Cary raced toward the scream in the night. Chivalry was not a part of the demoness, but curiosity had been engraved into her bones at birth, before Elelele had laid his hands on her. No matter how hard he tried, he could not have erased those marks. Of course, his training had only honed them and deepened them, made those runes essential to her nature.
Bursting through the underbrush, Cary came upon a confusing scene. A woman stared forward blankly, her body swaying in the darkness. A few feet away from her, a figure with a bushy white beard dragged a man dressed in dark blue from head to toe, including a full face mask away from the trail. The woman had clearly been the one who screamed, but Cary had no idea what was happening here.
When he spotted her run onto the trail, the white-bearded figure clucked his tongue at her. “A lady screams and you come running? I think your actions backward, madame. Gallant though they be.” The figure raised his hands to his lips and blew a puff of green-tinted spores toward Cary. They tickled her nose, but had no effect on her. For a brief moment, she considered freezing in place and feigning the same effect the spores had on the woman.
But she wanted to know what happened here and the best way was the more direct way. Besides, Cary had eighty lifetimes worth of freezing in place and watching behind her. She could have her fill of that later. “What are you doing to him?”
The white-beard started, as if he’d been so confident of his spores that he’d stopped paying attention to Cary. Familiarity with that treatment only made Cary’s blood rise to near-boiling levels. But she bit her lip as the bearded man dropped his cargo and brushed his hands off. “I did not think you would be friends. I should have guessed.”
Before Cary could deny her association with the stranger in the head covering, the bearded man raised his hands and a series of tiny needles flew out from his palm. Ignoring them as she stalked toward him proved to be a mistake.
Those needles dug into her flesh, ignoring the stone in her makeup, and began to spread thick cords of root material over the front of her body. A few seconds later, Cary wore a woven bundle of roots around her torso and waist.
“You are not mortal, I see that now. Why would you help this…” Whatever appellation he intended to give the unconscious man faded from the speaker’s lips as Cary burst out of her imprisonment with a simple transformation into her stone form. It was larger and not at all subject to the hooks the tiny needles had set into her flesh. “Ah! A gargoyle!”
Cary had never heard the man’s accent in her life, but Emilia’s memories pegged it as Russian, or something similar.
The word he’d used — gargoyle — wasn’t a terrible guess based on the evidence. It was dark, Emilia had shifted without using a word or any magic, but it was off enough for her to wonder what the man intended to do next.
He didn’t stop his assault on her. Instead, he spun his finger in a circle and called out something in a language Cary had definitely heard before: Latin. It translated to “bring out the sun.”
Cute. Good luck buddy.
The light of the Sun blazed out of the man’s portal with incredible intensity, as if his magic amplified the rays. But they did nothing more to Cary’s stone body than perhaps disinfect the portions exposed to the hard UV. Again, the temptation to freeze up and pretend to be a statue was crushed and discarded by her past.
Instead Cary stalked though the fiery emission from the portal to grab the bearded man by the short white locks attached to his chin. He yelped at her and the portal burned itself out, no longer powered by his concentration. Still, he kept his cool. “Ah, not a gargoyle then. Tell me, my dear. What are you?”
Cary snorted at this brazen creature. Faced with something like her that could crush his windpipe with one finger and her thumb, he continued to ask questions. Cary posed one of her own. “I’ve been told curiosity was my downfall. How about you?”
“If you are asking right now, I would say it is seven-foot tall statue women.” He flashed a toothy smile at her that was surprisingly white and well-cared for considering his woodlands aesthete.
Cary laughed again and released him. “Tell me your name stranger and I won’t break your neck.”
“Olegiev, but please, call me Oleg.” He raised his hands. “I was not aware a fellow shadow creature had marked this woman as their own.” He pointed to the lady standing in the middle of the path still slack jawed. “Nor did I realize you worked with such… low characters. My apologies.”
Oleg grabbed the hooded man and tossed him toward Cary. He landed at her feet with a thunk. Cary rolled her eyes in the dark and shifted back to her mortal guise. Only belatedly realizing that she’d torn through her clothing as she shifted. Oleg’s gaze drifted over her nude body, but he didn’t say anything. That was worth something. “Look, Oleg. I think we’ve got a miscommunication on our hands. I don’t know either of these mortals and I don’t care one bit for them. I just heard the woman scream and came running.”
