Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Sunset Coven 23




Jime sat on the rattling bucket, a trapped Kage Inu Yokai locked inside. Before her a talking Rai stood in his high school girl uniform. Suri had said he was the most arrogant S.O.D (son of a demon) she had ever met. She hadn’t been so sure about that. It was impossible that someone more arrogant than Jack walked this Earth. How wrong she had been. 
“I weakened them for you. That’s why you were able to handle them so fast. If you fought them from the start, there’s no way you would have been able to capture one. But that’s okay. Not all are born with the skill set that I was born with.” And on and on he went. 
“Tace,” a weak voiced Suri said as she made her slow way down the hill to the tree. Vomiting for over and hour tends to zap all strength from a girl. 
Rai’s eyes widened when no sound came from his mouth. He opened wider and appeared to scream. Nothing. Enraged he turned to the witch, pointing and screaming, but she ignored him. 
“Feeling better?” Jime asked and received a scowl in response. “Next time take it in slowly. Don’t go hardcore and shove it all in the first time around.”
Suri stopped in front of her. “Are you giving me advice about eating moderation or sex?” 
“Both. You’re never too old for a little bananas and pineapples talk.” 
Suri threw her hands up to her mouth and gagged. When the urge to vomit passed, she glowered at her aunt. 
Jime opened her mouth to speak but her words were drowned out with the clash of a lightening bolt. 
“About time you showed up,” Jime said to Zeus. “I was starting to think you weren’t paying attention.” The big golden god usually took their gain immediately after the task was complete. Ten minutes passed since Jime trapped the dog in the bucket before he graced them with his shining presence. 
“I wasn’t,” he replied. “I have better things to do, Dead One, than to watch your every move. Now if you will excuse me, I have a tasty hot fudge sundae at the Four Seasons, just waiting for me to top her cherry with my whipped cream.” He winked
Suri vomited on his feet. 
Jime raced off the bucket and snatched her niece out of the gods’ reach when he grabbed for her. “Sugar rush,” she gave by explanation.
With a snarl, Zeus muttered something about “weak beings” before he disappeared just as suddenly as he arrived, taking the dog with him. 
“Maybe,” Suri burped, “next time he’ll pay attention.” 
Jime elbowed her. “Shut up. You know how he tends to pop back up.” 
Silently they stood in the dark park momentarily, waiting to see if the god king would show up again.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Rai stood in front of them arms failing, face red, totally pissed. Who knew that someone that couldn’t talk could still be so loud. 
Suddenly tired and weak from all the lost of nutrients Suri just wanted to leave and rest. “I can’t deal right now. Do you need a lift anywhere Naila cat?”
The cats glowing eyes blinked ever so slowly. “Of course not. I’m the Grim Reaper. I can move anywhere.”
Suri nodded. “Right. I’ll tell Saku-sensei to expect you.”
If spontaneous combustion was at all possible, Rai would have exploded. 
“Oh, hush. It’s nothing personal. I made a promise. I have to keep it. You wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Well. I don’t think he’s coming back this time,” Jime said. “Good thing to. Don’t feel like fighting a god because you vomited on his sandals.” Jime started towards Honey Poo. “Thanks for the help Naila cat.” 
Suri turned to Rai. A flick of her wrist sent him back to Tokyo. 
“Are you ready?” 




Jime recited the list of task separating the ones they’ve already completed from the ones that they still need to do. 
“You okay, sobrina?”
“I’m fine. You? You kinda fried less than twelve hours ago,” Suri asked from her reclined position in the passenger seat.
“Ha. Yeah. No worries. I’m perfectly fine. That was just a little sunburn.” Jime looked at her niece. “You sure you okay? You look horrible and not just from up chucking your body weight.”
She felt horrible too. “Haven’t slept for a few days now.” Jime got her automatic shut-eye whenever the sun came up. Most days Suri didn’t sleep at those times. She was either up keeping watch, working on a potion or charm, or catching up with her Dancing With the Stars. A sigh escaped her lips. Val. She’d watch Dancing with the Stars all day every day to see Val. Maks as well. Derek too, but mostly Val. That guy oozes sex and testosterone and charm and charisma.  Just looking at him dance without that shirt gets the estrogen tidal waving. Woo! She started to fan herself.
