by Jane Cousins
What’s Up, Buttercup?
Vexatious Valkyries – Book One
Jane Cousins
Copyright © 2020 All rights reserved by the author. Do not copy or re-distribute either in part or in full. Do not host on any website without the express permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction.
Front cover design; Fiona Jayde
This one is for my parents. Who raised three Valkyries. We wouldn’t be the strong, independent and quite frankly, awesome people we are today, if not for your love, support and inspirational example. You are not just my family but my best friends. Not a day goes by that I don’t count myself so very lucky to have you in my life.
Foreword
This series sits adjacent, but separate, to the world I created for my Southern Sanctuary series.
Inspired by book 9 of that series - To Vex A Valkyrie. There was just something about the heroine, Brodie, and her blunt, bloodthirsty Sister Valkyries that kept my Muse up at nights. I kept wondering what their world was like now that the Valkyrie Empire had gone Corporate.
Timeline wise? – this book is set some fourteen years earlier than the events that take place in To Vex A Valkyrie.
Oh, and just a reminder, lovely people. Being Australian, I adhere to British English grammar. Which basically means I have a deep and abiding love of the letter ‘u’ – delighting in finding ways to insert it into as many words as possible: colour, neighbour, saviour etc. Trust me, you’ll learn to love my style, no doubt I’ll quickly become the centre (yes – that spelling is correct too) of your universe.
Chapter One
“This is your idea of a perfect bachelor party?” Galen Darvyn surveyed the chaotic scene surrounding him. The smell of blood tainted the air. A cacophony of sound battered his eardrums. Screams of pain, war cries, the clash of swords and the meaty thud of fists or boots hitting flesh.
“I know, right.” His best friend and the organiser of this little surprise, Kaleb Chipp, grinned broadly. “Isn’t it awesome?”
Galen’s dark eyes narrowed with irritation as a third cousin he’d always detested ran by. Absently Galen punched Aldo in the head. Sending him crashing into a group of even more distant cousins. Who under the guise of battle conditions, took the opportunity to deliver several more punches to Aldo’s thick skull.
Ah, Conflict Demons, they’d take their literal kicks anywhere they could find them. Even at the expense of their own kin.
Problem was, before six months ago, Galen had always considered himself an exception to that rule. Holding himself to a higher standard. A connoisseur if you will. Preferring the unique, delectable flavour of conflict elicited in a court of law. The thrust and parry of words just as cutting, just as evocative and satisfying, as any physical act of violence or outbreak of mayhem.
Divorces... his specialty, they had a singular flavour all to themselves. And Galen was particularly picky when it came to choosing his clients. He had a hard and fast rule. He only represented those whose soon to be ex-partner was manipulative, scheming, entitled, or a bully.
Once they entered a court of law to face him, their lives were guaranteed to never be the same. Galen made sure of that. Hmmm, so damn tasty. The waves of humiliation and rage that they emanated. Heightened and doubly satisfying when there was an audience present.
He loved the law. The loopholes. The hard and fast rules that a ruthless Conflict Demon could use to his advantage. Verbally battering the opposing counsel. Ensuring their cocksure client experienced the crushing jaws of defeat. Sweeter still, since the opposition all too often ended up quite literally paying for the privilege of the experience. Delicious.
Well… it had been. Not so much lately. Which was novel and beyond frustrating. Since it seemed to be out of his control, and Galen was all about control. He played others, he didn’t get played. Until now, betrayed by his own body.
“When you said leave all the bachelor party details to you, Kaleb, I was envisaging Vegas. Or even the crappy gambling dens of Paleois Central. I was not imagining-”
Kaleb shifted slightly to the left as Galen unconsciously flung out an arm, sending Aldo’s equally loathsome twin brother, Alton, flying with a solid punch to the jaw.
“-two thousand of my most annoying brethren gathered together on one of the planes of Fjornfiall in order to fight a Horde of pissed off Valkyries. What, in the name of the Pits, did you do to make them so damn angry?”
