty to the fawn world in the first place?
Lars had bounced through two dozen worlds after his escape from prison in order to throw off whoever would be hunting him. Some of the worlds Lars had been familiar with himself. Others, though, had been completely unknown. He’d met with demons at specific points, as arranged by his family, who could either create the next portal for him or direct him to the next demon in the chain.
It seemed that Ty had figured out that the demon meeting Lars at one of those awful rock worlds had gone straight to the fight with the fawns.
“And the other attacker?” Lars prompted Sigmund.
“A troll.” Sigmund scowled, looking even more pissed off than he had been. “A troll who had magic.”
Lars gave a satisfied smile. “Good. The troll is now in play.”
Of course, he would have preferred that she not come onto the gameboard until later, after he’d had more opportunity to prepare.
He’d planned for her showing up, though. Had planned for those distractions specifically.
“She must have surprised my brother, or something,” Sigmund said. “She couldn’t have taken him in a fair fight.”
“That’s probably true,” Lars admitted. “That damned troll can be sneaky. Now, whether or not she would have defeated Zemund anyways, well, we’ll never know.”
Sigmund growled but didn’t say anything.
“And what about the fire? And the eruption spell?” Lars asked.
Sigmund shook his head. “They timed their attack perfectly,” he said with disgust. “Zemund had just gone back to do the final rituals. If we want to use the fawn world for the spell, we’re going to have to start from scratch.”
Lars shook his head. “No, I need someone reliable to finish off the work.”
“I am reliable!” Sigmund said.
“Your brother was taken out by a troll,” Lars pointed out. He wasn’t about to admit that the same troll had nearly killed him on more than one occasion.
“She wouldn’t survive an encounter with me,” Sigmund boasted.
Lars narrowed his eyes and stared hard at Sigmund.
The demon didn’t back down. “She used rocks to pummel Zemund. And she used the bonfire itself to attack the other demons. I know that she also has magical air and water elementals. She wouldn’t surprise me, not like she did Zemund.”
Lars was impressed with the other demon despite himself. “All right, then,” Lars said after a bit, having made his decision. “You go to the Iris world. Await orders there.”
Sigmund tilted his head to one side. “But there’s no fighting there,” he complained.
“Exactly,” Lars said. “You are distraction only. Do not engage with anyone who comes across you. Kill them if you must, but stay hidden and out of sight for the most part.”
“Why would you send me there, and not to someplace where there will be proper fighting?” Sigmund asked.
Lars really was impressed with the demon’s smarts. He was going to have to be careful, or Sigmund was going to be coming for Lars one of these days.
“Two reasons,” Lars said. “First, when the signal comes, you will be transported to one of the other worlds where there will be more glorious battle,” he assured Sigmund.
The demon nodded and waited for Lars to continue.
Patience in a demon? Interesting. Sigmund was already a general. Maybe he was bucking for the next higher position, grand general. Or even supreme general.
“Second,” Lars said. “That troll you were just complaining about? May come sneaking around your encampment. I give you permission to kill her if you see her.”
Sigmund gave a wicked smile. “Consider it done.”
After Sigmund left, Lars first selected another easy world, like the fawns, where the demons could wreak the most havoc, then use all those souls to power the movement of his troops. It was an enhanced eruption spell: instead of lava or geysers of water, demons would erupt out of the earth.
Then he called up the other generals and had them start to deploy their troops.
The next phase of the battle had begun.
Chapter Twenty-One
King Garethen didn’t bring the head of the cambion demons to his usual office where he met with the guard and members of the court.
Instead, the king used a tiny room, just off the kitchen, that was too small to be a proper pantry or root cellar. The cook had been paid off well, originally by the chamberlain, now by the king himself, not to blab about certain private meetings.
The room itself had good rock walls. Fresh sawdust had been sprinkled on the floor. It held three solid chairs made out of wrought iron—garden chairs, given the fancy vines and blossoms that made up the backs of the chairs. Smells from the kitchen, of the fish that had been served for lunch and the fresh corn-and-mint salad that the cook was making for dinner that night, permeated the small space.
Manny, the cambion, was just as ugly as the rest of his race. His nose constantly ran with a thick, yellow snot. His eyes were set too far apart, giving him the look of an ox. And about as smart as one, too. Most of his skull was bald, but a few patches grew long, greasy locks of hair. Thick folds of dirty flesh encircled his neck, along with a goiter that had pushed out of one side. His eyes held the darkness of a bad nightmare, and his jagged, pointed teeth also followed that theme. He wore a dirty red vest that could barely be tied over his extended belly. Filthy claws tipped the ends of his six-fingered hands, though he only had four, equally dirty, toes.
The king wasn’t sure that it had been that smart of a decision to meet with Manny alone. However, Ozlandia and Alberthendi had refused to listen to the king’s very reasonable objections about how many border troops they actually needed.
Maybe they hadn’t really represented the cambion’s request fairly either.
“So you see,” Manny continued, wheezing as he spoke, “it’s really just about equal access for all.”
The king shook his head. “But you have access to the other worlds through portals. Why do you need direct access to the human world through the bridge?”
Manny nodded as if he’d already considered that. “Now, you know that my people are part demon. Some of them are quite proud of their heritage. Others, they would prefer to emphasize their human halves.”
