by Karen Chance
The ground around me exploded in fire even as I shifted. I landed in a nearby copse of small trees, hoping for cover. But he must have anticipated that. Because almost immediately I had to shift again, as the trees burst into flame, flooding the landscape with garish light and sending strange shadows writhing over the ground.
I could see them from the other side of the hill, where I’d landed behind a rocky outcropping. They backlit the huge form of the transformed Spartoi, which was hovering in the air, powerful wings churning up the air. His back was to me because he was still facing the trees. But I couldn’t stay where I was. He was already spiraling up to get a better look. Any moment now, he’d spot me—
A wave of fire came my way, before I’d finished the thought. And it wasn’t a narrow stream that I might have been able to dodge. It was a wall of flame that blistered the air, like a tidal wave, if they came in crimson and gold.
I shifted again because I had no choice, but I couldn’t keep doing that. I had my mother’s power, but not her stamina. I was already panting—that time wave had been a bitch—and another few shifts would have me close to exhaustion. I had to make the shifts I had left count. Which is why, when I shifted again, it was back in time.
Normally, I wasn’t good at judging short time shifts. A day I could do, or even twelve hours or so, but anything less was tricky. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. Okay, most of the time it didn’t. So I was pretty surprised to land on the right side of the Spartoi at roughly the same moment that it set the trees on fire.
But not as surprised as having a second dragon pop out of the air right over my head.
I froze, hiding in the shade cast by my pursuer’s own body. I guessed I knew what that quicksilver feeling had been earlier. He must have put the same spell on me they’d used on my mother.
Which meant that I couldn’t time shift, or I’d take the asshole with me.
Perfect.
The only thing that saved me was that he’d been looking outward instead of straight down and didn’t immediately spot me. Maybe because he was too busy screaming a warning to his former self. I didn’t know what language they used, but if he told him where I was about to shift to, former me would soon be dead. Meaning present me would be dead. Shit!
Luckily, everything had happened so fast that his alter ego didn’t have time to capitalize on the information. He went screeching toward former me, my Spartoi spiraled up looking for present me, and I decided to hell with this. Despite the cold, my hair was sticking to my cheeks, my palms were sweaty and my heart was drumming in my ears. I thought I had maybe one more time wave in me, if I was lucky.
This one had to work. And as fast as these things moved, there was only one way to ensure that. I gathered my power and shifted—
Onto its back.
I’d hoped it wouldn’t notice an extra hundred and twenty pounds for a few seconds, considering it had to weigh something like seventy times that. I was wrong. I’d no sooner rematerialized than it let out a bellow of rage that echoed off the surrounding mountains and almost deafened me. And then it did a barrel roll.
I screamed, with nothing to hold on to but rain-slick scales that tore at my palms even as I grasped for them. But I launched my last time wave, even as I fell. I saw it veer off course, saw it slice into one of the great wings, saw it miss the body. But I didn’t have time to curse.
Because the next second, I was hitting down—hard.
I landed on my side, and, of course, it was the side with the injured wrist. A wave of pain engulfed me, so fast and so hard that it froze a scream in my throat. Or it would have, if it hadn’t already been knocked out of me. I writhed in the mud, too crazy with pain to do anything else, including think, for a long moment.
And when I did manage to gather some thoughts, they were nothing I wanted.
I told myself I’d just had the wind knocked out of me, that I’d only fallen maybe two stories, and onto soft ground that had just been churned up by the talons of those two beasts. In a minute, I’d get my wind back, I’d gather my strength, I’d get out of this. There was nothing to worry about, no need for panic.
And if I’d had any breath, I’d have laughed. Because if ever a situation called for panic, this was it.
I did finally manage to drag in a shaky breath, but by then it was too late. A shadow fell over me, a human one, because the Spartoi had transformed back. I suppose he didn’t think he needed the extra power to take out a halfdead body, and it didn’t help that I kind of agreed with him.
He stopped beside me, staring down out of those horrible eyes. “You forgot,” he said gently. “My father was Ares, god of war.”
