Tholan: Mystic Protectors: An Angelic Paranormal Erotica

by Kathi S. Barton

  “There was no deal for that. You want your piece, you have to win it.” Rollin stomped his foot, and that made her laugh. “What? Did you need a nap? That’s the way small children act when they’ve missed their nap time. Shall we put this off for another day? So that you might get one in?”

  “You will stop this teasing of me this moment.” She closed her mouth, but Parker was far from finished with him. “Now, as I was saying, the two of you will come with me as soon as you turn over my piece. It has been most terrible of you to have kept it for this long. How would you like it if I kept something that belonged to you?”

  “You did. I’m here about that as well.” Rollin looked confused. Parker was pretty sure that it was a way of life for him, to be confused all the time. “You killed, or were directly responsible for the death of, a family member. And today, this night, you’ll pay for that as well.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You hand over the piece you took from me, and then we’ll be on our way. I don’t know who that is behind you, but that will be my bonus for having to put up with your sniveling mouth for the last weeks.” She asked him what he was talking about, her voice as calm as Boss’s when he spoke to them. “You forget? You did nothing but cry and beg for me to be nice to you. Or perhaps that was someone else. No matter. I am finished with this game of yours. Hand it over or die.”

  “What is my full name?”

  ~*~

  Warrior told her. “You are Parker Jane Brooks. Now, you must be tired of this. I know that I am.” She told him that he was wrong. “Nay, never on this. I was given your full name by your mother. A reasonable sort, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t. What is my full name?” Warrior wasn’t sure what she was doing, but he told her again. “Nope. Wrong again. If you’d like, we can come back to that one. When you’ve had more time to think about it. Who is my mother?”

  “Are you going to do this all night? I have shit that I want to get done. Tying you to my cell wall. Fucking you until you’re nothing but flesh. Those are on my list for every day, and I do not have time for this. Your mother’s name is Angela Brooks. She may have a maiden name, but I don’t need that. Just her married name.”

  “Wrong.” Warrior was getting sick of that word. He knew that he wasn’t wrong. And she was toying with him again. “You have one more try on my name, and two more on my mother’s name. Let’s see if you can get my birthdate right.”

  “What do you mean, I have only a few more tries on your name? There is no rule for that. This is not a childhood faerie tale. There will be as many tries as I need to get it right. Even though I have had it right every time.” The man behind her cleared his throat. “What is it? You have something to add to this?”

  “I do. According the handbook that was written long ago, there are only three tries to each question. Three questions, three tries. If you fail that, you can buy more tries. It will be up to the soul as to what the fee will be.” He looked at the man. “I have studied these laws since the day I was created.”

  Created? Children of this realm were not created. They were born of a female’s body like all the species of this place. The only thing created, besides his kind, were—

  “You brought a protector to the field? What is wrong with you? I cannot deal with this. Come with me and we will be finished today.” Warrior put out his hand, fully expecting her to take it. “Did you not hear me? Come with me now.”

  “What is my birthdate?” Warrior took a step toward her. He wasn’t going to play anymore. But when she reached up her hand, he covered his own and stepped back when a sword appeared in her hand. “What is my birth—?”

  “May twenty-third.” He rattled off the year too. “This is correct too. Your mother’s name is Angela Brooks. Your name is Parker Jane Brooks. Now, I said to come with me.”

  The shift from demon to beast wasn’t as easy as it had been before she’d gotten a piece of him. He would never show her that. Warrior wouldn’t want her to have any knowledge of him. When she laughed, Warrior stomped his foot. Trees trembled in the aftermath, but none of them fell, much to his anger.

  “You got that right. Now, you have no more guesses on my name. What is the name of my mother?”

  He growled, spewing his hot breath and spittle on the ground. Where he was hoping that it would catch fire, all it did was sputter and go out. Anger surged through him like a hot blade. He lunged at her and felt the blade of her sword cut deeply into his gullet. Screaming out the name of her mother, he fell to the ground. He was going to end this, even if he had to cheat.

  “Would you like to buy more guesses?”

  ~*~

  Hell watched the people on the field. He almost wanted her to lose so that he could take her for his own. She was a good fighter; her stance was that of a warrior. Her blade as she held it was nothing like anything that he’d ever seen before.

  “I do not wish to buy more guesses. I am correct.” She said that he wasn’t. “Then you tell me what you have changed it to. So that you are aware, you cannot do that just to mess me up.”

  Tholan nodded. This was another person that Hell was impressed with. Not only did he know the laws, but he could quote them better than Hell could. And if pressed, Hell knew that Tholan would know the page number as well as which paragraph it was in. When he told Parker that Rollin was right, the moron jumped up and down like a small child.

  He was going to suffer. Hell could see that now. Not only was Rollin a moron, but he had yet to figure out that he was going to be destroyed. Not by him, nay, but by the slip of a woman in front of him. When Boss sat beside him, a beer in his hand as well, he bumped his can to his and it changed into a glass of amber liquid for him, and Boss now had a glass of tea.

