Demon Lord 4: White Jade Reaper (6 page)

I stripped off my coat and shoulder rig.

Madison eyed the hardware.  “Oooo, nice.”

“I need sleep.” I stripped down to my pants.  “Don’t wake me up unless it’s an emergency, and even then, be careful how you do it.  I’ve been known to wake up shooting.”

“You should get another bed,” Grace said.

“You guys can share one,” I said.  “Or if not, somebody can sleep on the floor.”

“You could sleep on the floor,” Madison suggested.

“You could sleep face down on my bed with my massive cock buried deep in your tight little—” My phone rang.  “Excuse me.”  I answered, “Yeah?”

“About time you got here!”  It was a little girl’s voice.  A
dead
little girl.  I looked around the room.  “You’re here?”

“Yeah, just don’t expect me to materialize ‘til after dark.  That’s how it works for ghosts.”

“And you couldn’t wait until
after
I got some sleep?”

“I don’t like hanging around anymore than you, hot shot.  Find out who killed me so I can go into the light already.”

I sat down on the edge of my bed.  “You got any more for me to go on?”

“A song.  I heard it before I died, and I keep hearing it.”

“How’s it go?” I asked.

I expected her to hum the damn thing.  She didn’t.  Instead, a flute warbled.  A melodic flutter of notes appeared in the air of the room.  The music was beautiful, haunting, and nothing I recognized. 

I noticed the girls staring at my body and ink work.  Grace was flushed.  Madison looked more fascinated. Maybe even a bit hungry.   Neither of them were experienced enough to be comfortable with their budding sexuality.   I found that kinda

cute.

After a few minutes, the ghostly strains faded away.  I spoke into the phone.  “Well, that was a big help.”  Only silence answered.  “Hello?  Anyone there?”  More nothing.  I put away my phone, trying to remember a little of the melody I’d heard.  I hummed a few notes, hopelessly mangling a riff.

“That’s not how it went.  Like this.”  Grace sang the melody with perfect pitch, capturing the entire thing like a human recorder.

Madison stared at her.  “That’s awesome!  I didn’t know you could sing.”

“I can’t.  My sister always told me to stop trying.  She said I make the dogs howl from five blocks away.”

“Jealous,” Madison said.

I nodded, looking at Grace with a smidgeon more respect.  “You’ve got talent.  I’ve heard professionals not half as good.  Sometimes, you have to ignore what people tell you and just pull the trigger.”

Grace’s face had turned bright red with the sudden attention.  She hurried to change the subject.  “I’m not tired.  I slept a lot in the car.”

“Me, too.”  Madison’s voice spiked with excitement, “Hey, Caine, how about we borrow your car and see a little of the sights around town?”

“No, no, and hell no.”  I slid a gun under my pillow, with the safety on. 

“What are we supposed to do all day, then?” Grace asked.

“Not my problem,” I said.  “Just be here when I wake up.”  I kicked off my shoes, stretched out, and closed my eyes, relaxing. 

The girls whispered to each other.  I heard one of them digging through a backpack.  There was a scrape as the room key was picked up off the nightstand.  Minutes later, I was still awake, faking sleep as Madison leaned over me.  Gently, she took hold of my hand and pressed a piece of sticky tape to my thumb.  I suppressed a grin, knowing she was going to try to fool the biometric scanner on the Mustang and hijack my ride.  Having stolen my thumbprint, the girls snuck out of the room.  It wasn’t going to work.  The print would have a human temperature if Madison pressed on it from the non-sticky side of the tape; she’d be too cool.  And neither of them matched my weight in the driver’s seat.  With those failures, the security system would demand a retinal scan.  There was no way they’d get past that without killing me and taking my eyeball.  Grace wouldn’t do that.  Madison would—if I’d been a vampire. 

Just another example of how scruples are counter intuitive.

I laughed silently as they returned grumbling, flopping down on bed and chair in utter defeat.  The TV came on.

“Too loud,” I said.

One of them used a remote to turn it up louder.

