Demon Lord 5: Silver Crown King (14 page)

I walked through the office door, back to the breakroom.  There were a few more bodies, these ones exploded into bloody chunks.  Julia’s work.  She was getting serious herself.  Aggie might give me grief about that latter—or not.  Dragons as a species were a bloodthirsty lot.  I should know.

My inner dragon stirred.  He looked around. 
She does good work.

Yes, she does
.

I entered the front of the jewelry shop.  One display case was half-shattered, a sword poking through it.  Two warriors were half-way dead, one roasted, one waterlogged, both disarmed, and in the process of being stomped to death by the stiletto heels of the salesladies.  Izumi leaned backs against a counter, offering interrogation suggestions.  The salesladies ignored the critique, as did Jorge and Jo-jo who were guarding my women folk, awaiting my return.  Julia stared at jeweled silver in a display, probably deciding which ones she wanted me to buy her.  I noticed she’d used up her butterflies; her stomach was bare.  Somehow, that seemed wrong.  The butterflies had really looked good on her.

Jorge and Jo-jo saw me and hustled over.

“Where are Megan and Gumbo?” I asked.

Jo-jo pointed to the front door.  “Outside.  They’re making sure no customers come in and see something they shouldn’t.”

“Smart idea,” I said.  “Who thought it up?”

Each of them said, “I did.”  They turned furious glares upon one another and went to disputing the intellectual property rights to the idea.

I muttered, “I’m sorry I asked.”

FOURTEEN

“Spare the fist, spoil the child!”

                                                   —Caine Deathwalker

I roasted in the noon sun, a cold drink in my hand.  Sweat trickled down my face.  Leaving Izumi and Julia with Lysande, I’d come to the back of this abandoned motel to deal with the security detail that had walked off the job.  Megan was out front, watching the cars, keeping an eye out for trouble.  Jorge was sweeping the rooms, making sure our private business stayed private with no squatters around.  Gumbo was also inside, pulling down a rafter, making a stand for it, putting a strut on the other end.  The sound of his hammer was slow and steady.  He also had a rope from trunk.  I’d told him to make me an old fashioned gallows. 

I’d need it soon.

This left Jo-jo and me to wake the cactus demons from their camouflaged hibernations.  This was an important step since it does no good talking to dormant demons until you get their attention.  That’s especially true of cactus demons stretched out in the sun, imitating an ordinary cactus patch.  I took a sip of rum-and-Coke, looking over a bed of prickly pear cactus: flat, thorny paddles with red radish-looking fruit crowning the top edges.  There was probably thirty or forty demons here.  It’s hard to say when they’re not in humanoid form.

I called back over my shoulder.  “Jo-jo, I need a little fire.”

He walked up beside me and looked at the cactus.  “Those are demons?”

I nodded.  “Yep.”

“Our guys, and we’re going to roast them?”

“Singing around the edges will be enough to start.  They need to be held accountable for abandoning a client.”

Jo-jo nodded.  “Okay, I can see that.”

“I could do it myself with Dragon flame,” I explained, “but I’m holding back on the overkill, for now.”  Dragon fire is many times hotter than what fire magic tends to command.  Also harder to control once it takes hold.  I turned and gave Jo-jo a menacing stare.  “Just so we’re clear, I’m not in the habit of justifying my decisions. 

He nodded back.  “Understood.”  He held his palm out.  A ball of red-orange fire bloomed there.  He closed his hand around that ball and fire spurted out past his thumb, a lash of flame.  He snapped his hand and the lash rippled out, slashing off some of the red fruit, black-scarring some of the cactus paddles.  They twitched and shuddered.  The whole mess began to pull itself apart, with separate clumps rearing up, acquiring human form.

“That should do it,” I said.

Jo-jo’s fire thinned to nothing.  He opened an empty hand, letting it swing back to hang at his side.

A sickly-green group of naked men and women huddled before me, more than a few with smoking hair.  Blistery, puss dripping wounds closed and healed.  Spines grew back in areas of reddened skin.  Hurt groans, sobs, and crying died down.  Cactus demons are tough, but vocally are very emotional.  They have to be silent to be truly intimidating.  The looks they sent mingled rebellion, hurt, and anger; the eyes themselves were jade scabs on butter yellow, but they weren’t jaundiced being human only in a rough sense even now.  Their noses were parrot beaks, their mouths just slits across their faces. 

