Asmodeus, whose eyes were as black as what remained of his soul, glanced briefly at him. Constantine felt the look as a whip of pain through his being. “Former wyvern, surely.”
Constantine inclined his head. “Unfortunately, that is so. I have yet to convince the current wyvern to return the position to me. I would like to take this opportunity to object to the bête noire that your minion has placed upon me. As you pointed out, I am a spirit, and as such, I do not have a part of the war between you and the dragonkin.”
Bee stopped staring at the head in order to look in frank astonishment at him. He couldn’t warn her against speaking, but trusted she had enough wits about her to keep from letting Asmodeus know he was bluffing.
Asmodeus’s eyes closed halfway. Power crackled around him in tiny little black whips that occasionally reached out and snapped painfully against Constantine. “You presume much, spirit. You will return to me what you stole from my chamber.”
Annoyed, Constantine looked at Gary.
The head made a little apologetic bobble. “Sorry, Connie.”
“My name is Constantine.”
“My lord!” A demon burst into the room began bowing and groveling. “My lord, there is word of your rival—Oh. Er. I have news of which you would be interested.”
Asmodeus sighed, and set down the head before striding over to the demon. The two spoke together in low tones.
Gary gave Constantine an apologetic moue. “The thing about the finger just kind of slipped out. I mean, I wasn’t going to tell Asmodeus why you were there, but we got to chatting, and you know how it is—one thing led to another and I happened to mention you were at the chest, and… well, I am sorry, truly I am. I hope this won’t affect our friendship.”
“There is no friendship,” Constantine said acidly.
Gary looked horrorstruck. His mouth hung open slightly until his lower lip began to quiver. To Constantine’s surprise, tears filled the knocker’s eyes. What was worse (Constantine hated tears from any anyone—man, woman, or disembodied head) Bee seemed to have a sudden change of character, for instead of gawking at the head as she had been ever since she clapped eyes on it, she rounded on him.
“Well, now look at what you’ve done, you great big ghostly baboon! You’ve made Gary cry.”
“It’s all right,” Gary said nobly, his voice thick as he turned away. “I deserve his scorn. What sort of a friend grasses on his buddy? A horrible sort, that’s what. I am not worthy of his friendship.”
Bee punched Constantine in the arm, gesturing at the head, who was now quietly sobbing against the bars of the cage. “Well?”
“What is it you want, woman?” he asked irritably. He was watching the demon and Asmodeus closely, trying to lip-read the former, although he’d never really mastered the skill.
“Apologize to him!”
“To Asmodeus?” Constantine shook his head. “It will serve no purpose. It has all come to pass as I feared, and all because I stopped to save your life. It is your fault we are in this situation.”
“My fault? I like that! You’re the one who said you could disappear where no one could get you. Well, I don’t see you doing it.”
“Because you’re here,” he snapped. “If you hadn’t allowed yourself to be captured in the first place—”
“I was trying to do my job and help you dragons, not that you deserve it—”
“I am a spirit. Your foolish trip here could not help my cause at all.”
Bee took a deep breath and whomped him on the chest. “Stop being pedantic and apologize to Gary.”
“For what?” He didn’t look at the head. Ever since he had been a small boy child, he had been overly affected by tears.
“For hurting his feelings. I’m sure he didn’t mean to tell Asmodeus what you did.”
“No, I didn’t. I truly didn’t!” Gary wailed from where he sat on the floor. “The last thing I wanted was to endanger our friendship.”
“Five minutes’ acquaintance does not make a friendship,” Constantine tried to point out, but he knew in his heart that it was useless. Bee had clearly taken Gary’s side and would no longer see reason.
“Not if you’re a pigheaded asshat, no,” Bee said, glaring.
For some insane reason, Constantine wanted to laugh. He wondered at that fact, since it had been a long time since anyone but Ysolde had had the power to tickle his sense of humor, and yet, the irate woman next to him had done just that.
It wouldn’t do to let her see that, though. “Wyverns do not apologize,” he said stiffly, and turned his back on the still sobbing Gary.
