Dragonsword

by Chloe Garner

  “This is sincere. Not a joke.”

  He raised an eyebrow and she fished in her back pocket for an MP3 player she had there. She pulled it out and put the earbuds into his ears, then found the song she wanted. He pulled one of them back out.

  “Listen to this,” she said.

  “What about it?” he asked, frowning as the music started. It would play on repeat until he stopped it. She handed him the player.

  “Listen to it. For me. It makes me feel powerful.”

  “But I’ll be the one listening to it,” he said. She shrugged.

  “That’s why you have to listen hard.” She nodded, then sucked her lips between her teeth and chewed them. Nodded again. “I’m going to go now.”

  He kissed her.

  It wasn’t the type of passionate, sensual kiss that confounded her brain and changed her priorities. It was possessive and proud and sad. If she hadn’t had her mind exactly where she wanted it to be, he would have made her cry.

  It was a goodbye kiss.

  She rested with her nose against his lip for a few seconds after he let her go, feeling his breath stir with hers, then squeezed the back of his neck and tugged his hair.

  “I’m going. I’ll see you soon.”

  She didn’t like making false promises, ones she didn’t have the power to keep. She almost never did it. But that was one they both needed to hear, and she worried that it might be true, either way.

  She hoped he didn’t die badly.

  Shuddered, felt his concern at the change in her mood, and pushed the thought away. Focus.

  Focus.

  Focus.

  She drew Lahn and continued on.

  <><><>

  The hallway led to a large central auditorium. The lights were off and the seats weren’t in yet, so it was just a large, red velvet, sloping floor that disappeared into the darkness in front of her. All the way across the room, more than a hundred yards, there was a stage with dim, yellow emergency lighting in the wings. The broad expanse of wood was empty.

  Samantha waited.

  The woman had a flair for the dramatic; this was where she was going to be.

  She bent time, staying where she could feel Sam watching her, just outside of the doorway. Even with his advance warning, the muscles along her spine cringed against the idea of the point of a knife finding home there.

  She waited.

  A huge light switched on with the sound of a mechanical relay slotting into place, and the stage illuminated. Cassie appeared in the middle of it, clapping slowly. The sound echoed off the walls, emphasizing the distance and the size of the space.

  “You’ve no idea how to make an entrance, dear,” Cassie called. “Come in here, stand in the darkness. This is how we belong.”

  Samantha walked into the room, letting go of her grasp of where Sam was as the door swung closed behind her. He was fighting off frenzy, every instinct telling him he should have come with her. She pushed calm at him, perking at an idea of rhythm. He settled, withdrawing his focus into himself. She looked up at Cassie as she slowly crossed the floor.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this,” Cassie said. “You’re the last piece to the puzzle. The dreadful demon who snatched up Carter to ransom him to me won’t move him until you’re dead.”

  “It’s Miami, isn’t it?” Samantha called back. “On the other side?”

  Cassie startled, the green and pink snaking pattern shifting along her exposed skin freezing for a moment. Samantha smiled, cutting the air with Lahn with enough speed to make the blade sing. Lahn was hungry. So was Samantha.

  “It’s the skin thing, dear,” Samantha said, slipping into character. She let a mocking smile roll onto her lips, and she played her tongue along her molars. “How do you keep it so fair, on that side?”

  Cassie was back on her game.

  “Trade secret, darling.” She grinned. “Oh, I have been looking forward to meeting you properly. It almost seems a shame to kill you.”

  “I won’t hesitate,” Samantha said. “I’ve got places to be.”

  “Yes, you are busy,” Cassie said, hopping off the stage. Dim lights overhead sprung to life, and Samantha wondered who was working the switches. “Did you know, I first took note of you some time ago? You know, you were the inspiration for this whole thing.”

  “You flatter me,” Samantha said, circling Cassie. The demon was looking for an opportunity where Samantha would be off her guard, and she was determined not to open that door.

  “Sincerely. You got yourself paralyzed by a demon. I thought: if it can happen to her, then who else?”

  Samantha frowned. She hadn’t thought about that in a long time.

