Vacation Hell: Princess of Hell #4 (13 page)

A question for another day. Right now, I had to save Hell, and I totally would if a certain obstinate cat would get out of my way. “And who’s going to stop me?” I asked with a smirk.

“I will.”

Before anyone could fathom what Felipe meant, he took off running, his form morphing into his Hell kitty, sending his clothes scattering. My, what a nice pussy. Big, furry, and looking soft for the stroke.

Even the dirty innuendo did nothing to arouse me. Fascinating how my magic worked, but, again, not the issue of the moment.

Felipe escaped my reach, determined to foil my plan to kill Jenny. At this point, I had two choices. Chase after the feline who sat perched on the rail or wait and see. After all, there was only one place for him to go and that was the cold, icky water. Felipe wasn’t the only one who’d prefer not to get wet. Hmm. That didn’t sound right. I liked to get wet, but not salty.

No wait. I liked salty.

But Felipe didn’t. He hovered on the railing, hesitating as he evaluated his choices. I noted he cocked his head, eyes focusing elsewhere, as if listening to someone. That someone being my mother, who got only half of her ventriloquism act together. She didn’t even have the grace to look sheepish when I caught her mumbling to Felipe.

Whatever she said probably included the word jump, seeing as how Felipe launched himself into the swirling whirlpool forming alongside the ship.

I blinked and peeked again, but I’d seen correctly the first time. A twisting funnel had formed in the rocking sea’s waves, like an inverted tornado that went down, down, down…much farther than I was comfortable with.

But so long as we didn’t hop in like a certain dumb cat, we’d be fine.

Speaking of cat, though, the hairy bugger had dared to defy me and then escape. Already frustrated by a few things in my life, I let out an unladylike screech that I knew my daddy would wholeheartedly approve of. “I am so going to skin that cat and use him as a rug when I get my hands on him.”

“Mind rerouting that murderous impulse to something a little more pressing?” my father asked, and I paid attention, seeing as how his eyes glowed, a bright red and orange and yellow, much like the flames that kept Hell lit.

People often claimed we were alike. I did, after all, have his eyes, a wart off the old hairy goat. Being alike meant we often clashed, like now when I snarled, “What could be more important than making sure your minions respect me?”

What surprised me was Daddy didn’t immediately side with my desire to kill a minion for respect. Odd because he was usually the one egging me on and then taking me out to celebrate when I laid down my law.

Then again, the lookout shouted a damned good reason why everyone needed to focus on something other than turning a certain cat into a fur coat.

“Krakens!”

Dammit! So unfair. I’d always wanted to holler it at the top of my lungs. So I did. But I did it with much more pizzazz than the imp in the crow’s nest who shivered in fear.

“Krakens,” I yodeled with a bright smile. “Woo! Hoo!” I kicked off my flip-flops because I wanted to be taken seriously. “Give me a sword.” I held out my hand and then sighed as no one slapped a weapon in it. There was the best reason for never leaving home without either a four-foot blade or my men. They’d have shoved something with a sharp edge at me. But this crew? They gave me a wide berth. That was one demographic my PR department could ignore for the moment. They showed proper respect.

“Doesn’t anyone have a freaking sword?” I snapped.

“Would a scimitar work?”

At Tristan’s voice, I turned to peek at the rail then blinked in astonishment because there, suspended on a wave, was Tristan, but Tristan in full-warrior mode. He wore a chest harness adorned with spikes. At his wrists, bracers laced with deadly bladed fins. In each hand he held a scimitar, the curved blades gleaming.

“Take one.” He tossed it to me, the silvery length flying end over end in the air. I caught the pommel and curved my fingers around it. The weight was just right for my hand, the balance perfect. I jogged to the rail—and, yes, it had a slight slow-motion, Baywatch, watch-the-bouncy-boobs action going on. Tristan certainly noticed, as did the Vikings pouring onto the decks.

To a hundred, perhaps more, wolf whistles, I leaped to the rail, my toes curling around the pole for balance, my arms out by my sides. I scanned the horizon, seeing the churn of water and the wave of tentacles bursting from the waves.

“Kraken.” I whispered the word with an edge of excitement. I’d never fought their likes before, but I knew a few crucial things—they were deadly, they projected a paralytic poison, and killing one was on my bucket list.

