Prince of Demons 2: The Order of the Black Swan (9 page)

Brave managed to get Lana onto his shoulder and start forward again.

“Where are you taking me?” She was so incensed she sounded possessed.

“To a place where you’ll be forced to listen to reason.”

“Reason!” she screamed. “Listen to reason? I hate you. Bruce.”

He stumbled to a stop. “Brave.”

“Oh yeah? If you’re so “brave”, put me down and face me like a man.”

The second he put her down she spun and raced away from him. He ran her down and lifted her onto his shoulder again, panting. A demon couple had come upon the scene and stopped, staring.

“May I be of assistance, Your Eminence?” asked the male.

“No!” Brave wheeled on the would-be assistant. “Thank you,” he said more calmly trying to be as dignified as one can be with a screaming banshee over his shoulder. “I’ve got this,” he said just as she reared up and socked him in the side of the head.

The demon couple looked at each other.

“We’re going now,” said Brave.

In another five minutes, they came to a stop. As Lana was being dislodged she looked around and saw that she was being redeposited into the same cell where she’d first awakened. She grabbed at Brave, but he was too quick. The door was closed and locked with him on the other side before the blood had begun to resume its normal course with her head up instead of down.

“You wouldn’t!”

He held up the ring of heavy keys and smiled.

“Take me back.” She started chanting in a low voice then building in a crescendo of volume and intensity. “Take me back. Take me back. Take me back.”

“Lana. You are being childish.”

That stopped her mid-chant. She gaped at him.

“Childish? Childish? I happen to think my reaction to this particular set of circumstances is
entirely
appropriate. But even if it was true, I’d rather be childish than a kidnapper and betrayer.”

“Betrayer?”

“Yes! Betrayer!”

He ran his hand through his hair and growled in frustration. “This is not the way this was supposed to go.”

“Really? How was it supposed to go?”

“You were supposed to be thrilled! And delighted!”

She gaped some more with mouth wide open. When she closed her mouth she said, “Thrilled and delighted,” in a dry monotone. “You’re insane, aren’t you?”

He pinned her with a look so focused and intense that she couldn’t turn away.

“Alright. I’ll make a deal.”

“A deal. Isn’t that cute? In a classic demonstration of nurture over nature, the first resort of raised-by-demons-boy is to suggest a deal. I get it. Maybe you’re not insane. You’re just a demon in human clothing.”

“What?” He squinted like that made no sense.

“Never. Mind. You’ve got ten seconds to name the deal before I go back to shouting so that I don’t have to hear your voice.”

“Okay. First, calm down.”

“Calm down?” she yelled. “
Never
tell an angry woman to calm down! You’re not only psycho. You’re stupid, too.”

“Okay. Okay. Don’t calm down.”

She fumed. “I won’t.”

“Alright.” He took a deep breath. “I was going to say that, if you’ll just listen and hear the whole story, I’ll see to it that you’re taken back if you still want to go.”

She mulled that over and decided that, all things considered, it was as fair as she could expect. “Agreed.”

She wasn’t pleased that he looked hopeful.

“Let’s start by getting comfortable,” he said as he slid into a sitting position with his back to the wall on the other side of the bars.

“Why? Is this a long story?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “I’m going to sit down, but I want you to know that calling this ‘comfortable’ is just further proof that you are PSY. CHO.”

He waited until she had seated herself so that she was facing him with eight feet and iron bars separating them.

“I first encountered
you when I was on a mission to retrieve a relic. The locator resumed transmitting after being dormant for thousands of years because you and your team were close to laying your hands on it.

“It was an accident that I was even there. I’d gone along on impulse because I was bored with meetings and hadn’t been away for a while.”

She put together that he was talking about the Oualanka River mission with Cal. As much as she didn’t want to engage Brave with questions, and certainly didn’t want to encourage him, she was curious.

“Encountered me. How? We didn’t see…” Lana stopped mid-sentence when she remembered the changes in the light and the feelings that they weren’t alone.

“You did see me. At least you reacted to me, but then convinced yourself that it was your mind playing tricks. The Callii demons are natural light refractors. They can appear to be almost invisible. If you didn’t know what to look for, you’d never know they were there.”

He paused to let her take that in.

“What about you? If you’re human, you’re not a light refractor.”

He smiled. “When I leave this world I’m what you might call modified human.” She looked interested. “If some of the demons’ blood is introduced to my system, bloodstream, I can travel the passes and mimic invisibility for a few hours at a time.

“So I had gone along to get the relic. You looked straight into my eyes and held my gaze like you knew everything about me. Beautiful gray eyes that change color whenever you move,” he mused almost to himself.

“We got the relic, as you know, and brought it back safely, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I returned to the shelter where you were staying and listened to your conversation. That’s where I learned where you live.

“I couldn’t stay away from you. I started getting injections every day so that I could visit the place where you live. I came often at night while you slept.”

Lana was trying to sort through the idea of invisible demons, or humans, coming and going from Order Headquarters with no one the wiser. Her mind told her that the idea of Brave visiting her while she slept was creepy, the ultimate in parastalker. But she couldn’t seem to work up much of an emotional disturbance about it.

“I went to you almost every night and watched while you read stories on your device until you fell asleep. You kept old style paper books in your room like sacred texts. I wanted to know what interested you. So I borrowed one at a time, knowing it wasn’t likely that you’d miss it.

“I couldn’t read the words, but the Callii, like most demons, are fluent in hundreds of languages. They can even absorb new languages by psychic osmosis when they come across one they don’t know.

“So I brought a book back and asked them to teach me to read the strange little symbols. I wanted to read your book, but I knew that I would also want to talk to you someday. So I asked for volunteers to acquire the dialect you speak and then insisted that no other language be spoken in my presence until I was fluent enough to sound like a native.”

