The Last Slayer Read online

  “Ah.” He laughed. “Your life. Would you still have that life, were it not for me? I have saved you twice. Shared Sex with you. Offered my assistance in finding a cure for your mortal companion. I don’t know what more I can possibly do to persuade you.”

  I took a deep breath. Losing my temper wasn’t going to get the job done. Plus, he had a point. The firm had some of the best demon toxicologists and healers around, but it was an open question whether they could concoct an antidote for Semangelaf’s poison. “Fine. We’ll do as you say…for now.”

  “That’s better.”

  I clenched my teeth. “So where do we go next?”

  “To the Mystic Forest. Where you shall meet your mother.” He gave me an unreadable look.

  The Mystic Forest again. “You said Leh was ‘bound’ there.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “But if I remember correctly, the Mystic Forest is the land of the dead.”

  “No. It’s the land of the bound dead.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Those who are not bound go to the underworld. Those bound to the Mystic Forest do not.” He sighed. “Once a month, on the night of the full moon, it is possible to visit the Mystic Forest if you possess the necessary magic.”

  Something wasn’t right, though. Leh was the last slayer, reviled by the dragonlords. Who would have dared to prevent her descent to the world of the dead? “Who bound Leh to the Mystic Forest?”

  “Nathanael.”

  That made no sense. He was renowned for killing slayers, not binding them. “Why?”

  “Being bound there is the ultimate form of slavery. No matter how powerful a witch Leh is, she’ll never be able to break the spell unless Nathanael wills it.”

  “Did he do that to the other slayers?”

  “No.”

  Strange. Why Leh and no one else? It felt like a trap. Nathanael and his buddies probably expected me to contact her. I would, if our situations had been reversed.

  If it hadn’t been for Valerie, I would have flat-out refused to go. Assurances and logic notwithstanding, I remained wary. There’s no free lunch, especially in the supernatural realm. Besides, I wanted to be a supernatural, demigod or no, about as much as a regular hunter wants to be a deer.

  But I didn’t have a better option. “All right. Let’s go.”

  “Now?”

  “Were you thinking of waiting a year or two?”

  His lips thinned, then curved into a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “We can’t go until the full moon. Which is tomorrow.”

  I had to get out of there, do something to work off the tension that was gathering and churning in the pit of my stomach. I hate being cornered, forced into doing something.

  I nodded jerkily and walked out of the antechamber. The hall was dark, a vast cavern that seemed to stretch before me endlessly. I walked on the carpeted stone floor like a horse with blinders on, hardly noticing anything around me.

  Everything was falling apart, the perfect existence I’d worked so hard to build. Most people probably wouldn’t understand what my problem was. After all, I was supposedly going to be a kick-ass supernatural. To be a demigod—to bend high magic to my will, to command dragons, be worshipped. It was what so many humans wanted, and why they were so desperate to be part of the supernatural realm. They wanted some of the magic.

  So yeah, people would probably scoff at my “issues” because they would be too busy thinking about the benefits to consider the drawbacks. On one level, there was my car. My condo. Sure, a real dragonlady could whip up both of those items—and a lot more—with just a thought and a gesture. But I’d earned mine. Studied and sweated, placed my all too mortal life on the line time after time to achieve those prizes. They meant something.

  And there were larger issues. My career as a hunter. Three dragonlords after me. A slayer for a mother. My sister and best friend dying.

  Maybe this was a nightmare.

  Except I was never that lucky. Jack had once told me my name meant “lucky one.” I think he really meant “cursed one.”

  “There you are!” Toshi headed toward me, an orb light in tow. Rainbow-colored scales rippled along his body.

  “How’s Valerie?” I asked.

  “She is resting well.” The tiny dragon floated slightly below my eye level, the correct position of respect. “Milady, if I may… I wanted to know if you had any special requests for the banquet.”

  I really wasn’t in the mood for a fancy dinner. What was there to celebrate? But Toshi had brought it up twice now, so it looked like it was going to happen. “Just some General Tso’s chicken, I guess,” I said finally. Hell, if someone was going to give me a free meal, I might as well get something I wanted.

