We walked back to the Angel Hotel, Ellen leaving me about halfway to go to her hotel. She said that she would see us tonight in the Gold Room.
The venue that Rose had selected many years ago was going to prove interesting, I thought.
* * * *
Dusk was approaching and I sure hoped that neither Jane nor Rose would be displeased with my selections. Still, I wished we were dancing again.
“Nice,” Jane said.
We do look good, I thought.
“Mom might actually not cringe when she sees it but it will make her uncomfortable. I like it.”
Friar Tuck had rented us a limo for the night and he would be going with us. We would pick up Ellen on the way.
“Ellen and Rose are good friends and very evenly matched in their chess game,” Tuck said. “Both of them have won this tournament in the past, I believe it is three wins apiece. There is a friendly competition with them, Ellen lives only a few blocks away from Rose in London and they have a standing Wednesday date for a chess match. Most of them end in draws.”
“For the last five years, a man named Clive Wishmeister has won the tournament. He had been a pretty strong player but all of a sudden and shortly before he got that big part on that American TV show, he started winning every tournament he entered. Rose tells me his game is better but not that much better, he seems to have good fortune with his opponents making some big mistakes or just not being quite on their game. Rose and Ellen both are determined to put an end to his win streak this year.”
“I have seen him on TV,” I said. “That’s a pretty funny show. He plays a lawyer but everybody thinks he really is the devil. They keep killing him off and he keeps somehow coming back, surviving the attempts to kill him off.”
Jane said, “Not only is he winning chess tournaments and starring on a TV show, he has also edged in on a lot of my mom’s business interests and his business interests are not very savory ones. My sources over here say he runs several gambling and prostitution houses and he is heavily into the black market and gun running.”
“This should be fun,” I said. I wasn’t a big fan of chess but this might make things interesting. As we were passing a local shop on the way to pick up Ellen at her hotel, my nose tickled. Not only did I smell wine, I smelled cigars. My dragon started telling me to stop and stop now.
“Stop,” I told the driver and telling Tuck and Jane that I would be right back, I let myself out the door and entered the shop, a little place selling a good variety of wines and cigars called Bacchus, after the God of wine. Entering the door was like entering paradise. I picked out the wine and I let my dragon chose the cigars, I would sniff each one and she would give me a yay or nay. I ended up with several bottles of wine and about a half dozen cigars, a couple of which I stuck in my jacket pocket. I hoped to get a chance to smoke one tonight.
“Sorry about that,” I explained as I got back in the car carrying my wine and cigars. “My dragon loves cigars,” and I took one out and sniffed it some more.
“I love cigars as well,” Tuck said and I showed him my choices, asking him if he’d have a chance to join me in a smoke tonight. Jane thought it was pretty funny.
The Polesdon Lacey House was beautiful from the outside and just as gorgeous on the inside. The matches would be played in the Gold Room, which had some seating around the tables,with additional seating in the sitting room where they had some TV screens set up for us to watch the action from there. Most of the big-wig dignitaries got the Gold Room seating, there was even a member of the Royal family present. Jane and I got a spot in the sitting room where they were serving drinks, including bottled blood. Unfortunately, we would not be dancing tonight.
Rose came over as soon as we entered the sitting room. She and Jane stopped about a foot from each other, neither wanting to make the first move. She looked exactly like her daughter, just a smaller version. Not as tall or athletic looking but she appeared to be in her late twenties when she was turned. The same signature red hair, looking at them you might think they were sisters instead of mother and daughter. I gave Jane a not too subtle push forward and they hugged each other. Rose had a few tears in her eyes and Jane looked like she was close to tears as well.
Jane turned to me and introduced me as her girlfriend and Rose gave me a hug as well. Things were going nicely. I had been so worried. Rose even complimented me on my choice of outfits for us, saying that I had done well under the circumstances. It made me feel good.
