My eyes slid down to Guin’s tits again. In my pants, my cock was stiffening with interest. She sighed, adjusting her harness. I sympathized; Must give you muscular strain, carrying around a pair like that.
She got up and came around to the back of my chair, draping her arms over me, pressing her tits into my back. I smelled her perfume: black vanilla and pink peony. She whispered into my ear. “Do you want to fuck my tits and just get it over with?”
I felt the muzzle of her gun press into my lower back, held so no one else saw it. She had to know that wouldn’t work; my spell-warded suit could turn bullets away all night. Of course, I’d bruise under my clothes. Maybe that was what she intended. Or maybe she was waiting to see if I’d give her question an honest answer despite the threat of death.
In my head, my cock yelled: Hell, yes! He was more than ready to invade those mountains.
Despite my better instincts, I also gave her an honest answer. “Yes, please.”
The gun left my back. She whispered. “Not here. Outside. I have a private van.”
I stood.
In my pants, my cock sang a happy aria.
Winter shot me an amber-fire stare, a wolf’s warning. I knew his sensitive wolf’s hearing had picked up his Captain’s invitation to me. He didn’t seem to like it much. As I passed him, I said, “No harm, no foul; consenting adults here.”
I followed Guin across the balcony and down the stairs. We threaded the crowd and passed the bouncer, leaving the building. There was still a line waiting to get in. The guys watched Guin like lions spotting a gazelle. Quite a few of their dates looked like they were ready to commit murder.
Good thing she’s armed.
The street lights lit the area. There seemed to be a decided lack of pedestrians in the area. No traffic on the street either. She set a course for a rusty red van that looked like anything but an official police vehicle.
My inner dragon opened golden eyes in my mind. She’s both the carrot and the stick. Very pretty bait.
I sighed. It did seem a little too good to be true.
My cock said: I don’t care. I want to fuck those tits.
I nodded to myself, thinking back. That look Winter gave me; he knew something. He was trying to warn me.
My dragon said: Someone’s trying to use the Preternatural Unit against us.
With my keen dragon-hearing, I picked up the sound of stealthy footfalls on the far side of the parked van. I also smelled the faint, old residue of gunfire from their weapons. Some cops never fire their weapons on duty, but if nothing else, cops go to practice ranges, and they don’t clean their guns that often. Over cleaning damages them. Once about every hundred shots is normal. What I smelled was like the burnt paper of burst firecrackers, but not so strong.
There would be more cops inside the vehicle. As soon as the back doors opened, I’d have a bunch of guns stuck in my face. They’d all have been told to take headshots if they needed to fire.
I stopped.
Guin swung around, her tits bouncing nicely.
I said, “You usually wear a bra, right? That much weight needs support. And a bra makes a quick draw much smoother.”
“Maybe I’ll show just how fast and smooth I can be. The van’s right there.”
I started walking.
She waited long enough for me to pass her, then, swung in behind me so she could catch me by surprise.
I decided to surprise her. Instead of going around the van to the back doors—where expected—I walked straight to the side of the vehicle and hopped into the air a little, slamming the bottom of one foot into it with dragon-strength. The van skidded sideways and toppled over on the hiding cops. Those inside probably didn’t enjoy the ride.
Landing, I spun in time to catch Guin’s gun as she extended it toward my head. Pushing the barrel up and back, I forced her to let go or have her trigger finger broken. She let go, and smashed a knee into my guts. Being human, there wasn’t enough power in her blow to bother me. I put her in a headlock and walked her to the back of the van.
As we got there, the back doors opened. Three policemen scrambled out, guns waving, seeking a target.
I swung Guin around and let them see I had her gun against her head. “Put the guns down.”
They were too well trained for that. They aimed at me, but held their fire, afraid of taking out their own Captain.
I said, “I’m not going to repeat myself, except with bullets.”
Eyes on his Captain, one of the men lowered his gun’s muzzle a few inches.
Guin yelled, “Don’t do it. He’s too dangerous to take chances with.”
