Spears' Challenge (The White Dragon Series Book 2)

by Bonnie Watts

  NO, you will not die! I won’t allow it.

  I stabilize his physical injuries and heal him, but keep him in a stasis spell while my mind healing magic moves into his fevered brain. I see the kennelmaster demon who raised Slayer, who abused the puppy in such a myriad of ways that his fragile mind finally snapped. He becomes the rabid out-of-control killer who the kennelmaster hopes will one day turn on his bond-mate King Lucifer. He would have, despite the love he feels for his master, his twisted mind couldn’t help itself. I remove many of the worst memories, replace them in his mind with healed feelings and thoughts. It is much simpler to do with dogs than humans. Before long, the Hellhound comes up on his feet as Jeff helps me stand up.

  I turn towards the demon king.

  “King Lucifer, the kennelmaster who abused Slayer sent a time bomb into your house on purpose. He is meant to turn on you in his madness, which he would have someday.”

  “You saw this in his mind?”

  “I did. I made a memoryscape of it, so you can see it for yourself.”

  I sent the memoryscape over to him and put my hand out to calm Slayer. The Hellhound is nervous because, in healing him, I was forced to break the mind bond between him and the demon that had guided him for most of his life. I also took away his paralyzing mental power that had resulted from the abuse he’d suffered. His usefulness to the demon king is gone.

  “You took away his ability?”

  “It made him a danger even to you, so yes I did. I’m the White Dragon. Of course I took it away so that no one can be hurt by it.”

  King Lucifer frowns at me, his face pale from the severing of the mental bond with the Hellhound. “You do-gooder White Dragons can be really annoying. He’s useless to me now.” The sorrow I sense in the demon tells me he loved the monster dog.

  Now Lucifer looks curious. “What were those creatures who first attacked Slayer?”

  I motion for Beauty and Courage, who have changed back to their smaller forms, to come up next to me.

  “Send your troops away, and I’ll lower my shield and introduce you.”

  He orders the others out, then steps down from the dais and comes over. He is even better looking up close. A girl could get lost in those storm cloud eyes.

  “This is Harddwch and this little man is Dewrder.”

  He petted Courage and said to him, “Courage you have indeed, little man, to take on Slayer. What did they turn into?”

  “Sidhe lion-dogs. They were gifts from the Seeley Queen.”

  He tries to pet Beauty, but true to the little queen’s form, she snorts in derision at the pathetic male and comes over and sits down by me, a distinct look of ‘How uncouth!’ on her face.

  We are all surprised when the King of Hell starts laughing at the little dog’s antics.

  “You can tell she came from a queen.”

  “Oh, yes, she’s let all the men in my court know just where they stand for her, that’s for sure.”

  I look at Lucifer the demon.

  “King Lucifer, may we go somewhere we can talk? I need to warn you of what is coming and we need to discuss the consequences of any more attempts on my life.”

  The demon king for some reason has picked up Courage, who is now being cuddled in his arms and is licking the king’s hand in utter happiness.

  Oh, oh. Is what I think happening, Lucifer?

  Courage has chosen his person. It is why he came, and to save me, of course.

  Of course. But can we trust this demon to treat him well?

  I glance back at Slayer, who follows quietly behind me. Hell hadn’t treated this poor dog very well at all.

  Beauty says that the demon, though male, loves dogs. He knew he should have killed Slayer years ago, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. He will treat Dewrder well.

  I don’t think we’re going to have much of a choice. Courage has chosen his person, and I don’t think we’ll be able to separate them.

  Of course. That is the way of things.

  King Lucifer takes us to a conference room and we all sit in comfortable office chairs around it.

  The king looks down at the terrier and gently puts him in an empty chair next to him.

  “Courage has chosen you as his person, King Lucifer. If you give me your word of honor that you will not experiment on or hurt him in any way, the way your kennelmasters do to the Hellhounds, then I will offer a trade to you.”

  “What kind of trade?”

