Memoirs of a Dragon Hunter Page 18

That’s when Aspen launched herself at me like she was a bullet, her head hitting me in my gut, not only sending me stumbling backward, but also knocking my breath away.

  I gasped, reeling for a moment, but when she started drawing runes in the air, the same sort of black symbols that the wrath demon had tried to use on Ian, I saw red.

  Literally. A wave of crimson burning anger washed over me, sending my anxious beast running for cover. With a snarled curse that I’m not proud of, I swung my sword, intending to scare Aspen into stopping the casting of whatever spell or curse she was engaged with, but she thrust her arm forward at that moment, throwing the black runes toward me. One of them clipped my wrist before dissolving into nothing, sending a cold, searing pain up my arm. I had little time to wonder at that because suddenly, Aspen was down to possessing just one arm.

  She shrieked, and we both stared with disbelief at the arm that lay in the road between us. Normally, I would have fainted dead away at that point, since I am averse to blood and gore of any type, but there was nothing gory about the scene. It was just an arm, a slightly bloodied arm that lay in the street, and above it, Aspen was dancing a little jig of pure anger. Her shoulder, I was amazed to note, was also not gory. I had no idea if it was because she was also some sort of supernatural being, but whatever the reason, it allowed me to regain my wits.

  “How dare you! That was my arm!” she screeched, snatching up the limb in question and shaking it at me. “I use this arm! Now what am I going to do?”

  “Uh…” I lifted the sword in order to examine the blade. The blood on it was red, which meant one thing.

  “You’re not a demon,” I said, wondering if it was impolite to ask just what she was.

  “Of course not!” she snapped, one lip curling in disgust. “We are priests of the Church of the Mortified Flesh of the Anguished Witness, and you will die for what you have just done to me!”

  “Whoa, now, let’s not have any more accidents. I can’t stomach another— Ack!” She lunged while I was speaking, and before I could gather my wits, I had taken off her other arm.

  “ARGH!” she screamed, her voice echoing off the row of houses.

  I pursed my lips at the sight of the two arms in the street, and sent up a silent prayer to whatever deity wished to hear it that there was no gore. “Well, now we’ve gone into a Monty Python movie. I hope you’re happy.”

  “I will kill you!” she screeched again, dancing an infuriated dance.

  “Aspen, what are you doing?” her husband said, looking up. “What have you done to your arms, woman?”

  “She took them! She cut them off, and now I’m going to kill her!”

  I twirled my sword. “Really? You want to do the whole Monty Python skit? Because you’ll just end up with no legs, too, and I can’t think that’s a good look for you.”

  “Kill her!” Aspen shrieked, realizing the truth of what I said, and unfortunately, her husband decided she had a point, because he rose, pulling a gun out of his pocket.

  Before I could yell a warning to Ian, John shot. Instinctively, I jerked to the side, the sword held up in front of me like it was a shield. I felt the shock of the bullet hitting the sword and being deflected to the side.

  “Holy shit,” I said, staring at the sword. There was a long scrape on the blade where the bullet had slid off the metal. “I really am Wonder Woman.”

  “Kill her, kill her, kill her!” Aspen chanted, hopping up and down next to her arms.

  John took aim again, but this time, I embraced the heat of anger filling me, making me feel like my skin was alight. I charged him, my sword raised. To my surprise, he didn’t fire—he simply turned, made an odd symbol on the air, and disappeared into the black rift that opened in response to his gesture.

  As soon as he disappeared, the air smoothed over just as if nothing had happened.

  “John!” Aspen shrieked, her face showing both disbelief and the realization that he had abandoned her. Ian handily beheaded his last demon and started for us, the two bodies behind him dissolving into wisps of black, oily smoke.

  “You bastard!” Aspen’s voice broke, her face bright red with emotion, her skin glistening with sweat. I didn’t know if she was talking to me, Ian, or her husband, but Ian stopped in front of her, carefully avoiding her arms.

  “Why do the Witnesses want the courier?” he asked her.