And my mother was death, I didn’t say, because I didn’t have the breath. I just stepped out of my body and grabbed him.
I don’t know if he could feel my dim, insubstantial hand around his throat, but he acted like he felt something. He staggered back, flailing and tearing at nothing. Because what I was, he could no longer touch.
But I could touch him, although for a long moment, it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing was happening, just like with the damn apples. And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, his face began to change.
Liquid skin pulled away from flesh, from muscles, from bone. Eyes rolled in sockets, hair grayed and whitened and then fell out as the skin holding it in place rotted away. The tongue, a bloated black thing lolling in his mouth, tried to move, to speak, to curse, before suddenly deflating and disappearing, withdrawing back into the skull like the eyes, like everything, until the bones cracked and splintered and the whole thing dusted away on the breeze.
For a moment, I just stared at the imprints of his feet in the soft soil, which were quickly filling up with rain. That had worked. I couldn’t believe that had worked. I’d . . . I’d won? I didn’t feel like I’d won. I felt dizzy and sick and more than half crazy, like I wanted to run screaming around the hillside. Only I couldn’t. I didn’t have feet anymore, either.
I didn’t have anything, I realized, except for the tiny bit of life force I’d torn away with me when I came out. And after using up most of it on the battle, it was fast running out. I turned, feeling misty and jumbled and oddly . . . disjointed, like parts of me were already trying to float away....
And saw the small pale slash of my body lying almost halfway across the still-burning hillside.
It was so far. How had we come this far? I didn’t remember moving much at all. Of course, I didn’t remember much of anything except watching the Spartoi’s face peeling back.
A breeze came by, blowing some burning cinders through me, and I flinched. I didn’t feel them, was starting to have trouble feeling anything. Or concentrating . . .
I needed to move. I needed to get back. I needed to get back now.
I started forward in a vague, streaming motion completely unlike walking. And that was wrong, wasn’t it? It hadn’t felt this way before in the apartment, had it? I couldn’t remember. But it was wrong somehow, a halting, dragging feeling, slowing me down, pulling me back. I turned, half expecting to see that a piece of myself had caught on something, stretching my metaphysical form behind me like taffy.
But I didn’t. I saw something worse.
A seething cloud of blackness had boiled up behind me, blocking half the sky. It looked like a storm cloud, except storms are laced with lightning, not iridescent feathers. And they drop rain, not tendrils of odd, black smoke.
“No,” I whispered, knowing what it was. And that, without a body, I was nothing more than a tasty snack for any passing spirit.
And then it was on me.
I screamed, expecting it to hurt, but it didn’t. It didn’t. But the draining sensation ramped up a few dozen notches, causing my hand to shimmer in front of my face as I reached out, trying to part the thick, blue-black clouds to see. But it didn’t want me to see. If I could see, I could find my way back, and once inside my body, I would have not only its protection, but that of Pritkin’s talisman, as well.
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br /> Pritkin. The name caused pain, caused my tenuous concentration to wobble, and I felt a stinging slap to a face I no longer had. Sentiment . . . sentiment in battle got you killed. Not once in a while, not occasionally, but almost every single fucking time. You do not stop to cry or whine or mourn, not in battle, never in battle. That’s for later, when you’re safe, when you’re home. Do you understand?
I’d understood. I’d told him I understood. I’d promised, and now I had to . . . I had to . . . concentrate.
Yes, I had to concentrate. I had to get back to my body . . . my body. Where was my body? I couldn’t see. And now it did hurt some as the draining sensation picked up and—
Blue-black clouds were everywhere, almost completely cutting off any vision. I surged forward, hoping I was going in the right direction, only able to catch glimpses, here and there, of stars and trees and my body, which seemed to be constantly changing position. I knew it wasn’t moving, knew I was the one getting off course, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.
