Demon Lord 3: Blue Star Priestess (6 page)

SIX

“Vampire Princesses play well with others;

much like a werewolf and the slow kid down

the street.  I hear the funeral was nice.”

                                      —
Caine Deathwalker

We stopped in the middle of the street.  Parking was just around the corner, but the scene in front of The Velvet Door demanded our attention.   Two twenty-five foot pythons were using their coils to crush patrons who’d been leaving the bar.  The snakes’ olive-brown and black scales marked them as rock pythons, and from the dissolving lump in the middle of one of them, I could tell it had just swallowed someone it disagreed with.  A few guns were lying on the sidewalk, in pools of blood.  Wild shots had scored the brickwork and the front door.  The doorman Claude—with a face even a mother would loathe—was down on his knees, a hand clamped against a bloody shoulder.

“Chiirist on a rubber raft!” Claude said.  “Naga!”

Yeah, the mountain giant’s buddies had joined the party.  The invasion of L.A.’s preternatural community was on.  I wondered where else they were hitting.

Zero-T got out from behind the wheel and gently closed his door.  One hand on the side wall of the Volvo C-70, I sprang out and landed on the street, my phone chiming.  I answered while Zero-T pulled out a Magnum, sighting on the closest snake.

I spoke into my phone.  “Yeah?”

Gloria’s dead-flat voice spilled out.  “Caine, where are you?”

“Outside.”

“Good.  Stay out of the way.  I’m coming out.”

“Fine.” 

There had been icy anger in her voice.  This place was a neutral territory where violence was forbidden.  The naga might have thought they were trashing some bar, but they were messing with hell in heels.   As a
pure blood
—vampire royalty—I wasn’t surprised to find her active; she could function in daylight like a dhampyr, when other vamps were coffin-bound.   Master vamps and pure bloods were like that.

I put away my
phone and leaned back against the Volvo, waving to get Zero-T’s attention. 

Ignoring me, he lay across the hood of his car, bracing his gun in a two-handed grip.  He squeezed off a shot, and a snake’s eye exploded.  The naga uncoiled, flinging away several crushed bodies.  One of the corpses slammed into a parked car and set off the annoying hoot of a car alarm. The wounded naga thrashed then stilled as the eye restored itself.  I’d known werewolves could do that, but not naga.

I called out, “Hold your fire.  Gloria’s coming.  Shoot her by accident, and she’ll rip your head off and stuff it up your ass.  You’ll walk funny the rest of your life.”

Zero-T slanted me a look, holstered his gun, and pushed off the car, coming around the front grille to join me.  He leaned against the vehicle as I did and he crossed his arms to match my posture.  The bar door opened slowly.  Gloria emerged, five-foot-four, a hundred and fifteen pounds of well-disguised cold-hearted terror.  Her eyes were flame red.  Her black hair—streaked with pink highlights—was tied at the nape of her neck. 

Her usual glamorous gown was gone.  She’d doubtless not wanted it ruined with blood and gore.  Also, the long skirts she favored would have hindered movement.  She’d improvised a new outfit: two bar aprons, one covering her front, the other her back, all tied snuggly to her generous curves.  Her arms and legs were bare.  She’d abandoned her heels as well.   With only one hand, she gripped the hilt of a two-handed broadsword that had been carved as one piece from a massive fang.  Its white tip dragged across the threshold of the door as she strolled toward the naga.

Claude took the opportunity to run inside the bar.  He was going to miss a hell of a show.

“Oh, man, I’m in love!” Zero-T said.

“Claude?  I could put in a good word for you.”

He glared at me.  “No, the warrior babe in the aprons.  Do you think she’s the type to wear thong panties?”

I shrugged.  “If she jumps into the air, we’ll find out.”

Gloria pierced my skull with a knife-sharp glare.  With her vampire hearing, she’d heard every word, including my heartbeat, and the sound of blood rushing to my groin.  It was hard not to get a hard-on around her.  I didn’t hide my attraction, though I didn’t act on it.  Our friendship didn’t need that kind of strain, and, at twenty-five hundred years old, she was way past unnecessary complications too—especially since her vampire son hated my guts and wanted me dead for a lot of good reasons.  

