A shout answered me from his room. “Hai, Deathwalker-sama. One moment please.” He came out into the living room, closing the door behind him. His black chauffer’s uniform suited him. A bulge in the coat revealed that he was carrying his .38 special under his jacket. His aged Japanese features, darkened by sun, were contradicted by the youthful energy of his steps. His empty right palm showed the brand scar I’d given him. It had been part of a ritual making him more lethal as a combat butler. The mark allowed him to summon his own demon sword the same way I pulled my own out of thin air.
He had his driver’s cap under his left arm, anticipating we were going somewhere. Maybe he was going stir crazy, locked in here all the time. I waved him to come closer. When he did, I handed him one of my black opal rings. He looked at me, knowing there is often a catch to my gifts. “Makes you an honorable member of the demon clan, and answerable only to me or the Old Man. Anyone you see with one of these—like Vivian or Zero-T—is part of my trusted inner circle.”
He bowed deeply. “Yes, Caine-sama.” He straightened, a flash of strong emotion in his eyes that he swiftly hid. Giri. Duty. The burden that is each man’s to carry alone. I had honored him, but he would not embarrass me with a useless display gratitude. He’d prove his worth through service, as was his way.
“I’m in for the rest of the day. I’ll be preoccupied with business. Go out and celebrate.
Have Zero-T take you down the demon road to the casino, or a good restaurant. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have a night out. The Mustang’s parked out front.”
He bowed again. “Yes, Caine-sama.” He left like a cat, without looking back. Once he was gone, I went around to the inside of the couches and loveseat. I sat in the middle of the U and opened the copper tin.
At last.
The malachite crystals caught the light and fractured it, each one shimmering gently. Drawing a little raw magic into my hand, I touched the first crystal. My mind whirled through a kaleidoscope display where green light danced through flying shards of glass, all of it settling down as I landed in a large stone dungeon warmed by a brassiere of hot coals. Reddened irons were poked in the coals. Black metal armor was piled off in a corner. Chains were bolted to the wall, though no prisoners currently wore them. An unused cot with mattress and blanket pressed against one wall. Flickering torches in wall sconces helped with the lighting.
A dead man in Slayer leathers lay sprawled across a table. From the large quantity of knife cuts to his body, I guessed that ungentle questioning had just wrapped up.
A man in leather britches with no shirt stood by a little stand. He washed himself with a bowl of water. Blood came off his skin but revealed no wound. He wore a green crystal on a braided chain. The same crystal that had brought me here. There was something about his face, his eyes. His armor. Something familiar. Maybe something from a dream.
Father?
He didn’t react to my presence, but muttered, speaking so that his crystal swallowed his words. “Since leaving the Village, I have walked the lower dimensions of Earth, staying with distant kin, these self-styled Slayers. Since it involved one of the best blowjobs of my life, I’ve given them the genetic samples they’ve asked for. I’ve fought beside them on several missions, yet I get the feeling I’m not really trusted. It now seems they’ve grown afraid of what I am.”
He came back to the dead man on the table. “With good reason. On this last outing, we were supposed to encounter only light resistance. The vampires met us with overwhelming numbers. My comrades fled, leaving me behind. I don’t think I was intended to survive, but I did, after killing most of them.”
My father pause his narration, addressing the corpse. “Running out on a comrade is not nice, but I think you’ve learned your lesson, so I’m going to forgive you now.” He closed the corpse’s eyes and went over to the armor, dragging it to the cot. He sat and donned his battered protection piece by piece.
His narration to the crystal resumed. “I’ve heard whispers of a Slayer project called Black
Crown. I think this is what they want Villager DNA for. I’m certain now that preternatural DNA is being mystically gene-spliced into human volunteers. There may even be breeding pits where Slayer women are violated by captive monstrosities. The Slayers want what we in the Village have achieved over millennia, but on a more containable scale.
