Green Agate Pretender Read online

  I pulled out of my spiral and headed out into the center of this fey paradise. It was one of many scenes that Fairy could throw at you without notice, designed to stun the wanderer with beauty—so he could be pounced upon. I kept my guard up, anticipating attack from every direction.

  A stream of white moths fell through the slit in the ceiling, slashing across course. They were accompanied by a diamond glitter as they shed scales in flight. I formed lines of shadow on my chest, writing in symbols for my Dragon Flame spell. On my lower back, I formed the pattern for my red barrier sphere. I flushed both designs with raw, golden magic from my inner dragon. My skin warmed. The red shell formed around me, but seemed thinner, more pink than usual. Fire wreathed both hands, a weak orange flutter that didn’t seem too dependable.

  I didn’t think my alien magic should be this vulnerable to the power of Fairy.

  My inner dragon said: The crown, idiot. It’s a direct link to whoever is attacking you!

  “That’s probably right, but I’m not throwing it away. I’ve got plans for this thing.”

  Plans worth dying over?

  “Good point.” I poured some of my lifeforce into the crown, taking it off my head, and tapped the spell that connected me to my armory back in L.A. The crown went from green to gold, then thinned and faded, thrown into the ether. It would land in the secret subbasement of my Malibu mansion, and return when summoned again.

  And then the white moths were on me.

  My pink shield wilted and dripped away, collapsing, but my dragon fire flared brighter as my inner dragon added his will to mine. The insect glitter burned my skin like a fine mist of acid. I threw out fire to ignite their parchment wings. Seeing the creatures up close, I saw they had female bodies with fuzzy moth heads. They gnashed tiny pointy teeth at me, those that weren’t on fire. I continued to lash out with fire until the last survivors dropped down to a wooded islet.

  I half-closed my wings, diving, trusting to speed to get me past the next threat. I skimmed the water, using the spray to wash off the acid, and pulled up sharply as I saw a dark, submerged shadow coming at me. I beat my wings furiously for altitude while rolling to the side.

  A dark gray torpedo shape emerged, its maw wide, displaying multiple rows of triangular teeth. It had fins, sardine breath, and a vertical tail rising to a high point. And was easily four times my size. I couldn’t believe it.

  A fresh-water shark? Gimme a break!

  My inner dragon smacked his lips. If only we were using my body. I’d gobble him down for dinner, scales and all.

  “I’m beginning to think I should let you run amok here, but I’m not sure we can afford the five or six minutes it would take for the transformation.”

  Plus, it would mean stripping down and sending all my weaponry away for safekeeping. This was not a place I wanted to risk that. Especially since sending the crown away hadn’t stopped the bleed of power from my spells.

  I settled for dropping onto an islet covered with blood-red flowers. There were few trees, so I could see whatever was next unleashed against me. The air smelled sweet, inviting. This was as the kind of place where you wanted to lay down and roll around a bit with a naked playmate.

  Shrill screams and a storm of gibbering swept up, drawing my attention to an adjoining isle where heavy jungle dominated. The verdant growth quivered and parted as snow apes leaped out, flinging themselves over a stream to board my island. White snow apes with blue eyes, in green jungle made no sense, but this was Fairy.

  Machine pistol in hand, green laser sight slashing, I emptied my weapon into them, then let it dangle by the strap. Drawing both PX4 Storms, I squeezed off shot after shot, putting down as many as I could. I shot down the screaming mouth of one ape, and kicked the body away, using my last shot.

  I willed the weapons back to my armory for a magical reload. Before I could pull the weapons back to me, the last two snow apes reached me in a dead tie. They were monkey strong, but I had reach on them, and superhuman strength from mixed Villager and dragon DNA. Their heads caved in to the pressure of my fingers, skulls popping loudly. I whipped them and flung them away, turning to see what might come at me next.

  “How long are we going to play these games? Why don’t you just tell me what you want? Show yourself! Or don’t you have any balls?”

  Sometimes, a good taunt can make the bad guys careless, a little stupid. I thought it couldn’t hurt.

