Prince of Demons 2: The Order of the Black Swan (7 page)

“Brave!”

She yelled out when she felt his arm come around her waist from behind.

“Right here.”

She looked around. They were moving rapidly, but they were floating as effortlessly as fat people in salt water.

“We’re floating,” she said.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “It’s kind of fun. Do you like it?”

She had to think about that for a minute, but the answer was yes. Yes, she did. She laughed out loud.

“Are we safe?”

“We will be soon.”

After a half hour the canyon widened. The water became both shallow and calm enough that they could stand up and walk out.

She lay down on a grassy berm. “Looks like a good place for a nap. What do you say?”

Brave looked at the other side of the river. “Let’s get a little further away. Just to be sure. When it starts to get dark, we’ll stop and sleep. Maybe build a fire.”

She turned her head toward him. “How are you going to do that?”

“Find a fire hornet?”

He started to pull pieces of a mess from his pocket that may once have been bread.

“So. No dinner tonight.”

He shook his head at her. “Always so negative.”

“I’m not always negative.”

“Okay,” he said dismissively.

“I’m not!”

“Whatever you say.”

“Ugh!”

“What is that?”

“What is what?”

“Those monosyllabic words you like to use. Ah. Duh. Gah. Meh. Ugh. They were not in the books.”

Lana’s head canted to the side as her expression changed to quizzical. “What books?”

“At least I don’t think they were.” He ignored the question and seemed wrapped in his own thoughts. He looked over at Lana. “We also need to try to see about getting you dry before it gets dark. The best way to do that is to keep walking.”

He turned his back and started walking.

“Here’s another one for you. Ooh!” she said to his back as she curled her fingers into claws and made raking gestures with her hands. When he didn’t turn around, she reluctantly plodded after him.

The sun was
getting low on the horizon when she decided she’d punished Brave with the silent treatment for long enough.

“When are we stopping?”

“Soon as we get to the Yelta Caves.”

“That tells me nothing.”

He stopped and turned to look at her so that he could explain, but froze into a stare.

“What?” The look on his face was making her nervous and self-conscious.

“Your hair.”

She picked up the ends and brought them to her face in an effort to see what had brought Brave, Force of Nature, to a standstill. “What about it?”

“It’s different. Wavy.”

“Oh.” She dropped her hair. “That’s because I fell into a river and blew dry au natural. With real wind, no brush, no smoke and mirrors. It’s WYSIWYG wild. If you don’t like it, don’t look.”

“I
do
like it.” He took a step forward suddenly and picked up a lock of her hair. “
So
much. Why would you ever do that other thing?”

“Straighten it? Because it’s fashionable.”

He was still rubbing her hair between his fingers, but staring at her mouth. “The river water made it shine.”

“Um, thank you.”

“You still mad at me?”

“I never was mad at you, Brave. I get stressed in life or death situations. Maybe I take it out on whoever is available. It’s probably a character flaw. In this case you’re the one who’s available. But it’s not like you deserve it. You saved our bacon.”

His lips twitched at the same time he cocked one brow and pulled his gaze up to her eyes. “Our bacon?”

“It’s an expression that means…”

“I can guess.” He lowered his head. “You’re welcome. I’m very fond of your bacon and will protect it with my life.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t become necessary. Right? Shouldn’t we go? You were going to tell me about the Yelling Caves.”

“Yelta Caves.” He looked over his shoulder. “It’s not far. We’re going straight through a loke orchard and they’re in season. We’ll be able to grab some off the trees and take them with us. Dinner tonight will be fresh as it gets.” He grinned and started walking again.

“An orchard? You mean like fruit trees that were deliberately planted by someone.”

“That’s what orchard means.”

“So there are people, or demons, around here who are farmers?”

“Farmers? Yes. Demon farmers? No. They’re immigrants. Species that are not human, but human-like. Nothing for you to worry about, though.”

“Well, we might be able to get a match at least to start a fire when it gets dark.”

“You mean ask somebody for help?”

“Yes. You make it sound like an alien idea.”

“We won’t need to. The Yelta Caves are warm.”

“Warm caves. Sounds like an oxymoron to me.”

“They’re warmed by volcanic fissures. You have to find just the right spot in the cave. If you get too close to a fissure, it’s too hot. If you’re not close enough, it’s too cold. So you have to find the place that’s…”

“Just right.”

“Yeah.” He smiled.

When they reached
the loke orchard and started up one of the rows, Brave said, “Get the pink ones. They’re ripe and ready.”

By the eagerness in his tone, Lana surmised that Brave was fond of lokes and wouldn’t feel put out to have a fruit supper. They were rounded, about the size of a pre-engineered peach. Lana gathered as many as she could carry by hitching up her skirt. The occasion called for setting modesty aside. Besides, she reasoned, some people wore tights like pants.

At the end of the orchard row, Brave said, “We just have to duck through here,” meaning a copse of trees, “and the caves are on the other side.” Sure enough they walked right into a rock wall, white and pockmarked. “Ladies’ choice,” he said.

“Closest one with a soft mattress, clean sheets, and room service.”

Brave looked serious for a minute. “I’m going to give you that when this is over, Lana. I promise.”

“I was just kidding. How about a clean sand floor and enough warmth to get a little sleep?”

“Done.”

He walked along the wall until he spotted the
one
, apparently. The arched entrance was about the same height he was, so that he was able to walk in without ducking. She followed, noting that there was light coming from the fire of the fissure further into the cave. It was almost dark outside, but they weren’t going to spend the night in pitch black.

