by Karen Chance
I didn’t know how she’d done that, either. Or how she’d known that he belonged in that other time instead of with us. But it was lucky considering the huge amount of trouble that would have been caused if she hadn’t.
I shivered a little. Removing Pritkin from the time line would have also removed me—from life, since he’d saved mine maybe a dozen times in the last few months. It was the same thing I was trying to do for him, if my damned counterparts would stop interfering! Especially with graduate-level Pythia stuff I didn’t know how to deal with because I was barely out of kindergarten.
Maybe I should have felt lucky just to have survived. But what I mostly felt was pissed. As if this wasn’t hard enough already!
And now Rosier was scowling at me again.
“She’s from the past,” he pointed out. “Yet she sent us back here? You’re telling me your kind can manipulate the future now?”
“No.” At least, I couldn’t. I wasn’t so sure about the rest of them.
“Then how did she do it?”
“I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter right now, does it? All that matters is that we have to get to Pritkin. And for that I have to eat—”
“Eat all you want. Sleep. Take a holiday!” He threw out a hand. And then quickly replaced it on the railing as another gust came roaring by. “What difference does it make?” he yelled. “By now, his soul is back in the demon realm—”
“So?”
“So we can’t reach it there, little girl!”
Damn it! I glared at Rosier because I knew this was going to happen! It was why I’d been so desperate to catch Pritkin in Amsterdam. Since, shortly before that, he had spent what had seemed to him like fifty years or so in the demon realms, only to return to earth to find that more than a thousand years had passed.
Rosier had first snatched his son away sometime in the sixth century, when he was about my age, and the next time Pritkin saw earth, it was the late 1780s. Thanks to a much longer life span from his demon blood and the different time stream operating in hell, he hadn’t changed all that much. But earth . . .
It must have been a damned wrenching experience, coming back Rip van Winkle–like to find that everything he knew was gone and everyone he cared about was dead. Just one of the hits his psyche would take from the curse of having Rosier for a father. But it wasn’t much better for us, since our failure in the icy canals meant that our next stop was likely to be a whole lot warmer.
But impossible, it wasn’t.
“My power may not work in hell all that well, but it doesn’t need to,” I reminded Rosier. “I can take us back in time on earth, and then you can take us into the demon realm. It amounts to the same thing—”
“It is not the same thing! It is not remotely the same thing!” The fake eyebrow had come loose and started slapping his face as he talked, like a trapped moth. He reached up and ripped it off, taking half of his own brow along with it. The suave demon lord was getting kind of hard to see right now.
But I didn’t laugh.
He looked seriously demented.
“I had planned to catch Emrys on earth,” he informed me, using Pritkin’s hated demon name. “Not in hell!”
“But the hells are your home ground—”
“Yes! Yes, exactly!”
“And that’s a problem because?” I asked carefully.
“Do you have any idea how many enemies I have?” he demanded. “How am I supposed to go without magic into an area where I walk with caution even now? Why do you think the council has guards to protect us? For their looks?”
He was being funny, I assumed, since the demon council’s guards didn’t have faces. Or much of anything else. It didn’t stop them from being deadly, however.
“So we’ll . . . catch him when he goes to your court,” I said, thinking fast.
Pritkin had spent much of his time away in the Shadowland, a minor demon realm that served as a gateway to the vast array of worlds that made up the hells. I didn’t have fond memories of it, but Pritkin had apparently preferred it to Rosier’s domain, where a large number of jealous incubi wouldn’t have minded improving their rank by knocking off the royal heir. But he had been at court for a while, at least, and if we could catch him there—
“Oh yes. That would be better.” The sarcasm dripped.
“It’s your court!”
“Which is why I know it as well as I do,” Rosier said grimly. “And entering it as a demon, fat with power and with no protection, wouldn’t be foolhardy, it would be suicide.”
“He’s your son! And you’re a council member. Get the guards to protect you if you’re so worried about your precious neck!”
“I’m a council member now,” he said, gingerly feeling the raw skin over his eye. “He is a council member then.”
“He who?”
“Me who.”
“What?”
“Me—the other me,” he said impatiently. “The Rosier of that time. The one I would be assumed to be impersonating. An offense, I might add, that is punishable by death.”
“Damn it! There has to be a way—”
“There is.” I looked at him. “We wait.”
“For what?”
“For Emrys’ soul to enter earth again, natur—”
He broke off, possibly because he’d just been grabbed. And it looked like I wasn’t as tired as I’d thought. Because the next second I was slamming the rat fink against the windows hard enough to dislodge an avalanche of dust from the crevices above. It came down in a reddish brown billow, coating us and partly obscuring Rosier’s outrage.
It had nothing on mine.
“The devil is wrong with you?” he choked—literally, since his mouth had been open when the deluge hit. “You utterly insane—”
“Pritkin will be twenty-four by the time he reenters this world,” I ground out. “We’re supposed to let hundreds of years slip by and try to catch him in a few decades? Knowing that, if we miss, that’s it?”
And it would be. The damned demon council had known my abilities when they cursed him, and had used the one spell that would be the hardest for me to counter. His soul would only pass through each period of his life once, and then never again. I couldn’t go back to Amsterdam and try to get him again, because Pritkin’s body might be there, but his soul, the modern, precious, cursed version I had to save . . .