  Ten feet away, a mound of red poppies erupted to form a column. As the fountain reached five-foot and a few inches, the petals blew away, revealing a female shape carved from absinth, smelling of it: dry, bitter, and pungent. Her translucent limbs moved with liquid grace, in a skin of glossy magic that didn’t let her splash apart, which would have been natural. Her bodily curves were dangerous, challenging. Her breasts exquisite jewels. Her smile ferocious, feral. There was an animal quality to her sleek pose that warned she was about to pounce.

  My inner dragon said: Didn’t see that coming.

  “Cut it out,” I said. “Adults are supposed to use their words.”

  She paused, either understanding my words, or simply startled by them. She smiled, teeth the same bright green as the rest of her. “Words? Fine. Here’s one. Die!” She leaped like a jungle cat, feet shoving into my guts, her hands twisting at my head, clawing at my eyes.

  I grabbed her wrists. They stayed solid a moment, then went liquid as she poured free. Moving into her personal space, I kicked through her right leg, separating it from the knee. She went down with a hiss. Her nub of a leg swept across the lower limb she’d lost and the leg fused whole again.

  Damn. This is like fighting water.

  Well, I had an answer for that.

  One elemental attack deserves another.

  I yelled at my dragon self. C’mon, now. Cough it up! I don’t have all day.

  My mental landscape became a hell-zone of golden energy. I screamed in pain and rage. Golden lightning sprang from body, sizzling over the liquid lady.

  She screamed, a shrill, high-pitched stab of sound. Then she went silent, wilting into the red flowers.

  The golden jags crawled over me a little longer, then thinned to nothing. I swayed. Tired. Hoping it was all over.

  Ten columns shot up. Red poppies blew away. More of the absinth-green women surrounded me.

  I sighed. Oh, I’m fucked.

  FOUR

  “Oh Vanity, how many

  have died in your name?”

  —Caine Deathwalker

  “All right,” I said. “You got me. I’m obviously way out classed by all of you beautiful women.” I sent the shoulder holsters and automatic machine pistol away to my armory with a thought. Since the spell was powered by my armory, the drain on my personal magic here in Fairy didn’t matter. I untied the shirt and parka from my waist and let them fall to the poppy-littered grass. I squatted a moment to loosen the laces of my boots, then toed out of them. I wiggled my toes in relief and smiled at the girls as I unzipped my pants and let them fall, kicking out of the legs. “There, no hidden weapon you need to fear—except for the monster in my pants. Him, you should fear. Never has a cock like mine walked the Earth since prehistoric times. I wonder which of you lucky women get to enslave my beast for your endless orgasmic pleasure.”

  They were looking at the considerable bulge in my thermal underwear.

  “Use enough socks?” one of them muttered.

  Oh, no she didn’t! my cock exclaimed.

  My balls—Pete and Repeat—tittered in a less than manly fashioned.

  I frowned. Not because I could hear my genitalia, that was unfortunately, a common occurrence, but because I’d been insulted. “Oh, I assure you, this is all me, and I’m not even halfway hard yet.

  “Impossible,” another said.

  “Impossible? As much as I hate vulgar displays of nudity...”

  My inner dragon laughed at that outright lie.

  I stripped out of my thermals and my socks and stood there in all my un
natural glory. “There, you can see for yourselves I have no need to pad my shorts.” My “third leg” hung there, stiffening, drawing even more attention. One of the fey creatures licked full lips.

  I made my voice stern. “But if I’m going to surrender, I insist it be to the most deserving, the most beautiful among you.” I walked toward the closest one, giving her naked topography an obvious examination. “Hmmm. Right tit looks a little heavier than the left.” I went on to the next green lady. “Not bad, at all.”

  As I swung past the third, she pulled her shoulders back, letting her proud tits thrust mightily.

  “Such temptation... I like a woman who’s got a little meat to her thighs, and a nicely full ass. This is so hard; you’re so close to identical I can’t decide.”

