Prince of Demons 2: The Order of the Black Swan (4 page)

“I told you to go on without me.”

“Since that is not happening, I repeat, ‘Are you ready?’”

“I guess.” Conceding the reality of their circumstance. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“More or less. At least I know the direction.”

“Let me put it another way. Do we have a destination? Or are we just running?”

“It’s not random. If we can get to the Orange Sea,” he turned and pointed, “we can barter for transport to a friendlier place.”

“Barter? What do we have to barter?”

He slowly raked his gaze down her form. “Well, there’s your beautiful body.”

She gasped. “What? You’re… I’m…”

He looked serious as long as he could and then started laughing all over again. “Be calm, Atalanta Ravin. I will never let anyone harm you. I was practicing humor.”

“Practicing humor?” He looked blank, like that was not an odd thing to say. “Never mind. What do you really have to barter?”

“Magic tricks.”

“Magic tricks,” she said drily. “And that will get us passage to a safe place?”

“Absolutely. Entertainment is a commodity that’s always in demand. Universally.”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “Yeah. I guess so. And you’re entertaining?”

Brave stood and gave her a look that said, “You have to ask?” Then he stretched out a hand. She took it and let him drag her up to her feet. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Bossy,” she grumbled. “Your nickname should be Bossy. Bruce the Bossy. Not Brave.”

He chuckled and resumed the trek toward a mystery port that had been described cryptically at best.

After another hour of tromping through weeds, bushes and saplings growing in the dense shade of giant towering trees, the forest opened onto a vista overlooking a wide valley. Without the perspective of horizon to guide her, Lana was surprised to see that they were up so high.

“You want to stop?” Brave asked.

“I’m thirsty. Do you think we’re going to find some drinkable water?”

He nodded.

“There’s a river, but we have to find a safe way to get down to it. Another couple of hours I think.”

Lana looked a little dejected at that response.

“Yes. I want to take a break.”

She sat down on a flat rock and looked down at her tights. The knit fabric had picked up all manner of weeds and left bits of seed and leaf as she’d brushed past. She began picking the debris away while trying to ignore the slash across her right shin that exposed skin.

Brave had been turning in a slow circle, scanning the horizon to be sure they were relatively safe. When he turned back to Lana and saw what she was doing, his eyes went directly to the tear. He hurried over and went to his knees.

“Here. Let me see that.”

She tried to brush his hands away. “It’s nothing, Brave. A little scratch.”

Although that was true, it was also true that it was bloody. She hadn’t given it much thought when it happened. She’d ignored the sting because a quick assessment had her deciding that running from demons was more urgent than attending to minor plant slashes.

He grabbed her wrists as she batted at him and placed her hands firmly on her lap. He held them there, looking into her eyes, until he was sure that she understood he was serious. She looked down at his hands holding hers still. Even Brave’s hands were beautiful, strong, masculine.

Surrendering, she raised her eyes to his and said, “Okay. Go ahead and look. But there’s nothing to look at.”

While he gingerly pulled the lips of the tear back so that he could see the wound, she was able to surreptitiously study Brave’s features up close. His jaw line and cheekbones were pronounced. His brows were a couple of shades darker than his sun-streaked brown hair, which was falling around his eyes and partially obscuring her view.

“It’s
not
nothing, but it isn’t bad.”

“Seems like I might have mentioned that.”

When he looked up, he trapped her in his gaze like she was a mouse and he was a snake. The dark green of his eyes picked up even the smallest hint of light and reflected it back like it was magnified by the power of his energy.

He smiled. “So you did. When we get to water, we’ll wash it. You’ll be fine.”

“Surprise. Surprise.”

Brave chuckled. “I’m getting the feeling you like to have the last word, Lana.”

She opened her mouth then closed it, deciding not to play into his accusation, which made him laugh even more.

He sat back on the ground in front of her. “Want a bread break?”

“Try saying that five times fast.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Yeah. But not much. With nothing to drink, I’m afraid it will get stuck and then you’ll have to write my family and tell them I died from dry bread.”