  “Surely something that run-of-the-mill couldn’t have been that important,” she said, returning the volley. She felt off her game. She hadn’t crossed wits with one of the higher demons in a while, looking for information, for openings, for advantage. She’d just bulldozed through them.

  “Oh, of course. Don’t you see? You’re central to the whole thing. He’s going to see me, dear, and he’s going to think I’m you. No one is going to warn him.” Abruptly, the seething colors vanished, and she changed her posture, putting on eyes that Samantha could only assume mirrored her own. Cassie shook her head. “Carter, where have you been? What’s going on?”

  It put chills down Samantha’s arms. She grinned anyway.

  “You underestimate him.”

  “Who knows where that dreadful woman has been keeping him. He’ll be relieved to see a friendly face. He’ll be open and happy and just perfect for me to snatch him.”

  Samantha shrugged dismissively.

  “If you say so.”

  Lahn swished through the air again, impatient. She’d never demonstrated much willingness to hear people out.

  Cassie circled Samantha, feet like a cat.

  “Oh, the secrets you’ve got. I do wish that had played out better.”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” Samantha said. The demon was gloating now. Millennia of planning, they liked to play with their food when they decided they’d won.

  “Dear Tabitha said she could get into your head. And then she turned into a social idiot. What did you do to her? She actually managed it, didn’t she?”

  Samantha yawned, keeping her eyes on the demon. Cassie grinned.

  “She had you, but she couldn’t hold you. I should have beat the secret out of her, and taken you myself.”

  “Hindsight,” Samantha said, rolling her neck to one side. She wasn’t sure if she wanted her back to the stage or the rest of the room. With her back to the stage, Cassie had elevation on her, but Samantha had a little bit of cover if she needed it. She sighed and rolled her eyes, then, taking a risk, turned her back on the demon and walked to the stage, hopping up onto it and turning to face the demon.

  “Brandt certainly put in a solid performance at wanting Sam.”

  Cassie widened her eyes and tipped her head back in a mockery of amusement. The colors shifted to black and purple.

  “How do you think I’m paying him, when it’s all done?”

  “Then you’d better hope your bet with Carter pays off,” Samantha said. “Hate to have him get the lion’s share of the deal.”

  “You have no idea what he’s worth,” Cassie said, shaking her head and stalking a line across the floor. “The power I could have had if I’d just settled for your little friend out there that you sent running.” Her eyebrows went up. “I’d tell you to say hello to him for me, but… You understand.”

  “Of course,” Samantha said. “He wouldn’t want to hear from you anyway.”

  A grin flashed across Cassie’s face again.

  “Oh, he’s promised, too. To who is a secret, though.”

  “Oh,” Samantha said. Cassie wrapped her arms across her chest and hugged herself.

  “Oh, I’m so happy we finally got to talk. I wish I could have turned you into an asset, after it was all said
and done, but you disappeared the demon who knew how to do that, so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to die.”

  Samantha shrugged.

  “You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do,” she said. “There’s no way both of us come out of this alive.”

  Cassie pushed her lips out in a pout.

  “Such a brave little soldier, right up to the end.”

  “You’re stalling,” Samantha said, hopping off the stage.

  “Not at all,” Cassie answered, closing her eyes and pulling her shoulders up. “Savoring.”

  She glitched.

  Samantha turned, rolling over her toes to one side and putting Lahn up to catch the blade Cassie had intended to plunge into her chest. Sam was beginning to get the music. He was through it a few times, now, and the pace of it and the attitude of it were beginning to come across. She smiled, letting the music flow, an inaudible concept from another place, and she brought her arm down, metal bracer flashing through the space where Cassie’s arm had been. Samantha ducked, feeling her wings from the Paradise plane, feeling the music from the next room, feeling her own power. There was a whir of air above her, and she spun, slashing Lahn across the space that Cassie again vacated a fraction before the blade arrived.

  Samantha found the stage with her back and paused.

  Cassie wasn’t anywhere she could see.