Eyes still closed, I pulled out my gun and shot the TV, aiming by sound.  After that, I was able to get some sleep.

SIX

“Even monsters need to dream.  It gives them reason to kill.”

                                   —Caine Deathwalker

Like a dream, the world lay blurry around me, the edges uncertain, only the center of my vision perfectly clear.  A blaze of white light shone down from a light array suspended overhead.  I stood in a staging area at the same level as the audience in front of me, occupying fold-down black chairs.  All eyes were on me. 

I looked down at myself.  I wore a pink dress with ribbons and ruffles.  My little shoes were black with straps across the bridges.  I wore white socks that matched my white gloves.  One hand held a violin.  The other held a bow.   This was a dream, but not one of mine.  I’d become a little girl.

Fuck no!  My cock is gone.
 
I ain’t doing this cross-dressing anime shit. 
I tried to “will” myself awake, but the dream went on with me as a hostage.  I sighed.  All right.  I’m here to do something, and the dream won’t let me go until I reach the end. 
Let’s get this over with
.

I turned to the left, catching something dark at the edge of sight.  Over my shoulder, several feet away, stood a grand piano.  Balanced precariously on an ottoman, Grace’s teal blue fu dog sat, paws raised, ready to play.  His curly-haired head turned my way.  He held up a paw in greetings.  It would have been a thumb’s-up gesture—if he’d had a thumb.  He grinned with an awful lot of teeth, his lavender eyes blazing like magic pearls.

His thoughts reached me, booming in my head. 
Let’s rock!

“Yeah, like I can actually play the violin.  Where’s Grace, anyway?  You two are taking separate vacations?”

Not exactly.  Tukka just got interested in some things of his

own.  Hook up with Grace later.

There was sheet music in front of the animal.  I didn’t have any.  I took this to mean that he was accompanying me, and I was the star.  At least that part was right.  “Hey, Tukka, what song am I supposed to be playing?”

He looked at his music. 
Tiny Dancer
.

“Hell no.”

Tukka likes this song.

“Too bad.”

Tukka can’t play anything else.

“How can you play anything at all?  You’ve got no opposable thumbs!”

You want dream to end or what?

There was a nervous stirring from the waiting audience.   I looked out and saw that several men and women in the front row had writing pads in their laps. 
Damn, it’s a competition
.  “Fine.  Let’s get this train wreck going.”

Tukka nodded above the keys, his paws leaping over each other as he scurried the song to life.  The piano spewed a torrent of grandiose chord progressions in the air, something strikingly classical that quickly degenerated into rock and roll—
Thank Buddha’s fat ass.

I tucked the violin in place under my chin.  Lifting the bow, I set it against the strings.  My hands seemed to know what they were doing even if the rest of me didn’t.  I made love to the instrument, displaying the same sensitivity and dexterity as when I played a woman’s body.
 
My melody leaped with fire and grace, soaring into realms of glory.
  This might not be so bad after all.

Tukka impressed, Deadfinger play good
.

“That’s Deathwalker because I walk with…  Never mind.”  I shot him the finger without a break in my playing.  “When this is over, I’m going to kill you.  I’ll find some way to explain it to Grace. 

Temporary sanity, perhaps.”

I looked out at the audience.  They waved cell phones so the glowing screens arced in the gloom. 

In the front row seats, the critics sat mouths agape, pens still,

and pads forgotten.  Their wonderstruck eyes clung to my violin.  One old man with thinning white hair and extra-thick glasses was mouthing the words to the Elton John tune.  As I tore into the second verse, I happened to notice that the dream was starting to spiral into edgy directions.  Okay, sure, I’ll take the blame. 

A pole appeared at the edge of the stage.  Madison was there in fishnet stockings and a black leather bikini with a couple wooden stakes strapped to a muscular thigh.  She gripped the pole with both hands, shaking her money-maker as drunken sailors—bearing a surprising resemblance to Popeye—crowded close, fanning the air with one dollar bills.  The dream version of Madison swung her closed legs up into the air, using the pole to hang upside down as she slowly spun back down.

