by Sam Cheever
Apparently Nestrada’s venom was working like a charm. Speaking of which. I grabbed my long knives and looked around for my mother. A dragon demon screeched and I turned, lifting my knives toward the creature flying directly at me.
Danika Phelps sat astride the horrible creature, her beautiful face calmly watching me as power spit in a large ball hovering over her palm.
My dear mother, looking not at all concerned as she prepared to murder her younger daughter. Pain flared in my breast. Pain that had nothing to do with battle wounds. I’d always known my mother didn’t love me. I’d thought I’d come to grips with that years earlier. It was probably one of the reasons I killed dark worlders and felt no regret. My mother’s careless disregard had turned something inside me dark...twisted me just a bit.
It was the thing that had worried me most when I’d been fighting to keep my light side alive during my Settling. But I realized in that moment that I would never really accept my mother’s hatred.
How does one accept that?
If I could leave it simply at that it would be bad enough. But it appeared I was going to have to end my own mother, permanently. Souls that are killed in Hades did not return. When I removed my mother’s life force from her again, it would be for good. The pain that had moved into my chest spread to my belly, twisting until I could barely breathe.
I said a prayer for strength and, as my mother lifted her arm to fling the ball of energy at me, I leapt sideways and threw one of my venom-painted knives.
The ground where I’d been standing spit upward, covering me with dirt and grass. The dragon my mother was riding hit the ground with a roar and skidded several feet before stopping in a cloud of dust, my knife jutting from its shoulder.
I leapt to my feet, looking for Danika. She was half beneath the dragon, struggling to climb out. I swallowed hard, realizing it was my chance to finish her.
The ground erupted again. I felt the stinging heat of the power behind it and looked up. Crisanne stood on top of one of the tall rocks, her pretty face dark with rage. “You left me behind, you bitch. We had an agreement.”
I briefly considered throwing my last remaining knife at her but my mother had renewed her efforts to get free and seemed to be making progress. I thought she’d be upright and dangerous again in seconds. “I told you I had to do this first, Crisanne. I didn’t break my promise to you.”
“You left me holding that damn breech open by myself. Do you have any idea how painful that was?”
I pressed my lips together to hold back a smile. I thought that probably wouldn’t go over well. “Sorry about that. I figured you’d realize we were gone...eventually.”
“You double-crossing bitch!” Crisanne lifted her hands and I panicked, flinging my last knife in her direction. My mother stood up, turning to me and I realized she was between me and Crisanne’s power. I started forward just as Crisanne’s oily yellow energy hit my mother between the shoulder blades.
Danika’s eyes widened and her mouth came open with surprise. I stood there for a moment, torn, watching my mother’s expression turn to horror as her magic was ripped away from her. My mind was screaming that I had to stop it. My legs tightened with the need to leap between them and take Crisanne’s power myself. I even took that first step. But I forced myself to stop. Because something ugly had occurred to me. Something selfish, which would make my life a tiny bit easier. And I just couldn’t bring myself to save the evil Danika from her current fate.
Crisanne’s power sputtered and, for a moment I thought my mother was fighting back. But Danika Phelps was on her knees in the grass, her pretty face pale and twisted with pain.
I knew that pain intimately. That sense of having the most precious part of yourself ripped away, leaving behind a black, empty hole that you couldn’t fill with anything. Not knowledge, or hope, or even love. It was an ending that was in many ways worse than death. I scrubbed the tears from my face and forced myself to look away. Danika Phelps had made her own choices. She’d created hell for too many people, and she would live the rest of her life miserable and empty.
I lifted a tear-drenched gaze to Crisanne and gasped. She stood rigid upon the rock, her pretty brown gaze glazed and fixed, and her hands straight out in front of her, power still trickling from her palms.
My knife stuck out from her left thigh. The venom had done its work.
“Astra?”
I brushed tears from my cheeks and turned. Dialle was safe and whole. In one hand he still clutched his bloodied sword. “I’m okay. Your father?”
“I killed him.” Pain slid through his gaze and I reached out, squeezing his hand in silent support. I hadn’t had to kill my mother but Dialle hadn’t been so lucky. Still, seeing my mother groveling on the ground, sobbing as her body still writhed in unaccustomed helplessness, I couldn’t help thinking Dialle might have gotten the best of the bargain.
He wrapped an arm around me and kissed my forehead. “Let’s go home, my love. We have a court to rebuild.”
I nodded, sniffling, and let him turn me away. It would be good to be home again. It would be good to have something constructive to do. It might even keep my heart from breaking totally apart in my chest.
Though at that moment I doubted it.
EPILOGUE
As it Ends...So it Begins
I sat in Dialle’s court chair and looked out over the room. The long, curved table was the only thing that still remained of the old council chambers. We’d returned to the court a few months earlier and had walked into carnage and destruction the likes of which I never wanted to witness again.
Even during the bloody civil war between magic wielders and humans, when the magic veil was making everyone crazy, things had never been as bad as what Dialle and I found when we returned from Perdigo.
Things in the celestial realm were bad too, as The Big Guy and the celestial army tried to deal with the uprising in the ranks of the dark angels. They’d finally managed to batten the situation back down, but the losses on both sides had been great.