I raised a hand, dim, so dim, almost transparent now. I could see the mist through it, like it was almost a part of it, like it was floating away . . . and maybe it was. Maybe it already had. Maybe I had. Things were getting dimmer, harder to see, and I didn’t know if that was the clouds getting thicker with stolen power or my sight getting dimmer, but either way, it was very bad news. Because I couldn’t see at all now.
I stumbled on anyway, hoping I would literally stumble into my goal. Would I know it? I thought I would know it, but what were the odds? It was a huge hillside and my body was small and I couldn’t see—
“Cassie!”
The sound was vague and indistinct, like my form, like everything. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard it, but then it came again, a faint, echoing sound, but stronger to the right. Was it? I thought so, and instinctively moved in that direction.
“Cassie!” It came again, nearer now, or so it seemed, maybe . . . I couldn’t really tell. I didn’t have ears; how could I hear without ears? Wasn’t sure I had much of anything now, and I had a feeling a coherent thing like a body might be too much for me to maintain at this point. I had a flash of a dim silver ball, a little twinkling light against a wall of clouds, bright, so bright, against the darkness. But I was probably just making that up. I couldn’t see, after all. I didn’t have—
“Cassie!”
I jerked, because that had been close. Really close. Close, close, somewhere . . .
There.
I felt a body, not mine, but familiar. Warm. So full of life. Hurt.
Why was it hurt?
“Cassie! Listen to me. You have to merge with your body. You have to do it now!”
My body. Yes. I had to get back to . . . but where was it? I put out a hand, or what would have been a hand if I had hands left, a tendril of power, anyway—
And then snatched it back, mewling in pain, after something took what felt like a bite right out of it. God, that had hurt. But it cleared my mind, or what was left of it, because I suddenly remembered. My body . . . was on the ground.
I dove, and something screeched in my ear, a furious, screaming cry, full of hunger and pain and desperation—
And then I was back, filling myself not in one quick rush as I had before, but in tiny trickles here and there. Funny, it didn’t feel that different, being back. It didn’t feel that different at all.
I stared up at the sky, at the rain falling almost straight down, highlighted here and there by stray beams of moonlight. It wasn’t enough to obscure the stars, which were winking with pinprick brightness through the trees. Or the moon, riding a sea of clouds overhead, silvering the landscape. Beautiful.
I wondered if I was dreaming. And then I knew I was, because he was there. Strong arms went around me, pulling me up. Beautiful, I thought, looking into clear green eyes.
He gathered me in, folding me under his chin, and I thought there was something . . . something strange about . . .
He had on a shirt too light for the weather, thin cotton with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, showing the tendons in his forearms. His forearms . . . that was it. I could see the arms he’d wrapped around me because he wasn’t wearing his old, battered coat. But Pritkin always wore . . . didn’t he? Some reason floated here and there, darting across my mind like a butterfly . . . but I couldn’t . . . couldn’t catch it. . . .
“Cassie.” Warm fingers trailed down my cheek, my neck. So warm, so warm. Was he healing? I couldn’t remember him being this warm. But it felt good. It felt . . .
A sigh leaked out like blood.
We sat like that for a moment, his chest hard at my back, his arms hard around me, so solid, grounding, when I felt like I could float away. My head lolled back against his shoulder. It seemed too hard to hold it up anymore. His hand came up, burying itself in my hair, clenching.
And then releasing as he carefully laid me down on the grass again.
His face swam into view over me. He looked different, and it wasn’t just the coat. His hair was a rumpled, silky mess. His eyes were hot, the lines around his mouth deeply etched. He was breathing hard. I watched it curl out of him, silver air on a silver sky. . . .
Maybe I’m dreaming, I thought vaguely. Maybe he wasn’t here at all, just some shade I’d conjured up because I didn’t want to die alone. But he looked real, sharply defined by dark shadows, highlighted at the curve of his neck, the breadth of his shoulders, by moonlight. Substantial, undeniably there. My fingers curled around his, and he caught them in a hard grip.
