by A. J. Aalto
I took a chance and closed my eyes for a split second, cramming them shut and focusing all my thoughts on my brother, slumbering in late, lightening VK-Delta in the cellar. Mentally, I commanded him to rise from his immortal rest.
But it wasn’t only Wes that woke to my call.
The nosy, nearby presence of Asmodeus, mischievous Overlord of the Falskaar Vouras, augmented the strength of my plea, a bullhorn the size of a volcano. I tried to stop it, shocked by his suspiciously helpful intrusion, but it was too late, and He was much too strong. My cry avalanched like cold fire through my Bond, startled Harry as it screamed through his veins, past him, and into the immortal house, beckoning to every single Dreppenstedt in existence.
With a slam and a jerk, they heard.
One by one, across the miles, they rose from their rest or interrupted their nocturnal endeavors, alarmed by the call, alert and fierce. I felt a thousand fangs extend from across the ocean, and knew the true extent of House Dreppenstedt with new eyes. Young and old, ancient some of them, rising from VK-Delta, some even rising from wraith-state, shaken from slumber by my call, from every corner of Earth, no matter how distant. Not one of them could ignore the power of their dark master, and tonight He had made my voice His own. The scar around my throat, His infernal collaring, burned anew as it had when I was fresh-marked and claimed, and I knew then what is was truly like to be His thing.
House Dreppenstedt stirred as one being, UnDeath en masse, confused but ready to serve the needs of their bloodkin, whatever that might be. I had bragged to the incubus that I was not alone. I hadn’t known how true that was. How horribly, horribly true. The Overlord stroked something dark, deep inside me. I knew He was still giving me His voice, if I wanted it. I had their attention.
Including, much to my dismay, her.
Remy Dreppenstedt purred and sought out my mind with her own.
“Well, that’s just great,” I muttered on an exhale. “Thanks a lot, Three-Face.”
Ready when you are, Toots, the Overlord replied.
“What’d you do that for?” I hissed, though I was talking to my own mind.
“Who owes you the biggest big time?” He said, echoing my own thoughts. His laughter had way, way more echoes than it should have.
Chapter 34
On a distant throne far away, the pale, long-lashed eyelids of the First Queen of the Falskaar Vouras fluttered open to display a vast and swirling cosmos of blues and greens. Since coming into her full power on the Unhallowed Throne, Remy Dreppenstedt had gone through many physical transformations, some of her choosing, and some not. Awakened by the Unholy Father’s call and mine, she ached to go through yet another, that of claiming my warm, mortal body. Per our hastily-made arrangement, that was on the table for negotiations, and I felt her craving my living, breathing heat. She stretched languorously, and I felt her stiff muscles loosen when she wriggled her long, slender fingers and rose. With no preamble, she launched from her perch and fell on the nearest warm body with a ravenous snarl, tearing into a vein and bathing her tongue in hot blood. The intimate connection between us broke suddenly, and I found myself staring again at the incubus as it sniffed the air in front of me warily.
By the way his wrinkly nose twitched, I could guess the incubus smelled something different on the night wind, but he was crazed with the need to defend his claim on Beau Boudreaux. Considering incubi were lust demons, and Asmodeus was the King of Lust, the demon's failure to scent out one of his own in the vicinity had me puzzled. Still, the Overlord made no move to appear, content to coach and cheerlead from the back of my head. As I slipped back into the relative safety of my salt circle to buy myself a few seconds to plan, I felt Harry and Wesley’s cautious approach, only as far as the front door, to check what was happening.
Was Asmodeus right? Did Remy owe me? I thought she owed me a hell of a lot more than Wes did, but would she see it that way? While she had ached for freedom from her icy state of exile under the Arctic shelf, she had not asked to be placed in charge of the ancients who put her there. What few reports that Harry had chosen to share with me indicated that she was not enjoying court politics and the responsibilities of her station. Would Remy step up and help me in exchange for the pleasure of being within a mortal body again, however briefly? It was a lot to ask. An immortal casting their phantasm this far was dangerous; a primeval revenant was never more vulnerable than they were when cleaved in two, their physical vessel left behind, their phantasm sent across the miles. Neither body nor phantasm could summon much of a defense, if that was needed, and the body was prone and helpless until the shade returned. Funny, I thought, I was asking the First Queen of the Falskaar Vouras to do what had happened to my shadow, to cut herself in two and send me her shady bits. How could I ask her to do something so risky, just to scare off a medium-sized demon?
