bedeviled & beyond 03 - bedeviled & beleaguered

by Sam Cheever

Nodding, I grabbed a larger and sturdier mug from the cabinet. I programmed a strong, black cup of coffee into the drink valet, and then carried it to the table. Sitting down across from my sister, I stared at her until she slid her blue gaze reluctantly to mine. “Talk to me, Darma. Why are you with Torre and why didn’t you tell me?” Unspoken in that question was the one about why she’d been sitting in supreme judgment for months over my relationship with Dialle while cavorting with his little bro.

  She shrugged, hiding behind her cup. “It was none of your business.”

  I arched a dark red eyebrow at her. “Really?”

  Her response was a glare. “I found someone who treasures me for what I am. I don’t need your permission to date...anyone.”

  “And what exactly are you, Darma?”

  Her head shot up in surprise. “What an odd thing to ask me, Astra.”

  I shook my head, “Not really. You’ve been denying your heritage since you were old enough to recognize it, so it seems logical to ask which you he treasures, the real you or the you that’s been made up in your head.”

  She scowled at me for a long moment and then, amazingly, shrugged. “I’m not sure actually. I’m still figuring it out.”

  I barely resisted the urge to offer her a smart retort. There was something in her eyes that I couldn’t remember ever having seen before and I just couldn’t do it. My bossy, bitchy older sister was feeling vulnerable.

  The world must be ending.

  Finally I sighed. “Do you love him?”

  She shrugged again, concentrating hard on her tea. “I’m not sure about that either, Astra.” She looked up at me, her blue eyes suddenly swimming in tears.

  I reached across the table and grabbed one of her hands. When I squeezed it gently she squeezed back and gave me a slight smile. “I’m kind of a mess right now.”

  I laughed, finding myself unsure how to treat her for the first time in our adult lives, “Finally!”

  She stared hard at me for a beat and then, incredibly, she smiled and even chuckled. “I know I’ve been hard on you...”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “A little stern at times...”

  “A little, yes.”

  “But I thought I was doing what was best for you.”

  My gaze shot wide. “But you don’t think that anymore?”

  She shrugged, taking a long sip of her tea. “I...I’m just not sure anymore.”

  I stared at her, not believing what I was hearing.

  She raised a shaking hand to her fae and rubbed at her eyes before meeting my gaze again. “I know now that your...magic...is something you can’t live without. It defines you in some strange way.” Her gaze slid downward and her hands met in front of the cooling tea, the long fingers tapping together. I almost smiled at the mannerism, which was one I’d seen our father make whenever he was distressed about something. “I might have been wr-wr-wr...” Her lips wrapped around the unaccustomed admission but her throat just wouldn’t let go of the word.

  “Wrong?” I smiled.

  Darma’s gaze jerked in my direction. Instead of answering she pinched her shoulders upward again.

  Darma appeared to be undergoing some kind of life altering change that had the potential to make my life easier in the long run. But somehow, looking at her miserable face, I couldn’t quite celebrate the change.

  I gave her hand a final squeeze and stood up. “Whatever I can do to help.” I hesitated. I was on totally new ground. Darma had always been so self-sufficient and strong. She’d never needed my help before. For anything. I wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed. Finally I just went with my instincts. “You’ll let me know?”

  She didn’t look up but nodded. “Thanks.” The word was spoken so quietly it was nearly a whisper. I stood there a moment longer, reluctant to leave her alone. But when she didn’t appear to notice me I decided I might as well leave.

  I headed for the office, feeling unsettled. My life had always been so filled with turmoil, so complex and, at times, difficult but I’d always had one thing I could count on never changing. One thing. But that was changing too. Sighing, I decided I’d adjust to knowing my sister was cavorting with a Royal Prince. I always adjusted. It was one of the facets of my nature that I was particularly proud of. I just wasn’t happy at the moment about having to make that adjustment. Something about the situation just felt...wr-wr...

  Suddenly the sky in front of the Viper blackened and we surged sideways on a sweep of violent air. All thoughts of my sister and her state of mind fled as I realized the unnatural blackness of the sky had glistening scales and, when it shifted to stay in front of the Viper, large white teeth.

