Villains Pride (The Shadow Master Book 2) Read online

  “Well, let me look over some contracts and see what can be done,” I said. “Maybe if you consider a re-branding, we can spin this into a positive? Or perhaps we steer into the skid?”

  “What are you thinking?” Cthulhu asked.

  “Off the top of my head? We saturate the market with so much of your likeness that people turn away from you. It will give us the time to work on a new approach, and those who stayed loyal the whole time will be the front-runners for your new cult.”

  “Could it work?”

  “Possible. I’m testing the theory right now with zombies. They were everywhere for a while. Now people are bored with them.”

  I looked over a few documents with some of my contacts. “I do have allies in The Never Realm. We could use demonic influence to help the situation.”

  “What’s the matter, Jackson?” Cthulhu asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “It feels like you’re just going through the motions. You’re not your usual loathsome self. The Shadow Master I knew would’ve solved this already. Are you losing your edge?”

  I summoned a trident from my weapons vault to my hand. The weapon sparked with power. “Take that back.”

  Cthulhu held hands up. “Hey. Jack. It’s me. We sank Atlantis together, remember? We forced it to exist in that parallel dimension. All for the glory of R’lyeh.”

  “Yeah, yeah we did.” I smiled, then dismissed the weapon. “Good times. Sorry, I’m on edge ever since the Conclave.”

  “I heard about that. Want some advice?”

  “If you must.”

  “Just be you. You’ve been through worse. I’m sure this will all work itself out.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Look, concerning your issue—”

  “Don’t worry about for now,” Cthulhu said, getting up. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  The Great Horror stood and gave me the briefest of hugs, causing my suit to instantly reek of endless madness and Red Lobster. As he turned to leave my office, Cthulhu paused. The Cosmic Horror snatched a book from one of my bookshelves. He slapped the book and roared.

  “This! This is what I’m talking about!”

  He held my signed copy of Cthulhu Armageddon by CT Phipps. “It’s pretty good,” I said with a half shrug.

  “I’m not even in it! How can it be a Cthulhu Armageddon if I’m not even in it?!”

  “Public domain, Lou,” I said with a shake of my head. “I warned you. But you should grab the book and the sequel there. You show up in that one. Oh, and check out the audiobooks for those. That Kafer fellow does a solid job narrating. I think I have some free download codes I can email you.”

  “Fuck,” Cthulhu grumbled, looking at the books. “Yeah, email me.”

  With that, the being walked out, taking both books.

  I sat back down at my desk and lit a cigarette. I did my best to hide my bemused smile until after Lou left. He would have gone insane if he knew the truth.

  I planted those books there just to get under his blubber.

  I was the one who was pushing the blatant merchandising off his likeness, after all. The royalties I got per sale alone were insanely lucrative. But it was the fraction of soul power I also received from his hopelessly devoted zealots that I really wanted.

  You’d be amazed how much power and money you can amass from nerds. If you don’t believe me, go to a nerd’s house and count the mini plastic figures (the ones with big heads and tiny bodies), pewter dragons, replicas, resin statues, and media boxed sets. Their incessant need for knick-knacks and hero worship provides a very steady revenue stream.

  Speaking of: Note to self--Stop digital sales of . . . everything. It’s bad for fair-weather collecting. And since it was my dimension, I would be reminded of that when the time was right.

  OK, with that business done and old squid-face gone, I turned to my docket. “Sophia?” I buzzed my intercom.

  “Sir?”

  “What’s next for today?”

  “The Dread Lich-Lord Morakesh is still here.”

  “Really?” I asked, more than a little shocked. “Still? He’s been waiting there since . . . ?”

  “The last book, yes sir.”

  “Huh. Well, let him wait.”

  “Until when?”

  “When the running joke is no longer funny,” I said, then added, “and probably a little while after that.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Jackson,” Sophia said, her voice taking a serious tone. “You’re stalling.”

