Demon's Debacle, John Stormm [best summer reads of all time txt] 📗

than the dragons, thank you very much, Miss Ice Bitch.” He chuckled.

“She works in your factory.” Khu Lim pleaded, “Won’t you just look in on her to see if she’s alright?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt… but no promises,” Storm conceded.

“One promise only, and that is only if you agree to do this,” said the demoness, hiding her delight. “You can’t use your magick to charm her. You can only protect her because you honestly care to. Her curse is a deep one, and not lightly charmed away.”

“I’ll take it into consideration, as you say,” Storm replied. “Show me this woman that I might recognise her later.”

Khu Lim vanished and the wizard fell into a sound sleep. In his dreams he saw a tiny Asian woman with a pretty face smiling sweetly at him. As she moved closer, she reached up and put her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. He could feel her warm breath on his neck as she whispered something in his ear and kissed him. Long forgotten memories relentlessly whipped at his heart as he put his arms around her and they burst into flame but neither of them were consumed or hurt. He awoke with a start, his heart pounding like a hammer in his chest and the sweat of panic on his brow. He was troubled by the dream. Every night for a solid month he would have the same dream, in exactly the same way.

* * *

Khu Lim kept tabs on the wizard, Storm from a discreet distance. Yin would be returning from her grandfather’s funeral in Viet Nam and she wanted to be certain that Yin and the warrior wizard hit it off. She would leave nothing to chance. As Yin had no knowledge of asking for any personal favors and Storm didn’t know her name, she felt certain that she could not be held responsible for any action against the rightful claim of the Kuei.

* * *

     Yin and her elder brother arrived at the pack center on Monday morning. Both were assigned as QC’s, quality control auditors. They moved from assembly line to line, taking random samples of the work and inspecting for flaws or errors in packaging. The camera and film merchandisers were the chief product here.

When Yin had taken time off to return to Viet Nam on family matters, Storm was only a light industrial worker with T.E.M.P. Services. Now he was a very competitive line leader on the management core staff. He always wore plain, unbroken black. Never any Harley slogans or brand names visible. He wore it like it was a uniform he would not be caught out of and looked to be in his late thirties. If not for the white streaks in his ash blond hair, Yin would have figured him younger still. As it was, she miscalculated by about twenty years. She just couldn’t figure Caucasian men. She had to strain her neck, just to look up at him. He was friendly enough though. Most of the line leaders would get defensive about their work being critiqued, but Storm had no such compunctions. If his team had a problem, he seemed happy to see it fixed in short order. Yin found this refreshing. With only a few notable exceptions, everyone seemed to like the new guy. It was said that he had “the Samson thing goin’ on.”

* * *

     Martin Gorge was as corpulent as he was greedy. Nearly as wide as he was tall, he was morbidly obese. As a member of Snapix Corps planning committee he had power of making-a-living-or-not over these temporary laborers. People were quick to greet him when he walked by and just as quick to snicker behind their hands when he was out of range. If you played “yes man” to him, you were sure to be picked to work on his next project. He liked this arrangement.

Tito and Tiny were his greatest fans. They would laugh at all of his jokes and point out the sexiest babes in the plant when he was around. Martin liked the sexy babes, especially the young ones with the tight tummies. They were feasting their eyes on little Yin, who was bending over a pallet of disposable cameras when the Kuei found him.

* * *

     Khu Lim watched from her hiding place as the Kuei took possession of Martin Gorge to suit its purpose of blood debt. To be corporeal with all it’s inherent senses and the fat man’s excessive appetites greatly appealed to the wraithlike Kuei. For a single moment of disorientation, Martin fell forward and struck his chin on the table before him. Tiny and Tito quickly attempted to help but Martin sprang up and angrily batted the table out of his way. Khu Lim smiled that the Kuei’s first experience as a man was to feel pain and embarassment. Tiny and Tito looked at each other, their mouths forming “wow.”

     Yin looked over her shoulder at Martin rubbing his chin and eyeing her hungrily. Across the room, Storm paused a moment to test the air, as if something in the vicinity had changed. Steel gray eyes scanned the room and caught the look Martin was giving Yin.

“The game is on,” Storm said quietly, figuring Khu Lim would hear from her hiding place. “It’s big. She’s small and I’m not going to let it happen.”

He had taken a liking to Yin. She could hardly wait to see what this witch warrior might do next.

* * *

     Yin systematically made her way to Storm’s line. She was feeling very small and vulnerable and some instinct was telling her that Storm was just the man she would actually want to meet in a dark alley. He wasn’t likely to do her any harm and not about to allow anyone else to do so either. Many of the other women on his line had commented that he seemed a bit slow on the uptake and more than one query had arisen as to his sexual orientation. He would laugh at the ribald jokes and even share one or two of his own but he never came on to anyone. He had been out on Friday nights with the core staff but never drank more than one or two beers and was never seen with anyone at his arm. He said he was “happily divorced.” But what did that mean? Yin’s need for protection and curiosity about an unknown factor drove her to the “biker-who-was-not.”