Your other choice is demonology, that papery whisper reminded me. Save your queen the trouble and use the grimoire. The answers are there. More power than you could ever dream of. No one will stand against you. Kings of Demons will tuck their tails and run from you.
I felt something bubble up and it came out as a harsh Ha! This seduction was the lure of Ruby Valli herself, and it was straight up bullshit. If she had been so all-fired powerful, how did she end up bleeding out on my dock after a lame-ass game of hide-and-seek in the forest with me, taken down by a paintball gun and a thirsty revenant mostly gone to lich? The laugh returned, an incredulous cackle. I had almost believed the lies that the darkness had to offer. And while trusting my body to the metaphysical invasion of an immortal wasn’t exactly playing on the straight and narrow, it wasn’t going full-black witch.
Perhaps grey was the best I could do tonight, or at all. Probably, I would regret that; Harry’s worry from inside the cabin was palpable through the Bond. I sent him the clear sense that he wasn’t to come out yet; I didn’t have a clear picture of how a lust demon could affect a creature belonging to the King of Lust Himself, but I didn’t feel like using my own Cold Company to find out.
“All right, Three-Face,” I whispered, eyeballing the incubus warily. It was testing the edges of the salt circle in much the same way as it had tested Elyse and I inside her rental cabin while we’d waited for Folkenflik, cruising the boundaries and making cautious invasions, kneecaps shivering and bones rattling audibly.
I summoned earth magic and felt it swelling beneath my hand as a warm, potent bump. Drawing it more forcefully to me, I then sent it out as an invisible barrier along the very edge of the salt circle, sending all the little crystals dancing in the grass under the force of it. I could almost see it, like heat rising from asphalt, making a protective bubble around Beau and me. The demon was less than impressed, and spat black goo at us. It splattered the barrier and oozed downward in fat trickles, sizzling and blackening the grass where it hit the ground.
I gazed up at the moon and was treated to another three-second vision — a pale horse, a sleek fox, and the rolling white curve of something deep underwater — then I gathered my courage and sent my call out again, trying to focus not on the entire house but upon the only Dreppenstedt who owed me. Big time.
The connection was immediate, and sharply sweet with a hint of absinthe and spice. She came to me, pouring across the miles, an inky streak through time and space. Her coming felt like the first time I’d met Malas; the approach of a telekinetic made my skin all fire-ants and expectation, causing my guts to quiver. Unlike my Fetch, which had slipped into my control with the weightless touch of a shadow, Remy’s arrival was an unpleasant kidney punch, being hit from behind by an avalanche.
She appeared in the near dark as a vaguely angelic shape in the corner of my eye, but when I turned to look at her, I couldn’t quite catch a glimpse. She darted coyly, setting to stir a cold current that smelled of thunderstorms and dragon scales, of wormwood and fire. The sun dipped below the tree line for the Lady of Nightfall, as if responding to the coming of the Duchess of the Darkest Corner. The male revenant
s called her Falsefeather, the Defiler, the Empty Womb. The demons of the court at Skulesdottir called her Lichlady. Appearing now in her phantasmal glory, she spread glorious black raven wings like Wilhelm Dreppenstedt, but to my horror, she was pale to the point of being sickly yellowish-green, much like Malas Nazaire. Now that she had come into her full power on the UnHallowed Throne, it was eating her up from the inside. Subdermal rot tinted her fair cheek, though her eyes burned with vitality. The moon cast a shadow across half her face as she turned it aside, catching the vein of my thoughts as only a telepath could do; she was the only female, and the only revenant to have all nine revenant powers.
I heard her in my mind, but her words were pure Wilhelm, and it caught me off guard. Leave the circle, my Delight. Let me in.
I glanced down the salt, and over at the demon. It slavered and grinned, and I wondered if it could understand what was happening. An ugly thought occurred then. Dear Dark Lady, she’s not going to use my body to fuck that thing, is she? I glared at Remy’s phantasm and thought I saw the tiniest hint of a smirk.
