I sensed someone standing close by, and forced my eyes open. It was Zero-T, looking like hell. He seemed to sway, but that could just have been me. He pointed an accusing finger at my head. “See, that’s what you get—bad karma. Teach you to shoot my car radio.”

  I drew a careful, shallow breath. “That’s so funny. Lean down here a moment … so I can hit you with a brick.”

  He didn’t oblige, tottering over to a chunk of concrete, sitting down. Zero-T’s eyes scanned the wreckage. “I feel like soggy crap served on a shingle.”

  We all did. A lot of water had slammed through like Godzilla escaping detox. I had no idea where the tsunami came from, or where it went. It had smelled of brine and now we all did. Damn Atlantean magic. Quite the party trick. I’ve only seen the Old Man use that much power. This Lauramus is definitely his kid. Well, it will be a first. I’ve never killed a brother before.

  Zero-T rummaged through his clothing and eventually pulled out the Atlantean crystal I’d used on him earlier. Sliver in hand, he staggered toward the most damaged of his men.

  A squadron of witches on their brooms dropped out of the night sky. These were old school, and old besides. They reeked of the black magic that had added centuries to their lives. I saw their eyes shining with lust over the fresh blood still seeping out of our troops, but they were professional enough, administering first-aid, setting up a magic barrier that would hide us and keep the curious away while we retreated. Which we did. Stabilized, our demons would be return to the clan house where we had our own medical personnel on call.

  One of the witches stopped beside me. Her black eyes stared out of a beautiful face. Her skin was flawless; her red lips an invitation to sin. She smiled, her hand caressing my arm where the tattered sleeve allowed the dragon-blood tattoos to be seen. She leaned in, acting as if she could smell the scent of my magic.

  “Nice,” she said. “Who does your ink?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Esmeralda.” She nodded toward the rest of the witches. “These are my girls.”

  To use the term loosely.

  I asked, “Are you going to be able to fix this?” I stared at the damaged museum.

  She followed my glance. “Help is coming, but there’s a lot here to clean up. Better, I think, to lay the blame on terrorists, and charm the damage so nothing magical is noticed. We’ve got a hellhound canine unit coming in to find all the supernatural bodies. Can’t leave those behind.”

  She was still stroking my arm.

  I looked at her hand. “I charge for the privilege of touching. By the minute.”

  She laughed and strolled away, giving her hips a little extra roll like she knew I’d be watching. I was, but I didn’t intend to go there. It’s not that I had anything against milfs. I’d done my share of Mothers-I’d-Like-to-Fuck, but you sleep with a witch who’s gone to the darkside and you risk waking up without a soul or body parts, if you wake up at all.

  I was feeling better. My dragon blood was helping my human side to heal a good deal quicker. I figured I’d give it a few more minutes, and see if I could limp to Zero-T’s convertible Volvo. Meanwhile, I had a lot of mean built up. Might as well use some of it. I snapped my fingers, sending out a mental summons: Quig!

  A teal green ball of light came shooting in, pausing in front of me, wobbling slightly. You called?

  I smiled the way a cobra might seeing a mouse scurry by. “I seem to recall sending you off to scout for ambushes. Funny thing about that, we got ambushed—jumped—several times, and no sign of you anywhere.” I stopped smiling, letting death hang in my eyes. “Why do you suppose that is?”

  I thought the plasmic ball of light might have reversed poles, inverting, but I wasn’t sure. Quig said, I did exactly as you said. You wanted the enemy scouted. I did.

  He fell silent, waiting for me to send him away.

  I nodded. He was right. He’d done exactly what I’d asked. It was my own fault for not specifying that he come back with the information. Still, the little bastard knew what I’d wanted. He’d have to deal with my displeasure, justified or not.

  I continued my silent stare. Seconds passed, then a minute. Time was stretching out like it did when you paid it attention. I did nothing to break the tension in the air, imagining all manner of ways to injure a magical entity without letting it escape into dissolution. Killing Quig wouldn’t just lose me his services, but that of the rest of his kind—a breach of contract.

