Dragonsword

by Chloe Garner

  “Enjoy your dinner tonight, Mathilda,” Samantha said in English. “Enjoy sitting in a soft chair, the smell of your extra-rare steak, the soft light. Having skin. You know, the little things. Because you just hit the list of demons I’m going to kill if anything happens to him.” Samantha stepped forward, dropping her head to look Mathilda in the eye. “You remember what I was like after Justin. And you remember what I was like after Jason. You consider what I’m going to be like after Carter.”

  The demon swallowed and licked her lips.

  “You have to find me first,” she said and vanished. Samantha stood taller again and shook herself.

  “What was that?” Sam asked.

  “A threat,” Samantha answered, putting Lahn away under her shirt again.

  “No, I heard that,” Sam said.

  “Both parts were threats,” Jason said. “She was threatening us.”

  “Does she know where he is?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Samantha answered. “I think they’re all scared of what we’re going to do. When we all get here.”

  “You’re going to bring that lot here?” Jason asked. “Why?”

  She glanced at him, a hushing look, and he nodded.

  “I have the right to,” she said. “I’ve laid claim, and I can summon them. And if I summon them, we will tear this place apart. It won’t be looking for him; it will just be punishment for existing in the city where he died.”

  There was a very hard edge to her voice, and Jason didn’t press her any further. She opened an office door and went in.

  Two demons glitched out when they saw her, and Ozy stood.

  “Mathilda spoke to you?” he asked.

  “She did.”

  “And yet you came.”

  “I told you I would.”

  He frowned, then rolled his head to one side.

  “Surely you don’t mean Carter.”

  “I told you if anything happened to any of my friends…” Samantha said.

  “But you already knew what was going to happen to him,” Ozy said. “I told you.”

  She shrugged and he backed away.

  “I’m here to make an example of you, Ozy. If you don’t make me chase you, I give you my word I won’t kill you.”

  “Charming,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Who knows?” Samantha asked.

  He swallowed.

  “Knows what?”

  “Where Carter is. Who has him and who wants him.”

  “What, you want me to give you a name? Just tell you?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Jason said. Ozy sneered.

  “You don’t know what she’s asking,” he said. “I refuse to tell her anything, she hurts me. Too bad. Maybe she hurts me a lot. Maybe she even kills me. Whatever. I betray the kinds of demons who can keep hold of Carter, they’ve got more time than your feeble little mind can comprehend to make me regret it.”

  “I respect that decision,” Samantha said. “I do. I just have to make it as expensive as I can. You understand.”

  “You said you wouldn’t kill me,” he said.

  “I did,” she answered.

  “You really are his protégé, aren’t you?” Ozy asked, taking off his shirt. Jason raised his eyebrows. “It’s an expensive shirt,” Ozy explained.

  “Over here?” Samantha asked, motioning to a bookcase.

  “How? What’s the tell?”

  “You all have one,” Samantha said.

  “My staff will want to watch.”

  “They aren’t invited.” Samantha walked over to the bookcase and looked at it as the shirtless Italian watched her. “Jason, would you come open this?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Just open it,” she answered.

  He walked over to the bookcase and put his hands on his hips. Obviously it was a door. He didn’t feel like wiggling books and looking for secret buttons, so he set up to do what he always did. Kick it down.

  “Fine, fine,” Ozy said. “I’ll do it.”

  He pushed Jason to the side, looking over his shoulder at Jason like he must have been a barbarian, and pulling the bookcase open.

  “That’s all it took?” Jason asked.

  “No,” Samantha said, following Ozy into the next room. Jason went in and she turned to Sam and Kelly.

  “Yeah, I know,” Sam said. “We stay out here.”

  “Send Kelly in if you need me.”

  “You have no idea how emasculating that is,” Jason said as the door swung back closed.

  “Are you really going to try to give me a lesson on sensitivity?” Samantha asked. “You of all people?”

  “Just saying.”

