“Uh huh.” She rolled her eyes briefly. “I’d think that bringing about the end of the curse would be reward enough without the dramatic declarations. Just the thought of having the world be a normal place with all the septs able to talk to each other again, and no one at war, would be heaven compared to how things are now.”
Slowly, so Ysolde would not notice, Constantine nudged the deflated sheep behind him. “I will pack my things. Where must I go to accomplish this burdensome task?”
“Pack?” Ysolde looked amused and curious at the same time. “I didn’t know ghosts had luggage.”
“Of course we do.” He waited until she was looking at Alduin before snatching up the sheep, and holding it behind his back. “We have need of things just the same as you do. I wear clothing, do I not? I must shave, and bathe, or I would be unpleasant to be around.”
“Yes, but you’re a spirit. You can wear the same thing every day if you like, and I doubt if you’d stink if you didn’t take a bath.”
He pulled himself up to his full height, and shook his finger at her. Unfortunately, it was the hand holding the sheep, which baaed forlornly before he jerked his arm behind his back again. “Just because I’m a spirit does not mean I wish to appear unfashionable or be unclean!”
Ysolde giggled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. Of course you must pack your clothes and…” She glanced at his arm. “… accessories if it makes you feel better.”
“You did not answer the question of where I must go in order to accomplish this mission.”
“You are the cutest sticky child in the world,” Ysolde said to her son when he started to sing in a high, singsong voice. “Hmm? Oh, the Charmer is evidently in Paris, so it’s probably best if you get into Asmodeus’s palace by one of the European entrances.”
“Evidently?” Constantine picked out a word that made him frown. “Do you not know for certain where the Charmer is?”
“I don’t know the Charmer personally—this is just what was passed on to me.” She dropped a kiss on her son’s head and started toward the door. “Thank you so much for doing this, Constantine. I would tell you how much I appreciate it, but it’s so much more than just my wishes that’re at stake here. You’ll free all the dragons, and be a hero forever. All right, my darling, it’s the bathtub for you…”
Constantine’s frown grew darker as he absently watched the love of his life leave the room, his thoughts, for once, not on his own grievances, but instead reaching back in time to his youth. “I wouldn’t do it if Bael were not safely confined in the Akashic Plain,” he said softly to himself. “But as he is, and has no way to get out, then I will act the hero. I will save the dragonkin. I will take my place in the annals of modern dragon history. I will do this for the glory of the silver dragons.”
With a little nod at his noble intentions, he took the sheep to his bedroom, already planning the items he would need on the trip. It didn’t occur to him until later that he never once thought of undertaking the job for Ysolde’s sake alone.
Two
The spirit world version of Seville looked almost identical to the real world version, if you discounted the fact that there was a slight sepia haze over everything, and all the angles were a degree or two off from what they should be. Constantine never could figure out why the spirit world wasn’t filled with broken, straggly headstones, willow trees draped with long creepers that moved eerily in the breeze, and odd little spots where fog seemed to cling to the ground, obscuring the vision, but giving flashes of movement that disappeared as soon as one looked at them.
“In other words,” Constantine said aloud as he examined the dark red door before him, “it should look properly spooky. This just looks like something out of an old film.”
No one answered him, which was right and proper, since the mortals couldn’t see or hear anyone who was in the spirit world, even though it occupied the same space as the mortal world. Unfortunately, that also meant that while Constantine could bear items into and out of the spirit world, he couldn’t use anything that had its origins in the mortal world, which meant the notes he’d taken regarding accessing Asmodeus’s palace could only be read if he summoned the energy to switch to a corporeal form.
“As if getting to Spain just to enter the blasted palace wasn’t enough of a drain of my corporeal energy,” he grumbled to himself, moving around the side of the sepia-stained stone walls of the building to what he judged was a relatively concealed position. “Now I have to use up precious energy just to read the notes.”
