We emerged from the backside of the chalk cloud. A slap across his face with the instep of my right foot sent him spinning, tripping across the monorail track on the ground. I’d hoped he’d get fried but there was no power in the rail—until I stepped on the rail myself and let my golden magic flush into it. Golden jags chased themselves over him, stealing the last of his shadow magic. He stumbled from me, turning to run.
Better part of valor, my ass. Come back here and die!
I leaped with full dragon-strength, the same vitality that kept my wings going all out. Slamming into his back, I rode him to the stone floor, giving extra thrust to the back of his head. His face crunched. His nose broke. I pulled his head back and slammed it down again. And again. Soon, his skull was in pieces and his blood and brains were splattered everywhere. All that remained in my hand was a torn-off scalp dripping blood.
Regarding me with golden eyes, my inner dragon said nothing about my killing method. He did say: With Abel dead, how are you going to find out where they took Colt?
“Able will find out for me.”
Say what?
I stripped off his boots, enameled chainmail, and the wrist cuff. Though the green lens was dark, I still needed it for my impersonation. Minutes later, the wings had wilted off my back, sloughing off to finish decomposing. I put on Able’s clothing, changing under the inorganic eyes of Colt’s gargoyle friends. They’d come looking for him, leaving the monsters up on the street so they wouldn’t collapse the tunnel by trying to squeeze in.
I said, “Colt’s been taken hostage. I’m going to get him back. Give me a head start, then follow.”
Several of the black-iron statues nodded to show they understood. One of them stood over Able’s remains, pissing on him. Another gargoyle stepped up to me and pointed at my chin.
My dragon said: The scar.
“Right.”
The gargoyle flicked with a claw-tip, scratching me. “Problem almost solved.” I spoke to my dragon: “Can you let this scratch almost heal, leaving a faint mark instead of a recently made cut?”
Sure.
Cleaning up, I dabbed at my chin, taking off a little blood.
My dragon said: Done.
“Then let’s go get my son before Selene finds out I’ve lost him.”
She probably already knows.
“Scary thought. Hopefully the Villagers will find me just as scary.”
I walked into the tunnel, passing emergency lights. Some had failed, leaving dark spots. I went at a moderate pace. I couldn’t afford to go past the right turn-off and wander aimlessly. I strained my hearing as I went, listening for any scrap of sound.
My dragon said: Try putting a little raw magic into the wrist comm. You might be able to get it working again.
“Dragon magic might burn it out. These things were designed to run on shadow magic. I’ll try that first.” I trickled a little in, almost using up my current store. The green lens flared, then settled down to a wan, cool glow. “Slightly better than nothing.”
I’d traveled what felt like several city blocks when something moved in the darkness between two lights. I crouched, bracing for trouble. By the light I wore, I saw a door had opened. A man dressed as I was stood there. A green light on one wrist blurred, jiggling as he gestured me closer. “Over here!”
I was glad he was speaking English, not ancient Greek, or some secret Villager tongue. As I walked up to him, he moved his light to study my face. His eyes glanced at my chin, then away. His face became clearer at the same time. I could tell he was middle aged and stout, standing several inches taller than me. He said, “The boy is secure. We were waiting on you before taking our ultimatum to the Red lady. With her child in our hands, she will have no choice but to fight for us.”
“It is a brilliant plan,” I said.
The Villager said, “One of your best.”
I said, “A necessary first step in restoring order and our ascendancy.”
“Your brother, he’s—”
“Dead. Very dead. You can see his blood on my clothing.”
“I can’t understand how such an inferior copy could cause this much trouble. Only half Villager…”
“Even half a Villager is not to be underestimated. It’s a valuable lesson,” I said.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Lord? I have social rank here. Good to know.
“Take me to the boy. I don’t want any surprises there, either.”
The man grunted agreement, turned, and led the way through the service door, down a stone passage. Our footfalls echoed. We came out into a large chamber lit by more of the emergency lights. A couple flickered, their shadow magic draining. The batteries had to have been designed for longer life than this. I suspected Bella’s unseen hand at work.
