Vanity Scare

by H. P. Mallory

  “So, you stopped escaping,” started Agent James, “even though you had the scarf?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you didn’t leave with the scarf, even though you realized the danger you were facing, because you wanted to have sex with this girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the express purpose of being as loud and obnoxious as possible?” Quillan added.

  “Well, I don’t know about obnoxious… but yes to the rest.”

  “In public,” put in Agent James.

  “Yes, in public. In a public fountain, specifically. The locale is very important to our game.”

  Agent James turned away and pinched his nose. “What the actual fuck, Dagan…”

  “The water was absolutely frigid,” Dagan informed us, clearly thoroughly delighted by the memory. He feigned a shiver and shrugged at us helplessly. “Osenna was ahead by one person. I did not want to lose.”

  “What happens if you win?” asked Quillan.

  Dagan grinned at him, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Do you really want to know?”

  Quillan pursed his lips, reddened slightly, and did his damnedest not to look away. “Not really, no.”

  “Maybe Osenna and I could show you sometime,” suggested Dagan, his grin widening like oil spreading across the surface of the sea. “We’re always happy to accommodate.”

  “Why not put on the scarf to get away?” Christina cut in before Quillan could make an attempt at a reply. “Become invisible and disappear.”

  “I did. I was wearing the scarf the moment Mingmei walked in, looking infinitely more beautiful than I ever remember her being, and so I took everything off. And after we joined bodies,” he added with a smile. “I completely forgot the scarf was in my hand.”

  “You forgot,” I repeated dubiously, “a scarf which makes you invisible to all eyes, magical or otherwise, while you were being pursued, presumably by people who were not especially concerned with your well-being.”

  “Completely forgot,” replied Dagan, almost cheerfully. Too cheerfully, perhaps. “Just at the moment that I was giving Mingmei a earth-shattering orgasm, her father came into the courtyard, saw me with Mingmei, and…” He gestured vaguely to the room. “Well, here we are.”

  “How the fuck are you still alive?” Quillan asked.

  “Sheer dumb luck, I expect,” said Dagan.

  This was a fair estimate; he had been making decisions of the most precarious sort for as long as I had known him. Most of these decisions, had they been made by anyone else, would have resulted in, at least, numerous broken bones and a fair amount of bloodshed. The list of places Dagan should have died was quite long.

  “But,” he continued, “I made it back with the scarf, so I suppose I’ll just have to make what use of the scarf I can.” He leered at Christina. Only a stern look from her prevented Quillan from lurching forward and attempting to strangle the demon with his bare hands—less, I think, because she was worried about Dagan and more because she did not want Quillan to have his ass handed to him in front of Vander, Agent James, and especially me.

  Quillan settled for a glare.

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” I said, which was as complete a lie as ever I have told, “but Darion is here.”

  And Dagan paled.

  “What?” he asked, and every shred of his former contented mood was now nowhere to be found.

  “He was in your apartment,” explained Quillan. “And he was at our house, getting his ass reamed by Timothy. We think he was looking for Osenna, but obviously, we can’t be sure.”

  “Timothy?” Agent James repeated, but Quillan shook his head.

  “Long story,” he said.

  “Darion’s here,” Dagan breathed, and all the lechery drained from his body. He sat erect in his chair, as frightened as ever I had seen him—and perhaps not legitimately erect for the first time in his adult life. “In Splendor.”

  “Yes,” I said. I would have been lying, had I said I was not enjoying this. “Strutting about as though he owns the place.”

  Dagan swallowed audibly. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. “How?”

  “Inhale, Dagan,” I said. “You do still need to breathe, do you not?”

  “How?” he said again, more fervently.

  “You dropped your wallet somewhere,” Christina told him. “In Dromir, I guess, before you returned here.”

  “He had bubbles,” added Quillan.

  “Bubbles?” asked Dagan.

  “Yeah.”

  “My bubbles?” he asked, offended.

  “Really?” Quillan asked. “How the fuck should I know?”

  Something occurred to Dagan and the question evaporated before him. “Where is Darion now?”