“Don’t you even dare,” I whispered at her. “Don’t even think it! I invited you here to scare that worm off.”
Come to me, mortal. Kneel before your queen.
“I must be off my tits,” I muttered, shaking my head back and forth and making a big nooooooooo with my mouth. “This was all a bad idea. How about I scare him off another way? Maybe he doesn’t like flowers or some shit. I’m sure I can find something.” Even as I said it, I was inching toward the edge of the salt circle around Beau’s unconscious form, hoping Umayma stayed inside, hoping Harry and Wes were cautious enough to stay in the cabin, too.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I told Remy. “I’ll open a bit of the barrier and—”
The demon liked that idea and pounced at the salt circle. I kept the pressure up where he pressed at it while daring to drop a slit of control in Remy’s direction.
My bones ached, but I could no longer tell if it was because of the moon’s heavy sway, the cold threat of Remy’s imminent invasion, or from hugging myself too hard. “Too bad you didn’t bring Manflay, that charming troll of yours,” I told Remy’s shade. “He probably could have scared off the demon without any of this body hopping business, eh?”
Come to me, Remy blasted into my brain, the force of her desire for my warmth causing me to see stars. Accept me. You are mine, human. I will be one with you.
“You’re gonna fight him off?” I said, closing the bare spot in the barrier as the demon sniffed it out, bearing the weight of his rage-strikes before opening another tiny crack in my hold for Remy to slip through.
The barrier shuddered and I felt myself losing it where the strike hit. Come on then, get in here, I thought at the revenant queen. Let’s go already. If you’re gonna do it, do it now. Another demon slam and a sliver of physical pain lanced through the metaphysical link between me and the barrier, causing my hold on it to waver further. I dropped my left hand and tried to shift my focus on drawing more power from the earth, but my confidence was slipping and my fear was bouncing from Beau to the demon to the cabin to the sudden screech of tires on the dirt road nearby. I couldn’t take my eyes off my problems to find out what it was, but I didn’t have long to wonder; I heard a man bellow, and at first the voice didn’t sound familiar at all, but then it hit me.
“Footer?” I shouted. “If that’s you, you need to get the fuck out!”
“Where is that sleazy little worm?” Footer bellowed behind me.
“Not the time, man,” I yelled, then said to the phantasm, “Any day now, Lichlady.”
“I want a promise,” she said teasingly.
“Holy shit!” Footer said, and I didn’t know whether it was the demon, the phantasm, the unconscious Beau, or the fact that I was holding together a fucking barrier against a demon assault that he was holy-shitting about.
“Yeah, this is neither holy nor doody, sir,” I said loudly over the keening wail of the angry incubus, “and I really need to focus right now, so if you could come back, say, Tuesday, six-ish?”
“Hey, look lady, I just need—“”
“Make that Wednesday,” I said. “Tuesday’s my day off.” I swung my attention back to Remy. “Here’s the crack in the barrier, get in!”
“My promise…”
“What do you want?” I snarled. “You know you’ve really got me over a barrel here.”
“I want you to send your boy home to see me,” she purred, her ghostly lips turning up in a smile that could only be called lascivious. “I want him.”
“What boy?” It dawned slowly on me and I felt my lip turn up. “Harry? You want my Harry? For what? Does your wardrobe need mocking?”
“Not that boy…”
Footer had come around one side, away from the demon, closer to the phantasm, whom he might have seen as a solid and attractive woman; I wasn’t sure. I gave him major points for not bolting at the sight of the incubus.
I was busy glaring at Remy now. “You want… my baby brother… to come see you?”
I was about to tell her to forget it, that the deal was off, that she could go fuck herself and I’d deal with the incubus alone. But Wesley’s voice pushed forcefully into my brain, loudly and insistently. Don’t you dare turn that down! I’ll kick your ass!
I sighed, rolling my eyes. “Fine. Apparently, he’s quite eager to make your acquaintance. You’re not going to kill him, are you?”
“Of course not,” she laughed throatily. “Now open the barrier.”
