Written by Falconempress. Posted on Jun 16, 08:52 AM.

"You Slay Me" Spork - Chapter 14 Part 2

Fiat leaned forward, his fingers a cool whisper as they danced along my cheek. “It is the thrill of the chase, you understand, cara. If the quarry gives up too easily, there is no pleasure in the hunt.”

Yay! More overused creepy predator/prey metaphores! Because they worked so well the first time! Which reminds me… drink!

He laughed and withdrew his fingers from my face, leaning back against the pillows with an almost feline grace. It was then I noticed he was also dressed in blue, but a blue that had an intricate black pattern swirled through both the shirt and matching pants. “I hope Drake appreciates the mate he has been granted.”

Haha, get it? Get it? He is dressed all in blue on a blue couch in a blue room, because he is a blue dragon!

Stop it, MacAlister, you are not impressing anyone.

And he really is coming on to her! Of course he is, silly me, what kind of a self – respecting Sue she would be, if there weren’t at least two absurdly powerful beings set on winning her favors.

Assling wants for Jim to be allowed inside, which Fiat (snicker) is somewhat suspicious about, but since Assling demands it she is not to be denied and Jim is ushered inside. I was hoping he got hit by a car or something. Oh well.

After that they FINALLY get to business. Assling wants Fiat (snicker) to store one of the Tools of Bael for her so that Drake would not get to it and unleash hell on earth, because Fiat (snicker) as a dragon leader himself, is the only one with enough power to defend it against Drake, if it came down to that. But just what is it that she wants in exchange for this Old and Powerful object?

I smiled, pleased we were to the bargaining point with me in such a strong position. “Once I tell you where to locate the item, I will need your help to leave Paris… to leave France. The police have my passport and other things, and although I fully expect that they will see the error in their thinking, it could take some time. In ex-change for you taking the item into your custody—and giving me your word you will never allow anyone else to have it—you will get my passport and things back, and help me get out of the country.”

Um, didn’t Drake offer to get your papers and ship you out without asking anything in return earlier? And you refused to because you wanted to stay with him? Is your memory somehow faulty? I am sure that if you just asked Drake to do it, he would do it. You could keep the silver dragon medallion hidden from him like you did before and just fly your ass across the Atlantic and hide it there somewhere without any of the bullshit that is about to follow. OR you could take a boat and dump the medallion in the ocean. Certainly, not even a dragon would be able to find it in such a vast expanse of water. There, see? I just solved all of your problems.

A calculating look filled his eyes as he leaned one elbow on the shelf. “I am no thief. For that you would do better to ask your mate.”

A valid point, that.

I took a deep breath. “Does that mean you can’t help me get out of the country?”

Again – you can just ask Drake, he will be more than happy to oblige.

Fiat (snicker) gets pissed because he is suspecting foul play.

His lips narrowed. “So you say, but I think that you are not telling me the entire truth. I do not like to be fooled, cara, not even by a woman I would enjoy taking. You come here presenting to me the grand explanation, but you shield your mind from mine, you insist on your demon being present, and you refuse to tell me much about this object. I was not born yesterday.”

OF COURSE he wants to bone her. Everybody does. And seeing as you are falling for a twerp like that yes, I would suspect you were born yesterday. You were named after one of the cutest and least threatening – looking cars in history and you would like to nail a chick who thinks that having sex is a “boy – girl thing”. Shut up. You have no dignity left to defend.

There. See? Dignity not pictured.

Assling says she wants time to think things through and suggests a time and place they could meet again to discuss the matters. Fiat (snicker) does not take it too well and goes all “you go nowhere, woman, until I feel like letting you go”, which does not agree with Assling. So she orders Jim to attack and the two of them proceed to escape.

To give credit where credit is due, the following sequence is actually pretty competently written and I had very few problems with it.

“Now!” I yelled, whipping around to grab the Ming vase, throwing it to the left of Fiat. He lunged toward it with a shriek while Jim and I dashed to the right, out of the room and down the hall toward the door. The blond behemoth named Renaldo who dragged me there stumbled out of a side room. Jim flung itself on him. I continued, yelling Jim’s name as I threw open the door and ran out of the apartment, racing down a wide stone spiral staircase. Voices shouted after me, but I didn’t wait around to see what they wanted. I leaped down the steps, my heart pounding, my breath caught in my throat. A black shape lunged past me as I threw myself toward the street door.

“You . . . have … the … stupidest . . . ideas . . . sometimes,” Jim panted as we jumped down the front stairs, running pell-mell into the busy street.

See? I don’t even want Jim to die a horrible, painful death. And that’s saying A LOT.

The pacing is good, there is suspense, and the passage flows well. Judging by this, MacAlister is not a half – bad writer. Then why oh WHY do teeny little glimpses of competent writing have to be buried under the steaming pile of waste that is the vast majority of the prose in this book? Why? I demand an explanation!

“This way,” Jim shouted, running toward a small building that bore a blue and white sign that read VISITE DES EGOUTES DE PARIS.

“What is it?” I managed to ask as I ran toward the building.

“Sewers,” Jim yelled,

Ooooh, so that’s why the random remark on the Sewer museum.

The two of them run in, jumping the turnstyle, but since we can’t have Assling feeling bad for entering a museum without paying (oh noes!), she throws a bunch of euros at the admissions clerk. Oh suddenly she has money to throw around. I wonder – is this the money you got for cashing in your plane ticket? The ones you were supposed to buy meagre scraps of food with, since you could not afford a proper meal due to having bought two absolutely gorgeous outfits?