  “Any time, people,” Ozy said.

  “Okay, this is really a little weird,” Jason said, looking over at the demon. “You’re supposed to fight back or something.”

  “With pleasure,” Ozy said, spreading his arms. Jason grinned and drew Anadidd’na.

  “Hold,” Samantha said, and they froze. She stepped in front of Ozy and pinched his nose shut, then hesitated. “You put your tongue in my mouth, I will bite it off.”

  Ozy smirked, and she put her mouth over his, drawing a sharp breath in the same motion that she stabbed him with a gold pin in the back. It was intended to miss his heart and lungs, ending up in the non-existent space in between them, Jason knew, but it wasn’t critical whether she hit it exactly or not. Ozy yowled and sprung away from her, reaching for the pin. His hand came back empty, and he glared at Samantha. She shrugged.

  “For your own good,” she said. She waved her hands at them.

  “Be my guest.”

  Ozy ran at Jason and Jason slashed the air. He expected the demon to hold up, but Ozy put up an arm, blocking. Jason felt his eyes widen as Anadidd’na struck bone and stopped dead. Ozy grinned.

  “So much to learn,” he said, grabbing Jason by the throat and shoving him into the wall. He looked over his shoulder at Samantha. “I assume your threat stands, with him?”

  “I’ll give you a little leeway, but yeah,” she said. “You hurt him, I splash you.”

  Bone might have stopped Anadidd’na, but his stomach didn’t. He looked down to find the sword hilt-deep into his gut, and gave Jason an exasperated look.

  “Ouch,” he commented. He reached down with his spare hand to take the sword away and Jason punched him in the face. Say what you will about tactics, but, damn, that sensation of fist to bone was satisfying. Ozy’s head snapped to the side, no real harm done, but the distraction made him lose his grip on Jason’s windpipe. Jason had a faint memory from back when he first got Anadidd’na, and he smiled.

  “What?” Ozy asked.

  “She doesn’t like you,” he said. “You shouldn’t take it personally. She doesn’t like anyone.”

  Ozy laughed and looked at Samantha again.

  “Your boy here is cracked.”

  “She has a name, on your side of existence,” Jason said. Ozy spun and looked down harder at the sword. He hissed. Jason nodded, shifting his grip on the hilt as a howl of energy reverberated through his elbow. The demon had tried to take her away again.

  “Kha’shing,” Jason said. Greasy yellow flames flickered up along the blade, and, focusing, Jason found he could maintain them. The demon screeched a curse in hellspeak and pushed against Jason’s shoulders, sliding his body back out along the blade. The flames marked his chest black with smoke ash, and the gash in his skin around the sword blistered.

  Ozy tore away and sprung at Jason. Jason bent time, anticipating the glitch as the demon reached full speed. His elbow connected with the hole in Ozy’s gut and Anadidd’na came down to ricochet off of his collar bone. Ozy reached up and wrapped his hand around the blade, the skin sizzling in the flames there, and lifted it away from his body, reaching for Jason’s throat again. Jason jerked Anadidd’na away, severing four fingers, and twisted, just so fractionally out of reach as the demon glitched toward him.


  After that, the fight took on a sense of inevitability. Anadidd’na found flesh over and over again, and Ozy grew slower and slower. Jason was pretty sure he’d broken something in his own hand, but it wasn’t relevant yet. Finally, the demon lay on his back on the floor and spread his arms.

  “That’s all the help you’ll get from me,” he said. Jason looked at Samantha, and she pressed her lips together. He nodded. Went to her backpack to get the iron manacles she carried there now and clasped them to Ozy’s wrists.

  “Nothing personal, man,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ozy answered. Jason found an eye-hook in the wall and dragged Ozy over to it, using a carabiner to attach the chain to the wall. He glanced at Samantha with an eyebrow up.

  “What do you think they do in here?” she asked. He wrinkled his nose and she nodded.

