devil 02 - tween a devil and his hard place (8 page)

You just had to slap at the bad guy and piss him off didn’t you, boss? You can’t just do what you came in here to do and leave can you? Oh no, you want to fight the stinking nasty gargoyles because, in your feeble little mind you think it’s fun don’t you?

I was too busy taking a battle stance and readying my weapons to respond but trust me, he would get a formerly pointed earful when we were back at the office. Assuming of course that we ever made it back to the office.

“The one on the left is mine,” I told him in a low murmur, even as I turned to look at the demon on the right and his eight-foot-long, drooling charge on the straining end of a steel chain. The gargoyle on the right, seeing me looking at him, figured he was my target, leaving him open to an unexpected attack from Emo. It was one of our favorite tactics when dealing with creatures of lesser intelligence.

Emo blew out a nervous breath and turned toward the one on the left. “Have I told you I hate gargoyles, Astra?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “I think you might have.”

Then all hell broke loose and we found it difficult to talk for a while.

Keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the gargoyle and its handler on the right, I reached for my power core, opening the metaphysical door I used to shut it off when I didn’t want it leaching out all over the place and embarrassing me.

Using the skills I’d perfected over recent days, I quickly stoked the tiny flame into a raging blaze and then jerked it forward and threw up a protective shield just as the gargoyle on the right launched itself toward me. The ’goyle hit my shield with a splat, spraying spit in a wide arc and sliding slowly down into a saliva-drenched pile at my feet, claws outstretched.

Emo reached out and hacked the ’goyle’s head off and then jumped back as blood spurted from the neck stump. Gargoyle blood burns like acid on angel skin and, like me, Emo was part angel.

The demon ’goyle keeper dropped the now empty chain and looked up at Emo. I, shot him with a jolt of power through the heart. He went down right on top of his smelly charge, twitching all four limbs at once in a manic death dance that might have been funny if Emo and I didn’t have at least six other stinky foes to defeat in that underground room.

“To Hades with you fool, for God hath tired of you!” I murmured.

Two down, lots to go.

Emo turned his warrior face to the gargoyle on the left just as it lunged. He wasn’t quick enough with his shield and the thing was on him before I could kill it. A sense of unhappy déjà vu hit me between the eyes as Emo went down under the terrible onslaught. I heard flesh tearing and Emo grunted in pain.

In a panic I turned to help him but was brutally stopped by the less than gentle application of a thick steel chain around my throat. The second ’goyle’s keeper had reached me.

I managed to get one hand under the chain and was able to hold it off my throat enough to breath but the demon was strong and outweighed me by about three hundred pounds. The thing about demons though, is that they generally aren’t very smart. And they aren’t agile at all. They’re basically just nasty brutes. And while I certainly
had
been known to be nasty, I had brains and looks to go with my attitude. I was betting I could outwit it.

I threw my weight backward into the demon’s rock-like chest. Expecting me to try to pull away from the chain, the demon had braced himself on his heels and I caught him off guard. While, under normal circumstances my weight would have made no more impact than an insect, the momentum of my attack, along with his weight distribution, caused him to take several steps back in an attempt to regain his balance.

Two things happened at once. The hapless demon relinquished his tight hold on the chain around my neck and he stumbled butt first into another gargoyle.

I jerked loose from the chain just as the affronted gargoyle opened wide and sank three-inch-long saliva-coated teeth into the frantic demon’s left butt cheek and ripped, pulling the round, leathery body part right off, with a wet thwucking sound. The gargoyle whipped the fat chunk of demon derrière from side to side, throwing dark green blood around the room and looking mighty happy with his unexpected snack.

The mono-cheeked demon ran screaming around the room—that’s what they do when they get upset, brain shuts down, feet kick in—until one of the other demons reached out an arm like a battering ram and knocked him cold. He went down with a whimper, trailing snot from his head and blood from his mangled posterior.

