Siren's Song (Cassandra Palmer Series)

by Karen Chance

  And so did John, running up an outside staircase, and launching himself off a roof and onto the tentacle covered back of the demon lord, a sword in either hand.

  There had been two of him a second ago, but the memory had fully taken him now, and there was only one.

  Who was yelling the strongest anti-healing spell he knew.

  It was fey magic, which the demon didn’t know and couldn’t counter. Not in time, at least, to prevent John from hacking off its thrashing appendages faster than it could regrow them. It screamed in pain, bucking and cursing and trying to fling him off, yet the massive body still lurched down the street toward the girls.

  The nearest portal was on the other side of the brothel district, a dozen streets away. And every stride of his was at least ten of theirs. They weren’t going to make it.

  Not unless John did something really, really stupid.

  “Don’t you dare! Emrys! Damn it, listen to me!”

  That was his father, from a street back, but yelling loud enough to be heard, nonetheless. John laughed, because why the hell not? He was about to die.

  And still his father was bitching at him.

  He brought both swords down together, so close that the hilts almost merged into one, in a savage blow right at the base of the skull. The spell-laden blades sparked and flickered, cutting through the tough outer hide like butter, sinking deep. And the creature underneath him lurched and stumbled, hurt and enraged—

  But not dead. Not yet.

  And you don’t get two tries at a council member.

  John felt the great claws rake him, felt his skin start to bubble and burn where the creature grabbed him, felt himself go flying. He hit a wall with his back and the ground with his face, but somehow found the strength to look up from where he’d fallen. Just in time to see the beast stagger and falter, the huge arms scrabbling for the hilt of the twinned weapons that he couldn’t . . . quite . . . reach.

  And then the impossible happened: the great body shuddered, not once, not twice, but three times, all over. The eyes rolled up into the skull and didn’t come back down. And the massive corpse hit the ground, hard enough to shake it, one outstretched fist heading for John even as he desperately tried to scramble back—

  And failed.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  J ohn crashed into darkness, his head swimming, his breath coming heavy and panicked in his throat.

  He stared around, but couldn’t see anything for a moment, anything at all. But he felt movement off to his left and grabbed a fistful of storm light, thrusting it out before he thought. Stupid! Stupid! That only made it easier for someone to see him, too—

  Someone did. He caught sight of the dhampir, looking at him in confusion, before he could snuff out the light. He looked back at her, his heart rate spiking, his eyes fighting to adjust.

  It took a second.

  That gave him time to notice a few things. First, the darkness wasn’t that of the lamplit market anymore, but of the inside of a stasis pod. Second, the fact that he was no longer trapped in his mind must mean that the crazy plan had worked. And third, the dhampir was . . . not herself.

  Or, rather, she was her other self, the more human version instead of the fierce predator he had just met. But the other was still in there, or back there he supposed, reunited with her alter ego and flashing amber colored eyes at him for a second to let him know. He felt his spine unclench for the first time in what felt like hours, and with it came a strong desire to just sit down for a minute.

  It had been that kind of day.

  The dhampir looked like she felt the same. Her eyes were huge and reflecting the storm light, and she appeared off balance and confused. Probably, John realized, because the mental gymnastics he’d experienced, and which had taken what felt like half an hour or more in his mind, had probably occupied mere seconds in the outside world.

  Meaning that, as far as she was concerned, she’d just been on fire.

  He finally found his voice. “Are you stable?”

  “I think so,” she said, not looking entirely sure. She cleared her throat. “What did you do?”

  “Put you in a stasis pod,” he told her, for the second time. “We use them for creatures too powerful for the cuffs.”

  The human version of the dhampir didn’t look like she knew what to do with that information, which surprised him. And not only because it meant that her two halves didn’t communicate as well as he’d assumed. But because, considering how much purchased magic she’d thrown at him, he’d have thought she’d have had some pods in her collection.

  Apparently not.

  She didn’t look like she was thinking about adding them, either. She didn’t look like she was thinking about anything, except possibly collapsing. John finally sat down and she did the same, one hand searching around behind her first for support.

  It wasn’t really there, of course, any more than the two of them were. Their minds had been sequestered in a sort of mental time out, which John for one could really use at the moment. The dhampir appeared to feel the same.

  Her mercurial, always-on-the-go vibe was completely absent. She sighed, and laid her head back against the boiling darkness. “Damn. Wish I’d known you had this thing. I could have used it on you.”

  “I know how to get out of it, too,” John said dryly.

  Her mouth twisted.

  She closed her eyes, because there was nothing to see. Or maybe there was. He wondered what she saw behind her eyelids: the same void as everyone else or . . . another person, staring back at her?

  He had a sudden urge to ask—how often does a person get a chance to talk to a myth, after all? But he refrained. He couldn’t afford to get into a conversation about dual natures with Basarab’s daughter. Her father would likely learn anything that she did, and John . . . well.

  His own situation was a little too close to hers for comfort.