“Okay,” King Garethen said after a moment. He hadn’t known that, though it made sense to him. While all trolls shared some traits, individuals were, after all, individual.
“The demons…” Manny paused and looked around, then over his shoulder as if making sure they were still alone. “The more purebred demons, they look down their noses at us. And the ones who would rather honor their human heritage get the worst treatment of all.”
King Garethen nodded. He’d seen the same thing happen to a human-troll hybrid. Not that he’d met many. Most trolls wanted nothing to do with the humans.
“Now, you’ve heard about the fawns and what happened to their world, right?” Manny continued.
Grimness took over the king. He felt his heart harden. “I did.” Christine had sent a messenger with the news. They’d be meeting the next day to discuss troop deployment.
Seemed that the king wasn’t going to saving any coin after all on the border patrols.
Manny nodded as if in sympathy. “Shame. Real shame. I was told it was such a pretty world. Kind of like here.”
King Garethen raised his eyebrows in disbelief. Most demons couldn’t see the beauty in good soil and earth.
Maybe this cambion was different.
“Wouldn’t want something like that to happen here,” Manny said. He gave King Garethen a wink.
“Are you threatening me?” King Garethen said, sitting up taller. Of course, only a demon was stupid enough to come into the heart of Trollville and threaten the king.
“No, no, nothing like that,” Manny said. “More like a trade. A deal.”
“I’m listening,” the king said coldly. He would listen. He’d promised that. Then he’d escort this demon right back out the door and send him on his way.
“The cambion who are more human, well, they’re going to be hurt in the oncoming war. They might even be persecuted by those who they call relatives.” Manny shrugged. “It’s the nature of demons to turn on their own.”
King Garethen nodded slowly. While it happened sometimes among trolls, humans were the mostly likely to declare war against themselves.
“We want access to the human world, via the fairy bridge, so that those cambion who need to escape can do so quickly when the need arises,” Manny said. “And in return, I can promise you that the demons will delay their attack on Trollville.”
“How can you do that?” the king asked. “Even if you could make a bargain with the attacking demons, there’s nothing to make them hold to their worlds.”
“They’ll keep their side of a bargain if enough gold has exchanged hands,” Manny assured him. “And I have plenty of gold.”
“Do you, now?” the king asked. Not that he needed more gold for his war chest. It was plenty full. And he anticipated a lot more coming in. As Lapundar had said—the merchants would stop complaining about taxes and would happily contribute if battles actually loomed.
“It wouldn’t take much to have some of it flow here, into your worthy hands, in exchange for access,” Manny said smoothly.
“Hmmm, you’ve given me much to think about,” King Garethen replied. He wouldn’t say anything more than that, and got Manny out of the palace quickly.
Then the king went back to his office, thinking.
He knew better than to make a deal with a demon, any demon, whether they were part human or not, whether it would benefit those who were also being persecuted by the demons.
But in his private heart of hearts, King Garethen knew that he was tempted.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Don’t tell me you have to cancel,” Dennis said sourly after he’d seen it was Christine calling him on his phone. “I’m already at the restaurant. Is it really too much to ask that you actually show up? Spend some time with your family?”
Dennis knew that he sounded like a sullen Jewish mother, the kind he saw in sitcoms. But the day hadn’t gone anything like how he’d expected, between the fight with his boss, then the fight with traffic, followed by the near impossible task of finding parking on Capitol Hill after six PM.
Now, he was going to be here all alone at this weird Russian restaurant. The woman running it had that doughy peasant look, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and flat cheeks. To say she’d been dismissive of him was an understatement. She’d grudgingly sat him at the single separate table tucked into the far corner of the place.
The rest of the tiny space was filled with a bar along one side and three long communal tables jutting out from it. Huge guys
from the rugby team of a nearby college were sitting around the one table and toasting each other with large steins of beer. Dennis didn’t even know what language they were speaking in. Any one of those guys easily made up two of him. Not in height, but sheer breadth of shoulders.
What looked like a clutch of office workers crowded in around a second long table, sipping a martini-like drink that had blue food coloring in it.
Glowing blue food coloring. Which meant it wasn’t food coloring but something Dennis really didn’t want to know about.
He shouldn’t have let Christine pick the restaurant.
“No, I am not canceling,” Christine said with a too-familiar growl. “I’m calling to let you know I’m running a bit late but will be there as soon as I can be. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Don’t tell me you’re having problems parking. Oh, wait, you don’t drive,” Dennis said. He pressed his lips together and shook his head. He shouldn’t be taking out his bad day on his sister.
“Ty was hurt,” Christine said. “I’m still at the healer’s.”
Dennis gulped and felt even more guilty. “Get here when you can.”
Damn it! Dennis stared down at his phone. If he was only going to play second fiddle, a supporting role, then he needed to change his attitude and actually be supportive.
He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself. Right the fuck now.
Dennis swallowed down the bile he’d been tasting and looked around the room with different eyes. The walls were done in a rough-hewn wood, and the floor was concrete. It felt…rustic. Not something that Dennis was necessarily comfortable with, but he could work with this.
No TV graced any of the corners. He only now noticed that there wasn’t any music in the background either. The woman who’d seated him, who still looked daggers at him from the corner next to the bar, had pointed out the menu to him, written on a chalkboard hanging over the bar.
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