  “How far?” he asked.

  “Lay him open,” she answered. “I don’t plan on leaving anything here, and we aren’t going to ash him.”

  Jason looked down at Ozy as the demon slumped against the wall, his dress pants covered in blood and tears from their fight. He’d gotten so used to demons ashing that it was strange to see blood, like that.

  “This is messed up,” he said.

  “You’re telling me,” Ozy answered.

  “I’ll do it if you want,” Samantha said. Jason shook his head, then got to work.

  <><><>

  Samantha was leaning against a wall, her arms wrapped around her knees, as Jason finished. He didn’t know why he was done, he just was. So did she. She stood and looked down at Ozy.

  “You tell them,” she said. “Tell them that I only spared you because I gave my word, and that I’m capable of worse. Tell them that I won’t tolerate this intent to market Carter as a prize catch, nor any intent to take possession of him. Tell them that I will not be an impartial judge, and that I am not afraid to kill demons. Badly. Is that clear?”

  Ozy blinked the one eye that still worked; that would have to be enough. She put her hand out over his face and made a sign in the air.

  “Sleep.”

  What little was still holding the demon upright sagged.

  “I thought demons couldn’t sleep,” Jason said.

  “They’re capable of unconsciousness, under specific circumstances. He won’t remember anything until he’s healed some. Now he gets to see whether his underlings think he’s worth his weight or not.”

  “They might kill him?”

  “They’re demons,” she answered, going to sit next to her backpack. Jason started to clean up. Everything was still sticky with blood; this was a new experience for him, and it amplified the sense of gore in the room to the point that he almost couldn’t tolerate it.

  “Come here,” Samantha said, putting her hands out. He went to help her up, but instead, she took his hands and blew on them, from the palms up to the elbows. He knelt, and she drove the rest of the blood to ash.

  “I don’t like this,” she said. “This is the last one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m just going to kill the rest of them. This isn’t right, I don’t care if they’re demons or not.”

  Jason looked back at Ozy.

  “Look, Sweetheart, if you feel bad because I’m doing the dirty work here…”

  “That’s not it. Well, it is, but not like you’re saying. It’s because I don’t want your hands dirty any more than mine. Not for this. We’ve made our point. I’ve exploded any reputation I’ve had for being soft.”

  Jason smiled.

  “I think you and Sam did a pretty good job of that before.”

  “A killer can still be soft, for demons.”

  “That’s sick,” Jason said. She nodded.

  “Thank you, though,” she said.

  “For what? Doing this? It’s just what we’ve got to do. You don’t need to thank me for it.”

  “Well, that and for teaching me how to do all of this like a Ranger.”

  He stood and looked down at her for a moment before twisting to sit next to her.

  “What does that mean?”

  She shrugged.

  “If I had done this by myself, I’d be doing all the same things, but I’d be a wreck. It’s how we do things. Angry and preoccupied with the details. I mean, you guys never even think to ask why someone else isn’t doing what we do, instead of us. And that’s how we are, too, but you guys come at it with this ‘what the heck’ attitude… Thank you for that.”

  “Sweetheart, you do what you’ve got to do, you and us the same.” He shifted so his shoulder pushed against hers. “I’m glad it’s working better for you. Your people… they’re good. They’re damn good. But they aren’t good people.”

  She nodded.

  “They aren’t.”

  She laughed.

  “I feel like I keep dragging you two into all my family drama.”

  “Neither of us would be doing anything else, if we could choose. You know that.”

  “Yeah.”

  She shifted and got up, looking through her bag.

  “You do just throw things in here at random, don’t you?”

  “Doesn’t matter how careful I am, you’re going to reorganize them anyway,” he answered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  <><><>

  They hunted. They socialized. They slept. Well, Sam and Carson slept. They moved apartments every day or so, and Samantha cooked a few times. She played the power games, and she drew Jason into them further and further.

  “Is he one of you?” Marvin asked when she went to see him. She shook her head.

