Page 13 of The Last Slayer
The Fair Lakes community was an upper-middle-class neighborhood with a lot of yuppie cars and even yuppier people. Regularly pruned trees, green lawns and colorful red and purple flowers made up the flawless landscape. I owned a fairly new two-bedroom condo on Fairfax County Parkway. I’d had it for two years, and I loved it. It was my own—my home that no one could take from me.
Regular folks have no idea what it’s like to have everything taken away. Foster care really is all about temporary families, temporary homes, constant shuffling and uncertainty. People who knew me thought I’d chosen Fairfax, Virginia, at random, or that I was here because the firm put me here. Not so. I could’ve gone to our Los Angeles office. Or Miami. Or even New York. But I didn’t want to go to those places. Los Angeles because of earthquakes, Miami because of hurricanes and New York…well, it’s just too cold up there. Besides, all of those cities are too transitory. I’d had no debt when I’d graduated from Stanford—thanks to Jack—and I’d saved and invested conservatively until I had enough to pay cash for the condo. I was putting down roots.
I parked my car in its reserved spot by the main entrance. The building had only three stories and no elevator. My unit was on the first floor. I hate hauling stuff up stairs. One of my later foster families had lived on the third floor of an elevator-less apartment, and they’d always made me carry all the heavy stuff—okay, heavy to a seven-year-old—while their own two daughters hadn’t lifted a thing.
The streetlights illuminated the small pitiful patch of land that came with my place. I’d tried to turn it into an herb garden, but it had ended up as an herb cemetery. I sighed. Even the mint looked as if it would expire from utter neglect, and mint was supposed to be able to grow anywhere. But not in Ashera’s Garden of Doom, apparently. Still, it was home and I did my best to make it as homey as possible.
I went through the main entrance and unlocked my door. The wardings on it were sophisticated, invisible unless you could sense the magic flowing along the convoluted pattern of the darkmotifs. One could never be too careful, even though Valerie had personally warded all the partners’ residences, worried no doubt about headlines. Supernatural Protection Firm Partner Sex’d by Incubus would be a PR nightmare.
I stood in the doorway, looking and listening.
You are marked.
It could mean anything—or nothing—but something about the way “Sele
na” had said those three little words creeped me out. Of course, I could be doing exactly what it wanted by acting all timid, tiptoeing around in my own home. The platinum-haired demon might show up, but I doubted it. Unlike Selena’s townhouse, my place was supernatural-proof. And this time he wasn’t going to catch me off guard. Besides, he had probably been part of the ridiculous “test,” something Andersen had thrown in there without telling Valerie. Maybe if I’d accepted the demon’s help, I would’ve gotten an F. Now I wished I had, just to piss the two of them off…and to have had a chance to wipe the look of utter confidence off that demon’s oh so perfect face.
Well, there wasn’t any time to waste. I had some quick reading to do and didn’t have the luxury of brooding over something a couple of loser demons had said.
The condo was quiet, warm from the heat of the day. I tossed my bag by the couch and inhaled a lungful of dust, the result of not vacuuming for a month. I flipped the lights and AC on, kicked off my shoes and went to get some coffee. Several abstract paintings decorated the walls between the entrance and the kitchen. Jack had done them and sent them as housewarming gifts, with a note saying they were images from his dreams about me. He’d never mentioned that he dreamed about me until that moment, and then he’d refused to interpret them. I would’ve offered to pay if I could afford his rates.
Given my luck, I bet his visions meant I’d made the wrong career choice. Jack had a music producer client who had heard me sing once and said I could be a sensation with the right surgical adjustments. He’d tried to get me to come in for an audition, but I declined. I didn’t want to be a sensation. Paparazzi hiding around my condo at all hours? Not good, for me…or for them. I can be a little trigger-happy when I get stressed.
The kitchen counter looked barren without the small jars of creatures of nightmare body parts. I’d removed them at an ex’s request because he claimed they were disgusting.
Sissy.
At the time I’d sort of agreed with him, but looking back, it seemed like he was just jealous of my superior hunting skills. I really needed to stop dating other hunters. A nice normal regular man would be better. Not that it was easy to get one of those. Hunters have the highest divorce, suicide and mortality rates of any profession, magical or otherwise. It comes with the job, the demands of the hunt. We can’t talk about our work due to client confidentiality, we can’t dwell on our feelings, because that only makes us ineffective in battle, and there are so few of us and so many demons.