Dialle and I had spent a full week trying to record all the dead in the court and tend to the living. We’d emerged from the process changed. The darkness that had stalked us both had found a permanent spot in both our breasts, a small, unshakeable handhold that we’d forever need to control.
But it had also given us a stronger grip on the light. Moments after we returned, the blood-covered walls had glowed with a silvery light that preceded the arrival of hundreds of guardian angels, come to help us deal with the aftermath. Devil and angel toiled side by side for weeks returning the court to its former health.
Dialle and I had worked to put our own stamp on the place. And I thought we’d done a good job. Glossy wood floors replaced cold, hard stone in the court chambers and hallways. Warm, soft carpets covered the floors in all the living chambers, and the court had a brand new gathering place where the court’s inhabitants could lounge on oversized couches and pillows to watch holographic films or play laser games.
The court population was much smaller but growing every day. Something else had changed. I’d talked Dialle into allowing halflings and other species to apply for residence there. The diversity of Dialle’s new kingdom sometimes made things more difficult...but it also made life more interesting. And we were stronger for the change. Our magical abilities were more varied, our reach into other worlds and dimensions more extensive, and our influence nearly without limit.
The court of Dialle the Second was vastly different from First’s rule, but that was exactly how we’d wanted it to be. It wasn’t his father’s Royal Devil Court. It was his. And mine.
It was ours.
There was only one thing missing, and I fully intended to see it remedied that night. I sighed, swiping a hand over the glossy surface of the table before me. The double doors to the court chambers opened and I looked up.
Gerch stuck his head inside. “My queen, the dark fairies are cheating at laser bowling again.”
I frowned. Sometimes I felt like a babysitter for the world’s most difficult children. “Gerch, I’ve already told you to handle it.”
“I’ve tried, my queen. They won’t listen to anyone but you.”
I sighed. “What did they do this time?”
“They have encased their opponents in fairy string and hung them from the balcony railings. They are out of control.”
I shook my head and stood. “Did you ask the coven for that potion I requested?”
“I did. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, clear bottle with a stopper.”
I grinned. “Good. Mix up some cherry nectar and put that into it, then offer it to the fairies with my compliments.”
“I hope it will kill them.”
“No. But they’ll probably wish they were dead. It will make their wings limp for a week and remove their ability to create fairy string. Once they’re subdued, gather them up and lock them in their garden for the week. I will explain to them that we will keep neutering them until they behave.”
Realizing how pissed they were going to be, Gerch finally smiled. “Yes, my queen.”
I smacked him on the arm. “For god’s sake. Stop calling me that.”
He chuckled and turned away. “Where will you be, m—” His grin widened, “Astra, my dearest friend. In case I need to confer with you again?”
“Out of range, Gerch my largest ass-pain. I’m going to...erm...confer with the king.”
He waggled his eyebrows and then bowed low, dancing out of range when I tried to smack him again. I watched him stride down the hall, toward the kitchens. Then I took off in the opposite direction, admiring the gilded mirrors and shiny wood consoles lining the halls. The changes had done a lot to make the court feel more cozy, more like home.
Astra?
I cringed inwardly as my sister’s voice razored across my mind. What is it, Darma?
Where are you?
Where I’m supposed to be. Where are you?
Ha, ha. I need your help with something.
I frowned. I’m kind of busy, Darma. Can’t you handle it?
Believe me, Astra, I wouldn’t have called you if I could have thought of any way out of it. But Emo is out vanquishing a snake demon and Slayer is up to his sexy eyebrows in gargoyles.
Feeling the promise of a long, leisurely romp under the covers with my favorite devil sliding away, I was perhaps less patient with my sister than I could have been.
Well shit! What’s the problem? When I gave you and the guys Angel Network to run I expected you to actually run it. Not come whining to me every time you had a tiny little problem.
There’s nothing tiny about this problem, Astra. And it’s currently standing in my office, glaring at me through one, big, blood-shot eye.
A troll?
Yeah. And I’m weak from the stench. I’ve never vanquished a troll before. I don’t know what to do.
Are you sure you need to vanquish it? Maybe it just wants to talk.
Um, I’m pretty sure the gore-covered claw currently digging a hole in my throat is a negative on the conversational option.
Sighing, I told her I’d be right there and space-shifted to my old office beneath Angel City. I landed just outside my old office door and lifted an eyebrow at the mess. The troll hadn’t so much opened the office door as crashed through it. What was left of the wood door hung at an odd angle from bent hinges. Slivers of it were scattered across the floor.
I peered inside, and saw the broadest back and fattest ass I’ve ever seen standing in the center of the room, obscuring Darma’s desk. Sitting atop the wide body was a squarish head that looked small in comparison to the rest of the troll, but was probably twice as big as mine. The narrow noggin was sparsely decorated with wiry yellow hair, telling me it was a girl. Male trolls were entirely bald.
“Hey?”