  Damn it. Sophia Rose DeVrille wasn’t just my receptionist. She was the Djinn my parents discovered in the Middle East on one of their adventures. The source of their wealth, power, and ultimately their demise. It was with her power and influence that I gained access to this dimension and my godhood. With her assistance, my career as a villain adviser had begun.

  She also plotted to kill me one day. But let us be honest, all our dearest friends truly do.

  Look, if none of that made sense to you, then read the first book. Seriously, go buy it. I could use the sales.

  But Sophia was right; I was stalling. “Fine. Let’s get on with it.”

  “So glad you’re embracing this with so much enthusiasm,” Lydia said, walking in, holding her swelling stomach.

  I sighed and lit a cigarette.

  Lydia gave me a look, stared at the cigarette, and scowled.

  “You know, back in your realm, people did far worse around children,” I said.

  “Yes, but I’m not in that realm, I’m in ours.” She stressed the word of ownership. “And I’ve been reading about how bad it is. So put it out.”

  Rolling my eyes, I took another puff, then snubbed it out.

  Sigh. The abundance of information. Worst thing the unwashed masses could have ever gained after the vote.

  Take, for example, every moron with Wi-Fi and WebMD who thinks they know more than the doctor who spent ten years and $300,000 in training. Trying to convince those hypochondriacs that they simply have the sniffles as opposed to a rare disease was an exercise in futility.

  I counted my baby-momma Lydia among the aforementioned unwashed. I told her that as this was MY realm, then the cigarettes had no harmful effects. Yet thanks to daytime programming from the Prime universe, she insists I not smoke around her while she’s pregnant.

  Note to self: Kill Dr. Phil.

  Within the last month or so, after getting back from Caledon and defeating the coup against me, Lydia had changed. I didn’t know if it was the pregnancy or not. But her mood, attitude towards me, and outlook on life in general was downright dour and hostile.

  Naturally, me being me, I informed her that her state of being reminded me of a person I would see next Tuesday.

  That did not go over well.

  Such back-and-forth encounters between us had become the painful norm. Which, inexorably, had brought us here.

  Couple’s therapy.

  Sophia entered, took her spot in my office’s overstuffed leather chair, and took out a notebook and a pen. As it turned out, Sophia was a licensed couple’s therapist.

  Who knew?

  Lydia sat across from Sophia, on the matching leather sofa. I sat next to Lydia and held her hand while I crossed my leg and unbuttoned my suit.

  “You stink of smoke.”

  I sighed. “Let the healing begin.”

  Chapter Two

  Where I Endure Couples Therapy, Pick the Wrong Time to Drink Scotch, and Further the Plot

  “OK, let’s get this farce over with.”

  “I told you he wouldn’t take this seriously,” Lydia said to Sophia, who was already taking notes on her yellow legal pad.

  It appeared that the fairer sex was conspiring against me. Well, Sophia wasn’t really a human woman; she merely posed as one. But the idiom stood.

  “What I take seriously,” I said, crossing my leg, “is that my beloved consistently finds fault with everything I do
, say, and am, despite my not changing anything about myself since our meeting. So, while we’re failing the Bechdel Test, can we please fix whatever hormone imbalance is going on?”

  Lydia sighed and threw her hands up. “You see what I mean?”

  Sophia made a note on her legal pad, then tapped the end of the pen against her lips. “Jackson, why do you feel you don’t need to change?”

  “Why should I?”

  “You have a child on the way now and a woman who loves you.”

  “And?”

  “And life is changing, our lives,” Lydia added. “I’m not the same person. You’re going to be a father. Yet you behave as if none of this is happening.”

  “You are a remarkable man, Jackson,” Sophia said, “but a man nonetheless. And oftentimes, men refuse to accept that they must express an awareness of the life-altering events unfolding around them. This comes from a lack of empathy which I believe stems from excessive testosterone and a fool’s belief that men can crystallize time around them.”

  “I can crystallize time around me,” I said.

