Tempt the Stars

by Karen Chance

  A really, really unsteady gun. The jury-rigged “sail” bowing out in front of us was only tied at the bottom, meaning that Pritkin and I had to hold on to the top ends because we didn’t have a mast. We also had to cling to the far side of the rug, so we didn’t get launched over the top and end this whole thing real quick. But crazily enough, it worked, maybe because the spell keeping the rug level also seemed to stabilize it, leaving only one small problem.

  The human body wasn’t designed as sailboat rigging.

  Really, really wasn’t, I thought, glancing desperately over at Pritkin. He was holding his end of the rug in his teeth and fumbling with something he’d looped around one arm. But I couldn’t tell what it was, or what he thought he was doing, because I was too busy feeling tendons stretch and ligaments pull and muscles shriek that this was not good, not good, not good—

  And then I was bouncing onto the middle of the rug.

  I panicked for an instant, thinking I’d just screwed us over, but we were still skipping ahead of the storm, and were as level as a jury-rigged vessel made out of scraps could be. Pritkin must have grabbed the piece I’d been holding, and was somehow managing to control both of them at once, because the sail was as full as ever. But I couldn’t turn around to find out how, because I was half-blind from the sand and trying desperately to cling to a bucking magic carpet that wasn’t nearly as fun as the legends would have you believe—

  Until it suddenly evened out.

  I twisted around, desperately hoping that Rosier had reconsidered, even knowing the odds on that. But over my shoulder was the same boiling mass of fury, just darker now as it swallowed the lights of the city we’d just left behind. But I barely noticed, because Pritkin was . . .

  “No,” I said, immediately rejecting what my eyes were telling me.

  I blinked, and then I pushed a fluttering scarf out of my face and blinked again. But the scene didn’t change. Pritkin was still leaning off the back edge of the rug, his feet were still anchored behind a rigid wrinkle in the cloth, and he was still arching back, to the point that he was lying almost flat. But now his forearms were looped around the ends of the long fabric sash he’d been wearing, which were tied securely around the top two corners of our sail.

  Our wind-filled sail. That he was directing by pulling on one side of the makeshift rope or the other, or by turning his body this way and that. So, basically, he was—

  “No!” I said again, because he was absolutely, positively not windsurfing in hell. It hurt my brain, my relatively sane-no-matter-what-Casanova-said brain, to even think the words, because things like this didn’t happen.

  Unless I really had gone nuts. An idea reinforced a second later, when Pritkin suddenly grinned—grinned—at me, and said something that the wind blew away. “What?”

  “Why do these plans of yours always involve me getting naked?” he yelled, making me blink again. And then scowl, because damn it, brain, this was no time to lose it.

  “You’re not naked!” I yelled back, because it was true, if not by much. He still had on a pair of silky gold trousers, ruffling in the wind and looking ridiculous next to the hard lines of his body.

  And because what else do you say to a grinning, windsurfing demon?

  He said something that sounded like “disappointed?” but wasn’t because that would be absurd.

  And then Caleb and Casanova dove by, just missing the front of our crazy contraption, because they didn’t seem to have figured out Pritkin’s modification. But with vampire strength and Caleb’s brawn, they seemed to be doing okay just holding the ends of the sail, although that gave them a lot less control than we had. But the bucking, weaving, crazy course they were on didn’t seem to bother them.

  At least, it didn’t seem to bother Caleb. Who I finally saw laughing and whooping and giving a good representation as to why war mages were viewed as being slightly off by the rest of us. Like Casanova, who was upholding the banner of sanity with a lot of horrified screeching.

  I turned toward Pritkin, to point out that, see—that was how a normal person reacted when being chased by a giant storm of a demon lord through the skies of hell. But I didn’t, because he yelled something. Something that sounded like “the gate.”

  And oh, crap.

  I turned back around, flattened out, and stared underneath the rigid edge of our sail. And saw to my horror that in a few short minutes we’d managed to cover almost as much ground as it had taken us hours to walk. Which meant that the portal to this world was coming up, and coming up fast.

  It was already visible, the twin peaks of the canyon where the doorway to Rosier’s court originated, well away from the city. So, I assumed, he’d have some warning if he was attacked. But I hadn’t, and I didn’t know for sure that I could do this, and Casanova’s outraged face demanding why I hadn’t tested Mother’s theory was starting to sound a lot more like the voice of reason and—

  “Shiiiit!” I yelled as the wind howled and the dust whirled and the guards around the portal saw us and hit the ground. And Casanova and Caleb screamed by again, and somehow snagged hold of the side of our carpet in the process, slinging us around in a huge arc. Because no one knew if the gate would stay open for anyone who wasn’t with me.

  Assuming it was going to open at all.

  I couldn’t tell if I was doing anything, because we spun back around, and then around again, still headed for possible oblivion, but in wild, whipping arcs that made concentration all but impossible. Or sight. Or anything that wasn’t clinging to our crazy craft and screaming.