A boat was being lowered down the side, filled to the brim with Vikings, but I was sure they’d make room for me, even if they had to toss one of their own overboard. I readied to jump into the bobbing craft, but Tristan moved closer to me on his wave and shook his head.

“I have a better plan.”

His lips pursed, and his throat did the oddest ripple as he blew a sound. A sound that should have rung for all to hear, but was silent. Whatever he did never managed to cut through the din of impending battle, yet I could feel it, a sonar type of speech.

Tristan dove under the waves, and while fainter, I could again feel the vibration of the sonar pitch he emitted.

From the choppy sea he surged, his single scimitar holstered by his side in favor of his gleaming triton, but more fantastical than that, hellphins rose from the waves, eight of them by my count, their rusty skin gleaming, the dark leather of their harnesses crisscrossing their bodies. Behind them, they pulled an intricately carved shell.

With a hint of a smile, Tristan tipped his glowing fork. “Your chariot, princess.”

Now this was what I called riding into battle with style. How freaking awesome. I could practically bitch slap the jealousy hovering in the air as both my dad and mom gaped. I stepped on to the shell, wrapped a rein around one wrist, and held aloft my sword.

A moment like this deserved a speech, a cry to battle at the very least. “Let’s kill ourselves a monster,” I hollered. It belatedly occurred to me that the hellphins might take offense at my calling one of their possible cousins monsters, but then again, given how eagerly they jerked, maybe not.

I braced myself, adjusting my stance to the wild roll and soar of the chariot as it skimmed over waves, steering clear of the whirlpool as we headed for the cluster of thrashing tentacles. As the chariot zipped along, sluicing through the waves, I ducked and swung, the sharp edge of the blade slicing and almost sticking in the thick flesh. A wrench of my arm and it slid free, but I didn’t like it.

So I fixed it.

אש,
I whispered.
Fire.

Flames erupted along the edge of the blade, not my usual red flames that adorned my Hell sword, but icy blue ones. Interesting. But were they effective?

The chariot swooped around, the loop sling shooting me toward the back of the kraken. But a kraken could see front or back via the suckers on their tentacles. A snakelike limb came whipping toward me, the mottled gray of its skin not even attractive enough to make into a lampshade. I slashed with my blade.

Sizzle. It sliced clean through and left a pleasant barbecue flavor in the air.

“You’re slow, princess,” Tristan shouted as he soared into the air alongside me, his silvery tail flashing. His triton slammed down on a tentacle, close to the body, chopping it short. “That’s four for me.”

This was a competition? What a cheater for not telling me before. My dad was going to love him. I would probably end up caring for him, too, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to beat him.

I wound the reins in my hand one loop tighter. Time for me to guide my sleigh. I directed my sea steeds through the winding and twisting morass of flying tentacles. I sliced here and there, seemingly at random, but I had an objective. The eye of the beast.

Wide, bloodshot, and unblinking, it proved a wonderful target when I launched myself, my blade sinking into the gelatinous orb.

We wouldn’t discuss what oozed out—the waves thankfully wiped it clean—and I managed to irritate the kraken, which, in turn, meant a few Vikings that were caught in its grip got tossed into its mouth. Excellent.

Now to get a few more swallowed.

Before anyone got all in my face about me sacrificing the soldiers, let me say, suck it up. This was war. And two, the only way to kill a kraken, short of firing a torpedo at point-blank range, was from the inside.

I’d just handed victory to those who didn’t get digested by the acidic juices in the stomach of the beast.

In moments, the tentacles went limp, hitting the water with a splash. But even the large waves capsizing a few of the teetering boats with men aboard couldn’t dampen their enthusiastic cheer.

“Hail the daughter of Odin.” Another name for my dad back in the day when he used to rampage and pillage for fun with the Norsemen. “May she be rewarded with a spot in Valhalla.”

Screw a spot. I intended to run the place.

As I whipped my chariot around to attack the next sea monster, I winced as a noise unlike any I’d heard rushed from the whirlpool to my left. The shocking sound rose into the air. I could practically see the coils of the discordant notes as they hovered high in the sky and clung. I felt and saw the tear between Hell and the other dimension, a rip that widened but that I had to ignore as a tentacle tried to slap me.

