bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled (22 page)

Inch by inch it moved toward me, the putrid smelling mouth gaping open with nothing but that evil looking tongue and black, stinky air to fill it. The tongue lapped at the air around the mouth, swinging back and forth and spraying globlets of gore as it danced on the thick, fetid air draining from the thing like an open sore.

I gagged as a wall of the stuff hit me full in the face and gave a mental jump. Tears ran from my stinging eyes as the thing reached the table between us and bumped it as if it hadn’t realized the furniture was there.

The creature stopped and seemed to be thinking, but I figured that was probably a skill it didn’t have. Then slowly, almost tentatively, it tried to move forward again and bumped the table, a little harder the second time. The table crashed into me, hitting me just under my breasts and rearranging my ribs just a wee, damn bit.

At no time since I’d become immobile had I wished to be able to scream more than when that table remade the physical geography of my ribs. Although I couldn’t move or scream under the incredible pain, my breathing was coming in quick, sharp, painful jabs and my fingers had found a way to spasm.

An obvious improvement.

Apparently pain could override whatever was holding me hostage inside my body. I wondered briefly what else would have that effect. I didn’t have a lot of time to wonder because the thing shoved its wandering column of ions into the table again and my ribs collapsed inward with a huge cracking sound. My chair flew backward on its small efficient wheels and rolled to a reluctant stop several feet away from the table.

I was pretty sure one of the jagged ends of my ribs had pierced a lung. Tears of pain filled my eyes and my hands flailed around on the arms of the chair. Closing my eyes, I tried to breathe through the knife-like ripples of pain in my chest. I realized that another hit on my ribs would probably finish me off.

I couldn’t, of course, let that happen. Opening my eyes, I realized that the monster was still pushing against the table, which was moving toward me at an alarming rate. Without being able to move my head, it was hard to figure out exactly where I was in the room, but I thought I was probably not too far from the door to my sleeping quarters. If I could just get through that door, at least the table wouldn’t be able to reach me. What I was gonna do then was a problem for another moment. One problem at a time, that was my mantra. I’d just figured out that mantra but it was going to be my guiding chant from that moment on.

Now. How to get to the door? The table had moved to within a few inches of me when I realized what I’d have to do. If pain would loosen my rigid limbs, then pain I would have to inflict. I took the biggest breath I could manage and my chest exploded with agony. I was sure I felt another rib surging through the tender wall of my right lung and then an even deeper, darker pain rode into town on the heels of the first shock of exquisite agony. That was when I realized an even more important organ might have taken a hit.

A fire-tipped arrow might as well have been poking through the throbbing wall of my heart. My legs went completely numb under a wave of pain and my whole body became instantly drenched with a cold, unhealthy sweat. It almost made me forget what I was trying to do. In fact, I heard the scraping rumble of the table moving toward me and even felt the treacherous edge of it brush against my flesh before my newly loosened feet managed to jab against the floor and propel me backward, through the door of my sleeping quarters.

The table hit the door as the rolling chair hit my bed and I toppled backward. I bounced off the bed and was propelled toward the floor between the bed and the wall. As my head hit the floor with a resounding bang, my chest caught fire again. It was finally enough. I let out a scream of rage and pain that surprised even me. And then I lay in a panting, pain-racked, pile on the floor. Wishing the cursed thing would just put me out of my damn misery.

The only good thing, I finally realized, was that my body seemed to have broken completely free of whatever force had been binding it. I could move my arms and legs and, if I hadn’t been squashed between the hard, unmoving platform of the bed and the equally hard, unmoving surface of the wall, I could have turned my head.

Breathing was a nightmare and movement was an even worse torture, but I was working under my own steam again. Life was as good as it was gonna get for a while.

I heard the electrical monster slamming against the table and pulled myself up painfully, with much cursing and panting, to look over the bed at the door. I was surprised to see that it had changed form again, becoming shorter and more square as it tried to muscle past the dense, heavy imitation wood of the table. My information unit was now resting on its side just inside the doorway, smoking and sparking indignantly. I knew how it felt.

