The Wielder: Sworn Vengeance (The Wielder Series) (18 page)

Unlike Znuul, I never made it past
half way of my bottle.  For the last couple of hours, I’ve been on the water.  There has been no news of nuclear explosion or nuclear devices.  That’s not surprising – what government would want its people to know they were almost erased from existence?  Talk about panic…

In addition to getting my fill of how many atrocities man is willing to commit against hi
s fellow man in the name of his God on the news, I also learned a little more about why the balance is so important.

As Znuul explains it, the energies around our particular dimension of existence can make it easier, or more difficult to allow transit to and from other dimensions.  In the case of his home dimension, Helterzen as they call it, a swing to the negative allows gates to open easier and allow more
traffic through.  Enough of a swing in the balance and portals that would have maybe let in one being of magnitude, could allow in ten.  As he puts it, a potential for invasion could present itself.

Luckily
, he explained there are particular “locks” on our dimension from Helterzen, put in place by the Fae long ago when they cast out the Dzemond from their own realm. These locks require that for a gate to be opened that allows a being such as Znuul to walk through as flesh and blood, human life must be spilled and that life be given willingly and without coercion.

Znuul t
old me the cost of his entry was five lives.  Things must have been pretty bad back then for that deal to make sense.

We also talked a bit about the status of the
Protectorate in all of this, which is pretty dim in Znuul’s view.  He really, really does not care for Alistair Burningwood in the least.  I tried to bring up the subject of Karen’s “protective custody” and did not get very far other than realizing that is a very sensitive nerve.

“Arthur it’s been thirty six hours since we phoned in the nuke. They must have it. You need rest.”

That’s the truth. I stand up, walk over to Z and hold my arms out for a hug. “We need to talk like this more often.”

The hug offer gets a roll of those red serpentine eyes, but
he stands and I get engulfed anyway. “It’s good talking with you. And how you got me to hug you is a mystery.  Go get your rest. We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

I leave the office,
noting that it is dark outside.  I have no clue of time. Truth is, at this point it doesn’t matter.  I make my way to my room and collapse on the bed. 

Pillow nice.  Bed good.  I don’t feel like ge
tting up to turn off the lights, so they’ll have to stay on.

I close my eyes and begin to drift away. The
n I shoot up as I feel a shiver of pain coming from one of my crew.  Terrible pain.  Emotional pain.  Anguish.

The last time I felt something like that was when Shey was forced to recount her capture and the death of her sister.  I
t shoots through me again.

Guess I won’t
be getting to sleep anytime soon.

I roll
to the edge of the bed and run my fingers through my hair. The wave passes though me again and I try to get a better grip on it. Unfortunately, I’m not at the top of my game. Who is it?  Shey recalling bad times… probably not.  She just refuses to acknowledge them.  Pffif?  Naa…

Damn, it’s the succubus. Has to be Sil. Kitten’s been saying she’s acting strange.  Now this… has she figured a way to fake this level of stress or pain? If anyone
, the mistress of manipulation could.

Another wave of shrieking pain comes through again.
Being a little more alert, I pick up on what I think is a tinge of rage at the tail end of it.

Not faking.
Rage is not calling for help. Rage is not an “oh, I hurt so bad – make me feel better.” Rage is what makes things like her hurt other things so very badly.

I kneel down and invoke a wave of blessed healing though myself. Not that I need to be pure to be around Sil, but I did just drink half a bottle of Stoli vodka.  Running a little extra of that poison from the system couldn’t be bad.

I set up my basic mental defenses as Karen and Grey had taught me. Then I step out of my room and head for the stairs across the way to Sil’s room. I get to the door and find myself needing to take a breath. Not for the stairs – but for the drama I am sure to be marching into.

I knock on the door.

“Go away!”

I knock on the door again.

“Are you deaf!”

I check the knob and it
’s unlocked. So, here I go… I enter the room and see the black tuft of Sil’s bed head hair and her wings poking out over the side of the bed.

“I told you to go away.”

“Just had to check on you.”

“I’m here.  Go away.”

OK.  This is going nowhere. So I walk around her bed to at least make eye contact.