Behind him, he heard the soft murmurings of a woman who was attempting to soothe the hurt feelings of a disembodied head. That lasted for half a minute before Asmodeus snarled something to his minion that had the demon prostrate on the floor, begging for mercy.
Asmodeus stalked away from him, heading straight to Constantine. He held out his hand. “Return to me what you have taken.”
Constantine hesitated.
“If you were thinking of escaping into the spirit world,” Asmodeus said in a deceptively mild voice, “you should dismiss the thought. The bête noire placed on you has the effect of limiting you to a corporeal form only. Permanently. There will be no escape for you.”
Constantine frowned and, without looking at Bee, tried to step into the spirit world.
Nothing happened. The leaden weights he’d felt cast upon him kept his form as solid as any living being.
In a rush of irony considering how long Constantine had railed against being a slave to the energy needed to maintain a physical form, he wished he was back to the way he had been before the demons had found him. There was something peaceful about lounging around the spirit world rebuilding his energy.
Asmodeus’s hand did not waver, but his voice sharpened. “Return the object now.”
Slowly, wondering just how much Gary had told the demon lord, he reached into the inner pocket of his shirt and deftly manipulated the small box, sliding the desiccated finger from it. He dropped the finger onto Asmodeus’s outstretched hand.
Asmodeus looked at the finger, and lazily considered Constantine and Bee. “You risked much to seek a strange object, one that apparently has no importance to anyone but me.”
“We’re quirky that way,” Bee said, and once again, Constantine had to fight the urge to smile.
“One would almost think that it was the type of object that held meaning to you, rather than the object itself,” Asmodeus continued, his eyelids dropping until he was once again watching Constantine through half-closed eyes. The tendrils of power snapped and danced around him, leaving the air charged with static.
Asmodeus’s presence seemed to leach the heat not only from the room, but from Constantine himself.
There was a rustle of movement behind him, and a hand suddenly slid into his, cold fingers making him start. Constantine kept his face from expressing surprise that Bee would be driven by fear into taking comfort from physical contact with him. The last thing he wanted Asmodeus focusing on was her. He shifted slightly to the side, so as to better block the demon lord’s view of her. “You may think what you wish, naturally, but I will repeat that I have no parcel in your war with the dragons. Your desire to parlay with me will be of no use.”
“Parlay,” Asmodeus said softly, and gave a little smile.
Constantine braced himself against the effect of the smile.
“An odd choice of word and one that is meaningless here. What does have meaning is a former dragon seeking an object of a personal nature to me, and the presence of a Charmer who was caught sneaking around, presumably on a task of a similar nature.”
Bee’s fingers tightened around his. He squeezed hers in a silent warning against speaking. He wanted all of Asmodeus’s attention on himself. “The Charmer is mortal. She does not know the ways of the Otherworld.”
Bee gave a little gasp, but thankfully, kept silent.
“That much is obvious,”
Asmodeus agreed. His gaze flickered over Constantine. “Just as it’s clear to me that dragons would not seek such an object unless there was a need for it. For instance, in the use of the breaking of a curse.”
“Oooh,” Gary said, clearly over his crying fit. “Is that what you were—”
Asmodeus shot a look at the head, who promptly swallowed what he was going to say.
“Perhaps,” Constantine said with studied nonchalance. If he could have pulled off the act of buffing his fingernails as he had with Baltic, he would have, but he knew there was no way he could face down Asmodeus in the same manner. Instead, he rallied the arrogance natural to all wyverns, and wrapped it around himself. “If that is the case, there will be others seeking the same.”
To his amazement, Asmodeus smiled a second time. It was just as painful as the first. “And they would be just as unsuccessful as you find yourself, spirit.”
Constantine was formulating a suitably vague threat as a response when Asmodeus snapped his fingers, and two wrath demons, part of the elite group that headed up all of the minor demons, burst into being, and stood attentively beside him.
