“Silence!” she commanded, and gestured toward one of the flunkies standing against the wall.
A man came forward, pulled out a scroll, and read. “Demon of unknown origins found arriving via portal in the Latin Quarter on Tuesday afternoon.”
“Jim,” I said quickly, eyeing that nasty dagger. “My name is Jim!”
“You are charged with violation of the Roaming Demon Ordinance of 2008.”
“What?” I squawked, trying to squirm out of the two thugs’ grip. “What Roaming Demon Ordinance?”
“In accordance with the laws sanctified by the Venediger, your mortal form will be destroyed, and your being sent back to Abaddon where you belong.”
“You can’t do that!” I yelled, watching as the Venediger nodded and a Guardian came forward, pulling out a gold stick and beginning to scribe a circle around me. “Aisling is going to be really pissed!”
The Guardian paused, looking up. I’d never seen her before, but evidently she’d heard of Ash. “Aisling? Aisling Grey?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s her. Aisling is my boss.” I craned my neck to glare up at Jovana. “The same person who gave you your job!”
Jovana narrowed her eyes on me for a few seconds. “It is true that Aisling Grey has a demon under her control. But I have heard that the demon’s preferred form is that of a dog.”
“Man alive, doesn’t anyone listen to me?” I complained, trying to pull my arm free.
Jovana nodded to the guard, who let go of me. I yanked my hand free from the other one and sat up, rubbing my wrists. “I just got done telling you that I’m normally in dog form, but another Guardian ordered me into human form because she knew it would tick me off.”
Six pairs of eyes considered me as I slid off the table to my feet. I straightened my codpiece, dusted off my leather thong, and raised an eyebrow while I waited for the apologies to flow.
The Guardian rose from where she’d been kneeling. “If this demon speaks the truth—”
“I may be a lot of things, but I’ve never been a liar,” I said grumpily.
“If it speaks the truth, then I want no part of this,” she continued, putting away her gold stick. “Aisling Grey is one of the most powerful Guardians in the Guardians’ Guild. She is a savant, especially gifted, and someone I do not wish to cross.”
“Anyen will tell you who I am,” I said, waving at the ghede.
She glared back at me.
“Hey, I helped you, now it’s time for you to repay me,” I told her.
“Oh, very well. The demon does not lie. It is Effrijim. I have known it for several centuries,” she said, albeit kinda grudgingly.
“There, see? All’s well,” I said, heading for the door. “I’ll tell Ash you send her love, ‘K? See ya round.”
“Halt!” the Venediger said, and instantly the two guards were in front of the door, their eyes narrow little slits as they frowned at me. “I do not accept this foul thing’s statement.”
“Foul thing!” Anyen said, starting forward. I grabbed her before she could jump the Venediger. “I am not a—”
“Hackles down,” I said softly. “Now isn’t the time unless you want to get us both tossed back into that cell in the basement.”
“That is exactly where you are going,” the Venediger said, putting down the dagger. She looked at it regretfully for a moment before pinning me back with a glare that stripped the hair from my toes. “You will remain there until I can speak with the Guardian Aisling Grey to verify your identity.”
“No way!” I protested. “I’ve got...let me count...man, I’ve only got one day left of my vacation. I’m not going to spend it sitting in that room with a pissed off ghede!”
“Nor will I go back to that squalid little room!” Anyen declared.
“Fine.” Jovana shrugged. “Then we will perform your release ceremony now. There will be no Guardian to object to you being sent back to Abaddon, I trust.”
Anyen’s eyes opened up really wide when the Venediger picked up the dagger again.
“You know what?” I asked Anyen, taking a deep breath and thinking about Cecile’s warm, furry little ears.
“What?” she asked.
“We’re immortal.”
She blinked at me for a second, but that’s all I gave her. I grabbed her arm, lowered my head, and charged the Venediger. She sprang to the side, out of the way, just as I figured she would. Anyen and I kept going through, right past the Venediger, the two others staring at us in surprise, and on through the window that opened onto a small garden.