  My circuit took me to another pair standing side by side. I looked back and forth. “Maybe you can help me out. Which of you is the most beautiful? The most deserving of a cock like mine?”

  Three women spoke up in unison: “I am.” They followed this up with narrow-eyed glares at one another. Then all of them spoke in unison. “No, I am.”

  “My tits are perkier,” one of them proclaimed. They actually increased in size.

  I backed away, staring.

  “That’s not fair!” another said.

  “Cheating,” I muttered.

  “That’s cheating!” several of them repeated.

  The one with the ass I’d complemented put fists on her hips. “Are all of you blind? Obviously, I am the most perfect among us. I get to use the meat-puppet first.”

  She took a step in my direction.

  One of her sisters blocked her. “Says you!”

  Push came to shove. Shove went to gouge. Then it was every girl for herself, Hell take the faint-hearted. Their screams of fury thickened the air as I gathered up my stuff and strolled away.

  Wait! my cock said. I’m not getting any?

  “Sorry, buddy. Not this time.” I padded across the red poppies, heading for another islet, one with apple trees in bloom and garden hedges. And hopefully, no winged pythons, late night chatter-monkeys, or cuddle-bugs.

  I took a few moments to dress. Then, with a flutter of wings, I launched myself over a stream. Purple tentacles shot out of the water and tightened around me. I still had my Dragon Fire spell on stand-by. The quelling effect of the heart-zone weakened my flames, but they at least answered, erupting out of my skin, eating into the violet coils. The main body of my attacker lay under water. The stream turned turbulent, roiling, as something burst up to take a bite out of me. I saw a blur of a head with a gaping beaked maw. It had a single red eye that glowered with fury.

  Devil squid. Uh! Can’t get a good breath.

  As I exhaled, the coils lightened more, preventing me from dragging in more air as it tried to twist me in half.

  How can something so big hide in such a small stream…never mind. It’s Fairy.

  It pulled me into the little stream. Water closed over my head, feet of it, then yards. The moonlight on the surface was pale and yellow green, refusing to follow me into a growing darkness. The inside of the stream was vastly larger than the outside.

  Magic. I need some of my own.

  From the ether, I pulled my demon sword to my hand, feeling the solid weight in my palm. Its red aura brightened the water, its hunger clawing at me as it demanded to be fed. I couldn’t swing the katana, but that wasn’t necessary. I just had to roll my wrist and let the black-iron blade touch the squid—and suck out its soul.

  The coils loosened. It burbled in panic. And died.

  I released the sword, sending it away, and swam hard for the surface, my body sharing in the stolen lifeforce. It burnt and filled me, a roar of power. Breaking the surface, I suddenly found the bottom of the creak under me, just a few feet down. I stood and staggered across to the next islet, pulling myself up a red clay back, pushing through a thicket of copper-colored leaves on olive stems. Beyond lay rusty and gold grass, a cushiony carpet that invited me to lay down and rest.

  I didn’t fall for it; I kept going.

  Obviously, I was fighting Fairy itself; the land had risen in rebellion to all the abuses inflicted on it by the fey over past millennia. Ages ago, the land grew alive in a special way, a solitary entity with magic for a soul. It created lesser life, filling forests, and mountains, and river valleys. And then it made the mistake of giving birth to a magical race of children: the fey. They too loved the land, at first living in harmony. Some were of the Light Court, and others were given to the Dark. And then there were more solitary fey, the Gray that stood in the twilight, bound to nothing.

  The fey loved nature, one with its magic, but they grew to love prestige and power even more. Feuds burst out. Kin killed kin. Alliances formed. And the fey fought for possession of their Mother’s fractured heart. And then in a legendary battle, madness reigned and the heart was shattered. The fey Lords and Ladies took their pieces, the ties, and rent the land, making themselves kingdoms in their own images. And the time of decline began. The warring states created unspeakable weapons of nightmare, and never realized their abandonment of the Mother—of Underhill—had sealed their doom, for with time, fewer and fewer children were born…

  It was the Mother’s way of killing her children humanely, so she and the land might one day return to sanity. A sad story, really. If I had human sympathy, I might have wept.