  “She will win this.” Hell nodded and drank down his liquor. “You should give her a boon. I have one in mind for her. She is making it so that we do not have to meet up like this again. I think that deserves something.”

  “You did not know that she asked for a promise from me?” Boss shook his head, but he didn’t look all that surprised. “She asked that all protectors and mystics be safe from my kind forever. When I asked her how that was to work, she reminded me that they have been hurt several times over the years. She said that I had only to show them what happens here today, and they will leave them alone.”

  “You believe her?” Hell nodded. “I do as well. She is terrifying, is she not? I think that in her mightiness, she might be more petrifying than Michael should I need her to be. And Tholan. I have never seen him so relaxed, so ready to come to my aid. Before, he was as timid as a mouse. I feared that he would be eaten alive by his mate. But they are a pair of matched bookends like I have never seen before.”

  The blade came down on the foot of Rollin. When he screamed in pain, Parker asked him again if he wanted to buy more guesses. This time he told her that he would buy them with money. Parker only laughed.

  “You are not doing this fairly, you know that, don’t you?” She nodded and said that she was following the rules. “I have given you your name. I have said that of your mother. You are not doing what is right by the rules of the land.”

  “My name is Parker Jane Daniels.” The slice to his belly brought a vomitus-like spilling of hot juices. As it spilled onto the ground, it was eaten up by the earth. Hell knew that it would be in his realm when he returned. He’d made this bargain with Boss. “My mother’s name was Grace Jane Elliot Brooks.”

  This slice removed his legs on his left side. It was too late for Rollin to shift. Too much of his body now lay on the ground before him. And when she stabbed at him again, Rollin not only lost his right eye, but a part of his head as well. This too spilled lava, while his eye spewed a green vileness that even Hell thought too nasty. As the sack that his eye was in shrank and shriveled, so did Rollin. He was screaming for fairness, for the reason for the name changes. Even as he lay there, his body boiling in his own juices, he demanded that she come with him.

&nbs
p; “Angela Brooks wasn’t my mother, you sick fuck—she was my stepmother, and had no rights to bargain with you at all for me.” Tholan read the laws regarding blood relations, and when he got to the part where a stepmother could bargain with a demon, there had to be one biological parent alive when the deed was done, but only if the person was yet a child. Parker was well old enough to make her own decisions, and her father had been alive up until she was an adult.

  Rollin was nothing but pieces, pieces that could come back to together in time and form him again—however, not without the last piece of him, the one that Parker had. Parker stood over his body, her blade at the ready, and Hell stood up. As he made his way to the field, he peeled off his mask, taking the form of his true self as he watched the final breaths of his demon.

  Few had seen him as such. Hell knew just what he looked like—the fiery demon that was portrayed in books. The only difference was, he did not have a pointed tail, he had pointed spikes. His eyes were red in anger, as they should be. His skin, scales and all, was just as hot and poisonous as everyone thought. He was, after all, the king of Hell.

  “Master.” It was difficult to understand Rollin; his mouth had been split open, His chin no longer attached to his face. His ears, too, were spread out on the lawn, and the tongue that had told so many lies today was half gone—Rollin held it in his hand. “She has harmed me. I would wish that you were to take me with you when you go. I shall need a few days of healing before I can bring her to you.”

  “This woman that you have said you would tie to your walls? This same one that you promised to Merlin? You now give her to me? I think not, Rollin. I believe that she has done just what she told me she would to you.” Rollin shook his head, trying to beg him again for help. “Nay, I shall not help one such as you. Even for a demon, I am ashamed of what you have done. You bargained for the wife of a protector.”

  “No.” Hell nodded and asked Parker if she was finished. With a shake of her head, Rollin screamed again. “Take me with you. I command that you do.”

  “You command me? I think that you are in the wrong place if you think to command anyone right now. Rollin, you have been beaten. Just give her what she wants and she will finish you. And in case you don’t understand, she is going to destroy you for what you have heaped onto her family.” Rollin told him that the stepmother had lied to him. “Yes, so she did, and you punished her even before you knew that. To have signed her over to Merlin, without my permission, is something that I would like to have taken you to task for.”

  “Take me. Take me and punish me. I wish for it.” Hell shook his head. “I beg of you to take me away so that I can be a better demon, my lord. Please. She will destroy me should you not.”

  “She is going to destroy you anyway. I came here to watch her do it.” Hell looked at Parker, then at Tholan, before addressing Rollin again. “And to think I doubted that she could do it. Do you have any idea what kind of protector can do this? What sort of woman it would take to kill a demon such as yourself? One of the most powerful beings that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. That’s right, pleasure. You have made your bed, Rollin; now you must lie in it.”

  Hell looked at Parker again. Telling her to finish it, he was glad more than he could put to words that he wasn’t near her when she brought the blade down a final time. It not only removed Rollin’s head, but it split him in two. His body not only shriveled up, but it incinerated in seconds, much like he’d been put into the pits of Hell’s home, as it should have been.

  When he was gone, his body no more, Parker handed Hell the last piece along with a pair of oddly colored socks.

