by Karen Chance
Or his face, I thought, as Casanova hit the wall and bounced off, only to meet a very familiar fist on the way back to his feet.
“Pritkin!” Caleb and I yelled together, and the irate blond who had just followed Casanova out the door looked up, and then did a double take, fist still clenched. And then clenched the other one as a scowl to beat all scowls spread over his face and took up residence there. He stared at me, and he looked pissed.
Only no, that didn’t really cover it.
He looked like I’d felt when I woke up on that damp, burning hillside, only to find that he’d just given up the independence he’d worked so hard for, had suffered so much for, in trade for my life. When I realized that he’d just destroyed his future to save mine even though I hadn’t asked, and would never have asked, him to. The same impotent, all-consuming, helpless fury was on his face that had been on mine that night and I was suddenly, viciously glad of it.
And then he jerked Casanova off the wall and dragged him inside and we ran after them and slammed the door. Which was stupid, because it wasn’t like everybody didn’t know where we’d gone, and I didn’t think a flimsy piece of wood was going to hold them off for long. But it felt good to slam it, so good that I almost opened it and did it again.
I settled for glaring at Pritkin as he glared back, and dared him to say it. Dared him to tell me off for doing the exact same thing he’d done for me. Dared him to say anything.
“You broke my node!” Casanova screeched.
“You brought her here!” Pritkin said viciously, his eyes never leaving my face.
“Not willingly, you insufferable—”
“Where’s Rian?” I demanded, cutting him off, but staring at Pritkin. He looked different. The hair was longer, to the point it could actually be styled like a normal person’s. He was shaved and his skin looked soft, with a slight shimmer to it like the people’s downstairs. He was wearing some flowy, desert sheik caftan thing in a dark green that highlighted the breadth of his shoulders and brought out his eyes.
He looked terrible.
Pritkin’s idea of a beauty regimen included soap and deodorant; I’d never even smelled cologne on him before. But I was smelling it now, something wild and seductive and—and wrong. Pritkin smelled like sweat. He smelled like burnt gunpowder. He smelled like nasty potion ingredients and too-strong coffee and those little licorice candies he snuck around to eat because he didn’t want to set a bad example for my sweet tooth.
Only not now.
Now he smelled like this place.
Now he smelled like nothing.
“Where do you think?” Casanova said bitterly. “She told me we were coming here to look for John, but as soon as we arrived, she started asking after Rosier. When I demanded to know why, she left me and went to look for him on her own. And stupidly, I tried to warn—”
“I knew it was you,” Pritkin told me, quietly furious. “Before he said a damned word. As soon as I heard the bells, I knew—”
I slapped him. Hard. It came out of nowhere, to the point that I didn’t even realize I was going to do it until his head snapped back, until he was glaring at me over the imprint of my palm on his left cheek.
“I—we’ll talk later,” Casanova said, and slunk off somewhere.
“How’s it feel?” I asked, voice low and shaking. And I wasn’t talking about the slap.
“You—” Pritkin cut off and clamped his lips tight, as if he was afraid if he started he wouldn’t know where to stop. Which was fine by me. My adrenaline was pumping, my pulse was pounding, and anything he could throw—just any damned thing—
Except that, I thought, as I was dragged against a hard chest.
“You son of a bitch—” I began, only to have my voice choked off by something caught in my throat. It wasn’t sentiment. It was too dark for that. I thought it might be hate.
Yes, that was it. I hated him.
“Did you hear me?” Caleb barked, from across the room.
“What?” I snapped. And finally looked up. And blinked. Because a prison cell this wasn’t.
Instead of the cramped, potion-filled, messy room in Vegas, which even on a good day looked like it was inhabited by a cross between a hyperactive toddler and Rambo, this place was . . . beautiful. Graceful. Perfect.
It was huge, with couches and pillows and rugs scattered around, and a bed big enough for seven or eight people. And maybe designed for it, considering where we were. There were arched doorways on either end, leading off to even more space, but the big story was the balcony, which was easily as wide as the room and ran its entire length.
Pierced bronze lanterns swayed softly on silken chains, surrounded by geometrical halos. A breeze sent long white curtains wafting languorously into the room, so diaphanous the stars could be seen through them. Their edges caressed diamond-shaped stones on the floor, in every possible shade from honey to palest gold. I stared at them, trying to wrap my head around the idea of Pritkin living in a palace instead of the middle of Dante’s tacky clutter, of him wearing fine, embroidered clothes instead of old, scratched leather, of him inhabiting a space as beautiful as it was alien, with nothing, not a book, not a vial, not a picture, nothing, to remind him of the world he’d lost.
As if it hadn’t mattered. As if he hadn’t even missed—
“Cassie!” Caleb said, more urgently this time. “Look at this.”
I ran over to the balcony, which gave a pretty good view along the side of the cliff and over the sprawling city. But the twinkling lights didn’t hold my attention nearly as well as what was coming down from above. So that’s what’s up there, I thought, watching a bunch of dark figures literally running down buildings and spars of rock above the palace. They weren’t using the streets; they were leaping from roof to roof to outcropping as if making their own highway.