There were groups scattered about, some preparing food under primitive conditions, muttering curses about the inconvenience, others bandaging and being bandaged at a makeshift first-aid station. Several naked, bruised women sat off by themselves on some crates, wearing blankets, staring into space, a few weeping at the death of better days. One of them went from a stunned, blank expression to one etched with horror. She burst out in tears.
My guide muttered. “Those hell-beasts, never have seen their like. Never dreamed of anything so perverse.”
I had no sympathy for these people. Like Prometheus, they’d stolen divine fire, using the Mask of Cronos to cripple a goddess who’d blessed them in this cursed place. As a civilization, they’d violated her unspeakably, and now they wanted to whine about a little tentacle rape?
You reap what you sow. I should know. It’s why I commit random acts of benevolence. Some of the penalty of bad karma can be headed off if you pay attention to the balance.
Zeus had known that. While he’d dethroned Cronos, casting him into Tartarus, he’d eventually relented and allowed the fallen god to retire to the Blessed Ilse of Elysium, to rule the heroic dead. The mask was a cursed relic: its user suffered whatever fate he forced on another. Because Cronos overthrew Uranus and banished him, they shared the same experience. Zeus’s act of mercy freed him from that cycle. If the curse were to play out again, every Villager would have to suffer a thousand years of imprisonment. The only way I could see that happening was if Bella locked the doors to Tartarus and cut this place off from the rest of the universe while she tortured her wayward children.
Note to self: don’t be here when that happens.
We approached a man at a table with elaborate comm gear. He wore headphones and dialed across frequencies. He looked up as we passed. “All city districts have gone silent. Last word I had from the atmosphere plant was that the scrubbers were failing. The City Guard has abandoned the city along with the Administration. The other city-states are refusing to assist us. They claim their own defense against coming attacks requires their full resources.”
“Gutless, traitorous bastards.” My guide spat the words like cobra venom. “Once this mess is settled, there will come an accounting, I promise you.”
“The boy?” I reminded him.
“This way. I have Circe guarding him. Your fiancée was excellent bait for the trap, you must admit. She wore the shame of her nakedness with great pride. I do not think she would deny you anything.”
“Indeed. Quite effective.”
I’d better not let her know I killed Able, not while she has Colt in her hands—and the mask of Cronos that Selene is looking for. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Colt has too much power otherwise to be held this way. I knew that mask was trouble.
My guide stopped at a steel door, lifted its latch, and pulled it open. He went in and I followed. This space was lined with electronic systems and displays, most of them dead. In the middle of the room, Circe and Colt faced each other. Colt didn’t move. He barely seemed to breathe. His head was encased in an ugly gray helmet type of mask with a lock on it. There were square eyeholes, a wide slit for a mouth, and a beak-like cover over the nose. He made no sign, and gave no
objection even though Circe held a blowtorch style cigarette lighter, adjusting the flame.
She saw us and killed the flame. “I was just about to test the prisoner’s restraint,” she explained. “Maybe burn off a finger or two. It’s so boring down here.”
“What’s the point?” my guide asked. “He can’t give us information. Wearing the mask, he wouldn’t even feel your attentions.”
She smiled. “I’d know.”
They didn’t plan on ever releasing Colt. They needed Selene to confine Bella in her cavern prison, to get their lives back. After that, threatening the boy was the only way to make Selene leave and not come back. If she did, Colt would pay for her defiance, and for all else that had happened here. From their point of view, torturing the child would motivate his mother to do what they needed that much faster. I couldn’t say that if I were a Villager I’d do things any different.
Colt remained where he was, stiff as a mannequin, as Circe tossed the lighter onto a desk and drifted over to join us. My guide, whose name I still didn’t know, turned to me. “See? It is as I said. The boy is secure, all his power sealed, along with his mind.”
“This is not a time to take chances,” I said. “I have to be sure.”
