Chapter Fourteen #4
“—they are twelve weeks old now, and although the one with the black spot on the side is reserved for the head priestess, the orange one is available.”
Yrian turned to me as I approached, a small bundle of orange clasped to his chest.
“Yes, you can have a kitten,” I said, the objection I’d had on my lips since I’d seen the kittens for sale sign out front dying at the look of delight in his eyes.
“And yes, I realize I don’t have the right to give you permission to have a pet, but in case you were going to ask if I minded, I don’t.
Although I really think you should have cats in pairs, so they have company. ”
“We will get another later when we have a home,” he said, offering the kitten to me.
It looked sleepy and somewhat annoyed at having been woken, but offered a rusty purr when I gave it a quick snuggle.
He turned back to the woman, gesturing toward the orange purr machine.
“Will you guard our kitten for us for a short while? We are going into battle, and it would not be safe for her to be around while we rid the world of my brother.”
“Him, and I’ll keep him for a few days so long as you put down a deposit, but if you don’t come back for him by Friday, I’ll look for another home,” the woman warned, her gaze turning stubborn.
Yrian had taken the kitten from me prefatory to handing it over to the woman, but reeled back like she had struck him. “You will not give away our kitten. I have funds put at my disposal by my youngest brother. What amount do you want?”
Payment settled, five minutes later I managed to pry Yrian away from the orange kitten, its sibling who was promised to the local priestess, the mama cat, and even a baby lizard that he rescued from the mama, and herded him back to the taxi with promises of lots of critter playtime once we had finished our task.
“That’s it, the second from the end,” Neferu said about a half hour later.
We were on the edges of a medium-sized village, one with a few shops, as well as dwellings.
There were no people roaming around the village itself, but to our left where the fields spread out like a vast, golden blanket, a good two dozen or so people worked the land.
“I don’t get why they don’t use a proper tractor when they have cars,” I said eyeing a man and his ox as they plowed the nearest edge of the field. “It seems like this way would be so much slower and harder.”
“That’s the whole point, though, isn’t it?
” Neferu said, one arm out of the window as she contemplated the pastoral scene.
“Osiris expects those who are unable to pass on to work as a form of penance, so he doesn’t want things made too easy.
Anyway, I’m off. Give me a call if you need a ride to the nearest portal, OK? ”
“Will do,” I said, hurrying to catch up to Yrian when he stalked across the dusty dirt road toward a set of four small clay buildings.
I wanted to hold his hand, if for no other reason than comfort, but to be honest, I wasn’t any too happy with the idea of standing in front of Bael.
I allowed Yrian to move in front of me when he approached the wooden door of the third house.
A symbol was scratched into the wall, but what it meant, I had no idea.
It gave Yrian a moment of pause, however.
“Do not speak to Kashi. He lies,” was all he said before flinging open the door without so much as a knock.
“Yeah, this is so anticlimactic,” I said a half minute later, after Yrian had marched through the house.
It had only one bedroom, a minuscule bathroom with a toilet and sink, and the main room that housed a long table, two chairs, and a wall full of bladed weapons.
It was empty of all former demon lords. “Mind you, I’m not complaining, but I know you were all keyed up to—”
I stopped when Yrian held up a hand, his head cocked slightly to the side. I wondered what he was listening to, since I didn’t hear anything, but just as I was going to ask what was wrong, a woman’s voice carried in on a breeze from the river.
“—can’t believe you have not yet done away with that annoying dragon. Why you insist it’s better to keep him alive is beyond me. You got what you wanted from him! We don’t need any loose cannons—”
The door opened to reveal a woman. She stood taller than me, was of a substantial build, and had black eyes and long chestnut hair.
Yrian took a step back, his expression as frozen as the woman’s.
At least, for a few seconds, then all hell seemed to break loose.
The woman screeched something in a language that felt really old; then she spun on her heel and ran off toward the road.
“Was that Asfet—” I started to ask, but Yrian was gone, racing after her.
By the time I made it outside, the muffled cough of a motor scooter could be heard, accompanied by a cloud of reddish-brown dust from the road, the obscured image of a woman bent low over the handlebars visible as she sped off.
She pulled something black out of the robes she wore, and for a moment I thought it was a Taser, but since she kept fleeing, I figured it must be a cell phone.