Anyen was fast on her feet, luckily, and although my chest and arms and legs were cut by the glass as I went through the window, we both landed on our feet, and took off running.
The Venediger’s guards, however, were mortal, and they were less than thrilled about leaping into a mass of broken glass. They were slower getting through the window, and by the time they got to the garden, we were racing down the back alley and freedom.
We split up not long after, Anyen making a snarky remark about me slowing her down.
“You’re welcome,” I yelled after her as she disappeared into the Tuilleries. “Hope you don’t get a really nasty case of zombie rot while you’re raising the dead!”
It took me a couple more hours before I finally lost the guard who persisted in following me, so it wasn’t until afternoon that I staggered exhausted, bleeding, and dirty from a fall into the Seine, through the door of a familiar shop. “Cecile! Baby! I’m here!”
The woman behind the counter at the shop stared at me in stark surprise. “Jim? Is that you?”
“Hiya Amelie. Yeah, it’s me. Where’s Cecile?”
“She...she...” Amelie seemed to be struck speechless because she simply pointed upstairs.
“Thanks. Mind if I use your shower? I had a run in with the Venediger and I’m all ooky with blood and stuff. See you later,” I called as I dashed through the back room, then up the stairs that led to the apartment in which Amelie and Cecile lived.
Cecile was also a bit taken aback by my appearance, her eyes going even more bug-eyed than they normally were when I scooped her up in my arms and kissed her all over her adorable pointy little snout. “My darling, my adorable one! We might only have one day left together, but I will make it a day you won’t forget. I promise I’ll get back to my normal form as soon as possible,” I told her when she tried to squirm out of my hold, her little stubby legs kicking wildly. “This one sucks big time, huh? Don’t worry, my beloved. I’ll soon be your big, handsome Jim again. But first, a shower.”
The sound of voices drifted in to me when I stepped out of the shower, drying myself on one of Amelie’s soft towels. I looked at the codpiece and thong, but decided I just couldn’t wear them any longer. By the time I headed out of Amelie’s bedroom, I realized that I knew the voices.
“—came back early because Drake insisted on seeing the doctor. It turned out to be nothing, of course, just a case of the sniffles.”
“Any illness in infants can be serious,” Drake’s voice rumbled in response. “I was not easy in my mind until the children had been seen by a proper doctor.”
“Anyway, we decided it wasn’t worth hauling the babies back to the yacht, so we figured we’d just swing by and pick up Jim and head back to London. Is it here?”
“Aw, man!” I said, marching in to the room. “You’re early? Fine! Just ruin my plans!”
The silence that greeted my arrival in Amelie’s sunny living room was thick enough to cut with a butter knife.
“Er...” Amelie said, her expression kind of shocked.
“Jim! What on earth are you doing in that form!” Aisling demand, her hands on her hips. “And naked!”
Drake narrowed his green eyes at me and muttered something about knowing better than to leave me on my own.
“It’s not my fault,” I told them both. “You can ask that no good, conniving Guardian why I’m like this.”
“I certainly will,” Aisling said,
staring.
Drake slapped his hand over her eyes and glared at me. “Put some clothing on, or I’ll see to it you have nothing left with which to shock Aisling.”
She giggled.
“I don’t want to wear clothing! I want my old form back. Let me change back, Ash. Please.”
“All right, you can change into your normal form,” she said, giggling again. “But I want to hear everything that happened. Only not right now—we had a message from Nora when we got to Drake’s house.”
I sighed with relief as I shifted back to my fabulous Newfoundland form, making a quick check to be sure everything was the way I had left it. “Boy, did I miss you, tail. And package. And four paws. And—”
“Enough,” Drake said, bowing to Amelie. “You will excuse us if we leave in haste. Aisling is anxious to get back to London.”
