devil 03 - tween hearts fire and devils delight (33 page)

Assuming a watcher was the same thing as a babysitter I grinned.
That’s a very impressive number, sire. I hope Glynus isn’t that bad. I don’t have that many friends.

The black didn’t respond. His elegant black head suddenly jerked up and he let off a blood-curdling shriek before flying backward away from the booger.

Released from the embrace of the enormous dragon, the booger belatedly responded to my frantic instructions and surged forward at an impossible speed. I slammed buttons to drop the speed down to just above normal and peered out of the windscreens, trying to find the black.

I looked at Glynus. She was still standing in her rigid stance, her eyes unswervingly focused on the windscreen. I realized why a moment later when something large and dark fell from the sky in front of us and the black returned to the booger’s windscreen.

What’s going on out there?
I asked him.

The rogue blacks have learned that you carry my heir. They have proclaimed the need for your destruction. I am here to escort you to your destination safely.

Shit! Just what I needed, another level of complexity in the current mess.
Then a thought occurred.
Zerphor! She’s carrying an heir too.

She has returned to Olympus. She will be safe there. Where shall I take you?

I frowned.
Take me?

Yes, this metal bucket is no match for the veil. It dies beneath you. I will carry you to your destination, it will be easier for me to protect you that way.

I sighed and looked at Glynus. She’d softened out of her rigid stance and was looking at me with wide, bright eyes. Fear emanated from her with every breath. “Cheeeiiitt?” she asked me.

I nodded. “That about sums it up, tadpole.”

* * * * *

The booger chugged and stuttered toward my father’s house, where I was meeting my father, Myra and Flick for a rescue planning meeting. After much delay and arguing, I had managed to convince the big black that I didn’t need him to carry us on his back and he was flying just behind us, ready to catch us when we fell out of the sky as he expected.

Every once in a while an enormous black body would sail past us on its way to oblivion, as the warrior dragon disposed of another would-be assassin. Once a big red sailed past, all crumpled and beat-up looking and I took a moment to I hope it hadn’t been dispatched just because it had happened into our air space.

I sighed, my life was
so
not easy.

So far the booger had managed to chug along pretty much under its own steam but it had stalled out completely once and I hadn’t been able to get it started. Before I knew what was happening, the big black had given us a boost from behind and we were sailing through the blinding mist at about a thousand miles an hour.

The good news was, I’d managed to get the booger to start up again. The other good news was that Glynus had decided it was better to sit in the seat than practice her flying around the cabin after her father’s boost had smashed her like a bidgie bug against the back windscreen.

The bad news was that I was pretty sure I had whiplash from the experience and Glynus was holding one of her tiny wings kind of funny.

She looked decidedly crabby sitting over there in her seat. But at least I was able to lose myself in my thoughts since I didn’t have to keep a constant eye on her.

I sat and stewed about Dialle, Darma and Emo.

The booger’s spotty voice system choked out the news that we were approaching my father’s house. I peered out of the front windscreen. “Couldn’t prove it by me,” I murmured. The mist had grown so thick that I could barely see the front of the booger.

I plugged in the landing coordinates and prayed the booger’s system was up to landing without my help. I couldn’t see enough through the mist to find the pad beside my father’s house. And the river raged not far from the pad, down a very steep drop with a jagged rock bottom. I didn’t like putting my life in the booger’s decidedly shaky hands.

I had a sudden thought.
Um, hello. What is your name by the way?

I am Quince.

I grinned,
No shit?

I felt the black frown in my mind.
The third actually.

I giggled.

It is not funny, dragon fighter. The name has been passed through many generations of my family.

Who’d you piss off to get stuck with it?

I sensed his shrug.
At least I use my name. I don’t just call myself Q.

I bristled at this.
Hey, it’s a middle name. I don’t have to use it.

So you say, dragon fighter. I embrace who I am. I do not hide from it.

“Hard to hide from a name like Quince the Third,” I murmured.