“They aren’t going to like it that I can blow their humans-only propaganda with what I know. They’re going to come at me directly after this.” The man stopped and lifted the crystal on his chain. He stared at the necklace for a very long time, shadows masking his face. “I could simply go back to the Village, but there is one there I’m not yet ready to face. Also, there is a woman in this world that I’ve grown greatly attached to. If I abandon her, there is no guarantee she’ll be safe. Slayers have killed dragons before. Well, that’s all for now.”
He closed his fist around the stone, and I was swept on to the next image: a bedroom scene where a looming golden dragon spitting lightning as my father reached for his sword. His black armor was near a rumpled bed. A horde of Slayer fanatics had caught my father with his pants down. Off to the side, on a dresser, his green crystal necklace lay neglected, until a slayer pounced on it and retreated, my father throwing curses after the man.
SEVEN
“Where’s the fun in running with
scissors if they aren’t sharp?”
—Caine Deathwalker
Several hours later, I emerged from mental fog, knowing that these crystals were my father’s. The stones contained audio-visual playbacks, still images, and raw data that to simply be absorbed: Slayer operations, safe houses, and legend. A good bit of the information went to the origins of the Slayers. In ancient Greece, a spot of prime real estate belong to a dragon of Ares. Red dragon clan. He guarded a spring, making his home there. A Greek named Cadmus came along, wanting to found the city of Thebes. With divine help—meaning he cheated—Cadmus and his men killed the dragon.
The goddess Athena told them to sow half of the dragon’s teeth in the earth. They did, and an army of dragon-fierce, armored men sprang up. Cadmus was too afraid to take them on, so he tossed a rock in their midst to stir up trouble. Old tricks were new at some point in history. When the dust cleared, five Spartoi, the “sown”, remained. Cadmus befriended these men. The building of Thebes went on fairly well after that.
Here, my father’s the story took a direction not recorded in Greek myth. One of the wounded Spartoi wasn’t as dead as the others thought. He lay among his dead breather until night, at which time he stole the other half of the dragon’s teeth and fled. In time, the Spartoi would have their own village, The Village. The hunters-of-the-dark. Selective breeding with the best human warriors—and with not-quite-human creatures—made the Village warriors monsters on the battle field, and a threat to any city-state dreaming of empire.
Having the whole world against them, the Village saw the wisdom of vanishing, hiding itself behind dimension-twisting barriers, pinching off for themselves a little pocket of time-space. Those that did not want to leave Greece, the failures in the breeding process mostly, stayed behind. These dregs would one day found the Slayers. According to the crystals, the Black Crown Project is the Slayer’s attempt to make “Villagers” of their own, borrowing a little of the monster to fight monsters. The crystals also documented Slayers killing children born too monstrous, because they couldn’t be easily controlled.
With a world full of Slayers wanting my father dead, I could see why he and my mother might want to fall off the grid. What I didn’t understand was why my father couldn’t take mom and me back to the Village, or why a gold dragon would give up her son. Ever.
My phone rang, breaking me out of my distraction. My current Ringtone played: Dio’s Rainbow in the dark. I answered. “Yeah?”
A deep voice boomed. “Haven’t you wasted enough of my time yet?”
It was the Old Man, breaking my balls, so I lied. “Oh, I’d have com
e down in another hour or two. I’m trying to set a world’s record for jacking off without Viagra.”
“We have a lot of people sitting in on this evening’s clan review. Haul ass down here before I send up a pair of shadow hands to wring your chicken for you. You will experience all new dimensions of pain.”
He would, too. When I was growing up, he’d be a dozen feet away when a shadow hand would briefly form and smack the back of my head. Shadow magic. My own fault for time traveling to Atlantis and starting him on that road. Having seen the Old Man as a teenager had been a helluva shock. It was no wonder he’d taken the job of raising me. His own future had depended on it. That also meant that all the times growing up when it seemed he was about to get me killed had been safer than I’d known. Or he’s just flat out crazy.
“Caine, you there?”
“I’m on my way.”