She’s sitting, her arms around her legs, obvious streams of her grayish tears having rolled down her cheeks. She looks at me venomously and wipes them away.

“What?”

“Like I said, just checking on you. Had this feeling you might not be OK.”

The green alligator eyes turn to me accusingly. “I’m fine. You can go.”

This is a new seduction technique –
“buzz off and get lost.”  Strangely enough it’s working as now I want to stay more than leave. Something is going on here and its more than just a “so I got caught.”  I stand my ground meeting her accusing glare saying nothing. Finally, she looks away; I win the staring contest.

“You’re going to send me away aren’t you?  I know you are.”  Her eyes return to me
. “You’re going to toss me into that big white garbage pail and leave me there to rot forever. I didn’t lie to you.”  She looks down. “I didn’t lie. Not sharing is not a lie. I’m not garbage. I have value.”

The sarcastic and hurtful thing to say would be something to the effect of “you just keep telling yourself that.”  But that would
also be the wrong thing to say.  I note that she’s trembling. Anger?  I try to sort through my memory of the wave of emotion I felt.   Fear.

And rage.

I plop myself down across from her, sitting cross-legged. “You’re trembling,” I say in my calmest voice.

“I’m losing my mind” she says quietly, not looking up. “Everything I had hoped for… gone.
Now, I’m being sent away as worthless… again.” She closes her eyes and more of her grayish tears run down across her alabaster white cheeks.

I startle back as Sil
pops up scary fast up and paces over to the other side of the room, facing the corner. Moments of awkward silence follow.

“Nobody is sending you away forever
,” I say to break the tension.

“Thank you
,” comes her quiet reply.  After a few more moments of silence she turns around, wiping her cheeks and coming over sit on the edge of the bed away from me. “So, looks like I’ll never have you.”

Have me. Just the sound of that rubs me wrong. Like I’m
a thing to be taken. Still, I put a check on those feelings for her sake. Instead I give a small chuckle.  “It’s always about the sex with you, isn’t it? I understand the feeding thing and I understand the whole really time good for Sil part too. But, do you understand that I don’t think of myself as a buffet with benefits? And truth is if you haven’t figured it out already, I’m not all that driven for gratification anyhow. I like to think there’s some greater connection other that just ooo baby yea.”

She was doing a good job of regaining her composure. That was until I said what I did.  It was almost like I slapped her –
physically. She turns away again - I think so I can’t see the water works. After a few quiet moments she turns back meeting my eyes ever so briefly.  “No connection… Almost eighty years.”

“Yea,
seventy five plus years and I’m finding out I don’t know who you are.  Try to see it through my eyes.”

That gets a quiet nod,
“Try to see it through mine” she says. “A slutty sexpot is a lot less scary than a trained operative of death, manipulation and corruption. And it’s a more fun role to play.”

There it is.  Agent of death, manipulation and corruption – what Znuul called a special forces succubus. Corruption and manipulation I knew.  Death, I’ve seen
that being deal that out. Now she’s telling me the whole persona I know as Sil is role-playing. Part of me wants to be pissed. 

Part of me is
thinking it’s good to get this all out in the open.

Another part of me is wondering when the next shoe will drop.

We must have sat there in silence for minutes -
Sil playing with the pleats of her leather skirt in that nervous habit of hers, apparently deep in her own thoughts.  Me, just wondering what the hell.

She looks up at me finally.  “I need to show you two things. I can do more than be a... a... pleasant distraction. Will you let me come close
and touch you?”

It was something in her eyes, I was not being propositioned, not being enticed.  It was more like something very important.  “Sure Sil”

“Thank you,” she says to me and her face changes to something I can only categorize as worry.  She moves from the bed to the floor and crawls over to me, sitting up on her knees in front of me.  She’s looking at me curiously, studying me.  “Okay, first thing” she says and takes my face in her powerful, slightly oversized hands.

I meet her eyes wondering what all this
is about until I feel it – like a charge through my whole body. Every nerve more sensitive, arousal coursing through me.  I’m being succubussed!  My mind races and I reach to my will to compel her to stop.   “Sili..”