  “No.”

  “He’s scary close, isn’t he?” her friend asked. She looked back at where Jason was playing dice with a huddle of demons and nodded.

  “Scary close.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marvin said.

  “Why? Isn’t this what all of us want, in the end? To have a legacy?”

  “Girl, you got out,” Marvin said, wrapping his arm around her waist. She turned to lean her head back against his shoulder. “And you got normal friends.” She snorted and felt his laugh. “As normal as you’re ever going to get, anyway. But we needed you.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  There was a long pause as Marvin picked his words.

  “If he’s some kind of portal for power… And no one can control him… There are a lot of us who would rather see him dead than be here for what comes next.” His other arm came around to hold her shoulders against him. “We’re glad there’s someone here to hold things together. Means there’s an option for us.”

  “You want him dead,” Samantha said. “And I’m your insurance policy for keeping peace when he’s gone.”

  “Put simply,” Marvin said.

  “I’m not going to let either one happen,” she said.

  “I don’t see a third option,” Marvin said. “Maybe getting out of Carter’s shadow is what you need.”

  She shook her head.

  “One of your friends finds him, you call me. I’ll take care of it. Don’t kill him.”

  “You know I can’t promise that. Hell, I can’t even tell you I’d call if I found him myself. Not that I’ve got the chops to kill him.”

  “At least there’s that,” she said.

  “You’re sure you aren’t here to buy? I haven’t been kicked around lately,” Marvin said. She laughed.

  “Says the one who wants me in charge of everything,” she said.

  “Doesn’t change that women shouldn’t be demon slayers,” Marvin answered without a trace of irony. She grinned.

  “You’ll sell to him without a fight, now. I don’t have to fight you for your stock anymore.”

  “Come on, though. Those were fun days.”

  “You remember the looks on their faces the first time they watched me fight you?” she asked. Marvin laughed, a rolling, purring noise in her ear. She felt his nose trace the back of her ear and she twisted her head.

  “No
, you don’t, because I was pounding you over against the wall over there.”

  “If only you understood your proper place,” he said. She shook her head.

  “I’m going to have to hurt you just on principle.”

  “That’s what I’m going for,” he said. She rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t forget that you’re supposed to be with my brother,” Jason called, noticing them.

  “Doesn’t count with a demon,” Samantha called back. Marvin bit the back of her ear and she tilted her head down.

  “You do that again, you’re going to find a dagger in your belly,” she said.

  “That’s my girl,” Marvin said, hugging her. “He make you happy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad.” He leaned his face against the back of her head. “You two scare them.”

  “Not you?”

  “No, I know what a pussycat you are. I’ve got you wrapped around my little finger.”

  “Oh, do you?”

  His face split in a wide smile.

  “Oh, you have no idea.”

  “Sam is the jealous type,” she said. “You should be careful.”

  “In that case,” Marvin said, letting her go. “You’ve got other stuff to do tonight, I expect.”

  “I do. It was good to see you, though.”

  “Give Nuri my regards.”

  “Like she knows who you are,” Samantha answered.

  “Cold. Carter makes you so cold.”

  “Come on, guys,” Samantha called. Carson emerged from the group of men, counting a stack of cash. She shook her head. He didn’t fit in anywhere, but no one seemed to know what to think of him, so they let him past. She was beginning to wonder if they wouldn’t let him in at Nuri’s club, out of sheer bewilderment.

  “How much are you up?” she asked as he got closer.

  “Few hundred,” he said. “Good night.”

  She nodded.

  “You got balls, taking cash off of demons,” Marvin said. Carson shrugged.

  “Guys are the same everywhere,” he said. Marvin laughed, then glitched back over to the crowd as Jason shook hands with one of the demons and walked across the lot.

  “You two are awfully cozy, aren’t you?” Jason asked.

  “He’s a friend,” Samantha said. “It really is different, with demons.”