Shatter the Earth

by Karen Chance

  I was too busy wondering why Pritkin didn’t know how to kiss me.

  Not that it was a bad kiss, but compared to his usual it was . . . not clumsy, exactly, just . . . odd. As if he didn’t know what I liked. But he figured it out quickly enough, nipping my bottom lip, sucking on my tongue, then plundering my mouth so passionately that I forgot about everything else.

  Until he suddenly drew back, and the impressive torso floated up out of the water. There was nothing underneath, after all, I realized, except for unformed steam. It was boiling away into the air, making him look like a genie coming out of a lamp, and was frankly disappointing.

  But not for long. The steam started to thicken and come together as I watched, just as the chest had, forming a taut backside, powerful thighs, and the tops of thick calves. And, finally, the last piece of the puzzle emerged and . . . made me blink.

  Pritkin was a big boy, but not like this. The glistening column of flesh, still water bright and crystal clear, seemed too large, too broad, and brought up strange thoughts in my sleep fuzzed brain. Would it even fit? Would it have to? If it was water, shouldn’t it be able to become any shape I liked? Fitting me exactly, filling me precisely, taking on the exact dimensions that I wanted, and suddenly, desperately needed?

  I didn’t know where these thoughts were coming from, but he seemed to be responding to them. He took himself in hand, and even the sight of one of those sudsy gloves caressing the watery column didn’t make me want to laugh. He coaxed it to become even thicker, even longer, but all the while, those strange eyes weren’t on himself.

  They were on me.

  And they were . . . odd.

  I’d have expected them to be transparent like the rest of him, or white with the steam still boiling around inside that strange skin. They weren’t. I couldn’t tell if it was him, or if there was something behind him that was being distorted by the watery body, but they were black and gleaming.

  “Pritkin?” I said, and for the first time, heard the unease in my voice.

  There was no reply. Just a ripple in the distortion as he moved closer. Close enough that I could feel the steam pouring off that strange skin, hot against my own; close enough that I could taste the suds dripping off his shoulder onto my lips; close enough that I could see that no, it wasn’t something behind him; those eyes really were black and glittering.

  Beautiful, I thought. And framed by long, crystalline lashes that reflected the lamplight like tiny icicles. Like his spiky hair, half colorless, and half blond when the light hit it just right. Or the stubble on his cheeks, because, as usual, he’d forgotten to shave.

  I lifted a hand, unthinking, and cupped his face. And I could feel the whiskers against my skin. They were tiny pinpricks, hard and fully realized, and flooding with color now, too.

  But it wasn’t from the lamp this time. My hand moved along his jaw, but instead of leaving clear water behind, it left something else. A print in brilliant peach remained in place, as if I’d dipped my hand into paint and then caressed his face with it.

  It glowed warm and bright and alive for an instant, before sinking through the watery surface and dissolving into the whole. But it didn’t disappear. It lent a faint tinge to the face, to the entire head. I could see it spiraling out as the steam had done, filling the area before falling downwards toward the shoulders, and being lost in the larger sea of water below.

  The same thing was happening to the new fingermarks I had made, which spotted his jawline for a second, before being absorbed like the rest. They didn’t make much of a difference, either, at least to his coloring. But they did have an effect—on the eyes.

  Unlike the rest of him, they held their own color, with no help from me. And they had noticeably brightened. Black and glittering, like all the stars in the heavens were staring down at me.

  Watching him prepare to take me.

  Because that’s what he was about to do, I realized, as a cool hand smoothed down my body, taking on color and warmth as it did so. And then dipped in between my legs, and there was no clumsiness this time, no hesitancy. Two fingers entered me, making me gasp as they pushed deep, exploring my contours as if he’d never felt them before.

  And when they emerged, they were as real and solid as if carved out of flesh.