  Finally, he broke. Uh, if there’s nothing else, I really ought to—

  I warmed the tattoo that let me summon my demon sword to hand. The straight katana materialized, filling my grip. A haze of demon-red light shimmered along its length. The fierce hunger of the blade uncoiled in my mind. I kept my eyes on Quig, and spoke in a mild, conversational tone. “I want you to stay exactly where you are until I’m done with you.”

  What, what are you going to do?

  “With my sword? I see you’ve noticed it.”

  I noticed that the emergency sirens were growing fainter. The vehicles had been magically diverted. Esmeralda was on the job. Zero-T’s troops, those mostly functional, were helping the rest to evacuate. Josie and her team had arrived as well. They were helping out, but none of them turned their backs on the black witches.

  I turned my attention back to Quig. “My sword is salivating. He hungers for souls—and magical energies—the way a coke whore needs a fix. You’d make a very tasty morsel for him.”

  My demon blade thrust its thoughts into the conversation. Yes, excellent idea. Feed me!

  You won’t do that. Edged with fear, Quig’s thought lacked certainty. I’m a valuable resource. And if you kill me, you lose the services of all of us.

  “Well, now, you have a point. But I can feed quite a lot of you to my sword without actually killing you. Think of it as slimming down to more obedient size.”

  Quig vibrated with horror. No!

  My sword howled in triumph. Yessss!

  Quig pulsed in distress. I’ll be good, I promise. You don’t have to do this.

  I sent the sword back to my armory, its snarl of rage fading from my mind. “Fine, as long as you understand—next time, there will be no reprieve.”

  NINTEEN

  “Ice cream only buys twenty minutes of

  forgiveness from a hostile bitch—I’ve timed it.”

  —Caine Deathwalker

  I tried not to move my head too much. I had the mother of all headaches and single images were trying to divide into two. Feeling like century-old crap warmed up on a hot plate, I leaned against Zero-T’s Volvo and used a borrowed phone to call Izumi. She picked up on the second ring. “I’m hurt,” I admitted. “Can you come to me?”

  “On my way.” She hung up.

  I did the same. I handed the phone back to Imari. “Thanks.”

  She took it from my hand and muttered a mystic word. The phone popped off to some private pocket dimension she used for makeup, credit cards, and whatnot. She continued to stand right in front of me, hand on hips, waiting with a what-now expression on her face. Kona had been found, a lump on his head from a chunk of wall that had knocked him out. He stood off a ways, glaring around ferociously, hoping some enemy might return to mess with him.

  I offered an explanation. “I’m seriously injured. All that’s holding me together is some magical first aid. I need to return to full strength quickly if we’ve a hope of winning this war—especially with what we’re up against. There’s only one way I can do that; I have to have Izumi take me over to Fairy, to the land I bonded with. Tell the Old Man I’ll be back when I’m healed, and tell him we need to have a serious conversation. His skeletons are out of the closet and dancing up an apocalypse.”

  Kona grunted from ten feet away, his demon hearing picking up every word. “Been a while since I’ve been to one of those.”

  Imari’s eyes burned holes in the air. “We’ll stay with you until the fey bitch comes.”

  There was no love lost between fey and demon kind, but it was going to get worse. Fire types and ice types have a natural antipathy for one another. Izumi and Imari were going to hate each other on sight. I sighed. “I don’t have the energy to referee, so behave. Also, you should know one thing.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I don’t have the strength to look away from your excellent tits, so if you don’t want me to stare, you should go join Kona.”

  She spoke heatedly, but didn’t move. “You’re a bastard.”

  “Actually no. I may not know my sperm donor, but I have one. Somewhere.”

  She didn’t bother to cover her assets. I continued to stare and didn’t spontaneously combust. That’s when I knew my animal charisma was bending her to my will. Note to self: buy a flame-proof bed for future recreational activities.