He said, “Of course. I will ready a messenger to take word to his mother. You still want her to meet us at the city coliseum?”
“I do. See to matters. And leave us. I would like a few moments with Circe.”
He bowed, a short, choppy action and smiled at Circe with affection, touching her arm. “I will see you later, my daughter.” After that, he stalked away with the focus of a military commander, off about his duties.
Ah, so that’s my prospective father-in-law.
He closed the door behind him.
Circe pounced on me, slipping her arms around my neck. She pressed against me, her lips seeking mine. The blood I wore didn’t seem to bother her, but then, I doubted anything really did, except not getting her way. I crushed her in my arms and ravaged her mouth, taking her the way a conqueror would. Her lack of objection told me I was doing something right.
This was the most dangerous part of my deception. If anyone knew Able intimately, it was she. If anyone could tell his kiss from mine, she could. I dared not hold back unless I was going to kill her at once. I hesitated to kill her until I knew I could remove the mask. There might be some trick to that lock I didn’t know, but which she did.
I couldn’t just call for Selene; this close to the mask, it might hide me as well as Colt. Bella had said that it hid from those that sought it. I could only conclude that it wanted to be in Villager hands, and its magic would fight me once I started to remove it. That meant I needed to play for time, or grab Colt and run like hell, trusting in chance and the approaching gargoyles to get us free.
My inner dragon said: Actually, not a bad plan. We can worry about getting the mask off later.
Circe pulled back. “It’s been a while since you’ve kissed me like that.”
“Murder gets me hard.”
“Hard to tell with the chainmail on. Take it off.”
She touched the pressure sensitive seal at my throat and parted my chainmail with a hard jerk. Stepping back, she did the same to her outfit. Her C-32 cup breasts emerged from hiding, white mounds with large pink areolas. She paused her strip, rubbing her damp fingers together, looking at the blood my chainmail had transferred to her.
“His blood was as black as ours. Strange. Wasn’t he half dragon?”
“No accounting for the genetic anomalies in hybrids.”
Her eyes lifted to my face, then dropped to my chin. “Wasn’t that scar a little longer last time I saw you?” Her eye narrowed.
I flipped a mental coin: kill her or fuck her into submission. While the coin was spinning, she grabbed my arm, swinging the wrist comm up so she could see it. The light was no longer green. It had shifted to gold. The gold of dragon magic.
Damn! How did that happen?
Realization widened her eyes.
She knows.
THIRTY-SIX
“Chaos is merely opportunity in disguise.”
—Caine Deathwalker
She let go of my arm. Her mouth dropped open in stunned disbelief—as she noticed my cock’s reaction to her bared tits. He’d gone hard as a steel bar, stabbing the air. She reached down and gripped him. “Is that monster real?”
Apparently, Able had not been as well endowed. This fact went a long way to explaining his incredible hatred of me. Jealousy, pure jealousy. In death, I could only pity his many, uh, shortcomings.
I said, “Yeah, baby, you’ve traded up. Call for help and I will be forced to give you the fucking of your life.”
“He was a prick anyway.” She released my cock, stripping off her wrist device and chainmail. They fell at her feet. In a whisper-soft soft voice, she yelled. “Help, help, someone save me!”
My cock yelled at me: About time! I never get any.
I seized her hair, pulling her head back so her pale white throat was bared. I bit, taking hold of her the way a werewolf lover might when staking a claim. A gasp escaped her. I grabbed her left tit and squeezed, walking her backwards to a bare stretch of wall. There, I shift, gripping her ass, lifting her off her feet. Villagers are three times stronger than human, my dad and his cloned son being exceptions. Even against my greater dragon strength, Circe could have struggled. She didn’t. Her head fell back as she moaned, the tip of my cock pressing against the soft delicate folds of her slit. “Hera’s tits, do it!” she demanded.
My cock said: Yes, ma’am.
I eased her down, giving her a chance to adjust to my size. She was wetter than I’d expected. Maybe it had been a while since Able had seen to her needs.