I’d lost my first lover, Miguel, on the job while I was still an apprentice hunter. That had forced me to grow up fast. It didn’t matter what the counselor had said, some crap about how it wasn’t my fault. Jack had concurred, but refused to tell me what he’d Seen about that job, claiming memory loss from too strong visions. Cripes, he hadn’t even been able to bring himself to fib to make me feel better. That told me everything I needed to know. If I hadn’t been such a mass of fear and adrenaline, Miguel would’ve survived. And that was the main reason for my not working on teams or taking anyone into a real battle for training, although I’d never told anyone except Valerie. The official reason was that I didn’t need any distractions when I fought. And that wasn’t exactly a lie. But the truth of it was I didn’t want the guilt to get to me. Because it was there, and the second you start doubting yourself, wondering why you’re alive when it should’ve been your buddy or whoever, is when you forfeit your life.
No exceptions.
I looked down at my left hand, and the big silver ring winked at me. Valerie had suggested I take it off, but I hadn’t. Hadn’t and wouldn’t, not until I’d found and killed the incubus who’d murdered Miguel.
Unlike some other guys, Miguel hadn’t wanted to use me as a stepping-stone to Valerie. He’d desired me, no one else. I hadn’t believed it at first. I mean, just look at me…and then look at Valerie. Not even my birth parents had wanted me enough to keep me. They’d tossed me on the steps of a church like a piece of trash. But Miguel had put up with my skepticism and prickliness and won me over. A man like him deserved more than a too-bad-so-sad, time-to-move-on from me. He had deserved everything.
I shook out my hands, trying to relax. Dwelling on Miguel and the incubus wouldn’t solve any of my immediate problems. That odd slimy sensation still lingered over my skin, and it was really beginning to aggravate me. First thing tomorrow, I was calling Honishi, one of the partners who specialized in astral magic. Maybe he could do something about it.
I brewed some coffee, which used up the last of my grounds. The moment it was ready, I dumped in a ton of cream and sugar and took the cup to my study.
Stacks of books littered the floor. Well, “stacks.” There wasn’t really any carpet showing. But my superior sense of balance and athleticism rose to the challenge, helping me reach my desk without spilling my precious drink.
“Let’s see…” I knew I had a couple of books on dragonlords. There were a few that had been written centuries ago, author or authors unknown. Nobody could vouch for their accuracy, but they were the only reference books that had survived. Mortals normally don’t commune with dragonlords, who generally consider anything with a lifespan of less than three hundred years as transient and beneath notice. There wasn’t much shared history to write about until the Twilight of Slayers, when the dragonlords killed all of their archenemies in a genocidal war. But afterward the dragonlords had cut all ties with mortals and yada yada yada.
I spent an hour or so flipping pages, but none of the books gave me anything I hadn’t retained from the Stanford Academy of Mageship. The only one that was even remotely useful was a book of spells that I didn’t realize I owned. It listed a particularly interesting incantation called draco perditio, supposedly part of the forbidden ancient magic. From the looks of it, the spell required a hell of a lot of power. More than most mortals could command. Since the decimation of the slayers, certain mortals had taken over their role by hunting the low- to midgrade demons that plagued humans. But hunters could never be what the slayers had been. Nearly immortal, only the slayers had ever been able to bring the dragonlords to heel—the last time some six hundred years ago.
Until the Twilight of Slayers, the slayers had taught us magic, hunting skills, divination, alchemy, medicine and so much more. Mighty empires had risen with the slayers’ help and fallen when they lost their favor. I drummed my fingers next to the yellowed page. The slayers paid for their opposition to the dragonlords with the eradication of their race. Compared to that, what Rome had done to Carthage was merciful.
I took a sip of coffee and closed my eyes. Theoretically, mortals didn’t have the power to kill dragons, much less dragonlords. Being a dragon specialist didn’t change that. It merely meant I understood them better than civilians and could maybe engage in a battle of magic, which might delay them. But destroy one? No.
Slayers and dragonlords were the only ones capable of such a feat.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder. If I did attempt draco perditio, what would happen? Races born to magic, such as slayers and dragonlords, had a huge reservoir of power they could tap into. What we mortals had was pathetic in comparison. A bucket of water to a monsoon.
Could a mortal even incant draco perditio without killing himself? And what would be the manner of death? Would it be just an expiration of sorts, a loss of power akin to the loss of life force from old age? Or would the person be sucked into some ravening extra-dimensional maw of sorcery, chewed up by unimaginably powerful occult forces for daring to try to harness them?
It wasn’t a pleasant possibility to consider the day before you faced a demigod. Diplomacy better work, I thought and closed my eyes.
