Prince of Demons 2: The Order of the Black Swan (8 page)

“Where is Brave?”

The demon turned back and smirked at her. “Do not worry about the human. He is receiving the same royal treatment and will be united with you tomorrow.”

“And he also has the protection of the Prince?”

“I can see that you care about Brave’s welfare. The Prince will be pleased. I assure you that tonight Brave is safer than anyone else in this world.”

The demon nodded toward the rectangular pool and it began swirling like a whirlpool bath with state-of-the-art Jacuzzi-type jets. “When you leave the bath, the water will resume a state of calm. Other facilities are beyond that partition.” He waved in the direction of the corner.

At that he left her alone and closed the door. After checking to see if the door was locked from the outside and learning that it was, she reasoned that the best course of action was to do exactly as the demon had suggested – take a bath, have dinner, go to bed. But not before she visited the “facilities beyond the partition”. She told herself that she would manage the next day, whatever it brought, better if she was clean, fed, and well rested with a pleasantly empty bladder.

After sitting on the bench staring into the flames for a few minutes, she bent down and pulled off one boot. She moaned from the ecstasy of pulling her foot free and wiggling her toes. She repeated the same process with the other foot then pulled off her tights and left them in a small pile on the floor.

She bent one knee while the foot attached to the other leg ventured testing the water. The swirling water was such an inviting combination of heat and massage that she released another audible moan.

Looking around the room between a repast conceived in delight, the seductively pristine bed and the clean gown waiting to caress her clean body, she began to understand why demons had a reputation for temptation in her world. Nothing made a girl appreciate a massage bath, a feast, and a heavenly bed like being filthy, starved, and sleep deprived first.

She lay back in the bubbling water with the back of her head resting on the rolled edge and stared at the fire until she almost went to sleep. She jerked awake and realized that her muscles were less sore as the result of the water pressure and subtle manipulation of flesh. When she climbed out and reached for a towel, the water became calm just as the demon had said it would.

She pulled the saffron silk garment over her head and it settled around her body like a cloud. The table had one chair so there was no need to tax herself deciding where to sit. She took one of the two pitchers and poured into the tall goblet. Sparkling water. She poured the contents of the other pitcher into the shorter goblet. Something red. She sniffed. It was wine. She was no connoisseur, but she thought it smelled like a pinot noir. The tiniest sip confirmed that it was sinfully sweet, but full bodied.

As good as the meal looked, she was too tired to want to stay awake for it. She picked up a fowl leg and took a bite then said to the room, “Tastes like chicken.” After four bites of bread and three small squares of a to-die-for white cheese, she pushed the chair back, shuffled toward the bed and threw herself in.

It was good. It was so good that she had an internal battle with whether or not she wanted covers badly enough to reach down and pull them up. Finally deciding she could manage just that much more effort, she pulled the thick lightweight covers up to her chin and knew nothing else until she was awakened by the bright light of day.

It seemed the entire ceiling of the room was a skylight.

Looking over at the table she noticed that the food that was there the night before had been replaced with a different arrangement, which could only mean that someone had been in the room while she slept. Without disturbing her.

She slid out of bed and headed straight for the partition. On the other side was a toilet, a waist-high trough with running water and a long counter on the opposite side. The long bench that normally went under the counter was pulled out to display her own clothes, neatly laid out – cleaned or laundered as the case might be. She picked up her tights which had been both ripped and nasty.

They looked brand new, no sign of a tear, pulls or pilling. She brought them to her nose and took in a whiff. They didn’t have a newly manufactured chemical odor, just the sweet clean smell of fresh laundry. Likewise, the boots looked brand new. No scuffs. Not even signs of caked mud or clinging plant life.

When she had dressed herself, she brushed her teeth with a bristled instrument identical to the one Brave had stolen for her and brushed her hair with the handle brush provided. She didn’t miss any of her other toiletries because her skin felt soft and smooth as if she’d slept in a cocoon of lotion. She was thinking there must have been something in the water that made complexions glow and hair shine.