The thing turned slowly, lumbering around to the accompaniment of a choking sound that I assumed came from my sister. Sure enough, as it turned, it carried Darma with it, her toes dancing along the floor and both hands digging at the thick, gray-skinned hand wrapped around her throat. “Let her go, Venus. That’s my sister you’re choking.”
Darma’s eyes widened with surprise as the troll simply opened her hand and dropped her like a piece of rotting meat. The troll’s forehead wrinkled and her thick lips moved as she tried to form a thought. Finally words emerged. “Where you been?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “You know I’ve been working at the Royal Court, Venus. We just had this conversation a couple of hours ago. Why did you come here? I told you to meet me at the court.”
The large, startlingly green eye in the center of her forehead widened. “Where dat?”
I expelled a breath. “Good Him.” I strode across the room, gagging at the eye-watering stench as I got closer. Darma had moved as far away from the creature as she could. I’d thought it was fear that made her backpedal. In that moment I realized she was probably just trying to get away from the smell. I glanced at my sister. “Sorry. Venus is seeking asylum at the court.”
My sister’s pretty face folded into a very familiar scowl. “She needs an asylum all right.”
“Be nice, Darma. Her king has been beating her because she’s slow.”
“I thought they were all slow.”
I lifted an eyebrow, trying to instill some tact in my sister. The irony did not escape me. “Some are more slow than others.” I touched Venus’ arm, turning away to grimace at the oily prickliness. Darma grinned. The troll felt like a greased elephant. “I’ll shift you to the court, Venus. Okay?”
The big creature worked her lips, frowning. I waited, trying to be patient with her, but as you know, patience isn’t one of my better things.
Still, I got points for trying, right?
After a full minute of lip wobbling I gave up. “Frunk me. See you later, Darma.” I pictured the welcome center at the court and shifted the troll there. I got Venus settled in and got the hades out of there as soon as I could, but as I hurried toward our rooms, I realized I hadn’t escaped nearly fast enough. I had troll stench all over me.
I’d definitely need to clean up before seducing Dialle.
I was glad to see he wasn’t in our rooms when I entered. If he smelled me in my current condition it would undeniably kill the mood. Hurrying into the personal hygiene room, I pulled my clothes off quickly, dumping them into the laundry cylinder before stepping into the shower tube. “One hundred degrees. Forty-percent soap.”
The hot, soapy tentacles of water felt wonderful pounding against my skin. I just stood there for a moment, letting it smooth the rough edges of the day away, and wash the troll stink from my skin. Gradually I began to feel overheated so I backed the heat of the water down. Still I felt too warm, stiflingly so. “Seventy degrees, and clear,” I instructed the tube. I rinsed quickly under the cooler, soap-free water. My skin still felt hot, despite the much cooler water pinging against it, and my sexual core was coiling with its own kind of heat. With a start, I realized what I was experiencing was both familiar and devilish.
A dark shape shimmered into view on the other side of the glass tube. My lips curved upward on a delightful sense of déjà vu. “Water off.”
As I stepped out of the tube, Dialle raised one silky, black eyebrow and let his gaze slide down my dripping flesh. “Very lovely. I shall enjoy this very much.”
My grin widened, remembering all too well when he’d last said that to me. “Why do I feel like we’ve been here before?”
Dialle lifted a small square of cloth and wiggled it enticingly. I let my gaze slide to the towel he was holding for me, just out of reach of course. “I do not know what you refer to, my love. Every moment with you is a revelation for me. When we’re apart I think of nothing but you.”
I snorted. “You’re so full of shit, Dialle.” I reached for the towel and he yanked it just out of my reach.
“I know you feel the same way, my queen. Why don’t you just admit it?”
My devilish side couldn’t resist the chance to tease him. Besides, his ego didn’t need a boost. It was already so big there was barely space enough for all three of us in the personal hygiene room. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, bud. I’m just going about my business here. I haven’t even thought about you in at least an hour.”
His yummy lips parted in a wide smile, showing just the very tips of his teeth. “Did you know that royals can smell lust, little halfling?”
I blinked, trying to keep from smiling at the remembered taunt. “Just give me the towel, Dialle.”
As he’d done the first time we’d acted out the same scenario, he let his gaze slide slowly down my wet, naked form, and then held the towel out, keeping it just far enough away that I would have to take a step closer. Knowing exactly where we were headed, I took a step and tugged on the towel. He yanked me close, wrapping a strong arm around my waist, and before I could object the world dropped away and we were locked in a space shift.
~SC~
“Surprise!”
My eyes shot open and I sucked in a breath.
The kitchen at Phelps castle was filled with people. Each one of them was holding a glass of something alcoholic and wearing a happy smile. The place looked a lot better than the last time I’d been there.
Instead of bodies and wounded strewn around the floors and table, colorful air bubbles drifted around the space and a veritable bounty of food covered the long, wooden table.
I suddenly thought about where I’d just been and gave a little shriek, looking down. Thank Him! Dialle had dressed me before dumping me at my father’s house among all my friends. The long, form-fitting black dress was very pretty, in fact. And it looked kickin’ with the tall, leather boots. “Nice job, bud.”
“I much preferred you the other way.”
I tapped him on the end of his perfect nose. “Hold that thought.”