Is there a dragon in your queendom who wants to overthrow your mother?
What do you mean?
If the red guard is to be believed, your parents left the red queendom safely. But they were met by a contingent of blacks, and they never made it home. They either ran into trouble on the way, or you have a power-hungry black in your midst.
Ah.
Glynus thought about this for a long moment.
I guess it could have been Euryice. She’s my fourth cousin twice removed. She believes she is better qualified than I to run the queendom.
That sounds plausible. Does she have the stones to act on it against your mother?
I could feel Glynus frowning in my mind.
Stones?
Never mind. I keep forgetting you’re a tadpole.
Euryice is very stonesy. She is enormously stonelike in fact.
Having completely lost control of the subject, I fought a sigh.
I think she’s the logical one to look at. Would the other dragons follow her?
A few would, yes.
Okay. We’ll make a quick side trip to your queendom, conquer this Euryice and then you can take me home. I think Darma might be in danger.
She’ll be okay, mother Tweener. She has her magics now.
I snorted in an unladylike fashion.
Darma wouldn’t use her magic if it grabbed her uterus and held it hostage. She’s even more anti-magic now than she was before she discovered she had some.
That’s so sad, mother Tweener.
Yeah. Especially when you’re in charge of keeping her narrow, white ass safe in a dangerous world.
My mental drawers shifted and my sister’s strident, unpleasant tones filled my unsuspecting mind.
Astra! Where are you? I think somebody’s trying to kill me!
Speak of the devil…or at least his handmaiden.
I didn’t bother asking her what she meant. She was always imagining that somebody was trying to kill her. With her personality I was pretty sure she was mostly right. I’d seen her bring out the worst in such harmless creatures as sweet, little old ladies. One rosy-cheeked octogenarian actually threw her cup of hot tea at Darma after a small verbal exchange that I was pretty sure had something to do with the idea, presented by my sister, that the elderly are crabby and selfish. I thought I was gonna have to jump in and save Darma from that one. But fortunately the ninety-some-year-old woman couldn’t run very far. She put up a good sprint for a few blocks though.
I’m helping Glynus clean up a mess, I’ll be home in a few hours. Do you think you can hold on until then?
I could feel her glare in my mind.
Don’t worry about me. Just make sure your little magical friends are safe. I’ll fend for myself here. I’m only your helpless human sister.
Despite the fact that Darma was the product of an Archangel and a Royal Devil, with her own legacy of magic fizzing, unused, beneath her pale skin, she chose to ignore those facts and pretend she was a simple human. I’d given up trying to find logic in that thinking.
Logic and my sister were not acquaintances. Not even distant ones.
I had my own way of dealing with her. Mostly I just pretended she agreed with me and went about my business. That really pissed her off.
A bonus.
Great! I’ll see you in a few!
I closed my mental drawers on her sputtering. It was easier to ignore her from long distances. I decided right then and there I needed to take more trips.
We found Euryice fairly easily. She apparently hadn’t thought Glynus would survive her little tea party and had been openly preparing to take the throne. Fortunately Euryice wasn’t a very creative or brave dragon. With me holding her captive in a set of power cuffs and Glynus driving a good-sized claw into her soft underbelly, she spewed information like an ugly, scaled fire fountain.
As Glynus’ soldiers led her away to be executed, she turned her ugly head and fixed me with her cold black eyes.
You think you win in this, dragon fighter, but you will soon learn that things outside your puny control are exploding and changing. You and those you love will soon be swamped under the changing tide of events
. She leaned toward me, causing Glynus to take a protective step in my direction.
You will die soon, dragon fighter, and your lover will be the cause.
The nasty reptile laughed then, before she was jerked away from us.
I watched her go, feeling the dread that had been carving a hole in my chest for a couple of days now burning hotly. My stomach churned and my palms were sweaty. Even in my current oversexed state, I couldn’t miss all the signs smacking me between the eyes.