I retraced my earlier path to the entrance of the Great Hall. Just beyond, the under the dome, the chandeliers blazed hard white. The floors were parquet, an intricate design of exotic woods from Africa and Brazil. The walls were etched with the names of every clansman who had ever lived. Mine was over the door’s archway next to the Old Man’s. It took a while to reach dead-center of the chamber. The spot was occupied by Lauphram’s coral throne with its half-shell backrest. The thing looked like it had been plucked from the throne room of a sunken city. I guess that was the point.
I passed the throne on the way to the back of the space. Another hallway waited. The checkerboard floor was laid in jade and ivory tiles. Wall sconces copied the giant mermaid on the roof, but these miniature versions lifted arms to support aqua-blue crystals. The back passage led to the War Room. Just outside, my heightened dragon senses identified several of the demon guards the Old Man used most often to attend him. Imari was there, a smoky, spicy scent like incense.
The War Room was circular with numerous plasma screens showing every L.A. territory. Lauphram’s was color-coded ocean blue. Blood red indicated vamp strongholds and nightclubs. Yellow-white marked the areas claimed by magic-users like the cleaning services we used to keep the preternatural community a secret. Amber marked the shifters’ territories. I noticed that the spot over in Malibu for William’s house was gone. That’s a little premature.
Entering drew all eyes to me. I nodded toward the Old Man. “Once this is over, we need to talk.”
Lauphram’s gaze flicked to Imari, then back to me. “This new intelligence you’ve sniffed out?”
“Yes. I know about my father, what you’ve been keeping from me all these years. I know about the Village.”
Imari looked between the Old Man and me, her confusion evident. “Village?”
“Later,” the Old Man said. “This review has waited long enough.”
Imari tensed. If her black face were able to pale with fear, I think she would have. This was her professional life on the line. While the Old Man and I had been away from the clan house, she’d had responsibility for defending it against the hordes of the Blue Star Priestess. We’d lost clansmen, taken damage, but hadn’t fallen. Imari should have taken pride in that. All battles have casualties. The problem was she’d taken the deaths and injuries to heart.
Not good. Guilt is a liability in a commander of troops. It can cause hesitation, second guessing, and paralyze. The Old Man and I were doing this to help her get past all that.
We moved to the far side of the room, to a dais with built-in, magic-enhanced holo capabilities. Normally, this served as our link to the Council of Lords who managed the other L.A. territories. The display was now being put to another use. A lot of research and tweaking had gone into the system so that it could show a play-by-play simulation of the last attack.
“Start the review,” the Old Man ordered.
One of the geek-demons seated at his station ran claws over the controls. The property with buildings was recreated in smaller scale, sculpted in blue light. Dead center was the Great Hall. Protective wards were depicted with red-and-black hex signs. The demon road leading toward the coast was a paler blue than the buildings.
The enemy had approached the clan house with confidence, doing little to conceal themselves. They were a mongrel lot, the cast offs of many other demon clans. There were non-demons, too. Rock demons walked side by side with mountain giants. Pooka—murderous water ponies—clopped along with giant pythons. The host carried a mix of modern and ancient weapons.
The sorcerers were obvious having bedecked themselves in protective amulets and talismans of power. They also tended to wear garments made of bone. One of them had for a helmet the horned skull of a gargoyle killed under moonlight when they stop adorning buildings and move about the skyline freely. The magic-users tended to glow with murky red lights, or to spew black flames. One of them levitated a dozen swords, hedging himself in with protection so he could work his spells without some hero coming along and lopping his head off. Power built on ritual could be very potent, especially when stored in charmed items for later use. The weakness of magic was that destroying the charms killed the spells, and spells started from scratch required time to become effective.
This was why my own spells were in tattoo form, needing just a touch of raw magic to set them off. And why I used sword and gun just as much. The best warriors aren’t the strongest or fastest—though that doesn’t hurt—but the most flexible in mind.
“Here’s the good part,” the Old Man said.
