by Karen Chance
“It means long. We need other options.”
Rosier scowled.
“And we have one. Don’t we?”
Nothing.
What a surprise.
But then he did surprise me, by leaning over the bed, close enough to mouth, Two.
I blinked, brain still foggy, and followed his gaze to the door.
All it showed me was a tousle-headed blonde in an oval mirror, with dark circles under dazed blue eyes, wearing a high-collared white nightie. I guessed the shorts and T-shirt I’d started out with had offended local sensibilities. My new attire offended mine, making me look about twelve. It also did not give me any answers.
My eyes found Rosier’s again in confusion.
He sighed. Guards, on the other side of the door.
Yes?
They have the key. He held up his chained wrist.
I looked from it to the skinny, hairy legs poking out from under his tunic. And the arms that in no way resembled his son’s. And the too-soft middle. Rosier looked like he’d never lifted anything heavier than a champagne glass in his life.
Which might explain why he kept getting beaten up . . . by little girls.
Yes?
He sprawled across the bed to glare at me. And to whisper: “I’m a lover, not a fighter, but I’m damn good with sleight of hand. Just help me get them in here!”
Fine.
“It wouldn’t have to be for long,” I said, going with the argument I’d planned to have anyway. Because I wasn’t the only one who could shift. Of course, Rosier couldn’t time-travel, and his spatial shifts only went one place. But right now I’d take it. “A short trip into the hells—”
“No.”
“Really short. Like a couple of minutes—”
“Not a couple of seconds.”
“—just long enough for us to move a block or two and get past whatever wards they’ve got on this place—”
“Going into a minefield to avoid a fence. Yes, that sounds safe.”
“You know what’s not safe?” I asked, getting genuinely pissed. “Pritkin stuck in freaking Wales about to die, that’s what’s not safe.”
“And if I could do something about it, don’t you think I would?”
“Not if it meant risking your precious neck. You’ll let your own son die when a small risk—”
“Small? Small?” Rosier was beginning to look a bit flushed himself. “I put so much as a toe in hell, any hell, and I might as well have a neon sign over my head reading FREE BUFFET! I wouldn’t last two minutes—I doubt I would last one. And in case you forgot, this mission requires both of us, or I wouldn’t be here talking to you!”
“Ditto! If I could do this alone, believe me—”
“Alone? You can’t walk across a room alone—”
“I did pretty well when you abandoned me in freaking medieval Wales—”
“—without starting a war!”
“I didn’t start it! I had nothing to do with it!”
“And yet there you were. There you always—”
“This isn’t about me!” I yelled. “You have to be the most selfish, uncaring, infuriating man since—”
“Emrys?”
“Pritkin! It’s Pritkin, you prick! And he’s nothing like you!”
“He’s exactly like me,” Rosier said, scrambling across the bed to get in my face. “He doesn’t want to admit it; he’s never wanted to. You saw him, mooning over those damn fey. Ooooh, look, a Sky Lord! When they’re nothing but insane murderous bastards, every single one—”
“No arguments here.”
“—living in one measly, intensely creepy world—”
“Says the man from hell.”
“—when he could have thousands. And the knowledge of millennia, time out of mind. But always, always that perverse boy was attracted to every damn thing besides his own birthright!”
“The fey are his birthright, too. You saw to that yourself—”
“A fact I’ve regretted every day since!”
“—and, in fact, pretty much every problem Pritkin has can be traced back to you, can’t it?” I asked. “From leaving him to grow up with zero guidance, to taking him from earth before he was ready, to putting him in a terrible situation as your heir—”
“You understand nothing!”
“—to placing that damn prohibition on him—”
“To save his life, you wretched, wretched—”
“—to dragging him back to hell again, when you knew damn well—”
“That was your mother’s fault!” Rosier moved like lightning, wrapping his free hand around my neck. “She took my sire, long before I was ready to fill his shoes! She left me and my people vulnerable. She forced me to have to find a way to increase my power, and now her daughter is trying to take him away! I hate you! I hate your whole damn family!”
The door burst open, a fact I was grateful for, since I wasn’t entirely sure Rosier remembered that we were acting. Two war mages stood there, with their long leather coats and butt-kicking boots and annoyed expressions not looking all that different despite the era. But they didn’t come any closer.
Maybe because one of them had a blowgun.
“Well, fuck,” Rosier said as a dart caught him in the neck. He face-planted onto the bed. The door slammed.
I looked at it for a moment, then at my passed-out companion. And then I sighed and pulled the pillow back over my head.
Chapter Two
“There’s always option two,” Rosier said, sometime later.
At least, that was what I thought he’d said. But whatever knockout drug they’d given him was making his tongue loll, and it was kind of hard to tell. I looked up, but he just lay there and drooled at me. I waited for a minute, then went back to fiddling with the metal around my wrist.
It wasn’t part of the handcuffs.
I’d given up on those. They were solid steel and probably overlaid with spells to make them extra hard to pick, given experience. Not that it mattered; I wasn’t Houdini.