I heard that!

Whatever,
I grinned.
Do you think you could maybe set us gently down beside my father’s house? I don’t quite trust this piece of shit’s landing system right now.

Of course.

Turns out the word
gently
has a different meaning in dragon than it does in Tweener. After I shoved my hair out of my face and checked my underwear to make sure I hadn’t peed myself in the throes of my near death experience, I gathered up Glynus and stalked out of the booger.

I gingerly pressed a new bruise on my forehead and glared up at the black.

He twitched his wings and said,
What?

You could have warned me you were gonna see how high we would bounce if you threw us at the ground.

Stop exaggerating, dragon fighter. I’m disappointed in you.

I couldn’t frunkin’ believe it.
YOU’RE disappointed in ME!
I didn’t exactly like the way my voice got all screechy like that but he’d asked for it.

The dragon actually sniffed with disdain, expelling a gray puff of smoke on his exhalation.
I thought you were more of a man than this.

If I had been a man you probably would have emasculated me when I hit the seat that last time.

The wings twitched again in what looked suspiciously like a shrug and I could have sworn his lips tipped up just the tiniest little bit.

I turned away and stomped into my father’s house.
Thanks for the escort,
I thought at him less than graciously.

I will await your return.

“Frunkin’ awesome,” I murmured.

I heard that.

I smiled and opened the door, struggling to hold onto Glynus with one arm. She felt like she’d grown in just the last couple of hours since she’d become connected to me. Plus she kept flapping her wings and floating out of my arms.

She was quickly picking up the flying thing. I shuddered to think what it would be like trying to keep up with her when she could actually fly any distance.

My father’s house, as usual, was quiet and dimly lit. “Hello?” I called out.

Myra’s voice greeted me from the kitchen.

I followed both her voice and the smell of coffee into the spacious room.

I set Glynus down on the floor and she fluttered after me like a large bidgie bug, singing nearly unrecognizable swear words in her childlike warble.

I cringed. At least I hoped they were unrecognizable. I wasn’t keen on everybody finding out what a truly shitty surrogate parent I was.

My father was sitting at the long, wooden table in the center of the room. He looked appropriately worried.

Myra sat across from him, a steaming mug in her hands and a violent expression on her face. She looked like she was ready to go all ethnic on somebody’s ass.

Flick was sitting on the counter next to the drink valet with something pink and fruity looking in his pale, freckled hands.

Figured.

I snatched the fruity drink away from him and handed it to Glynus. She burbled happily and stuck the straw up her nose.

Flick glared at me and another drink appeared in his hand.

I punched a black cup of coffee into the drink valet and waited for it to dispense. Then I carried it to the table and sat down next to my father, across from my aunt. I took a sip and closed my eyes in pure bliss.

I set the mug down and glanced at Flick. He made a face and I knew things were bad.

My father turned to me. “How did your session with the prophet go?”

I shrugged. “She wasn’t very helpful as usual and she said the summons would count against my lifetime limit. That’s just not fair.”

He frowned at me. “Astra.”

I sighed. I tended to take the long road around things that made me uncomfortable or unhappy. It wasn’t one of the personality traits I was particularly proud of but at least I recognized it as a failing.

I figured that was worth something.

“She told me Dialle is dying. The veil is pulling him away from the light and it’s killing him.” I frowned and took another sip of coffee. But it had lost its appeal somehow.

“And your sister?”

I chewed my lip and thought about a way around the stab of panic that hit my gut every time I thought about Darma in that monster Prince Nille’s hands. I couldn’t find a way to avoid it so I just plunged in. “She didn’t say. But you and I both know it can’t be good. The only good thing is that they will keep them all alive to perform the locking ceremony. They’re safe until that’s done.”

Myra looked at me, her pretty blue eyes nearly unrecognizable in a face that had turned warrior since I’d last seen her. “They can’t perform the ceremony until the last three conduits are in place.”

