Demon Lord 3: Blue Star Priestess (7 page)

“That’s what people keep saying, but you know, I keep wondering if that might be too small a destiny.”  Smiling at Zero-T’s confused face, I walked to the bar’s front door.  “I’m overdue for a drink.”

SEVEN

“Alpha males neded humility beaten into

Them.  Fortunately, I’m happy to oblige.”

                                       —Caine Deathwalker

Inside the bar, ebony tables and chairs pinned down a blood red carpet that stretched over to crimson walls where assorted clan symbols hung on display, making this
theoretically
a no-kill zone.  I saw Sarah in a black dress and apron, carrying a tray of drinks toward assorted patrons who would have been busy trying kill each other anywhere else.  The granddaughter of the Alpha who managed the local werewolves, but not a werewolf herself, she worked here for pocket money while attending college.  The petite red-head was half human and half fey, her hair coloring a recent change.  On the way back to the bar, she saw me and waved, smiling.  We’d been enemies once, but that was blood under the bridge, so to speak.  

Gloria returned from her office, her dangerous curves now packed into a metallic green sheath the color of freshly printed money. Its bright highlights—produced by fine scales—shimmered and slithered as she closed on Zero-T and me.  She’d touched up her makeup to continue the green motif: dark green lipstick and key lime eye shadow.

Something about being half-dragon made me immune to getting my mind rolled by a vamp, but I didn’t know the strength of my self-appointed bodyguard. 

I whispered to Zero-T, “You know not to look her in the eye, right?” 

“I’m not a newb,” he muttered back.

Gloria stopped in front of me.

I asked, “Barstool or table?”

“Bar, for now.”

“Sure.”  I glided over to an open stool near Gray, the half-angel.  He wore his usual Raiders jacket with the sleeves pushed up his arms.  His hair looked like winter-killed grass, and his bloodshot eyes were otherwise white agates.  He’d traded in his usual khaki pants for faded denim, and sported a Stryper concert tee-shirt that said: NO MORE HELL TO PAY. 

I thought that a little too optimistic.

I nodded his way as I sat down.

Zero-T took the empty seat on Gray’s other side.  Gloria went around the bar to serve us herself, sending the regular on-duty bartender away. 

Tossing some bills on the table, Zero-T smiled to show off a gold clip-on tooth.  “Keep ‘em coming.”

“Sure, honey.  What will it be?”  Gloria smiled with predatory delight, making the money vanish into her cleavage. 

Zero-T’s eyes stayed on her boobs.  If that continued, he’d be safe from getting mesmerized, but she’d probably get tired of it and punch out his lights.  “Kentucky bourbon,” he said.  “Something with a taste of bluegrass.”

“Give me a Blue Lagoon,” I said, “and hold the umbrella.”

Zero-T looked at me, his jaw dropping.  “That’s a kid’s drink.  I thought you were a man.  No wonder no one in the clan respects you.”

“They’ll respect my foot up their collective asses,” I said.

“Other people win over their peers,” Gloria told Zero-T.  “Caine stomps on their throats and asks them if they want some more.  It’s his management style.”

“Buddha’s brass balls!” Zero-T said.

“Life is too short to mess with assholes, unless they’re on a hot chick,” I said.

Gray had been doing his best to ignore the conversation.  He suddenly failed, lurching a little on his stool as he slanted me a blind glare.  “Hey, some of us are trying to drink for free here.  If you’re going to keep yapping past me, the least you can do is buy me a beer—or two.”

Zero-T settled a cold, black stare on the sloven derelict.  “And what are you supposed to be?  You don’t smell human, demon, fey, or vampire.  You don’t reek enough to be a shape-shifter.”

In human form, a couple
of were-ducks at a nearby table blasted Zero-T with murderous glances.  They scooted chairs, standing with the plain intention of coming over and getting Duck-Dynasty-crazy.

Gloria glared.  She didn’t raise her voice, but it slapped them.  “Sit.  Back.  Down.”

They sat, heads lowering, returning attention to their drinks.

