by Sam Cheever
She gave Slayer a smoldering look and touched the pommel of her rapier as she strolled past and addressed me. “You rang?”
“I need to find out how Dialle and I got poisoned.”
“And you think I know?”
“No. But I need you to find out. You and Slayer.”
She cast him a look and snorted. “Surely you jest?”
“I never jest where Dialle’s life is concerned.”
She cast a look toward the bed for the first time, her expression growing more serious. “The king languishes?”
I frowned.
“I think I might know who you’re looking for.” Slayer stepped forward so that he faced Brina and me, his back to the bed. His frown had deepened.
“Spill it, Slayer. What do you know?”
“I recognized a magic signature at the cave. One that I sensed at Mx. Davis’ home and at the old lady’s.”
“Mx. Diamon’s?”
“Yes. I couldn’t place it at first. It’s been bothering me. But I think I’ve got it now.”
He glanced at Brina, looking as if he was uncertain he should speak in front of her.
“Slayer!” I was quickly losing my patience, never a snake with a long tail to start with.
He hesitated a moment longer, until my glare made a big enough impression on him, and then said, “I think it’s Crisanne.”
Brina lifted a dark eyebrow. “Is she a witch?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
Brina glanced at me. “The poison. I recognize its effects. I don’t know which one it is exactly, but there’s only one class of poison that creates a dying belly like that. From the benedictine plant on Mars. It’s popular with sorcerers and witches because several different poisons can be made from it. All of which kill the internal organs and rot the victim from the inside out.”
Placing a hand on my belly as it spun in memory of my own bout with the poison, I gave the Royal a sharp glance. “I thought you didn’t know where the poison came from.”
She shrugged. “I don’t. Specifically. I only know where it probably originated from. Mars initially, and then somebody’s coven.”
My gaze slid to Astis and an ugly suspicion danced across my mind. “How is this poison administered?”
Brina shrugged. “It depends on the particular poison, of course. I’ve heard the covens have perfected a poison that can be transmitted through a kiss.”
And with those seemingly innocuous words, my entire world crashed down around me.
My knees buckled and I started to droop. Slayer grabbed my arm and yanked me upright. “What’s wrong, Astra? You just lost about four shades of color.”
I shook my head and pushed Slayer’s hand away, striding toward the witch at Dialle’s bedside. I grabbed her arm and yanked her violently around.
She sighed with pleasure.
“What is the name of this poison?”
Her smile made me want to send a power arrow between her eyes. I think the only thing that stopped me was the sure knowledge that she would enjoy it for the few seconds before she died.
“I have two words for you, witch…pleasure parlor.”
She glared but finally responded. “Benificious. It is a particularly vile concoction, generally fatal. I am one of few who know how to remove it totally from the victim’s system.”
I glanced at Slayer and Brina. “Isn’t that awfully handy for us? Who uses this poison?”
Astis’ expression was slightly smug. “Few covens know the secret of its makeup. It is what you might call a designer poison, made up of the worst elements of all its cousins. My coven has used Benificious against our enemies for decades.”
“So you’re telling me the Angel City Coven is behind Dialle’s and my poisonings?”
“Not at all. We sell some of our stock to other covens.”
“I’ll need the names of those covens.”
She named three out of dozens of area covens. They were the largest three. Apparently Benificious came at a price only the wealthiest covens could afford.
“Who else might have access to this poison?”
Astis shrugged, her glance sliding away guiltily before she shuttered it.
I grabbed her shoulder. “Tell me!”
She shuddered with pleasure at the harsh treatment and looked at me from under lowered lashes. Her tongue slipped across her lips in a purely sensual way.
“Cut it out, Astis!”
“But your reaction is so much fun, Tweener.”
Before I could stop him, Slayer strode across the room and grabbed her arm, yanking her up off the floor in a quick, brutal move. Something in her shoulder popped and she cried out, her eyes rolling closed with pleasure.
“Slayer!” I grabbed his arm. “That isn’t the way, I need her thinking right now, not having an orgasm from rough treatment.”
His pretty golden eyes widened as he realized what I was telling him and he dropped her arm like a red-hot lump of coal.
I touched Astis’ arm, sending healing power into it until the shoulder popped back into place.
Her eyelids fluttered and opened. She eyed Slayer up and down, licking her lips. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know if this one will beat me.”
I think Slayer growled. If he didn’t it was me. I’d prefer to think it was him. “I need information and I need you to heal Dialle.”
Her silver-gray gaze slipped down Slayer’s body, assessing. “Then he’ll beat me?”
I expelled a breath and glanced at Slayer. His lips were twisted in disgust but he met my gaze, finally nodding.
“Yes. Get on with it. Dialle’s getting worse while you play your stupid games.”
“I had some of the poison in my things.”
My stomach sank and dizziness swamped me again. I had known. But I didn’t want to admit it fully to myself. I sucked air and forced my knees to straighten, pushing away the sadness that made my stomach roil. “Let me guess, you put it into a lipstick and kissed him?”
She snorted. “Stupid Tweener. Do you honestly think I’d kiss an enemy? My poisons are all in oils.”
