by Karen Chance
It was Cassie’s.
He had never quite realized how small she was, how slight, how bird like her wrists were or how sharp her shoulder blades, the latter of which looked likely to tear through her skin if he wasn’t careful. He didn’t know what to do with a body that felt like it weighed nothing, that had virtually no muscle, no stamina, and a center of gravity so different from his own that he kept stumbling into things.
The whole experience was incredibly disturbing for a number of reasons, but the one most concerning him at the moment was the pain. The washcloth was unforgiving, highlighting every scratch, every bruise, every wrenched muscle that protested as he moved and stretched. And all of them were his fault, his failure.
Damn it, he was supposed to be better than this!
He had to be. Every war mage was technically the guardian of the Pythia, the supernatural world’s chief seer, and willing to lay down their lives for hers at a moment’s notice. But he had taken on a special charge, given to him specifically by the previous Pythia, who had realized that Cassie—beautiful, mercurial, stubborn, clueless Cassie—hadn’t received the usual training, and was going to need help. And he was supposed to give it to her.
Specifically, he was supposed to keep her alive until she could grow into her power, something that should have been easy enough, except that Cassie Palmer attracted enemies like bees to honey!
The Corps, her rightful protectors, were currently convinced that she was a dangerous rogue and were trying to bring her in for trial—the outcome of which John was pretty sure had already been decided. The vampire senate were trying to control and use her, specifically that oily Basarab, who had gotten his claws into her early and deep. And the rest of the supernatural community only knew her as the daughter of a dark mage and a traitor.
She needed friends, she needed support, and she damned well needed a better bodyguard!
He flung the sad excuse for a washcloth against the wall, having finally managed to get her more or less clean, by scrubbing an appalling amount of dried mud off the sweet rounded limbs, adorable shoulders and taut, firm backside—
John stopped, scowling, and removed his hand from somewhere it had no business being. Then he shut the water off and, for a long moment, just stood there, watching suds swirl down the drain around sparkly pink toenails. And wondering what god he’d offended to end up in this mess.
Daikoku, apparently, a little Buddha-looking Japanese deity who thought that every day was April 1st. He was actually a damned djinn in disguise—one of the pranksters of the demon world—and his favorite play was switching people’s bodies with those of their friends, companions, or enemies, then sitting back to enjoy the show. How he must he chortling now, John thought savagely, at the idea of a half-starved incubus suddenly thrust into the body of—
Shit.
Don’t use the word thrust, he thought miserably, and slid down onto his haunches.
Only they weren’t his, were they?
He tried really, really hard not to think about the sleek, tanned thighs with the fascinating color line demarcating where her shorts usually reached, so golden brown on one side and so creamy white on the other. Or the sweet line of her calves flowing into her delicate ankles, with a sprinkling of freckles making intriguing patterns that he’d like to trace with his tongue. Or the dimpled knees—and why the hell did she have dimpled knees? Or any of the five hundred or so other distractions currently tormenting him, but it didn’t work.
Not least of which was because his new position left certain other plump assets almost touching the aforementioned dimples.
Fuck!
He climbed out of the shower, thankful that the bathroom mirror had fogged over. He left it that way, toweling off as impersonally as he could, whilst staring at the ceiling. It was useless, of course. He felt like he was about to come out of his skin, or at least, out of hers, but that didn’t seem to be on the agenda just now and—
And damn it all, where the hell were his clothes?
The ones he’d arrived in—and then slept in, after an exhausting, headlong race to get here ahead of some dark mages—were ruined. Torn, stained and filthy, he doubted if they would be salvageable at all, and they certainly weren’t at the moment. He finally wrapped a towel around himself and went off to find something suitable.
Only to find Jonas instead.
His old friend and mentor was coming up the stairs bearing a coffeepot on a tray, the smell alone being enough to make John’s borrowed mouth water. But it wasn’t getting any closer. Because Jonas had stopped, stared, and then looked quickly away with what appeared to be a faint blush creeping up the old cheekbones.
What the devil was the matter with the man?
“Jonas?”
“John. Yes.” Jonas cleared his throat. “Good morning. Did you sleep well, then?”
“Is it morning?” John couldn’t tell. The usual rasp of beard announcing the passage of time was absent, and it was still dark outside.
“More or less. I, er, I was just going to start some breakfast.” The rheumy old eyes were staring fixedly at a knot in the wood paneling lining the stairs, why John didn’t know.
“What are you doing?” John demanded.
“I, er, I was just bringing you up some coffee.”
“I can see that. I meant, why are you staring at the damned wall?”
“Oh.” Jonas’s eyes found another knot they liked. “I was giving you time to cover up.”
“I am covered!”
“Yes, well. But perhaps a little higher, dear boy?”
John scowled at him, wondering what he was going on about. Before looking down at the area where Jonas determinedly wasn’t. Only to realize that he’d wrapped the towel around his waist instead of . . . instead of . . . oh, damn it all to hell!
He abruptly snatched the towel up—too abruptly. Which caused it to fly open in the back, slapping a sensitive region with cold air. John cursed some more, which was not nearly as cathartic in Cassie’s sweeter tones, but finally got things arranged again.