Of course, I wasn’t a dark mage, either, but I didn’t have a lot to work with here.
Tiny silver daggers, like links in an especially deadly chain, slid under my fingertips. I assumed Gertie had relieved me of my only weapon when I got here, but it didn’t matter. I’d tried to get rid of the little bracelet a hundred times myself, after finding out that it had once belonged to a dark mage. But every time I took it off, it was back in place moments later, spit-shined and gleaming, to the point that I could swear it was smirking at me.
It kind of looked like that now, winking smugly in the light of a nearby lamp, like it knew what I was thinking. On a positive note, it could throw out little ghostly knives that looked about as substantial as mist but cut like well-oiled steel. On the negative, I didn’t always control what they cut.
Or who.
“Did you hear me?” Rosier demanded.
I looked up again. I’d rolled him onto his back and tucked the too-cheerful coverlet around him, because his tunic kept riding up and I’d had enough trauma for one day. As a result, he now resembled a colicky baby with wild tufts of blond hair sticking out everywhere.
Huh. I guess part of it was genetic, I thought, and patted one down. “I heard you.”
“Well?”
“Well what? You’re the one who said no.”
“What?” The colicky look intensified. “When did I say that?”
I frowned at him. “A few minutes ago. You said no shifting—”
“Shifting wasn’t option two—”
“Of course it was. Mug the guards, option one. Shift into the hells, option two—”
“That was your option two! I never—”
“That was my option one,” I corrected. “This is option two.”
&nb
sp; I held up my wrist, and his eyes focused on it. Or tried to. But then I guess they managed, because they widened alarmingly. “That’s dark magic!” said the demon lord.
“Dark magic that just might get us out of here.”
“Dark magic doesn’t get people out of trouble,” he said, struggling with the blanket. “It gets them into it!”
“The mages who use it seem to do okay.”
“Yes, until they get addicted to the magic they steal from everyone they can get their hands on, and end up little better than junkies! And start doing progressively crazier things to get more of it—”
“I’m not talking about mainlining the stuff,” I said—to myself, because Rosier wasn’t listening.
“—summoning my people, trying to trap them—think of it,” he said, green eyes blazing, “beings thousands of years old enslaved to a group of idiots so hopped up on their latest fix they can’t see straight! Until we find a way free and eat their faces!”
“Okay, I get that you don’t like it—”
“I loathe it! All demons do. If you’re smart, so will you!” he added, panting a little because the blanket was being stubborn. But he finally managed to get the arm that wasn’t chained to the bed free and flailed it around.
I moved back so he didn’t accidentally clock me. “Then I assume you have a better idea?”
“Of course!” he said unhelpfully, and the flailing arm flailed some more. Until it landed on my leg. And then just stayed there, the hand clenching.
It took me a moment, because the other hand was clenched, too, on the edge of the bed, probably so he wouldn’t fall off. And because he was still mostly wrapped in the quilt, like a cherry-covered burrito. And because he was scruffy and smelly and crazed-looking—
And pawing at my thigh.
“Eww!” I jumped back, all the way to the headboard.
“It’s the only way,” he insisted.
“Like hell it’s the only way!”
“I’m an incubuth. I can lend you thome energy—” he said, around the foot I had smushed in his face.
“I have energy!”
“You have the Pythian power but can’t access it. I can help—”
“Stop touching me!”
“—by increasing your personal strength—”
“I’m warning you!”
“—so you can shift uth out of here. Damn it, girl!” Rosier glared at me through a gap between my toes. “This isn’t exthactly fun for me, either!”
“Then cut it out!”
“I’m not . . . going to die . . . because of you! Now help me—”
“Oh, I’ll help you,” I growled, and kicked him.
He reared back, holding his nose and looking outraged. “You bith!” he screamed. “You coldhearted bith!”
And then he grabbed me.
But he was still handcuffed to the bed, which limited his range, and wrapped in the blanket, which limited his motion, and apparently, he hadn’t been trained in hand-to-hand combat by his son.
I had.
“Coldhearted? Coldhearted?” I got him in a headlock. “You’re the most coldhearted, conniving, evil son of a bitch I have ever—”
“Get off me!”
“—known in my life—”
“If you kill me, who is going to help you get Emrys back?” he wheezed.
“I’m not going to kill you! I’m going to make you wish you were dead!”
“Trust me. Working with you, I already do!”
The door slammed open. We looked up. I expected more grumpy mages, probably pissed that we were making so much noise
That wasn’t who I saw.
“Oh, fuck that!” Rosier screeched, and disappeared, just as a cadre of the demon council’s personal guard flooded into the room.
And since he was still cuffed to the bed, it went with him.
But I didn’t.
I hit the floor face-first, hard enough to see stars, not understanding how I’d been left behind. Until I saw the cut chain dangling off my wrist. And the ghostly knives gleefully zipping around the room, stabbing everything in sight. And the glass breaking, and the mages shielding, and the council’s guards hunkering down in their armor—
And then the lights went out.
