Written by Falconempress. Posted on Jun 8, 09:49 PM.

"You Slay Me" Spork - Chapter 13

I wonder if it’ll be any worse than the others, given the number. Oh what the hell, let’s just get down to it.

The last time I subjected myself and you to this atrocity, Assling arrived at Amelie’s where she hoped she could stay, but was denied, since the cops have been all over Amelie’s case, and even searched her place and her shop three times already. Assling tells Amelie she did not kill the Venediger and since in this book anybody who says they are not a murderer are really not the murderer, the two of them start chatting.

Hmmmm.

Say, what time is it? It’s exposition time, everybody!

And what do we learn from this conversation?

- One of the Wiccan twins that appeared in one of the earlier chapters is actually Venediger’s second in command. This actually surprised me, since I assumed that once the two fulfilled their purpose of being an exposition devices themselves, we will not hear of them again. Who would have thunk it.

- The twins were separated for quite a long time by the time the Venediger found them.

- the three Tools of Bael have been around for centuries, sometimes resurfacing, but never the three of them were put together. If they were, it would be, to quote the book itself, “une grande catastrophe!” Why she could not have said “a big catastrophy” is beyond me, although then it would not look so… French. I would get if Amelie struggled for a word that is diametrally different from its French counterpart, but if you have two words that are basically the same… oh you know what? Nevermind.

- The Tools are Bad, but we already knew that.

- There is a power struggle going on in hell, with Bael currently in charge, but there is another one who wants to take over. The Tools allow the user to tap into his power, but like every bond, this goes both ways and it would allow Bael to take control of the person and those around them.

- Bael was the Venediger’s master. Did you hear that? That’s the sound of a plot point dropping like a 16 ton weight.

- the Tools can be destroyed by a powerful mage, not a guardian. Blergh. Even the book acknowledges Assling is not good for anything.

- Each Guardian (yes, capitalized and all) is assigned the portal which they guard (bet you did not see that one coming, eh?), they prevent the dark powers to use the portal and moderate the creatures passing through it.

- Assling was born to the job, just as she was “born to be a wyvern’s mate”. I have no words to describe how horrible in any imaginable way that sentence is. You try! Yay determinism!

- Assling needs to find herself a mentor. And from the fact that the Exposition Lady refers to the mentor as “she” I gather all Guardians are female. Why? Care to elaborate, MacAlister? Care to explain yourself? Of course not.

I really don’t like these infodump – heavy chapters. It seems like we have had quite a few of them recently. I don’t know, just something about the way the information is offered feels awfully heavy – handed and you are fed such big amounts of it at the time, it horribly disrupts tho flow of the story – as if you dropped something big and heavy, like a 16 ton weight, for example, into a river. True, the metaphorical river in this case may be of questionable puke – green color and have putrid smells hovering over it, but it’s a river nonetheless and you don’t drop 16 ton weights in rivers because then they will pour out of their stream and turn into a lake or something.

I think this metaphor does not work anymore.

Anyways, Assling decides to call up the twins and ask whether she could stay with them, because they are next on the “Friendly People I Met Here In Paris To Dump My Wanted Ass On” list. The twins agree and are suspiciously excited about the fact that Assling may have been the cause of the Venediger’s untimely demise. They are so nice, they even promise not to tell the cops anything.

Oh. And Assling’s face made the first page of all the Parisien newspapers.

Ahem.

Newsflash, MacAlister – wanted murderers don’t always make the first page, not even serial killers. If you are a cop, publicity is something you don’t want in your investigation, unless you are really desperate. Publicity tends to make investigation of the crime harder more often than not. If you watched enough “Detection Channel”, you should have known that. And having nearly caught her the day before hardly makes the cops desperate yet. Plus, if every single wanted killer was to make a front page of the papers, let’s just say your morning reading would get pretty boring very soon. But of course her picture has to be on the cover, because it’s Assling and she is wonderful and Speshul and somehow found herself in this hilarious misadventure.

knock on the door

What is that? My new desk has arrived? Great! Just give me a second to put it together, I will be right back with you.

sawing

hammering

drilling

breaking

pained screams

strings of profanity

loud arguing

more loud arguing

awkward silence

hammering

door slams

I’m back. Hey, this is a pretty nice desk. It’s nice and smooth, fits here well. And no better timing! Let’s put it to test right away!

headdesk

This is right up there with the Designated Hero escaping the clutches of the Evil™ Emperor only to find wanted posters all over the first village he stumbles into a few hours later.