Madison glided in for a landing, knees swinging down to catch her.  Her butt toward me, one hand still on the pole, she bent backwards, arching so that could see her face—and her tits.  Completely out of character, she mouthed silent words, “Come fuck me!” 

I thought of something else she could mouth once we wrapped up this gig, and found some privacy.  I smiled at her. 
Hold me closer, tiny dancer!  No wait! 
I groaned, suddenly remembering I had no cock. 
This is way too fucked, even for me.

I hung in there, fiddling away, watching Madison working the crowd.  She took the ones, snatched a wallet, emptied that as well, and took another guy’s watch.  One sailor had nothing in his hand.  He lunged for the bikini bottom.  Madison staked him through the heart, and never broke stride in her dancing. 

Wow, that slayer training sure makes you supple.

The main audience didn’t seem like they could see her there.  Their eyes were still on me as I finished the last chorus and played into the final chords.  Over my shoulder, I noticed that Tukka had kicked the piano bench back, letting it crash over.  He balanced on his hind legs, front paws a flurry of pounding exuberance.  The piano rattled a little, one wheel popping off a leg, shooting out to the audience where it was lost to sight.  This made the keyboard slant a little, but it didn’t seem to faze the fu dog in the slightest.

Give ‘em big finish!
Tukka bellowed.  Behind him and the piano, stage pyrotechnics ignited.  Jets of fire stabbed upward.  Colored smoke billowed.  It was like being at a rock concert where special effects compensated for a lack of talent—but that vibe changed as colored spotlights skidded across the stage and a 70’s disco ball dropped from the ceiling on a golden chain.

My hands were possessed, doing things on the violin that I didn’t believe were even possible.  At one point, I played double lead, point and counterpoint, and still had time to drop in a couple of bars of the Star Spangled Banner, and to tap out some harmonic tones. 

The audience was on its feet.  Voices surged in a roar of approval as I slashed out the last note and froze in a dramatic pose, chest heaving as if I’d just run a marathon.  Eventually the adulation—which I totally deserved—died down and the judges lined up to lift score cards.  The cards went up.  Each one a picture of a bullet on it. 

I bowed, knowing nobody could ever follow that performance.  As I straightened up, my violin transformed into a golden-haired doll with cornflower blue eyes.  She winked at me.

Someone ran in from the wings.   His child’s voice stabbed across the stage.  “No, no, no, no!  You can’t make her number one with a bullet.  She didn’t play all the notes.  I counted them, every one.  She adlibbed half the freaking performance.  You gotta play the music as written.  As written!”

He stomped past Tukka and the piano and came up to me.  He poked a trembling finger in my face.   “You, you, cheat!  I should win, not you.  I played every damn note, everyone!”

I used the doll to slap his finger out of my face and I used the bow to jab him in an eye.  Reeling back, my bow caught in his skull, he screamed and staggered off.  In response to my action, the audience went even crazier.

I looked for Madison, but she was gone—and the sailors with her.  The audience clapped on, but the sound and lights dimmed.  I turned my head toward Tukka, suspecting he was eating the dream, stealing its life.  He was gone too, the grand piano now a child’s toy occupying a very small place on the floor.  I clutched the doll to my pink party dress, wondering what was next.

As things do in dreams, the scene dissolved, one world torn away, another crowding in—everything in motion except for me.  As the surrounding area slowed, the blurring resolved.  I found myself on a sidewalk in a sleepy little community, near a town square.  Leafy trees caught and strained the gentle sunlight.  Tourist shops lured in the unwary.  This wasn’t New Mexico, the place lacked the rugged, southwest character.  And the buildings were made of chocolate.  One in particular seemed more real than others, with finer detailing.  It was an antique shop with an unlikely name:
Ever As It Never Was AntiqueS
. 

