Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Six
by Shanyah
 

A Man and his Mule

Thudding shook the ground and breathing a little hard, Xander watched the ground-level entrance to the pit. Dragon thudded in. Chain-mail over his impossibly brawny chest, leather leggings on his tree-trunk legs and a tennis ball where his head was should be. Such a small head for so much Dragon. The mouth took up most of the room on Dragon’s leathery face, he opened wide and Xander saw the reason why.

It wasn’t a mouth, it was a wide open flame-thrower.

“AAAAHHHH!” The spectators sighed as orange-red flames blasted from Dragon’s mouth.

"Lovely," Spike said, shedding his duster and pulling the gray-used-to-be-white tunic over his head. "Had to be a bloody big dragon too."

Xander blocked Spike’s path, thinking two words; self and preservation. "Nu-uh. No way," he said because Spike’s continued undeadness was important to him – within reason.

"Sit down. You’re making me look a pillock.”

He disregarded Spike’s ashamed tone and worked at sounding sensible. “You can take a man out of the democracy, but you can’t take the democracy out of a man. I know that deep, deep down in you democracy lives on so why don’t we get the group’s vote on this Bid, huh?”

"Vote? I’m not running for freakin’ Mayor. Get out of my way Harris, or I will punch some sense deep, deep into you."

Xander stayed put, didn’t see the fist coming.

He felt it though, aching deep in his jaw. Tottering back to his seat as Spike swaggered to the aisle, Xander wondered, not for the first time, about the competence of The Initiative’s hardware.

“And I thought my parents were embarrassing,” Dawn said to Fred.

*    *    *    *

Stupid boy, making him look pathetic like that. Got less than what was coming to him, the idiot. Deserved to be flat-out on the floor or fed to Dragon. Distracting him when he should be concentrating on the fight ahead, which he’d lose if he didn’t distract Dragon. The flames weren’t a problem, had a short reach, a shorter lifespan and were flaring well above his head height. The arms were another matter. Long enough to lift him into roasting distance, looked strong enough to crush him.

Dragon stomped and breathed fire. Spike dallied down the stairs, swinging Xander’s axe faster overhead the closer he got to the pit. From the corner of his eye he watched the spectators closest to the gangway, spotted an inattentive one.

Quick now, leaning left and lowering the axe after the next spin overhead, Spike tore open the spectator’s shoulder, stopping in his tracks as the Earner roared, clutching his arm to his side.

“So sorry. Nerves, stage fright,” Spike said, flitting a glance into the pit as the metallic scent of blood swept into his nose.

Dragon quit his stomping and tilted his head up at the fuss in the audience. Spike launched into the pit, his arm pulled back and his demon soaring. Buried the blade in Dragon’s throat, crashed into him a split second later. Went down with the Dragon, pulling the axe out. Blood splashed his face and neck, made his grip on the axe slippery. Dragon opened his mouth, a flame grilled the blood on Spike’s face. He laughed at the pain and gave Dragon back double. Hacked the blade into the open mouth, slit him from ear-to-ear. Did more than that, sliced the top half of his head away from the bottom half.

Soft hiss like air escaping a tire puncture; Dragon twitched, twitched, lay still.

"Tresten is impressed," Tresten said, slow-clapping.

Spike rolled off of Dragon, close to moaning when the burnt skin on his brow yelped as he unmorphed. “The bollocks is duly noted,” he rose to his knees and wiped the axe with a handful of sawdust.

“Now point the way to my deluxe digs,” he panted, far from the terror he used to be.

*    *     *     *

A rice paper screen was wheeled before Tresten. He tipped a goblet of wine to his lips, sipping as he waved at the figures sitting on floor cushions in front of him. The figures scattered, one to sit on the end table to the left side of his divan and the other two to kneel on the rug, right of the couch.

“May we have a consultation before the shadow dance begins, Mi Amo?” The left-hand Advisors asked.

Tresten revealed his teeth in something of a smile. "Although Tresten loves surprises, he would rather watch the screen at this moment. Groza will learn brevity for the surprise consultation."

Tall, skeletal and pale, Groza had bleached blue eyes and a fuzz of bone-white fur covering his scalp. Many Seventh Rankers had long concluded that The Seventh Ranking would be too happy a place without Groza and they went out of their way to massage Groza’s ego, a little something to evidence their appreciation of his dour presence on the Ranking.