“Not to my friends.”
One of the cops waved his gun low, looking to hit me in an exposed leg.
I pulled Guin’s gun off her at dragon-speed and shot the cop in his own knee. Before he could scream and fall, I had the gun back at Guin’s head, keeping her effective as a human shield.
“Why don’t you want to be my friend?” I asked her.
Flailing her fists at me, trying to jerk free, she choked out an answer. “I’ve seen what you do to your friends, you monster!”
“Seen where?”
“Your car. How long have you been driving around my city with those girls in your trunk?”
Damn. This is beginning to sound like a dead hooker joke, and not a good one.
“Girls? How many? And how did you find them with my car’s anti-theft system on?”
That question got through to her. She stopped struggling. “We got a search warrant from a judge to check the vehicle, and you left the system off.”
“I never leave my vehicle vulnerable. Rather convenient though, don’t you think, that warrant. A judge knowing something cops didn’t? Orders from powerful people, not through channels, that didn’t tip you off to something fishy?”
She said, “If you’re innocent, turn yourself in. I promise a thorough investigation.”
“Before I’m convicted, or maybe shot while escaping?” I dragged her away from the van. “Tell your people to stay back. We’re going to go take a look at my AI system. I want to see how your men opened the trunk without taking damage. They weren’t hurt, right?”
“Just by you, you bastard.”
“It was his knee or mine.”
There were police cars on both ends of the street, lights flashing, but no one was getting too crazy. They’d probably called for a SWAT team sniper to come and put me down, but I still had a little time. I dragged her along the sidewalk to my Mustang. It was oddly dusty. The trunk door was up, the trunk itself full of dead hookers.
After joking about this for years, I was finally seeing the real thing. A quick glance told me volumes. The bodies were all chalked, coated with it. A white, ceramic mask lay on top of the pile. The expression on my brother’s mask was one of over-the-top laughter. The chalk also told me how he’d disabled my vehicle—and maybe killed the whores. A fine infusion of dust in the air could have infiltrated my car and damaged the AI before it sensed a magical attack underway. And if the girls were made to breath chalk, it would coat the inside of their lungs. They’d die of dry asphyxiation.
Hell of a frame, I thought.
My cock said: Hell of a waste. Those hookers are hot.
My dragon said: But shouldn’t Able think you’re dead, killed by your own magic gone awry?
Not if he went back for my body and didn’t find it. Villagers like DNA samples to play with, remember? He might have even wanted my head on a pole. It’s the kind of thing I’d do—if the neighbors wouldn’t fuss.
My dragon asked: So, what do we do?
A thundering police chopper appeared in the sky. A spot light stabbed downward like the accusing finger of God. It looked to me like there might be a sniper’s rifle up there, poking out of the helicopter.
I see three choices: we use Demon Wings to run and keep running, talk our way out of this, or kill an awful lot of cops.
TWENTY-NINE
“Things are nev
er so bad
they can’t get abysmal.”
—Caine Deathwalker
High in the sky, the scream wasn’t human, more like an explosion. I’d heard such a sound before, during the war in Fairy when I’d held my new kingdom against the encroachment of fey lords—when I’d been in dragon form, fighting alongside other golden dragons. This wasn’t the roar of a gold; no lightning jagged anywhere. This was the rage-choked challenge of a silver. DeSilver to be specific.
He’s learned I killed someone precious to him. He’s come hunting me.
All of the police in the area were staring upward. Only those who’d worked with the Preternatural Unit had an idea of what was coming.
I still had Captain Guinevere Helland in a headlock. She no longer fought me. She’d gone still as a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk. She said, “Shit.”
I let her go and swung her around to face me. “Listen, those bodies in the trunk aren’t mine. The guy that did this is an elementalist. He controls the element of chalk. Given time, I can prove it to you. But there’s no time.”
The dragon scream came again. A solar-breath attack turned the police helicopter overhead into flaming debris. Wreckage rained down. A rotor vane dropped and impaled the roof of an empty police car, destroying the flashing blue lights.
