Me and My Shadow (2 page)

Jim, whose full demon name of Effrijim was deemed too girlie by its owner to be used in anything but formal ceremonies, grinned, not an easy task considering it bore the form of a large, shaggy black Newfoundland dog. “Actually, I think she said if I pissed you off, she'd banish me to the Akasha until the baby was old enough to vote, but everyone knows doppelgangers don't get pissy easily, so it's all copacetic.”

“Were we in Abaddon at this moment,” Magoth told the demon, the words coming out as a growl, “you would be on your belly begging for my mercy. It would be a useless gesture—nonetheless, I would allow you to continue begging, while writhing in torment so great you would plead for destruction, until such time as I grew tired of your screams of absolute, utter, endless agony.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jim said, turning back to its graphic novel. “Been there, done that, have the ‘My demon lord torments me for fun' T-shirt.”

Magoth puffed himself up until I thought he was going to explode. I considered whether the cleaning bill would be worth the entertainment value to be found therein, but decided against it. “What's the problem, Maata?” I asked instead, shifting my gaze to the woman who stood at the door, watching us with noticeable amusement in her silver eyes.

She held on to a placid expression. “Magoth—”

“Prince of Abaddon Magoth, to you, dragon,” the man in question said. “Or Lord Magoth. Or even, His Unholy Highness Magoth.”

“Magoth,” Maata repeated, “tried to get into the basement.
Again.
”

I raised one eyebrow at the exiled demon lord, former silent-film star, and bearer of a (literally) cursed penis as he stormed around the room in impotent rage. Being born an incredibly handsome man in possession of sultry looks that had women throwing away their better judgments (and sometimes souls) over the centuries, Magoth had no reason to adopt a form other than his natural one. Not, I noted silently to myself, that he could now if he wanted.

“You see how I am treated? This is intolerable, wife! I insist that you lesson this minion! I will not be told by a mere slave what I may or may not do! She threatened me with violence!
Me!
She deserves a lengthy and inventive punishment for daring to treat me in such an insupportable manner!”

“It was my fault. He used my bathroom break to get past me to the entrance of the lair,” Maata said, apology rich in her voice. “He won't do so again.”

“It was the merest of coincidences that I was in the basement at the exact moment the slave was out of the room,” Magoth sniffed, adopting a self-righteous expression that I didn't for one moment buy.

“You sneaked past me when I was in the bathroom,” Maata accused.

“I am a demon lord! I do not sneak!” he said, outraged.

“One,” I said, ticking it off on a finger, “you're no longer a demon lord. At least not technically. Two, Maata is one of Gabriel's elite guards, not a slave, and you will treat her with the respect due her. And three, I'm not your wife, so stop calling me that.”

“You're my consort,” he insisted, his eyes narrowing on me.

“You de-consorted me when you found out you'd been kicked out of Abaddon, remember?”

“I spoke in the heat of the moment. You know full well that I have not conducted divorce proceedings. Until it pleases me to remove you from that position”—he smiled, and I thanked my stars that we weren't in Abaddon, or I might have lost a few bits of my soul to that smile—“or until you die, you will remain my consort.”

“Thank you for that reiteration of demon lord protocol.” Inside me, deep inside my chest, the shard of the dragon heart that I bore stirred, triggered as always by any threat or strong emotion. I clamped down hard on it, practicing the control I'd been working so hard to wield. I smiled at Gabriel's bodyguard. “Thanks, Maata. I'll take care of this.”

“Better you than me,” she answered with a wry smile as she left.

“You want me to rough him up a little?” Jim asked, rising and walking slowly toward Magoth.“I'd go straight for his noogies, but that curse gives me the willies. Ha! Willies! Get it?”

“Go ahead and try,” Magoth said, his eyes glittering with an unholy light.

Jim paused, shooting me a worried look. “You said he doesn't have any powers here, right?”

“He's without about ninety-five percent of his power, yes,” I answered.

Jim froze. “Oh, man! I thought you said
all
of his power was gone!”

“It is. Well, all but about five percent, as best as we can figure.”