  “You said yourself that Slayer is no longer of use to you, and the bond you two share had to be broken for me to heal his mind. I will take him to Avalon with me to live out his life in peace, and Courage will stay with you as your magic terrier.”

  “Won’t the Seeley Queen mind you giving away one of her gifts?”

  “Queen Ceresa understands the value of exchanging gifts between courts. As long as we both have your word that you won’t allow Courage to come to harm, except that which might inadvertently happen from him protecting you, then she won’t object, I don’t think.”

  “I wonder if the Queen would consider selling me a female to make a breeding pair?”

  Dragon speaks up next. “Unless you want to become a race of demon slaves, Lucifer, I suggest you might want to think twice about getting one of the females. This one,” He nods down at Beauty, who he has of course put on his lap so she can see and hear everything, “has turned the last dragon shifter into her royal feeder.”

  His droll comment gets us all chuckling.

  Lucifer nods. “All right, Lady Dragon-Spears, you have a deal. Take Slayer where he can live out his life in peace, and not only will I take Courage here, but I won’t try to kill you again. I didn’t know what you were becoming, for what that’s worth. I just responded to the insult you did me when you had the impudence to steal one of my beasts and then name him after me!” He glares at me, then at Lucifer next. “But when I saw you actually break Slayer’s paralysis trap today, I can see that the rumors are true. Another White Dragon has arisen, and she is the most magically powerful one in millennia. Now, tell me what you know about what’s coming.”

  “I will, but I need your word of honor you won’t try to harm me or my Familiar in the future.”

  “I’ve already told you I wouldn’t. I won’t grovel for even a White Dragon!”

  Lucifer-dog gets up from where he is sitting by me and walks around the conference table until his head is only inches away from the demon king. We can all hear what he says next in our minds.

  You must give us the use of your Hounds, Demon. They’re needed to watch the great dark to guard it and to prepare for the invasion. You will do this, or we all could be eaten by the ones-who-come!

  The king looks at me in surprise. “He projected to someone he isn’t bonded to! Do you know how long we’ve been trying to breed that trait into our Hounds?”

  “We all heard him. It’s the first time he’s projected to a group of minds. He’s projected to single minds before this.”

  “His mental voice doesn’t sound like a Hellhound at all. What have you done to get him like this?”

  “I haven’t done anything except not abuse and starve him. It’s the White Dragon magic that’s made him like this.”

  “What a stud dog he will make!”

  “One step at a time, King Lucifer. About not sending any more assassins?”

  “Yes, yes. You have my word. Killing a White Dragon, no matter how annoying you are, will be counter-productive at this point.”

  “I have seen that some very powerful mages, like those who almost destroyed our worlds before the Great Magics, will try to invade our dimension from the void. This makes using your hounds for void perimeter guard duties even more important. Can we count on your support?”

  Say yes, Demon-King, or I will order Courage to come home with me.

  I don’t say anything to counter Lucifer’s threat, even though I won’t consider separating the demon and Courage once they had chosen each other.

  “I
am not accustomed to being dictated to by one of my accursed Hounds, Lady Dragon-Spears!”

  I do not belong to you.

  My Familiar pulls himself up to his maximum height, which makes him taller than the seated demon.

  I am the White Dragon’s Familiar. I belong to no one but myself. I am equal to you, Demon-King!

  It is time for some diplomacy, I think.

  “King Lucifer, now do you see why I honored my Familiar by giving him your name? My Houndmaster said it was an honor to name him after so powerful a king. Do you understand that now? The name fits him, and insures your name will go down in history, not only for your own great deeds, but for his as well!”

  King Lucifer looks at me with a twinkle in his grey eyes. “Good White Dragon, bad Familiar, like good cop-bad cop? Hmph! How can I resist such sophisticated blandishments?” He strokes little Courage, who has climbed back into his arms when my Familiar threatened to take him from his new person.