Dialle was mixed up in something. Some kind of trouble. And as usual it was bleeding over into my world.
Sighing, I turned to Glynus. “Let’s go get your parents, Tadpole, I need to get home.”
We found the queen and king stranded in a cavern high in the mountains, their wings broken so they couldn’t fly away, and under guard.
Glynus gathered a small group of loyal guards, who rounded up the Euryice loyalists and killed them swiftly. Then, motivated by a need to get to Darma, and with the benefit of surprise on our side, Glynus and I and our small contingent released Queen Zerphor and her mate Quince.
Thank you, dragon fighter. You are a good friend to my people.
Queen Zerphor told me later when we’d gotten them safely ensconced back in her caverns.
I bowed slightly. “I need to ask for one more favor, Queen Zerphor.”
Name it.
I grinned.
You aren’t gonna like it.
Her sigh filled my mind as her beautiful black eyes slid toward her mate. Quince’s chuckle rumbled through my mind. Not unpleasantly.
I’m sure of that, dragon fighter, this isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with you. Your life is never easy, and anyone who participates in it must be ready to “roll with the punches”, as your human neighbors would say.
I flushed. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I treasure your friendship. And I’m beginning to think I may really need your help.”
Chapter Seven
Going to Hell
Our Lady’s sister lands in Hell, a bloody message writ,
To Hell, to Hell our miss must go, to save the cranky twit.
Glynus dropped me at home and, after thanking me for helping her find her parents, left with a promise to stay in touch. I immediately called Darma on my televisual and was moderately concerned when she didn’t respond.
I headed to the Red Knight and climbed inside, programming Darma’s address into the machine’s flight computer.
As I flew toward my sister’s home I looked around at the city below the Knight. It still showed the scars from recent riots, brought on by the Serpent’s attempt to take over the human world by dropping a poisonous magic veil over everything. The veil had made magic users crazy and humans even crazier, creating violence and destruction on an epic scale.
I still shuddered when I thought of it.
Dialle, Darma and I had barely managed to beat Satan back before he’d finished his work and brought the veil completely down, locking it over the Earth for all time. It would have meant the end of humans and a permanent turn toward the dark side for the magical world.
With my Settling bearing down on me, I’d almost forgotten how bad the dark side of my magics could be. I’d embraced the darkness, in fact, for whole moments at a time. Or rather, embraced the sheer pleasure that darkness could bring me. Before it burned away all light from my soul and turned me into a soulless monster like the Serpent.
The scarred earth and torn buildings far below were a stark and welcome reminder of why I had to fight my dark side with everything I had.
My destiny was in the light.
I was surer of that now than ever before.
But that didn’t make it any easier to resist the siren song of dark magics. Unrestrained power can be intoxicating.
I stopped the Knight if front of Darma’s house and sent it skyward with a command, engaging the locks as it hovered above the neighborhood.
Turning to Darma’s home, I took note of the open door with the splintered frame. A horrible sense of déjà vu slid its cold fingers down my back. The last time I’d found Darma’s door ajar like that, it had taken a whole contingent of angels to pull my sister back from the brink of death.
Pulling my knives from their hidden sheaths in my boots, I pulled my power forward and kept it shimmering just below the surface, to be pulled free if I needed it. I didn’t know what I was facing yet.
If it was a human foe or a lesser demon or devil, my knives would suffice. If my foe had more magical tricks beneath his or her sleeve, I’d need every bit of power I owned to get the upper hand.
The problem with playing for the light side is that you kind of had to play fair or you quickly found yourself toe to tippy toe with oily darkness. Then you weren’t playing for the light side anymore.
The other side isn’t constrained by silly things like rules and scruples.
Darma’s place was trashed. Furniture was smashed and walls had holes surrounded by scorch marks, telling me that somebody had laid out some serious power arrows in the small space.
But even more worrisome to me was the blood spattering the walls, from the entranceway all the way into her main living area.