Slayer nodded. “To tip weapons, fingernails…”
“Claws?” Brina stepped forward. She looked at Slayer. “The Puka.”
He nodded.
“Yes. The poison was in a small blue bottle.” She glanced at me. “When you became ill I went looking for it. It was missing.”
“So someone in the Royal Court took it?”
“That was my assumption.”
I nodded, frowning. Glancing at Slayer, I asked, “Puka?”
“What were you doing during your Human Mythology classes, Astra?” Slayer shook his head.
“Sleeping. They were always the early morning classes.” I grinned at him. “I didn’t do mornings back then. I was determined not to join the adult world any sooner than necessary.”
“Some would you say still are,” the witch murmured.
Brina snorted and I glared at her. “Tell me about the Puka.”
“That creature who attacked me at the old woman’s house,” Brina offered. “It was a Puka.”
“Ah. Yes.” I nodded, the pieces sliding together. “As I recall, the Puka is a mythological fairy and shapeshifter that can assume all sorts of forms.”
“I’ve seen them take the form of a horse, a rabbit, a goat and a dog,” Slayer offered. He looked at me. “Didn’t you say you saw one in the Davis home, right before you got sick?”
“Yeah. I was scratched.” I frowned. “That would explain my poisoning, but not Dialle’s.”
“Could he have gotten sick from touching you?” Brina looked at Astis.
“Not likely.” Turning back to Dialle, she pointed to a line of scratches that ran from his armpit to his waistline on one side of his torso. Despite her healing efforts, the scratches remained deep and still festered. “This is probably where the poison was introduced. I’d say from gargoyle claws if I had to guess.”
“So the Puka took the
form of a gargoyle?” I glanced at Slayer.
“Possibly.”
“Or someone behind the scenes is orchestrating the attacks, using these other creatures to cover for him.”
“Or her,” Slayer added, lifting an eyebrow to remind me of our earlier conversation.
And we were back to his former girlfriend, Crisanne.
“Brina, take Slayer around the court and see if he can find this Crisanne chick. If she’s behind this I’m going to bitch-slap her onto the next moon.”
She nodded and turned away. Slayer touched my arm. “Will you be okay? Maybe you should call Darma to be your backup.”
I snorted. “I’d rather take your place beating the witch.” Shaking my head, I turned back toward the bed. “I’m going to stay here with Dialle. I’ll be fine. Gerch will be here with me.”
Slayer looked at the massive royal soldier standing just inside the door, his thick arms crossed over a huge chest and his wide red face intense. “Okay. You know what to do if you need me.”
“Coming, Tweener?”
Slayer rolled his eyes and started toward the door and the petite Royal waiting impatiently for him.
I turned back to the bed and was relieved to see that Dialle had a little more color. Astis’ magic was working.
My pocket televisual bleeped and I pulled it out of my boot where I’d stuffed it. Ralph’s handsome face swam into view. He looked worried.
I could see Darma standing behind him.
“Hey, Ralph. What’s my sister doing there? Where’s the client?”
“Astra. Mx. Diamon is missing. I’m really worried about her. I think she’s gone after her husband on her own.”
“Frunk me! Why do you think that?”
“It’s just a guess, but it’s definitely strengthened by the transmission she sent me that said, ‘I’ve found Henry and I’m going after him’.”
“Have you and Bob looked for her?”
“We went to her home and tried to follow her trail. Her scent was strong in the kitchen, but we followed it to the living room and then she just…disappeared.”
Darma shoved Ralph aside and bent toward the screen. “I’m sorry, Astra. I think she put something in my tea. I fell asleep. When I woke up she was gone.”
Aha! Vindicated! Just as I’d suspected, tea was Satan’s poison and little old ladies were his spawn.
I thought about what Ralph had said for a minute. The woman had bothered me from the first moment I’d laid eyes on her. Her aura had just been too perfect. Over the years she should have blemished it a little. And then there was Bob’s reaction to her, which he denied. “Put Bob on. I need to talk to him.”
A beat later, Bob’s face replaced Ralph’s on the small screen. “Hey, Astra? Do you think you can help us find her?”
“If you’ll be honest with me.”
He frowned. “What does that mean? I haven’t lied to you.”
“Maybe not intentionally. But you have been lying. I’ve asked you several times if there was anything different about Mx. Diamon. Each time you hesitated and then assured me there was nothing.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Tell me, Bob. What is it about her that bothers you?”
He expelled a breath and glanced off screen before answering. Then he lowered his voice. “Look, Astra, Mx. Diamon’s emotions are…I don’t know how else to say it except that they’re frazzled.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged. “The best way I can explain it is that humans think and feel in words. Animals think and feel in pictures. When I used my empathic powers to read her, what I got back was a mixture of pictures and words. It’s highly unusual for humans, Astra, but not unheard of. That’s all. She’s different, but not necessarily in a bad way.”
I thought about this for a minute, trying to figure out what it meant. Nothing jumped out at me. “Okay, so she’s gone to get her husband back. Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why now? She hired us to do exactly that, Bob. Why is she suddenly setting off on her own?”
“I couldn’t tell you. It bothers us too.”
“Are you sure the transmission came from her?”