  “Who cares about her?” she sneered, which isn’t an easy look to pull off when you are spitting mad and your arms are on the street. She seemed to calm down then, because she continued on in a more reasonable tone. “You won’t get them. We have plans for the sacrifices.”

  “Since when do Witnesses use esprits for their nefarious purposes?” Ian asked.

  I raised my hand, having wiped the sword on some tissues from my pocket. “Can I ask what you guys are talking about? I don’t see what that weirdo church—sorry, Aspen—has to do with the sword spirits. And who’s being sacrificed?”

  “I know who you are now,” Aspen said, her eyes narrowing on Ian. “You’re the man that demon said was sent to find the courier and her sacrifices. You’re Alexander.”

  “You know Falafel?” Ian asked quickly.

  “She’s been very helpful,” Aspen answered. “She told us about the courier.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean Ian is Alexander? ” I asked, my skin going goose bumpy. “His name is Ian Iskandar. Alexander is the man who abused the woman I’m helping.”

  She smiled. It sent a cold, clammy shiver through me, making me feel like something was gripping my stomach. “Ask him what Iskandar means. Go on, ask him.”

  Insert Something Smart Here. Smarter Than Me, That Is.

  I LOOKED AT IAN, THE GOOSE BUMPS GOING INTO FULL-fledged skin-creeping before I shook my head at Aspen. “No. He can’t be Alexander. Indigo would have freaked out when she saw him. You’re just trying to confuse me because you are pissed about your arms, which, I’d like to point out, was mostly your fault, what with all your threats and throwing yourself forward in the path of my sword. Ian.” I turned back to him. “What does Iskandar mean?”

  His jaw flexed a couple of times. “In itself, it means nothing.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ in there,” I said, surprised at how calm both my mind and my voice were. My gut, however, was filled with dread. I clutched the hilt of the sword so tight, it left marks on my fingers. “You might as well tell me.”

  “Yes, you might as well. And then you can pick up my arms and get me to the nearest mage to see if they can be reattached,” Aspen said with a sniff.

  “Ian?” I kept my gaze on him, and saw the moment his anger flared.

  “Iskandar is the Tajiki version of the name Alexander. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  I took a step back from him, feeling as if I’d been hit by a wrecking ball. “You’re the Alexander my sister warned me about? The one who abused Indigo?”

  “I have no idea what your sister said, since I wasn’t there. And I have abused no one, man or woman, let alone Indigo.”

  “Helen warned me to beware of you. If it’s not Helen you were chasing, then why would she warn me about you?”

  “I have no idea.” His face was stony.

  “But why—”

  “Oh, for the love of the seventy legions of the dark earth master…he wants the sacrifices! Now can we get me and my arms to a mage before it’s too late?” Aspen stamped her feet and glared at me in a manner that indicated she would be waving her arms around if she could.

  “Sacrifices?” I asked, taking another step back from Ian. My heart felt leaden while my brain tried its best to justify how I could have become so smitten with the man whom Helen feared.

  “The esprits!” Aspen all but shouted. “The two esprits who will become sacrifices to the glory of the dark earth lord and who will raise us all to an exalted state.”

  Horror crawled out of my mental beast’s cave and filled my mind. I stared at Ian, unable to believe it. “You want the two litt
le girls? What kind of monster are you?”

  He had both my arms in his hands before I could even register that he moved. “I understand that you are distressed, but I would have thought you trusted me a little more than that.”

  “I did trust you,” I said, scanning his face for any signs of depravity. My mind told me that something was very wrong with the situation, but my heart—oh, my heart believed him. Ian wasn’t evil. He couldn’t be evil. He was the most chivalrous man I’d known, and was definitely a protector, not an abuser. “Now I don’t know what to think. Why did Helen tell me you were bad?”

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose again, his slumped shoulders and lines around his mouth speaking volumes. “I didn’t hear the call she made to you.”

  “She told me to beware of Alexander—” His words filtered through the confusion in my brain, and I stumbled backward, holding up the sword without being aware I was doing so. “You heard the call she made to me?”

  “No.” He frowned. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that I’ve never met Helen Larson.”