When I reached Yrian’s side, he swore in three different languages for a good minute and a half.
“Why did Asfet run from us? We haven’t met her, have we?” I asked, coughing and waving away the swirl of dust. “Why did she look so surprised to see us? I think she had a phone. Do you suppose she was calling Bael to warn him we’re here?”
“That wasn’t Asfet,” Yrian said, whirling around to search for something. “It was Tenite.”
“Who—wait, isn’t that your mom’s name?” I asked, a chill gripping my bones.
“We need a form of transport,” Yrian said, marching to the road, looking up and down it.
The houses here didn’t have anything more than a couple of beat-up bicycles, but just as I was about to pin him back with a dozen questions, a tinny horn sounded as a golf cart bounced its way around the edge of a building, moving slowly through a flock of ducks and chickens.
“That will do—” Yrian stopped speaking, but a sudden rush of his fire had me gasping with the intensity of it.
The golf cart bounced to a stop on the road on another cloud of dust, the driver barely visible through it, but I caught a glimpse of an extremely old-looking man with a bald head, clad in nothing but a loincloth, holding a cell phone that he clicked off as he stopped in a swirl of even more dust. But it was the man who emerged from the cart through the brownish-red haze that had me taking several steps back before I realized it.
“Is that—” The words were barely audible, since my breath seemed to be caught in my throat.
“Kashi.” Yrian all but spat the name out, as if it fouled his mouth.
The driver slid out of the golf cart and, with a back bent by extreme age, shuffled the way he had come, then disappeared around the house without a backward glance.
As the dust dissipated, I could see Bael clearly.
He didn’t look even remotely like Yrian, but I had a feeling I wasn’t seeing his true form.
This one was of a tall, elegant man with dark blond hair swept back, clad in a black pinstripe suit that was extremely out of place in the rural setting of Duat.
“Yrian Shadowsworn. I had heard a rumor that the First Dragon dragged you kicking and screaming out of your pity party. I am disappointed to find it true.”
His gaze raked Yrian, but as I could feel the latter drawing in power to himself, I kept my attention on him.
I couldn’t help him by creating a glamour in the Duat, but I sure as hell could cast any of the premade ones I’d brought with me.
I angled myself so that I could dig through the small cross-body bag I’d donned before leaving the Wepwawet, and felt through the glamours searching for the insensibility one that would hopefully stun Bael for a few seconds so Yrian could deal with him.
“You have become too much of a threat to the dragonkin to tolerate your continued existence,” Yrian told him, his voice so icy goose bumps rose on my arms. “Either you cease your actions, or you will be destroyed.”
Bael looked bored. “You think to command me? I am the premiere prince of Abaddon, dragon. I give commands, not take them.” His gaze shifted to me, and I had to stop myself from hiding behind Yrian.
“You have a mate? After swearing you would never replace your first? Perhaps you welcomed her death so that you might consort with this mortal.”
Bael gestured toward me as he spoke, and for a moment, I sagged in relief against Yrian’s back. He hadn’t seen through my glamour.
“My mate is of no concern to you,” Yrian snarled, and I think he would have attacked his brother except Bael seemed to expect that.
“You can’t kill me, you know,” he said in a voice that I’m sure he thought was pleasant. It wasn’t. I swore it took years off even my immortal life. He lifted a hand and gestured toward the clay houses. “Like me, your powers were limited the minute you stepped foot in the Duat.”
“I don’t need powers to throttle the life from your body,” Yrian said in a low, deceptively soft tone that sent another round of goose bumps down my arms.
Bael laughed, he actually laughed. It was a horrible thing to witness. “If only it was that simple. Alas, unless you have something along the lines of this, there is no threat you can make that I would take seriously.” As he spoke, he pulled out of an inner pocket a small bluish crystal.
Yrian’s fire roared at the sight of what I figured must be the mage sword, and before I could think of the wisdom of the situation, I flung the insensibility glamour over Yrian’s shoulder, smack-dab into the face of Bael.
“What did—” Yrian half turned toward me, but evidently realized what I’d done, because before I could warn him we had about five seconds at most, he snatched the crystal from Bael’s hand. It elongated into a long, glowing blue-and-white sword.