And every single one of them was headed straight for us.
“It looks like somebody called out the elite troops,” Caleb said grimly. “What we’re gonna do, we do now.”
“Get her into the study,” Pritkin said, coming up behind us. “Barricade yourselves inside. I can’t call off the guards, but I can call my father—”
“We’re not hiding; we’re leaving,” I said flatly.
“Not until I negotiate safe passage—”
“Your father isn’t going to grant safe passage for you!”
“That is irrelevant—”
“Bullshit.”
“—as you knew quite well before you started this insanity! Damn it, Cassie! I thought you had more sense—”
“Have you met her?” Casanova asked, sticking his bloody nose onto the balcony.
And I lost it. I grabbed the front of Pritkin’s gold-embroidered caftan—and since when did he wear a goddamned caftan?—and dragged him down to me. “I am going to say this one time. You are my servant. Sworn to my service until death. I never released you from that obligation. And if I want to come after you, I’ll damned well come after you!”
Something shifted behind his eyes, something dangerous. “And I’ll shut up and like it.”
“Right now I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not. But I’m not leaving without you, so you may as well—”
The door blew open, and Caleb and Pritkin both flung out a hand. And whoever it was blew right back out again. The door clicked softly shut.
Pritkin glared at me for another second, and then transferred the look to Caleb. “The rugs,” he snarled, and for a second, Caleb looked as confused as I was. And then—
“Aw, hell no!”
“You have a better idea?” Pritkin snapped, striding over and grabbing a big gold one that was anchoring a pleasant conversation area just inside the bedroom.
Caleb looked heavenward, but then apparently remembered where he was and gave up. And snatched up a red one from the balcony floor. And in the
process sent one of the guards tumbling over the railing and into the night, who had just jumped down on top of it from the floor above.
Caleb grabbed Pritkin’s arm as his buddy tossed what looked like an expensive rug after the demon. “My magic’s weak here,” he warned.
“That down in the souk was weak?” I asked, in disbelief.
Caleb glanced at me. “With the amount of power I let loose, the whole damned market should have been in flames. As it was, we barely made it here. And I don’t know—”
“It’ll have to be enough,” Pritkin said grimly.
“Sure. Says the half demon.”
“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“After this?” Caleb rolled his eyes. And then he grabbed Casanova. “Are we taking this one?”
“Yes!” Casanova said heatedly. “I don’t want to be here when Rosier finds out what you’re doing!”
“What we’re doing?”
“None of this is my fault!”
“Oh, you’ll be here,” Pritkin said grimly. But then he threw him over the balcony, too.
I was about to freak out, because that was a damned long way down, even for a vampire. But I didn’t get a chance. Because I was next.
I didn’t even have time to scream before my butt was bouncing on something firm but soft, not two yards under the balcony’s lip. I didn’t have time to see what it was before Pritkin landed beside me. And before we took off, in a blur of wind that had my eyes tearing up.
Or maybe that was the spell that flashed through the air right in front of my face, and set something on fire.
I turned back around, because that had come from above. And saw a bunch of guards hanging over the railing of the floor above Pritkin’s, firing what looked like balls of pure lightning at us. They burned like it, too, I thought, smelling singed wool.
And realized that the something on fire was the something we were sitting on.
Something big and gold and—
And missing a corner when Pritkin pulled a knife and sliced off the burning bit of what had been a nice rug. No, not a rug, I thought blankly, gripping the suddenly very flimsy feeling sides. Now it was a flying—
Target, floating around over the city on a gentle wafting motion that was going to get us roasted any minute now. I stared across the void at Casanova, who was also clinging to the edge of his carpet with both hands, peering over the side with his ass in the air. And with an expression that somehow managed to combine pissed off and terrified.
And you know things are bad when you start agreeing with Casanova.
“They’re still shooting at us!” I told Pritkin, who was crawling around, muttering something at the carpet.
“And this surprises you?”
“Yes! They have to know you’re up here!”
“Obviously.”
“But they could kill you!”
“That would be the idea.”
“You’re saying there are people here who want you dead?” A terse nod, but no information. Of course not. “Damn it, Pritkin! I don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t!” he said, turning on me savagely. “Which is why you shouldn’t have come!”
“That’s why you shouldn’t have left!”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“Neither did I!”
“Get a room!” Casanova screeched as another spell flashed through the space between us. “And put these damned things into high gear or we are all going to die!”
“Layering spells isn’t easy under the best of terms,” Pritkin told him. “Which these are not!”
“What layering? Just move this thing!”
“Levitation spell—one,” Caleb said, holding a finger in front of his face. “Keeping the damned carpet stiff and level—two.” Another finger. “And now you want a propulsion spell, which is three, and which ain’t happening.”
Casanova stared from him to Pritkin and back again. “You mean, you threw us off the balcony and you didn’t have a plan for getting us down?”