I suddenly remembered Emo and whipped my head around to see how he was doing with his ’goyle. I was very relieved to see that he had managed to fight the thing off and was just putting the finishing touches on its unexpected trip to the afterlife as I glanced around.

I turned back to discover that the rest of the gargoyles and their hapless handlers were heading our way.

Sigh.

I took a deep breath and reached into my boots for my knives. Emo came up beside me panting like a virgin in a room full of gigolos. We squared off in anticipation of a full on attack but nothing happened. We stood there blinking when all things mean and leathery stopped in their tracks and stared, gape mouthed, at a spot somewhere beyond my right shoulder.

I turned to see what they were staring at and came eye to eye with a very pissed off but decidedly yummy royal devil. He moved up to stand at my shoulder and put his arm around my waist possessively.

I itched to shrug the arm off but knew that we needed a united front against the bogymen in that room.

I had it under control.

I could see that. But I wanted to play too. It was no fun up there all by myself.

I rolled my eyes.
How did you get past the mountain?

It was his turn to roll his eyes.
Please, Astra. Give me some credit.

Point taken. He was after all a royal. And the mountain had been only a demon, if an ageless and infamous one.

Dialle turned to Alcott, who had found reason to straighten considerably in his makeshift throne. “You have much to answer for demon. King Dialle will not like the report I give him. You had better tell me that you will stop this treasonous behavior at once or I fear the king’s wrath will visit these premises.”

Alcott’s featureless countenance faced Dialle for a beat of ten and then lowered only the tiniest fraction of an inch. “I apologize for your treatment here, Prince Dialle. It was inexcusable and I will make amends for it to the court.”

Dialle’s dark eyes glowered at the demon leader but I felt his body relax just the tiniest fraction.

“However…”

And the tension lurched upward again.

“My demands remain in place. My people have served the Royal Court for millennia without question and with the utmost loyalty and we have earned our place at the council table. I will take that place now…either by decree of the king or through a less peaceful method. It is the king’s choice.”

Dialle’s arm around my waist tightened to the point of pain and then suddenly relaxed. I looked at him and he smiled. “You dare to bargain for sovereignty on the backs of the human cattle? Humans are of no consequence to the Court. King Dialle cares nothing for their fate.”

Alcott smiled, the unremitting black of his face splitting to show two rows of small, white teeth. His body language was smug to the point of insult. He laughed in fact, causing Dialle’s arm to become an iron band around my waist again.

I tried to step away from the encircling arm but Dialle held on.

Alcott lowered himself back into the throne chair with an air of disdain and a flip of one hand toward Dialle. I thought I was going to see steam emerge from Dialle at any moment.

“The Royal Court cares nothing for the humans, I agree. My goal is not to cause your hearts pain. It is to cause the Court much embarrassment and trouble with the humans. Your unspoken truce with them is young and tender. It will be easily strained and torn by the discovery of thirty or so mutilated bodies. The obvious work of satanic ritual.”

Dialle stepped threateningly toward Alcott and the demon sat up just a bit straighter in the chair, obviously not as dismissive of Dialle as he tried to appear. “You declare open war on the Court? Have you gone mad?”

Alcott shrugged. “I seek only what we have earned. You will choose how we gain it. I would peacefully take my throne if it were up to me.”

Dialle was suddenly standing mere inches from Alcott, his hands clutching the arms of the throne chair and his face close enough to the demon’s to bite. All traces of the white split disappeared from Alcott’s face and his body went rigid. He tried to lean further back into the chair.

I sensed movement in the gargoyle and demon ranks but Dialle threw up a hand and they stopped in their tracks, blinking at him in confusion.

Dialle’s voice filled the room effortlessly when he spoke. It seemed to come from every corner and moved as if alive through the underground space. I wasn’t sure what it was doing to the bad guys but it was giving me a serious case of the heebies and I was on his side.

“I accept your offer of war, Alcott and give you this pledge back. Your people will rue the day you went against the Royal Court of King Dialle the First. Your children will suffer for it, their children will suffer for it and their children will beg to be released from this life as a result of your tampering this day. You have my word on that, as the next in line for the throne of the Royal Court.”