  Toshi lost a bit of altitude. “Ah…General Tso’s chicken, milady?”

  “Yep.”

  He cleared his throat. “Could you…that is if you don’t mind, of course… I mean, it’s not your responsibility to instruct one as slow and ignorant as I—” he cleared his throat again, “—but…could you please deign to enlighten this humble servant as to who this general might be and where I can find one of his famed chickens?” His speech became faster with each word until he sounded like a chipmunk.

  “Um…what?”

  “I’m sorry.” Toshi’s small diamond-shaped ears curled slightly and folded back along his head, the dragon equivalent of a blush. “What I meant to ask was…where may I find General Tso’s famed farm?”

  Comprehension dawned. “General Tso doesn’t own a chicken farm.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “General Tso isn’t a real person. It’s the name of a dish.”

  “Ah.”

  Those ears looked welded to his head. I hoped he wasn’t going to have a heart attack on the spot.

  “So…so where do I find…General Tso’s…” He paused then blinked several times. Then he plunged to the floor and started pounding the carpet with his miniscule fists. “Milady, forgive your ignorant and incompetent servant! I don’t know anything of importance.”

  I’d never considered General Tso’s chicken to be a thing of “importance.” I bit my other cheek. Laughing was not going to be good here. “Uh, To—”

  “What would my father say? How I shame the family tradition!” He cried harder, his tears making small wet spots in the carpet.

  I pursed my lips. I had no idea what kind of “banquet” food dragonlords ate, but hopefully it wasn’t something disgusting, like tequila worms. Ugh. “Forget it. I’ll leave the menu up to you. You can serve whatever you want.”

  “Milady, you do not have to give up your General Tso’s chicken. If it is what you desire, it is my duty to procure one for your pleasure.”

  Procure. Such a formal word from one so small. It would’ve been hysterical if it weren’t for Toshi’s propensity to convulse into a quivering mass of fear at the mere thought of failure. I guess he had a lot of expectations to live up to. Ramiel came across as a super perfectionist, but Toshi was doing a fine job as far as I could tell. Besade was spotless, its food excellent. The mortal rich would pay dearly to have housekeeping one-tenth as good.

  “I’m not giving anything up. I trust your judgment on this matter, that’s all.” I gave him a reassuring smile. “So go cook something delicious for me.”

  He sat up on his hind legs and tail, tiny forelegs clasped together. “Yes, milady! You shan’t regret your generosity.” He waved his claws, and another tiny dragon who looked just like Toshi zipped over. “My assistant will show you to your chamber.”

  With that Toshi left, and his assistant escorted me. He was even smaller than Toshi. Dragons live for centuries, and he was undoubtedly older than I, but for some reason he seemed younger. As we made our way through the castle, he told me that he and Toshi were both descended from Besade’s ancestral castellan family, that Toshi was currently the oldest of their line at the age of two hundred and four, and that their genus was known as fairy dragons.

  “Sorry for all the questions
. It’s just that I never encountered your type of dragon in my studies.”

  “Oh, that’s easily explained, milady. We don’t show ourselves to mortals or dirty our claws with fighting like some common wyrm. Though it is true that a few of us engage in reconnaissance during wartime, purely for the benefit of the lords we serve, of course.”

  “So you guys don’t fight at all?” I said.

  He sniffed. “Those of us who care about our dignity don’t.

  “This is your room, milady. I hope you enjoy your stay at Besade.” The dragon bowed. His movement had the sort of overprecise clumsiness that children have when they’re trying to do something formal for the first time.

  “Thank you.” I walked inside, and the door closed behind me automatically with a loud click. I jumped a bit, even though I should have been used to it by then. Automatic doors seemed to be a standard feature of the dragonhold.

  The “room” was ornate, sumptuously decorated and larger than my now obliterated condo by a significant margin. Even the four-poster bed was twice the size of my old bed, which had been a California king. Translucent rose-colored drapes trimmed in white lace hung from the bedposts, with seed pearls and roses the size of ladybugs lining their edges. Surprising, since Ramiel didn’t strike me as a lace-and-pastel kind of man. Maybe he entertained a lot of lace-and-pastel kind of women. The thought didn’t cheer me up, and the fact that the thought didn’t cheer me up annoyed me.

