Demons Don’t Dream (41 page)

"Curses," someone muttered. "Foiled again."

The three of them passed a glance around. None of them had spoken.

There was a swirl of air, like a small whirlwind. It became smoky, then solid, taking the shape of a well-proportioned woman, scantily clad.

"Metria!" Jenny exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

Dug remembered that there had been a lady demon among the choices available for Companion. This would be her.

“Two things," the demoness said. "I'm investigating your chaos."

"My what?" Dug asked.

"Confusion, disorder, misapprehension, ferment, jumble litter—"

"Foul-up?” Dug asked.

"Whatever," she agreed crossly. "What are you doing with the wrong Companion?"

"We traded," Dug said. "I decided that Jenny Elf was better for me than Nada Naga."

"But the challenges were pitched for Nada!"

Dug wondered whether that was good or bad. "You mean that she could have helped me through better—or that she couldn't?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just that Grossclout had it figured one way, and you were playing it another. Using the cat to find your way through. Zilch only knows how the other player's been doing with the serpent woman."

"So is there a rule against it?" Dug asked.

"Not exactly. Nobody thought anybody'd be fool enough to pull a stunt like that."

"So what's the problem?"

The demoness fidgeted. "It's just not steak."

"Not what?"

"Encounter, converge, intersect, unite, connect, join—“

"Meet?" Dug could handle puns when he had to.

"Whatever. It's just not meet to change things around like that. Now I have to recomplicate things."

"You mean I'm doing okay, so you're going to mess me up?" Dug was bemused. He wasn't even trying for the prize. He just wanted to undo the mischief he had inadvertently caused.

"Approximately," the demoness agreed.

"Wait half a moment," Jenny said. "Metria, did Professor Grossclout tell you specifically to interfere with Dug's progress?"

"What's it to you, waif?"

"I'm Dug's Companion. It's my job to steer him past unnecessary confusions and complications, so that he won't think he's in some other game where that sort of thing is supposed to be standard. You strike me as exactly that kind of mischief. What exactly did Grossclout say to you?"

The demoness fidgeted. "He said to investigate, and use my judgment."

"He meant to judge whether Dug was in some unwarranted trouble, because of the mixup," Jenny said. "He's not, so all you have to do is go back and report that all is swell."

"All what?"

"Bulge, grow, increase, billow, bloat, inflate—"

"Hey!" Dug protested.

"I mean surfs, seas, waters—"

"Wells?" Metria offered.

"Yes. Only the other way around: swell."

"Oh, you mean that everything is satisfactory."

"That's what I mean," Jenny said evenly. "In your own imitable fashion. So you can now buzz off and tell him that. No more turning his guilt literal, or whatever else your demonly fancy conceives. He is not for you to play with, Metria."

Dug saw that Jenny was trying to do her job. Obviously the demoness would only interfere with whatever he was trying to accomplish. He liked the elf's attitude.

Metria pondered. She glanced at Dug, then at Sherlock. Her garment flashed translucent, not quite showing her panties. Assuming she was wearing any. "But these are such interesting men. I think I'll stay and investigate some more."

"But you have to go back and report to Grossclout," Jenny reminded her.

"I have to use my judgment. My judgment is that I should hang around a bit more." For an instant she assumed the form of a woman being suspended by the neck until dead.

"But you aren't supposed to interfere with my legitimate Companioning."

"But Nada Naga's supposed to be his Companion," Metria pointed out. "You're not his legitimate Companion. You're Kim's."

Jenny turned to Dug. "This is likely to be trouble," she said. "Fortunately her attention span is not great. If you ignore her, she'll go away after a while."

Metria smiled. "Yes, ignore me, Dug Mundane." She stepped into him, her clothing disappearing.

Dug expected her to be smoky, but she was completely solid. He realized belatedly that she was not half demon, the way Threnody was, but full demon. She could change instantly.

Metria squeezed against him. Not only was she nude, she was voluptuous. She reached up and drew his head down for a kiss. "You should have chosen me to be your Companion," she murmured. "I could have made your life deliriously exciting."

He realized that it was true. He had taken one look at beautiful Nada and chosen her, but now he saw that the demoness could make herself just as shapely, and she had no princessly attitude to counter it. He probably should have chosen her. He might not have gotten far in the game, but he would have enjoyed the distraction. He was now appreciating first-hand (first-mouth) what Sherlock had when he had gotten kissed by a demoness.

"Still could," she added, sliding her bare front across his clothed front as she inhaled. He realized that it was no bluff. Innocent was not a term anyone would ever apply to this creature.

However, at the moment he had a different mission. He had to catch up to Kim and warn her about her False Companion. So he steeled himself to ward off the demoness' allure. "Forget it," he said. "Maybe some other time, you infernal creature."

Right away he realized that he had blundered. Metria's mouth curled into a frown, and then on into a fanged, tusked muzzle. It snapped at his nose, but was insubstantial as it closed. Dug was startled but unhurt.

Then the demoness faded into air. "I'll be back," her words came.

"Oh, mice!" Jenny swore. "I told you to ignore her, not to insult her. Now she'll be seriously mischievous."

"She was getting hard to ignore," Dug said defensively.

"All she was doing was getting in your way."

"She was hard to ignore," Sherlock said. "A child wouldn't understand."

Jenny shrugged, obviously not understanding what appeal there could be in a lusciously shaped bare demoness who wasn't wearing panties. Dug was glad for Sherlock's support.

They set off south. But soon they encountered a huge gray donkey. "Well, now," the creature said. "Are you the three folk the demoness said are looking for trouble?"