Waving at me from in front of the store window, I saw the little ghost girl that had been haunting me.  Somehow, I knew her despite the wet brown sheet she wore that had cut-out eyes like something made for a kid to wear on Halloween.  The chocolate ghost ran to the door and through it, leaving a chocolate smear on the glass in passing.

Okay, I can take a hint.  I’m supposed to go in there, too.

Unlike Ghost Girl, I opened the door to go inside, a little bell tinkling overhead.  The shelves were disturbing: bell-domes over the decapitated heads of dolls, teddy bears with their button eyes all but gouged off.  I saw the same rocking chairs with faded paint, the wood distressed to make the thing look older in a kind of garage-sale chic.  I saw a Slinky tied into a knot that meant it would never walk again, and what a military action figure was doing to a Malibu Kenny doll was illegal in most states.

Ghost Girl was everywhere, a dozen copies of her running around, grabbing things off the shelf. 

All of them ignored me.  I walked over to the counter where a saleslady waited.  It was Grace, but with breasts swollen to D-cup size.  Her face had matured as well, going from pretty to knock-out gorgeous with a perfect, pale complexion.  Her hair cascaded, actually made of red velvet cake.

What the hell is with this dessert motif?  And why do I suddenly want to eat a blond brownie with maple butter?

“Grace?  Is that you? Are you here?”  I had to ask.  Kitsune

were supposed to be able to dream-walk, just like fu dogs.  This might only partly be a product of my lust.

The back of her blue cotton dress shredded as moth wings burst through, not the baby wings I’d seen before but overgrown, Mothra-style wings that kicked up a breeze.  Her forehead antennae waved languidly at me, the feathery strands writhing as they tasted the air.  Oddly, her eyes filled in as if injected with ink.  Maybe it was in her blood, too; after all, she wanted to be a writer.

“Grace?  No, I’m Belinda, the Chocolate Whisperer.”  She actually
did
whisper.

Okay, not the real Grace, just an unreasonable facsimile.

The door crashed open behind me.  The little bell freaked out.  I heard scooting shelves and the sound of falling, breaking merchandise as I turned.  Suddenly the town’s chocolate motif made sense.  Like a teal blue bull in a china shop, it was Tukka, stupid grin and all, his eyes giant lavender pearls.   The chocolate ghost girl saw him and screamed, backing around a barrel of stick ponies that might have been popular in the fifties.  I understood; if I were chocolate, I’d live in fear of Tukka, too. 

Tukka’s fevered stare caught the motion, giving Ghost Girl his full attention. 
You there!
  His boomy voice attempted to soften, becoming wheedling.  
Want to come outside and play with Tukka?  We be bestive friends!

I moved smoothly toward the girl, hurrying without seeming to.  Back in L.A., I watched over an adolescent girl.  Letting a young girl that reminds me of her be abused—or eaten by a two-ton fu dog—was one of the few lines I’d draw in the sand. 
Just not happening, Tukka.  Go attack a vending machine.

“Tukka!”  The ghost whisperer whispered.  “
I’m
your bestive friend.”

Tukka shot her a dismissive glower. 
You let Tukka get captured all the time.  Besides, Grace high maintenance, and not chocolate.

Grace’s eyes flared with hurt.   “Tukka!”

Sorry, only the truth
.  His hungry stare returned to the little girl, or would have if I weren’t in the way.  He frowned, his fore-

head furrowing. 
Don’t get in Tukka’s way.  Tukka smash!

“Oh, it’s the Incredible Hulking Tukka now.  Aren’t you the wrong color for that?”

I willed my Berettas to come to me.  What popped into my hands was an AA-12 full auto shotgun in a sleek, no-frills casing with a round drum magazine.  Chills of awe went up my spine. 
Oh, baby, I love you.
  I didn’t bother wondering how this had happened; weird shit was always finding its way into my dreams.  I lifted the weapon and sighted down the barrel on Tukka’s face. 
I only hope the magazine comes with the new fin-stabilized mini-grenades or maybe the dragon-fire incendiary rounds.

“Back out of the store,” I told Tukka, “and save yourself a lot of pain.”