Dragon Storm
Page 6

“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.”
“Er…” Constantine cleared his throat. Although he wouldn’t put it past Asmodeus to keep the head of his latest victim as some sort of a grisly prize, he hadn’t expected it would be so… chipper. And friendly. Not to mention animated. “Hello. Are you… forgive me, but I was not expecting to find anyone in here. Is there just your… head? Nothing more?”
“Nopers, just a head. Used to have a body, but one day I was sitting by a creek doing a little fishing, and suddenly my pole jerked. I thought I must have caught a whopper of a catfish, and was playing him out when whoosh! Up rose a leviathan that chomped me right in two. Talk about inconvenient!”
“I can imagine so.” Constantine glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. It had to be the head talking to him, not to mention the fact that it was looking at him with bright gray eyes, and a smile on its lips. “Most people die when they are consumed in such a manner.”
“I know, right? Luckily, I’m not mortal. I’m a knocker, see?” The head rolled over to the side of the cage and rapped its forehead against it a couple of times.
“Do you mean like a door knocker?”
“No, no, knockers are best known as being spirits that live in mines, and warn the miners when a collapse is imminent. We knock on the walls to warn them. Knockers. Get it?”
“Ah, just so.”
“Nowadays,” Gary continued sociably, “we tend to watch over industrial outfits, and let the locals know when their safety is being compromised. Most of us work in some form of environmental regulatory agencies, you see. So when a local power plant is about to explode, or a dam burst, or fracking is creating sinkholes, we warn people about the damage before it happens. Of course, most of the mortals don’t pay us any attention, but eh.” Constantine imagined that if the head could shrug, he would do so now. “We do what we can.”
“I can’t imagine why a demon lord would be interested in that unless he was causing the damage.”
“Well, that’s an interesting story on its own. When the leviathan started gobbling me down, I knew I’d be okay so long as there was one part of me it didn’t get. And luckily, he was the precursor to a horde of demons coming out of a portal at the bottom of the creek. One of them picked up me up as a tribute to his master, and that’s all she wrote.” Gary leaned back against the bars, a contemplative look on his face. “It’s not a bad life, really. Asmodeus is a big ole grumpy-pants, but he mostly leaves me alone. I get fed—although Asmodeus doesn’t understand why I need feeding since I don’t have a body, but a head can’t survive on nothing, you know—and there are plenty of demons to talk to. They tend to be a bit shouty and a bunch of Negative Nellies, but there you go. It’s Abaddon, after all. So who are you? You’re not a demon, are you?”
“I am a dragon,” Constantine said, squaring his shoulders. “I am Constantine, wyvern of the silver dragons.”
“Coolio! I’ve never seen a dragon before. Although the way you kind of shimmered into being gave me the impression you were some other sort of being. You know, like poltergeist, or one of those creepy Japanese ghosts with black eyes and long, streaming hair that suddenly appear out of nowhere.” Gary blinked for a moment, then did a little head bobble. “Oh, wait, that’s from a movie, isn’t it? Sometimes I get creepy beings mixed up. What’s a dragon doing in Abaddon?”
“Looking for something.” Deciding that the head posed no immediate threat to either him or his mission, Constantine turned to scan the room. The likeliest offering was a large onyx bowl sitting on top of a narrow bookcase that was inexplicably filled with bones.
“Oooh, is it a scavenger hunt? I love scavenger hunts! We used to have the best ones at the Knockers Local Forty-two annual parties. We’d have to go hunting for days for this item and that, really obscure stuff, you know? Graphite moderators, and core cooling pumps, and oh yes, there was that time in the Ukraine where we had a party that lasted a week, a whole week. My team was close to winning the scavenger hunt—all I needed was a separator drum—and wouldn’t you know it, the whole thing exploded.” Gary gave a little shake of his head. “That was one hell of a party until it got out of hand. What items are you supposed to find?”