  What was I expecting? He probably had a harem tucked away somewhere in the dragonhold. Lots of mortals couldn’t remain faithful to a single spouse, and our life expectancy was generally measured in decades. Dragonlords might be demigods, but they weren’t saints. So what if Ramiel liked girly girls? Fine. Let him. I hated girly girls, the ones who giggled around guys like they didn’t have enough brains to come up with something interesting to say. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to be girly if my life depended on it. And the fact that I was anything but girly had no bearing on anything. Ramiel was merely keeping the promise he’d claimed to have made. Doing things to earn my trust. So my sleeping in a frilly bed where, like, centuries of other girls had probably slept was irrelevant.

  Stop obsessing, I told myself. Keep your eye on the ball or you’ll end up dead. Gorgeous men never approached me without an ulterior motive, and Ramiel probably wasn’t any different. The vow was an excuse. Besides I didn’t even know exactly what his famous “vow” really entailed. Other dragonlords wanted to kill me. Why wasn’t he joining them? They might belong to a different triumvirate, but he must’ve allied with them at some point or he would never have fought in the war against the slayers and killed Kyran. Defeating the slayer overlord had undoubtedly helped elevate his status among the dragonlords, so if I really was some legendary “Prophesied One” or something, killing me would be a similar coup. Which in turn would make him even more of a chick magnet, kinda like a quarterback on a winning football team.

  “Argh!” Now my head hurt from overthinking it. For the moment I had no choice but to go along, making sure Ramiel didn’t do anything to hurt Valerie. I turned my attention back to the more pressing matters. Like my bath.

  Fresh-cut flowers of indeterminate varieties occupied scores of pale jade vases along the window sills. They perfumed the air with a lovely blend of lilac and lavender. I’d never seen some of the flowers before, a kind of rose and lily hybrid. Dark crimson freckled their vivid golden petals.

  Those same petals floated like soft scarabs on steaming water in the bathtub. I silently thanked Toshi, since he had to be the one who’d thought of drawing it. I doubted it was Ramiel, who hadn’t cleaned me up when he could have and should have. Furthermore, Toshi had seen to it that I had a long red silk dress and a pair of matching stilettos laid out on a plush leather sofa by the windows. I made a mental note to discuss my fashion preferences with him. I’m not an evening gown kind of girl, and was going to look ridiculous in that getup. Valerie could pull that sort of stuff off, not me. But anything would be better than the tattered, saliva-riddled suit I was wearing.

  I kicked off my shoes, undressed as quickly as I could and sank into the tub. God, it was heavenly. The heat warmed my joints and loosened the stiff muscles around my neck. All I needed was a glass of wine to complete the indulgence.

  Was this how dragonlords lived? If so, I could see why they never wanted to visit the mundane mortal world.

  I scrubbed myself thoroughly with a sponge. Then I washed my hair, which was a disgusting mass of blood, saliva, sweat and tangles, and took forever to unbraid. The water turned murky, then cleared almost immediately. Now that was some amazing stuff, self-purifying bath water. I could make a killing if I knew the spell for it.

  Finally squeaky clean, I stepped out of the tub with a thick white towel around me. The crest of Besade was embroidered on each corner of the towel. The dragons inside the emblems curled around and sighed with contentment. They were kinda cute. I shook my head. What was I thinking? Dragons were not cute. They could never be cute.

  Mellowed somewhat by the bath, I rubbed my thumb against my silver M ring. Maybe this whole heartstone business wouldn’t be all bad. If I could somehow manage to control one, it would magnify my magic and make tracking down the incubus responsible for Miguel’s death easier.

  If.

  I heard a knock and looked at the solid wooden door, which wasn’t opening automatically. Odd. Maybe it wasn’t working because I temporarily owned the room.

  “Come in.” It would be just like Toshi to check up on me, just to make sure everything was all right. I put on a big smile for him.

