Hunt the Moon cp-5

by Karen Chance

  For a guy who was as loud as Pritkin, he really didn’t lose it very often. Maybe all that yelling served as a release valve; I don’t know. But no matter how bad things got, he kept his shit together better than most people I knew, including me. Not that that was saying much. I was usually the run-screaming-at-the-first-sign-of-danger type, but Pritkin was Mr. Cool under Pressure.

  Which was why it was a little strange to find him standing in the spray, staring at a bar of soap with the air of a man who has forgotten what he’s supposed to do with it.

  It didn’t look like he’d used it. There were streaks of blood on the powerful legs, oil or something black on the broad back and livid bruises pretty much everywhere. The black stuff had run, dripping down the multicolored skin, making him look like some kind of avant-garde painting or vandalized sculpture. The Thinker in yellow, purple and green.

  The hair was wet and plastered to his skull. It made the bones of his face stand out more, and his nose look bigger as he turned his head to me. It wasn’t with his usual rapid reflexes, but in a bewildered kind of way that really worried me. Not that an assassin was likely to be sneaking up on him at war mage HQ, but still. I had the disturbing impression that, if I had been an assassin, Pritkin would have just stood there and let me kill him.

  Okay, then.

  I walked over, despite not knowing what the hell I was supposed to do. Growing up at Murders ’R’ Us, I’d seen a lot of nasty stuff, and my visions had shown me a lot more. Pretty early on, I’d learned to distance myself from inconvenient feelings, from anything I couldn’t easily handle. And by now, I was tops at the Scarlett O’Hara school of emotional distancing. I always thought about the uncomfortable stuff tomorrow, and, as everyone knows, tomorrow never comes.

  And despite what psychologists would have you believe, living in denial actually works pretty damn well. At least most of the time. It had worked for me, keeping me functional, keeping me sane—more or less—long after anyone could have reasonably expected.

  It wasn’t working so well right now.

  It meant that I didn’t know how to talk to Pritkin about his shit, whatever his shit was, because I rarely talked about mine. I didn’t know how to tell him it was going to be okay, because I wasn’t sure that it was. I didn’t have anything useful to say at all, so I didn’t try. I slid my arms around him from behind and held on.

  The water was still warm. I supposed that was something.

  Pritkin didn’t say anything, either, so we just stayed like that for a while. I found that I was in no real hurry to move. I was bone tired, but he was warm and solid and easy to hold on to. I got this weird kind of floaty feeling after a while, a combination of exhaustion, relief and the thrum of his heart under my ear.

  He hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights, so the only illumination was whatever filtered in from the bathroom or through the open top of the shower area. It wasn’t much, and the water hitting the tile sounded like rain, the kind Vegas rarely got. I pulled him closer and felt my eyes slip closed.

  I thought maybe I’d just sleep here.

  “Her name was Ruth,” he said hoarsely. And then he stopped.

  His back was warm against my cheek. I could feel the column of his spine just under the surface. I didn’t say anything.

  “My wife,” he added, after a while. I nodded, but he couldn’t see it, so I just tightened my grip for a moment. I’d kind of thought that might be it.

  I wasn’t an expert on Pritkin’s past, but I knew a few things. Like the fact that, more than a century ago, he’d married a woman he’d presumably loved a lot. I didn’t know much about her, because that was one topic that got a very swift conversation change. But I knew the important thing: I knew how she’d died.

  It had happened on their wedding night, when the incubus part of Pritkin got out of control—seriously out. For some reason, instead of simply feeding, which would have been normal under the circumstances, it had decided to drain her—dry. Pritkin hadn’t been able to stop the process, and it had killed her.

  Or, rather, he had killed her, because as the only halfhuman incubus, the two parts of his nature were forced into an uneasy cohabitation. It was like being Jekyll and Hyde, only at the same time, all the time. Other incubi could leave their bodies behind when they weren’t feeding, since they’d only borrowed them from a human anyway. But Pritkin couldn’t.