The naga had seized up, eyes darkening, their total attention on Gloria.  Nagas had been worshiped by African natives as gods for centuries.  As shape shifters, they were powerful.  Still, they had the instincts of their reptile nature, and that nature had to feel fear, though they couldn’t have known what they faced, or they wouldn’t have hit the bar in the first place.

The monster python—that had just regrown its eye—swayed back, betraying its intention to lunge.  The other snake didn’t make that mistake, pushing forward without any tell-tale sign. 

Gloria didn’t seem to jump, but she did disappear from the sidewalk and reappear above the head of the closest snake.  The bone sword in her hand became a white blur.  When the sword stopped, there was a red smear across its length.  Blood splattered the sidewalk under the snake as its triangular head bounced off into the gutter.

The second snake was in mid-lunge, hissing, mouth open wide, fold-out fangs like white sabers.  That was where these python diverged from natural ones.  Pythons had back-pointing, serrated teeth, but weren’t supposed to have poisonous fangs.   I’d never heard this about naga.  Then again, I remembered the mountain giant I’d killed had had some dental improvements too.

Gloria moved along the side of the second naga, slashing her blade horizontally into its mouth.  She became a blur, racing to its tail.  By the time she stopped, the snake was filleted into top and bottom halves.  The naga twitched and flailed weakly while their bodies figured out that they were dead.

I looked at Zero-T.  “So, did you see her panties?”

He didn’t answer.  He was staring up into the air.  He straightened and pulled out his Magnum.  “Incoming!” he shouted.

I looked up and saw two harpies in a power dive.  From the waist up they were women, until you got to the bird heads with wickedly curved beaks.  Their D-cup tits had rouged nipples, proudly displayed.  From the shoulders down, arms were replaced with wings.  They had the lower bodies of giant hawks, reddish brown feathers, and cruel talons for feet.  Tail feathers and wings were fanned for descending glide paths that were locked onto Gloria.  They saved their piercing screams for the last ten feet of the dive.

Not that Gloria hadn’t heard them coming.  Fliers that big don’t move silently, at least not for creatures with good hearing.

I put my hand on Zero-T’s gun and directed the muzzle down.

Gloria went from a deep crouch to a jump, doing that momentary vanishing thing she does.  She materialized amid the harpies, spinning like a top, her fang sword slashing.  She continued up, slowing, and hung in space a moment in defiance of gravity.

Pieces of harpy rained to the sidewalk and street.

I didn’t see why Gloria had ditched her good clothes; as far as I could tell, there wasn’t a spot of blood on her.  That changed as she floated to the ground, her feet settling onto a crimson slick. 

She looked over at me.   “Caine, would you mind?”

I already had my phone out, hitting a number I kept on speed-dial. 

The connection opened.  A voice in my ear said, “Arcane Janitorial Services.  How may I help you?”

“Hi, Josie, it’s Caine.”

“Oh, God, how high is the body count this time?”

“Not my mess, for a change.  Send a team to the Velvet Door.  We got harpies, naga, and a few dead patrons outside.  Send Gloria the bill.”

“T-that’s not necessary.  We’d be happy to assist her in any way possible—on the house.  Tell her we’re on our way.”

“Sure.”  I frowned.  “Hey, how come I don’t get free service?”

“You’re not Gloria.” 

Damn.
  “I’m not less of a presence in the occult underground.  She just has a better publicist.”

Josie hung up on me.

Bitch.

I put my phone away, and noticed that half a dozen cars were stopped behind the Volvo.   Several drivers had gotten out.  One them—a burly, lumberjack-looking fellow with a red beard and a white plaid, quilted shirt—stood by our bumper.  I didn’t worry about what the normals were seeing.  This would all “magically” vanish soon, and their spell-wiped minds would forget anything strange had ever occurred here.  The magic-users I’d called would see to that.