He stepped into the real world, an act that he always thought of as walking through a slightly translucent curtain, glancing around quickly to make sure no one saw him suddenly appear. Since he was in a small side yard containing trash bins and tall, spiky wrought-iron fence rails with nary a person in sight, he relaxed and pulled out the paper with his notes.
He strolled to the street and compared house numbers. “This is the right location, but it doesn’t look very ‘entrance to hell’ to me. Hmm.” He glanced up and down at the passersby, but none of them looked particularly demonic. “Well, I’ll just have to risk that I wrote down the correct number.”
Getting into the house via the spirit world was easy enough—he simply entered through a slightly ajar window at the back of the house. But once inside, he ceased to be in what was the spirit world version of reality and instead found himself in Abaddon, that hell-like place where demon lords ruled and sorrow abounded.
“What an uncomfortable place. I can’t imagine why anyone would wish to stay here,” he told himself as he wandered down a hallway, noticing that the angles in the Abaddon version of the spirit world were even more askew than in other locations. “Which is why I need to just find the damned talisman and get out as quickly as possible.”
He turned a corner and saw two people standing together, a man and a tall, whiplike, slender woman.
Demons. He froze, waiting to see if they had the ability to see him in the spirit world.
The one facing him glanced briefly in his direction, but gave him no more attention than if he’d been a whisper on the wind.
That didn’t stop Constantine from tiptoeing past them, a fact that made him angry with himself. He was a wyvern, dammit! He was a man who’d battled in countless wars, protected his beloved sept of silver dragons, and fought desperately to save those who were weaker. Wyverns did not tiptoe. And yet when it came to the point where he was brushing by the pair in the narrow hallway, he held his breath.
The demons didn’t stop talking. Constantine let out an inaudible sigh of relief and hurried past them down the hall, then turned into an open space that contained a cluster of doors, each bearing spiked metal bars. Clearly, this was the dungeon area, the last place he wanted to be.
He hurried past the first door, trying hard not to look at the occupant while at the same time deciding where Asmodeus was likely to have his private quarters. Upstairs, definitely upstairs.
Just as he passed the last door, there was a rush of air, and a woman appeared at the bars, yelling at the top of her lungs. “I demand to be released! You, you can tell your boss that he’s going to incur the wrath of not only the dragons, but the Charmer’s League, as well as the officials in the Otherworld. They don’t take the imprisonment of their members light—Hey.”
Constantine, who froze when the woman started shouting, turned slowly to look at her. She was gazing at him with a curious look on her face, part annoyance, part astonishment. She pointed at him. “Hey, you’re not a demon.”
With a glance up and down the hall (thankfully empty), he shifted out of the spirit world and into his corporeal form. “You could see me? How is this possible? No one can see me when I’m in that state. No one but another spirit, and you—” He studied her closely for a moment. “You are not a spirit. Did you say Charmer’s League?”
“That’s right, I’m a Charmer. You’re a ghost? What are you doing in Abaddon? You look like a dragon, but dragons don’t g
et resurrected.”
“They do if they are exceptional specimens,” he said smugly. “I am Constantine Norka, wyvern of the silver dragons.” He made a formal bow.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed into little slits of glittering blue. “Did Kostya send you after me? He did, didn’t he? I told him that I would be perfectly fine getting the talisman, but he kept insisting that he’d send someone else in to get it. Honestly, you dragons are the stubbornest beings I’ve ever encountered.”
Constantine eyed the woman, then pointedly looked at the bars.
“Pfft,” the woman said, waving a dismissive hand at them. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“I doubt that,” Constantine said with a wry little smile.
“You’re thinking that I was hasty in trying to get the talisman myself, rather than waiting for whoever Kostya came up with to do the job, but that’s unfair. It was just the merest coincidence that those stupid guards were upstairs when I came through the tear.”
“The tear in what?” he asked, wondering if there had been a less arduous way to enter the palace.