  I didn’t know if that had something to do with why he’d lost it that night or not. Because he’d told me those few hard facts and nothing else. It had been around the time we’d started to notice an attraction, and I guess the idea had been to scare me off.

  It had worked like a charm.

  The idea of ending up a straw-haired, desiccated corpse had proven a real incentive in ignoring any inconvenient feelings. Pritkin and I were together a lot, often in circumstances that got the blood pumping, if not spurting. It was only natural that there might be an occasional spike of something. It would have been strange if there hadn’t been, really.

  But we’d ignored them by mutual consent, because, clearly, they weren’t going anywhere. I was dating Mircea, and Pritkin . . . Well, as far as I knew, Pritkin didn’t date anyone. Ever. I’d gotten the impression that he wasn’t going to risk whatever had happened happening again.

  I suddenly found that really sad.

  Someone cursed behind us, but I didn’t jump. I was too tired, and anyway, I knew that voice. I looked over my shoulder and saw Caleb’s big body outlined in the doorway for a second before he disappeared.

  But a moment later he was back with a couple of large towels. He shut off the water, wrapped one around me and threw one at his buddy. Or former buddy, given the scowl marring those handsome features.

  “Out,” he said roughly, pushing us at the door. “It’s getting too close to morning. There’s going to be people showing up soon, and we got enough to explain as it is. And that vampire’s on the phone, fit to be tied.”

  “Which one?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew.

  “Marco. Said you either call him or he’s accusing us of kidnapping you.”

  He handed me a phone and I took it with a sigh. I punched in the suite’s number and it was picked up on the first ring. “Cassie, what the hell—”

  “You know what the hell. Am I still a prisoner?”

  “You know damn well you aren’t!”

  “Then I’ll be back. Now stop calling.” I hung up.

  Caleb just looked at me. “That was it?”

  “That was it until I figure out what story I’m using.”

  “I know the feeling,” he snarled, and pushed us toward the office.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  We walked back into the little space and Caleb slammed a bottle of Jack down on the desk. “Talk about whatever the hell it is you need to talk about, and get your story straight. I have to make out a report before the bosses show up, and it needs to be tight. You feel me?”

  I nodded. Caleb left.

  The air conditioning was on and my makeshift dress was clammy. I pulled it off and draped it over the back of Caleb’s desk chair, and wrapped myself in a towel instead. When I turned around, Pritkin had pulled the sweats back on and sat on the stinky sofa. He had his arms crossed in front of him, like a man who doesn’t want company, so I took the hard plastic chair in front of the desk.

  I poured the Jack, but not because I wanted any. My stomach felt like it might be fine without anything in it for a year, maybe two. But if a guy had ever looked like he needed a drink, Pritkin was him.

  “We don’t have to talk,” I told him. “I mean, I don’t mind listening, but it’s . . . I don’t need an explanation.”

  “But you deserve one.”

  “Do I?” I kind of thought we were even. He’d saved my life; I’d saved his. But it didn’t look like he agreed.

  I handed him the whiskey and he threw it back like a pro, not even wincing. He noticed my expression and smiled faintly. “Compared to what I grew up on, this
is . . . fairly mild. And yes, you do.”

  I was wondering what the hell he’d grown up on—the Celtic version of rotgut? But I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer. He just sat there, cradling the empty paper cup gently in his hands.

  They were still long-fingered, still refined. But they looked more like they belonged to a war mage tonight. Along with the ever-present potion stains, there was a smudge of dark brown that the shower had missed—dirt or dried blood—in the crease between the left thumb and the palm. It had run into the cracks, highlighting them like strokes of charcoal on a sketch. I had a sudden urge to reach over and wipe it off, but I didn’t.

  And then he started talking, and I forgot about everything else.

  “I told you once about Ruth. About . . . how she died.”

  I nodded.