  The door opened. Ramiel stood there, and my smile faltered. He’d exchanged his armor for a loose green silk shirt, black pants and a pair of black leather shoes. His unbound hair, cascading down his back, shone like the finest pearlescent silk. He looked casual and friendly, almost normal.

  Except he wasn’t.

  Whenever I looked at him, he dominated my senses and overwhelmed me. Something about him lured me like a sailor to a Siren. The sex we’d shared was phenomenal. Not just because it was intensely orgasmic, but because it had generated so much magic. However, I also knew—and was smart enough to remember—that whatever happened before had no bearing on what was going on with me now.

  We weren’t exhausted from depleting our magical reserves. He was a dragonlord, flawless in the perfection of his beauty. I was just a mortal, no matter what he claimed, and a plain one at that. And with myself as Exhibit A, I had to wonder if slayers got all the recessive genes. Or maybe their standard of beauty was just really different from ours. The fact was, I looked out of place in Besade, like an A-flat—really flat—in a chorus of C-sharps. Where was the two-way physical attraction?

  The thought stung, and I shoved it down into the dark corner of my mind where I keep the stuff I don’t want to examine too closely.

  “I hadn’t realized you weren’t presentable,” Ramiel said, his voice smooth. He bowed. “My apologies.”

  The formality of his manners lessened the discomfort I felt. If he was going to treat me like a lady no matter what I wore—or didn’t wear—it didn’t make any sense for me to make a big deal out of it.

  “I don’t suppose you have X-ray vision,” I said drily.

  “Pardon?”

  “You need something?”

  The steadiness of his gaze made me feel naked. It took an effort to keep my chin up and my hands down. If the towel came loose…

  “I would like your word that you’ll do as I say. Even if you disagree with me at the time,” he said.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  The skin around his mouth tightened. “Shall I list the reasons why I’m the logical choice to lead?”

  I didn’t bother to argue the point, because he was right. “The decisions you make will impact me and Valerie. I won’t follow you blindly.”

  Suddenly he was standing a hairbreadth away. He loomed over me, his eyes vivid emeralds against the snow white
of his skin.

  “Why must you be so obstinate? I know things you do not.”

  “Yeah, and apparently you never want me to know, because you hide them like a preacher’s daughter hides a pregnancy. How about a little sharing here, huh?”

  “And of course you will believe what I say, as you’ve done all along.”

  Touché.

  His eyes blazed hot enough to scorch. After centuries of unquestioning obedience, it must have been infuriating to have a mere mortal defy him. Until now, he hadn’t shown any emotion except mild amusement and derision. Now, up close and personal, he seethed with a mixture of frustration and hunger that made my chest hurt with its intensity. A small part of me was afraid, but another part of me was thrilled at being on the receiving end of this much focus. How messed up was that? Even more perversely, I wanted to push his control until it snapped.

  “I intend to keep my vow, whether you cooperate or not,” he ground out. “You don’t have a say in the matter.”

  “You wi—”

  His mouth covered mine, shutting me up. This time his lips were demanding. His fingers tunneled into my wet hair and held my head in place. Even if I could have moved, I wouldn’t have. My instincts had been right. All my faculties were in place, and still I found him irresistible. He was all man and heat. His scent, dark and mysterious, clogged my lungs and drowned me in sensation. The brush of his skin against mine made the fine hair on the back of my neck rise in response. It was frightening, how his magic ran up and down inside me, and how mine twined so eagerly with it.

  A monstrous need pushed me, whipped me into a frenzy of slick arousal as Ramiel’s mouth ravaged mine, took it as if it belonged to him and no one else. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

  A discreet knock at the door broke through the sensuous haze, dissipating it.

  Ramiel abruptly pushed me away from him. His chest rose and fell rapidly, his lips moist from our kiss. “I don’t care what you profess to be. You’re a witch.” His voice was hoarse and unsteady. “A slayer witch.”

  I couldn’t respond. My body screamed at me to go after him before he retreated, but I kept my feet firmly planted.