  Okay, I thought abruptly, time to wake up now. I instinctively tried to move back, but the still mostly translucent fingers on my thigh clenched, holding me in place, and a watery knee kept me splayed open on the other side. I lay there watching the room through the man-shaped distortion above me, and felt a little like that, too: confused and disoriented, and utterly immobilized.

  Not that it mattered, I thought; all I had to do was tell him to let me up. This was Pritkin, after all. Even in a dream, he would never—

  My thoughts cut off as something pushed against my body, thick and huge and hotter than skin warm. And big—still far too big, I thought in rising panic. I started really fighting then, still not going anywhere but struggling hard enough to send waves of water flowing over the sides of the tub.

  Until a strange languor flooded me, slowing my struggles, fogging my mind, and sending my body slowly spilling back against the porcelain, unable to struggle or even to remember exactly why I had been. Unable to do anything except watch in disturbed fascination as the color of my body surged upward, spilling onto his torso, splashing his hipbones with color, pooling in his naval, washing pale fingers up as far as his bottom ribs.

  And wherever it went, the swirling steam receded, and the body took on a very different appearance. Not just in color but in substance, from vague and undefined to hard and solid, with thick musculature, velvety skin, and tiny golden hairs that caught the light. No longer a phantom made of mist but a real, tangible man.

  And, suddenly, this was no longer some dream induced fantasy, distant and hazy. It was about as immediate as it got, frighteningly so. Yet my body went nowhere, ignoring my mind’s increasingly strident commands.

  Because he’d finally finished his metamorphosis.

  He was gasp-inducingly large from what I could see, but not so much as before. Not enough to stop the smooth head from pushing inside; not enough to halt the broad shaft, still groan-inducingly big, from beginning to follow; not enough to stop him from—

  “Pritkin!” I screamed, staring up into those glittering eyes as his hips abruptly thrust forward.

  And realized something that I should have all along.

  That wasn’t Pritkin.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The door burst open, letting in a flood of cold air from the hall. I barely noticed, because another flood—of hot rain—was suddenly pelting down all around me, sending my body plunging under the bathwater. And when I came up, spluttering and gasping—

  The fake Pritkin was gone.

  I stared around at the now mostly steam free bedroom, panting and wild-eyed, but there was nothing to see. Just a few swirling wisps in the air, a lot of water on the floor, and Rhea, silhouetted in the doorway clutching a tray. One she almost threw onto a table before running to my side.

  She appeared to be alone. And since no one else came thundering up the stairs, I assumed that my shriek hadn’t been as loud as I’d thought. Although maybe not.

  Rhea looked freaked the hell out.

  “Are you all right?” She asked, staring around now, too. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  She had her hand on her sleeve, where she kept the wand she’d learned to use while at the covens. But she didn’t draw it. Probably because there was nothing to aim at except for a half-drowned Pythia.

  A very confused one.

  “What did you see?” I croaked, clutching her arm.

  “See?”

  “When you opened the door! What did you see?”

  “I—nothing, Lady.” She stared at me, her eyes wide. “I heard you scream and thought you were being attacked. I burst in—”

  “And saw what?” I knew I probably sounded like a broken record, but ri
ght then, I didn’t care.

  “I didn’t. See anything, I mean. There was so much steam, and then it cleared and—and there was just you.”

  I swallowed and stared around some more. Yeah, only there hadn’t been just me. Had there?

  Suddenly, I wasn’t sure. The images of the attack, so fresh and clear a moment ago, had already faded in my mind, making me doubt myself. And try as I might, I could find exactly zero signs of an intruder. No marks on my body where that watery hand had held me down. No footprints on the wet boards except for Rhea’s. No anything.

  Yet I could still feel the strange lips on mine, the alien tongue exploring my mouth, the foreign hands charting my body, because my assailant didn’t know it. While Pritkin—the real Pritkin—had sucked and licked and studied every inch of me. But this man, this thing, hadn’t, and didn’t know what made me wriggle, what made me sigh, what made me writhe. He’d had to figure it out, the same way that he’d had to change his size in order to—

  I shivered suddenly, hard, and Rhea’s hands gripped my shoulders. “I’m getting the Lady,” she told me, and it was her firm voice. The loving but implacable one she used for younger initiates who had ventured too close to the balcony railing.

