Chapter Six
Alexander Gray sat back in his limo, put his feet up on the leather couch and sipped Krug ’95 from a gold flask. It had been a wonderful night. The Knight of Flame destroyed, smashed against the surface of Tampa Bay and flushed out into the Gulf of Mexico like so much pulverized offal.
After his victory, Alexander rode his dragon down to the surface of the water in the hope of finding the mangled body, but nothing floated up. He dredged the bottom with tendrils of shadow to find proof of the Knight’s demise, but there was nothing. Not a head. Not a leg. Not even a little finger. He was simply gone. Vanished.
Alexander smiled and took another sip. Yes. It had been a very good night. He closed his eyes, swished the perfectly chilled champagne across his palette, and let it sparkle down his throat.
For the first time, he welcomed the scheduled call with his father, even considered initiating it early to share his news. It was not every day that a member of the renowned Knights Elementalis met their demise.
The Gray Lord will be pleased. He pictured his father’s gnarled and wrinkled visage split in an evil mockery of a smile, with the twinkle of affection aglow in those tomb-dark pupils.
Who am I kidding? Not even his own imagination could envision the all-powerful Bestok Molan uttering a word of praise for his third son, let alone allow something on his body to twinkle.
“Wake up, boy.” A high-pitched version of his father’s voice filled the cabin.
Ah. The grim image speaks. Alexander raised his flask and toasted the leering vision in his mind.
“To victory.” Alexander upended the container and drained the remaining liquid in two loud gulps. “To me.”
“Drunk, I see.”
Cold dread congealed in the pit of Alexander’s stomach. He blinked to clear his vision and stuffed the flask behind a cushion.
The Gray Lord’s avatar paced across a serving tray on the other side of the cabin. Ten emaciated inches of malice and ego wrung its swollen hands and glared. The glare was the same, but the nervous attitude was new. Something troubled his father and he hoped that his good news would be well received, maybe even rewarded.
Bestok Molan, evil incarnate in his Ken-doll frame, stopped dead in his tracks, ear cocked toward his son.
“No, Father, but I have been celebrating.” Alexander suppressed a grin at seeing the Gray Lord in this diminutive form with a helium-esque voice. “The Knight of Flame has been destroyed.” He led with his big news, but would keep the part about the club’s destruction to himself if possible. No point in announcing that minor loss to tarnish his glory.
“What did you say?” The figure scowled and stepped forward, claw-like hands grasped the air like a power-hungry squirrel snatching at acorns.
Alexander glanced away and covered the amused twitch at the corner of his mouth with a nonchalant wave of his hand lest the emotional lapse unman him.
The temperature in the limo’s cabin dropped. Condensation formed on the one-way windows.
“Do not push me.” The little Gray Lord spat.
The limo jumped a speed bump too fast. The rear axle bounced up and threw the Gray Lord into the air. He landed awkwardly, backside first, followed by the loud click of boot heels against a thin sheet of aluminum.
Alexander laughed, on the inside, at his father’s rise and subsequent fall and waited for the intense reaction.
Slow, ponderous movements marked the Gray Lord’s ascent. Back on his feet, he arched his back and grimaced at the pop and snap of ancient joints.
The laughter escaped, a rapid-fire chuckle that, once out, grew into an uncontrollable howl of glee as the rage darkened his father’s minute face. For the first time in his life, tears formed and blazed a trail down his cheeks. Amazed, he collected the flow on one finger and flicked it at the tiny gnome of evil in front of him.
Bestok Molan destroyed the tear before it got close.
A pang erupted behind Alexander’s left eye, a sharp needle that jabbed and twisted and chased away all sense of good humor. The enormity of his indiscretion settled in.
“You were saying.” Civility. A dangerous sign.
“I said the Knight of Flame has been destroyed.” Alexander gained control of himself.
“Where? When?” The Gray Lord’s avatar took two eager steps forward.
“Gothrodul and I defeated him last night after he came to the club.”
“Bah. You cling to that old dragon like a wet nurse. Do you have the body?” The Gray Lord scanned the car. “Let me see it.”
“No, Father. I did not recover the body.”
“Of course not, for that would have required thought.”
The last drop of champagne tasted like ash on the back of Alexander’s tongue as his triumph turned to manure within seconds. This thing dressing him down was an aspect of his father, a communication tool controlled by the Gray Lord. Its capacity was severely limited. If his father tried to manifest too much power through the link, the device would fail.
“We searched the water. There was nothing left.”
“There’s always something, a toe, an earlobe, something. But you have nothing.” The figure paced across the tray and clasped his hands behind his back. “Were you recognized?”
Alexander shrugged. “I was not wearing a name tag.”
“Curb that tongue, boy.”
Don’t call me boy.
“That I was the owner of the club was no secret. However, any who saw me there last night are dead.”
“What do you mean was the owner of the club?”
Alexander cursed his careless language. “The club was destroyed in the fight along with many of the patrons.”
“Another failure.” The Gray Lord raised his hand, fingers splayed wide, and muttered a word Alexander had never heard before. A gelatinous green mass the size of a baseball appeared and spun in the air before the Gray Lord, casting his hate-filled features in a shade of diseased verdigris. He pointed a bony finger at Alexander. The slime ball picked up speed. The hum of its rotation filled the cabin like a swarm of agitated bees.
Alexander held his ears, but the sound was everywhere—in his skin, in his bones, in his brain. It wormed beneath his palms and burrowed into his eardrums.
This was what he was waiting for, the punishment for his insolence. He collapsed on the soft bench next to him and clasped has head against the very real possibility that it would split open.
The green ball inched toward him.
Unable to look away, he watched its approach, certain that its touch delivered death. It reached the edge of the tray and the Gray Lord’s avatar looked on expectantly.
Alexander froze.
As soon as the ball spun out over open air, it and the Gray Lord winked out. Most of the pain vanished along with the Lord, except for the prick behind his eye. His father left him that as a reminder.
Like I could forget.
He slid across the bench seat and recovered his flask. After one whiff of that celebratory drink, he chucked the container against the front metal shield.
The intercom crackled. “Is everything alright sir?”
Absolutely not.
“Fine, Simmons, just fine. Take me to the office.”