“Yes, I am. Come on, Jim! There’s work to be done,” Aisling said in her chipper voice as she took Drake’s hand. “Nora said there’s been a huge outbreak of kobolds and imps and all sorts of nasties in the last few days, and she’s overwhelmed and needs our help in cleaning everything up. It’ll be like old times tackling them together, huh?”
“Oh, man,” I said, covering my face with my paws. “Can’t I just sleep here for a couple of days? Cecile and I—”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, cuffing me on the shoulder. “You’ve had ten days together; that’s long enough. Besides, there’s nothing like a bit of action after a nice long, relaxing vacation to get your blood pumping again, now is there?”
EXCERPT FROM YOU SLAY ME
Author’s Note: You Slay Me is the first book in the dragon sept series, and the book in which Jim, hero of the previous short story, was first introduced. Although this book is published by Penguin Random house (and available in print, e-book, and audio form), they’ve kindly given me permission to include the first chapter here for folks who haven’t read the book. If you have already read You Slay Me, feel free to skip over this chapter and move on to the next story.
Chapter One
“Ezling.”
“No, it’s Aisling.”
“Azhlee?”
“Aisling. It’s Irish.”
The Orly passport control man glared suspiciously at me over the top of my passport. “Your passport, it says you are American.”
I rallied a smile when I really wanted to scream with frustration. “I am. My mother was Irish, hence the name Aisling.”
He transferred his glare to the passport. “A-sling.”
I tried not to sigh too obviously. I might be brand-spanking-new to the courier business, but instinctively I knew that if I showed the least sign of impatience with being grilled as to the pronunciation of my name, Antoine the passport man would drag out his interrogation. I sweetened my smile, pushed down the worry that something would go wrong with the job, and said very slowly, “It’s pronounced ash-ling.”
“Ash-leen,” Antoine said, his eyes narrowing in concentration.
I nodded. It was close enough.
“Bon, we march forward,” he said, flipping through my passport. “You are five feet and nine inches tall, have grey eyes, are thirty-one years of age, unmarried, and you live in Seattle, state of Washington, America. This is all correct, yes?”
“Yes, except I think of my eyes as being a bit more hazel than grey, but the passport guy said to put grey down. Hazel sounds more exotic, don’t you think?”
Antoine cocked an eyebrow at me, briefly examining the visa that allowed me to act as a courier for Bell & Sons before moving on to the documents for the aquamanile.
I quickly glanced around, Uncle Damian’s strictures on perimeter security echoing in my head. Security is your personal responsibility; your security is not the responsibility of the police, or of the government, or any officials—your first and last line of security is yourself. Be alert and aware of your surroundings. Radiate confidence. Never do anything to indicate you are prey.
Easier said than done, I mused as I eyed the large number of people passing through the airport. Happily, no one was paying any attention to me or the case I held. I breathed a silent sigh of relief and raised my chin, trying to look confident and in control, not at all like a courier in charge of a six-hundred-year-old small golden statue in the shape of a dragon that was worth more than what I had made in the last ten years put together.
Antoine’s gaze flickered to the small black heavy-duty plastic case I clutched tightly in my right hand. “Do you have the Inventaire Detaillé?”
“Of course.” I passed over the sheets of paper describing in French the gold aquamanile. The document was stamped by the San Francisco French consulate, and included an appraiser’s certificate, as well as a copy of the bill of sale to Madame Aurora Deauxville, citizen of France and resident of Paris.
Antoine’s finger tapped on the top document. “What is this...aquamanile?”
I shifted the case to my left hand, flexing my right fingers, being careful to keep the case out of sight, held between me and the examination table. “An aquamanile is a form of ewer, usually made of metal, used for the ritual washing of hands by a priest or other liturgical person. They were very common in medieval times.”
Antoine’s eyes widened as he stared at the black case. “It is a religious artifact you have?”
I gave him a crooked smile. “Not really. Rumor has it that aquamaniles were sometimes used in...er...dark practices.”
He stared. “Dark practices?”