“Is that how people advise families about death?” He cocked his head.

She sighed. “It was a joke. Kind of a bad one since they’re out of reach. Writing isn’t a possibility in my case.”

“Why?”

She wasn’t sure he knew that multiple dimensions were a fact and didn’t want to give him cause to doubt her sanity. But while she was chewing on her lip trying to decide how to answer, he said, “They’re in another world and you don’t know how to get back there?”

Her mouth fell partly open and she nodded. She hadn’t been expecting such a quick and thorough grasp of her situation, but she should have. She’d learned enough about demons while employed by The Order to know about some of their remarkable means of getting around from place to place.

Nodding, Brave said, “Tell me about them.”

“Two younger sisters. Twins. Mom. Dad. Some cousins. You?”

He looked away and shrugged as if he’d lost interest in the conversation. “I’ve been here since I was little. My family was in some kind of political danger the demons were hiding me from. I always thought they’d come for me.” He sighed. “But they never did.”

Lana’s chest tightened when she realized he was saying he’d been raised by another species, one that was likely
very
different, and that he’d spent his whole life feeling abandoned. Her heart went out to him, but she didn’t want to injure his pride by appearing to pity him.

“So you haven’t spent much time with other humans?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’ve done some reading.”

“Reading. Well, that has to be better than nothing.” She paused then added, “Do I seem strange to you?”

He turned to her with a gleam in his eyes, and lips twitching at the corners. “Very.”

She picked up a pebble and tossed it at his chest, enjoying the laugh he got from teasing her. Lana’s mind snapped a photo and turned it into a memory that she would later identify as the first moment when she felt the click of things falling into place. That undeniable feeling that the connection that had been swirling and circling between and around them had just snapped into place and locked. She couldn’t tell if Brave felt it, too, but she was sure he was looking at her with an interest that went beyond flirting.

As her lips parted to say something, Brave’s head jerked to the side. He was looking in the direction they’d come from. That was when she heard it, too. A combination of sounds that had her hair standing up on the back of her neck. It wasn’t either howling or barking, but a low pitched mixture of the two.

Brave jerked to his feet. “Straithgard,” he said.

Lana rose, reacting to Brave’s obvious state of alarm. “Straithgard? Is it the demons?”

He was pushing her away from the sound. “It’s the demons
and
straithgard.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“No time for a lecture, Lana. They’re a form of canine with very big teeth. Unless you want to meet them up close, we’ve got to run for it. Stay with me.”

He turned before they reached the edge of the cliffs that dropped to the river below. She could hear the animal noises getting louder and, perhaps, more excited.

“Do you know where we’re going?” she managed between pants.

“Yes. The sulfur pits will throw them off. The smell is so strong, they’ll lose the trail.”

That didn’t sound like a bad idea to Lana until she got her first whiff of the sulfur and stopped dead in her tracks. Brave forged on, not realizing at first that she was no longer with him. He had to backtrack three minutes to find her.

“Lana! You can’t stop! We have to go!” She stood looking wide-eyed and shaking her head. “No? What do you mean no? We can’t stay here.”

She looked at Brave. “What could they do to us that could possibly be worse than that smell?”

He pointed behind her as he gaped. “You really want to find that out firsthand?”

“I can’t go in there, Brave. You’ve got to go without me and I’m not joking this time.”

He let out something that sounded like a frustrated growl and bent down. Before she had a chance to register what had happened, he had picked her up, folded her over his left shoulder, and was jogging toward a smell that was the worst fate Lana could even begin to imagine. In addition to blood rushing to her head, her diaphragm was being squeezed in a very unpleasant manner and the sulfur smell was making her wish she was dead. She responded by squirming, kicking and beating his ass in the literal sense, but Brave ignored it all and kept moving doggedly forward.