“You’re hot? Want me to turn the air on?” Jime asked concerned.
Suri waved her off. “No. Fine.”
“You sure?”
“I’m fine!” Suri responded like an annoyed teenager.
“Whatevs.” She pulled out the phone that she accidently-on-purpose took from James’s kid sister to check the Sunlight application. “What now? You need a break. Lets find a hotel so you can get some sleep. After that is there any task in specific you want to work on?”
“Not really. As long as it’s not the spit one.” Suri raised the chair to a regular seated position. “But first I need to make a P and S stop.”
“What do you need from there?” Jime asked.
“None of your business,” Suri said. “Just like I don’t ask you what you buy when you disappear to get your monster porn, don’t ask me what I need from the witches shop.”
Jime expelled a breath. “One time. It was one time and you just won’t let it go.”
“One time that I know of because I no longer ask.”
“I’m not getting into this argument with you. again.” Ending the discussing, Jime rubbed her hands against the staring wheel. She cooed. “We need to go to the Underground again sweet little car.” 
Jime went decades, sometimes centuries without visiting the Underground, but lately it seemed as if she was there more than anywhere else. Once this was all over, she hoped there would be no further need to visit the hidden city. There were other places she could visit. Sadly, those places were only open during daylight, a way to effectively hide from her kind. 
The closes portal was in Sapporo. Mustang Jack kicked into hyper speed, ascending into the air. The sped through the air like a jet the twenty or so miles to the portal. Jack, the mustang, didn’t slow down as he reached the portal. Like a dare devil, the car raced over Odori Park where it nosedived towards the three ballerina statue. No crash. No instant broken, mangled bodies. The mustang went right through the statue and came out on Suppiluliuma Blvd. Ah! Good old Egypt. 
At a decent pace, Mustang Jack drove them to P and S and pulled up in front of the store. 
Suri opened the door. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be,” she looked back at her aunt. “About an hour. Possibly two.” 
“Okay. I’ll just go over have mustang Jack park itself then hit the stores. Saw a pair of boots I’d kill the owner for.”
“Don’t kill anyone for boots,” Suri said. She got out of the car and shut the door. Jack pulled off and rounded the corner. Turning to the shop, she didn’t even make a step before her senses went on high alert. A spell formed on her tongue as a tall gorgeous man with dark hair and equally dark eyes stepped out of the shop, a slender pretty blonde beside him. The lady smiled, a predatory gleam in her eyes. 
Had she been a vampire like her aunt, or maybe someone else with sharper senses, Suri would have smelled the wolf on them. Instead, it was the teeth that told her exactly what they were. 
“Just great. More mutts.” She didn’t even have the chance to cast the spell when something hard and cold cracked over her head. Suri went down like a fly.
“Oh, foo Amor. You never let me have any fun,” Eva said to her mate. “I wanted to play with her first.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to play with her while we wait for the Dragon.”



The doors to mustang Jack locked the moment it pulled away from the store and went around the corner. Jime tried to unlock the doors but nothing happened. Pulling on the handle and thrusting her shoulder into the doors didn’t budge either.
“Okay Car. What are you doing?”
Gripping the steering wheel, she pressed on the break. Nothing. Mustang Jack was completely out of her control. Navigating through the streets, it went through another portal and came out along a dirt mountain road that appeared to be in some back country land. 
“Where in the world?” 
The car rolled along the road, passed a wooden arch, and creeped through wooded areas until it stopped beside a large, impressive, though creepy, lodge. The car shut off. Jime tried the door again. It opened. Expanding her senses, she listened, looked around, and scented for a hint of where she was and if she was under attack. She only felt one living creature around her. A presence she was very familiar with. 
The lodge door opened as Jime exited the car. “Thanks for nothing,” she mumbled to it. Mustang Jack honked the horn in response. 