Gloria’s lips pressed into a thin, hard line.  Completing our orders, her hands moved by instinct, while her stare enveloped Zero-T.  “If you start trouble in my bar, I’ll cut you off, and your decapitated head will be my new dartboard.”

I looked across the room at the darts area.  There were three regular boards plus a Japanese water-goblin’s head that had seen better days.  The
kappa
had yellow-green scales, a yellow beak for munching cucumbers, and a flat, bald plate on top of his head.  The eyes had gone all milky in death.  Someone had painted concentric circles on the face. 

Guess he hadn’t been able to pay his bar tab.

“Dart board!”  One of the were-ducks snickered loudly. 

The other said, “I’d like to see that.”

Gray sighed with disappointment.   “You won’t.”

Zero-T looked at Gray, and lifted an eyebrow in inquiry.

I picked up the neon blue drink Gloria slid over to me on a pink bar napkin.  “Gray’s half angel.  His visions are never wrong, though somehow never as helpful as you’d expect.”

Zero-T said, “Then the name Gray…”

Gloria slid Zero-T’s bourbon over to him.  She said, “He chose it as a sign of neutrality.”

Gray smirked.  “What she means is that both Heaven and Hell want me dead in a passive-aggressive sort of way.”

Zero-T motioned toward Gray so Gloria could see.  “Get the man a beer, on me.”

I looked at Gray.  He sensed my gaze and met it, blind eyes glowing slightly.  “What?”

I took another sip of my drink, savoring the cold sweetness.  “So, you going to help me out with a prophecy this time too?”

“Are you going to make me a
caipirinha?”

“What’s that,” Zero-T asked, “Mexican were-coyote?  Why would you want to be turned into one of those?”

I said the word slowly, “Caipirinha, not Chupacabra.  The first is a Brazilian drink.  The second is a spiky green vampire lizard that attacks sheep.”

Zero-T threw back half of his drink, and looked at me.  “Oh, I see.  You have mad bartending skills.  Now that’s impressive.  Just don’t tell me you use little paper umbrellas.”

I itched to draw my gun and blow an ear-to-ear hole in him.  I looked at Gloria, wondering what it would cost to get her permission. 

Her flame-bright eyes met mine.  She shook her head, maybe reading my mind, and mouthed a word:
No
.

So much for that.  I got up and circled the bar to join Gloria.  Instead of giving me room to work, she stayed close.  Very close.  “Am I that irresistible?” I asked.

She watched as I gathered supplies.  “I’ve never heard of this drink.  I want to watch you make it.”

I shrugged and smashed two sliced limes with a pestle and mortar until all the juice drained out. 
I added water, white sugar, and two ounces of
cachaca
—Brazilian rum stocked just for me—to the pulverized limes.  I mixed well and poured two glasses.  One was mine, but Gloria pried it—rather forcefully—from my hand and sipped it.  Her eyes closed in pleasure.  I slid the second glass over to Gray.

His white eyes stabbed through me like a winter wind on the dark side of Pluto.  His stare relented in some way, becoming that of just another blind man, as his sweeping hand found the glass.  He picked it up, took a sip, and then a mouthful.  “Okay, one lame-ass prophecy coming up—you’re going on a journey.”

I stared.  “That’s it?”

“A long journey.”

I reached for the drink he held.  “Give that back!”

He pulled back, hauling the drink out of reach.  “I can’t give you no more.  She’ll kill me, or worse.”

I pulled my hand back.  “She?”  I sent Gloria a measuring stare.

She held both hands up in a warding off gesture.  “Hey, leave me out of this.”

“Not her.”  Gray jerked a thumb over his shoulder.  “Her!”

I looked where he indicated, and if I weren’t a real man, icy talons of fear would have clutched my heart. 
My head felt stuffed with cotton panties, muting the bar sounds.  I’d have ducked under the bar, but I have a reputation to uphold.
Next to me, Gloria followed my stare.  She went as still as a mouse trying to avoid the interest of a hawk.  “What the hell is she?  I’ve never felt so much power.”