Kaleb shrugged. “It’s not personal. I hired them for this gig. How great are they?” His gaze zeroing in on a tall, bosomy redhead, who was taking on five Conflict Demons at once. Her shapely, toned legs slashing out. Her swords thrusting and parrying with lightning speed. A fierce scowl clung to her beautiful face as she fought her five opponents as if each and every one of them was ten minutes late on their child support payments.
“You paid a Horde of Valkyries to kick our collective asses?”
They both moved slightly to the right, as the body of an unconscious Conflict Demon came to a rolling halt a foot away. Bloody and broken, the Demon was alive. Their kind could take an awful lot of damage. This particular one would hurt for a few hours but he’d heal. Then Kaleb would whisper a few lies into his ear about how the Valkyries had called him a wilting violet and send him running back into the fray... only to get his ass kicked once more.
Conflict Demons. Luckily they were speedy healers. The majority were not, however, big thinkers.
Unlike Galen. Unlike his very good, shit-stir loving friend.
Over the centuries he’d forgiven Kaleb a lot, but this time… this time with the mood he was in. Yeah, and wasn’t that his biggest fucking problem at the moment. The mood he was in. Even now, he was fighting the urge to reach over and rip Kaleb’s throat out. A Demon he’d known for almost four hundred years. His brother in all but blood.
Sharing only the same height, at six-foot-four, Kaleb was built along much leaner lines. They both enjoyed expensive clothes, but where Galen chose three-piece suits, Kaleb could generally be found wearing fine linen shirts, tailored trousers and Italian hand-made brogues.
Where Galen was darkness; black, silky hair, midnight eyes and haughty, watchful, arresting features. Kaleb was the light. A fallen angel with his blonde, sandy coloured hair that had a tendency to curl. Blue, sparkling pale eyes that gleamed with constant amusement. With an all too ready mischievous smile, and a Devil damned dimple in one cheek.
Women too often in their presence found themselves torn. The dark? Or the light? Knowing full well that there was danger either path they might choose. After all, whilst Galen and Kaleb could pretend to be human, they couldn’t help but exude an elusive, dangerous air.
They might eat, socialise and fuck the humans, but they never forgot their own nature. They were Conflict Demons, and essentially the human race was their prey. The waves of conflict, rage, panic and humiliation that humans exuded fed and sated their inner Demons.
Since the dawn of time, humans had been in conflict. They’d prayed to the powers that be - the Gods above and the Gods below - for their favour. Frantic to survive, to emerge triumphant against whatever foe they faced. It had been easy for Conflict Demons to gain a permanent foothold on Earth. They no longer needed to be summoned. Or bargained with. The humans who first walked the Earth, desperate and blinkered, had gifted Conflict Demons free for all travel to and from their plane.
Many Conflict Demons, like Galen, chose to live on Earth, keeping their nature secret. But there were laws, a code of conduct that must be adhered to. Don’t kill. Never attract undue attention. You could arrange as much conflict as you could eat, but nev
er, ever, forget your nature, or your allegiance to the Demon Queen. Most importantly of all, don’t reveal the existence of the supernatural to the mundanes.
A hungry Demon could potentially destroy worlds. They had to feed. Whilst some might condemn him for playing with his food first. Galen could give a fuck. He wasn’t a one dimensional Demon.
He saved men, women and children in his job. Divorce was ugly. Most of his clients were desperate, heart sick and mentally depleted by the time they worked up enough courage to engage his services. Only time could heal them. Though he could ensure that they would have food on the table, a roof over their head and a pissed off ex funding them. Who’d better pay up in a timely fashion, or Galen Darvyn would be visiting them personally, for a not so gentle reminder.
His good buddy Kaleb had chosen to enter a similar cut throat world on the human plane to get his kicks. Owning a string of exceedingly expensive and even more exclusive pre-schools. Setting up hurdle after hurdle for the over-privileged parents to jump over. Citing the tougher he was, the more eager and desperate the parents were to participate in his physical and mental tests. Tests that were all but impossible to pass.