All in all she decided that she didn’t look half bad for a person who had been through a desperate terror-filled escape and had to get ready for the day without makeup.

Next stop breakfast. The wine had been replaced with her favorite – cranberry juice, or something very like it. Coffee would have been nice, but she promised herself that she would stop the next time she passed a Starbucks. The bread was brown instead of the white that had been served the night before and full of whole grains and nuts. She amused herself, eating alone, by imagining asking the demons for the recipe.

On cue when she finished, almost as if they had been watching, the door opened and the demon who had “escorted” her to her chambers the night before appeared.

“Good day, Ms. Ravin. Are you ready for your audience?”

“Is there a choice?”

His lips twitched. “Not really.”

“Does the audience involve torture or beheading?”

“As mentioned last night, you are under the protection of the Prince. No harm will come to you.”

“Well, then. I guess I’m ready.”

“Follow me.”

“Dude. You totally ruined it. You were supposed to say ‘walk this way’.”

“What?”

“Never mind. How did you make my clothes look brand new? Is it against the rules to tell me that?”

“The rules? What rules?”

“Um. The rules of kidnapping a person who’s never done a thing to you, dumping them in a dungeon with a total stranger who could be psycho, chasing them through all manner of life threatening events, then telling them to bathe, eat, sleep, eat, dress, and ‘follow me’.”

The demon stopped abruptly and turned around. “You’re stranger than most humans. Right?”

“I suppose it depends on who you talk to.”

The demon stared down at her for a few beats then turned abruptly and resumed leading her to the “audience”.

The hallways were wide and covered in polished stone similar to that in the chamber where she’d slept, except that it was light in color. After a couple of turns they came to an even wider hallway that ended in two giant doors with semi-arch tops that met in the middle. The two demons outside opened the doors as they approached.

Lana scanned the room quickly. Like her guest chamber, the ceiling was mostly skylight. The floor was large stone squares juxtaposed to create an abstract pattern. At the head of the room was a throne-like chair, definitely created to make an impression and enlarge the persona of the person who sat in it. But the only thing in the room she cared about was Brave. He was talking to several demons who towered over him.

His face broke into a radiant smile when he looked up and saw her. He was wearing black pants that looked like soft leather tucked into knee high black boots and a light colored sleeveless shirt that was so thin it was almost sheer. All the demons were dressed in a similar manner.

Brave held out his arms as she walked toward him and she walked straight into them, burying her head in his neck and hugging him tightly.

“Good morning, Beautiful. How did you sleep?”

“Like the dead. But when I wasn’t asleep I was worried about you.”

She heard one of the demons snort at that.

He hugged her tighter, nuzzling her ear and murmuring sweet thoughts about how good she smelled.

“What’s going to happen to us now, Brave?”

She opened her eyes a sliver. What filled her field of vision was the chest and arms of one of the demons and his arm tattoos were identical to the guard that they had either killed or left for dead when they escaped.

She opened her mouth to tell Brave, but he pulled back smiling. “Nothing is going to happen to us. We played a game. It was fun, but now it’s over.”

The guard they had fought with said, “Do you have further need of the Council, Your Eminence?”

When Lana realized that he was addressing Brave, she felt shock register and then resonate all the way to her toes. She looked back at Brave with wide eyes.

“No, Perry, but I want you and Dart to stay for a bit and get to know Lana. Atalanta Ravin,” Brave smiled down at her like he was introducing her to friends at a cocktail party, “this is my chief security officer, Peregrination. The other ugly demon is Dart. He’s been my best friend since, well, forever.”

“I don’t understand. This demon is the one you attacked so that we could escape,” she said, nodding at Peregrination.

Perry laughed and winked at her. “I’ll be forever grateful that you weren’t brought here in stilettos, I assure you.”

Everyone vacated the room, leaving them alone. Brave ushered Lana toward his chair and sat her on his lap. She went along dumbly because she was too stunned to resist.

“Lana,” Brave laughed. “Don’t look so glassy eyed. All this was prearranged for you.”