Echsel, their leader, was nudged forward by the rest.  His too-smooth face had a plastic hardness.  He made a formal bow.  His coloration began to pale as I stared through him. 

“What am feeling?” I asked.

“Human emotions are difficult for us,” Echsel said.

He was lying, making excuses.  These cactus demons had been in and around Santa Fe for centuries.  They knew humans.  These demons had most of the same emotions buried away.  “Make a wild guess,” I said.

The cactus demons behind him edged back, as if to say:
“We don’t know this guy.”

Echsel said, “You are
peeved
, possibly
put out
?”  His head turned.  He listened to the nearby hammering, but didn’t comment on it. 

A definite failure of curiosity there
.

“Possibly?”  I used my piss-your-pants scary bad-things-are-coming smile.  “How did you fail to keep the client’s family safe?”

Echsel looked away, “We did our job.  We stood around and looked tough, until we were asked to leave.  How is it our fault that the client wished to—?”

I held up a palm to stop him.  The hammering had stopped.  I could hear the sound of dragging.  This told me my gallows was on the way.  Echsel and the rest of the demons turned their faces to see what was coming.  I turned as well.  Jorge and Gumbo brought the gallows.  The thing looked serviceable, but queer as hell—but not in a gay way.  Gumbo did most of the heavy lifting, barely noticing the weight of the twenty-foot beam.  Jorge had a push broom, its handle poking out of his armpit, the bristled end hanging behind him. 

They stood the rafter up beside me.  The top had a two-by-four nailed to it, a jutting arm whose tip had a metal trashcan nailed in place with its bottom removed.  The rope was threaded through the loop of the converted trashcan.  Stranger than that was the cobbled base of the rafter.  Three mismatched wooden chairs had been nailed on, an attempt at a stable base. 

Gumbo looked at me, his human face dropped so he now had a gator head, his natural look.  The skin was several shades of gray with black mottling thrown in.  The lids had yellowy splotches added.  The eyes themselves were bright green, flecked with gold, possessing black, vertical pupils.  Dragon eyes weren’t much different.  My right eye—which shifted in and out of human form—looked like that when my dragon nature surfaced, except my dragon often was clouded with golden, electrical fire, not that it affected my vision.  The similarity caused me to feel an odd kinship with the gator–demon.

I gave him a thumbs up, and lied.  “Great work.  I owe you a chicken dinner.”

He rumbled with pleasure.

I told my guys, “Keep this thing from falling over.  Gumbo, grab the end of the rope and hold it.”

Echsel said, “You’re going to hang me?”

I caught a hint of humor in his voice.  He either didn’t believe me or didn’t care.  I arched an eyebrow at him.  “Why, yes.  Is that a problem?”

He shrugged.  “No, not really.” 

Jorge shifted the push broom so he could unscrew the bristled end.  He knew it was only the stick I needed.

I gave my full attention to Echsel and his clan.  I had a few points still to make.  “What you don’t seem to grasp is that bad guys got to the younger sister.  This let them blackmail Lysande into dismissing you.  You should have picked up on that and pretended to leave.  Then two things should have happened.  You should have mounted a covert rescue of the sisters, and you should have called me so I wouldn’t walk blindly into a dangerous situation.  I am appalled by the shallowness of your loyalty.  You wanted the benefits of being allied to a larger, more powerful demon clan, but care nothing for responsibilities of such an alliance.”

There was murmuring among the cactus demons.  One of them, a female, I think, said, “See, I was right.”

Echsel turned to give her a hard glare.  “Shut up.”

“Is that what happened to the voice of reason among you?  It gets intimidate into silence so your stupidity can know no bounds?”  I was using a silky soft voice that hid the boiling rage straining to explode from me like the killing wind of dragon breath.

“Nothing was out of place,” Echsel insisted.  “The mistress showed no distress when giving orders for us to stand down, and informed us she herself would call you, Master.”

I moved up to Echsel, invading his personal space.  “As you say, I am your Master.  That means you don’t give a shit about what others say, you call me when I need to know something.”  I grabbed his left arm and ripped it off at what would be the elbow.  The needles on his skin broke against my graphene-armored gloves, doing me no damage.  He hid his hurt, or actually didn’t suffer the way a human would.   Sadly, the missing piece of arm would regrow in a few days—a short termed lesson.

“Yes, my Lord,” Echsel said.  “I will take your words to heart.”