Rose took Jane over to say hello to one of her old acquaintances and I made the rounds around the room meeting and greeting. I met Clive in the corner. He had two bodyguards with him. I smelled the guns on them and I didn’t like the feel of them at all. Human but not human, I guessed, demon possessed, some mid-tier demon and angel of hell whose spirit had taken over the human one it was possessing. My angel instincts perked up even more when I met Clive, his demon was hard to read, buried under layers of shielding but I knew this was no ordinary demon, upper tier angel of hell surely, possibly even Lucifer himself. All my instincts screamed out for me to attack. Possessing a human in such a way was an abomination to God.
“Jade,” he said. “I have heard so much about you from my friends in the Southern Territory. Now that I have met you, I am beginning to understand why. You ruined some of my plans there, Jade,” he continued. “I will enjoy killing you.”
“We shall see who kills whom,” I replied, letting my witch surface and letting him see my full magic. His bodyguards actually took a step back before stepping forward again and drawing him away from me. I stood there watching him, thinking again about the plans of God and the choice I had made. I would continue to do what I thought was the right thing to do, I determined. Maybe that was God’s plan for me.
Jane came over, asking why I had gone so still and quiet and asking what I thought of the TV star. “Remind me to kill him before we leave tonight, “ I told her.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Not in front of Mom,” Jane had said. “She would kick me off the island this time and I would be back to square one.”
A dilemma for me, this one, I thought as we watched the TV screens in the sitting room, first round matches were wrapping up. Rose and Ellen had breezed through their matches and had joined us along with Tuck at a table. We were watching Clive playing with his opponent, drawing the match out unnecessarily according to both Rose and Ellen.
“It’s almost the same with every match he plays,” Ellen said. It’s as if he plays for a draw every time, then his opponent will make some bonehead move and he pounces.”
“Typical demon behavior,” I responded. “He doesn’t want you to think you were beaten by a better opponent. He would rather you think you are stupid and beat yourself up constantly over it. He wants you to think about it, remembering how dumb and inadequate you felt.”
They were all staring at me now. I had not yet had a chance to tell Jane why I wanted to kill him.
“Demon?” Rose asked me but looking at Jane instead. Jane gave a slight nod, letting her know she believed me.
“Not just any demon,” I responded. “I believe it is Lucifer that possesses the body of Clive. What is left of Clive is just a shadow, only enough to keep the body running, the Devil himself is now in charge.”
Complete silence at the table. We had been talking in low voices, almost whispering so others would not hear.
“This is exactly how I felt when he beat me in the finals last year,” Rose said. “I kicked myself over and over for being such an idiot, replaying the game in my mind again and again asking myself, what was I thinking?”
“Angels don’t cheat,” I said. “For a demon, they would cheat even if they didn’t have to.”
“The little fuck,” Rose said. “I will kill him.”
“You will have to get in line,” I told her. “He is behind this mess in the Southern Territory. He told me himself. He wants me to know.”
“Let me ask you, Jade,” Rose said. “Do you
know how he is cheating and is there a way you can stop it?”
“He is probably using his power to influence his opponents causing confusion and befuddlement. He is a master of the art of indecision, wanting you to be so unsure of things that you eventually just do something even if you don’t know the consequences. Look at his opponent,” I said, looking up at the monitor. “She looks like she has no clue what she is doing. Notice how her moves have become tentative. She will reach out as if to move a piece then withdraw her hand before touching it. The last few moves she has made have been just as her time is almost up, probably made in desperation.”
“Can you stop him from cheating, Jade?” Ellen asked. She was scheduled to be his next opponent when he won this match.
“Maybe,” I responded. “I would have to be in the same room,” I added.
“I have a feeling our Royal retinue in there is about to be called away on important business,” Rose said. “That table in the Gold Room will become ours in time for his match with Ellen.”
Just as Rose had predicted, the member of the Royal family departed shortly after that and Rose, as host, led us to the table in the Gold Room, leaving herself a spot open. She had a match as well but said it would not take long and she was right. She crushed her opponent in short order, Tuck called it an all out assault, precise and vicious in execution, leaving nothing in reserve. Rose wanted to be with us watching Clive and Ellen’s match and she joined us before anything significant had happened.