Jack, the real Jack, leaned against the lodge door. “You and I have unfinished business to attend to.”


††††††††††††††††††††


The tech room in which Joslyn sat was so deep in the cave daylight never reached. Not even with the mirror trick. She has no clue what time it was. Two days had passed since the Templar attack. Joslyn reviewed the surveillance footage for their lair, and the lair of the other twelve clans under Toren’s leadership, dating a week before the attack. In charge of communications and intel within the clan, probably more than anyone else, she wanted to know how this happened. They knew exactly where to go in all the cave’s they attacked. There was no time wasted running in circles, into dead ends, the chance of being discovered greater. They slipped in secretly, stealthily, simultaneously hitting seven clan homes at once. Someone could have given them a extremely detailed description of the caves. A map. But that would imply a mole. And no successful assassin would walk into a place they’ve never seen before, a place full of the enemy, without personally checking the location first. The idea of a mole…She shook her head. A traitor of their kind was one thing, something preferable. A mole? She hoped her baby brother didn’t find signs of one. 
It was Joslyn’s job to see when, where, and how their safe homes were breached. A job she worked diligently at for the pass two days. It wasn’t until Ren sat down in the chair beside her that she looked away from the computer screen for the first time in nine hours. He sat facing her, one hand on the desk, the other on the back of her chair. 
“Whatcha doing here, Smoky?” she asked around a yawn, realizing how tired she was. “You’re supposed to be out helping the others get back on their feet.”
“I was, but I came back to make sure you’re still on yours. I left Lang in charge.” He brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Come sleep with me.”
Her lips quirked in amusement. “Shouldn’t you wine and dine me before asking me to your bed?”
“Right now I’m on a tight schedule.” He looked at the clock at the bottom of the computer screen. “I need to head back out in about eight hours, but I’m sure I can work that in. I can feed and bathe you then get a few hours of sleep in.”
Joslyn pressed a hand to her mouth as she yawned long and wide, her eyes watering. “I’d love to, but I really need to check through these videos. Only Gabe is helping me. I’ve sent the rest out to help the ones hit hardest, on extra patrols, or off to their families.”
Ren reached for her chair and spun it until she was facing him and no longer the computer. “Five hours. I’ll skip the wine and dine. You sleep for five hours and then you can come back. Gabe can handle it on his own for that long.”
She shook her head. “I’ll go to bed-“ she yawned mid sentence. “I’ll go to bed once I finish this. I should be finished in about twelve hours or so if I work nonstop. I want to know how they got in, so I can be there the next time they dare try and slice through their weak and fragile bodies with my talons. And we need to find the hatchling.”
He agreed. Jillian, the hatchlings aunt, had become a vicious, feral, crying, sobbing, mess of a dragonness since her nephew was taken during the attack, her brother and his mate killed during the attack. The only reason she remained within the cave was because her mate had left with Toren in order to find the babe. Yet, “you can hardly keep your eyes open. At this stage you’ll miss something.”
“Psst. And redo all of this work? No thank you. 
Usually smoke would curl from Ren’s nostrils by this point. She could be so difficult. But he was too tired and too concerned about her to display his annoyance. Her exhaustion he felt. Her strain he felt. Her determination he felt. Besides, it was this Joslyn, the fun loving dragon who’d dedicate her entire life to the clan that he took as his mate. But sometimes she tended to forget to take care of herself. That, along with his own fatigue, was why he didn’t engage in an argument with her this time. Instead, he took her left hand into his right and pulled her to him. Dipping low, he scooped her over his shoulder and stood, stalking out the back surveillance room into the larger security office. 
Joslyn couldn’t decide whether to laugh at how he man handled her or scream at his boorish tendencies. She did both.
Gabe, the two-hundred year old Western dragon, glanced at the dragon warrior and Joslyn. “Thank god you showed up,” he said to Ren. “I’ve been trying to get her to take a break for a day now. She just doesn’t listen. And no way was I going to do that to her,” he gestured at the way Ren held her. “No thank you. I like my skin where it is. Make sure she sleeps. Force her to take a nap. Knock her out. Anything.”