My cock said: More moving, dammit. Less thinking.
Sometimes it feels like my cock runs the show and the rest of me is just along for the ride. If he could detach and slither around in the night molesting women, I was sure he would. The only one I knew of who could actually do that was the Trickster of Native American lore.
My cock said: Why him, not me!
Focus, I told him. We gotta do her and get ready to run. The gargoyles will be here any minute. Selene had created them; I had no doubt they could follow my trail, sniffing out my magic if they had to.
Oh, yeah, right.
I lifted her again until I was almost out. She hunched over me, tits in my face. I nibbled with my teeth, tugging, then slammed her down, bottoming out inside her. She gasped, eyes rolling to the back of her head. Her hands were claws on my shoulders, relaxing as I lifted her, tightening as she slammed down, again and again. She pelted me with her grunts and moans. Her breathing quickened as she approached the tipping point to ecstasy. “Almost…there, you murdering bastard!”
She gave a breathless scream, arching back against the wall as her passage tightened, milking my cock.
He yelled: Take it bitch! Take it all. And then he burst, shooting, pulsing, our nerves awash in pleasure. I sagged forward, pinning her to the wall.
She drew a deep breath to scream for help. I’d been waiting for this. Just because she needed fucking didn’t mean she was on my side. I’m not that stupid. With my cock still hard and inside of her, I filled him with raw golden magic, which I knew the Villagers would be sensitive to—in a bad way. I’d already filled her with sperm. I followed this up with electrical jags. This didn’t bother me, but she thrashed, her nerves on fire, out of control. I pulled out of her and seized her neck in both hands, giving it a quick, hard jerk that broke it. Life left her shocked eyes. Her lids closed. Dumping her in the floor, I walked away.
My inner dragon asked: Why waste time with her if you were just going to kill her?
“I’d already taken her wedding from her. The least I could do was let her die happy. I am nothing if not compassionate.”
My cock said: I wanted seconds. And thirds.
“You’ll just have to suffer.”
My inner dragon said: And
weren’t you going to wheedle out of her what she knew about getting the mask off?
“Oh, fuck. I was thinking with the wrong head.”
My cock shrilled: Hey! I resemble that remark.
I dressed quickly, leaving the chainmail loose, unsealed at the throat. I restored the wrist comm to its place. The device’s lens had gone from gold back to green. I wondered if I could get a patent on it back on Earth. Might be a lot of money in starting a new trend.
My inner dragon said: We should definitely look into that.
I went to Colt and took a good look at the lock on his mask. It consisted of a loop of iron that came out of a small oval and went back into it, similar to an old-fashioned padlock but no keyhole. Forming horizontal and vertical rolls on the lock were square tabs, each one baring a symbol, some of them blank. I recognized the writing: The Greek alphabet.
My dragon said: Password protected. Could be a sentence, a word, or maybe a name.
“I knew a guy once who protected his online site account by using ‘Guest’ as a user name and ‘password’ as an actual password.” I punched in the name of Cronus—Κρόνoς—and yanked on the lock. It opened.
My dragon asked: What happened to that guy?
“After I hacked his system, he got smarter.” I slid the lock off the mask and opened it. The thing was oddly docile, its magic not fighting me at all. Hastily, I shut the mask on emptiness and stuck it inside my chainmail, against my abdomen. Colt toppled. I caught him. He showed no sign of coming out of his stupor. His open eyes sagged shut. His breathing stayed slow and deep, like a sleeper.
My inner dragon said: The effect of the mask probably needs a while to wear off.
“I hope so. Selene can be a bit volatile where her heart is concerned.”
I picked Colt up and draped him over a shoulder, holding him by the legs. He wasn’t in a mental state to portal us out of here; I was back to the option of hauling ass the old-fashioned way. Fortunately, the cavalry was here; my dragon-hearing pulled in sounds through the door: screaming, pounding, angry shouts.
07- Black Blood Brother Page 27