I thought I could write a ten-page paper, with illustrations, on all the ways Pritkin’s features differed from the usual standards of beauty, but that didn’t change anything about what I saw when I looked at the man.
“Beautiful,” I whispered. He closed his eyes.
Overburdened clouds broke open with a rumble and a sigh and rain fell like a veil across the horizon. I was watching it, mesmerized at how it blurred the distant mountains, at how it—
Pritkin’s hands framed my face. He bent closer, until his lashes brushed my cheek, until his lips touched mine. “Kiss me.”
Or, at least, that’s what I thought he said. But it was hard to hear. Something like voices murmured in my head, like a hive full of lazy bees, inarticulate and insistent, waxing and waning. I wished they’d shut up.
“Cassie,” his fingers tightened. “Like you mean it.”
And then he was kissing me, lips soft and slightly chapped on mine, the scratch of a three-day old beard against my skin, the smoothness of teeth, of tongue. He tasted like coffee and electricity and power, so much power. It filled my mouth like whiskey, like the best drink I’d ever had. It flowed down my throat, burned along every limb, snapping nerves back to life, filling veins, sending my heart racing in my chest.
Suddenly, I could breathe again, not shallowly, but fully, deeply. Only I didn’t want to breathe. I wanted him. My hands came up, burying in his hair, holding him, drinking from him, desperate and sloppy and greedy and ravenous. All warm and good and power and, God, oh, God, so good.
I groaned and rolled on top of him, so hungry, so hungry. His hands settled on my waist, not stroking, barely touching. Just holding me in place as I took what I needed. I could see it in my mind, like I saw the Pythian power sometimes, a glittering golden stream flooding out of him and into me, so good. And then his hands were clenching, holding me, bruisingly hard, for one last, brief instant—
And then there were people, people everywhere, running and yelling and pulling—on me. Pulling us apart. I tried to fight them and my limbs actually seemed to work now, to respond to my commands. But they were vampires and so strong and—
And he was gone. The hillside was spinning, people’s faces and the streamers of smoke and the rain all blurring together into a kaleidoscope of don’t care, because I didn’t want them; I wanted Pritkin. I struggled up, and someone tried to push me back down, and I snarled at them and they let me go.
I stumbled to my feet, naked
and muddy and bloody and half crazy, but he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there. And in a flash, I knew why. He’d told me himself—human or demon varieties. I’d given him power to save his life, and now he’d returned it. And while that didn’t mean anything in human terms, except emergency and necessity and the only possible way out, in demon terms it meant—
It meant—
“What have you done?” I screamed to no one, because he wasn’t there.
I dropped to my knees, screaming in fury, and the earth shook. A time wave boiled under the soil, causing roots to fly out of the ground, pushing up boulders, sending a cascade of mud and debris spilling down the hill and forcing several vamps to jump wildly out of the way. So much power, I thought dully.
And it did me no good, it did me no good, it did me no good.
“Now zat,” someone said approvingly, “is a Pythia.”
And then blackness.
Epilogue
I woke up in bed to find a vampire in my room.
He was sitting in the chair in the corner, flipping through a newspaper. The front page was turned to me, and the headline was a little hard to miss. One word, in huge black letters: GODDESS.
I stared at it for a long minute, feeling empty, feeling nothing. The vampire turned over another page. “You’re not supposed to be here,” I told Marco roughly.
A pair of bushy eyebrows appeared over the paper. “You kicking me out?”
“No,” I said. And then I burst into tears.
He came over and gathered me up. He was big and warm and smart enough not to say anything. I cried his shirt wet. I was hard on his shirts.
“I got more,” he told me, and gave me a handkerchief. It was big, like everything about him. I just held it.
I didn’t give a shit what I looked like.
“What happened?” I asked, after a while.
Marco’s big chest rose and lowered in a sigh. “Well, as I understand it, you showed up to your coronation naked, rolled around in some mud, dusted a dragon and then made out with the mage. Nobody really knows what happened, but it impressed the shit out of the senates. They signed the alliance early this morning.”