  Lydia groaned, but Sophia held up her hand. “Jackson. The point is—

  ”

  “Enough of this,” I said, getting to my feet. “Two minutes in and I’m done with this Earth-mother, getting-in-touch-with-your-feelings nonsense.”

  I stepped away and squared up, facing both women in my life. “I am aware she’s pregnant, just like the literal billions of women before her and like billions of women will be after her. It’s pregnancy, not the second, or third, coming of Star Wars. A child means that there will be a child, nothing more. I behave the same because that is who I am.”

  “Men,” Lydia said, crossing her arms in disgust.

  Sophia shook her head. “Surely you must realize that as a woman’s body changes, she wants to still feel desirable, wanted, needed, special.”

  “We had sex just this morning.”

  “But your heart wasn’t in it,” Lydia commented.

  Sophia tsked. “Jackson, were you connected in the moment?”

  I cocked my head to one side, looking at Sophia. “It was the wheelbarrow position. What do you think?”

  Lydia raised her voice and gestured wildly. “I need you to be with me when you’re with me.”

  “When we were performing oral on one another, you had a knife to my taint.”

  “But I did it with love!”

  I walked back over to my desk and lit a cigarette despite the glares. I could feel it: Everything I’d built and achieved was beginning to unravel. My personal truths, the rules of villainy, dictated that love, trust, and empathy were the caustic waters that eroded even the strongest of foundations.

  Khasil’s words from the Conclave echoed in my head over and over. I don’t know why, but I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

  “Like you ever loved me,” I whispered.

  “What?!” Lydia and Sophia said in unison.

  I didn’t know why I said it. But it was what I felt. A defense mechanism, perhaps? Khasil’s words were buried in the recesses of my mind. Were they manifesting as fear? It could have been a lie. Knowing Khasil, it probably was. But when I wished to mentally hurt an enemy, I knew the truth was a sharper sword than any lie.

  “Khasil,” I said, ashing my cigarette. “She claimed that you were her servant. Perhaps you were, perhaps you weren’t. Perhaps you never even realized you were under her beguilement. There is no way to know for sure.”

  “What are you saying?”

  I looked at Lydia. “It is very possible you’re a spy. Or at the least, an unwitting agent of a foreign power sent to undermine me.”

  Lydia burst into tears and ran out of the room through my office door.

  I could chase after her. But years of bad movie advice told me women needed to cool off. Or was I supposed to go after her? Hell, who knows. Instead I poured two drinks of a rare single-malt Glenfidditch Janet Seed Roberts Reserve scotch.

  “Well, that went well,” I said holding the other glass out to Sophia. “Drink?”

  Sophia rolled her eyes and set her legal pad down on the chair before accepting the drink. “Sir, if I may, that was—”

  “Stupid?”

  “Really, really stupid sir,” Sophia agreed.

  “I had to know.”

  “Sir?”

  “I had to know if Khasil’s words were true. I had to see the look in her eye and know for sure.”

  “Couldn’t you just use your power over this realm and know?”

  I sipped at the scotch. To be honest, I couldn’t tell the difference between it and regular scotch. But it was expensive, so it had an air of quality.

  “No, I can’t use my power. As she is my . . . mate. She has access to half the power of this realm as well. Considering she is carrying my child, she actually has just over half.”

  Sophia sipped her drink. “And now? What do you think?”

  “Sadly, I remain unsure.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Lydia said from the door.

  Shit.

  I looked up and she was standing there watching us. Sophia looked at Lydia, then me, and took two steps back, removing herself from the equation and leaving me at the center of Lydia’s ire.

  “Coward,” I said out of the side of my mouth to Sophia.

  “You manipulative bastard,” Lydia said with scorn, shaking her head.

  “What was that, dear? I swear you just called me a manipulative bastard. Is that an insult, or a term of endearment?”

  Lydia gritted her teeth. “Get out.”

  “Of my office?” I smiled.

  “Get out of my home!” Lydia yelled, her words resonating power.