Tilting his head, Oleg mumbled something in a language that tickled at Cary’s ear, like she should have known how to understand it, if only she could see it written down. She still memorized the syllables for later review. “Well, that is a great deal of water in my eye. I didn’t… I assumed you arrived because I was about to feed upon this black heart here. The woman screamed when he attempted to attack her while I watched.”
“Oh, then carry on. I don’t care what happens to either of them.” Cary folded her arms over her chest to save Oleg from his distraction. After a second’s blinking, he grabbed the hooded man’s leg and resumed dragging him out of the trail. Following him for a few feet, Cary watched Oleg’s body shift into a mass of vines and creepers. He flowed over the man’s corpse, from which mushrooms and other fungi sprang. After less than a minute, the hooded figure had been reduced to nothing more than a sack of clothing containing a few bits of plastic and metal that didn’t decay under Oleg’s touch.
He re-formed into his human guise, shook the hooded man’s clothing and offered it to Cary. “As a form of apology, for attacking you without cause?”
Smiling at him, Carry accepted the clothes and put them all on, dipping back into Emilia’s memory as she did. The hood was an adornment Cary had not been sure about, but putting it on was easy enough. “Thank you Oleg the Chuhaister.” Oleg started at her recognition, but he didn’t croak or whine at her. “My name is Cary. I am… a demoness.”
His face paled at that and he licked his lips. “Why are you here… Cary the demoness?”
“Just here walking about, exploring my new home a little.”
“Your… new home?” Oleg’s obvious concern set Cary’s teeth on edge. She’d faced that kind of regard from passersby during her statue days who’d studied her face too closely. As if they found something disturbing in her appearance.
No one appreciated that glare.
Impulse set her mouth into motion. “Oleg, I swear upon the Boundary itself that I am not here for you or yours. And unless you offer me violence, I will not offer it to you.” That made his eyebrows shoot up to the halo of white hair that scattered about his head. Dipping again into Emilia’s memories, Cary held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Oleg accepted her handshake. “The same. I’ve… never met a demoness like yourself.”
“Well congratulations, you have.” Cary directed her thumb to the woman back on the path. “What happens to her now that you ate her would-be attacker?”
Shrugging, Oleg said, “once the sleep spores wear off, she will resume her previous activities. She will most likely forget the attack.”
“Hmm.” Cary walked back to the woman and sniffed her. Oleg followed.
“Do you want something from her?”
Cary tilted her head back and forth. The idea had come to her watching Oleg feed. “Perhaps, but I would prefer not to steal a kiss if I can help it.” She took the woman’s hand and kissed the back of it, letting her tongue flick against the woman’s skin. With that, she had the taste of her. A shimmer of flesh later, Cary had assumed the woman’s form, keeping only her original curly blond hair in the process.
“Did you do something?”
“Oh right.” Cary pulled off the mask and showed Oleg her new face.
“Ah, that is incredible. You are a doppelgänger then?”
“Sure, something like that.” Cary found herself incredibly thirsty and hungry after shifting. “Tell me Oleg, is there a place I can find a…” she only had to glance through Emilia’s memories to find the word, “a beer? Maybe something else to eat?”
Clapping her on the back, Oleg laughed with his head tilted all of the way back. “Ah yes, I think I do like you then, Ms Doppelgänger! And come, I know just the place!”
“You must remove your mask.” Oleg had stopped on the edge of the green strip of woods. The two of them huddled in the last few bits of greenery before the tar-covered roads began.
“Why? It’s surprisingly comfortable.”
“Only blackguards and evildoers wear such hoods in our society. Please trust me.”
Cary reviewed Emilia’s memories to be sure. Aside from a few specific religious conventions, Oleg was right. Wishing he wasn’t, Cary removed the hood and put it back in her pocket. “And this thing, this credit card, will let us buy all of the beer we wish?”
“Da, trust me. Hand the card to the bartender and ask them to ‘leave it open,’ you will not want for drinks the rest of the night. Though I suspect we will not be able to return to that bar again after.”
“Why not?” Emilia’s memories didn’t contain any information about this particular transaction.
Oleg waved Cary’s question off and waited for her to pocket the hood while he stood in the street. His white beard and torn clothing would have made him stand out among the mortals, but as he passed out of the tree line, his bushy hair shortened and his garments repaired themselves. Still dressed mostly in white, he had trim slacks on and a collared shirt rather than the robes he’d been wearing. In her dark blue outfit, complete with long sleeves, Cary looked as though she’d coordinated her outfit with Oleg.
