Prince of Demons 2: The Order of the Black Swan (10 page)

W
hen the nausea
subsided, Lana was standing in her tiny apartment at The Order Headquarters in Edinburgh. Dart made sure she was steady before he released her to stand on her own.

She looked up and really looked at Dart for the first time. She supposed he was probably a real catch, a demon heartthrob. Maybe all the demon girls went gaga when he walked by.

He was undeniably beautiful. He also wasn’t gone which was what he should be.

“Well? Something you need?”

“You sure this is what you want?” he challenged. Lana didn’t answer. “Because Brave is wild over you. You should have seen what he put us all through trying to create a grand gesture. To please you. To woo you.”

Lana shook her head slowly. “He would have had a shot if he’d started with some nice
safe
flowers and candy. Maybe dinner and a movie. Even a walk to Calton Hill.”

Dart canted his head to the side. “You think you would rather have had nice boring flowers and candy?” He snorted. “Do you even hear yourself?” He walked toward the books on her three level shelf and pointed to the rows. “Tell me something, Lana. Is that what all these books are about? Human females being romanced by males who bring them flowers and candy?”

It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

She knew that he could tell by the look on her face that he was right. She didn’t choose to read about nice safe mundane relationships.

“No. But there’s a
big
difference between fantasy and reality.”

“There is. You are right. And that big difference is that most humans are
never
loved by someone who would go to such lengths to give them the fantasy they crave. You captured his love. The point is that he turned himself, and us, inside out to try to show you that no one else would go to such outrageous, extravagant lengths just to please you.”

“This is none of your business, demon.”

“You’re wrong about that, too, human. Brave is my friend. That makes him my business. Perhaps he doesn’t know the finer arts of human courtship, but I know his heart.

“I don’t see why he chose you, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that you’re not giving me any reason to think you deserve to be his consort. Personally, I think he just… what is it you say? Dodged a bullet?”

Dart took her hand roughly. She tried to jerk it away, but he held on and glared at her. He placed a large heavy ring in her palm. “If you change your mind, put the ring on and say his name.”

He closed her fingers around the ring and vanished. The ring was still warm from him holding it in his hand. As soon as the demon disappeared she threw the ring at the opposite wall which happened to feature the only window. The window pane it struck didn’t break, but the impact did cause a hairline fracture. It wasn’t too noticeable with the gray sky beyond, but it was visible.

She stood staring at the crack for a long time while her mind sorted through the events of the past few days. It was a jumble in her mind. After sorting through a cascade of images, she felt a wave of panic about the whereabouts of the ring. She went to hands and knees and began searching the floor frantically.

It hadn’t been under the bed or desk. She finally found it behind the dresser. Holding it up to the light, she took a good look. It appeared to be hammered copper and was inscribed with symbols she didn’t recognize.

If she’d stopped to analyze her own thoughts and behavior, she would have gained a large dollop of insight, because it never crossed her mind to get rid of the ring and not keep it. After several minutes of standing in the middle of the room trying to decide where to put it, she opened a dresser drawer, hid it in the toe of a pair of thick wool ski socks then replaced the socks.

She took a hot shower, made a hot tea, and opened up her reader. The first book cover that appeared featured a couple in a romantic embrace. He wore a shirt that had been partially torn away, revealing a body that was not just fit, but deliciously defined. The name of the book was
Sweet Surrender: A Romantic Adventure
. She scrolled to the next.
The Alien’s Saucy Captive
. She continued scrolling through the books in her device carousel.
Running with the Bad Boy: A Tale of Love and Desperation
.
Las Vegas Nights: Don’t Make a Deal with a Demon
.
The Edge of the World: How Far Would You Go For Love?

She growled out loud and, in a fit that Brave would undoubtedly have called childish, threw the innocent device against the wall. When it landed on the floor, she eyed it suspiciously and decided to put it in time out.

Sitting in the silence of her apartment, she looked around and debated turning on the TV. Then she remembered that the last time she’d turned to TV for solace, she’d ended up uprooting her life.

Her eyes slowly scanned the small living space of her apartment and came to rest on the shelves of paperback books. She tried to imagine an unseen Brave coming back and forth and choosing books. Based on what he’d said about learning her language, she deduced that he would have chosen the first few books based on their covers and she wondered which one he’d taken first.

Rising she walked toward the stack like she was being pulled by a magnet and ran her fingers along the spines, reading the titles.

He read each and every one.

Of course he came to the conclusion that she secretly longed for a romantic adventure.
Perfectly logical.

After looking over the covers, asking herself which book she would choose if she didn’t read English and had to go on image alone, she picked one, pulled it down and set it on the table.

The tea kettle had just started whistling, so she hurried into the little galley kitchen, not much bigger than the one on her boat, to fix her tea with two sugars and a splash of cream. She also grabbed a piece of Scottish shortbread before sitting down at her modest, two-person table.

Opening the book, she ran her fingers over the paper, knowing that he’d touched every page. She began reading, and tried to imagine experiencing the story from Brave’s point of view. When she’d finished off the tea and snack, she climbed into bed, cradling the book like it was a museum piece.

It was a science fiction fantasy about a couple who were the only survivors of a crash on a paradise planet. Shortly after they arrived they discovered a fruit orchard with perfect rows. They were suspicious about the orchard’s origin, knowing that it didn’t seem likely that such a thing was random. Still, they had to eat something. So they tried the fruit and found it sweet, juicy and wonderful.