  The sharp, narrow blade Cassie stabbed with could appear anywhere, and Samantha felt the potential of it in her skin, but it felt almost as if the dagger couldn’t get any further than that. She was hard and full of light and energy and power. She stared at the back of the room, far away and well above her head, and she listened.

  She listened to music of power and angels singing, and she smiled.

  The words flowed from her like she’d been practicing them for days. Cassie screamed, and Samantha blocked, the dagger jerking short of her eye by inches. Lahn bit home, cutting deep into Cassie’s wrist. Cassie vanished, and the flow of words - challenges, blessings, defiance - continued to roll out of Samantha. She blocked three more attacks, arching her back away from the last one as it found home. Cassie was whole again, the blood on Lahn turned to ash, and Samantha had a hole in her back. Such was the risk of trading blows with a demon.

  Samantha switched off the pain, not needing it. The wound was clean, shallow, and hadn’t damaged important muscles. It would bleed and she would worry about it later. She spun, dropping down onto a knee midway around, and springing back over her hands and landing in a crouch. She called Cassie down in front of her, using angeltongue shaped and designed by the angels to abuse demons. Cassie’s face was red, and the rain of blows was more than Samantha could manage to block.

  Normally.

  Music crashed, like it played over the speakers in the room, and Cassie slowed under the bent time, but Samantha didn’t. She slid and curled around the blade Cassie held, always a fraction ahead, no less than three times feeling the cool metal of the blade across her skin. A thin trickle of blood formed around her elbow and down the inside of her arm, flicking away as she counter-attacked.

  She was unstoppable.

  Cassie glitched, and Samantha met her again, taking injury, ignoring and putting away pain, but continuing to lay down the thick layer of magic.

  Cassie was slowing.

  It wasn’t exertion; she was much too powerful for that.

  Too late, she realized what was happening.

  She had Samantha’s blood on her.

  She had Samantha’s magic on her.

  Samantha paused, swallowing, her throat squeezing dry against dry. She took a breath. Cassie’s eyes showed panic.

  Samantha called the blood and the power and the magic closer, feeling the roll of the guitar. Power. Silence. Power. Drums.

  Cassie stumbled forward. Samantha fell to a knee.

  She’d lost more than she had accounted for.

  Cassie put both hands around the hilt of her dagger, bringing it down for a killing stroke between Samantha’s shoulders. Samantha felt the wings that had sat there, two days earlier, felt them stretch to either side. Felt the air in her lungs and the wide, deep bond between herself and Sam. Opened her eyes to the spattered blood sitting up in droplets on the carpet around her.

  Closed her eyes.

  Whispered the last words of the spell, a new one she’d never known before.

  Felt her will tied to Cassie.

  Flexed her wings up, holding the demon and her sharp blade as a weight across her shoulders. Cassie grunted and dropped more weight onto the dagger, forcing the point lower. The muscles in Samantha’s back rippled as she felt the dagger drop, inch by inch. She flexed back, holding the knife in place again. Cassie leaned harder. Blood ran down both of Samantha’s arms, making her grip on Lahn slick. It also slicked the palm of her right hand, where she held the dagger from her boot.

  She felt the balance tip and took a deep breath.

  She rolled to the side, feeling Cassie fall down onto her as Samantha rolled onto her back. Cassie’s arms were folded, her chest pressed against her fists as she tried to drive her dagger down, so Samantha’s straight arm caught her long before the dagger fell.

  Cassie’s knees buckled, and her weight vanished. Samantha let her arms fall to either side, leaving the dagger in Cassie’s chest where she’d buried it. Cassie was nearly weightless, sprawled across the space above Samantha. Dark demon blood dripped out of her chest, down the hilt of the dagger and onto Samantha’s chest. Samantha took another deep breath, then rolled over her elbow and pushed herself onto her feet. Cassie gaped at the floor. Samantha motioned and the demon’s shoulders rose, lifted higher over her feet. Samantha found herself looking at her own face, pale, and in pain. The demon looked down at the knife buried in her chest.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A gift,” Samantha answered.