Neither of them wore shoes.
“This is called Black Lynx. Is good bar, noisy and yet quiet, eh?” Thrumming noise pounded Cary in the chest as she looked up at the three storied building. It was half the size of most of the buildings on this street. Maybe that meant half the impressions to laboriously commit to memory? “Why do you hold your head this way?” Oleg raised his hands in the same way Cary did, shielding his peripheral vision.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“I have a condition.” Cary had to comb through Emilia’s memory to find a suitable phrase. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it came close enough for Cary’s purposes.
“Oh, I hope the bar is not uncomfortable then?” As they crossed in front of the bar, a large tattooed man who looked like a eunuch bred to be a bodyguard stopped them.
“You two coming in here?” He addressed Oleg as if Oleg would make the decision for both of them.
To his credit, the white-beard raised an eyebrow at Cary, who nodded in return and tried to focus on anything but the maddening rush of people in the street. Oleg leaned against the wall and said, “Yes, good sir. May we enter?”
“Sure, five bucks and I need to see some ID.”
Oleg grinned and blew a set of brown-colored spores into the eunuch’s face. “We are both of age, you confirmed it yourself, yes?”
The man’s eyes lost focus as he nodded. “I confirmed it myself, yes. Please enjoy yourselves.”
Not begrudging the bouncer the money he’d requested, Oleg slipped four bills into the man’s hand and patted it as he led Cary through the doors.
What had been a solid wall of sound before transformed into a blanket that surrounded Cary and tried to crawl into her body from every pore. The music, thumping and furious, insinuated itself into her thoughts. For the first time since leaving her stony former profession, Cary found herself able to totally relax. She still recorded each passing sensation, but now the experience grew manageable, almost relaxing against the constant beat.
Oleg kept a firm grip on Cary’s hand and still two men a woman interposed themselves between her and Oleg. “Hey babe, you here to dance?”
Cary had crouched down, ready to attack at the first provocation. But these two wished to see her dance? Since Elelele had captured her, Cary had not danced a single step. She didn’t count the way her master had made her reenact the blocking from some of her surveillance missions. After as much as she’d seen of the room and the brief glimpse at Emilia’s memories, Cary knew she could fulfill these peoples’ request with ease. “I was here to drink, but I could dance. Why not?”
Releasing Oleg’s hand, Cary stepped away from him and merged with the crowd behind her. Not only had the music freed her from her preoccupation with memorization, but it had liberated her very soul. The men followed her while the woman practically glued herself to Cary’s hip. They ground their bodies together as if simulating sex, or promising it for after their dance. Cary didn’t care one bit, she would just add their scents and the feeling of their hard bodies to her mental notes. Throwing her head back and howling, Cary released several millennia worth of anger and frustration as she tore over the dance floor.
The original three dancers followed Cary through her jaunt over the floor. They couldn’t quite keep up with her, but they didn’t give up entirely either. After an hour of dancing, they took shifts grinding their bodies with Cary, who embraced the sensation after so many years of solitary, statuesque existence.
Oleg watched through the entire show, two full hours before Cary decided she’d danced enough and wanted to try a modern beer. Her three companions had stationed themselves at a tall round table several feet from Cary and Oleg, but they didn’t approach when she first sat down. A waitress walked by and Cary flagged her down. “Serving girl, a beer please! Take my plastic card and hold it open until the night expires!”
Shaking his head, Oleg conferred with the waitress, who’d screwed her nose up at Cary’s declaration and stood there with her mouth agape. Oleg turned back to Cary and laughed. “You did that almost as poorly as I did the first time I tried to order. Good job!”
Cary shrugged off his comment and waited at her table, flush from the burst of activity. “I do not think I have enjoyed myself this much in a thou…” A raised eyebrow from Oleg made Cary amend her words. “…thousand days. I am pleased! I hope the beer is as good as the dancing.”
“Do not worry, I ordered you a good beer.”
Cary tilted her head at Oleg’s assurance, but felt a strange sense of trust from the man as he clapped her on the back. A minute later, the waitress returned with Cary’s order and presented a full glass of amber liquid to Cary along with a wink toward Oleg. Waiting until the server left, Cary tapped the glass gingerly and looked askew at Oleg. “What is this?”
“It’s beer. You drink it.” Oleg shook his head and raised this own glass, which was already half empty. “It’s good. Trust me!”