  “No,” I said hoarsely. Gertie already thought I was a hot mess; I didn’t need to confirm it. Not when I wasn’t even sure what had happened myself.

  “Lady—”

  “Check the wards. Quietly,” I added, grasping her arm.

  She looked like she was about to protest, but something on my face stopped her. “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything. Everything.” I didn’t even know what to call it.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” she said, her face conflicted.

  “I’ll be all right.” If anything else happened, anything at all, I was shifting the hell out of here. Naked or not!

  But Rhea had her mother’s stubbornness, if masked behind a sweeter façade. And my response clearly wasn’t good enough. “Can you come next door first?”

  It was an example of how out of it I was that I didn’t even ask why. I just nodded and started to get up, only to find out that I couldn’t. Halfway up, my legs gave way and my body splashed back down, splattering Rhea with sudsy water.

  I tried again before accepting that it wasn’t merely a soap-slick foot that was the problem. I clung to the side of the bath, feeling dizzy and panting like I’d run a marathon. The heat and languor of a moment ago was gone, and I was chilled to the bone. My heart was pounding, my throat was tight, and my body . . .

  Was so exhausted that I couldn’t even climb out of the tub.

  Rhea had to help me, biting her lip the whole time on what were probably a hundred questions, which was maybe a tenth of what I had. She wrapped me in a huge towel, because there was no overnight bag for me, since I was just supposed to be the taxi service. And used another to furiously dry my dripping hair after I collapsed onto a chair, shivering.

  “You’ll catch your death!” she told me.

  I’ll catch something, I thought, still looking around for—

  I almost said Pritkin, but stopped myself. Damn it! That hadn’t been him!

  After Rhea managed to get me from soaking to just damp, I wrapped another towel around me and we moved to what I guessed was her room since her overnight bag was on the bed. She transferred it to the floor and got me under the covers, helping me to sit up against the headboard because I was too antsy to lay down. She left but came back almost at once, with the tray she’d abandoned in her hands, the one holding the hot chocolate I’d almost forgotten about.

  “I’ll be right back,” she promised, putting the cup in my hands and wrapping her own around them, until she was sure I could hold it.

  And even then, I almost sloshed it onto the bedcovers after she left, because I was so freaking weak.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  I flexed my shaky digits, and they looked okay, but felt like an old woman’s. I drank the cocoa anyway, using my raised knees as a table and cupping my hands on either side of the mug. It was piled high with fat, squashy marshmallows and little chocolate shavings and was the perfect temperature between scalding and merely hot. Yet it could have been water for all I cared. I didn’t even taste it.

  But after a few moments, the chills that had been wracking my body lessened, and I started to feel slightly better. I drained the mug, more for the heat than anything else, and got out of bed. I shucked the towel, wrapped a blanket around me and sat at the old-fashioned dressing table. It was an antique, even in this era, with little worm holes that somebody had patched over and sanded down, giving the wood a faintly burl-like quality.

  I stared at the wooden swirls and saw again the billowing steam churning in the air. Too much for any one bath to account for, or a dozen for that matter. Why hadn’t I noticed that? Was that when I’d fallen asleep—if I had? When I first saw the creature start to coalesce?

  I couldn’t remember.

  But I remembered those eyes—black and gleaming. And then glimmering down at me, brightened by stolen power. My power.

  I’d seen ones like them before, on a windswept plain in Wales, while fire blew in the background and an ancient god tore open the skies. And again in that very room, that very tub, gleaming in the lamplight. And later in the softness of the bed nearby, while Pritkin and I moved together as one . . .

  Incubus eyes.