It took me a second to realize that Rosier was back. And that it was lucky I’d still been sprawled on the floor, because the bed was, too. I hit my head on the underside anyway, which was on casters, so it was just high enough to accommodate a pissed-off Pythia. And then another one was yelling: “Forget the demon! Get the girl!”
But the council’s guards didn’t take orders from anyone except the council. And a second later my chin hit the floor again, when half a dozen supernatural soldiers leapt onto the bed on top of me. And then went flying back off, because war mages do, in fact, follow the Pythia’s orders.
Well, you know, most Pythias.
And then all hell broke loose.
There were suddenly bodies flying and hitting the floor and shaking the bed, and there went my chin again. And instead of stars I was starting to see more like whole galaxies. But not so much that I failed to notice the frantic, manacled hand waving at the end of the bed.
I grabbed it, and was jerked out and up. I had a split second to see Gertie herself blending in with the wallpaper, a bunch of war mages battling some faceless demon guards, and a confused, very young-looking version of my predecessor, Agnes. Oh, look, I thought fuzzily.
And then I was looking at something else. Something that looked a lot like the Shadowland, a minor demon realm with dark streets and shuttered buildings and absolutely nothing to recommend it, except that it happened to be close to earth. But I wasn’t sure because I didn’t get much more than a glimpse.
Because the bed had started rolling this way.
“Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up!” Rosier was yelling and pulling, and I was stumbling and scrambling, and he was heaving hard enough that I thought my arm would break.
Instead, I ended up on top of the bed, after having been dragged over the metal footboard less than ceremoniously. But that nonetheless would have been an improvement—except that the bed was still rolling. Rosier, damn him, had landed us at the top of an incline.
A big one.
“Help me stop it!” I yelled as our ride picked up speed, shaking down the hill on its little casters fast enough to throw up sparks from the pavement.
Or maybe they were from something else.
“Never mind,” I said, and flattened out.
“What?” Rosier stared around. “Why?”
I jerked him down with me, just as a curved sword appeared, vibrating out of the footboard between us.
“That’s why,” I said.
Looked like some of the guys had tagged along.
Make that one guy, who must have been holding on to the bed when it flashed out, and was now running and then dragging behind us as we rattled down the street.
Fast.
But not fast enough to throw him off.
Because the council’s guards don’t get tired, or feel pain. They can’t. They’re spirits trapped inside golemlike bodies, only instead of clay, they’re made of an almost impervious metal that takes a beating and keeps on killing. As this one demonstrated by launching himself from a prone position onto the bed—
And then lost a head, when a sword flashed and struck it clean off.
It went bouncing across the street and I looked up to see Rosier holding the blade he’d ripped out of the footboard. And then screaming, I thought to let off excess emotion. But I realized there might be another reason when, instead of collapsing, the headless body started whaling on him.
It wasn’t doing a great job, not being able to see, but it was a small bed. And Rosier wasn’t doing a great job of evading, either. Maybe because
he was still handcuffed in place.
“Do something!” he shrieked, and I was trying, but pulling didn’t work and shoving didn’t work and when I grabbed for the sword that had gotten knocked out of his hand, a metal fist closed on it first. And the next second, Rosier was dodging rapid-fire sword blows that were raining down on the footboard, sending sparks flying and almost cutting through in places.
Cutting through.
“The cuffs!” I yelled at Rosier.
“What?”
“Hold out your cuffs!”
He looked like he didn’t know what I was saying, but then I extended my arms and light dawned.
“Are you crazy?”
Then it didn’t matter anyway, because the metal body went flying in a cloud of flames, sailing off toward a nearby building like a headless Tony Stark. I looked behind us to see half a dozen war mages booking it down the hill with enhanced speed, leather coats flying out behind them like action movie stars. And a great big grin of relief spread over my face.
Which was still there when the second fireball launched.
A mass of flames came boiling through the air, which is exactly as scary as it sounds when it’s coming straight at you. I screamed, Rosier screamed, and the bed suddenly leapt up off the street and traveled maybe eight feet through the air before hitting down again. Because we’d just taken a turbo shot to the ass.
And then it burst into flames.
“What are they doing?” I screamed.
“Keeping us from escaping!”
Great.
Especially since we weren’t escaping now, not on top of a merrily burning bed. And these weren’t normal flames, and they were eating this way fast. And Rosier was still chained in place and the mages were still gaining and we were still tear-assing down the hill, until suddenly we weren’t.
We were tear-assing through an open-air market.
An open-air market on earth.
A row of Victorian-looking buildings flashed by on either side, with tables set up in front piled with wares, and people diving for cover. At least most people. A vendor nimbly danced out of the way, but his cart didn’t. And there was no way to avoid it with no steering and no brakes. And then it didn’t matter when we hit it head-on and were inundated with a wave of hot water filled with . . . pigs’ feet?