The trust had already waned, this looked nothing like beer to Cary. Nothing floated in it and she could see through the liquid. They must have watered it down horrendously. Sniffing the glass before she sipped it brought an entirely new dimension to Cary’s senses. There was a good deal of water in this drink, but it also contained a remarkably pure spirit. Hops, wheat sugars, and a dozen other aromatic compounds danced in Cary’s stead over the glass in the form of bubbles that tickled her nose.
The first sip brought those flavors into stark relief in Cary’s mind. What had been a dubious glass of near-water turned out more akin to nectar than anything else. Cary drained the glass in a single gulp. The swirling mix of liquid excellence changed subtly as she finished it off. “That was… sublime. I wish for another?”
Oleg slapped his thigh and flagged down a waitress for Cary. This time he ordered two different beers, Cary paid attention. The second and third draughts were as good as or better than the first. Cary finished those with the same speed as she had the first. Dancing made for thirsty work.
The taller of her former dancing partners wandered up with his companions in tow. “You look like you can hold your liquor.”
Cary nodded, the warmth of the beer had settled in her midsection where it spread to her limbs and cheeks. “I have not thrown up in years, thank you.”
Behind the tall man, whom Cary had dubbed the leader in her head, the girl giggled with her mouth covered up. The leader said, “care for a cocktail?”
Oleg raised his hand to wave the trio off, but Cary interrupted him. “I am not sure about a cock’s tail, but if it is a drink, I would be happy to try one.”
Shaking his head, Oleg held his arms out to Cary as if to say, “you’re your own boss.” Cary smiled at him, glad he understood his place here. The leader of the trio flagged down a different waitress and ordered a drink with an odd name. Cary leaned in and shouted over the music, “I thought you intended to order a cock’s tail?”
Laughing into his hand, the man said, “I did. It’s called a Bikini Sunrise. I’m sure you’ll like it. Packs a heck of a kick.”
Cary shrugged at his words, too captured by the alcohol to examine Emilia’s memories for the names. Besides, Emilia was apparently too young to legally drink in this world, a confusing fact Cary ignored for the time being, except to note that Emilia would be no expert on such things.
The waitress delivered the drink to the man, who spun about with a flourish and presented her drink, complete with umbrella and little fuzzy bits of fruit floating on top. During her statue days, Cary recalled powerful men drinking such beverages with shaved ice in the desert, whole buildings were made just to produce the ice for their indulgences. This place must have possessed incredible wealth to make such an extravagance just for her.
“What is the tube for?” Cary leaned into Oleg, poking the odd little plastic tube in her drink as she did.
“It is for drinking, suck on the tube as you would… ah that is, you suck on it.” Oleg blushed as he answered Cary’s question. Something in his face looked sour, as if he did not care for the expensive beverage Cary had been given. Yet, he was curious about it as well, watching Cary to see how she would take it.
Sucking on the tube was a strange experience by itself, but when the flood of frozen liquid hit her lips, Cary sprang away from her drink in alarm. Her three dancing companions glanced among each other guiltily, as if caught conspiring. Cary laughed at the sweet frozen mix of juice and high-strength alcohol on her tongue. “Delightful!” There was a slight bitter flavor underlining her drink, but that might have been the result of using less-than-fresh fruit or some other component of the drink. After she dove back into the tube and resumed “downing” her cock’s tail, the other three seemed to have relaxed.
Cary didn’t want to make them think she was a spoilsport. Those three might be fun to play with later. There were many things Cary had not done in a millennia that she was dying to engage in. That drink finished, Cary ordered another two “Bikini cock’s tails” for herself before she noticed something was wrong.
Like most flesh-based demons, she would be affected by any alcohol she chose to take within herself. Though it had been many years ago, she’d enjoyed more than her fair share of drunks before Elelele had captured her. This effect was different.
Cary’s vision narrowed to a small dot, as if she stared through a telescope at objects in the distance. The sights and sounds she constantly recorded intensified and dulled as she spun her head about. Dizziness had certainly been a part of intoxication so long ago, but this strange time-dilation had not.
Standing up on her own, the leader of the group caught Cary in his arms. “You need a place to sleep it off, darling?”
Cary patted him on the cheek and his two companions surrounded her, cutting Oleg off from Cary’s back. The girl ran her finger down Cary’s back toward her rump, purring as she did, “I bet you’re a demon in the sack, hon.”