Her mouth on mine silences my
voice and any thoughts I had of making her stop.  The kiss is slow, soft and I am enraptured. She breaks the kiss and I’m confused.  She gently turns my head and kisses my ear.  I about jump up off the floor.  I try to force her to the ground, but she just gives me a demure smile and says, “No Arthur.”

What a beautiful voice she has.  Then
, very gently she pushes me down to the ground and straddles me. She closes her eyes and begins grinding on me, eyes staying closed. I reach down to undo my belt and her hands stop me, eyes now open and she guides them up above my head, where she pins me to the ground.

“Ok
ay, promise me you won’t be angry” she says.

“I promise when we’re through I won’t be angry
.”

She releases my hands, sits up and says
, “Take a deep breath.  There won’t be a we’re through – we’re not doing this.  This was the first thing I had to show you. I am capable of saying no and also… just capable of taking what I want.”

I
inhale a deep breath.  She’s broken the neuromantic connection. Anger starts to swell. Not that she’s not going to do me, but that she did what she did.  A soft finger with a black nail across my lips breaks that moment.

“You promised not to be angry.”

Dammit.  I did. I collect myself and say what comes to mind. “Sil would you mind not sitting on my dick anymore, please. And goddamn it!”

“Of course
,” she unstraddles me and looks at me sympathetically. "If it makes you feel better, I'm rather worked up too." Her eyes roll down to my waist and I see a large wet spot on my pants - not from me. "Reflectivity, remember?"

I do
remember. What my summonlings do to me comes back to them in multiples.

“
I want to show you the second thing now, I think you’ll like it.”

My face g
ives away my thoughts before my mouth can. She doesn’t let that stop her.

“It’s another talent I have from my training at the sisterhood.  I can undo the whole arousal you’re feeling. It instills a clarity of intellect too.  It’s not som
ething I enjoy doing because it's kind of counter to my normal flow of energy.  We actually barter that service with sorcerer and higher-up kinds.  Trust me. Let me undo what I did.  You’ll see I’m good for… other things.”

“You could have just told me
,” I’m still feeling the effects of her first thing. I try to shake off thoughts and rationalizations that I should lay her down to make us both feel better. 

“
You needed to see” she says again. “If I wanted you against you will – I’d be having you.”

She makes a point.  “Ok, it’ll make this damn horniness go away?”

She nods a “yes” at me.  “Take off your shirt and turn your back to me."

I do as I’m instructed and she basically drags me into her and us to the edge of the bed. “Something to rest my back against
,” she says very calmly as her hands lightly push me downward, then move up and down my back.

It’s driving me crazy.  “Not helping Sil.”

“This technique works best with a focus point.  I’m thinking of a problem for you to solve."

“OK, got it
,” she says “Listen up” she says breathily in my ear making every hair on my body stand up and something else stand up even more.

Her hands go to my shoulder
s and dig in deep, like one of those Swedish massages that hurt at the time, but leave you so relaxed afterwards.  She makes this little “eew” sound like she’s just smelled something really disgusting.

“Arthur, think about our resources.
We have you, us.  We have a bad-ass glowing holy sword you can swing.  We have a guardian angel.  Now, we have Ahtsag Znuul – not small things. Do you have any doubt that if we were to meet the Collector we would prevail?”

It seems obvious to me, crystal clear obvious.  “No doubt.”

“Good, so here’s your question – how do we find the unfindable?  How do we find one who can be anywhere randomly?  How do we bring our resources to the target?”

Her hands let up
on the pressure and she gently pats my shoulders.  “That’s your question.”

Holy ka-moly!  That is the question.  It’s right there. “Damn” I say
repeating my thought: “That’s the million dollar question.”

My head spins.  First off Sil is wrong. Nothing is un
-findable.  And he can’t just be anywhere randomly.  For his dragon to whisk him off, it needs to have psychically created a landing at that place. I read that at Grey’s Chateau. That and intelligent creatures are never random.

“Talk it
out Arthur,” she says quietly, her chin resting on my shoulder. “I see your wheels are turning.”