So they walked closer to the fissure. When Brave stopped, she said, “Too hot.” They walked back toward the entrance. When she reached a point where she missed the warmth, she shook her head to indicate that they’d gone too far. Brave took a couple of steps further in and looked at Lana. She smiled and said, “It’s just right,” while thinking to herself that she had always wanted to say that.

They sat on the sand floor with their backs to semi-smooth stone wall and began to dig into the pile of lokes. Brave withdrew the knife from his belt. “Some eat them peeled. Some like the peeling.”

“Which are you?”

“I like both.” He smiled before biting into a pink loke. It didn’t make a crunchy sound like an apple, but it wasn’t totally silent like a banana. It sounded like biting into a ripe peach. Sure enough, juice ran down his chin, but didn’t stop there.

It dripped onto his chest and continued to make a path down his abs to the waistband of his pants. She’d been momentarily hypnotized by the trail of fruit juice and realized that she was staring with her mouth open.

When Brave saw the look on her face, he stopped chewing and looked down. Lana knew she’d been caught fantasizing about helping her companion with his errant juices. She had a tongue in perfectly good working order and, after an hour’s soak in the river, she knew his skin was clean and would be supremely lickable under the juice.

She covered by saying, “Tell me about the tattoos.”

“What about them?” His expression was unreadable.

“When did you get them? Why? What do they mean?”

He studied her for a few seconds while continuing to eat lokes.

“Some of it is personal. I started getting them when I went through puberty. It’s a custom here. Each one signifies a ritual of passage. Some of them are in the script of my world of origin. Some of them are demonic symbols. Some are what they call elemental glyphs.”

“Did it hurt?”

He barked out a laugh. “Yeah, Lana. It hurt.”

She picked up a loke and bit down. She’d been right about the consistency. It was a lot like a ripe peach, but even sweeter with a hint of liqueur-type flavor that could possibly become as addictive as chocolate.

“Hmmm,” she said. “Good.”

Brave turned his head in her direction to agree with her, but just as she had, he became lost in the sight of juice running down her chin to her open-necked, still-damp satin blouse and disappearing between the teasing bit of cleavage that was visible. He swallowed.

Either he didn’t have Lana’s control or didn’t want to. He leaned over and slowly licked the juice on and around her mouth before easing his fruit-swollen lips over hers. Lana forgot all about quenching her thirst and hunger with lokes. Her hunger for Brave was so powerful that it overrode everything else. And that was shocking to her. She’d never before been so affected by a man. Her body seemed to have disconnected from her brain and developed a mind of its own.

She dropped the loke she was holding to put her hand on Brave’s head and pull him even closer. He responded to that encouragement by urging her to straddle him without ever breaking their string of serial kisses. It seemed they were equally eager to explore each other’s mouths with their tongues and each other’s bodies with their hands.

Brave’s hand cupped her breast as he lowered his face to her chest, where he began alternately kissing and licking loke juice. Lana’s skirt was around her waist as she ground her body into his erection.

She wasn’t promiscuous, but she’d been with enough guys to know that what she was feeling was more than just sexual excitement. In just three days she had formed an attachment that was so much more potent than anything she’d ever experienced before. Brave’s ready grin and determination to see them safe had managed to etch a place in her heart that had never before been occupied.

Lana was thinking she could be a goner if she wasn’t careful.

The other thing she knew was that she would have given just about anything for the soft mattress and clean sheets she’d joked about. As much as she wanted Brave, she knew that there was no quicker way to ruin love making than adding sand to the mix. She was about to tell him so, when they heard voices. Before there was time to react to having been caught, bright lights were shining in their eyes, blinding them.

Brave lifted her away, got to his feet faster than she would have thought possible and put her firmly behind him.

It would have been Lana’s first real look at the demons, except that it was dark. All she could really see was that they were tall, almost a head taller than Brave, which meant she was dwarfed in comparison.

Brave had the stolen knife in hand, but the demons overpowered him. Since there were at least a dozen of them, Lana didn’t really see the point of putting up a fight. She opted to be the coward who survived for a possible future escape.

They took Brave away through the arched entrance of the cave. When she reached the mouth of the cave, she looked around but there was no sign of Brave or his captors.

She expected to be placed in handcuffs, maybe chains. That didn’t happen.

What
did
happen was that the demon next to her took hold of her arm. She was instantly disoriented, in a surreal fog of gray and swirling ribbons of a color similar to maroon. She immediately experienced a nausea that reminded her of motion sickness, but it ended within a few seconds, when movement stopped and she was no longer in the space that was between places.

‡

T
he demon who
had hold of her arm steadied her on her feet when the motion stopped. They were in a large room with walls and ceilings of shiny polished stone with veins like marble. There was a fireplace so large that it took up most of one wall. It was not burning wood, but was perpetual flame from an undetermined source. The flames reflected on the high polish of the walls and floor.

Looking around she saw that there was a large bed with four posts of carved ebony the size of tree trunks. The white covering had been turned back to expose red satin-like sheets.

There was also a table laid out with a feast of roast fowl, bread, cheeses, and a variety of fruits. Near one end of the fireplace a rectangular pool caught her eye. In the low light, the water looked black, but reflected the firelight like a mirror. Next to it was a bench with fluffy towels and a saffron-colored garment.

She looked up into the demon’s face for the first time. He had a nose ring and amber eyes of a color that does not occur in humanity. They were compelling and foreboding at the same time.

“I have been given instructions to see to it that you bathe, eat, and sleep undisturbed until you wake. There is nothing more for you to fear. You are now under the protection of the Prince. He’s left instruction that you be encouraged to recover from your ordeal. He will meet with you tomorrow.”