  Before anyone could answer, a popping sound emanated from the center of the room. A split second later, Darion appeared. Without a sound. It was as though—pop—he was there, when only a second earlier he wasn’t.

  Darion was smiling, and looked so disturbingly similar to Dagan that, for a moment, I thought him a poorly maintained duplicate.

  Darion put his hands on his brother’s shoulders and squeezed. “As always, my timing is impeccable.” He beamed at us. “Oh, my apologies, friends. Am I interrupting?”

  SEVENTEEN

  Quillan

  Something happened to the air in the room when Darion appeared.

  You know that clingy, wet feeling you get when it’s foggy and cold outside, and it’s nighttime and probably Halloween, and you’re almost definitely being followed by a clown that wants to murder you? Yeah, that was the feeling that hung in the air like overpowering cologne.

  Dagan didn’t say anything. His hands curled around the arms of the chair, and he squeezed until I thought he was gonna break the arms off.

  “So, you did find him after all, how splendid,” Darion said, shaking Dagan’s shoulders. He smiled at Christina. “Wherever on Earth was the little rascal, hmm? Wasting away in a small room full of chains somewhere, I expect.” He chuckled. “You never were very imaginative, were you, Dagan?”

  “Mr. Halsir, this is a private meeting,” Christina interjected, talking like her teeth had turned to ice. The smile she gave him was furious, powerful, but frozen. She blinked, and had to fight to get her eyes back open. Clearly, something was overcoming her. And I had a feeling that something was Darion. “I’m afraid… I’m going to have to ask…” She sucked in a breath. “…you to leave.”

  “Christina?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  But she wouldn’t or couldn’t look at me. Instead, her gaze was pasted on Darion.

  “Oh, I’ll only be a moment, darling.” He leaned against her desk and crossed his arms, facing Dagan. He looked like the dad from The Brady Bunch getting ready to tell Bobby why Jesse James isn’t a good role model. “I have a number of questions for brother dearest.”

  We all had our guns out, obviously, pointing at the second guy this morning to magick himself into a warded federal building—but our silent alarms weren’t going off. We have these little buzzers on our belts that go bzz whenever someone who isn’t supposed to be in the vicinity suddenly appears without using the front door. But for some reason, they weren’t working.

  I looked at Casey and Knight, and they looked at me and each other, and we all decided together that this was a very bad situation.

  Casey made for the door.

  There was a little click noise as it locked itself, and Casey started blinking a lot. He swayed, then fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, putting one hand to his head. Grimacing, he clenched his teeth.

  A ringing started up in my ears. Like a repressed memory of a fire alarm.

  My heart started pounding and a rush of blood made me suddenly feel like I was going to pass out.

  “You have not been excused,” said Darion, tutting. And Hades, that smile. It was volcanic. It glowed like something that would crawl out of a mountain when the world was supposed to end.<
br />
  Casey’s hand went to his belt, to the buzzer, and he pressed the fuck-me-sideways-with-a-blender panic button. It took him a disturbingly long time to get there.

  I guess Darion heard the tiny, tiny click, because he looked up and around very suddenly. His eyes stopped on Knight, then Bram, then Casey. All of them stood stock-still. Bram was the only one who could look Darion in the eye, but he wasn’t moving, either. He had his arms crossed, and his jaw was tight. Clearly, he was under Darion’s power just as much as we all were.

  Darion smiled at him. “Long time, no see, Bram. How have you been?”

  Bram didn’t say anything.

  “You know, I always wondered why you stopped coming to visit us,” Darion continued. “I’d assumed it meant you’d finally gone under.”

  Bram made this deep, pissed-off, freak-out animal growling noise, but it wasn’t very loud.

  Darion’s smile got wider. He looked around the rest of the room until, eventually, his gaze landed on me.

  “I see you’ve made some interesting friends,” he commented, still talking to Bram. His eyes flashed red.

  A distant, fire-alarm-in-a-pillow-fort ringing popped into my ears.

  I wanted to collapse. Just close my eyes and go to sleep and let everybody else deal with this. Like those dreams where you’re running from something and you can feel your muscles telling you to fuck off, and you wonder if anything bad would really happen if you just stopped and let whoever was chasing you catch up.