Written on one large wall, in the main area of Darma’s house, were the words,
Gone to Hell, not coming back,
written in blood and signed with my sister’s name.
My pulse picked up and my knees went weak. She’d asked for my help and I’d blown her off to help Glynus.
Now she might be dead—or worse, she might be alive and in Hell.
I was a terrible sister.
Grabbing the cross around my neck I closed my eyes and sent out a plea to my father. After a moment he shimmered into view, but he wasn’t really there. His tall, leanly handsome form wavered softly on the air in front of me, ethereal and insubstantial. A thick lock of blond hair fell across his forehead, making him look uncharacteristically disheveled.
It was his soul form.
He frowned as he glanced around the room. “Astra, your sister asked you for help. Why has she been taken from her home by force?”
Oh-oh, he’d used his father voice instead of his benevolent angel voice.
I forced my shoulders not to lift in a dismissive shrug. Something in his sparkling blue eyes warned me he wasn’t in his happy place. “She contacted me and I came looking for her. This is what I found. I was hoping you knew something.”
Nice how I left out the middle part of the contacting and coming part, eh?
His frown deepened and his angelic complexion turned red. A rumbling sound filled the space between us. Apparently he could read between the lines of my life and see the missing parts.
Was he growling?
“Father?”
He looked heavenward, trying for calm. “I’m teaching this damn seminar on angelic ethics in the world of carnal temptation.” He lowered his bright blue gaze on me. It was filled with self-loathing. “You can imagine the ribbing I’m taking.”
I grimaced. My father, Archangel James Phelps, had been God’s right-hand man before he fell into carnal temptation with a Royal Devil Princess and begot two Tweener daughters. Yours truly and the missing Darma.
Probably not a good choice to lecture others on the subject.
Or the perfect choice, depending on your perspective.
“Ouch. Whose idea was that?”
He sighed. “I told Him it wasn’t a good idea but He insisted.”
Shaking my head I gave him my best look of pity. It didn’t seem to make him feel better.
Imagine that.
His form started to shimmer on the air. “I have to get back. I’ll send your Aunt down to help you.”
Oh god no! Not my cranky Aunt Myra.
I reached for him, realizing too late that there was nothing to grab. “Wait! Just like that? You’re leaving Darma to her fate? Father!”
He shimmered back, looking only slightly ashamed. “She’s not dead or even nearly dead. I would have been told. But you need to find her and get her out of the plane she’s on.”
He started to shimmer away again. “Wait!” He frowned at me but didn’t shimmer away. “The plane she’s on? Where the Hel—um—heck is she?”
Lifting a golden eyebrow, he glanced toward the wall bearing the words written in blood. “You were right the first time, Astra. She’s been dragged to Hell. But she’s currently in an outer circle. If you can reach her quickly you can get her out before things get really ugly. If you don’t get her out let me know right away and I’ll have to intervene. I’d rather not do it at this point. I think you and Myra can get to her and I don’t need any accusations of favoritism right now.”
Horror washed over me. “But what about my Settl—”
He shimmered away and disappeared completely with a small pop on the air.
I stomped out of Darma’s home, called the Knight back and slid into a cool black leather seat. Programming the office into the directional computer, I sat back and pouted.
Just frunkin’ great! I was standing on the wobbly razor edge of my Settling and I was going to immerse myself in the dark world even more deeply. I was doomed, screwed without the fun, completely forked.
I was goin’ down.
Literally
and
figuratively.
* * * * *
I tried calling Emo on the Knight’s televisual with no luck. He was either avoiding my calls or too busy slaying something to talk to me. I was more disappointed by this than I should have been. My reasonable side told me he was busy doing the job I’d hired him to do. My sentimental, girly side told me he was really mad at me.
I hated my damn girly side.
When I got to the office I found it empty. No Emo.
I took a moment to skim through the reports Emo had left me and discovered that he was probably fighting off a pair of snake demons at that moment.