“Someone once said, if you’re in a burning building, you jump out a window. You figure everything else out on the way to the ground.”
“It’s the ground I’m worried about!”
And I didn’t blame him. A drop like that was one of the few things that could kill a master vampire. But it wasn’t like we could go any lower. The red lightning balls seemed to have a range, and we had drifted too high for them to reach.
We’d also started moving forward a little, barely fast enough to ruffle my hair, although that would have been an improvement—if the guards hadn’t just switched to other spells. These looked different, with long tails and a wider dispersion; I guess because they were harder to aim at this distance. But the result was a sky full of what looked a lot like fireworks, red and pink and yellow and orange, and would have been really beautiful . . .
If we hadn’t been flying through the middle of them.
Casanova shrieked as another spell burned past, shedding yellow sparks that ate tiny holes in his robe before something Caleb muttered put them out. I was more worried about the shock waves from the explosions, which were rocking us every which way, like a boat on the high seas.
I’d just had the thought when another wave hit us, heavier than the rest, tipping the rug I was clinging to with both hands and a foot by at least thirty percent. I slid to the edge, and for a second, I stared straight down at a city full of deep blue shadows and orange lantern-light and exploding spells and streets full of people staring back at us. But I didn’t scream.
Because there was one thing, at least, that I wasn’t seeing.
“Why aren’t the incubi coming after us?” I gasped as Pritkin grabbed me and the rug wobbled back into place. “They can reach us no matter how high we are!”
“Yeah, except that we shot one a few minutes ago,” Caleb reminded me, the light from a passing bolt staining his face gold.
“With what?” Pritkin demanded.
Caleb held up the little silver gun I’d given him.
Which is when Pritkin started cursing.
“We didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “Which is more than they’re trying to do to us!”
“There are many among the lords who would gladly see me dead,” Pritkin said, reaching over and snatching his gun back. “But they aren’t going to attack me—or those under my protection—right in front of my father. Unless you two give them a perfect reason by shooting at them!”
“It was only one,” Caleb said diffidently.
“You’re as bad as she is!”
“Why do they want you dead?” I demanded. “You’re Rosier’s heir—”
“And as such stand between them and power. I pushed everyone a step farther away from the throne the day I returned.”
“But if they can’t kill you in front of your father—”
“They can’t. At least not openly, although half the guards around here are in the pay of one faction or another. But they’re not the main—”
“Augghhh!” That was Casanova, bloodstained face lit up by a ruddy spell, giving him a truly hellish look. Not that he needed the help right now. “Am I the only sane one here? Am I the only one who realizes this is not the time for a chat? I don’t care what you do or how you do it, but flying carpets are supposed to fly!”
“In the movies, maybe,” Caleb said. “But in case you didn’t notice, this is not in a movie. That”—he pointed at the glittering city, so far below us now—“is not CGI and you are going to get shoved off this rug if you don’t shut up and let us think!”
Only that didn’t seem to be going so well.
And that was before something rumbled the air around us like thunder. Only this place didn’t look like it got a lot of thunder. And I didn’t think thunder would put quite that exp
ression on Pritkin’s face.
“What is that?” Casanova asked, voice strained. Like he couldn’t take any more bad news right now. Which was too bad, since that was the only kind we seemed to get.
“A demon prince in the seat of his power,” Pritkin said tightly, as a massive sandstorm broke over the cliffs.
Chapter Eighteen
It dwarfed the city, making the considerable sprawl look like a child’s toy in comparison. All along the horizon, as far as I could see in both directions, it came, a boiling mass of dirt and dust and outraged fury dozens of stories high. Casanova stared at it for a second, wild-eyed and disbelieving, like a man who had successfully dodged death for centuries seeing it come straight at him.
And then he started stripping.
He ripped off the dusty robes he’d worn all day even as the first gusts hit us and sent them billowing out all around him. He was fumbling and cursing and acting like a crazy man. But for once, I didn’t think he was.
For once, I thought he had a damned good idea.
I grabbed Pritkin’s pretty green caftan.
“Take it off!” I yelled, over the howl of the winds that were already almost on us, and for a miracle, he didn’t argue.
Maybe he’d figured it out, too, or maybe the noise made discussion impossible. All I know is he skinned out of it, and thankfully, it was good, heavy wool, comfortable, but warm for those cold desert nights. And sturdy—I hoped.
I lashed one end of it around a corner of the rug and reached for the other one—and realized we didn’t have it thanks to the spell that had burned it away. There followed a mad scramble to get the robe untied and to crawl around to the other end of the rug and get it into place with Pritkin’s help. He said something, but I couldn’t hear him with the wind howling in my ears and the first flurries of dust scouring my face and panic making my hands fumble as badly as Casanova’s, who I couldn’t even see anymore.
But we got it tied, and the makeshift craft turned just before the storm hit. A furious blast of wind and sand slammed into us, with enough force to have launched us to the moon. Or across a city at insane speeds, like a bullet shot out of a gun.