Already the mischief of a demoness scorned was manifesting. This was obviously no ordinary equine. In fact, he saw that it had a whole bundle of tails. Dug thought fast. This was really just another kind of challenge: how to turn mischief into something positive. "No, we are the three folk who are in trouble," he said. "We're looking for a way out of trouble. She must have misunderstood."

"Hee haw haw!" the donkey brayed. "That's for sure."

"In fact, what we need to get out of trouble is a ride," Dug said. "A fine animal like you could do us a big favor."

"Hee haw! I'm the Ass O' Nine Tails. I can give you a ride anywhere. But you'll have to listen to my tales."

Dug glanced at the other two. "Seems fair to me. Can you take us to the Good Magician's castle?"

"Hee haw! That I can. Hop on."

Dug congratulated himself, internally. He had succeeded in converting a menace into an asset. A genuine ass-et.

Jenny looked doubtful, but didn't protest. That meant that she had concluded that the giant ass was not dangerous to ride. So he helped her mount, and then climbed on behind her, and Sherlock climbed on behind him. There was generous room for all three, as well as Sammy Cat in front of Jenny.

The Ass started off. "Hee haw! I have nine tales, of course," he said. He flicked up the first of his tails. "First I will tell you about the Deadly Night Shade and the Kith of Death. It seemed that a certain shade of the night was lonely, having no kithing kin. So he decided that nobody else should have kithing cousins either. He became the deadliest night shade of all."

At first Dug found the tale interesting. But after a while it palled, because the Ass was great on de-tail but not on plot. He told how the shade killed one cousin after another, using his deadly kiss, until all the kith were dead. There it ended. There was no resolution and no justice, just continuous killing. Dug realized that the Ass's memory was a good deal better than his originality. Yet he realized that he had seen many similar stories on TV back in Mundania.

"Then there is the tale of Rubella and the Fool Moon," the Ass continued as soon as the first story expired in dullness. He told how Rubella kept fooling the moon, adding a measly pockmark on the moon's face each time. After an hour or so of the narration, the moon's whole face was pocked and cratered, but the moon was too foolish to learn how to stop Rubella. Again, there was no point; it was just one pock after another.

Then there was the tale of the Fait Accompli and the DeOgreant. Fait set out to weaken the ogres by eliminating their powerful smell. She used a special roll-on gunk to deogreize each ogre in turn, until no ogre had a strong smell. Unfortunately she accomplished nothing, because the ogres remained horribly strong and still crunched bones at a great rate. The bulk of the tale was concerned with a description of each of a hundred or so ogres Fait dealt with.

Then there was the tale of Michael Velli and the Crow Bar. Michael set out with devious cunning and no ethics to ruin the crows' favorite hangout: a bar where they could drink themselves silly on com squeezings. He did this by informing each crow separately that the bar was closed. When, after another hour of narration, he had told each of about three hundred crows this, the bar was indeed closed for lack of patronage. Michael was very pleased with his connivance.

Dug wasn't. He was lulled to sleep by the dullness of the tales, while the huge Ass plodded on.

He woke amidst the tale of Mother Hen and her sons Vim and Vigor. Exactly what kind of a trial these cocky youngsters were to Ms. Hen he was never to learn, because he realized that they were approaching a castle. The party had arrived, thank goodness.

'The Good Magician's castle!" he exclaimed, waking Jenny, Sammy, and Sherlock, who it seemed had been just as bored as he with the endless tales. They slid down to the ground, flexing the dullness out of their legs.

"No, this is Castle Roogna," the Ass said, surprised, flicking several tails.

"So it is!" Jenny said, recognizing it. "There's the orchard and the zombie graveyard."

"But we were supposed to go to the Good Magician's castle," Dug protested.

"By no means," the Ass demurred. "I was going to Castle Roogna."

"But you agreed to take us to the Good Magician's castle!" Dug was adding annoyance to his confusion.

"Hee haw! You asked could I take you there, and I agreed I could. I did not say I would, and you did not ask me to. So I came here."

Dug realized that he had been had by the Ass. There had been no definite commitment. It had been, as it were, a handshake agreement, not worth the paper it was written on. And the Ass had told them such continuously dull tales that all three of them had fallen asleep and been unable to correct the route when it went wrong. Jenny Elf would have recognized the wrong direction, and acted to correct it. Certainly Sammy Cat could have found the way to the right castle, had he too not been lulled into sleep. But nobody could have remained awake for the whole of that barrage of asinine tales. Dug felt like a fool moon, and a real country rubella, being the victim of this fait accompli.

The Demoness Metria appeared. "Oh, too bad," she said silkily. "I see that your Companion has let you down, and allowed you to be delivered to the wrong castle. How unfortunate, when you could so readily have had a more competent Companion." She inhaled again, allowing her full blouse to turn translucent, not far from Dug's face.

"Hee haw haw!" the Ass brayed gustily.

Jenny looked as if she were about to speak a word not properly in the Juvenile Lexicon. Dug saved her the trouble by taking action he knew he would regret. He swung a fist at the demoness' face.

Naturally his hand passed right through Metria's head without resistance. Then she stepped into him and planted a too, too solid kiss on his mouth. Then she faded into smoke and drifted away on the nearest vagrant breeze. She had had her revenge.

Dug realized that he had lost this challenge. Fortunately it had not been a game challenge, just the mischief of a jealous fantasy female. There was no point in belaboring it; he'd just have to get back on track and get where he was going. And hope he wasn't too late.

"What's the fastest way to the Good Magician's castle?" he asked.

"Be sensible, man," Sherlock said. "She's there already. You need to figure out where she's going from there."

"He's right," Jenny said. "And the best place to ask is Castle Roogna."

"You figure the king will know?"

"Oh, we shouldn't bother King Dor about this," Jenny said. "I was thinking—well, I can't say right now, but maybe it will work out."