  Rollin the Warrior—Warrior to those who’d had the misfortune of knowing him—was no more.

  Chapter 11

  Tholan let her sleep. Today was going to be a big day for Parker, and he wanted her to have as much rest as she could get. Not that he feared things would not go her way—he knew that they would—but she had been up and down all night, sick to her belly.

  When he made his way down the stairs, Heather was waiting on him. Today was a big day for her as well. She was going to have her first day of school. She, too, had been up all night, but not sick to her belly. Heather wanted to have the perfect outfit to wear so that she’d be just like everyone else.

  “Are you ready? Kipling said that he’d come by to get you today so that you’d not have to ride the bus.” Heather asked if she looked all right. “I think you the prettiest little girl in the whole wide world, and I would know. I have been around for a long time.”

  They had finally told her what they were. She had taken it like she did most things—lots of questions and a great many touches. Tholan had learned that there were people who learned by teaching, while others learned by touching. Heather was like the latter of the two. And he had enjoyed watching her face when he’d given in and flown the skies with her.

  “I have everything on my list. And I brought me a sweater in case the room is cold. Kip told me that wolves like the rooms cooler because they burn more energy.” Tholan told her that was correct. “Dad, do you think Mom will be all right? She looked sort of green the other morning.”

  “I’m sure that it’s just nerves. And if she’s still sick after today, she promised me that she would go to the doctor.” He looked up the stairs when he heard the door open. They both waited to see if Parker would join them, but she didn’t. Another trip to the bathroom, he supposed.

  They had their breakfast, each of them having eggs and bacon. It wasn’t his favorite meal this time of day—he had grown very fond of the colorful flakes that came in a box, but he was trying to make a good example. After Heather left, he’d have some cereal.

  Kipling would take her to the pack school, then make his way to his own classes. The kid was getting bigger every time he saw him. Someday, he decided, if one came their way, he would like to raise a little boy into manhood. He thought it would be fun. Heather certainly was.

  He loved the new kitchen. While he wasn’t positive what all the new pieces did, he particularly loved the new fridge. The way all he had to do was push a few of the little buttons and it told him what was inside. Also, and the part he loved the most, they could leave notes for each other. The rest of the house was finished now, and he made his way to the living room to read the paper. This room, too, was nice to be in.

  Waking Parker up at noon—they had to be at the courthouse at two—he was glad to see she was feeling a little better. Dressing in something comfortable, they made their way to her new car. He had yet to learn to drive, but he would never ride with Dusty again. She had a meanness in her that made his belly ill when they got to wherever they were headed. Heather couldn’t ride with her either. Parker thought that it was a hoot riding that fast.

  There were so many people standing outside the courthouse, Tholan thought that the hearing had been canceled. But when he got to the door, people allowing the two of them to go through, he could see that there was no room for anyone else in the seats. People were even standing around the outside edges of the seats, there were so many people about.

  When they were brought to order, several people stood up and told the judge, Judge Brown, that they thought Parker had gotten a bum deal. Parker explained that to him. He was getting better at sayings, but sometimes he was still tripped up, as Heather told him.

  Everyone settled down when Judge Brown told them that he’d like to see that for himself. There were several people in the room that had been at her first trial. The only people absent, ones that Parker wanted there, were Angela, so she could tell them what her part in all this had been, and her da.

  “Mrs. Daniels was convicted on all counts, Your Honor. I haven’t any idea why she thinks that this is going to solve anything.” The prosecutor was the same as the last time, Parker told him. “Was she so happy with serving time that she wants to do it again? I can certainly arrange that if she wants.”

  No one laughed at his bad joke, and he cleared his throat. As he
went on about how the witnesses had picked her out, how there were bloody fingerprints on the body and in the room, Tholan looked around.

  There were a great many protectors around the room—not just the ones with their humans, but many of them on the ceiling, the walls, as well as sitting on tables. They had all grown to love his wife as much as he did, and wanted to see justice served. Tholan did as well.

  “It says here that the body could not be found.” The attorney nodded. “What exactly does that mean? I mean, how does one misplace a body? One that I myself signed the workorder on to have exhumed.”

  “Someone stole it.” Judge Brown said that there had been a police person on duty with it since it was brought to the coroner’s office. “That’s what I mean. When it got to the office, there wasn’t a body in the casket. Someone must have taken it.”

  Parker’s attorney asked to approach the bench. He was one of the protectors that had been on this earth for a very long time and knew the law better than he would bet the judge did. Nolan James was good at his job.

  “Anytime you’d like to join us, Peterson, that would make my day.” Levi Peterson joined the other man at the judge’s desk. They talked for several minutes, and then Judge Brown had them have a seat. He called to one of the officers at the back of the room. Whispering to him, he asked that there be a ten-minute recess while he had something checked out.

  No one moved when the officer left. Tholan wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t want to lose their seat or space, or if it didn’t seem worth the effort to leave only to have to return.

  Ten minutes later, the officer showed up. After a brief moment as Brown went over whatever had been brought to him, he looked around the room. Shaking his head, he asked Peterson if he wanted to stick to the stolen story.