“Space, of course. I hired a demon to tear open space so I could sneak in and out without anyone noticing me. And it would have worked, too, if those guards hadn’t chosen that moment to walk into the room.” She sighed. “Oh well, it’s a moot point now. If you’re the man Kostya hired to help steal the talisman, then you can let me out and I can get it and be on my way.”
Constantine thought quickly while absently taking in her appearance. She wasn’t overly tall, but had dark red hair that seemed to move around her as if it had a life of its own. Her eyes were a clear, warm blue that reminded him of the Aegean Sea. She had freckles on skin the color of very milky coffee. He couldn’t make a judgment on her breasts, since the sweater she wore concealed them, but he was willing to bet she had a nice ass.
It was at that point he realized he was ogling her hips in an attempt to qualify that guess, and with an effort, snapped his gaze up to her face.
She was glaring at him. “Had a nice gander, did you? Need a little longer? Maybe you’d rather take pictures so you can look at them later?”
“Er… no. That’s not necessary.” He thought for a moment. “Unless you really wouldn’t mind, that is. Just a few informal shots would suffice.”
She grabbed the bars, yelped, and released them, but stood as close as she could, her nostrils flaring in a manner that he found wholly enticing.
Ysolde never flared her nostrils in just such a way. He froze at that thought, immediately filled with an odd sort of guilt. How could he even compare this woman, this Charmer of curses, with his beloved Ysolde?
“Look, I don’t know who you are—”
“I told you: I am Constantine Norka. It used to be Constantine of Norka, but I am now very much with the times. I have a mobile phone. I listen to podcasts. I twat.”
The woman’s eyes rounded in utter surprise. “You… what?”
“I write twats. Not often, and only Ysolde and her oldest son follow me, but I frequently use my mobile phone to post pictures. Ysolde always has nice things to say about them. What is your name? I keep thinking of you as ‘unnamed woman’ and it’s getting annoying.”
She stared at him a moment longer, then blinked, taking a deep breath before answering, “My name is Bee Dakar. And the word you were looking for, but horribly mangled, is twit. You post tweets on Twitter, not that other word, which in case you didn’t know, is sexually objectifying and demeaning. So don’t use it again.”
“Is it? No, you are incorrect. I’m sure it’s Twatter.”
“Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I have more than five hundred followers on Twitter.”
He pursed his lips a moment, then pulled out his mobile phone and touched a button. He held it up to the bars.
The woman named Bee looked. “I’ll be damned. Twatter.”
“I told you.”
“It’s clearly a rip-off of the original site. It’s probably run by some horrible virus guys who are infecting your computer every time you use it. Now, will you get me out of here, please?” She carefully grabbed a section of the bars that wasn’t spiked, and rattled it. “I’m not having a ball here, so I’d like to get the talisman and beat it before the next idiot guard runs into me.”
“I don’t think that would be wise,” Constantine said with regret. He was a bit startled to find that he genuinely felt regret at the idea of leaving Bee trapped in Abaddon, but he prided himself on being a thoughtful man, one considerate of the feelings of others, especially those who were weaker or more vulnerable. He informed Bee of this fact.
“What do you mean, you’re only thinking of what’s best for me?” She rattled the bars again, her eyes all but spitting little slivers of blue at him. “Okay, one, I didn’t ask you to protect me. Two, how is leaving me to rot in Abaddon going to benefit me? And while we’re on that subject, what’s this crap about me being weak and vulnerable? I’ll have you know that I’m a damned good Charmer, so good that people who know me don’t even try to slap a curse on someone because they know I’ll simply un-work it.”
“You are not immortal,” Constantine pointed out.
She all but bristled at him. “So?”
“I am. If I am caught by the guards who saw you the first time, I can simply slip into the spirit world and they will not be able to touch me. But if you are with me under the same circumstances, then you would be left alone to face their wrath.”
“We’re not going to be caught—” she started to say, but Constantine interrupted.