“Hey, Zero?” I said.

“That’s Zero-T.  What do you want?”

“Better move your car to the side parking lot.  We’re blocking traffic.”

“Oh, sure.”  He went around and got in behind the wheel.  In moments, the car was easing ahead, and rounding the corner.

I stepped over various parts of a supernatural critter and joined Gloria, standing just outside the blood pool brushing her toes in.  “The next best thing to drinking blood is to bathe in it,” she said.  “Too bad it’s all naga blood.  That stuff isn’t fit for ghouls.”

“Maybe next time we can get you something else,” I said.  “The invasion is just getting started.”

There was a whump of displaced air, and a knot of wizards and witches popped into view.  They wore the usual color-coded robes displaying their orientations: dark magic, white magic, and twilight-gray for neutral.  One of them was paisley blue and green, a chaotic.

Josie wore jet black and had a wizard’s pointed hat adorned with silver stars.  She carried a peeled willow wand, taking in the scene with a brisk sweep of her eyes.  She nodded decisively and spoke to her team.  “I’ll deal with the witnesses.  The rest of you know your jobs.”

They hustled, slinging spells around before the cops showed up, or the neighborhood watch.  The chaotic filled in the bullet holes with magical tofu paste that took on the characteristics of the surrounding material it patched.  Elsewhere, a cute blonde—Tiffany, I think—morphed the blood and gore into red, soft plastic, then went around rolling it up for easy transport elsewhere. 

Gloria shook her sword and red confetti dropped off it.  She stepped out of the pool and I noticed none of the blood clung to her feet.

Soon, the drivers were all back in their cars, heading away, glassy-eyed expressions on their faces.  Vikki, a white-robe, used mage-fire to incinerate body parts.  The passing of her magic flame didn’t so much as scorch the sidewalk. 

Zero-T got back as the clean-up crew finished.  He nodded.  “Nice work.”

“We’re the best.”  The lady in the black robe came over, wand in hand carefully pointed at the sidewalk so as not to give offense.   She bowed at Gloria, straightened, making a point of not looking the master vamp in the eyes.  “It has been our pleasure to serve one so illustrious.”

Gloria—looking all the world like a hot, edgy seventeen-year old—smiled vacuously, the glow of her eyes ebbing to a dull, ember red.   “Who?  Me?”

The mage bowed once more and backed away, her eyes flashing covetously at the bone sword.  Gathered with her crew, they vanished in another whump of air.

“So,” I studied the carved blade, “what is it with that sword?”

She turned her smile on me. 

I kept my gaze on the sword. 

“It was a gift from a one-time admirer.”  She adjusted the front apron she was wearing, smoothing out the wrinkles around her breasts.  The motion captured my attention and Zero-T’s. 

“Made from a giant fang,” I said.  “Whose?”

She smiled sweetly.  “Jörmungandr’s.”

Zero-T’s eyes bugged out.  “The midgard serpent?”

Gloria shrugged.  “One of his baby teeth before he grew big enough to circle the world.”

“Who’d give you a thing like that?” Zero-T asked.

Gloria arched an eyebrow.  “And who would be asking?”

Not meeting her eyes, Zero-T gave her an Old World, formal bow.  Back up again, he held out his hand so she could see the ring. 

“You’re with Lauphram’s clan?” she said.

He nodded.  “I’m on bodyguard duty.”

“Not that it’s needed,” I said.

Gloria was no longer breathing.  Distracted by her thoughts, she’d forgotten to maintain the illusion of life by keeping her heart going.  Her sword was now balanced across one of her bare, shapely shoulders.   “So, you weren’t kidding about an invasion.  How bad do you think it will be?”

It was my turn to shrug.  “I’m just planning on having fun.  I don’t really concern myself with the suffering of others.”

What we care about will always be used against us.

Zero-T glowered.  “And you’re supposed to one day lead our clan?”