  My gun drooped in my hands, and I heard myself go thunk against the wall. Thoughts came slowly, as if I were pulling every word out of old honey with one of those claw-grabber things you see in arcades.

  I stayed standing. Barely.

  Over in his chair, Dagan twitched. He was either trying to shrug or there was enough electricity stampeding through him to make him jump like a squirrel on a live wire. Darion leaned forward. He reached out and took Dagan’s chin in his hand like he was going to kiss him, and he did that awful demon-with-a-secret-that’s-definitely-going-to-get-all-of-us-killed smile.

  “Do you know how long,” said Darion, “I have been looking for you, Rogan?”

  Dagan opened his mouth. Something in the back of his throat was glowing. His chest spasmed like he was trying to breathe, but he couldn’t get anything in or out.

  Somebody knocked on the door. Darion didn’t appear to hear it.

  “You’ve made me look silly.” Darion paced around the chair, hand trailing behind him. “Disappearing with Jadra like you did. How very brave of you, to make off together in the middle of the night. And on my birthday, no less.” He tutted, and I got the feeling he was saying a lot of this for our benefit.

  Darion’s lip pouted. “How very rude of you. You might have at least said goodbye.”

  None of us could move. I didn’t feel frozen, just lethargic. Like when you first wake up and you can’t get your eyes to open. Like I hadn’t put anything in my stomach besides alcohol and Benadryl for three days. Glancing around the room, I noticed everyone else pretty much looked the same as I felt.

  “Now, I’m going to ask you this once,” Darion continued, “and I really hope you’ll make me ask you again, because this is no fun otherwise.” He stopped pacing and stood in front of Dagan, then drew a nail across Dagan’s face, pulling blood that steamed. I’d never seen Dagan’s blood steam before. Which probably meant it wasn’t supposed to.

  “Where, oh where, is my sweet Jadra?”

  The doorknob jiggled. Once, twice, then a third time, a little more insistently. Darion kept staring at Dagan like he hadn’t noticed it.

  Dagan swallowed, visibly steeled himself, and spat in Darion’s face.

  “Mine, now,” said Dagan. Maybe he was trying to sneer, but only half his mouth was listening to him.

  Darion’s smile curled into a snarl. “Jadra is mine. Your theft of her was petty and childish. It was a piece of a game you never learned how to play.” His nose twitched. “But it is a transgression I could be persuaded to forgive… if only you would return to me my most precious possession.”

  “Sorry,” retorted Dagan, fighting for a decent inhale. “No returns… without a… receipt.”

  Darion snorted, and Dagan devolved into a fit of coughing and hacking and other medically concerning noises.

  “Christina?” said whoever was out in the hallway. It took my muddled brain another second to recognize the voice as belonging to Dulcie. “Christina, open the door.” The doorknob jiggled again, and this time, the wood creaked like Dulcie was trying to pull it off its hinges.

  Darion wiped his face clean. “I,” he said, wearing a smile he’d stolen from some poor, unfortunate shark, “am going to have an unhealthy amount of fun dismantling you.” He poked Dagan on the nose.

  The doorknob creaked and groaned and splintered. “Christina.”

  Knight took half a step forward, looking like he was about to do something dumb and heroic. Dagan’s gurgling grew more frantic. Christina shot Knight a look, but it didn’t matter, because Knight dropped to the ground a second later, mouth open in a noiseless howl of pain.

  I tried to move, but I had to haul myself kicking and screaming out of whatever haze had dropped over us. My gun was pointed at the floor, and I couldn’t get my arms to move up. My finger hung lax beside the trigger. I fought to keep my eyes open.

  And Dulcie kicked the door in.

  Darion stood up, taking his hand off Dagan, who still couldn’t breathe. His eyes roved up and over Dulcie and he looked a little stiffer, less relaxed. Less “no, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die,” and more, “and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids and your dumb dog.”

  “And who might you be?” Darion asked with a broad smile.