  I was done eyeing her breasts, my gaze sliding lower, when a magical portal opened up behind Imari, throwing her shadow all over me. The oval of ice-blue light dropped the surrounding temperature thirty degrees. Orange-gold flames ignited, clinging to Imari like a shroud. She turned as Izumi stepped out of the portal. They studied each other in silence. Snowflakes swirled between them. The flakes hissed into steam as they neared the fire demon. Imari angled herself to see me and Izumi at once, backing out from between us so a triangle was created.

  Imari slanted me a glance from her new position. “So that’s your type, huh?”

  “Actually,” I said, “variety is necessary for a healthy sex life. Maybe we could have a threesome sometime.”

  “Ask Kona,” Imari said. “I’ll be busy that night.”

  Staring at Izumi in her jeans and tight pink top, Kona actually looked hopeful.

  Izumi pointed her pert nose into the air, pointedly ignoring the fire demons as she marched over and grabbed my hand. “C’mon, let’s go before your cock digs your grave.”

  “That’s not one of its special abilities,” I said.

  Izumi’s voice cut like hard frost, “Shut up.” She jerked me toward the waiting portal.

  The sudden motion caused my cracked ribs to burn. I clamped down on a hiss of pain, not letting it escape my throat, hiding such weakness. “Take me to my lands in Fairy.”

  She looked at me over her shoulder, but didn’t say a word. The portal’s cold light blotted her out, swallowed my hand, arm, and then the rest of me. Gravity fluttered. I felt a moment of falling, then a snapping into place where gravity was once more strong in resolve. The oval of silver-blue light we’d come through vanished a moment later.

  I looked around. This was not my tree-top mansion in the heart of the golden grasslands. Mountains loomed, all purple black with edges graced by a huge silver moon. We were in a narrow valley. And it was cold—not that Izumi noticed. Yet this was my land. I felt its attention, an eagerness to please. The rocks around me softened, losing sharp edges that might have accidentally cut me. A trail of white gravel appeared. The air warmed. Several large boulders became encrusted with honeysuckle, sweetening the air. White moths—the size of my hand— fluttered out of the starry sky as if moonlight had been given living shape, retaining its luminescence. My fey kingdom was part of my harem, a lover who’d prepared herself to greet me.

  Izumi drew in a slow breath of wonder. “This is so beautiful.”

  “Yeah, but why bring us here? My mansion has a lot more creature comforts, and I’m not really up to a wilderness jaunt.”

  She said, “With you here, backing me up, the land will form what I want. We’ve been needing an outpost where travelers skirting your lands can be received.”

  “What you mean is, you don’t want to spend days in the saddle, visiting me from your mother’s kingdom. Your portals take you in and out of Fairy just fine, but are less reliable getting you through other people’s domains.”

  She shrugged. “I just thought we could kill two birds with one brick. C’mon.” She took my hand and we walked along the white gravel. “If you desire it, there will be a mountain lake around some bend, and a stone keep built into a mountain side. Capping the central building, there will be a peaked roof with red-clay tiles, and chimneys with wood smoke winding up like lazy dragons. Regularly spaced out, we passed more of the honeysuckle-wrapped boulders with glowing moths for lighting.”

  Something about being here was making my aches a distant thing. My breathing was growing easier, and fresh strength seeped into me with every step as if the mountains were sharing their endurance.

  I could smell smoke in the air, and the path did curve around an unexpected grove of wild shrubs that bore bruise-colored fruit. The baby trees were gray barked with saw-toothed leaves resembling miniature spear points. Seeing my interest, Izumi named the type of orchard, “Choke cherries. Good for making jams and wine. They do well in the mountain cold.”

  We rounded several more trees, where the gravel fused into a white road that stretched into a tunnel. Heavy, crisscrossing portcullises were raised at both ends, the only way past a heavy wall of polished granite. I looked up over the wall to see various buildings and their rooftops. They were mostly as I’d envisioned. An unexpected touch was pale blue glass in narrow windows. Light beamed out through them. I wondered at the source of the lighting inside.

  “Impressive,” I said. “The land is just letting you put all this here?”

  “She knows this is all for you. That makes her happy.”

  “As long as there is indoor plumbing, food, booze, and a king-sized bed, I’ll be happy too.”