  “It’s just a dagger,” Cassie said. Samantha shook her head.

  “No. Not even a little bit.”

  Cassie looked back up at her.

  “You’re going to torture me.”

  “I have to teach them a lesson somehow,” she answered. “Have you met Lahn?”

  The demon shuddered, struggling against the magic. Samantha felt the dozens of cuts along her arms and her back. She was tired, but the magic held strong.

  She pushed Cassie up onto her own feet completely now, and tapped the dagger with Lahn’s flat side.

  “This might hurt a bit.”

  The demon glared, and Samantha ran deep slits from the inside of Cassie’s elbows out to her palms, then took gold pins from inside her shirt and pushed them into the arteries. Cassie tipped her head back, the sound of an unvoiced scream gagging in her throat. Samantha drew another short blade, a simple steel-and-iron dagger and plunged it into the insides of each of Cassie’s thighs, drawing a gush of blackish blood from each. She pushed a pin into each of those after the blood slowed, then stepped back. Cassie looked at her.

  “You aren’t going to kill me,” she said. Samantha smiled.

  “You said you were going to kill me,” Cassie accused. “You lied.”

  Samantha reached out to put her palm against the demon’s forehead, drawing her consciousness out of her body, but keeping the life pinned there.

  “Doesn’t count with a demon,” she muttered, looking up as the doors behind her flew open at the top of the arena.

  “Come on in, Sam,” she called. “It’s all over.”

  <><><>

  Samantha lay across the back of the Cruiser, listening to the road go by underneath her. She’d let Jason tend her wounds while Sam sat with her, just quiet. He wouldn’t let anyone too close to her while she sat, and then he’d escorted her out to the Cruiser while Jason and Argo carried Cassie and stowed her in the back. He’d sat in the back seat with her for the first few hours, her head in his lap, and played his fingers through her hair, but he’d moved to the front seat after dinner. Kelly kept watch over Cassie all the way to New York, he
lping Samantha bathe her in water and oil periodically. Samantha bled the demon twice more. Maryann showed up at breakfast to say that she’d tracked down Cassie’s psychic and lost her again, but she thought she could find her again. Samantha had sent her on her way.

  Kelly sat in the car with Cassie while they ate, turning his nose up at the offer of food to go when they came back. Samantha lay in the back again, drinking a soda. She let her mind drift, on the verge of sleep but not there yet. She could wait a bit longer. Sam napped. Jason was a machine. She felt awful for how badly he was going to crash, when he finally let himself sleep, but she hadn’t used him up any more than she had herself, and technically, that was her right.

  “Where to, Sweetheart?” Jason asked as the city skyline came into view.

  “Nuri’s,” Samantha said.

  “We’d have heard from Carter or Abby if they’d let Carter go, wouldn’t we?” Jason asked.

  “Yes,” Samantha said.

  “Dammit,” Jason sighed. “What’s the plan?”

  “We get him back,” Samantha said.

  “All right,” Jason said. Sam looked over his shoulder at Samantha, concerned at how exhausted she was. The blood loss had been significant, but not dangerous. The wounds were superficial and would heal clean. He didn’t understand why she was so tired. She sent him calm. Serenity. It was going to be okay.

  “I need to go before we get to Nuri’s,” Kelly said.

  “You don’t have to,” Samantha answered. “Angels go to her club.”

  “Gray ones,” Kelly said. “I don’t belong there.”

  “Not until you think you do,” Samantha said, sitting up. It was time to work.

  Jason navigated through the city and paused for the attendant at the gate into the underground garage before parking the Cruiser and getting out. Sam helped Samantha out of the car while Jason and Kelly got Cassie pulled to the edge in the back. Kelly gave Jason a small nod and disappeared.

  “Can you carry her?” Samantha asked.

  “Nothing’s going to jab me?” Jason asked.

  “Shouldn’t,” Samantha answered. He shrugged and lifted the demon off the tail and stepped back for Sam to close it.

  “Lead on,” Jason said. Samantha opened the door into the lower hallway and led them to the old hag who kept watch of the stairway leading up into the club.