“All right, I’m decent. Although if I had some damned clothes—”
“I left them outside of your door, didn’t you see?” Jonas asked, finally risking a peek. “Or perhaps it was Cassie’s door. I thought you might have decided to share a room, after all . . .”
“And why would you assume that?”
Jonas just raised an eyebrow, but didn’t answer, being too busy struggling the rest of the way upstairs with the coffee.
As it turned out, he had indeed placed suitable clothing—for a young woman, that is—on a stool outside Cassie’s bedroom door. John looked it over with a sneer on his face: khaki capris and a flimsy yellow top. And sandals, no less!
He needed to get her something more suitable, and considering how much trouble she regularly fell into, he needed to do it soon. Steel toed boots and a war mage coat for starters, over laced with as many spells as he could fit onto the thing. Or, better yet, a damned tank!
But this would have to do for now.
Only something appeared to be missing.
“Where is the bra?” he asked, following Jonas inside the bedroom.
“What? Oh, I didn’t think . . .” Jonas’s forehead wrinkled. “Perhaps you can reuse the one from yesterday?”
“The one from yesterday is filthy!”
“Well, there is a washer/dryer, you know,” Jonas said pointedly, which is how John ended up doing laundry.
It was morning, as it turned out, if a very dark and blustery one. John drank his coffee and watched the skies toss water at the window of the little laundry room, while Cassie’s clothes from yesterday went round and round. It was oddly cozy.
He was still in the towel, but the laundry was behind the kitchen, in what had been the old pantry, and Jonas had the stove going full blast. So, Cassie was warm enough. But he had slipped on the sandals because the floor was cold, and her feet were absurdly soft and vulnerable.
Like the rest of her.
He shied away from that thought, concentrating instead on the scent of the rain mixing with the sweet-smelling detergent Jonas used and the buttery scent of frying eggs drifting in from the next room. Jonas was puttering about, talking to his damned demon possessed dog, and whipping up a full English for breakfast. He seemed content, drifting around the small space, humming lightly to himself. There was no sign that he recalled the incident from years before, when he’d rescued John from his dangerous wallow in self-pity after the death of his wife.
The death of his wife in this very house, John realized, struck by the fact that he hadn’t thought about that once since his arrival.
He usually avoided this place like the plague, which was why he had sold it to Jonas after the old man’s somewhat forced retirement. It had lain empty for decades before that, gathering dust, because he hadn’t so much as stepped foot in it. But it wasn’t easily unloaded, being a Circle designated property, meaning that it had a magical issue associated with it and couldn’t be sold to a non-magical human. It had therefore moldered away quietly for decades.
And John . . . well, he had moldered elsewhere.
He wasn’t sure how one was supposed to get over the death of a spouse, especially when one had had more than a little to do with that death. He only knew that he’d never found it. Ruth’s memory had haunted him as surely as any ghost, showing up reliably at any moment of peace or joy and turning it to wormwood in his mouth, for what right did he have to peace? To anything?
Coming back here had only served to intensify those feelings, so he mostly hadn’t. Not even when he’d signed the papers with Jonas, which had been done electronically from half a world away. He’d assumed that being here would prove as painful as ever.
It wasn’t.
The sun was behind the rain clouds outside, yet the kitchen and little laundry space glowed with warmth. The old dog was napping in front of the stove, threatening to trip Jonas up every time he passed, determined that he not miss his fair share of the sausage that had now joined the eggs in perfuming the air. There was a new rug on the floor, bright cherry red and cheerful; a new—to John anyway—set of gleaming copper pans on the kitchen wall; and a very new sense of peace and tranquility.
It was . . . disturbing.
Profoundly so, because he could easily imagine Cassie living here. Imagine her bustling around the next room, fixing God knew what kind of unhealthy dish for their dinner. Imagine their dog—decidedly unpossessed—getting in the way. Imagine children—
Stop it!
But his brain didn’t want to stop it. His brain had fixated on this new idea, like said dog with a bone. It populated the scene in John’s mind with absurd touches, like frilly curtains and overstuffed furniture, because she liked girly things, and a garden blooming with flowers—yellow nasturtiums, her favorite—and a—
No! I said stop it!
John pushed off the washer and went back upstairs, undergarments be damned. He needed to get dressed, he needed to concentrate on the problems at hand, he needed to get them out of this damned haunted house! One not filled with visions of the past anymore, but with even more disturbing ones of a future that was never going to be, that never could be for any number of—
Gah!
His hand brushed her chest as he jerked on the flimsy top that Jonas had thought suitable. The capris were all right, being thick and almost denim like. But the top . . .
Damn it, was the man trying to kill him?
That wasn’t fair, John knew, but he was having a difficult time with fairness just at the moment. He was trying not to notice the way that a couple of puffy nipples strained at the cloth, as if begging for the touch of his hands. Or his mouth, he thought dizzily. He knew how they would taste under his tongue—he ought to; he’d imagined it often enough—soft and yielding but rapidly coming to a peak, getting harder, getting—
John let out a strangled scream, and tore off the damned shirt. He just stood by the bed for a moment, half naked, trembling and breathing hard, and wishing for the millionth time that his incubus was an actual spirit, one he could exorcise and fight to the death! But it wasn’t. No matter how much he liked to think of it as a separate entity, one he could cut out of himself like a goddamned tumor, it was part of him.