“There’s a lot you’re going to take before we’re done.”  I slapped him across the face with his own hand.  His head turned sharply.  It looked for a moment like his neck was going to break.  His face turned back to me, still blandly lacking significant emotion. 

Passive-aggressive bastard.

I threw his detached arm away.  My hands tingled with raw magic.  Then came a sharp burst of pain as they enlarged.  My fingers tapered, hardening with scales.  My dragon claws came out.  I sliced Echsel open along his right side where humans kept a kidney.  Greenish white sap leaked out, just like what dribbled from his upper arm stub. 

He dropped to his knees. 

The rest of the cactus demons jolted in a common surge toward their clan leader. 

I filled my eyes with the promise of death.

They stopped moving.

I looked at the slice I’d made in his side.  “Oh, yeah, that’s where you keep some of your testacles.  A globby, bladder-like thing lay leaking in the dirt, part of his animal/plant reproductive system. 

“That’s a lot of kids on the ground.  Reminds me of my first day in kindergarten.  Oh, the carnage...”  I smiled.  “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t play well with others.”

I stepped back so he could better look up at me. 

The female cactus demon that had spoken earlier said, “My, Lord…?”

I looked at her in silence.

She said, “You have every right to your anger, but if you kill him, he can’t learn to do better.”

“If he’s dead, he can’t fuck up again, either,” I said.  “Do you know what he almost cost me?”

She hesitated.  “No, my Lord.”

“My life and the lives of my friends, a mountain of fey silver, and a valuable ally among the fey, but worst of all,” I thought of Lysande, naked, writhing under me as I pounded into her, “this dumb, nutless plant almost cost me a great pussy!”  I kicked him in the face and watched him fall backward. 

I held my hand out and was given the rope, the end with the noose.  I snagged his feet with the rope and tightened the loop so I had him by the ankles.  “Pull, Gumbo!”  The slack left the rope.  In moments, Echsel dangled upside down from the gallows.  Jo-jo and Jorge each had a knee in a chair, stabilizing the beam as Echsel rose higher and higher.  Soon, his head was seven feet off the ground.  “Tie it off there, Gumbo.”

He grunted acknowledgement of my order, tying his end of the rope off on the chair base.  He picked up the broom handle Jorge had brought and handed it to me.  Once I had it in hand, he went to help support the gallows.  I smacked the broom handle against a palm, looking over the cactus demons.  “Piñata Time!”  I walked away from my dangling servant, choking up on the stick by holding it mid-point where it felt balanced in my hand. 
Thick, sturdy oak. 
I turned back toward Echsel, took a few running steps, and jumped past him.  The stick in my hand right claw blurred. 

Whack! 
Echsel jounced and bounced like a tetherball.  An “Urrummmph!” came out of his mouth.  Green-white fluids striped the ground like strudel frosting as he bled.

I landed lightly on my feet.  “Ah, that was fun.”  Turning to the cactus woman, I pointed the stick at her.  “You, what’s your name?”

“Rhanda, my Lord.”

“Take the stick,” I said.

“My Lord?”

“Don’t be coy.  You were right.  He was wrong.  He should have listened to you.  That entitles you to have a swing at him.  Go ahead.”

She came forward and held up a palm, waving it a little.  “My Lord, I would rather not.”

“Are you related?  Dating?”  I held the stick toward her.

She shook her head.  “I just don’t want to do this.”

I frowned at her.  “But it’s Piñata Time!” 

“Still, my Lord…”

I sighed.  “Look, each of you can take a healthy
whack on him
, and it’s all over.  If I have to do this all by myself, I’m not going to stop until he’s in itty-bitty pieces that I’ll gather up and throw in a furnace.  You see, I have to be sure that whoever I appoint to take his place isn’t a dumb fuck.  I have to know that when I give an order, it will be followed above and beyond the call of duty—or else.” 

I extended the stick a little more towards her.   My eyes narrowed.  I dropped the silken softness from my tone.  “Rhanda, take it and hit him.  I want you to lead by example.”

She looked at the stick like it might bite her, but extended her hand and took it.  I let go and watched her walk up to Echsel.  Dangling, he spun around and saw her.  His mouth opened.  “Rhanda—”

She hit him across the face.  Paused, then hit him again.  Then again.  Soon, she was beating the unholy hell out of him.  I suddenly understood: it wasn’t that she was afraid of hitting him, she’d been afraid that once started, she might not be able to stop.  I knew in that moment exactly who was going to take Echsel’s place.