I took in his raised eyebrows and smiled sympathetically. “Demons,” I said succinctly. “Aquamaniles such as this are said to have been used by powerful mages to raise the demon princes.”
I didn’t think his eyes could open any wider, but at the word demon, they all but popped out of his head. “Demon princes?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
I shifted the case again and leaned forward, speaking quickly, aware that a faint note of desperation had tinged my voice. “You know, Satan’s big guns. The head honchos of Hell. The demon lords. Anyone can raise a demon, but it takes a special person with special powers to raise a demon lord.”
Antoine blinked.
“Yeah, I know, I think it’s a bit out there, too, but you’d be surprised what people believe. Even so, it’s a fascinating subject. I’ve made quite a study of demons—not that I believe they really exist outside of man’s imagination—and found there are whole cults revolving around the idea of demons and the power they wield over mortals. I heard there’s a group in San Francisco who is trying to get a demon elected into public office. Ha ha, like anyone would notice?”
The blinking stopped. Antoine stared at me with a blank look in his eyes. I decided my little foray into joke-land was probably pushing the Anglo-Franco boundaries. Not to mention that the minutes were ticking by at an alarming rate. “Yeah, well, I don’t guarantee the usefulness of the items, I just deliver them. So, if everything is in order, do you think I could go? I’m supposed to get this aquamanile to its owner at five, and it’s already past three. This is my first job as a courier, you see, and my uncle—he’s my boss—told me that if I screw up this delivery, I’m off the payroll, and since a very stupid judge in California ordered me to pay my ex-husband alimony just because Alan, my ex, is a lazy slob who likes to hang around the beach and ogle the fake-boobed girls rather than get off his surfer ass and work for a living like the rest of us, it’s kind of important that I keep this job, and to keep it means that I have to get the aquamanile to the woman who bought it from Uncle Damian.”
Antoine looked a bit stunned until I nudged the hand that held my documents, then he pursed his lips as he shot me a quelling glare. He nodded toward my case. “You will open it. I must examine the object and ensure it matches the pictures presented.”
I stifled yet another sigh of frustration as I fished the keys out of my neck pouch before unlocking the case. Antoine’s glare turned to an open-mouthed look of wonder as I peeled back the protective foam padding and
laid open the soft linen cloth that was wrapped around the aquamanile. “Sacre futur du bordel de Dieu!”
“Yeah, it’s pretty impressive isn’t it?” I looked fondly at the dragon. It was about six inches high, all coiled tail, gleaming scales, and glittering emerald eyes. It was one of the few dragons I’d ever seen depicted without wings.
Antoine reached out to touch the golden dragon, but I quickly wrapped the linen back over it. “Sorry, look but don’t touch. “ His nostrils flared dramatically. I hurried to sooth his ruffled feathers. “Not even the X-ray guys got to touch it. If you’ll take a peek at the appraiser’s valuation of the piece, I think you’ll see why it’s better not to.”
He glanced at the appraiser’s sheet and swore under his breath before brandishing his stamp on my passport and the dragon’s documents. “All is in order. You may continue.”
I closed up the case, locked it, and tucked the keys back into my neck pouch, giving Antoine a cheery smile as I slung the bag containing my clothing onto my shoulder. “Thanks.”
“One moment—” he said, stopping me with an upraised hand. I held my breath, worried he was going to insist on something that would keep me from making my appointment with Madame Deauxville. It would be just my luck that Antoine would decide I needed a full body search.
I tried to look innocent and friendly and not in the least like someone who would smuggle something into the country in a convenient body cavity. “Hmm?”
He glanced around quickly, then stepped closer to me, his voice dropping. “You are an expert in demons but you do not believe in them?”
I shook my head, not wishing to get into a philosophical conversation while the clock was ticking. “I’m not really an expert, I’ve just studied a few medieval texts about them.”
“Demons are very bad.”
I shrugged, and edged sideways. “Not really. According to the texts I’ve read, they’re actually rather stupid. I think people fear the thought of them because they don’t know how to control them.”