“Shackle them,” he said, gesturing toward Constantine and Bee. “I do not have time to get the information I need from them until I deal with this latest situation.”
“I do not think—” Constantine started to say, but the breath was knocked out of him when the two wrath demons lunged forward, a long length of chain suddenly manifesting itself in one of their hands. He thought briefly of attacking them, grabbing Bee, and making a dash for the door that led to the mortal world, but Asmodeus, who now stood at the door watching, quelled that idea.
And so it was that two minutes later he found himself attached to Bee by means of a leg shackle, being walked (slowly, due to the chains) down a flight of stairs to Asmodeus’s dungeon.
“I am so not happy about this,” Bee muttered to him, kicking her foot so the black metal chain rattled ominously.
“Well, I think it’s a good look for you both,” said Gary, happily beaming at them from the cage that Bee still held. “You are a very nice looking couple to begin with—wait, dragons have something different than a girlfriend, don’t they. It’s a… it’s a… mate, that’s it! So you’re Connie’s mate? How long have you been together?”
“About three minutes,” Bee said, looking at her watch.
“She is not my mate. She is mortal. And a Charmer. Neither of which are qualities I seek in a mate, even if I was seeking one, and I’m not, because I had one and she opted to tear out my heart and stomp on it while rushing to the arms of another.”
“And then there’s the fact that you’re a dead dragon,” Bee said with annoying candor. “I mean, yes, I’m not getting any younger, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind having a steady relationship with a man who wasn’t so self-centered that he couldn’t see beyond the end of his nose, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to consider that sort of a relationship with a dragon. Especially not a spirit one. That’s just… weird.”
Constantine looked at her with dislike, marveling to himself that one woman could stir so many emotions. “I’m sorry that my presence disgusts you.”
“Aww,” Gary said, giving Constantine a sympathetic look. “I don’t think that’s very nice of you, Bee. Connie is very handsome in a rugged, dangerous sort of way. Sure, he’s a spirit, but he’s a very corporeal spirit. It’s almost like he’s not a spirit at all, really. I’d certainly be happy to be his mate.” A wistful expression drifted over his face. “I don’t suppose you’d consider a male mate?”
“I’d consider it,” Constantine said, noting that they were now on the floor that contained the door that led out of the palace. Their guards turned them in the opposite direction, however. “But I am not seeking a mate. As I said, my heart has been broken by the glorious Ysolde, and it will never recover. For the love of the saints, woman, will you stop kicking your feet around?” He stopped with an aggravated and exaggerated tsk.
“What?” The look Bee shot him was confused. “I’m not kicking you.”
He turned to face her, grabbing her by the upper arms, and gently shaking her. “I’ve taken all the abuse from you that I will tolerate!” he said loudly, before adding in a much softer voice, “When I disable the guards, be prepared to turn and run.”
“Oooh! Are you breaking out?” Gary asked excitedly, then immediately looked contrite.
Constantine allowed himself a second to sigh, then snatched the birdcage out of Bee’s hand, and swinging it wide, slammed it upside the head of the first wrath demon.
“Whee!” shouted Gary.
The demon, caught off guard, windmilled into the second one, whom Constantine nailed on the side of the face with a backswing.
Gary, hooting triumphantly as he rolled around the cage, clamped his teeth down on the guard’s ear, and yelled mostly unintelligibly, “You guyth run! I’ll handle theeth two.”
“Don’t leave Gary—they’ll torture him!” Bee shrieked when Constantine slammed the cage a second time into the first guard. The demon howled and clutched his head. Evidently Gary hadn’t let go of his ear when Constantine swung the cage a third time.
It wasn’t easy to try to match his stride with Bee’s as the pair of them ran shackled together down the hallway, the screeches of the downed demons following after them, and in the end Constantine shoved Gary’s cage at Bee, and hoisted her over his hip, the position an awkward one, but allowing him to run with relative ease.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Bee yelled, her voice thick and breathless, no doubt due to being bumped around on his shoulder. “Mother of pearl, I can’t breathe! Let me down!”