Guin flinched, ducking automatically. Which was nice since I no longer had to crane my neck to look her in the eye.
I told her, “Nothing you have can stand up to this. You need to fight dragon with dragon. That would be me.”
Her eyes narrowed as the muscles of her jaw knotted. “Two monsters stomping on the city is better than one?”
The scream came again, lower in the sky. DeSilver was flapping closer. I could hear the rhythmic whumping of giant wings. I hated to waste time with explanations, getting her firmly on my side, but she power in this city and it would save me from fighting other battles later.
“Some damage is inevitable, but can be explained away—unless the whole world sees a giant silver dragon running amok. How long do you think that can be kept quiet? Or are you ready for the preternatural to become widely accepted. You’d probably get a bigger budget. People will panic. Humans will start killing anyone that looks suspicious, monster or not. When targeted, the actual monsters will fight back. A brave new bloody world will be yours!”
Another roar bludgeoned the street. A plume of incandescent plasm dug into the asphalt, cutting a trench across the rusty van and the cops pinned under it. The cops had no time to scream before being incinerated. The van exploded.
I asked, “How much death has to come before you let me help you?”
With her face white with shock, her breathing fast, her heartbeat sounded loud to my dragon-hearing. Her hands shook. With visible effort, she pulled herself together, watching a giant blur of silver streak past, just above the buildings. DeSilver would be back. This was just the first of many strafing runs; I could see that truth in her wide eyes as she brought her stare back at me.
She said, “Go get him!”
“I’m half dragon. Taking dragon form is slower for me, more of an ordeal than a process. You need to buy me at least a few minutes, and I need to change where DeSilver can’t see me. I’ll be vulnerable until the shift is complete.”
She shouted at me. “So, I hold him off with a gun while you run away?”
“Call in the witches you use for crime scene clean-up. A few offensive spells are all we need, then they can haul ass, and I’ll be back to deal with this.”
“You are coming back, right?”
I grinned at her. “If I do, do I still get to fuck your tits?”
“All day and night,” she said.
Fuck, yeah! My Cock said.
I ran back toward the nightclub. It would give me the cover I needed, and the room to grow a whole lot bigger. Of course, DeSilver knew about the club, and maybe about the bachelor party, so the place was going to get hit sooner or later. I was hoping for later.
A couple of single-minded cops got in my way. Their guns spat flame and lead. Several rounds deflected off of my suit, leaving new bruises underneath. These cops didn’t know that only head shots could be effective. Before they figured it out, I bowled through them, sending them careening away amid the sound of broken bones; I didn’t have time to be gentle.
The line outside Noctem had vanished by the time I got there. The red doors were closed. Probably locked. I hoped an evacuation was already underway via the emergency exits. I didn’t slow, hitting the doors with full dragon-strength. They shattered, flying inward off the hinges. The impact slowed me, but I soon recovered speed. There was screaming going on. The music had stopped. People headed for the back and side exits in the usual mindless panic, but from the laughter and buzz of happy voices, it seemed like the balcony party was still going strong.
I saw King wandering through the crowd, using his hypnotic red stare to chill out the patrons. Order spread out as he passed. I yelled to him. “Clear the dance floor. I need room to go all dragon.”
He turned my way. Thought about it a second. And said, “You’re going to owe me another club.”
“Fine!”
I stared up at the balcony. Some of the demons on the balcony were drunk out of their mind, hanging their heads over the edge like they might be sick.
I called up, “Old Man! Atlantis is going down again.” Metaphorically speaking.
His bald blue head appeared over the railing, joining the crowd. He looked down, his eyes searching me. “It’s bad?”
“Get our people out of here, and get a storm going outside. A silver is attacking. I’ve got to change!”
He yelled back, suddenly quite sober. “On it!”
I tore at my clothing, dropping my jacket, tie, shirt, pants… Soon, everything I had sat in a pile on the floor.