  I stopped and sat on a boulder, getting dressed again, straining my senses for any sign of a new threat. I left the boots aside, preferring to give myself an advantage by morphing my human feet into miniature versions of dragon feet. My feet lengthened, the skin turning gold scaled. A spur of bone grew out of my heel, and my toes grew long, ending in black talons. The next time I kicked something, it was going to know it had been kicked.

  Now, those are feet, my inner dragon said.

  “Does it seem like—after taking ages to kill the fey—the land is suddenly speeding up her timetable?”

  I suppose.

  “Why is that, I wonder. Something’s changed.”

  Well, if we ask what’s new in Fairy, we come up with you.

  “Me?”

  You are the first outlander ever to bond with a tie and hold a kingdom. That’s given the land a taste of a lord unlike those she’s known. You improve your land. You bond with the Dragon’s Eye. You harbor refugees from other kingdoms, and you don’t twist the magic to serve your will. You entreat it like a lover. If more of the fey Lords were like you…

  “They’d be scary indeed.”

  While my kingdom was accommodating and friendly, loving even, this part of the land was decidedly a bitch. “I’m not feeling the love right now.”

  The Heart of the land is broken, at war with itself. Some parts are going to be saner than others.

  “So, I wasn’t brought here just to be killed?” I concentrated and pulled my shoulder holsters back from my armory. They appeared, cinched around my torso, semiautomatics ready to be drawn and fired. I called the machine pistol back as well, letting it dangle from its strap.

  Part of the Land probably does want you dead, the part that sent the Pretender out to harvest ties. Other parts know that no fey can be trusted with this task. It was probably why he was first sent to the Winter Court where he’d draw your attention, and not to your own kingdom, after your tie. The part of the Land that loves you want you to fix all this.

  I remembered the deep green shadow that had guarded Izumi’s sleep, that had sent me this way. “That piece of the land’s soul, living in my tie, is protecting Izumi because she’s important to me.”

  It’s all guess work, but reasonable.

  “Have you noticed, the closer we get to the center islet of this place, the more gravity relaxes? What do you think’s up with that?”

  Where magic is wildest, nature is least in control. The central islet is probably the original site where the Heart Stone rested. Only splinters will remain, the pieces that were too small and damaged to be used as
ties.

  “We’re going to need those pieces.”

  My inner dragon grinned at me. I hope you’re hungry. There’s only one way to carry something so dangerous.

  “Damn.” I knew he wasn’t joking. There had been a few occasions when dragon instinct had taken over in past years and gems I’d been appraising had gotten themselves swallowed, by me, when I wasn’t paying enough attention to myself.

  The good news is that the longer the fragments are in you, the stronger you’ll become, and they might even react to our dragon lifeforce and fuse back together.

  “How likely is that?”

  I’m a dragon, not a witch doctor. You’d have to ask a healer.

  “And if these gems have sharp edges that cut me to pieces from the inside out?” I asked.

  Hey, there are drawbacks to every plan.

  “I think I’ll just put them in a pocket.”

  Are you ready to move on?

  “Yeah.”

  Good, I hear something trying to move stealthily through the underbrush. We’re being stalked.

  Sometimes, my inner dragon used my senses even better than me.

  I picked up my boots, tied the shoestrings together, draped them over a shoulder, and picked a direction. As I walked, I listened to whatever followed. It could be anything. Harmless or malevolent. The more it hid though, the weaker I thought it probably was. I stopped by a small grove of apple trees. They were in full bloom, still about six months away from putting out any fruit.

  That disappointed me. I was hungrier than Hell. In dragon form, I’d fought winter storms, flying to the Winter Court. I hadn’t eaten anything there, and here I was, still burning calories. I hadn’t even gotten a bite of the squid that had tried to kill me.

  In my own kingdom, I could just have touched the soil and communed with the earth to grow something to feed me. Here, I had no tie to look favorably upon me. Still…