  “But you knew she called me? You were there, weren’t you? Helen talked to someone while she was on the phone to me…oh, my goddess, you did kill her!” Rage and sorrow and betrayal bit hard, sending my temperature soaring.

  “I’ll just go get in your car now, shall I?” Aspen kicked her arms in the direction of Ian’s car. “If I get a road rash on my beautiful arms, I know who I’ll be cursing.”

  We both ignored her.

  “Why do you want me to answer when you already have decided my guilt?” Ian answered, his face a mask of pain, but I didn’t let that soften my anger.

  “Because you’re lying! You have to be—Helen warned me about you!” I yelled, and attacked him. His sword was out and blocking my attack before I was within a foot of him, as I knew would happen. “And if you didn’t, you know who did, and you are deliberately shielding that person.”

  He parried my thrusting stabs, easily turning them aside with a grace that I would have admired any other time. He said nothing while I yelled out all of my frustration and anger and fear.

  “And that means it has to be Sasha, because there’s no one else who you would protect, at least no one I know about. Why did Sasha kill her? Why did you let her kill her? She was my only sister, and she was a good person!”

  I slashed, and stabbed, and hacked, and each attack was turned away easily.

  “You used me!” A new thought popped into the misery that was my mind. “You used me to find Indigo and her little girls. You followed me to the real estate office just so you could find this address!”

  I lunged forward, trying a spinning move meant to disembowel, but Ian was well out of the range of it, his sword always in place just before mine had a chance to strike a blow.

  “You slept with me just so you could get information!”

  That finally did it. One second I was swinging wildly, the next he had me in his arms, his body hard against my softer curves. I could feel the heat of him, the fiery inner dragon that called to the one that now resided within me. “Did you get it all out of your system?” he asked, his voice husky with desire. “Because any minute now, the glamour is going to wear off, and mortals will see us, and I’d like to be away before they notice a woman kicking her arms down the street, not to mention you trying to beat the shit out of me very ineffectively with a large black sword. We will have to work on your swordplay this afternoon.”

  I thought of struggling, of pushing out of his hold, of telling him he was a sister-murdering monster, but I didn’t believe it. Not really. I felt in the deepest part of my psyche that Ian was not a man who killed the undeserving. I rested my forehead against his shoulder. “I’m done. What’s a glamour?”

  “A spell to alter perception. Sasha no doubt cast it on this block as soon as she saw the Witnesses, but it won’t last for much longer.”

  I sighed, drained now that my fit of anger had passed. “Ian, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “That my surname had an Anglicized meaning?” He shrugged, his lips caressing my forehead in gentle little kisses. “I had no idea it mattered to you.”

  “But I told you about Helen, and how she asked me to look for the battered woman because there was a bad man named Alexander after her, and you didn’t say a word, not one single word.”

  He frowned, his pretty green irises no longer licked by flames. “When did you tell me?”

  “The other day. Yesterday?” I pulled back out of his embrace, and put my sword back into its scabbard before rubbing my forehead. “I’ve lost track of the days. I told you about the task Helen gave me after she turned me into…well…this.”

  Ian looked thoughtful for a moment while cleaning the demon blood off his sword and sheathing it. “Yes, I remember something about that, but I believe I was distracted at one point. I must have missed you telling me what your sister said.”

  “Gee, thanks. It’s so nice to know you were blatantly ignoring me when I was standing right there in front of you baring my concerns and worries and tale of how I came to be there in the first place.”

  One side of his mouth quirked up. Desire licked my insides, making me restless and wanting. “I apologize for that, but in my defense, you’d just given me something precious, and it consumed my thoughts.”

  I frowned a little frown, searching my memory of the last few days. “We hadn’t had sex then, so if it wasn’t my body, what precious gift had I given you?”

  “Hope,” he said, then took my arm and escorted me toward his car. I don’t know how Aspen managed to get herself and her arms in the backseat, but she had. Around us, the street seemed to come to life again, with people popping out of their houses, cars traversing the street, and pedestrians taking to the sidewalks.