“Mmfrrmph!” Gary mumbled from behind Constantine, and made a wet, unpleasant noise that sounded suspiciously like someone spitting out the ear of a particularly unlucky demon. “They’re up! They’re coming after us! Run, Connie, run!”
“My name”—Constantine gritted his teeth against the pain of Gary’s cage whacking against his legs with every stride—“is Constantine.”
“I’m seeing spots,” Bee gasped, her voice somewhat strangled. “Everything is going black. I need air!”
“They’re about ten yards and closing,” Gary yelled.
Constantine made a heroic effort, and leaped forward to the door that led outside the palace, almost ripping it off the hinges in his desperation to get out of Abaddon.
The late afternoon sun of Seville blinded him momentarily, but he had enough sense to keep moving forward even though he couldn’t see.
Which is why he stumbled over a trash can, and sent himself, Bee, and Gary crashing forward into a black wrought-iron fence.
Four
“Ow,” came a pathetic moan from the birdcage. “I think I chipped a tooth. Wow, was that exciting! I was all ‘oh noes, we’re gonna die’ and then whammo! Connie sprang into action and was super dragon dude! That was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me, and that includes having the behemoth eat my body!”
Constantine, dazed for a moment when he hit his head on the grill, got groggily to his feet, prepared to fight off the demons if they had followed them out to the mortal world. He glared down at the shackles that still bound him to Bee, wondering idly how he was to protect her if he couldn’t order her away.
“Bloody hell,” Bee moaned from where she sprawled on top of a trash can, her legs hanging from the side. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, and promptly rolled off the can and onto Gary’s cage, jerking Constantine’s leg as she fell. “Bloody buggery hell.”
“Oh dear, fashion malfunction,” Gary said, rolling over onto the back of his head to stare up into where Bee’s chest was pressed against the cage. “A couple of buttons are undone, dear, and evidently you’ve… popped out, for lack of a better phrase… of your unmentionables. Which are a lovely shade of mauve, I do have to say. Aren’t they nice, Connie? The lingerie, not the parts that are popped out of it, because really, once you??
?ve seen one breast, you’ve seen them all.”
Constantine, being a male, and having natural instincts and urges common to those of his gender, couldn’t help looking, but he realized almost instantly that congratulating Bee on her nice breast wouldn’t be appreciated, and instead pretended not to watch when she swore and wrestled herself into what was admittedly a very feminine bra. “I don’t think we’re likely to be set upon by the demons who confined us, but we should move from this spot.”
“Because they can’t enter the mortal world, you mean?” Bee asked, taking his hand when he offered it. He helped her up, and plucked off bits of banana skin and leaves of lettuce from where they clung to her back. “I know some demons can, but don’t you usually have to summon them?”
“Wrath demons are different,” Constantine answered. He frowned down at where Gary had righted himself in his cage, and was looking around with interest. “We should put him back, but I hesitate to open the door again.”
“I don’t want to go back!” Gary protested. “Asmodeus will just stuff me back in his bedroom, and that’s no fun. He hardly ever talks to me, and he doesn’t even like to watch movies together. Can’t I stay with you guys?”
“We are shackled together, have a demon lord and who knows how many demons after us, and have to get from Seville to Paris without being captured again,” Constantine said, putting the birdcage on top of a garbage can. “We have no need of a disembodied head to add to our concerns.”
“You can’t just throw him away,” Bee said, standing still when Constantine tried to walk away.
Gary’s lower lip trembled again.
“Why not?” Constantine asked, averting his eyes.
“Because he’s a person, not a piece of trash you can just dispose of because it’s not convenient to carry him around.”
“I don’t want to be a burden,” Gary said with a moist sniff. “I don’t want to stay if I’m not wanted.”
Bee nudged Constantine with her foot. “Tell him he’s wanted.”
Constantine considered her for a moment. “You can’t expect me to believe that you’ve formed a bond with a disembodied head after seeing it for a just a few minutes.”