“Five percent? Geez, May! We've got to have a little talk about the difference between a demon lord without any power, and one with enough to squash flat a sixth-class demon!”

Magoth smiled again. A little black tendril of power snapped at Jim.

The demon yelped and backed toward the door. “Fires of Abaddon, can't you take a joke? I was just fun ning, Your Imperial Dark and Twisted Majesty. Er . . . I think
Hart to Hart
is on that retro-TV-show channel. You know how I love me some Stefanie Powers. Catch ya later, Your Eminence of Unholy Darkness.”

I gave Magoth my full consideration as the door shut behind Jim. It was true that over the last six weeks while Magoth had lived with us, Gabriel and I had determined that the demon lord had retained only a tiny fraction of his powers, but you don't become a prince of Abaddon without picking up a few tricks.

“You know the basement and areas below are off-limits until the workmen are done, Magoth. We explained that to you when they started building the lair.”

His expression shifted from outrage to sullen discontent. “As the mortals say, you are not the boss of me.”

“Perhaps not, but you are here on sufferance, a fact I am obliged to point out yet again. Irritating Gabriel by attempting to force your way into his lair is going to do nothing but give him due cause to boot your butt out into the street.”

He oiled his way around the desk at which I sat, and trailed a finger up my arm as he moved behind me. I fought the urge to shiver, his touch so cold it leeched the heat from the air around me. “Ah, but you wouldn't allow your scaly boyfriend to do that, would you, my sweet, sweet May?” He brushed a quick, frigid kiss on the back of my neck. Beneath the desk, my hands tightened into fists, pain pricking my palms. I knew without looking that my fingers had changed into long, scarlet talons. The dragon shard urged me to shift, enticing me with mental visions of Magoth lying dead on the floor at my feet.

I was sorely tempted to give in to the shard, but I reminded myself that once I gave myself up to it, there would be no going back. Much as I loved Gabriel, as happy as I was being the mate to a powerful—not to mention witty, urbane, and incredibly sexy—wyvern, I did not want to spend the rest of eternity as a dragon.

“You've been warned about touching me,” I managed to say in a neutral voice. The dragon shard fought hard to dominate me, but I hadn't survived as Magoth's slave for almost a hundred years without learning how to control my emotions.

His cold breath touched my neck for a moment longer before wisdom evidently got the better of him. He pushed aside my laptop and lay on top of the desk in a seductive pose, one hand languidly gesturing toward his body. “You want me.”

“I want Gabriel,” I said, struggling inwardly as the dragon shard once again threatened to overwhelm me.

He smiled again, but this was a smile of seduction, not promised retribution. “Your dragon may satisfy your doppelganger needs, but the animal within you wants me, sweet May. I can feel it.”

“I am not an animal,” I said, my voice taking on a rough tone. I cleared my throat, determined to keep my usual unflappable demeanor with him, no matter how much he provoked me.

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes half-lidded. I recognized the signs—heaven knew I'd been the recipient of his seduction attempts often enough. If I just let him work himself through the worst of it, eventually I'd be able to distract him with some other interesting mental tidbit. Magoth was always attracted by shiny things, be they tangible or intangible.

“Tell me you don't feel it, as well,” he said, his gaze attempting to draw me into the seduction. He didn't have enough power to put a thrall on me—a full-fledged sexual enchantment of sorts—so it was simply a matter of distracting him with a suitably interesting conversational offering.

To my surprise, shock, and utter horror, instead of passing along a benign bit of Abaddon gossip, I found myself leaning forward until my lips brushed his.

The dragon shard swamped me with emotions, hot and foreign, and suddenly out of the confusing mass came a burning desire to mate with him.

“No,” I gasped, shoving myself away from the desk, away from Magoth. Horror crept up my flesh. Never once since I'd met Gabriel had I considered Magoth with anything but loathing and irritation. What was going on that I was now responding to him?

I pulled up a mental picture of the man I loved with all my heart, remembered the warm latte-colored brown skin, the dimples that made my knees go weak, the flash of mercurial silver eyes, the fires he alone stirred in me, making me burn for him.
Only
for him.