Just as I managed to push myself to my feet, the hideous electrical thing broke through the table with a roar and then just disappeared. For a moment I thought it was really gone. Then the hairs on my arms jumped to attention and my ears picked up the low, keening moan which I remembered from my office experience.

Life was decidedly less good.

Moving as quickly as I could, I dropped to my knees and crawled along the wall toward the door. When I hit the end of the bed I looked around for something else to shield me. If the thing had trouble dealing with physical obstacles, I would give it as many of those as I could. The door into the personal hygiene room stood ajar. I quickly crawled inside and slammed the door, locking it and praying the thing wouldn’t make too quick a job of bashing through it to get to me. My eyes flew around the room looking for a weapon. I couldn’t see anything that the freak of nature on the other side of my door wouldn’t view either as surmountable or edible. Finally my eyes landed on the flat, black box that hung from the far wall just beside the shower unit and I gave a shout of triumph. That was when the thing on the other side of the door decided it was time to intrude on my personal hygiene. The door exploded inward, nearly blowing me to the back wall. My body crashed against the wall. My head split open from the impact. As I slid to the floor blood, hot and sticky, gushed down my face, nearly blinding me.

The force, invisible again, bashed into me and I grabbed the cross hanging from a chain around my neck and held it out. It had worked before, maybe it would work again, just long enough to hold the thing off until I could reach that black box. As extra insurance I tried to throw up my shields and managed to put up a weak resistance that was fed by the power of the manically vibrating cross.

When the monster came up against my shield and the platinum cross, a howl of sheer rage filled the room and the thing took shape again before my stunned eyes. It stood a mere five feet away, its mouth still gaping open, the tongue flailing frantically through the air, spewing goo around the room as it tried to find a vulnerability in my shield. Fortunately for me the shield held just long enough for me to swipe an arm across my eyes to clear the blood so I could see and then reach with one hand to flip open the black box on the wall.

Just as the disgusting creature moved in, pushing against my shield and ripping it apart, I slammed the palm of my hand against the power bar at the top of the board and pushed it to two hundred percent power, a level that was never meant to be used on the interior circuits.

The room erupted in sound and spark as a jolt of pure, unadulterated nuclear powered electricity tore through the walls and sent every electrical thing within a one block radius of my living quarters into overload. There was a second of hesitation in the circuits, while the lights wavered and my appliances spit and danced against the flood of electrical juice and then everything went black and silent as the power source shut down in self-defense.

The slavering, gaping, electrically charged conglomeration of trapped spirits that hung over me gave one final shriek and dissipated in a shower of sparks.

It was gone. Hopefully, for good.

Sliding to the floor, I dropped the arm that had been holding the cross, laughing in giddy relief as I rubbed my throbbing shoulder. “Take that you ionic asshole.” I felt pretty good for about ten seconds and then a jolt of hot pain helped me remember my mangled interior parts. “Shit, I think a pain killer might be in order.” It would have to be a damn frunkin’ big one.

CHAPTER TWENTY

...and Into the Fire

The maiden’s friends did beg her flee and find a kinder plight,

But the devil came and made her plea, for further dark delights.

The doctor at the Unplanned Care Unit, accustomed to seeing me all beaten up and looking like I’d gone twelve rounds with a demon, which usually I had, simply shook his head, pushed my ribs ruthlessly back into the shape God had originally intended them to be and guided me into the bone mending pod to set them. After a mere twenty minutes of ultrasonic mending treatment, my ravaged ribs were at least well on their way to regaining their former healthy state.

I watched quietly from my seat on the healing table, as a cranky, overworked medical care assistant keyed in a terse scrip for follow up marrow building drugs. Trying valiantly to ignore the woman’s foul mood, I looked around the Unplanned Care unit, swinging my legs and clicking the metal heels of my boots together like the innocent I’ve never been. I bit my tongue as the harried, unpleasant woman pushed the send button on the hand-held scrip unit and centered her glare between my eyes. “Dissolve two of these on your tongue twice a day for a week. And try to stay out of trouble long enough to let your poor body heal this time, Astra.”