One year, because he was bored, Kaleb had routinely denied every third application. Hinting to the parents they’d failed the morality portion of the background check the school performed as part of their due diligence. Subsequently, marriages had imploded as accusations flew.
Galen had picked up four new clients following the fallout.
Kaleb also had a tendency to make up the school fees on the spot just to watch the parents’ eyes water. He insisted the parents (never the children) submit to rigorous and extensive academic testing. Yet inevitably, he denied eighty-five percent of applications. Which sent the parents who failed apocalyptic, but seemed to make the filthy rich elite that much more determined to be counted amongst the chosen few.
Every year his submissions officers were swamped with applications along with some surprisingly inventive bribes. Not to mention the occasional threat. Which was why Kaleb’s pre-schools would have to be the only ones in the country who employed ex-Navy Seals to work security. While all the cars Kaleb drove were bulletproof.
“I don’t get-” Galen’s hand shot out as someone sent Aldo’s stumbling bloodied frame his way, slamming the hilt of the sword he was carrying hard against his third cousin’s temple. Aldo dropped with a groan, crumpling into a ball. “-why we are here.”
Kaleb huffed out an impatient sigh, absently brushing dust from one sleeve. “Look around you, what do you see?”
“My collective kin getting their asses kicked by a Battalion of Valkyries.”
“Well, yes, but no. See, this is your problem lately. You’ve completely lost not just your sense of humour, but all perspective since you went next level stabby.”
“Unmated Knustabber. And for the thousandth time, I have not yet reached the final stage. I merely have the symptoms.”
“No kidding, Mr Killjoy.”
Grrr, Galen’s hands clenched into tight fists. The sword digging painfully into one hand. His Demon side all but shredding his innards, wanting to kill, to decimate. Release somehow this Devil damn pressure that was slowly building inside of him.
Knustabber was an evolutionary state in the male Conflict Demon’s lifecycle. Associated with meeting and being claimed by a mate. Shortly after being claimed, the male in question would experience a brief but dramatic endorphin surge. Leaving him more powerful physically. Better able to protect and defend his mate. Most males also reported a sharpening of their taste buds. That conflict, following being claimed by a mate, tasted that much sweeter.
But for a rare few males, like Galen, Knustabber could be triggered unexpectedly, with no warning and with no mate in the picture.
For these mateless sufferers the early symptoms, though annoying, were liveable. Quicker to anger. More irritable. Inability to sleep. Increase in appetite and harder to satisfy. Needing to feed on emotions more often and more deeply than ever before.
Constantly plagued with the disquieting feeling that that they should be out hunting... not for food, conflict... but some elusive prey that had yet to make itself known.
It had been over six months now, since his affliction had reared its head, and Galen had been doing his best to take the edge off the uncomfortable feelings that had begun to eat away at him, with little success.
Unfortunately for him, he was mere months away from entering the second and final Knustabber stage if he remained unmated. The condition, once triggered, had historically proven to be unavoidable and irreversible.
There was only two ways for an unmated male Conflict Demon to deal with Knustabber.
Give in and turn stabby, as Kaleb called it.
Those males ended up in the Queen’s Army. Assigned to Berserker Units of similarly afflicted males. Powered up five fold by unmated Knustabber, those mindless savages tended to kill one another unless their energies were channelled. The Stabber Battalion delegated to the worst of the worst fronts defending their hell plateau.
Never sleeping. Never stopping. Sustained by the rage of their enemies. Ravening monsters. Yearning for nothing but constant destruction and bloodshed.
By all reports, the Stabbers loved it.
The very idea made Galen want to hurl. Devolving into a mindless, raging simple creature. Lucifer save him.
His only other option was to wed. Forcing a meld with a Demoness through magic.