When Lana fell asleep holding the book, she dreamed about a large orchard of ten foot trees that had dark waxy green leaves and ripe succulent pink fruit ready for picking. In her dream the fruit came away from the tree effortlessly and she delighted at the feel of it in her hand. When she bit through the skin, feeling juice squirt and run down her chin, she heard a familiar chuckle and turned to see Brave’s laughing green eyes.

The next morning
Lana got dressed, went to breakfast in the dining hall then made her way to Director Tvelgar’s office. She was told that he could see her if she would have a seat and wait for a few minutes. Almost two hours later, his door opened and he motioned her inside.

It was discomfiting for Lana to realize that no alarm had been raised by her absence. She supposed that, although it seemed to her that a great expanse of time had lapsed, she’d only been away for four nights. She was taken on a Friday night so they wouldn’t miss her at work on Saturday or Sunday. Monday they may have thought she was taking a personal day.

Since she was supervised so loosely that she wasn’t even sure who she reported to, she could understand why no one would have attempted to track her down. It did make her wonder at what point, if ever, someone would start a search.

The Director listened intently as she recounted the events, being as clinically objective as possible while omitting everything that had to do with motivations or feelings or personal exchanges.

“I came to you because I wasn’t sure about where to report this.”

“Well,” he smiled reassuringly, “this is as good a place as any to start, but there are a lot of people who are going to have a lot of questions to pose in your debriefing. So I’d get ready if I were you.” As she opened the door of the Director’s office to leave, he said, “What do you suppose was the motivation for taking you in particular? Any speculation?”

She looked down at her hand grasping the doorknob and debated whether or not to tell the truth. In the end, she decided that The Order was entitled to her professional life, but not her personal life. Even if it did fall into the broad category of paranormal event. Without taking her hand off the handle, she looked back.

“No. It’s a mystery.”

Simon simply nodded and said, “Thank you.” She couldn’t tell by his expression if he believed her or not.

And you called Brave a liar for withholding pertinent information.

Director Tvelgar organized
a panel of inquiry composed of a range of department heads who would be most concerned with the subject matter.

Lana described everything about her experience in detail from the fact that the demons were a species called Callii to the handsome guest chambers with sunken whirlpool tubs made of polished stone.

Naturally, the idea of demons mimicking invisibility quickly became the chief priority for inquiry. It seemed that everyone on the panel was unnerved by the idea that they might be observed by an elemental species without being aware of it. Not to mention that The Order’s security system had not registered the presence of any untagged entity in the building.

Tagging was the system The Order used it to track personnel and be sure the organization’s integrity was not breached. It was a sophisticated state-of-the-art means of identifying a person by their unique pattern of dna plus heat radiation, aka aura. It had been developed by Thelonius Monq and quickly adopted by every Order installation in the world. The fact that demons could come and go undetected was disturbing.

Lana didn’t amend that assumption to include humans whose abilities were temporarily modified by the injection of demon blood. At times she felt guilty about that because she knew that was a breakthrough insight that could be crucial to operations. She was aware that The Order had in its employ a half demon who could travel between dimensions at will. She was also aware that The Order believed that interdimensional shifting while human was a death sentence. Clearly the demons, and Brave, had found a way around that.

For a time
it seemed that her new job would be answering the same questions again and again. There was no question in her mind that the line between her professional obligation and her personal privacy was blurred. Still she continued to insist that she didn’t know why she’d been singled out to be taken and returned unharmed.

Lana knew that it was standard procedure to include psychics in debriefings and inquiries to insure that she was both sane and telling the truth. One of them had given her a look that said she knew Lana was withholding information. Apparently the psychic, who was either better than the others or had a connection with Lana, had decided that girls are entitled to keep personal details to themselves.

After a week of being questioned, Lana was sent back to her cataloguing job and things returned to normal. Or at least as normal as things can be when a person literally sails into an alternate dimension, learns that such things as vampire, werewolves, and banshees are real and is then kidnapped by demons and taken to yet another dimension so that a lost human can court her.

Now and then
she had a flash memory of something funny Brave had said or a hint of the way her body would respond with a rush from just an accidental brush of his hand. Sometimes she thought she felt his breath near her face. Sometimes she thought she heard his voice.

I know it felt great to have you grab onto me and hang on for dear life.

Now and then she even had the sensation that she wasn’t alone when she’d stayed late in the library to keep from going back to her room. Sometimes she thought she felt a presence in her room at night and she would ask out loud.

“Brave? Are you here?” Or, “Brave? Is that you?”

There was never a reply, exactly what she’d insisted upon. Exactly what she’d insisted that she wanted.

If he was there, he never revealed himself. One thing about demons, they always abide by the terms of the deals they make. She supposed that went for humans raised by demons as well.

At night Lana
continued to reread the paperback books on her personal library shelf. Each book brought her closer to understanding his reasoning and how he had reached his conclusions about what she wanted.

There was a paranormal romance in which a pair of would-be lovers traversed a quicksand bog by slowly and carefully walking single file on the abstract pattern of narrow bars of solid ground.

In another book a couple was chased through a forest by a sorcerer who had a pack of wolves at his command.

One book in particular involved a couple who had been imprisoned together without knowing why. During the process of attempting escape they fell in love.

She noted that, in each of the books, the adventure into which the couple was thrust served to bring them closer together and help them recognize the true love that they seemed predestined to express.

It was during one of the debriefing inquiries that she realized how ludicrous it was to be chased on foot by beings who can go anywhere they want with a thought. She came to the conclusion that the demons either respected Brave enormously or bore him great affection to be willing to go to so much trouble to help him win the “female” who… “captured his love”.

As the days
came and went, Lana felt underutilized by The Order. She became restless and was overcome by that feeling of having taken the wrong turn from her true path, the one she was supposed to be on.