I gave her my brightest smile but she was having none of it. Jumping down off the table I leaned to kiss my sister on her pale, cool cheek. “I could have healed the ribs myself but I’m sure you’d rather I came to you.”

Darma’s scowl deepened and she flung her hands over her ears. She looked so petulant I half expected her to stomp a foot with temper. “Don’t even tell me that. You know how I feel about all that magic shit.”

Boy did I. Older than me by five years, Darma had always tried to mother and boss me. Since our real mother had led a busy and secretive life, which apparently hadn’t been entirely compatible with her role as a mother, Darma’s inclination toward mothering had worked out fine for everybody but me. She’d always felt it was within her rights to tell me how to live my life. And she’d always been dead set against the way I make my living.

Darma’s the sturdy, serious, dependable daughter. I’m the hot headed, passionate and borderline psychotic spawn. I’m the dark side of a pairing between a devil and an angel. Darma is the cranky and all too serious, but light side. She has no powers and, with her size nine feet resolutely planted on terra firma, she appears to have a severe allergy to all things unearthly and magical. I think she must have been adopted, but my parents won’t admit it.

She pulled her hands off her ears and her scowl softened as she reached to push an errant strand of auburn hair off my cheek. “Besides, all I really want is for you to get a new line of work. All of this devil and demon shit is way not good for your health—mental or physical.”

I nodded agreeably. I mean, I’d have to be an idiot to disagree with her. What she said was true. But there was no way in Hades I was gonna do anything about it. Like Popeye of the ancient human cartoons, I yam who I yam.

I gave Darma a hug and left the Unplanned Care facility. Since the facility was built on a pedestal platform high in the Angel City sky, I climbed into the floating walkway tube and programmed the level and location of my hovering Viper into the tube’s directional panel. The tube pulled away from the facility on an accordion-like appendage and moved slowly through space toward where the Viper drifted in parking space. The mouth of the tube locked on above the Viper’s air hatch and I waited for it to suction onto the Viper’s exterior before ordering the hatch to open. As I dropped into the Viper’s cool, fragrant, leather interior, I sighed, laying my head back against the self-molding seat as I fought the guilty feelings which always nudged my happiness aside after spending any time at all with my sister.

I had no doubt that Darma meant well and she really did love me. However, her idea of real life and mine are vastly different, which makes her just so much kindling in the fire of my life. Like my human friends, I had to keep my seriously earth-bound sister away from my world as much as possible. It was for her own good.

Sighing again, I said, “Office. Accepted speed.” The Viper spun a one eighty degree turn and nosed its way into the solid stream of traffic flowing through the city’s upper level. Letting the vehicle’s intelligent nav system guide us to our destination, I stared off into space, wishing things could be simpler. I had no idea how I was going to untangle the sour knot my life had become. On the heels of that thought, one of the larger bumps in that knot decided to make an uninvited appearance.

Dialle shimmered into the seat next to me and set his smoldering gaze over my startled one. “Are you feeling better, lovely Astra?”

I glared at him, feeling my blood pressure rise to platinum level. “No thanks to you and your disgusting pet, Dialle.”

He tried to look shocked and innocent but, like me, he doesn’t do innocent well. “I had nothing to do with the Agar’s appearance in your home, Astra.”

Why did I hear a disclaimer in that response?

I turned in my seat and scowled harder at his wretched, but incredibly good looking face. “Are you going to try to deny that the thing is tied to your court?”

He continued to stare at me, the ghost of a smile on his face.

“I sensed it that day you had me dragged in front of your court, Your Highness, I know its strings are attached to you.”

He sighed and for just the merest flicker of time, his midnight eyes shaded into something that looked like worry and regret. “I cannot deny my court has an Agar, both Devil Courts have them, but I was not responsible for sending it after you. Perhaps you ran up against one of Nerul’s Agars.”