“I’m already dead. They can’t kill me again. They can’t even destroy my spirit—the most they can do is banish me to the Akasha and demon lords do not have that ability without some outside assistance. But you…” He shook his head. “I would not risk your life in such a manner. You are safer here, where you are not incurring the wrath of demons or their lord.”
“Are you freakin’ nuts? How on earth can you tell me that I’m safe when I’m trapped in a cell in freakin’ hell!”
“Abaddon is not hell,” he felt obliged to point out. “It is what mortals frequently think of as hell, but the two things are not the same—”
“Argh!” she screamed, shaking the bars more vigorously.
Constantine nervously glanced up and down the hallway. Much though he had enjoyed the interlude with the woman named Bee, he was using up far too much of his precious energy by standing there in a corporeal state. Not to mention risking discovery by the very same guards who found Bee.
“I can’t believe you’re being so pigheaded about this! Wait, you’re a dragon, I guess I can believe it.”
“Madam,” Constantine said formally, giving her a look down his nose. “I understand you are in a less than desirable situation, but there is no need to fling about insults.”
“If you don’t let me out of here, so help me goddess, I’ll make sure you are the saddest dragon who ever lived,” she threatened, breathing heavily.
“Once I have the talisman safely outside, then I will inform Kostya of your whereabouts. I’m sure he will send an armed group to free you, one that will be able to protect you against any retribution for your escape.”
“Who knows how long that will be!” Bee wailed. “I can’t wait around for you to round up a posse to rescue me! I don’t need a posse—I just need you to get this door open.”
“I’m sorry. It just wouldn’t be prudent.”
“Prudence be damned! If you’re going to send dragons to break me out later, you might as well do the job now and save everyone trouble.”
“I cannot protect you should we be caught,” he repeated. He felt sorry for her, and wished the situation were otherwise, but he was a man who protected those who were weaker, and he wasn’t about to put Bee in danger if he could help it. “A group of dragons who are well armed and able to keep you safe is a different matter. Cease trying to grab me, woman. I’m not going to allow you to drag me up against those s
pikes.”
“Gah!” Bee, who had indeed been trying to reach through the spiked bars to grab him, slapped her hands on the wall instead. “I don’t understand why you won’t listen to me! I swear to you that I won’t get caught again, so you don’t have to worry about what happens—no! God damn it, Constantine Norka! Don’t you fade away on me!”
Her voice took on that slightly muffled, distant sound that voices did when heard from the spirit world.
“Don’t you think I can’t see you, because I can! Oh! You’re smiling at me? You bastard! You rat bastard! How dare you leave me trapped in here.”
Her voice took on a strident quality that he felt was unbecoming, and gave the impression that she was a shrew. He strode quickly down the hallway, making a mental note to warn her about that at a future time.
“Constantine! Come back here, you coward! I’ll get you for this, see if I don’t! I’ll make you suffer like no one has made—”
Her threats were cut off when he slipped through a doorway, closing the door softly behind him. Idly, he wondered why she was able see him when no one else could, but decided that was a puzzle that would have to remain for another day.
It took about half an hour for him to locate Asmodeus’s private chambers. They were empty of all but a small birdcage hanging next to a magnificent canopied bed. Constantine hesitantly approached the cage, not seeing a bird in it. At the bottom was an oddly shaped lump, one that stirred a certain amount of dread in his belly. He wouldn’t put it past Asmodeus to have something hideous caged next to his bed, something vile and repulsive.
He stepped closer, and the lump rolled over. “Hi!” it said brightly.
Constantine stared in mingled horror and disbelief. The lump had turned out to be a head, a human head, a disembodied human head.
“How ya doin’? I’m Gary. It’s Gareth, really, although everyone calls me Gary, so I gave up trying to correct them. Demons!” The head laughed. “Awful with names, aren’t they? It’s like they just can’t keep them straight. I suggested mnemonics to try to remember my name, but you know how they are—testy, very testy. Don’t like to be corrected, either.”