I nodded. “I hope you guys have a plan because I haven’t been doing so well keeping conduits out of the Serpent’s hands so far.”

Flick slid off the counter and walked over to sit beside my aunt. “What else did the prophet say?”

I grimaced, thinking about the parenting advice I’d ignored to my current dismay. “Some junk about conduits working together but not working together but not being able to be at cross purposes… It made no sense at all. Per usual.”

My father suddenly pounded the table with his fist and stood up to pace. “We can’t just sit here while Darma’s in danger. I’m going after her.”

I stood up and grabbed his arm. “I agree, we need to go after them but we need to have at least some idea what we’re gonna do when we get there. If we just barge in there and they manage to force us into the ceremony everything will be lost.”

“What else, Astra?”

I glanced at Flick. “What do you mean?”

“What else did the prophet say?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

He stared at me hard for a moment and then shook his head, frowning. “I was sure she would tell you what we needed to know. There’s always a key message in their communications. Something that you need to decipher to solve the problem.”

I scowled at him. “Who does that?”

They all looked at me.

“Who comes up with these rules? Why can’t the prophets just tell us what we need to know. What’s with the frunkin’ riddles?”

From the floor at my feet a high pitched warbly voice said, “Frunkin’!” Clear as you please and with much enthusiasm.

“Shi…” I slammed a hand over my mouth and looked at Myra.

She scowled at me. “You shouldn’t swear in front of the child.”

I huffed out a breath. “I know that now! Why didn’t somebody tell me that before I went through my whole repertoire of colorful language?” I forced the prophet’s warnings from my memory and scowled at my aunt, who scowled back at me as she’d been doing since I was old enough to remember.

“What else, Astra?”

I turned to Flick with fire in my eye. “She told me to wonder why the angels healed!” I screamed at him.

His brown eyes widened. He looked at my father. My father looked at Myra. Myra looked at Flick.

My father turned to my guardian. “Go, Flick. Go now.”

Flick nodded and popped out.

I turned to my father. “What?”

“We’ve suspected all along that there is some connection between the plague and the veil but we haven’t been able to discover what it is. Your friend Raoul has come very close to finding it for us but there’s something we’ve been missing…something important.”

I glanced at Myra. “Like what?”

“Like why Flick and I both healed fairly quickly and no one else has.”

I frowned. “But they found nothing out of the ordinary in either of you.”

Myra nodded. “Maybe they shouldn’t have been looking at us. Maybe they should have been looking at those who haven’t healed for the difference.”

I nodded, sliding back into my chair and picking my mug back up. “But what if they do discover that you carry something the others don’t, how will that help?”

“It won’t,” my father said, his beatific face dark with worry, “unless we can figure out where the difference came from.”

“Or who,” my aunt added. She was looking at me very strangely.

“What?”

“Did you try to heal me when I was sick, Astra?”

My face reddened with embarrassment. “I-I don’t…”

“Did you try to heal Flick?”

Embarrassment fled with the memory of standing over him in his cloud and sending my power into him as he lay unaware and unresponsive on his bed.

“I-I hit a barrier…”

Myra looked at my father. “It is her. She’s the missing piece!”

My father’s face split into a smile that lit up the room. “Well I’ll be damned!” he said as my aunt grinned back at him across the table.

“Me danned!” came a sweet, warbly voice from under the table.

“Now look what you did, you taught the little tadpole another swear word!” I felt, once again, like the only one in the room who hadn’t been brought in on the secret and it was making me cranky.

Especially when my aunt just laughed and pulled me into a very rare hug.

“It doesn’t matter, Astra. Don’t you see, you healed Flick and me of the Devil’s Plague. That’s never been done before.”

“But I didn’t…”

“And the prophet confirmed the connection with her instruction to you. If you can heal the plague my guess is you can stop the veil too.” My father looked so happy I hated to point out to him that I had no frunkin’ idea how I had healed Frick and Myra let alone how to dispel the veil.