  Dulcie stood there, a silhouette of pissed-off, early-morning energy. Her shirt was plastered to her skin and covered with breakroom motor-oil coffee I could smell across the room.

  She glared at Darion, looked around the room, and settled into the obvious realization that Darion was being the murderous kind of mean.

  “Dulcie O’Neil,” she replied, unholstering her gun.

  Darion froze—he didn’t look scared, though, just surprised.

  Dagan started hacking and coughing, and he lurched out of his chair onto the floor, shaking but breathing a little easier.

  Darion folded his hands in front of him. “Ah, yes,” he said, and he was way quieter now. Like when the librarian comes by and tells you to shush, and suddenly, you’re testing all your words in your mouth before they can get to your teeth.

  He got tense. “I know you, I think. The fairy, the vampire. The everything-monster, aren’t you?” He paused. “Meg’s girl.”

  Dulcie bristled. “I’m not Meg’s anything,” she countered, and she fired at him.

  I had to give it to her—Dulcie didn’t exactly wait for invitations.

  The bullet struck him hard in the shoulder and stuck in his bone. He flinched. The hole sizzled and popped as the dragon saliva wound its way through him.

  Some invisible hand slapped me in the face, and the sleepiness evaporated the way a hangover gets bulldozed by panic. My whole body seized for a second, and Knight’s, and Casey’s, and Christina’s. We all looked like we were being electrocuted.

  When Darion moaned, the animal fear settled back in.

  He touched his shoulder and brought his bloody hand to his lips, licking the red off his fingers like frosting. “Oh, yes,” he said, “do it again, beautiful.”

  Dulcie rolled her eyes and shifted her grip on her gun. “Use dragon saliva, they said, it’ll be less lethal, they said.” She took two steps forward, pulled her arm back and punched Darion in the face. “It’ll be fine, they said.”

  He didn’t go down, but there was this awful cracking sound as his jaw decided that it and the rest of his skull should really see other people. He lifted his hand to his cheek, then brought it back to his mouth. Blood flowed out of a busted lip and
probably some broken teeth.

  “Huh,” he said, a hollow, gauze-in-your-cheeks sound. He grabbed his jaw with both hands and forced it back into place with an even worse cracking sound. “Well,” he said. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  My muscles went slack, and I crumpled to the floor.

  “Sorry, my demon-slaying etiquette is a little rusty,” Dulcie answered. “Did you want more foreplay, or should I have just killed you as soon as I walked in?”

  “Is that what we’re doing here?” Darion inhaled slowly. “Now, if you really thought you could kill me, I’d already be dead, wouldn’t I?”

  “Who says I’m not being nice?” asked Dulcie, and she shot him again, apparently just because she wanted to. The bullet dug itself into Darion’s other shoulder with a satisfied hissing noise. He sucked in air through his teeth.

  “In my… experience…” he began, dragging the words out of his mouth like bodies from their graves, “kindness is merely the lesser man’s word for weakness.”

  “Sure, fine,” Dulcie agreed sharply, and her eyes were glowing. Deep, vampiric red, lava red. “But in about thirty seconds, everyone in this building is going to come crashing into this room with guns, stunners, and a whole lot of other nasty toys they can use to put you down.”

  “Oh, will they?” he asked. “I do hope that’s a promise.”

  “Just let my colleagues go, and you won’t have to find out,” she told him, and I realized what we must have looked like. For all we knew, any attempt Dulcie made to actually kill him would kill the rest of us, too.

  Great. I loved hostage situations.

  “I am begging you to try to kill me, little one.”

  “Okay, you know what? Fine.” Dulcie holstered her gun. I had a feeling she took offense to being called little one. “Let the record show I fucking tried.”

  And she started to get big. Like. Really big.

  Her skin stretched, her bones popped, yada-yada-yada. If I said werewolf and slid you a notecard that said, “Tim Burton is having a stroke,” whatever image that combination planted in your brain was probably about an eighth as disturbing as actually watching Dulcie transform. She made a strangled half-scream, half-howling noise and did this violent get-me-the-hell-out-of-this-cocoon wriggle as claws and fangs and fur and really big ears sprang up and started swiveling.