  The ride home was spent listening to Aspen bitch about us taking our own sweet time to get her to a mage for arm reattachment and being abused by me lopping them off in the first place, not to mention her husband leaving her there to be further tormented by us, and finally, how she’d wreak revenge upon both her husband and us once the dark earth master was summoned.

  “Okay, first of all, mages are a thing?” I asked Ian in an undertone while Aspen was ranting about how no one ever gave her credit for all of her many and varied talents.

  “They are.”

  “And they can put arms back on people?”

  “Only certain types of beings, and no, mortals are not included, if you were thinking of suggesting they become medics.”

  “Oh.” I sat back and looked out the window for a few minutes, having been about to suggest just that. “What exactly is the relationship between this weirdo church and Indigo and her kids? Wait, they are kids, aren’t they? With sword spirits in them?”

  “No, they are esprits in human form. Why they chose children as those forms, I have no idea. I assume it was whimsy, although it might have been at the courier’s suggestion.”

  “You mean Indigo, their mom?”

  “I doubt if she’s related to them. Those esprits are probably hundreds if not thousands of years old.”

  My brain boggled enough that I kept silent the rest of the way back to the apartment house.

  Until we got out of the car, and then I asked, nodding to the backseat where Aspen was struggling to open the door with her feet, “What are we going to do with her?”

  “Take her to a mage. Eventually. Once we’re sure the sacrifices are safe.”

  “Will you stop calling them that!” I glared at him when he opened the door, collected Aspen’s arms, and wrapped them in his jacket. “They’re little girls, whether or not they have sword soul inner centers or not. Aspen, will you kindly shut up. People in this apartment complex are very nice, and we have several veterans and others who are missing limbs, so no one will stare at you unless you continue to make threats and references to old gods cleansing the earth from the blight of the unworthy.”

  She narrowed her eyes
on me. “You will be the first against the wall. The dark earth lord will hear of your acts this day!”

  “Yeah, yeah, tell it to the hand,” I said, holding open the door for her. My hope that she’d stay quiet was a vain one. She continued to bitch up the three flights of stairs until I realized where Ian was guiding us. “Wait, what are we doing at my apartment?”

  “She has to stay somewhere,” Ian said, holding out his hand for my key.

  Slowly, I brought out my keychain. “Yes, but she’s obnoxious. Sorry, Aspen, but you really are when you’re in full rant mode.”

  “The dark earth master will smite you as you have never been smitten!” she said with a dramatic swing of her hair.

  “Smote, I think, is the term you want,” Ian said.

  “Smitten,” Aspen insisted.

  “Smited?” I offered, rolling it around on my tongue. “No, I think Ian’s right; it’s smote. I smite, he is smiting, you smote.”

  “Although the past participle version would be ‘he has smitten,’” Ian said thoughtfully.

  “True, but I think smote works for that, too—”

  Aspen’s scream of frustration interrupted us. “I don’t care what it is; he will do it. To you! Now, get me a mage!”

  I gave Ian the keys. “Fine, she can stay in my apartment, but that means Indigo and her girls have to go to your apartment with me, because I’m not letting Her Craziness here hang out with a woman who may or may not have been abused by someone with your name. I’ll go get them now.”

  I hurried down the hall, but not before I could hear Aspen exclaim, “What in the name of the dark master happened here? This place is a dump!”

  Teresita opened the door before I’d landed more than two knocks. Her eyes were a bit wild around the edges, and she pulled me inside before looking up and down the hall and slamming shut her door. “Thank God the kids are going to my in-laws after camp today. Do you know what those two little girls are?”

  “Soul spirits,” I said, entering her sunny living room. Normally, much as I love Teresita, her apartment gives me the willies because her kids aren’t the tidiest of beings. It took us a while to work out a policy whereby I had one wooden chair that I was allowed to clean before I sat on it without Teresita being offended, and I would ignore the rest of the apartment. Now, however, I marched over to where the girls were sitting on the floor playing with a game console and plopped myself down onto the couch without regard to the scattered miscellany of items found there. “Indigo, I need to ask you a couple of questions. They might not be the easiest to answer, but I need to know the truth. Did Ian assault you in any way, shape, or form?”