  Izumi tugged me into the tunnel. “I doubt you will be disappointed.”

  “I’d better not be. That would set too dangerous a precedent.”

  There were torches inside the tunnel, and more lining an inner courtyard. Off to the left were stables. They were silent, dark, waiting to be used. I walked toward the double doors of what I figured was the main hall. The doors were fourteen feet, oak, and finished with black, silver hinges and latches. The doors opened as Izumi and I arrived.

  “It is good to be king,” I said.

  What wasn’t so good was that my land was uninhabited: there were no peasants to work the fields, no soldiers ready to ravage my enemies and protect my property, no servants to cater to my every whim. Our footsteps were distinct in the stillness of the hall, echoing back to us as if the sound didn’t want to venture too far.

  The flagstones underfoot were blue-gray octagons with square emeralds filling the gaps. The surrounding walls were striped with banners, those on the right showing the same gold dragon silhouette flying against a black field. The banners on the left were midnight blue with a large silver-blue snowflake on each. Between the hangings were silver-crafted stands made to resemble saplings. A nocturnal vine used the branches for support. The flowers were pale gold, spilling radiance in little pockets. A fire pit in the center of the chamber provided warmth and an orange light, a ten foot copper hood suspended over it to catch smoke and pipe it up and away.

  We skirted the pit and passed a dais with a pair of midnight blue thrones. The taller one had a high back, its upper half carved into a flattened dragon with a topaz eye. The smaller throne had no dragon on its back, but an oversized snowflake rendered in fine, crystalline detail.

  “Making yourself queen?” I said.

  “Someone’s gotta do it. Besides, my mom may come here with an escort to visit. It will give me leverage if I’m not just another of your whores.”

  We reached a back wall with an arch into a hub. Straight on was a kitchen. Left and right hallways led to other places I’d like to explore, once I’d rested.

  “Enough walking. I want to lay down a while.”

  “There’s an indoor garden this way.” Izumi led the way to the right. “Or, there will be once we get there. Lush, warm grass will cradle you where fountains murmur and flowers scent the air.”

  “Soothing. Maybe too soothing. Fair warning,” I said. “If you intend to jump my bones, you’ll have to do all the work.”

  “Fine, but if you fall asleep on me, I’ll kill you.”

  I crossed my fingers behind my back. “That’s only fair.”

  I was recovering from being ridden to distraction, and from a severe tongue lashing—the kind a man gets off on. Sated, Izumi nestled against me. Her clothes were tossed over by a terraced bank of white roses where more of the glowing moths chased their own light in zigzag flight. We were in a glass chamber with a vaulted glass ceiling, attached to the Great Hall.

  I could feel the joy of the land seeping into me from the grass. Closing my eyes, I pushed my awareness into the earth. There were currents of magic in the land, and very deep, I felt a vibration—like a human heart beating—where part of me was tangled with my domain. This was the tie of my ownership, my claim.

  It felt like I’d been loosed from my body and had grown a web of nerves that extended like roots for miles. Somewhere, my desire would find what I wanted. Ah, there! Come to me. I felt the land respond, a small piece of it swimming through dirt and rock to answer me.

  Up through the grass, a sliver of hardness pushed into my hand. I pulled it near my eyes, opening them to see what I held. It was a crystal tear, yellow, throbbing with the magic of the land and my own pattern of energies. In a real sense, this was a small piece of me.

  Izumi rolled against me. Her hand brushed the spot over my heart. Her cold breath brushed my face. She asked, “What is that?”

  I handed it to her. “Keep this on you and guard it with your life. When we’re back in the clan house, you will be recognized by the house as me. You will be able to use glamour and cover for me when I’m out. This will color your own magic so the House shouldn’t interfere with your fey powers unless the Old Man directly intervenes.”

  “All that from a little stone?”

  “As King Arthur once said, ‘I am the land, and the land is me.’ Because so many of my clan members hate me, the Old Man made sure I could use all of my magic, all the time. The demons are used to feeling my magic in me. If you couldn’t put out the same vibe, they’d see through your glamour.”