I stamped out the tiny little flame that appeared on the floor.

“You see? The beast you bear says yes, sweet one. Give in to it. Let me show you what exquisite pleasure I can bring you.”

I had to force my legs to back up. The need was great in me to take just what he offered, so great it almost had me casting common sense to the wind. “It's not a beast. It's one-fifth of the dragon heart, and it does not rule me. You can stop trying to seduce me, because it simply won't work. And must I remind you what Gabriel said he'd do to you the last time he caught you trying to make love to me?”

“I don't make love. I make ecstasy,” he answered, but his hands twitched protectively toward his groin before he stopped them. “No matter how much you protest, my adorable one, the fact remains that we both know the honeymoon with your dragon is over, and it's me you truly want.” He slid off the desk and stalked toward me.

“Stop trying to get a look at Gabriel's lair, stop getting in Maata's way, and stop trying to seduce me,” I said, backing toward the door. I jerked it open and was through it before he could answer, although the sound of his mocking laughter followed me as I raced down the hall to the stairs that led down to the basement.

Maata was sitting on a chair at the bottom of the stairs, reading a book. She glanced up as I leaped down the last couple of stairs, her eyebrows going up at the sight of my flushed face. Since I was normally a calm, possessed person, I knew she recognized signs that the shard was driving me to distraction.

“Where is he?” I asked.

She knew exactly whom I was talking about. “Examining the lock. They got the door up.”

“Thanks.” I didn't wait to chat, just bolted for the hole that was cut into the cement floor, clattering down the metal ladder set into the wall until I reached the rocky bottom. Lights hung drunkenly from the ceiling, a dank, earthy smell heavy in the air. It wasn't surprising, given that the workmen had just excavated this subterranean lair over the last month, digging deep into the earth to create a series of tomblike passages that ended in a large room where Gabriel would keep his most precious items.

Two guards appeared as I jumped the last few feet to the earth and stone floor. They smiled as I fled past, scattering greetings behind me as I dodged another three silver dragons who were lounging around on various packing crates.

My unseemly haste was cause for amusement, I knew, but none of that mattered at the moment. Gabriel's people—now mine—might be amused by the fact that I couldn't control the dragon shard, but they understood well what drove me.

Another metal ladder down to a lower, almost oppressively deep level, and the entrance of the lair rose before me. The door was metal, such as those found on large bank vaults, ponderously heavy, impervious to explosives and other devices intended to breach its thickness. Three high-tech locks and a retina scanner kept even the most proficient of safecrackers at bay. The spells that would be woven into the door would come later, I knew, ensuring safety from those beings who possessed skills beyond those of the mortal world.

I skidded to a stop at the door, seeing only one dragon present.

“Gabriel?” I asked Tipene, the second of Gabriel's elite guard.

He tipped his head toward the door. “They're testing the security system.”

I considered whether I would be able to last the ten minutes or so it would take before Gabriel and the security experts would emerge. I knew the answer even as I leaned in to allow the retina scanner to examine my eyes before I moved directly in front of the door, my eyes on the lock.

Tipene watched me with interest as I shook out my hands, trying desperately to clear my mind enough so I could “talk” to the lock.

“I've never understood why doppelgangers can do that,” he commented as I laid my hands on the lock, closing my eyes to concentrate.

“I have no idea, either. I'm just grateful I can do it.”

“I don't think you're going to have much luck. This is a MacGyver 512 titanium carbon magnetic electron lock, calibrated on the atomic level. It's absolutely top-of-the-line, not even released to the public yet. I know you can open most locks, but I doubt if even you will be able to get through it, May.”

“We'll see.” I persuaded the lock to open a few of its secrets up to me, probing its depths, noting with interest just how intricate and well made it was. Most locks allowed me to open them with nothing but a token resistance, but this one was different. It didn't respond at all to the usual persuasions, making me resort to brute strength. As I worked my way through the many levels of the lock, I made a mental note to tell Gabriel that there were some cases where overdesign was not to the good.