One of the demons overhead yelled encouragement. “Take it off! Take it off!”
I guess he thought the strippers had finally arrived. I flipped him off, but he might have been too wasted to tell. The eyes of my inner dragon were open in the back shadow of my mind. “You know what to do,” I told him.
I do indeed.
The change began, warmth in my bones, spasms in my muscles. My heart thudded ever faster. My Villager mind sank into the rising cloud of savage, dragon emotions. Lust, greed, a ferocious urge to battle… I screamed, my voice warbling into a screech as my vocal chords changed. My neck grew additional vertebrae, a longer spinal cord, and my back lengthened as well. I fell onto hands and knees. My skull felt like it was melting, a stew pot for my boiling brain. Pain erupted as joints popped, bones reshaped, and my damn knees turned backward.
Time dragged. Minutes passed. A pureblood dragon would have magically shifted one form for another in a moment. I couldn’t do that thanks to my mixed heritage. My process was more like that of a shape-shifter. My outer layer of skin hardened in little patches. Sweat poured off me as internal organs pulsed and writhed, altering alignment and scale. Knifed by terrible hunger, all of me trembled as the room shrank around me.
No, I’m getting bigger.
The people still in the club were getting tiny by comparison. Those that saw me mid-change screamed or fainted, often both. Others just pushed harder, looking for any way out. The dragon perspective crowded me out; I became the passenger in his head, watching the world through his dragon eyes.
I lifted a paw in front of my maw. The skin had become a golden mesh of scales. My rending claws were black. I turned my head on a very long neck, able to stare at my ass where a tail grew out a little at a time. Soon, the lashing tail-tip grew a scimitar of bone. I felt bone spurs jut from my heels, and wing bones spike out of my shoulder blades as ribbing grew, shredding the skin and muscle of my back. The iron scent of my own blood, and the smell of human fear, teased my stomach. The people around me began to look tasty: Soft yet crunchy, mmmm!
My lips writhed back from new-grown teeth as my face lengthened into a snout. My tongue fluttered out, tastin
g many new scents on the air than I’d known before. One taste dominated; burning copper, the lightning within me that wanted to erupt and spew forth.
New-grown muscle, tendon, veins, and arteries filled in on wings taking shape. Fresh skin covered the ribbing, scaled membranes stretching between.
I grew brand new nerves everywhere, each one screaming in torment. And hunger became everything. I lifted my head and roared. The sound echoed in the empty nightclub.
Nothing to eat here. Outside is better.
That wasn’t my thought. It belonged to my dragon, but he wasn’t an inner-dragon anymore; he was free. I’d become the ghost in his brain, the passenger, a voyeur in his life. It was his will that moved the great hulking bulk of our body toward the front entrance. I stared at the little square hole that I could never fit through. Through that gap, I saw heavy rain pattering on the ground. My sensitive ears picked up the rumble of thunder. Flashes of lightning whited-out the outside world for long seconds at a time.
I thought: The old man’s work. He’s keeping the silver busy.
My outer dragon said: My prey!
I ran at the opening and burst through, taking out the door’s frame and a lot of the surrounding wall. Bricks bounced off me and scattered in my path. The round Noctem sign crashed on the walkway, breaking. I stepped on it in passing, turning the thing into a pancake. It took a while for all of me to get outside. Trotting to the middle of the street, I fanned my wings, lifting my head and long neck toward the raging clouds, letting the rain dance across my face as I stared at the silver dragon slicing the air in complex patterns of combat. He wasn’t alone in his aerial maneuverings; a giant white eagle kept pace, looking for openings.
It’s Thule. Makes sense he’d be out here as backup for the Old Man. Where is the Old man?
My outer dragon answered my thought: He’ll be on a high building, as close to the sky as the area allows.
I felt my dragon’s intense hunger, and understood he was throttling down the more primitive side of himself. The need to fuel our new mass was a real problem. It weakened us when we couldn’t afford it.
07- Black Blood Brother Page 22