  “But I didn’t give specifics. We hadn’t known each other long at the time and it didn’t . . . I assumed that you would never need to know.” He paused for a moment, staring at the fake wood paneling on the opposite wall, as if it held some kind of fascination for him. “I think perhaps you do now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ruth had a small amount of demon blood. Ahhazu, a minor species, from her paternal grandmother. She was an eighth, or some such amount.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I knew. I knew as soon as I met her. But I assumed that, as she was living on Earth, she must feel the same way about the demon realms that I did. That they have their pleasures, but they are ultimately corrupting to whoever ventures there. Stay long enough and you lose yourself—your ideals, your values, everything you are—all in the pursuit of mindless pleasure. And in the end, there is no pleasure in that.”

  “But she didn’t see it that way?” I guessed.

  “No. By comparison to the glamorous, glittering courts she had occasionally glimpsed, Earth was squalid, diseaseridden and poor. It didn’t help that she was born into the middle of the Industrial Age, when, in fairness, those things were often true. The Thames stank like an open sewer, and very nearly was. The new industrial cities like Birmingham and Manchester were littered with overcrowded, filthy, ratridden tenements, filled with people dying of overwork, pollution, disease.... Even Prince Albert died of diphtheria, because of the filthy drains at Windsor. It was an ugly age, and she hated it, all the more for the brief glimpses she’d had of worlds beyond human imagining.”

  “But she didn’t tell you this?” I didn’t need to guess on that one. I couldn’t see Pritkin having much in common with someone who had loved the world he hated.

  “She told someone, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Rosier.” I don’t know how I knew. Maybe because Pritkin only got that particular look on his face when he discussed his father.

  A curt nod. “She went to see him, gained admission by mentioning my name. He later told me that she said she’d lived her life like a child in a candy store—one without any money to purchase anything. Able to see the beauty of her other world, but unable to gain access to it.”

  “Because of her mixed heritage?”

  “No. Demons aren’t like some of the Fey, jealously guarding their bloodlines, afraid of any impurity. They regularly mix races, among themselves, other types of demons, humans, Weres, Fey—anyone who has an attribute they think might be useful. Anyone who might give them an edge over a rival.”

  “Then why couldn’t she just change worlds if she wanted? If she didn’t like it here—”

  He shook his head. “It shouldn’t be difficult for you to understand. In that regard, as in others, your vampires are very similar to demonkind. What is the only thing that really matters to a vampire?”

  I hesitated, not sure where he was going with this. “There are a lot of things—”

  “Are there? In that case, why is your friend Raphael not the head of his own family? He is arguably one of the greatest artistic talents the West has ever produced, and yet he serves a sniveling, wretched nobody like that Antonio.”

  “He doesn’t anymore. Mircea broke Tony’s hold.”

  “But he did until recently.”

  “Not by choice. Rafe is a master, but he isn’t that powerful—”

  “And there you have it. Power. The one thing, perhaps the only thing, your vampires respect. It is the same with demons. And Ruth had almost none.”

  “But she was part demon—you said so.”

  “Yes, but demons are like any other species. Mix the genetics and you never know what will come up. Even full blooded Ahhazu aren’t that strong, and in her case . . . she may as well have been the human she pretended to be.”

  “But you’re part demon and part human. And you told me yourself that the incubi aren’t considered one of the more powerful species, either. But you—”

  “Yes, but my other half was magical human; hers was not. And that, or the small amount of Fey blood I inherited from my mother, or the way the genes combined—something worked to boost my abilities. I ended up stronger magically than I should have been, instead of weaker. If I had not, I doubt I would have ever known who my father was. He would have rejected me as another failed experiment and moved on. And the same was true for Ruth. Without power, she was of interest to no one.”

  “No one except you.”

  Pritkin was silent for a long moment. And when he spoke his voice was different from usual, softer, almost tentative. As if he had to find the words because he never spoke about this and didn’t have them ready.