A hated part.
Because he couldn’t have this. Don’t you understand, he snarled at himself. You don’t get this; you don’t get to feed, you don’t get to feel, you don’t get anything. And you damned well know why!
Cassie wasn’t his, and she wasn’t going to be. He was here to protect her, to counsel her, to help her. Not to profit off her!
Everyone else wanted that, all of them, even those who called themselves her friends. And it wasn’t likely to change. That was the lot of a Pythia; she was by definition the one whom people turned to who wanted help, who needed defending, and Cassie had a heart bigger than all outdoors. She would never turn anyone away.
But John would. He would guard her from all dangers, and that included himself. He might not be able to kill his incubus side, but he could damned well control it. Tie it up and tamp it down, deep, deep, so fucking deep, that it might as well be as dead as he wanted it to be!
And make sure that it never got out.
After a few more moments, his breathing evened out, his heart rate fell back into slow, even beats, and the room stopped pulsing vividly around him.
John Pritkin finally got dressed.
Chapter Twelve
J ohn awoke to a feeling of déjà vu; he didn’t know why.
Then he figured out why, when he was slung off a massive shoulder and onto something hard. It was painful enough to make him wince, or maybe that was the bucket of water that was thrown in his face a second later. A bucket of very cold water.
He came up like surfacing from the deep, shaking his head and spluttering, feeling like he was drowning on dry land. Only to hear somebody say something in Cantonese. Something that, judging by subsequent events, was probably “hit him again.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” a second voice said.
Somebody hit him again.
John yelled at the second shock of liquid cold, his eyes coming open and blowing wide. Allowing him a perfect view of the fangs on the creature above him. And on a half dozen more who were crowding him round, who were holding him down, who were trying to keep him—
From doing that, he thought, jumping up with a yell and blowing his shields outward like a bubble, slamming the vampires against the sides of a narrow brick alley.
And then almost falling back on his ass, when the world went swimmy.
“Told you not to wake him that way.”
That time, John identified the voice. It was that damned Zheng, the one who had carted him here and dumped him on a bench, and who was now sitting on an overturned bucket, yet managing to look like a king on a throne. John scowled, and tried to look like he wasn’t bracing against the wall.
“Where . . . the hell . . . are we?” he panted.
Zheng gestured around. “What does it look like?”
It looked like a bloody alley. One plastered with vampires who, John realized, he hadn’t bothered to release yet. He still didn’t because he didn’t know what was going on, and because the nearest one was fighting with the bubble of John’s shields. The others were splayed against the rough bricks like fanged butterflies on a pin, but not this one. His fists punched the air, his feet kicked and flailed, and his mouth, despite being squashed almost flat, was nonetheless trying to bite.
“That’s Kong,” Zheng said. “I’d let him down if I were you. He’s, er, excitable.”
John did not see that as a good reason to let him down. But the increasingly swimmy feeling in his head was a different story. If he had to fight the bastard, better now than when he was about to pass out—again.
Retracting his shields was such a relief that he barely reacted when the creature hit the ground, bounced up, and was in his face in less than a second.
John had the vague impression of the other vampires recovering with substantially less fanfare, but the one half an inch away and breathing like a bull in winter held most of his attention. The two of them stayed like that for a long moment, until John got bored. Along with tired, pained and generally over the bastard’s shite!
“Do you want to go back up again?” he inquired curiously, and Zheng said something sharply in Cantonese.
It probably had to do with the hand his creature was trying to thrust through John’s body, but without success. Because John hadn’t dropped his shields. He had simply drawn them back against his skin, thus greatly reducing the power drain.
Leaving the vampire poking at his abs as if in admiration.
Go without sex for a century and you, too, can be ripped, John thought dryly, thinking of the hours he’d spent at the gym. And then he shoved the idiot’s hand away. “Sit down before I put you down.”
That did not appear to go over well, judging by the flood of words being aimed at Zheng.
“He say you should die for all the vamps you kill,” the cutie pie on John’s left bicep informed him, while filing her nails. “He say you bastard and murderer and—” she paused, and waved the nail file at Zheng. “What English for po kai?”
Zheng shrugged. “Asshole?”
“Yes. He say you asshole man.”
“It’s been said before,” John rasped, and then he stopped dead.
So did the surrounding group of vampires, and rather more convincingly, but John barely noticed.
Something was wrong.
He could see his little stowaway because one shoulder of his sweatshirt was missing, along with most of the sleeve. The cuff still clung to his wrist, but it was black and crumbly, as if it had been grazed by a passing spell. One that must have hit him after his shields had failed.
Yet the underlying skin was fine.
A narrow, dirty window was the only reflective surface around, but it was enough. John strode across the alley and shoved his face into it, searching his appearance through dust and dirt and a spray of dried mud, the latter of which was fast turning liquid again as rain began pelting down. But he could nonetheless see his reflection staring back at him, his very whole and uninjured reflection, despite the blood still smeared about.