“Is everything okay?” Storm asked, observing her discomfort.

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Those guys over by the bander give me the creeps.”

“Me too,” he said quietly.

A flash unit must have went off in the room. For the briefest moment Yin was sure she saw its reflection in his stormy gray eyes as he watched the men in question.

“You can see the whole room from up there, huh?” she joked, while craning her neck to look up at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said laughing. “If I feel any rain, I’ll let you know before you can get wet.”

She playfully punched him in the stomach and massaged her fist.

“Ow! What you got in there?” she asked.

“Just lunch,” he smiled. “It’s a high fiber diet.”

“You eat a tree or something?” she joked, shaking out her fingers.

* * *

     Khu Lim follwed the wizard home that night. Being the proverbial fly-on-the-wall, or in her case, a moth hiding on the haft of a dragon spear in Storm’s living room, she watched the wizard at work. To the human eye it would appear as though the wizard was relaxing in the darkened room. A single candle was lit, some gentle music played on the CD unit and the wizard sat alone in the dark staring calmly into a small quartz crystal sphere on his coffee table. The demoness knew the wizard was tapping his own ether for information to make his war. This was a good sign that he was taking the Kuei seriously. The gazing went on for the better part of an hour before a tall dark haired woman let herself in the formerly locked door. He has another woman?

“Hi Daddums!” the woman said cheerily. “I come over to see you.”

“I’m glad you did, Mel.” The wizard rose to meet her. “Your old Dad needs someone to talk to. I have some heavy concerns on my plate and I don’t think anyone else would be qualified to advise me on such matters.” So she is his daughter, Khu Lim concluded.

“There’s a woman about half my age,” he started, “and a demoness who wants her protected. I don’t trust the demoness. I wouldn’t even trust the woman but I don’t think anyone else could help her quite like I can.”

“Would you know her birthdate?” Mel asked.

“I knew you’d ask.” He smiled. “The staff members’ birthdays are posted in the shift supervisor’s cubicle. It’s June fourteenth. Her brother mentioned that she was a snake woman. That would make her about twenty four years younger than myself. What bothers me is that in Asian astrology, women born in the snake and pig years are invaluable. Many Asians wouldn’t think twice about aborting a girl child, but a snake woman is an exception. This woman’s curse smacks of a sacrifice. The creature hunting her is around even now. I feel it wants a bloody sacrifice and not just a plague of bad luck or something like that.”

“You love her, Daddums?” Mel asked, noting her father’s discomfort. “Never mind, I see the answer for myself. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t care enough to take this risk for her. She’s a Gemini and if you’re wondering, there’s something witchy about her but she’s not for you.”

“I would have thought I was not prone to the doddering charm of chasing women who are half my age,” he said bitterly.

“No, Daddums, that’s not it.” Mel continued, “It’s the Merlin Formula I’ve been researching all these years.”

“Ah, your fascination with all things ‘Merlin’,” her father said. “I promise, Mel, I’m just plain, old Storm. I’m not Merlin.”

“That’s not what I mean. We are fae creatures,” Mel insisted, “You know that. Humans follow stereotypes but faery creatures follow ‘archetypes’. That’s why we tend to come off as bigger-than-life. It’s in our nature, just as in a full blooded human’s nature, a stereotype may factor in their behavior, in ours, an archetype will influence our actions and reactions. Throughout history, there has always been a Merlin archetype. A half human wizard with an Otherwordly father. In this day and age, you are that archetype, and you will, without thinking, follow the appropriate behavior down to the last jot and tittle because fae creatures can’t balance their eccentricities against their humanity, simply because they don’t possess any. You can’t expect an air elemental to respond emotionally to anything, it’s a water trait and they have only the one set of traits. Likewise, a fire spirit will never exercise restraint, it is not in their nature. You will always behave as Merlin and do Merlin kinds of deeds because it is in your nature. Therefore, the Merlin Formula should be figured in anything you do simply because you are that archetype.”

“So, you are saying that Yin might be my Morgana Le Fay?” her father queried.

“Nope, that would be me,” she quipped. “After all, I’m fae like my Daddums. I think Yin could be your Vivian, if you allowed her to be. You will find yourself trapped behind walls of air, of your own making if you let the equation work itself out that way. You won’t have a love like other mortals enjoy but they will never know the kind of love you know either. It’s a magickal balance. A Gemini would be quick to love you and then, without hating you, leave you bound