With that Dialle stood up straight, glared one last time at Alcott and returned to Emo and me. He said nothing to us as we ascended the stairs and headed back through the main room of the nightclub at street level.

I glanced at what was left of the Dis demon and grimaced, making a mental note to myself never to piss Dialle off.

As we left Demonica behind and stood on the sidewalk I turned to Dialle and smiled. “That went well.”

He scowled back at me. “It appears we are at war.”

I snorted indelicately. “Except the casualties will all be on the human side won’t they?”

His scowl deepened and he threw up a hand as if to dismiss that little fact as inconsequential. “We will have to save the humans since they are too stupid to save themselves.”

Just like that. No big deal. We will save the humans.

Bring me a red cape and some pretty blue tights. Here we come to save the day. I rolled my eyes again and turned to Emo, “I want you to put all your resources into finding those hostages. Reach out to all your demon buddies, use every favor you have coming on this one. If even one of those hostages gets killed it will be on our backs. You got that?”

He frowned at me but nodded and I continued, “How did you get here? Did you bring the Viper?”

Emo opened his mouth to respond but I never heard his answer. Dialle’s hand found my arm and we were suddenly locked together in motionless space. My blood pressure skyrocketed at this cavalier commandeering of my body and, although my body was as helpless as a stump, my fertile brain was in overdrive and when we landed wherever he was taking me he was gonna get verbally and possibly physically speared by a seriously pissed-off Tweener.

See how soon I forget my mental notes to myself?

Chapter Six

Clear as Mud

A simple visit to a king, dost give our lady pause,

She learns her journey’s complex, close friendships seem the cause.

He shimmered me into the middle of my office and then clamped those incredible lips onto mine before I could start screaming, thus saving us both from him having to disassemble my body as he’d done to the Dis demon.

A change in the atmosphere in the room, with a slight electrical charge, warned me that we were about to have company.

Emo appeared in the room and Dialle popped out.

I stamped my foot in temper and glared at my partner, having no other royals in the room currently to glare at.

Knowing me and my moods Emo just smiled. “Don’t take it out on me, boss,” he said. “He’s your problem.”

This little reminder did
not
improve my mood. “Okay, then tell me what you said to the Dis demon to allow us to pass without Dialle.”

Emo turned away and walked to his desk. But not before I saw his smile grow wider. “Nothing, I just used some information I had against him. Something he doesn’t necessarily want Alleycat to know about.”

I grinned, I couldn’t help myself. “Alleycat?”

Emo dropped into his chair and clasped well-shaped golden hands on the desktop. “That’s what they call him. His brother was not well liked but Alcott is even less popular.”

I nodded, my brow furrowing in thought. “Why was Dialle shunned? That was a huge tactical error on Alcott’s part.”

Emo nodded. “I agree. His ego apparently gets the better of his judgment on a regular basis. It’s one of the things the demons hate about him.”

I walked over and sat in the chair on the other side of my partner’s desk. Fixing him with the patented Astra Q Phelps glare, I waited for him to squirm.

He didn’t.

“Why won’t you tell me what you said to the demon?”

Emo stared back, seemingly unaffected by my badass boss routine. Finally he shook his head and looked down at his hands. “I told you. I know something about that particular guard and used it against him. That’s all. Nothing sinister.”

I continued to stare at him. I sensed he wasn’t telling me everything. “What about Dialle?”

Emo grinned. “I wasn’t lying to you about that, Astra. The guard had orders not to allow Dialle to enter.” He grinned. “I would have kept him out anyway if I could have but as it turns out I didn’t have to.” The grin widened until I felt myself wanting to smile too.

I looked away quickly so I wouldn’t be affected by his obvious amusement. “Well, regardless, Dialle is now seriously pissed off and I doubt his report to his father will favor the demons’ case. I’m afraid some of those humans are going to be toast soon.”

“I would agree wholeheartedly with that assessment, boss.”