Clive had noted our presence in the room with what looked like amusement. He had given me a look letting me see a very brief flash of yellow in his eyes, trying to scare me. From that I guessed he still didn’t know what I was or who I had been. This pleased me and I gave him a smile and flash of fangs in return. “Bitch,” I mouthed at him. He chuckled and turned back to his game.
Ellen had been playing very conservatively they both had been making pretty standard moves. As per plan, as soon as Rose finished her match and joined us, Ellen began to attack. I felt Clive’s influence move out of him toward her and I blocked it easily. He spared me a surprised glance, doubling his efforts. It became a contest of wills. His power was well known among angels but he wasn’t in full manifested form and he was limited much as I was and I was no slouch in the power department either. Still it was a great effort to keep his influence at bay and I began to sweat with the effort. Jane, placed a cup of coffee in front of me and I spared her a momentary glance of thanks. I needed all the energy I had and more.
When it became his turn to move, I pushed instead of blocked, trying to return his spell to it’s source, threefold in strength it would hit him, it was one of the laws of magic even he could not contest. He blocked easier than I had but I saw his lips stiffen with the effort. His problem now was that he was on his own and his focus, instead of being on the match became blocking me.
He made several blunders over the next dozen moves and all of a sudden the room started to notice. People were starting to wonder why he did not concede. He just grew more angry and determined to punch his spell forward. By this time I was starting to shake with the effort and my eyesight was starting to blur. I prayed to God for help, muttering slowly in Latin and felt a renewed sense of purpose and strength.
“Checkmate in three,” Ellen announced looking at him expectantly. Even I could see it. He continued anyway and when she made the last move to win the match, he made a sudden movement, reached over to one of his bodyguards, pulling a gun from under his coat, pointed it towards Ellen’s heart and pulled the trigger. The Devil is a sore loser is the only flash of thought I had as in an even faster flash, Rose had moved. She was the only one of us that reacted instantly. I had seen Jane move, and the Queen’s Blade, and I thought they were fast.
If there was a creature on Earth that could move faster than Rose Red, I had yet to see it.
She knocked Ellen aside, taking the bullet in the side of her chest, continuing her movement to fall to the ground. Jane screamed and attacked. Clive’s bodyguards had guns out and firing at her with Clive running for the exit.
I had been stunned with the relief from the pressure I had maintained with our magical battle of wills but that got me going as well, as I started towards the bodyguards also, moving in a blur of speed. It was not necessary as Jane got to the first bodyguard, moving so fast his shots missed and as the second bodyguard had turned toward Jane, aiming his gun. Rose was up off the floor and screaming in rage and pain, literally ripping his head from his body.
Jane had knocked the second bodyguard to the side, simply breaking the arm that held the gun and Rose was on him as well, fangs buried in his throat. The whole room was full of screams now. Jane took off after Clive and I changed my course and followed. Jane reached the exit first, the door broken in pieces, Clive had not even slowed down to open the thing, simply running through it as if it had been made of paper.
She was just outside looking around trying to spot him or sense where he had gone, what direction he had taken.
“Where, Jade?” she asked.
I let my nose tell me. “This way,” I said as Jade and Jane ran with the wind. We stopped at the clairvoyee, a great circle of stone on the grounds. I could not smell him past it. Rose was past us in a blur, running through the circle then stopping looking around confused, then in a blur back to us standing on the other side.
I had paused, letting my magic do the work now that my sense of smell was not helping. “It is a portal,” I told them. “I don’t know this one or where it leads. It could lead to the very gates of Hell as far as I know.”
Rose looked at her daughter. “Kill him, Jane,” she said.
“Yes, Mom,” she answered. “Come on, Jade,” she added, grabbing my arm and pulling me through the clairvoyee. “Do it, Jade,” she said as we went through.
I did as she asked. Great time for her to become an obedient daughter, I thought as we made the transition.
About the Author:
Rose Montague has always been a big reader and worked at a library and a bookstore. She always wanted to write and had a great time with this one. It is her first book. She lives in Raleigh, SC. She is currently working on the second book in the series, titled Jane.
Visit her online at:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000712227923
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Table of Contents
Jade
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Jade Page 17