  The lights in my office flickered. My body began to shift and phase in and out of reality. The heavy crystal tumbler of scotch fell through my non-corporeal hand and smashed on the marble floor.

  Well, there went $500 in a single glass.

  I focused and summoned all of my power. It took all of my will to remain real.

  “Jackson?” Sophia asked, looking at me.

  “It isn’t me,” I said through a clenched jaw. What was happening? Was my dimension under attack? Was it another god? Was it . . .

  Oh.

  Another god.

  Oh. Oh, you scaly bitch. Well played.

  Despite the severity of the situation, I started to laugh. “Who would have thought she had the foresight to do such a thing?”

  “Who?” Sophia asked.

  “Khasil.”

  “She can’t affect this realm.”

  “No, but The One’s decree can. While the previous matters are being investigated, I cannot be in any dimension, plane of reality, or universe unless all the ruling deities allow it. Apparently, including my own.”

  “I said, Get OUT!” Lydia commanded once more, and I felt my very essence growing thin.

  I watched my hand phase out of existence, then blink back. “Lydia, please, calm yourself. You know I love you and I will leave. But I need to gather a few things.”

  As she glared at me, I felt her will lessen. “You have five minutes.”

  “Thank you,” I said, straightening my suit. “But to be honest, I really don’t understand your anger. I thought you of all people could appreciate the quandary I’m in, therefore my actions.”

  “One minute,” Lydia seethed.

  Oh balls.

  I scrambled to my desk, pulling open drawers. “Where is it, where is it?” I mumbled.

  “Tick-tock, asshole.” Lydia sneered at me with crossed arms as she tapped her foot.

  I held back a few choice words and continued my search. I grabbed my bug-out briefcase full of several rings, power items, and soul-binding contracts. Next, I pushed aside documents, dossiers on potential targets, client workups, and the odd-set nipple clamps (don’t judge me; I have needs).

  “Ahh,” I said, grabbing the fist-sized medicine bottle. With a shake, I felt that the contents were full, then stuffed the
bottle inside my suit pocket. Next, I grabbed my Rolodex from my desk and flipped through the assortment of contact information until I found the business card I was looking for.

  Stanley’s stupid face smiled back at me.

  Damn it.

  Pressing my thumb to the card, I imbued it with a portion of my power, activating the interdimensional long-distance call.

  A small image of Stanley floated in the air. “Jackson! Glad to hear from you! Have you considered my offer?”

  I looked up at Lydia, then sighed, affecting my most cordial tone. “Yes. If it is not too much trouble, I would like a tour of your universe to look for some potential clients.”

  “Of course,” Stanley’s voice said through the business card. “With your permission, I’ll open a gate and you can swing by my universe. I’ll put you up in Dynasty City, an up-and-coming city that’s a nice balance of—”

  “Yes yes, I’m sure it will be fine,” I interrupted, feeling my body beginning to fade away. I had to find a dimension to go to now, lest Lydia cast me adrift in the void of endless space. If that happened, there was no telling which universe I could possibly land on. Even—gasp—New Jersey.

  Stanley smiled at me. “This will be fun!”

  I looked at my fuming beloved. With a smile of my own, I held my palms up in a hopeful gesture. “I’m beginning to think this may have been a mistake on my part?”

  Instead of an answer, a phantom image of a mutilated severed penis floated above Lydia’s head.

  Well, that was clear.

  “Please send the portal,” I told King Stanley.

  “You got it!”

  With my permission, a gate between worlds opened up to my left. As I prepared to step through, Sophia came over and gave me a hug, slipping me an earpiece.

  “Goodbye, sir. I’m sure things will get better.”

  “Talk to her, will you? Try and calm her down?” I asked, slipping in the earpiece.

  “I’ll do my best, sir. In the meantime, take this lemon and turn it into lemonade?”

  One last look at Lydia, and I frowned. “This isn’t a lemonade situation. This is a shit sandwich. And I’m fresh out of bread.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, sir. Just make the best of it.”