At the edge of the property were boulders meant to look like convenient ammunition. The hazel-skinned mountain giants waddled over to these rocks and effortlessly hefted them into the air. Explosions flowered where moving the boulders released pressure-restrained landmines. Titanium ball bearings punched into the giant’s legs, cracking the outer skin, punching through half-petrified tissues. Some of the legs came off at the knees. Mountain giants toppled, steaming mud pouring out of them like blood. Quite a number of slithering pythons went down as well.
“Off to a good start,” I said.
There were murmurs of agreement across the room.
Imari remained tense and silent.
Stepping out past the statues on the porch of the holo-version of the Great Hall, a miniature representation of Imari emerged. She held a flaming sword and her ink-black body was sheathed in red-gold armor. Using a bull horn, she demanded the immediate surrender of the enemy forces, threatening further carnage.
The Old Man gestured and the display froze. His voice emerged deceptively mild, uncharacteristically soft. “So, Imari, care to explain what you were thinking here?”
She cleared her throat. “I was thinking that if they saw we were ready for them, they might withdraw, meaning more of us would live through the attack.
“Naive.” I said. “They leave, they don’t get to loot, they don’t get paid, and their boss will kill them. Cowardess has no up-side here.”
“Worse,” the Old Man said, “you identify to them just who needs to be killed to throw our troops into headless disarray. Why do you think we have a rule about no salutes on the battlefield?”
“I didn’t think of that,” Imari said.
“No, you didn’t.” The Old Man gestured. The holo-record continued to play. Zero-T came up behind Imari, grabbed her by her armor’s collar, and dragged her back to cover. Magic propelled rock demons slammed onto the porch, skidded, and two of the ornamental statues standing there were half broken. Zero-T gestured and potted saplings left on the porch shattered their pots with a magical orgy of growth. The saplings became squat trees with roots that covered the rock demons, tying them up in balls.
Jets of flame shot from the enemy sorcerers. The flickering tongues enveloped the rock demons. Being rock, they weren’t hurt by the flames. The roots were burned away, allowing the rock demons to press their attack.
“The enemy is coordinating well,” the Old Man said. “Good training.”
“Not good enough,” I said. “Look at all the casualties they’re taking from the wards.” A lot of the
attacking forces swayed, weakened. They collapsed as their lifeforce was siphoned invisibly away, making the wards even stronger. There was a reason all our soldiers were staying indoors, allowing themselves to be penned in.
In their rush to attack, the magic-users hadn’t properly evaluated the nature of our defenses.
They probably thought the giant porch statues were supposed to come to life and defend the property. The rock demons converged on the last two standing statues, flailing away against them. The statues weathered the attacks without taking damage. I looked over at Imari. “You had a protection spell going to minimize damage at this point?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “We had a chaos demon in our ranks. An entropy spell leeched off the kinetic force. Same difference, really. The demons stayed on the porch as we rolled grenades over to them. The chaos magic was dropped so it wouldn’t corrupt the grenades. They detonated, breaking up the rock demons. We swept them away later, along with the broken statues.”
I shifted my attention to the back of the property where another wave of attackers had come in through the woods, trying to sneak past the massive structure that housed the clan vehicles. The enemy ranks had been thinned by more of our protective wards. The notion of planting them, and hiding them while in operation so they couldn’t easily be located, had been one of the Old Man’s best ideas ever. The wards were Atlantean in origin, a type of magic modern magic-users weren’t familiar with. They were paying a heavy price for that failure of education.
Snipers in the upper levels of the mansion opened fire. On both sides of the Great Hall, the enemy hordes took casualties, forcing them to withdraw to cover.
“I’d say you won the first skirmish,” I said.
“The wards did,” Imari said.
“Events forced the enemy sorcerers to scry for our defenses and to start attacking them.
Time became critical,” the Old Man said. “So you reemerge from the Hall and parley with the enemy.”
Demon Lord 5: Silver Crown King Page 6