  That was what had allowed him to take down a demon lord, and a council member to boot. Not that John was so powerful, but that he was so different, he and his magic. Unlike anything the creature had fought before.

  Once again, he saw Dagon the Mighty shudder and fall, almost crushing John’s younger self in the process. He’d moved at the last moment, and had thereby suffered only a glancing blow, but he’d still been sidelined for weeks with broken bones, contusions and a set of scars on his shoulder that had never fully healed. They still bothered him sometimes, twinging at night, sending him bolt upright in bed with his heart hammering in remembered terror. A reminder of how close he’d come.

  So why the hell had his demon sent him there? Because it had, John was almost sure of it. That horrible feeling, like somebody grabbing his soul and jerking it somewhere else, was memorable.

  Had it been trying to get them out of danger? Because if so, John couldn’t see how the shift had been an improvement! Yes, the mages were a threat, but he’d had back up in that first memory. The dhampir hadn’t been able to follow him into the second, as she’d warned him. Leaving him alone with a creature he’d barely bested the first time, and that mostly out of luck!

  Of course, maybe it couldn’t hurt him, being only a memory. But it hadn’t felt that way, especially once he’d melded with his past self. And in any case, John didn’t know enough about mental combat to be sure either way, so his demon couldn’t have, either.

  Had it been trying to show him something, then? Because that made even less sense. Dagon was a monster, yes, but he was a dead monster. It was one of the reasons John was held in so much aversion by the council, that he would dare to attack one of their own. And, worse, that he would be successful.

  Not that it had been intentional. John hadn’t gone there that day to commit suicide, which is what should have been the end result of taking on a council member. He’d gone there to free slaves.

  He’d encountered a runaway who had told him about the humans Dagon was illegally importing from earth. And, of course, John had immediately guessed why. Humans
had never been considered much use as servants, even before their import was prohibited, being weak and short lived compared to other species. But they did have two big advantages: an abundance of life energy, and a reproductive rate like no other.

  It should have made Earth the favorite feeding ground for demons from across the dimension, something that would have devastated the planet, except that rules had been put in place to avoid spoiling the resource. Council members weren’t subjected to the same restrictions as the rank and file, of course, but they were expected to set an example. Which meant that Dagon couldn’t go to Earth and eat his way through a crowd like in the bad old days, draining thousands of life and tossing them aside like empty soda cans.

  So, he’d found a workaround: if he couldn’t go to Earth, he’d bring Earth to him.

  It had been a perfect scheme, giving him far more power than he should have had and therefore more influence on the council. At least, it had until John found out about it, and planned to out the smuggler to Dagon’s colleagues. But, with his usual luck, the bastard’s best customer happened to show up halfway through their showdown, and things had gotten messy.

  But Dagon had very definitely died, a fact that John had been paying for ever since, so why had his demon wanted him to see that? Or had it? Had it just panicked and jerked them there without thinking?

  “This doesn’t really capture the body, does it?” the dhampir asked abruptly.

  John glanced over to find her rubbing her fingers together, probably wondering where the blue flames had gone.

  “The larger ones do,” he said. “The portable kind we carry as part of our arsenal aren’t so sophisticated. They only work on the mind.”

  “And my body?”

  John focused outside the spell for a moment, but there wasn’t much to see. The two of them were slumped on the boards, him propped against the railing like a discarded doll, while the dhampir—still glowing, albeit more faintly—was flat on the floor. The Irin was kneeling by her side, his hands outstretched, probably trying to rectify whatever had gone wrong.

  Or to make it worse, John thought cynically.

  “The Irin is attempting to undo his stupidity. We shall see if he succeeds.”

  The woman didn’t look any more reassured by that than John would have been. He wished he could give her a better answer, but he wasn’t going to lie. He wasn’t at all confident about the Irin’s intentions, but he was the only one who could sort out the current problem.

  They sat in silence some more.

  John didn’t know what she was thinking, but he was struggling with his resolution to stay quiet. He wanted to ask how she and her alter ego shared body space. Did she feel it there, all the time, like an itch at the back of her mind? Or was it mostly silent, a watchful presence that she could conveniently forget about?

  Because that was how his demon had been, before the recent incident in Wales. Like a battery pack that occasionally fed him power, boosting his strength, increasing his stamina, and speeding up his healing. And that was how he’d usually thought of it—as a thing.

  But now . . . what was it now?

  He didn’t know. Hell, he didn’t even know what it had been before, since it wasn’t a distinct person, as Dorina seemed to be. It was more like an extra subconscious, putting ideas and urges into his head that he didn’t want there. As if it was less interested in manifesting on its own than in remaking him into its image.

  Which was frankly far more terrifying.

  John had known, from very early in his life, what demons wanted and how they operated—and been appalled by it. And while he couldn’t carve out that part of himself, he could weaken it, control it, and keep it on a tight leash. Sex with other humans fed it, of course; he was an incubus, after all. But not much, not enough to put it in a position to challenge him.