I couldn’t answer, nor did I want to.  My hand strayed to the red pearl on the necklace I wore.  I felt my eyes go all dragon on me: all edges sharpened, and where I focused, images rushed closer, exploding with detail my human eyes would have missed.

The better to see you with, God help us all.

Across the room—beyond a sea of tables and a clueless crowd—stood the Red Lady. 
Young, heart-shaped, her face showed none of the ages she’d lived.  She sipped pink champagne from a glass with a smear of crimson lipstick on it.  Her nails and curve-hugging dress were a matching red.  A side slit allowed a flash of tone legs as she moved.  She looked good in the color of blood.  Her red-crystal eyes, like bottomless pools, were on me—hell-bright with the light of obsession.  The glass she held turned to pink mist, ghosting away as she dismissed its reality.  She moved with unyielding deliberation, empty hands at her sides, her gossamer dress frothy with dancing lace.  About to walk into tables and seated guests, she went translucent, becoming an intangible mirage drawing ever nearer.  The patrons stared after her, their silence growing.

This is so not going to end well,
I decided
.

Gray picked up his
caipirinha and scurried toward the door.

“Hey, blind man,” I called.  “I better see you out.”

Gloria gripped my arm like a vise.  I knew I’d have finger-shaped bruises by morning.  Any more pressure and the bone would crack.  She hissed at me under her breath, “Don’t you dare leave, and not take her with you.”

The Red lady stopped by the stool Gray had abandoned.  Her brow furrowed with annoyance as her gaze took in Gloria’s possessive hand on my arm.

Desperate to get lucky, Zero-T’s common sense disengaged as he leered at the Red Lady, spending extra time on her bare white legs.  His gaze finally slid to her face.  “Hey, good-lookin’, can I buy you a drink?”

She made a shooing motion at him.  A foot of white ice suddenly encased him, his face surprise
d under the distortion.

Hell of a cold shoulder. 

“Better get your ice pick,” I told Gloria.  “He’ll be running out of air soon.”

The Red Lady’s stare moved from Gloria’s hand on my arm to the vampire’s face.  “Caine is mine.  He bears my mark.”

Gloria’s hand jerked away so fast, I thought she might have been burned.  Her gaze went to my perfectly normal neck.  “Your mark?”

I pulled up the necklace and let the red pearl dangle.  “She means this.”

Gloria’s stare went from the red pearl to the Red Lady.  “You’re, you’re …
Her
?”

“Ice
pick,” I reminded Gloria, giving her a reason to get clear.  Sometimes master vampires can be as dumb as graveyard dirt.

The Red Lady said, “If by ‘her’ you mean the prettiest death you will ever encounter, then, yes, I am.”

With my heightened dragon senses, I could smell the simmering rage deep inside Gloria.  She was used to being feared, not casually threatened.

Time to save the day.  “Hey, Red?”

The Red Lady’s attention snapped to me.  “Yes, love?”

“He’s an idiot, but the guy in the ice is a friend of mine.  I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kill him.”

Her eyes flared with a shimmer of power.  “Oh!”

The ice around Zero-T cracked with a sound like firecrackers going off.  Big chunks fell and he was free, his brown complexion a little gray as he gasped for breath.  He slammed forward, crashing his head on the bar as he shuddered.  A moment later his head came up.   The broken pieces of his ceramic
face stayed on the bar.

Zero-T had been wearing some sort magical mask, allowing him to pass for human.   His real face was a mottle of blue and silver scales.  His pupils were X-shaped, black marks on blue robin eggs.  His nostrils were slashes that might have been made by a knife.  Without the magic mask, his voice came out like someone who’d been breathing helium.  “Thor’s tighty-whities!  I almost died!”

“If you can’t hang with the big dawgs,” I said, “get off the porch.”

“Your concern,” he gasped, “is underwhelming.”  He gathered the broken mask, puzzled the pieces together, and poured out a bit of earth magic
.  Healing the cracks, he put the mask back on.

The activity by the bar hadn’t gone unnoticed.  In heroic fashion, Claude the bouncer seized a broom—and headed out the front door to do a little pretend sweeping.  Several of the patrons, reading the atmosphere, followed him out the door.