Ren smiled tiredly at the kid and left the room. He walked into the empty stone hallway. Being this far beneath the ground, someone unfamiliar with the lair would expect to find dirt and dust everyone. Brimstone, lava, and fire. Everything made of dirt and rock. While the stone part was true, there was no dust and definitely not dirty. Gold and iron and all sorts of metals that could be found were imbedded into the stone, swirled and littered into natural patterns. The torches on the wall flickered to life as he drew close causing the metals to sparkle in the fire light before they blanked out when he was far enough away. 
Ren loved his home. The nest was incredibly large. Dragons were solo creatures who required their own space. Plenty of space. But when separated they are easier to kill off. That’s why the clan resided in one super large nest with thousands of caves and tunnels that spread for miles. He didn’t spend as much time inside of it as he wished. Always off training his warriors, or handling business that didn’t require the Warlord or his second, he usually made it home for a few days to check on Joslyn. He couldn’t rest unless he knew she was okay. With the way she taunted people all the time, constantly pranking others, he knew that sooner or later someone was going to seek revenge on her.  
Each time he returned home he discovered something new. A new addition to the nest. A new room. The best part was when he found a new tunnel. The tunnels form naturally, sometimes because of cave in’s and shifting earth. Traveling those tunnels to ensure they were safe and also to discover where they lead could be the best fun when Jos decided to play hide and seek. 
All the while, Joslyn bit into his back.  
Ten minutes later when he arrived at their home, he walked into the bedroom and toss her up into the air. She crashed down on the overly large bed. “How rude,” she said as she bounced on the bed.
He snagged her left ankle and yanked her flat ballerina shoe off. He did the same to the other. “Clothes off.”
Joslyn pushed up on her elbows. “My, my, my. Someone’s in a hurry today.”
“Shut up,” he replied and snagged a pant leg. With a tug, her pants were off and tossed across the room. 
She grabbed his hand and pulled her mate onto the bed besides her. A few seconds later his shirt joined her pants across the room. Joslyn rested her head on his chest, content with the skin to skin contact. She slipped one leg through his. “Tell me how the others are.”
He ran his fingers through her hair, the sides shaved short. “When did you cut your hair?” She didn’t have the style when he last saw her a few days ago.
“Yesterday morning.”
Like the nest, there was always something new with his mate each time her saw her. New hairstyle. New hair color. A lip or brow piercing. A tattoo. Searching for those changes was the best part. 
“They managed to infiltrate two other nest besides our own. The clans not attacked are assisting the ones that were. No one was killed or taken from the others. Just our home. Your brother left me in charge of defense while he and River search for the hatchling.”
“Hmm.” 
“What’s happened here?” he asked.
“The clan elders had a meeting.”
“Did you go?”
“Of course I went. With Toren and the lackey out of the nest someone had to be there to make sure they kept their old ass scales in their place.” 
With one hand locked into her hair he lifted her head and kissed her. “Don’t give them problems for the hell of it.”
A look of hurt spread across her face. “You’d think I’d do that? That I’d cause trouble just for fun.”
Ren didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. Of course she would. And her feelings damn sure weren’t hurt because he said that.
She blew a puff of smoke in his face. “They want to move the clan to a new nest. Someplace more isolated.” Joslyn rolled her eyes. 
“Is it possible to get more isolated than this?” Ren asked.
“Sure it is. If they find another dimension. Kang wants us to rely more on our alliances with the westerners.”
“That’s not what we need. This isolation they want only has negative consequences. Look at the Westerners. They isolated themselves from the rest of the world and now their numbers are few. The people of their lands don’t even believe in them. They’ve become a myth while we remain gods. We need to change from the old traditions, not embrace them further.”
Joslyn buried her face into his neck and inhaled deeply. “Doesn’t matter anyway.” She ran her lips, and lip ring, across his neck. “Change is coming whether they like it or not.”
Ren heard the secrecy, the amusement in her voice. He yanked her head up again. “What do you know?”