So they run through the sewers, because apparently blue dragons’ element is air and they hate water because they cancel each other out or something – the horribly inappropriately placed explanation/brief infodump talks about it. Again with the random infodumping. Couldn’t Jim just yell something along the lines of “they will hate it here and have trouble pursuing us, just trust me!” and then later, when they are not in direct threat of being caught and kidnapped, explain it over a nice cup of coffee? Why would you drop another 16 ton weight on the narrative like that?

“What the heck?” I stopped as I turned around. The antechamber we were in held huge black wooden balls … and I do mean huge. One of them was seated up against the opening of a tunnel, the ball almost completely filling it. Other balls of lessening sizes were chained to the walls, the smallest probably about four feet high, the biggest about sixteen.

“I was awed. I have never seen balls this huge. Their perfectly round contour hanging over my head, completely mesmerizing me. The surfaces of the huge, awesome balls was perfectly smooth-”

“Come on, we don’t have time to admire the sewer’s balls,” Jim snapped

Oh shut up, dog! I am the one making horribly inappropriate jokes around here!

A brief explanation tells us the balls were used to clean the sewers from all the debris.

Is anybody else having strange Indiana Jones flashbacks right now? No?

Oh and by the way, the balls are never mentioned again. So their sole purpose, and I will go on a whim here and dare say that the purpose of the entire sewer museum, was just to set the stage up for that one single joke about big balls hanging over Assling’s head. The only reason the entire museum is in this book is simply for Jim to deliver that one line. I never thought I would ever say this, but that is worse even than this:

Never in my life did I think there would come a day when I would have to google “Transformers 2 Devastator Scrotum” but here we are. MacAlister made me do it. Oh, and you can thank me later for finding one in such glorious HD quality.

And I stand by it. At least Michael Bay had the decency (and I use the word in its widest sense here) to not to center an entire sequence around that. MacAlister is worse than Michael Bay. WORSE THAN MICHAEL BAY. But wait a minute… the horrible racial/ethnic stereotypes, the moronic dialogue, the supremely annoying characters, the abominably unfunny jokes, especially about sex, handled with the elegance and poise of a fifteen year – old on sugar high… MacAlister IS Michael Bay!

So they run and they run and they run so more, having to hide briefly at one point because Assling is out of breath. And again, this is actually pretty well – written. I have nothing to complain about in these few passages, save from the occassional disruption of the odd explanation, but even that becomes less of a problem, since there is none of that in the crucial moments.

I didn’t need to be warned to be quiet as we crouched down, making ourselves as flat as possible. Because of the machine cars standing in front of us, unless Fiat’s men were right next to us peering down into the well, they wouldn’t see us. I sat with my arms around Jim, my mouth pressed up against its heavy coat to muffle the sound of my gasping wheeze for air. A moment later the men entered the tunnel intersection, calling to Renaldo. I didn’t risk standing up so I could peer out at them, but even though I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying—the blue dragons seemed predominately Italian in origin—the angry tones of their voices left me in no doubt they were not happy campers. After a consultation lasting about a minute, they left, each taking a different tunnel out of the area.

She could have saved herself the “happy campers” bit, but other than that, the tension and the atmosphere are good.

“Think they’ll come back?” I whispered into Jim’s furry ear.

“Don’t do that, it tickles,” Jim complained, butting its head against me to rub its ear. I rubbed it, scratching behind the ears the way I knew it liked.

And this is actually a pretty neat moment. Without any nauseating purple prose or needlessly repetitious and overblown descriptions, we are treated to this little treat as the relationship between Jim and Aisling develops – we are shown instead of told that they are finally starting to click together as a team with this subtle – yes, subtle – display of affection. He is helping her out of a tight spot and she appreciates it, simple as that. No wise – cracking or eye – rolling is needed here. I…I… like this. I like this. What is happening to me? This bit is so good, I am actually suspecting it was not MacAlisters idea at all.

No, no. There is no need for being needlessly mean. But it’s the things like that that anger me the most. These glimpses of something good, or even mediocre. The awfulness surrounding them is so complex and thorough that when something even mildly competently – written appears, it seems nearly orgasmically good in comparison. But I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for now. Can this book somehow redeem itself still?

“We have to leave,” I said softly, aware from the echoes of other tourists talking and calling to one another that sound in the nonwater tunnels traveled very well.

“No! I figured we’d stay here until they started calling you the’ Phantom of the Sewers.”

sigh

But then the awfulness returns and after experiencing less awfulness, this one seems even worse. Like a kick in the teeth.

They lose their pursuers when Assling barely manages to cross a narrow plank over the river of sewage and tosses it in. The blue dragon henchman just glares at her and swears, since he has an aversion to water (which brings out all sorts of uncomfortable questions concerning the personal hygiene of this species). And after all this chasing, he is not even out of breath. Why hasn’t he caught them then, when his physical body is not the slightest bit tired after all this running around? Why does he not just turn into his dragon form and jump/fly over? He has a sort of breath weapon, right? Why doesn’t he use that? Seems to me like it would come in pretty handy right about now? And how does aversion to water make it impossible for him to jump across? Are dragons like zombies now? Can’t cross running water? Why does he just leave them there? Why does nothing make sense? What is going on?

But again, I digress.

Assling and Jim find a street exit and climb out of a manhole. Since Jim is not exactly suited for climbing ladders, Assling has to give him a piggyback ride. I’m not sure how that would work, but there you have it. The two slump on the sidewalk and that concludes this teeth – kicking chapter.

(Edward Trait Shot Count: 8)

Thank you for reading,

falconempress

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

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