  And the few times it had tried, the rare instances when it had hesitated when he attempted to stamp it back down, well. He’d just arranged a little dry spell, hadn’t he? And starved it back into submission.

  Until the demon council put him under interdict a century ago and starved them both. He hadn’t realized how much power he’d gained from his strange symbiosis until then. When he lost a fight and almost lost his life along with it, because he ran out of power halfway through!

  He should have died that day, but fate wasn’t finished messing him about. Had only started in fact, he thought, as he felt it again, that sinuous, silken slide under his breastbone. It was like having a snake in his belly, to the point that it literally made his skin crawl.

  Worse than that, it made him worry: could he still control it?

  Because what he’d done with Cassie hadn’t been human sex. Hadn’t even been demonic, although it had been processed that way by his body. But it was the power of a demi-god that he’d magnified, over and over again, with his demon growing stronger, fatter, and more powerful with each pass.

  And considering how much of a boost John had received, just from the spill over, he had to wonder: what was it now?

  “So, you’re doing what?” the woman asked, her voice shaking him out of his reverie. “Babysitting my messed-up brain?”

  “Yes.” John cleared his throat, because that had come out as a rasp. “A crazed dhampir could be a danger to herself as well as others.”

  “And I was pretty crazed.”

  She sounded worried about this new side of herself that the Irin had uncovered, probably thinking that she had enough sides already.

  John could relate.

  “Not your fault,” he told her. “But, in future, you might wish to avoid his kind. They crave knowledge above all things, and do not concern themselves with what it costs others for them to obtain it.”

  She turned to look at him, a frown on her forehead. “He helped me once. Saved my life—”

  Ah, so that was how he’d gotten his claws in. “And, no doubt, gained something for himself in return.”

  “No.” She shook her head emphatically. “He was on Earth, looking for one of his people—it’s a long story. But he didn’t have to help me—”

  “Then he was curious,” John said harshly. “He’d likely never seen a dhampir before. He wanted to learn about your kind.”

  She looked like she was going to argue, but he forged ahead before she could. He didn’t know why it mattered to him that she understand this, but it did. Maybe because, despite her parentage, he had a fellow feeling. One creature that shouldn’t exist to another.

  Or maybe because they’d just been attacked by a powerful mentalist, something that described the Irin perfectly.

  “That is their coin in trade—knowledge,” he told her. “They buy it, sell it, trade for it—sometimes even kill for it. Be very wary of any you meet. Altruism is not a concept they understand.”

  She frowned.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said.

  She hesitated. John supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. The Irin presented a pleasant facade—tall, handsome, seemingly compassionate. They’d tricked older and more experienced beings than her into believing they were benign.

  It still didn’t make it true.

  “The reason I can talk to my other half is because of the Irin,” she finally said. “One of their children gave me a blessing that helped to bridge the gap between my two natures at a difficult time for me. I owe her a lot—”

  “Don’t say that!” She looked at him in surprise, but he didn’t moderate his tone. “Never acknowledge a debt. Never give them power over you! Or, sooner or later, they will use it. They’re not angels, no matter what they look like. They’re demons—”

  “As are you,” the Irin said, his voice echoing out of the darkness. “Someday, princeling, you’re going to have to come to terms with that. Someday soon.”

  And the next thing he knew the two of them were back in their bodies, panting in shock on the old wooden floor.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  T en minutes later, John was considering te
aring his hair out—or possibly someone else’s.

  He’d thought he might finally get some answers, once the dhampir recovered, but if anything, the opposite had been true. He’d been here at least half an hour—he couldn’t tell anymore—and was no closer to the truth than when he’d come in. Maybe less so, since the Irin kept talking in bloody circles!

  “But who is they?” John demanded, interrupting another long speech by the creature, who loved showing off his knowledge without actually giving anybody some of it! “Our enemies are legion. I need to know precisely who they are—and where!”

  “Why?” the dhampir asked. “What does the Circle want with vamp killing bullets—or can I guess?”

  John managed not to roll his eyes—just. That was all she and the Irin had been able to talk about. It was what had drawn both of them to the city: to investigate a triad that had used Dragon’s Claw to develop a bullet imbued with some of the properties of wood.

  The same ones that could kill a vampire.

  It reminded him of something Zheng had said, about some vampires who had been killed by strange bullets in New York, although John didn’t know if there was a connection. But it wouldn’t surprise him, since the new weapons had created a crisis for the fanged population, who didn’t have shields. They’d never thought they needed them, since their superhuman speed meant that very few rounds connected, and those that did were dealt with by their healing abilities.

  When somebody like Zheng could take a grenade to the back and be fighting fit in less than a minute, hot lead is no longer much of a deterrent.

  But the new bullets couldn’t be healed from, any more than could a stake through the heart. That explained the vampires’ interest, but it also explained the demons’. Because the two groups had recently joined forces to create a hybrid army—vampire bodies possessed by demon spirits—in order to invade Faerie.