I sliced it. I sliced all the wandering appendages and ignored the rift as I took care of the beasts threatening me and the
S.S. Sushimaker
.

The fight ended much too quickly. A handful of krakens didn’t prove much against a horde of Vikings and me.

Tristan helped, too. A little. But the guy—who obviously had some smarts—let me have the kill. How romantic.

With the sea free of monsters, I looked to the sky and noted the rip was wide enough to swallow a kraken whole. A hush of anticipation seemed to settle, and all sound stopped except for a final, horrible note that sent more than one imp screaming silently to jump into the sea.

As for me, I think my ears bled a little, but that was all. I could feel the soothing touch of a spell keeping the worst of the music from me. Damn my mother for doing something nice.

Pressure built into the air, and even with the spell shielding my ears, I couldn’t help a wince. A few Vikings screamed, “By Odin’s beard, make it stop!”

And then it did. There was a pop. A flash of blinding light. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, the sky was empty, the whirlpool caved in on itself, and nowhere could I see any sign of a big, bad monster. And I looked. But the waves were calm, no one was screaming, and nothing came lurching from the sea begging me to chop it into bits.

What a letdown.

With the enemy vanquished, I decided I should return to the ship and check on my parents. I worried about Daddy. He wasn’t as young as he used to be. Once upon a few centuries ago, he’d have dove in with me to fight. Yet, for this battle, he’d stayed aboard.

As for my mother, I wondered if she’d gotten swallowed by a beast or perhaps tossed into the whirlpool before it disappeared. It probably wouldn’t kill her, but anything that irritated her made me happy.

I unwound my hand from the reins and leaned against the side of my sea chariot, the image of casualness and with reason. Tristan swam alongside.

“You fought well,” he remarked.

“I always do. Take me to the
S.S. Sushimaker
,” I commanded my merman.

He rolled onto his back, long tail undulating, and tossed me a lazy grin. “What’s in it for me?”

If this were a guy in my harem, I’d say sex. But Tristan wasn’t in my boy band—yet. So instead he got, “A kiss.”

I expected indignation, anger perhaps even at the small token, especially given what we’d shared earlier. Yet Tristan kept surprising me. “I accept.”

In the blink of an eye, he’d flipped into the air and let out a silent sonar command. Well trained, the hellphins dove, dragging the chariot with them under the waves—without me in it.

Tristan had sliced out of the water, arms extended that he might scoop me before it went under. When a bare-chested man captured you, there was only one thing to do.

I plastered my lips to his for the promised kiss, a kiss that I meant to keep short and chaste. Ha, as if that would happen. Upon the first sensual slide of our lips, my tongue went for a walk, right into his mouth, and one kiss turned into two, three…

We stayed liplocked for several minutes, and might have gone on for several more if I hadn’t heard an excited shout. “My dark lord, something rises from the deep.”

I pried my lips from Tristan’s and leaned back, knowing my mouth was swollen and my skin hotly flushed, the image of a woman in lust.

I’d kept my part of the bargain. Now Tristan needed to keep his. “Take me back to the ship.”

“As the princess wishes.”

I wished for many things. Respect when my body burned wasn’t one of them.

On a wave he created, Tristan rose above sea level, high enough that he could stand me on the boat’s deck.

As his water perch backed from the boat, I frowned. “Aren’t you coming aboard?”

“Not today. I need to check on Atlantis and see how its citizens fared.”

I could have slapped myself silly when I said, “When will I see you again?”

“Missing me already?”

How could I miss something I didn’t have? A question that had no answer, but I felt Tristan’s absence keenly when he dove under the waves.

I might have dwelled on his ability to abandon me with such ease, even if it was for the best, if, at the moment, the waves hadn’t stirred even more than was normal in one spot.

The water split over the skin of a clear bubble. From the cold sea, it floated, up, up, and over the deck until it POP-ped!

From it tumbled a girl and Felipe, who steadied both their landings.

It didn’t take a genius to conclude this was the Jenny who threatened Hell. She didn’t look so big and bad.

I turned away from the couple and took a moment to eye the large boat deck, partially covered in goop and swarming with singing Vikings pushing large brooms. Shirtless Vikings, I should add.