“We were…but now I’m not so sure. It just doesn’t make sense.”
In the end I agreed to help them because…well…I was growing increasingly certain that the old couple’s plight was somehow tied to my and Dialle’s situation. Also, I didn’t think I could stand watching the witch run her hands all over Dialle for another minute.
I turned to Gerch and told him I’d be back. As he opened his mouth to argue I started to shimmer away. He glanced toward the bed one last time and then barked instruction at the other guards in the room and threw himself toward me, grabbing my wrist before I could completely shimmer away.
That was how I found myself locked in space and time with about three hundred pounds of devil attached to my arm.
Frunk me straight to Hades!
Chapter Eleven
Unraveling the Mystery
When love must heal and danger looms, young miss will ever try,
To save her man and with his goons, set the devil’s plans awry.
We came back to sound and light in an unused sewer tunnel leading to my new office. Gerch landed hard, facedown in an oily puddle in the middle of the tunnel. He came up sputtering, spraying dirty water over my pretty boots.
“Hey, watch it! These are fairly new.”
Climbing to his big, flat feet, Gerch glared at me. “You always say that. If it were true, you’d have to have a hundred pairs of boots.”
“And your point is?” I started down the tunnel, keeping an eye out for long-tailed, beady-eyed monsters as I went.
For those of you who don’t really know me yet…rats are not my favorite thing. And there I was, with an office in a sewer.
Bleurgh!
That’s what I got for hanging out with werewolves.
“Where are we going?”
I slanted him a look, grinning as he ran a huge hand over his cheeks and scraped dirty water off in a stream. Like a scaly red windshield wiper.
“To my office. Something about these cases is connected to what’s going on with me and Dialle.” I thought for a moment and then decided I could trust him. He was big, red and scaly but he’d proven his loyalty to me many times over. “And I think we’re looking for somebody at court.”
Gerch’s big head was shaking before I got the last word out. “Not a chance, my queen. No one at court would dare poison the king.”
I snorted, pulling open the double-glass doors that led into the foyer of Werever…Whatever. “Do you really believe that, in a Royal Court filled with the most egotistical and powerful devils on Earth, nobody would be mean enough to try to take out the top guy to gain control?”
I slapped my palm over the door lock and it snicked open, the three-inch-thick metal door sliding back into the wall with only a whisper of sound.
Gerch frowned, his beady black eyes almost disappearing beneath his forehead. “I am certain.” I shook my head and started toward my office. Bob and Ralph met me halfway across the foyer. Darma had been sitting in the foyer and jumped up when I arrived.
“What’s the plan?” Ralph asked.
“Can you send everything you have on the Diamon case to my information unit? I’m going to go over it with the Betty Davis files and see if I can figure out what’s going on. Today’s events seemed to tie these cases to what’s happening to me.”
At Bob’s questioning look I told him, “I’ll fill you in once I have all the files.”
Five minutes later we were standing in front of all the information we had on the two women, holographically spread out across the long wall in my office. It was like looking for a needle-thin laser beam in a light storm.
“What kind of demon did you find in Betty Davis’ home?” Ralph asked me.
“Just your typical third-circle-of-Hell grunt.”
“The kind the Royal Cour
ts use for heavy labor?” Gerch glared at Bob but he didn’t back down.
“That would definitely tie the demon attack to you and Dialle,” Darma offered.
I nodded. Resting my butt on the edge of my desk, I said, “The biggest wild card we have is the Puka. What in Hades would they be doing here and what do they have to do with the Diamons and Mx. Davis?”
We all thought about that for a minute and then Gerch offered, “There’s a meeting of the Dark Council coming up. I wonder if it could have something to do with that?”
I turned to him and blinked.
Bob and Ralph blinked too.
“Holy Him!” Ralph muttered. “I’d almost forgotten about that.”
“There could definitely be a connection. Is it possible Mx. Diamon’s husband is the Puka King?”
I sneered. “Living in a sky home like an everyday Joe Martian? Doubtful.”
“Or genius,” Bob offered.
We all looked at him. “Who would think a gnarly old human couple was special in any way? They might have been safer in that form than if they’d surrounded themselves in guards and retained their true forms.”
“If he’s the king, what does that make the female with him?” Gerch asked.
“I’m gonna take a stab in the dark here, but…queen?” Both of my eyebrows lifted in mockery of the red devil.
“There is no Puka Queen.” If he’d had an eyebrow it would have lifted. Instead his brow perked upward.
“The Pukas are an all-male society, Astra.” Ralph shook his head in disgust at my ignorance. “Did you completely skip your mythology classes in school?”
Darma snorted.
I was getting pretty frunkin’ tired of that question. Crossing my arms over my chest, I glared at one and all. “Yeah, pretty much I did. So impale me on a sword. I’m an idiot.” I expelled a frustrated breath as Gerch pursed his lips and Bob and Ralph looked away, their eyes sparking with suspicious light.
“Now that we have that out of the way…” Darma said with a grin.
Gerch coughed.
I glared at my sister and she laughed.
Sensing my growing anger, Bob placed an arm across my shoulders. “They’re just teasing, Astra. Ice out.”