The idea equally appalled him. But since he’d failed to find a mate and form the meld naturally, thus avoiding the nasty side-effects of the Knustabber phase altogether, his only option was to meenie mini mo the hell out of this. Choose a random Demoness, wed her, and allow the Queen’s Shamans to force the meld.
His future wife would not experience any discomfort. Galen... well, he would just have to live with the consequences of a forced meld. The idea of losing his metaphorical taste-buds was not pleasant. But he would rather a dull, bland palate, than becoming an irrational, savage creature that craved nothing but 24/7 bloodshed and war.
Shit. He was only four-hundred and three. Galen had assumed he had all the time in the world to find a mate. Sure, most of his friends melded in their three-hundreds. However, just as many were still footloose and Demon wife free as they entered their early four-hundreds.
The idea of a magically forced meld. It didn’t sit well with his gut, or his inner Demon for that matter. For all the scientific mumbo gumbo that forced melds were not that different from the real deal, the evidence failed to support the weak assurances.
One of his many cousins on his father’s side had endured a forced meld, and when he was three cups into the Devil’s Brew, he would tell one and all the facts as he liked to put it. That the connection between forced melds was dull. Like a tooth given novocain... numbness pervaded it.
Claiming the lack of taste-buds, it got to you after a while. Suffering through bouts of gorging, ineffectually trying to recapture the tastes that he had known from his younger days. And don’t even get Elgin started on the lack lustre sex.
His cousin’s wife routinely waved off her husband’s bitter words. After all, she had a lovely house, nine Demon kids and a holiday house on the Island plateau of Shingar. Plus, as she liked to tell one and all, she had retained all her taste-buds. So she wasn’t complaining.
When his body had begun to show signs he was entering the Knustabber phase unmated, Galen had at first been in denial, followed by shock, then horror. He couldn’t help but feel betrayed. For a man, a Demon who lived and worked by such a rigid code, this... weakness, it had rocked his world.
The denial stage hadn’t lasted very long. As the hunger increased, and his inability to feel satisfied began to impact his daily life he’d switched gears and gone full throttle. Feeding constantly. Working non-stop, taking on more and more clients. Getting in more and more trouble in the courtroom as his irritability levels increased, and he found himself with less patience for the
intricacies of the law and courtroom dramas.
It wasn’t surprising his aunt, the Queen of the Demon Conflict Realm, had heard rumours of his behaviour. He would have been unsurprised if she hadn’t. She had spies everywhere.
He’d received a royal summons a week ago, and hadn’t that turned out to be a shitty meeting.
So here he was, with less than two weeks to go before he was expected to attend a lavish party, where he was to be paraded around like a prime slab of beef before a pack of power hungry, rapacious She-Demons, that his aunt deemed suitable matrimonial matches.
By the Fiery Pits. At least he’d been able to wrangle one small concession from the Queen. The choice of bride was to be left up to him. Lord Lucifer help him. Typical his aunt, a master manipulator, she was insisting that to close out the party he and his bride would be wed there and then.
Fuck.
Talk about piling on the pressure. If only this bloody condition had held off a few more decades, perhaps he might have found his true mate. His soul mate.
If only he wasn’t related to the Queen.
While Conflict She-Demons claimed they weren’t bothered by the idea of a forced meld. Galen was given to understand that it usually took a fair amount of persuading. Normally money changed hands. Promises were made or a political advantage was somehow at stake. Unfortunately for him, being independently wealthy, and the nephew of the Queen, effectively making him a Prince - not that he ever claimed the title - it made him prime mate material, forced melding be damned.
He’d heard the She-Demons were lining up, begging for invites to his aunt’s party. More than willing to accept a husband they could never truly connect with... love.
Love? Lord below save him. Where had that idea come from? He’d never been a Demon consciously looking for love... but now, to think that it was something he’d never get to experience. The idea for some reason both enraged and depressed him. Bloody Knustabber, playing with his emotions.