  But that didn’t make any sense. Pritkin’s incubus had no reason to attack me, and even if it had, we were over a century in the past! It had no way to reach me here.

  So, was it another incubus? One drawn to me because of my borrowed powers, the same way the Were had been? I’d never heard of an incubus assaulting a master vampire, who could easily kick them out and possibly also kick their asses. Incubi were not the strongest of demons, and generally preferred to seduce rather than outright assault.

  But then, I wasn’t a master vamp. I just had a connection to one, a connection formed by a spell that used incubus magic as the conduit. Had some enterprising demon realized that I might be the pathway to a feast of epic proportions, one that Mircea couldn’t avoid without closing the link between us?

  I guessed it was possible—although he’d found me pretty damned fast. But maybe a conduit pulsing with incubus magic was a big draw, and I wasn’t under the demon council’s protection in this time period. I had an alliance with them at home, but here . . . I was fair game.

  But there was still one big problem. Whoever had attacked me had worn Pritkin’s face. How had it known to take that form?

  Because I’d never heard of the incubi having mental powers. The closest was a sort of empathic ability that let them know what their partners were feeling. And even that was hit or miss with many, including Pritkin, whose human half watered down the gift.

  But maybe it didn’t need to read my mind. Maybe I’d done the work for it, my brain conjuring up the image I wanted to see in its place. Perhaps that’s why incubi were said to attack in dreams: you didn’t need a glamourie if your victim’s brain automatically cloaked you in the skin of their fantasy lover.

  I shook my head despite the fact that there was no one to see it. No. I just didn’t believe it. I knew I’d been attacked by the Were almost as soon as I arrived, but it had already been here. It had been talking to Gertie only a few rooms away, and as soon as my scent hit it, it had attacked.

  That made sense; I could accept that. But I didn’t think there were any random incubi haunting the Pythian Court! Either one got really lucky, or . . .

  Or what?

  I didn’t know.

  I shivered again, and drew the blanket closer around me. And then wish I hadn’t. Because in the course of adjusting it I glanced up at my reflection.

  The dressing table’s mirror wasn’t the best. It looked like the bedrooms had ended up with all the furniture that no longer made the grade for downstairs: tables with scuffed legs, faded carpets, a chaise lounge on the other side
of the bed that had a worn patch where the butt was supposed to go. And a mirror that was not only mismatched, but also missing a lot of the silver backing and pocked with spots.

  But despite that and the low lighting, I could still see myself pretty well. Damp blonde hair straggled around a face that should have been flushed from the bath, but instead was dead white with dark circles under the eyes. It wasn’t a good look for me, and neither were the sunken cheeks and shadowed blue eyes. They’d seen some shit in the last five months, and that leaves a mark.

  Of course, it does something else, too.

  I stared at my reflection, and felt my anger rising.

  Pink flooded back into the face, burning hot along my cheekbones; the panicked eyes steadied and started to burn, to the point that I almost thought I could see past the glamourie; the trembling hands stilled and one of them snatched up a comb and began attacking the snarl of tangles on my head.

  There was a time, not so long ago, when an attack like that would have had me in hysterics, shrieking and running away, looking for a place to hide. I still felt like that a little, could feel that girl somewhere inside, silently screaming. But there was someone else in there now, too.

  Someone bigger. Someone badder. Someone who had tasted power and knew how to wield it.

  Someone who it was a very bad idea to piss off.

  And someone who had new abilities to call on, I realized, the comb stilling in my hand. I wasn’t sure why Nodo d’Amore worked here when by all logic it shouldn’t have. Maybe because human logic and magical logic were often very different things. I just knew that it did, and that opened up some new possibilities, didn’t it?

  Maybe there was a way to find out what was going on, or at least to try. And part of me wanted to try. I wasn’t sure if it was me or my new vampire instincts, but part of me wasn’t just angry, it was furious. We’d been attacked, by something wearing our lover’s skin, and it wanted to rend, to tear, to completely annihilate the one responsible.