The world does not turn around you! SHUT UP!

The twins live near Champs – Elysées and all the luxury shops – yes, the only thing MacAlister bothers to mention about this important Parisien landmark are the stores. And their apartment is of course luxurious with tasteless Luis XIV – esque decorations. Yes, she actually says that. And all the stuff is apparently legit.

Amelie’s modern taste in art and furniture surprised me, but the glorious Louis XIV antiques of Ophelia and Perdita’s apartment left me speechless. Beautifully worked Persian rugs dotted an inlaid parquet floor, two rose-and-cream-satin embroidered Baroque chairs complemented the matching rose-colored couch, a huge brown marble fireplace dominated one wall, while an intricately molded ceiling bearing a detailed Rococo mural fought with the museum-quality tapestries on the walls to hold the eye. They were all so gorgeous, so elegant, and not at all the sort of things with which pagan Wiccans would be expected to surround themselves.

My concerns:

1. How did they make enough money to afford all the stuff? Ophelia just shrugs it off with “Hm, it’s home” when Assling starts drooling over the hideous, over – embellished Louis XIV style – hey, I have been to Versailles! And I thought that the atrocious amounts of kitchy and tasteless decorations everywhere were going to make me puke. It may have worked for Louis XIV, but it certainly feels like an awful overkill for somebody who is decorating their place in the 21st century. But I guess that is because they are pretty and powerful and, as we all know, none of the pretty and powerful people ever have to work, because they get obscene amounts of money that materialize out of nowhere, just because they are pretty and powerful. What? Being pretty and powerful at the same time is a full – time job! Can you imagine what something like that has to do for your skin complection?

2. Louis XIV? Seriously?

It looks like a cake decorated by an ADD suffering, lace – obsessed cook high on cocaine.

And although I mentioned it before, let me expand a bit further on it here – Ophelia saying “It’s home”, like “our absurdly lavish and expensive furniture is not worth the mention, really. For all we know, the stuff could have come from the flea market downtown. Psh!” It just irritates me to no end.

Okay enough ranting.

Assling asks if she can do a little demon – summoning and Ophelia is okay with it, but the magic room has to be cleansed first via a ritual of some sorts. They don’t actually call it a “magic room” but they just as well could have, so I’m going with that.

For somebody who did the whole “Harry Potter is popular in Hell” thing, you sure do love your open and literal demon summoning, MacAlister.

I am so not getting over that.

Perdita arrives from grocery shopping and all of them sit down to talk.

What? Even more talking? Stop sitting around sipping coffee and DO SOMETHING!

sigh

The twins are not too happy that Assling is going to summon a demon in their home (serves you right for inviting her in instead of handing her over to the authorities like you’re supposed to! Haha!), but they reluctantly agree. Although one has admire Assling’s balls to ask for something like this when the twins – or at least one of them – has the whole “Venediger got what was coming to him” and “good riddance” attitude towards his premature demise.

looks at the clock increduously

Really? So soon?

It’s exposition and infodump time! Again!

taps clock

I really should do something with this thing.

The twins talk about their religion, which makes Assling somewhat uncomfortable.

“ ‘Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone and truth you’ll know.’ That is from the Wiccan Rede, the words by which we guide our lives. You would do well to heed it, Guardian.”

“It sounds lovely, but—”

“ ‘Mind the Threefold Law you should, three times bad and three times good,’” she quoted.

And so it went. I sat through several lectures on the sins of being someone who dallied with the dark spirits, all the while extremely aware of the soulless demon who alternated between rolling around begging Ophelia to rub its belly, and mooching in the kitchen. By the evening I was exhausted with trying to keep my tongue behind my teeth.

This is actually pretty funny and not that badly written and constructed. The twins present the polar opposite of everything Assling is and because of this she becomes extremely conscious of Jim’s presence. Maybe a little tension could have been added to the scene with the probability of Jim being exposed for what he is by the twins. Which then brings up a different problem – if Ophelia is so powerful that she is the second most important magic user in all of France, AND a member of a magical power branch that abhors demons and all that is connected to them, shouldn’t her internal alarms go off in Jim’s presence? Shouldn’ she notice something?