At first it almost sounded like Brave’s voice was coming from the bottom of a well. When her mind snapped back into real time, his last statement began to sink in.

“Why did he call you ‘Your Eminence’?”

“Oh that. They call me Prince because my foster father is Regent.”

Dart spoke up. “That’s not the only reason. He’s being modest. He’s Prince because he has something we need.” Lana looked at Dart, who smiled showing incisors that would be extraordinarily sharp on a human. “He’s devious. Has a gift for it.”

Lana looked back at Brave, who shrugged, obviously proud of himself, and gave her a little pat on the rear end. Which made her want to bite down on that hand. Hard.

“He certainly is. And apparently you think deviousness is a good thing.”

“It’s not just a good thing. It’s a thing necessary to protecting and preserving your home against aggressors who are also…”

“Devious,” she supplied. “So none of this was real.”

“Some of it was real,” Brave protested, suddenly becoming aware of her tone. “The part that counted – the sensations and emotions you were feeling.”

“And you thought making me feel those things was a game?” She scrambled off his lap and stood facing him in confrontation. “Not to mention the fact that we could have died!”

“No.” He shook his head, looking more concerned by the second. “Nothing could have happened to you. It was all planned.”

“Planned? That’s impossible, Brave.” She looked around at the others whose expressions were completely blank. “You don’t seem to understand that this was wrong! Wrong on every level.”

She jerked her head toward Perry when he snorted at that.

“Do you have something you want to say, demon?”

Perry wiped the smile from his face. “Yes. I would like to say your human philosophy on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’,” he actually did air quotes, twice, “won’t find any fans here.”

She stared at Peregrination for a full minute, trying to absorb that and imagine how a society could be ordered without some code of conduct, whatever it might be called.

While she ran through the ramifications, she felt a moist snuffling at the hand that hung by her side. When she looked down, she saw a large shaggy dog-like creature looking up and wagging its tail. When it raised its head to grin at her, she saw fangs the size of a sabre tooth tiger. She screamed and started backing away.

The canine looked around, uncertain about how to react to that behavior as the arc of its tail wag waned.

“Female!” said Peregrination. “Do not make that noise again!”

“Perry!” said Brave. “You will not talk to Lana like that. She’s never seen straithgard before.”

“That’s a straithgard?” she asked, pointing at the animal. The straithgard looked up and, seeing that she was referring to him, gave a hopeful tail wag and took a couple of steps toward her. She held up her hand and said, “Stop!”

“Oh for…” Perry said. “Tinker. Go sit with Brave.”

The straithgard turned and trotted to Brave’s chair where it promptly flopped down on its side.

“Was that chasing us?”

“Yeah, this one and others. But to them it was just an outing. A run. If they had caught us, they would have just drowned us in kisses.”

When Lana finally spoke again, it was to say simply, “Take me back.”

She turned away from Brave and refused to look at him or acknowledge him in any way. She began saying, “Take me back,” like a chant, partly to let her wishes be known and partly to drown out anything he had to say.

At length, when it became conspicuously clear to Brave that she was going to refuse to hear anything he said, he hefted her to his shoulder in a roar of frustration and stormed from the Regent Chamber.

The walk to the subterranean level where the dungeon had recently been constructed was not without punishment to Brave. She screamed. She kicked. She beat at his rear end with fists and squirmed so that it was almost impossible to hold onto her. All the while she was turning the air blue with every manner of curse and epithet, most of which he understood, some which he did not. The phrase “cock sucking son of a javelina whore” pierced through to his sense of humor.

When Lana heard him laugh, she threw herself upright in a rage and grabbed onto his ears. Brave reacted by setting her against the wall. He attempted to kiss her senseless. She bit his tongue and drew blood. While he was reacting to that with incredulity, she tried to knee him in the balls.

Some demon boys came upon them in the hallway and laughed at the Prince’s difficulty until they got a look at the glare Brave was shooting their way. They disappeared in a hurry.