  A black dragon.

  “Shit!”

  The thing smiled at me through the Viper’s front viewport and swung backward in the air with a powerful sweep of its massive, black wings. I saw the shocking white of its long, scale-free underbelly and thick, treelike back legs as the dragon spread its enormous wings, creating a solid backwash of wind. The backdraft nearly stopped the Viper’s forward motion, causing us to hang in the air as we fought to regain our equilibrium.

  Cursing colorfully I forced my horrified gaze away from the attacking dragon and started punching buttons on the Viper’s directional panel. Pushing us into hyper-drive allowed the Viper to break free of the wall of wind the dragon’s powerfully sweeping wings were creating and we finally surged upward, passing just over the thing’s, long, elegant snout.

  The dragon emitted a scream of rage behind us as we sailed free and I prayed we were going fast enough to outrun it. Unfortunately, a sudden thud on the Viper’s tail end told me that answer was a resounding...um no. We weren’t going to outrun the dragon. The Viper slowed and began to struggle, whining deep inside its guts at the effort to do what I’d instructed it to do. Finally we stopped completely and the Viper shuddered as something huge and heavy seemed to shimmy up its back.

  I looked up and saw the dragon’s white underbelly smashed against the upper viewport. Apparently the thing had wrapped itself around us.

  Movement tore my gaze forward as a huge mouth filled with deadly looking teeth filled the front viewport.

  Yelping in surprise, I threw myself backward, though I couldn’t really escape. There was nowhere to go. The scary looking teeth closed down over the viewport and grabbed on, leaving me to stare in disgust at the thing’s curling black tongue and surprisingly pink tonsils.

  The dragon drove its teeth through the shiny, red surface of the Viper and I winced, realizing that I was deep in a piss ocean surrounded by turd sharks. I wasn’t going to escape my predicament unless I donned my magic dance shoes and started doing a really good two step.

  Closing my eyes and taking a deep, calming breath, I pushed my mind through my options. It didn’t take long, I only had two. Pull out every ounce of magic I had and shoot it at the thing, praying it would take its nasty teeth back and hobble home in unhappy defeat...or let it eat me.

  I didn’t much like option number two.

  As the dragon tightened the grip its wings had on the Viper and started shaking its head in an effort to rip the nose off my beloved air vehicle, I forced myself to breathe deeply and pull my magic forward.

  The energy bubbled up just as the Viper’s nose started to squeal in unhappy submission. A violent wrenching, ripping sound made me lose my focus and my grip on my magic slipped.

  Forcing myself to focus, I managed to grab the thread again, just as the Viper’s nose wrenched loose and I felt the dragon’s hot, citrusy breath against my face. My eyes wanted to open but I forced them to stay closed, knowing that if I looked up into the hole the black dragon had made in my beautiful air vehicle I’d lose focus completely and I’d have no chance at all of surviving.

  Instead I threw out my sensing power and watched the dragon’s fiery aura through that.

  The thing lifted its snout into the air and gave a heart-stopping roar. I tightened my knees against the urge to wet myself and dragged my power
out of its hiding place in my brain. In horrified fascination, my senses tracked the flow of fire from the dragon’s lungs, up its long throat and toward the open maw that waited above me. I was suddenly at a bonfire party, facing a pretty orange and blue jolt of skin-melting fire and I was the weenie on the stick.

  Just before the fire emerged from the dragon’s throat I molded my power into a protective bubble, praying I had enough in me to stop the wall of flame that was coming my way.

  The flames hit my energy bubble with a whoosh and I nearly buckled under the dreadful heat. The Viper’s interior started to crack and melt around me and tears rolled down my cheeks. There was no way both of us would survive the attack.

  In fact, I knew with a heavy heart that the Viper was already gone, which meant I had two problems. First I had to vanquish the dragon and then I had to find a way out of the Viper before it hit the ground.