But I really buy into Assling being uncomfortable. Here the twins sounds like some of those people who knock on your door in the middle of the night and talk to you for hours, trying to convert you to their religion, otherwise you would burn in the deepest pits of hell for all eternity. It gets a little than a bit creepy when the twins say something along the lines of “The Venediger had to pay for his sins and for his arrogance and condescension when we tried to save him by turning him to the right (read: our) faith. He should not have mocked our religion, hahaha!”

Whoa, Assling knows some pretty strange people. I wonder what her acquaintances back in the States are like. Oh, wait, not even her best friend/her uncle’s secretary is needed right now, so for the time being, none of her previous life exists.

But still nothing is happening, they are just talking. It’s been more than twenty pages and still nothing has happened. Move! I don’t care what it is you do, just do something, for the love of fuck, anything!

You know it’s bad when you start begging for more scenes of soul – scarring, eye – searing, mind – warping sex.

On second thought, a little talking never hurt anyone. Where were we? Please, please, I beg you – tell me more! This is simply enthralling!

It’s evening. Ophelia insists Assling goes to G&T with them. Yes, when you are a wanted criminal, go clubbing in the one place where people whose leader you were accused of murdering congregate. Great times will certainly be had by all.

But apparently G&T is a neutral ground. So that makes it okay for Assling to go.

Oh.

headdesk

headdesk

Make the annoying chirping birds go away.

On the other hand, the desk still holds! Yay!

Is that blood on the desk?

“Other than Drake, are there any other wyverns in Paris?”

That sure came out of the left field. Why? You want to know if there are any non – murdering dragons in the city you could screw? Once you go dragon you never go back? Blergh.

Her pout faded as a puzzled look replaced it. “Wyverns? Yeeees … Fiat Blu is here.

blinks

What?

reads again

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Seriously?

He is- the blue wyvern,

You ARE serious! Hahaha, this is too good! Fiat Blu! That is too funny! Here, lemme google that. What I get is not so much this:

Rather than this:

THAT is the mental imagine that pops into my head when I hear “Fiat Blu”. Not all that menacing, is it?

giggles

Awww, is so cuuuute! Just look at it.

If you are more than six feet tall, you have to remove the front seats and sit on the back ones, just to be able to drive. IF the car has any back seats at all.

HAHAHAHAHA, Fiat Blu is a dragon! Did his mother name him after the place they conceived him? Some parents are twisted enough to do that, you know. For instance, I have friend who was almost named Ford Fiesta.

although I do not recommend you have anything to do with him. He is not only depraved and immoral; he is a psychic, too. All the blue dragons are, but he is the most powerful.” Her voice dropped to a throaty whisper. “It is said that he uses his powers to make women do … do … unnatural things with him.”

WAHAHAHAHA this book is getting better and better! Although – does the blue dragon guy sound any familiar? Abusive towards women? Twisted? Can see into your head? Heck, by paranormal romance standards, this should be Assling’s Obligatory Love Interest. Aw, they would be so happy together.

Assling asks where Fiat lives and though reluctantly, Ophelia gives her the address. And a word of advice:

“Fiat is much different from your wyvern.”

Yeah, Fiat can give you great mileage in the city and your problems with parking will mostly be gone, but it’s definitely not very suitable if you are thinking long, extended vacations in remote areas, which is due to their less satisfactory performance, especially compared to some other models.

You cannot hear it, but I am audibly laughing right now. I knew that one day, reading this shit will pay! I knew it!

So she finds the place, which is near Eiffel Tower. Wow, MacAlister waited this long to bring it up? I would be impressed if this didn’t sound so horribly stupid. First Champs – Elysées and now the Eiffel Tower? I’m more and more convinced the only research MacAlister did on France and Paris was flipping through a tourist guide to the city. And yet again, since Fiat (snicker) is Powerful and Old, he too is obscenely rich despite not having a proper job. Or even an improper one, for that matter. Also, the place is near a sewer museum as well. Huh, kind of random, but let’s just roll with it for now.

Assling knocks on the door, a man opens, sniffs her, shouts “Or!” and grabs her in, slamming the door behind her sorry ass.

Waterboarding! Waterboarding! I demand to see some waterboarding! I have been denied for way too long!

This could end in so many awesome ways…

But that will have to wait for some other time, since the chapter ends.

Thank you for reading,

falconempress

Tagged as Falconempress, Paranormal Romance, Spork, You Slay Me.

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