  But vaguely, through the bands of golden-red sand I saw another swirl of colors, a bright azure twist that glowed from the inside. And that was all right, but I couldn’t tell if the shield was covering the portal or not because it was mostly transparent even in good conditions and these weren’t good conditions. But Pritkin, damn him, was doing his best to aim for it like I knew what I was doing when we’d conclusively proved that that was pretty much never the case, and suddenly Casanova and I were shrieking in unison but I didn’t care because oh God—

  And then we were through, tearing across a mad swirl of colors that usually made me dizzy but—too late—and then out into darkness.

  But not that of Rosier’s secondary court. That darkness was filled with sandstone and hushed servants and stately foreign elegance. This one was neon streaked, with flashing lights and peppy spend-more-money music and screaming slot machines. And a screaming guy, too, who we’d scooped up from the floor when Pritkin tried to course correct to keep us from plowing straight into some butt-ugly carpet, and instead sent us careening straight for a stalactite-littered ceiling.

  Including an enormous one looming like a dagger directly in our path.

  “Auggghhhh!” said the guy in the pink pig shirt.

  “Auggghhhh!” said Casanova, straight in my ear, because he’d somehow ended up on our carpet.

  Auggghhh, I didn’t say, because he’d grabbed me around the neck, trying to hold on, and was strangling me in the process.

  Which wasn’t healthy but wasn’t any worse than hitting the giant mass of fake rock that was about to skewer all three of us—

  Until Caleb sent a spell at the last second that burst the thing into a cloud of plaster dust and a zillion flying pieces.

  And then I was just coughing and hacking and trying to hold on. And simultaneously working to throw off Casanova’s death grip while also attempting to keep pig-man from sliding off the rug ahead of me. Because we were at least half a dozen stories up, careening around a cavernous space like a . . .

  Well, actually, there is nothing else quite like a speeding, sand-filled flying carpet full of freaked-out passengers.

  And then Pritkin finally managed to get it stopped, pulling up hard and sending us falling back into him. And then sprawling back onto the middle of the rug as it flattened out, the spell that had felt so
flimsy in hell perking right up now that we were back. On earth?

  I didn’t understand, but the view through the carpet fringe was unmistakably Dante’s main drag, where the theme was supposed to be ghost town, not Aladdin, but nobody seemed to care. A crowd was gathering, and staring up at us expectantly, like we were a better variation on the street performers who usually prowled around trying to scare people. Only this time, it was the other way around, judging by the way Casanova was still shrieking.

  I wasn’t, for the same reason that I hadn’t been yelling.

  “Help,” I choked, not able to get any air past the hundred and seventy pounds of vampire lying on my back. And as a result, a certain porcine T-shirt and the panicked guy wearing it were slowly sliding out of my hands—

  Pritkin reached over and grabbed the guy, jerking him back onto the rug, right before he gave the crowd the spectacle they were hoping for. A bunch of Dante’s security ran up underneath us, a moment too late, and then just stood there, staring upward like everyone else. Because their training stopped just short.

  Until the boss crawled across me, dirty and naked except for a battered pair of tighty whities, and stuck his no-longer perfectly coiffed head over the edge. And screamed again. Only this time, it was actual words.

  “Get me down, you cretins! Get me down, get me down, get me down!”

  The guards started looking at one another, and then a bunch of them linked hands and looked back up at him. Hopefully. Which you had to kind of admire considering who their boss was.

  I’d have thought he’d beaten that out of them years ago.

  I guess Casanova did, too, because he started yelling some more, but I couldn’t hear it. The wind had just picked up noticeably and blew the words away, like it was suddenly wafting my sweaty hair against my face. And since we were inside, that probably wasn’t a great—

  “John!” Caleb said urgently.

  “I know.”

  “Get us down!”

  “No time.”

  And there wasn’t. A second later, a storm swept through the hotel like a cyclone on a prairie. The crowd screamed and ran for cover, a couple of tumbleweeds went spinning by, and we started wafting around again, our makeshift sail partially reinflating before Caleb could snatch it off.

  I clung to the gently rotating rug, but it wasn’t the fear of falling that had me worried. It wasn’t even the storm, which we seemed to be in the eye of anyway. No, my fear was kind of occupied with the pair of elegant boots that were materializing on the carpet, as the storm swirled and spun and came together into the shape of a very pissed off demon lord.

  Who grabbed for me almost before he’d finished consolidating, but I rolled to the side and he got pig-man instead.

  Who he promptly dropped over the side.

  “Oh my God!” I lunged for the edge of the rug, and got a split-second glimpse of a stunned-looking TV reporter sitting on a bunch of crossed vamp arms, until they unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. And then I was jerked up to meet a pair of furious green eyes.

  “Try again,” Rosier breathed.

  “Drop her!” Pritkin snarled, pulling his knife and causing Rosier’s eyes to briefly flick to him.

  “Good plan,” he said, and dangled me over the edge. “It was the woman!” he yelled, apparently at the storm. “She deceived him! Take her and do as you will!”

  But the storm didn’t seem impressed. If anything, it got louder and more ferocious, and new shapes started to coalesce out of the blowing sand. One landed on our rug, causing the whole thing to bounce and throwing me into Rosier.

  Who promptly threw me off, only that turned out to be a good thing.