  “We need to maintain a skeleton crew of hounds to keep order here in my demesne. But I can provide you with at least forty hounds, or there about. They’ll be older dogs no longer on active duty, younger pups like Lucifer here, breeding bitches ready to whelp and about twenty-some active duty Hounds. Do you have facilities to house them, their bonded demons, and a Kennelmaster or two to continue the young ones’ training?”

  “We’ve started a kennel back in Avalon for the seeley King’s su sith he gifted us and for Lucifer. It just means we’ll have to expand the operation a bit to handle more dogs. Though I’ll not tolerate cruelty or abuse in any Kennelmaster you send, your Majesty.”

  “That has been the traditional way to train the Hellhounds from before I started my reign five thousand years ago. But based on the information you gave me from Slayer’s mind when you healed him, I’ll soon need a new Chief Kennelmaster. Perhaps it is time to start looking at other methods.” He looks at my Familiar, who sat next to him. The covetous look on his face is clear. “If we can get these kind of results, those changes will be worth it.”

  Dragon brings up an important point. “Any magical creature who serves the White Dragon can be changed by the magic that surrounds her. We all have felt this. When you get your people and hounds back, you might not recognize them.”

  Beauty puts her front paws on the table and barks.

  Beauty says that her Royal Feeder is right. Even she has felt herself adjusted because of the magic. Although since she was already perfect, there wasn’t much to change.

  After a pause, the entire crew starts cracking up from the Hellhound’s droll recitation and Beauty’s words.

  Dragon looks at the demon. “Now do you see what I was saying earlier about the females of that breed, King Lucifer?”

  “I do, Consort, I do indeed.”

  So it is settled. The demons would no longer try to take my life, and we would have dimension-hopping Hellhounds and their demon bond-mates to police the void. Excellent!

  -10-

  The king offers us a tour of some of his less nasty sections of Hell. We decide to take him up on it since not even Dragon has ever seen much of the Hell Dimension.

  We first step into what looks like a gym or warehouse-style building. In it are rows upon rows of cheap folding tables with people of various ages sitting in metal chairs staring avidly at the bingo cards on the table in front of them. On a dais sits a bored-looking demon who calls out the numbers and letters as they are pulled out of the bingo-ball machine thing.

  “They’re playing bingo? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Jeff said.

  “Of course. Bingo is a perfect punishment for compulsive gamblers. This game, no one ever wins it, but they can’t leave the game until their purgatory time is up.”

  “That’s a good sentence, all right. It would drive me bonkers in no time.” I agreed.

  “B-45!”

  “Let’s go to the next place. The way they’re so focused on those cards freaks me out.” Jeff complains.

  “Me, too, Consort, me too.” It is the first time Lainn has said anything. He is watching the bingo players with fascinated horror on his face. It makes me wonder if the demigod likes to play poker or other gambling games and is seeing himself sitting in one of those awful chairs.

  “This next section is one I particularly like.”

  Lucifer leads us into what appears to be a fifties-style diner. There are waitresses and waiters wearing cute turquoise and pink outfits who deliver empty plates to really skinny customers.

  “Let me guess. Gluttons, right?”

  “You’re half right. The customers are the gluttons, and the wait staff are cheapskates who never tipped waiters and waitresses enough.”

  “You get sent to Hell for being a cheapskate?” Jeff whispers the question.

  “I expect that they’re here for an accumulation of bad things.” I answer. “Why, are you worried?”

  He just smiles at my teasing.

  The next hell place is a speaker’s hall. People stand at podiums trying to speak while hecklers in the audience harass them. I am particularly fascinated with what appears to be a writer who is attempting to read his work out loud. The hecklers are three blue-haired old ladies, who are repeating different derogatory phrases and cackling like Macbeth’s three witches.

  “This one’s got me stumped.”

  “The hecklers were egotists who forced people to do things for them just because they felt the people should have been honoured to do it. The speakers are people who prided themselves on their righteousness and calm natures, who nevertheless hurt a lot of others because they felt they could judge them. Now they are judged and found wanting.”