Nothing in Cary’s memory parsed that phrase correctly, so she snickered and nodded. “I am a demon. Demoness really.” The words came out slurred and jumbled with each other and Cary followed the three out of the bar with Oleg trailing behind them.
Oleg kept pace with them, arguing with the shorter of the three men while the other two called for a taxi. Despite the size and persistence of the man, Oleg shot by him and grabbed Cary by the upper arm, digging his fingers into her skin.
His grip broke through the haze of intoxication that gripped Cary by pulling her fury to the surface. “What are you doing, Oleg?”
Ignoring her tone and the threat she implied with it, Oleg jerked her closer to him and said, “These people have adulterated your drink. I believe they are attempting to take advantage of you.” The girl slapped at Oleg’s back and shouted at him. She drew the attention of passersby with her efforts. But Oleg’s words had penetrated the fog of Cary’s thoughts. “Can you not feel the taint within your own body?”
As if he’d uttered the words to a magical spell, Oleg tore through the last bits of haze. Cary turned her inner eye to her body and found more than a few problems with her brain and endocrine system. Sorting through Emilia’s memories, she found the possible cause: Rohypnol. If she was correct, it would have a reduced effect on her due to her inhuman physiology. Then she connected the word to another phrase: “date rape.”
Ignoring the crowd who’d gathered due to the woman’s shouting at Oleg, Cary turned to the rest of the group. She steadied herself against the ironwood stance Oleg took and leveled her gaze at the leader of the trio. “Did you taint my Bikini Sunrise?”
A flush appeared at his cheek, almost imperceptible against the general blush of drunkenness covering his skin. But then his eyes flicked away for a moment, as if recalling what he’d done. The episode with Elelele rolled over Cary’s mind with the force of a hundred Bikini Sunrises. These people, these mortals had tried to take her choices away, to make her an object, if only for one night.
Shifting only the interior of her body into stone, Cary roared with a blazing fury as she open-palmed the leader of the group right into his sternum. The crack echoed through her bones like a good cleaning with a stiff metal brush. Vestiges of her intoxication hung on until Cary backhanded the second of the two men, cracking his skull in the process.
“How DARE you!” Cary’s words ended her roar as she stalked toward the woman. “You helped them, you encouraged me to go with them and accept his envenomed cock’s tail.”
“You were hot to trot, you wanted it as much…”
“Silence!” The windows behind them shook from the force of Cary’s words. Deciding the woman’s fate was a simple thing for Cary. She dove into her vast memory of arcane knowledge and selected a fiendish and appropriate spell. She chanted the words of the lengthy spell, enjoying the other woman’s frozen terror all the while.
Weaving as she did, the light around her swirled, ebbed and surged with red and blue fury. The woman burbled as Cary spat the words of her magic into her face.
And nothing happened.
Cary’s attempt at turning the woman into a real statue failed. People shouted nonsense behind her, but Cary dismissed the words, the drink and intoxicants helping with the suppression. Someone tapped her on the back with a stiff rod, so Cary backhanded the person into the nearby building, shattering bones in their face as she did.
Behind her a figure dressed in an intricate blue outfit, utterly unlike Cary’s sleek blue uniform, shuffled back with a panicked shout. He dropped his metal stick with a curse and fumbled at his side for a wand or other item. If this new stranger intended to help these monsters, Cary wanted nothing to do with them. Over Oleg’s protests, Cary slammed a fist into this man’s chest before he brought his magic to bear.
An explosion sounded at the strike as the man’s feet left the ground and he sailed back into the blue and red flashing car behind him. The crowd who’d gathered gasped as if they were part of a single beast while another blue-uniformed figure raised his wand toward Cary. She’d already attracted too much attention to herself, so Cary charged the second figure. His wand exploded like the first and an impact struck Cary in the shoulder, but it did nothing to slow her down. She slapped the wand out of the man’s hands and drove her fist into his gut. He coughed up blood and fell to the street at her feet.
Oleg was still yelling at Cary by then. But once the second uniformed man dropped, Oleg grabbed Cary by the arm. She spun on him, ready to pummel Oleg next, but stopped herself before she hurt him. “We must run now, flee!” Cary blinked at him, trying to decipher his words through her bloodlust and lingering chemical intoxication. “Now, before they send the tanks, please!”
The white-bearded man had been kind to Cary, even trustworthy so far. And if the night had proven anything, she wasn’t safe here on her own. Cary relented and together she and Oleg sprinted away, leaving the crowd with their tiny lights and sirens behind.