  The dragon reared back again, taking a fiery breath that sucked all the air out of the Viper’s mangled cockpit, and roaring as it prepared to fling fire at me again. I opened my eyes and swallowed hard, realizing I had the space of a heartbeat to make my move. I quickly dropped power from my protective bubble and redirected it into a power arrow, which I shot through the ugly tear in the Viper’s nose and into the dragon’s convulsing throat.

  The horrendous noise was cut off mid-roar and the dragon squawked painfully as my power ripped a three foot long hole in its throat. Instinctively it unwrapped its wings from the Viper and surged backward, flinging it’s beautiful black head from side to side in obvious pain.

  I gasped as the Viper plunged downward, powerless and rudderless and torn beyond repair. My mind was quickly assessing my chances of shifting out of the cockpit into a place that was relatively safe and open when the Viper’s downward spiral halted with a bone jarring jerk and my body slammed into the floor hard enough to knock all the wind out of me.

  Gasping on the floor of the disabled vehicle, I groaned as the Viper shuddered beneath the dragon’s embrace again. I tried pushing myself off the floor, swearing inventively in my head as I fought to regain breath. My arms didn’t seem to be working right. Probably from oxygen deprivation.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me.” I wheezed as an eight inch long, razor sharp claw pierced the Viper’s back and started ripping away the metal over my head.

  I rolled to my back and fired another power arrow blindly through the new tear. The dragon screeched but didn’t let go of the Viper. I fired again and again until the dragon lost its temper and flung us away.

  I grabbed a seat as we plunged downward, wondering that we hadn’t hit the ground yet. As expected, the Viper came to a grinding halt in midair and my legs took a painful jolt, sending shockwaves of agony up my spine. Fortunately, my hold on the seat cushioned me from full impact.

  I didn’t wait for the dragon to attack again. Flinging myself into the seat, I hit the eject button. The roof over my head surged open and the seat bucked powerfully, flinging me through the opening in the Viper’s roof and into the sky above.

  I sailed past the dragon, watching one surprised, red eye track my upward progress as it realized what I’d done. The flying lizard immediately dropped the Viper and spread its wings to fly. Before it could react, I tapped into my daemon hickey and pulled the full force of my power and Dialle’s through me, firing it into the surprised dragon as I reversed my momentum and started falling past my attacker, toward the ground below.

  The thing had time to shriek once as my power hit its sleek head and then, with one last powerful surge of its mighty wings, the dragon’s head exploded and its dead body plummeted toward the ground.

  Grabbing the cross around my neck, I closed my eyes and placed it against my forehead. I thought his name and Flick appeared, suddenly cradling me in his arms. “Hey, Astra.”

  Taking a deep, shaky breath, I leaned my head against his chest and relaxed. “Hey, Flick. Take me to the office will you?”

  His voice rumbled in his chest as he said, “Sure thing.”

  And we entered the sphere where time and space stopped.

  ~SC~

  Flick sat across from me in one of my client chairs. Emo sat in the other. Emo’s handsome, golden face had creased more with each detail I’d fed them about my encounter with the black dragon.

  He shook his head when I’d finished, black curls swinging against finely honed cheeks and beautiful black eyes narrowing. “It doesn’t make any sense. Black dragons haven’t been seen around here for nearly thirty years.”

  My gaze slid to his, “That’s not entirely accurate. I did see one fighting a red dragon when we faced off against Enoch and my mother. I have a feeling Enoch brought them back from the shadows to fight that battle.

  Emo shook his head and looked down at his hands. That memory was not a good one for either of us. Enoch had been a long-time friend and trusted ally of our two families. That he had chosen the dark purpose over the divine goal in the end still stung.

  Flick seemed oblivious to our sudden melancholy. “So, we need to get you a new air vehicle.” He grinned at me, obviously relishing the idea.

  I grimaced. Losing the Viper was like losing my best friend. We’d been through so much together and the Viper had never betrayed or tried to kill me. Come to think of it, the vehicle had been better than a best friend. “I guess.”

  Emo slid his dark gaze to me. “I can start looking if you’ll tell me what you want.”

  I shrugged, suddenly not interested at all in finding a new air vehicle. It felt somehow disloyal to replace my beloved Viper within hours of having lost it. “Surprise me.”