  “Now that is a good one, if I do say so myself, King Lucifer.” Dragon says with a smile.

  “Do we have time to go see the Kennelmaster who raised my Familiar? I’d like to speak with him if I could.”

  Lucifer gives me a weird look. “As long as you don’t kill him. He’s of use to me, and it would be rather annoying to try to replace him.”

  “I’m a White Dragon, your Majesty. I stand for justice, not murder.”

  “Then let’s go see him.”

  King Lucifer waves his hand and we travel through his demesne without walking a step. When the motion stops, I see that we are outside a kennel. It looks like it is set up just the same as any other large kennel, with concrete runs and fenced enclosures that hold several Hellhounds. Most of them are puppies and females, but there are a few male dogs there as well.

  What differs from normal kennels is the smell of rotting flesh that permeates the place.

  “Ugh, that’s nasty!” Jeff complains, pinching his nose closed.

  “Nothing like decaying bodies to perfume the air with many odors.” Says Dragon fastidiously.

  “Not one comment about long pig, Consort, you hear me?” Growls my Knight Protector.

  Dragon bares his teeth at Jeff in what isn’t a smile. “I don’t break my word, Consort!”

  “Here comes Asmodius now.”

  The Kennelmaster is like the first demon we’d met here, a red pain demon. He’s about half the size of the king, with raggedy jeans and his red belly sticking out from under his dirty once-white t-shirt. Nasty.

  “You allow pain demons to have free access to your Hounds? Abomination!” I growl, shocked to my core that the King would let such a one near his valuable Hellhounds.

  This demon didn’t have skin as pretty a red as the other guy. His skin color is more like the color of old blood than deep rose. When he approaches us, he sees Lucifer-dog and Slayer bookending me, and he sneers at my Familiar.

  “Traitor! I should have destroyed you the day you were whelped!”

  I bring up all of my magic until I am glowing like a phosphorous emergency torch, the kind you put in the road after your car breaks down.

  “Threaten my Familiar and it will be the last thing you do, demon.”

  He blinks at me in surprise, finally looking at his King for guidance on how to handl
e this crazy witch.

  “This is Lady Dragon-Spears, As, who is our newest White Dragon. I suggest that you watch your sharp tongue with her.”

  “One of my dogs became a White Dragon’s Familiar? Most excellent!” He sticks out his chest in pride.

  I let my magic simmer down a bit. “I was the one who saw and healed the damage you’d done to him. I vowed that I would give his tormentor a piece of my mind the first time I laid eyes on him or her. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  I sense that the king is amused by my words. “You find something funny, King Lucifer?”

  “Oh, no, my Lady, I just had a stray thought is all.”

  I turn back to my victim as my Familiar walks up to the Kennelmaster.

  You are a sorry excuse for a Kennelmaster. My new Houndmaster can train hounds in his sleep and still be better at it than you. I don’t even know why I

  was afraid of you. You’re pathetic.

  You sounded like the way Beauty acts just then, my Familiar.

  Lucifer then gives the worst possible insult he can think of to his old trainer. He turns and raises his leg, then pisses on the demon’s legs and shoes to show his utter contempt. I sense no fear at all in him. He is healing from the abuse well. Cirwin will be pleased.

  I turn to King Lucifer. “I believe that my Familiar has expressed his opinion quite clearly. I think it’s time for us to go home now. When can we expect your troops to arrive in Avalon, your Majesty?”

  “Within the week, my Lady. I will drop by after they settle in to see how they do.”

  “You are welcome any time, Sir. Lord Cuchulainn, here, prefers that you come through the gate, rather than using the hounds.”

  “Aye, I do. But if you’d rather come the same way we came, by Hellhound express, then I would appreciate some notice beforehand.”

  “Hellhound Express! I like that. Of course, King Cuchulainn, I’ll have my people contact you before we come.” He bows to us all. “This alliance shall make our defence of the void and our two worlds very much easier.”

  Dragon packs Beauty into her holder and we grab Lucifer’s straps for the ride back.