  A flash of light seared my retinas as I fell back, and the piece of rug right beside my body went spinning off on its own trajectory, with Casanova clinging to it like a shipwrecked sailor to the last barrel left afloat.

  For a second, I didn’t realize what was happening, until Pritkin shoved me behind him. And lashed out with his knife, sending a hand and the curved sword it held spinning out over the void, neon running along the blade like blood until it hit one of the fake storefronts. And stuck there, quivering.

  But not as much as I was when a now one-handed demon in black robes lunged for me. He was kicked viciously back onto Caleb’s carpet by Pritkin, where two of his buddies had been about to launch themselves at us. But his added weight sent them flying before they were ready, one onto a nearby roof and one straight at us—

  Where he landed on a sword held by . . . Rosier?

  And judging by the vicious satisfaction on Rosier’s face, I didn’t think it had been a mistake.

  “Call them off!” Pritkin yelled.

  “I can’t!” Rosier wrenched out the blade and kicked the body into the void. “They don’t answer to me!”

  “Then why did you bring them?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t bring them! I was trying to get my son away from them, before you managed to get him killed!” He glared at Pritkin. “What in the nine hells—”

  “Cassie wouldn’t leave without me! I was escorting her to safety!”

  “And how’s that working for you?” Rosier demanded as two more guards spun into existence—and were just as quickly dispatched.

  “I thought we were going to the Shadowland,” Pritkin said, looking at me.

  “We were,” I told him. “I thought . . . I must have shifted us—”

  “You can’t shift from my father’s kingdom!”

  “She didn’t,” Rosier snarled. “She linked the gates, mine and the one back to earth, bringing you straight back where she wanted you to be!”

  “I couldn’t have,” I said hotly. “I wasn’t even sure I knew how to open one—”

  “We came through on your wake!”

  Oh. “Then it was a mistake—”

  “Some mistake!” Rosier hissed. “You just put my son under interdict!”

  “I was restricted to Rosier’s domain on the council’s order,” Pritkin explained. “The Shadowland is neutral ground; I could have accompanied you there. But here—”

  “Here he’s an outlaw, to be killed on sight!” Rosier panted, having just thrown another guard over the side.

  “The council’s order?” I repeated, getting a bad feeling suddenly. “But why would they want—”

  “Because of you,” Rosier spat, getting in my face. “He has his own past with them. They never liked him, but it wasn’t until he allied with you that they began to fear him! A council-hating demon and a time-traveling, border-crossing menace? You could go back in history, destroy us all! Although you seem to be doing that well enough as it is!”

  “I’ve told you before, I’m no threat to the council—”

  “Yes, and it’s so reassuring to have your word on that. Unfortunately, they’d prefer something a bit more certain—like my son’s head!”

  “Why not mine?”

  “You’re needed for the war effort,” Rosier said bitterly. “He’s expendable—”

  “He’s no such thing!”

  “Tell them that.”

  “Summon them and I will!”

  Rosier’s eyes flashed neon, and if looks could kill . . . well, they would have saved him some trouble. “Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he snarled.

  Pritkin cursed. “Do it! There’s no choice!”

  “You planned this,” Rosier hissed. “You planned this all along. I know damned well she didn’t come up with it on her own—”

  Pritkin cursed again, although not as much as when the guards wised up, and four of them decided to attack us together. Four hit down onto our rug at the same time, landing between me and the two demon lords, and their combined weight sent me flying. Off and up and into the void, arms flailing and body desperately trying to shift—and failing.

  And staring into Pr
itkin’s panicked face as I started to fall, because it was a long, long way down.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Or it would have been if I hadn’t fallen straight onto Casanova.

  And that would have been great—if my added weight hadn’t caused his bit of rug to dip a full story downward. And then to fly back up. And then to bounce back and forth between the two extremes, yo-yoing us past the battle that was now raging on both carpets.

  “Ooooh,” the crowd said, impressed at our acrobatics.

  “Aaaaaah!” I said, grabbing Casanova around the neck, because I am not a member of Cirque du Soleil.

  “Get off!” he snarled, because I don’t think he’d planned the heroics. He’d been on hands and knees, peering over the edge of his unsteady perch as he tried to get his men re-formed into a safety net. But they were busy running around, trying to clear the crowd away from what they, at least, realized was not an act.

  And therefore there was no one to catch either one of us.

  Not that I was all that interested in getting down. The storm had dropped a few dozen more black-clad figures on the surrounding rooftops, too far away to reach the main battle, but only a few flights of stairs away from the floor. I assumed that was why Pritkin and Caleb were keeping the rugs in the air. Fighting on a tiny, unstable platform isn’t fun.

  But it beats getting mobbed by two dozen otherworldly soldiers all at the same time.

  Especially these soldiers.

  Between the dim light at Rosier’s court and the flurry of activity around our escape, I hadn’t gotten a good look at the elite, black-clad troops before. I was getting it now. One of the creatures’ hoods slid back enough to show me his face—if he’d had one. Instead, a blank bronze faceplate gleamed under the lights, and my stomach abruptly started crowding my toes.

  “Fuck,” I said, with feeling.

  “What?” Casanova’s head whipped around. “What now?”