  Emo’s eyes widened slightly, knowing that the choice was too important to be sloughed off so cavalierly. “How about we just do a cyber-lease for a few months until you figure out what you want?”

  I nodded. “Whatever.”

  Emo left my office to find me a temporary air vehicle and Flick, finally picking up on my mood, sat silently in the chair across from me. I stood up under the weight of his gaze and walked over to the large window behind my desk.

  Outside the window, daylight was sliding into night under a heavy mist. As I peered into the dim distance, my eyes caught the occasional sparkle of light in the mist. My mind flitted from one thing to the next and didn’t really register anything beyond the glass.

  I felt Flick’s presence beside me at the window but didn’t turn.

  “Can you feel it?”

  Rubbing absently at my wrist, I kept my gaze in the distance, deep in my thoughts. “Feel what?”

  His robes rustled as he shrugged. “The change in the air? Something’s brewing out there. Something big.”

  I turned and focused a questioning gaze on him. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “I have.”

  Frowning, I returned my gaze to the window, seeing the view beyond it with different eyes. The sky was a deep purple color that seemed slightly off. It was entirely cloudless but flashes of lightning pierced it with a regularity that spoke of storms in the distance. Each lightning bolt left behind a kaleidoscope of sparkles as the mist picked up the illumination and played it back in a thousand points of light.

  It was pretty. But it was somehow wrong too.

  Deciding that I was being overly sensitive in a backlash from the adrenaline cocktail I’d just imbibed in the skies above Angel City, I did a mental shrug and turned away from the window. “Well, I need to get back to work. I’ll catch you later.”

  Flick accepted his dismissal behind the usual calm smile. “In His name, Astra.”

  I sat down behind my desk and bent to the work piled on its untidy surface. But when I heard the small pop that told me he’d left, I sat back in my chair, scrubbing a weary hand over my face. The day’s events had rocked me in ways that I couldn’t begin to explain.

  My brain roiled with thoughts and my heart with emotions that I didn’t have the energy to explore too closely. Something was definitely going on with my sister...something more than ju
st falling in love. And Angel City seemed to be functioning under some kind of black cloud, metaphorically speaking. Magical attacks certainly seemed to be escalating. My thoughts swung to Flick’s melodramatic question from moments before.

  Can you feel it?

  I swung around in my chair and looked beyond the streaked glass to the churning sky above Angel City. Maybe he wasn’t being melodramatic. Maybe something was coming. And whatever it was, its precursors told me it wasn’t going to be good.

  I shivered under a sudden premonition of danger that made me shake my head at my own capacity for melodrama.

  “You’re just being stupid.” I told myself. Then I went back to my work, trying to ignore the low-level hum of intuition that was causing my skin to bubble into gooseflesh.

  Almost without my noticing, my fingers returned to my wrist and resumed rubbing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Can You Feel It?

  The Devil walked beside young miss and bade her to attend,

  Our lady acquiesced in form but did his foul intent forefend.

  I had thought my injuries from my altercation with the dragon were manageable but, by the next day, despite my attempts at healing them through my own magic, I was still battling a throbbing pain in my head that made me think I should probably see a doctor. And there was the achiness in my wrist that was starting to bother me more and more.

  So I climbed into the small, non-aerodynamic air booger that Emo had leased for me and winced as my butt hit fake, cracked leather. The instrument panel was a nifty fake wood and the glass in my viewing screen wasn’t actually glass but...you guessed it...fake glass, which was scratched and dinged from years of abuse.

  I discovered that the verbal directional capability was not working and that the speed gage stuck at one hundred and fifty miles per hour. Unfortunately I didn’t discover the last problem until I tried to slow for a traffic merge. I had to blow through without stopping, narrowly missing a couple of air vehicles. I cleared the merge to the accompaniment of a cacophony of horns and extended middle digits.

  Finally I discovered that I could get the gage to release by pounding on it with my left fist. My right fist didn’t seem to have much effect and stomping on it with my foot just made it whir pitifully.