Oddly enough, in the middle of all that was happening, she did have the errant thought that he would have to be extraordinarily strong to withstand her best assault without being fazed. As the smell grew even worse, she fought harder. Just as it reached the point where she thought she might pass out from the fumes, Brave stopped, set her on her feet and held on until she was steady.

Lana jerked away from his hold as she looked around. They appeared to be in the middle of a farting yellow swamp. It had pools that were hissing, bubbling, popping and making farting noises so loud it drowned out the sounds of straithgard. Whatever they were. The cause of the bubbling and popping wasn’t apparent, but she didn’t really want to examine the why of it too closely.

When she started to take a step back, Brave grabbed her and pulled her toward him. “Watch out behind you. If you take a dip in one of the pits, you’ll smell like that forever.”

At that moment she was ready to push him into the one behind him and walk away. “I will NEVER forgive you for this,” she said through clenched teeth.

To her amazement, he laughed and said, “Yes, you will.”

When she opened her mouth to expound further on her feelings, he pulled her the rest of the way into his body and drowned the words in a kiss, which she should have resisted, but didn’t. She wanted to resist. She even thought about biting down on the tongue that was winding her body up into a molten dance of pleasure. But it seemed Brave had told the truth about being a good kisser. In fact, she would even say that he was being humble.

It seemed that Brave was the sort of masterful kisser who was capable of making a woman forget all other kisses before his such that in essence, if not in fact, it was a
first
kiss.

When he pulled away and broke the connection, she remembered that she was in the middle of a nightmare and infuriated with her escape mate.

“Look at it this way. If you expel gas in here, no one will know.”

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

He laughed. “Stay right behind me. Step where I step.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. Lana was really sure that she didn’t want to experience a liquid sulfur dunk. So she did all possible to mirror his footing, but some of the solid ground paths he chose were so narrow she had to place one foot in front of the other. The stress of the fear eventually began to take its toll and her legs started shaking.

Brave reached behind him until he could feel her. “Lana, are you with me?”

“Get us out of here, Brave.”

“Just hang on. You’re doing great.”

“How much longer?”

“Almost there.”

“I need to know exactly what ‘almost there’ means.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to go.”

“Go where?”

“I need to GO! Now!” She waved her arms like she was trying to flap and fly. When he just stared, she said, “Pee, Brave! I need to pee.”

He scowled as he glanced down her body as if that would confirm or deny the truth of her claim.

“Hold it,” he said.

“Ugh! Men! I can’t ‘hold it’. I’m a woman. I don’t have unlimited expandable bladder space like you.”

He looked around frowning. “Not exactly an optimal time.”

“Well, excuse me! Okay, look. We’re past discussion. Just turn around.”

“Turn around?”

“Turn your back to me and look the other way.”

“You never answered my question about whether or not you were going to be high maintenance, did you?” He didn’t look happy, but he complied and gave her his back. “You need to hurry.”

“Duh!”

Lana only had a ten inch width of solid ground on which to squat, but sometimes a girl has to make do. She raised her skirt, pushed her tights down to her knees and arranged her clothing so that it was out of the way of the stream. Hopefully.

The relief she felt when her bladder began to empty was a close relative of pleasure. When that pleasure began to be accompanied by a sensation of heat, she looked down at the ground. Her urine was igniting blue flames that were, thankfully, close to the ground, but spreading everywhere the stream of pee went. Her brain told her to get up and run, but her body was insistent that it was going to finish what it started.

When the blue flames popped into larger orange and yellow fire, she shrieked. Brave turned just as her tights were starting to smoke.

“What…?”

Brave was on her in a flash, pulling her to a standing position. He swatted at her smoking tights and, once again, put her over his shoulder just as the bubbling sulfur pits were catching fire and starting to burn. To complete her utter humiliation he was carrying her away, this time with her bare bottom sticking straight up in the air. When her weight started to shift, he put his hand on the exposed derriere for balance. She gave a wide-eyed gasp that no one would ever see or hear.

Ten minutes later, Brave stepped onto solid grassy ground and set her on her feet. She immediately set about righting her clothing. “Turn around.”