“Back away, Footer,” I advised. “This is going to get messy. Go back to your car and we can talk later—”
But Footer was already in motion, as the demon had taken a sudden interest in him.
“Fuckinshit—” I blurted, dropped the shield completely and took off running after Neenerpants, who was running after Footer in loping, crooked strides. Remy drifted after us, seeming amused and having fun. We made a complete circuit of the yard and ended up back near the cars when another set of wheels crunched gravel behind Footer’s vehicle; a white SUV marked SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT with Chief Deputy Morgan Sally behind the wheel.
Sally’s jaw dropped. We must have been quite a sight, Footer and the naked white incubus and me and the pale revenant queen running around the yard like ducks in a row, one after another. If Footer hadn’t been squealing, we could have passed for a group out for a late afternoon jog, the weirdest exercise crew on the books.
I yelled in passing, “I got this!”
Sally made no immediate move to get out of his vehicle but I thought I saw him mouth, “what the fuck” to me or himself. It didn’t matter. I was gaining on the incubus before I realized that all I needed to do was let Remy catch up.
I stopped abruptly. She slid into my body like the least gentle proctologist probing me from behind; cold, wriggling, and definitely foreign in nature, the thing that entered my body made no attempt to adjust to me, instead expecting me to adjust to it.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” I demanded of Remy.
The invasion was like drowning in ice water, but through the rushing in my ears, I clearly heard her say, No, my Delight. You are.
Having someone else in your body feels very much like you think it might; I was accustomed to having Harry diddle about in my brainmeats, or slip a bubble around us and shield us from the world, but this was far more intimate. Every cell in my body was full of her essence, full of her power, and I vibrated on the verge of losing myself to her. Luckily, it hurt so much that my scream kept me from passing out. I felt Harry on the verge of bolting out into the yard and mentally demanded that Wes stop him. It was far too late to change my mind or fight her off; I had called her, I had accepted her, and Remy was settling into her place. The pure joy that she felt was overwhelming the pain I felt. This was some deeply kinky shit. Too bad Beau was missing out.
The incubus made a rush at us, but it must have sensed something funny was up, because it pulled up short a
nd stood quivering and panting its hell-breath in our face. I had enough of myself left inside to think, Well, that’s fucking unpleasant, but I couldn’t work my mouth to make any smarmy remarks. There goes my one superpower.
A moment or two of shifting inside me was all it took for the incursion to be complete. She looked down at us and a sigh fell out of my mouth.
“How disappointing,” she said of my attire.
“Oh, you are a Dreppenstedt,” I snapped, fighting to work my own mouth; only the right side opened, my lips curving almost painfully as my jaws clamped down.
“I am the--”
“Relax, High Maintenance,” I told my guest, “you’re yelling about shoes.”
My mouth did a slip-slide to the left, and that side of my mouth, Remy’s side, sneered, “I did not spend centuries barefoot and naked under the ice to spend a single day wearing smelly, scuffed up boots.”
Are you kidding me right now, lady? I wanted to yell. Remy had wrested control over my entire mouth now, though, and she didn’t feel like yelling at herself. I thought hard at her, If I'd known it was going to get all Fashion Week up in here, I'd have put on some fucking Loubies and broken my goddamned ankles wrestling with that pervert.
My eyes traced the incubus as it closed in on Footer, and together, Remy and I bolted in that direction; I had never known such speed, not with any of my magical boosts. The immortal inside me infused my flesh with a cold fire. The incubus saw me — us — coming for him, and he must have known the jig was up; he evaporated before my eyes. I didn’t wait to find out why. I grabbed Footer by the forearm and yanked.
“In the circle, now, now!” I shouted. I pelted after him in that direction and we belly-flopped there in the grass together. My guest was having a marvelous time hitching a ride, but so far hadn’t done a hell of a lot to help.
Remy and I both knew that it was too late to deal with Neenerpants; the Collector had been summoned, and the grass was wrinkling where the larger demon’s prints would soon become visible. When Remy wondered What is that? I only had to mentally supply, Jungcsezep the Collector or his boss, Taziel. I tried to say but ended up thinking, We’re going to have to step it up. I was hoping a little stormbringing or pyrokinesis would scare this thing off, but I don’t think putting on a show is going to help.