He shook his head and smiled a little. “The initial lack of understanding presented difficulties, but I was sure that was the fastest way to learn. Total immersion.

“The only exception I made to that rule was for reading tutorials. I would sit and read the book out loud while one of my tutors corrected pronunciation and helped me with interpretation.

“When I finished one book, I would put it back on your shelf, in its exact place, and take another. At the end of three weeks, I could read out loud without stumbling. My tutors’ corrections of mispronunciations were becoming fewer day by day.

“Misunderstandings about conversational usage were also becoming rare. I continued to come see you at night and continued to borrow books until I’d read them all. I wanted to know everything about you and what you like.

“I’d instructed the Callii to tell me when there was no more room for improvement in my command of your language.

“The most important thing about this part of the story is this. At the same time I’d been learning your language, I’d been learning, through your choice of reading material, that you fantasized about adventure and romance.”

For the first time, he saw emotion flicker over Lana’s face and perhaps her cheeks were a little pinker than they’d been. He waited to see if she had something to say. When she remained silent, he pressed on.

“It occurred to me then that, if I could create an adventure that would thrill you and, if I could accompany you on that adventure, you might fall in love with me.

“It took almost a month to create and set up the ‘obstacle course’. We had to start over again and again because I would try it and decide it might be dangerous for you. When we thought we had a final version, I did it myself three times to be sure it could be done without putting you at risk.”

“So it was all fake,” she said as a matter of fact. “An elaborate but fake escape?”

“Yes. Entirely designed to give you a fantasy like in your books.”

She thought about that for a minute.

“What about the sulfur pools? You couldn’t have designed that.”

“No. We worked with the natural landscape. My friends and I had played there when we were boys. We held races, the object of the game being to get to the other side first without falling in. As you learned, there’s a powerful motivation to not fall in because the smell stays with you for a long time. But I knew I could get us through without falling in. I’d done it a hundred times at a run so walking through with a female wouldn’t be that hard.”

“What about the flames?”

In spite of himself, he started laughing. “Well, that was a variable I didn’t account for, but who would guess that? I mean, I never peed in the sulfur pits.”

She thought about that for a few seconds then said, “What about the snake in the cupboard?”

Brave smiled. “A pet of Perry’s. No fangs. No poison. Perry was waiting outside to lure it back into its cage.

“The river current?”

“The Salt River is like one of your amusement park rides. You couldn’t drown in it if you wanted to. It makes you float like a piece of Styrofoam.”

She wanted to slap the smile from his face, but she clenched her fists instead. “Do you know how scared I was?”

“I do,” he said sincerely. Then he grinned. “It felt great, didn’t it? Your heart was pounding, the adrenaline was rushing.” He dropped his head and his voice while looking at her through envy-grabbing eyelashes. “I know it felt great to have you grab onto me and hang on for dear life.”

She chuffed, looked away, then came right back with another question.

“And the horribly ugly black things?”

“They are ugly and black, but they’re also harmless. They’re simple, like single cell organisms. They live in that particular forest where the black trees grow. Whenever anybody comes into their space, they respond to the vibration and draw close out of curiosity or whatever, but there’s never been a report of them harming anyone. I don’t think it’s even possible.”

“Unbelievable selfish prick,” she hissed. “It may have been fun for you, but it was awful for me.”

“I didn’t mean it to be. The books you read… I thought it would be fun for
you
.”

“I don’t get it. You knew you were going to have to tell me the truth sometime.”

“Of course. It was my intention to present the adventure to you as a gift, which is what it was. I thought we’d both laugh about it.”

“Wait a minute. My celebration dinner with Cal and all those calamities… That was you!” Based on the sheepish look on Brave’s face, she knew she didn’t have to extract a formal confession. “So what exactly is it that you wanted from me?”

He looked shocked by the question. “For you to love me.”

“You wanted to make me fall in love with you.”

“Yes.”

She took a deep and shaky breath, stemming the urge to cry then looking down at the floor in front of her.

“Well, you did,” she said quietly. “Now have them take me back.”

When she raised her eyes, Brave’s crestfallen look almost made her rethink her decision, but then she remembered that a guy who would construct such a fanciful and elaborate lie was a guy who could also end up dating your admin behind your back while smiling at your front and hogging the remote.

Returning her gaze to the floor, she said, “I wish you hadn’t lied to me, Brave.”

He looked at her so sadly it pulled at her heart. “I never lied to you, Lana. I might have been evasive at times, but I never told you a lie. And I never will. Stay with me, Lana. I’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Maybe I don’t understand how human females want to be courted, but I’ll move mountains to make you happy. I swear it.”

“Is your name really Brave?”

He looked desperately sincere. “Yes.”

“Were you really raised here? By these… demons?”

“Yes.”

She noticed his jaw clench like he was offended that she didn’t trust him.

After a minute of silent processing, she said, “Well. At least there was that. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“I love you, Lana.” Brave swiped at his eyes as he rose to leave.

Within minutes the demon, Dart, arrived to escort her back to the world from which she’d been abducted to be Brave’s unwitting playmate.

He held up a syringe, squirted a small amount of red liquid from the needle and said, “Bend over.” Lana glared at him and rolled up her sleeve. “Have it your way,” said the demon with a shrug. But instead of giving her the injection in her arm, he lifted her skirt and stabbed her in the thigh, right through her tights. When she shrieked, more from surprise than pain, he laughed.

“You didn’t give me anything when you transported me here from the cave,” she protested rubbing her thigh.

“That’s because we weren’t leaving this dimension.”

“Oh.”

‡