  “She saw me, I think, as an entrée into a world she could only imagine. She knew I was part demon from the moment she met me. It is difficult to hide that from another of our kind, but it is also difficult to tell which species one belongs to if the human side is dominant. I think—I would like to think—that she didn’t know until I told her. That her affection for me had some basis other than the fact that my father was the prince of one of the most magnificent of the courts. It is far from the most powerful, but in opulence, in decadence, in wealth . . . it would be difficult to name another more entrancing. Certainly, it entranced her.”

  “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think what else to say. No one liked to feel they were wanted only because of what they had, or, in his case, who they were.

  “As am I.”

  He was quiet for a while, the whoosh of the air conditioner and the faint buzzing of the overhead light the only sound. It was peaceful, and the small office was oddly cozy. It felt like an island away from the craziness of our usual lives, another moment stolen out of time. Maybe that’s what did it, or maybe, like me, he just wanted to tell someone. Have somebody understand.

  “Demons do not . . . have relations . . . the same way humans do,” he finally said. “Or, rather, they can—the more humanoid of the species, in any case—but it isn’t considered a real joining. That comes only from merging with another, gaining power by feeding off their energy, having them feed off yours.... If done between two full demons, it can result in an exchange of power, enabling both to grow stronger. Some matings are done specifically for that purpose, to allow beings with complementary abilities to enhance them, possibly even mutate them into something neither had experienced before.”

  I frowned, trying to grasp what he was telling me. “So instead of making a new life, you . . . remake yours?”

  “In a way. Of course, a joining can result in both outcomes, although that’s exceedingly rare. But demon lives are long and experimentation is . . . almost a universal hobby. It is like the human fascination with genetics, the attempt to make oneself better through whatever means are available.”

  “And Ruth wanted to do that with you?”

  He nodded curtly once, and then went still. When he finally spoke it was harsh, clipped. “She didn’t tell me. She told my father, asked for his advice—why I don’t know. He would be the last person to give anyone selfless advice, but perhaps she assumed he would want the best for his son.” His lips twisted in savage mockery.

  “And he told her to go ahead?” I as
ked.

  “I don’t know what he told her. I know only what he said—after I found out on my own that she had been to court. He swore that he had informed her of the risk, but he had every reason to do precisely the opposite. He hated the idea of my ‘wasting’ myself on a human, and a nonmagical one at that, with barely enough demon blood to mention. He wanted me mated to full demons, powerful ones, influential ones.”

  “Why? Why would he care—”

  “Because it would lend him influence with the courts. Most demons have a very limited pool of partners with whom to experiment, because most are restricted in what kind of energy they can absorb. Incubi, however, are the . . . the O positive of the demon world. We can feed from virtually anyone and transmit energy to anyone, anyone at all.”

  I stared at him for a moment, sure I’d misunderstood. But as crazy as it sounded, I didn’t see what else he could have meant. “He was going to pimp you out?”

  Pritkin shot me a glance, and something of the tension went out of his shoulders. His face relaxed, not into a smile, but into something less forbidding. “If you could see your expression.”

  “How else am I supposed to look? You’re his son!”

  “Which makes me a bargaining chip. Or was supposed to. I don’t know what he envisioned—someone like him, I suppose, handsome, charming, ready to bed whomever and whatever was needed for the good of the clan. He did as much himself when it would help his negotiations. But while he could offer a power exchange, he couldn’t give the other races what they truly wanted.”

  “And what was that?” I asked, almost afraid to find out.

  “Children. Progeny who might carry the traits of both parents, thereby enriching the line with new blood for eons to come. Full demons have an incredibly low reproductive rate. They live for so long, if anything else were true, they would face mass starvation. But humans . . .”

  He paused, but I didn’t push it, didn’t say anything. I just sat there, torn between horror and outrage. But he saw, and that same quiet came over his face, as if my anger somehow lessened his own.