“He’s not random – not totally” I say back to her.
  “There’s a pattern there somehow.  This is more of an issue of probability.  The dragon can only go to places it’s marked.  If it randomly ports out it ends up at the place farthest from intelligent life at the plane, world, dimension whatever.  We need to understand his patterns of movement and then we can…”

I jump as
I’m stopped dead in my tracks as one of Sil’s hands plunges into my crotch.

“Where’d i
t go?” She says.

Wow, she’s right. Boner is gone. 
Urges? What urges? All I feel is very in the moment and engaged.

“Thanks, this is much better.”

“Told you," she says softly - her hand leaving my private areas. "Now, you were getting somewhere on the question.  Probability something…”

“Yea, if we can understand his patterns of movement we can maybe predict where he might be.  The
Protectorate doesn’t have much.  Maybe sources in the Grace have some information.”

“Sounds risky, they don’t really care for us.” 

She’s right.

“
Damn, Arthur.  If we had kept some of his blood we might be able to do one of those tracking spells.”

“Great thought Sil.”  A thought
percolates, maybe if we had something of his.  Maybe we already do.

“Did Maldy give you that communicator coin thing?”

“He did, but remember I broke mine in the white.”

I ask her to get it for me. She reaches under her skirt an
d produces two halves of a wood-like disc and drops them in my hand.

I bounce them in my hand.  He gave them to her. That made them his at one time.  It’s a
long-shot.  I share my thought out loud.

“Sounds like a stretc
h to me, but maybe,” Sil replies. “It would have to be a pretty specialized tracking spell.”

“Arix” I say aloud.  I need Arix.

“Go get him” she says calmly

I stand up and turn around to Sil who hands me my shirt. My mental wheels are turning at a pace that is incredible.  Then another questions poses itself, “Sil, what exactly did you do to me?”

“A nasty thing,” she says with a wan smile.
  “Well nasty for me. I gave you a cocktail of neuromantic energies that cool down the primal and pleasure centers while engaging the rational/logical centers.  It’s like opposite to my normal flow of energy, so it feels kind of disgusting to do - kind like how a cat feels when you pet its hair backwards.”

“Well, damn Sil I feel great.”
   Then the next question comes up – how did she did she get to me to begin with?  She’s compelled not to seduce me.

“Sil, how did you…”

“Arthur…” she says interrupting me. “That wasn’t a seduction - that was an assault.  I figured that one out a while back.  I can’t seduce you, but I can rape you.”

That unsettling revelation is broken
as the door to Sil’s room opens and Shey almost walks in.  She takes one look at me and Sil, then stops dead her tracks.  Her jaw drops. You don’t need enhanced reasoning abilities to know what she’s thinking – I’m shirtless and have a wet spot on my trousers.

“She’s had you.”

Before I can say a word, Sil flips around sitting up arms on the bed looking right at Shey. “Oh my, you were soooo right. It’s like the whole world shook when he came!”

Shey
doesn’t say a word, her lips quiver a little, then she steps back and closes the door. I imagine her running down the hall crying. I start for the door, but my left leg snags on something.

Really something snagged my leg – Sil’s tail, now curled around my ankle. I turn to let into her.  But don’t get the chance.

“Shush Arthur, before you even start.  That little pixie makes it a point to share all the gory details of every tryst you two have. She knows it makes me crazy jealous. So, this is a little payback.”

“She does what?”

“No biggie, really. I’d want to know anyway,” she says. She stands to look me in the eye. “Listen, you need to stay focused on the problem. I’ll handle Pixie. What matters is finding the Collector. Our family isn’t safe until he’s dead.”

Si
l appears very serious now.  Her hands take my face and her face scrunches like she just ate a lemon, rind and all.  I sense a very subtle feeling, like I’m even more awake.

“That’s a touch up.  Don’t let her get you off track. 
Or me. Work the problem, Jerry and Marge deserve no less.”

She’s right – Jerry, Marge, Svea, and Grey deserve revenge.  I meet Sil’s now intense gaze. “I’ll get Arix and see what we can do. 
Maldy’s link to the communicator thing has to have something to exploit.”

“Make sure to summon
Arix outside the house, if you know what I mean" she says.

Demon word games – in this case I may have to play this one.
  Not welcome in his house, indeed.