Groza forced a smile and his teeth, small and crowded close together behind the scarce lips, glinted like a snowy row of corn on the cob.

"Tresten waits," Tresten said, sitting back on the silk draped divan.

"My fellow Advisors and I are troubled by the vampire-”

"There are many vampires in Tresten's Trail, which one does Groza refer to?"

"I refer to the deceitful upstart. I refer to the vampire who put Dragon to death this evening when he had no right to Bid," Groza smoothed his palms over his knees, ironing out the slight wrinkles in his white trousers.

Tresten idly glanced at the stroking hands. "Tresten thinks Groza needs to visit The Baths. Perhaps a tepid soak might restore his tranquility."

Groza fastened his indigo band tighter around his reed-thin wrist, "The vampire does not own those humans.”

Tresten turned to the portly entity on his right. “Does Sargo concur?”

Sargo had the demeanor of a mouse experiencing a self-esteem crisis and the fact that he was gray all over only reinforced this impression. He rapidly blinked bright brown eyes and lifted gray claws to his mouth; long and sharp, they were not a set of mouse claws.

"Yes," Sargo jumped at the boom of his own voice, “Yes,” he giggled nervously.

Sargo had gone from nonentity to Seventh Ranker in one night of Bidding, seeing off the Custodians of Rankings one to four with his vocals. They’d fled his bellow before venturing in to see his form waddle uncertainly in the arena. The valiant Custodians of Five to Seven had trooped in, exhausted their energy and weapons on Sargo’s curled up form and had been without flight energy when he uncurled, unsheathing the claws.

"Yes, yes?" Groza smirked. He had watched Sargo’s victory that night centuries ago and could smirk because he had achieved his ascent in a fraction of the time Sargo had taken. "Surely Sargo has more to contribute than ‘yes, yes’?"

Sargo clicked his claws, "the vampire wears the color and yet none of his people are scented. Even were we to overlook this, his boy is disobedient. Rebellion against one Earner is rebellion against all Indigo Wearers and permitting the boy to continue his defiance unchecked sets a dangerous precedent."

Tresten smiled and bowed his head at his third and final Advisor.

Ruby’s eyes were as indigo as her wrist band and the indigo veil that masked her hair and the lower half of her face. She nodded at the men and swept the veil aside.

A low whine filtered through the air as the fleshy strands sealing Ruby’s lips together writhed, stretching as the whine rose to a shriek. Gusts of wind extinguished the lamps, capsized a bookshelf and snapped the legs off the coffee table, breezy poltergeist throwing Tresten’s lair into disarray.

Scratching gently at the shoji screen while conversely rearranging Tresten’s pile of books with spiteful turbulence, the wind spoke.

“Sargo is right but wrong. The child is flesh, but not flesh and is scented by no-one. She is entrusted to the Vampire by she who died, but lives. The Vampire owns the child. The woman is not scented by the Vampire yet is gifted to him by his sire's sire. He owns the woman. The boy gives others his scent and is not entrusted or gifted to the Vampire. Amo Spike does not own the boy.”

"What say you about the Spike’s book?" Tresten asked.

The wind changed tone to a wail and Ruby's strands squirmed one upon the other, causing her lips to bleed, “Beware the book: ruin and devastation. Uphold the book: might and prosperity.” She snatched an edge of her veil with shaking fingers and re-fastened it.

The wind lifted the book from among the jumble, dropped it in Tresten’s lap and rifled the pages before moaning to silence.

The book was open on a painting of a black double door thrown open.

Groza glanced at the page and jerked into speech, “Would Amo like action taken on the vampire?”

"Master Spike fights well and entertains Tresten. You will give him time to manage his affairs," he closed the book and passed it to Sargo. “Tresten should like to watch the shadows.”

Brief rustling, strike of a match and light came on behind the screen, showing the shadow of a man and a mule. The animal pranced for a few steps then sat, refusing to take another step despite the man’s swearing. Eventually, the man let the mule clamber onto his back, his ranting dominated by the mule’s braying.

The whole of his considerable household heard Tresten’s guffaws for, “More.”

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER SEVEN

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