Would not.
It was gone forever, tumbling backward through his life into the period he’d spent in the hells. And if we couldn’t catch it there, with a millennium of time to work with, how were we supposed to manage it in a few short years on earth? How were we supposed to manage it before Pritkin literally aged right out of existence? And how was I supposed to even get us there to try it?
“We’ll be waiting for him when he emerges,” the damn demon was saying, because he still didn’t get it. “We’ll catch him the moment he—”
“No, we won’t.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I can’t go back that far!”
I suddenly found our positions reversed, and myself backed into the glass door, forcefully enough to leave bruises on my bruises. And, okay, I thought, staring up into a truly devilish face, Rosier was looking more the part now. “What the hell does that mean?” he hissed.
“What I said!” I snapped, too angry to be intimidated. “The farthest back I’ve ever been was four hundred years—and that was without a passenger! What you’re talking about would kill me. It also wouldn’t work,” I added, because Rosier didn’t look too upset at that idea.
“Then why do the rumors say your kind can travel at will, even back to the ancient world?”
“I don’t know! Like I know anything about this damned office. But I’m telling you I can’t do it!”
“And I am telling you that you have to.”
“We aren’t going to the hells,” he said, and then raised his voice to talk over me when I tried to interrupt. “Even if I lost my mind and decided to risk it, it wouldn’t work, girl. By the time you could recuperate enough to get us there, he’d already be gone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! He was there for ages! We have plenty of—”
“Ages of your time. Earth’s time. But he wasn’t on earth, was he?”
I stopped, staring at Rosier. “What?”
“The hells are on a different time line—you know that.” He sounded annoyed. “And the spell isn’t on the time line, it’s on him. It follows him. And where he was, perhaps fifty years passed.”
It brought me up short. All the more so because I’d known that. I’d known it, but I hadn’t wanted to think about it, hadn’t wanted to acknowledge even to myself how close to the end we were getting. But suddenly, my hands were shaking.
I wanted to argue with Rosier, wanted to scream at him, to tell him that no, no, no, he wasn’t right, he couldn’t be. Pritkin was from earth. He was on earth time. . . .
But not when he was away from it.
Which meant that our window of opportunity had just been shortened by something like a thousand years.
I tried to process that, but I didn’t have the strength. That last outburst had left me feeling weak and wobbly, with a brain that was having a hard time keeping up. Everything was coming too thick and too fast, and all I could think was the same thing, over and over.
“Then we’ve failed,” I whispered, feeling dizzy. And lost. And very, very cold.
“Like hell we’ve failed.” I looked up to find Rosier glaring at me again. “I’m going to see Adra,” he said, brushing himself off. And talking about the head of the demon council.
“Why?”
“Because he laid the damned spell! He’s the only one who can track it. He should be able to tell us approximately when Emrys’ soul will enter earth again.”
“What difference does it make?” I demanded shakily. “I can’t shift again, probably not for hours . . . and even if I could, Pritkin was born in the sixth century—”
“I know when he was born.”
I shook my head violently, because he didn’t know. He didn’t understand. “You’re talking about fifteen hundred years. Even if we had more time, I can’t—”
“You can and you will,” Rosier said, his voice a whip crack. For a moment, he sounded exactly like his son giving me an order in the middle of a fight. It was enough to snap my head up, enough to bring me back from the brink. I blinked stupid tears away.
“How?”
“That’s for you to discover. But the spell gets weaker as it moves along, losing power as the magic behind it gives out. It starts out lightning fast, but nearer the end, it slows down considerably. We have time.”
“How much time?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.” The voice was hard. Like the hand that suddenly gripped my arm, possibly because I’d started to sway a little.
I looked up and met Rosier’s green, green eyes. They were so like Pritkin’s that, for a moment, I almost thought I saw a spark of compassion in them. And then the grip turned painful.
“Eat. Sleep. Do whatever you have to do. And then find us a way back there!”
Chapter Five
I woke up to a soft bed, cool sheets, and the feel of warm skin sliding against mine. It felt good; it felt better than good. Like the unmistakable thickness that pressed hard against me.
I smiled and stretched, pushing back into a strong embrace. Enjoying the feel of hard muscle and the quiver of anticipation that shivered from me into the body behind me. Or maybe it was the other way around; maybe he was the one shivering. I couldn’t tell, didn’t care.
An arm encircled my stomach, pulling me abruptly back. And the weight against me suddenly grew larger. A rough hand began to wander, exploring the jut of a hip bone, the curve of a rib, the dip of a navel. And then smoothing up my stomach, pushing my shirt along with it, up and over the swell of a breast.
A sound escaped my lips at the combination of chilly air and warm flesh. The latter began exploring my softness, but slowly, teasingly. Deliberately ignoring the tightly furled tip.
I moaned again, louder, and pressed into his grasp. But the gentle torture continued unabated, until I was gasping and sweating, shivering and desperate. Such a little thing, to leave me completely undone. Such a silly little thing . . . but it had, and I was, and I wanted . . .
And finally, finally, practiced fingers found the tender nub, rolling it expertly, making my breath catch in my throat. I pushed into the hand, trembling and aching. And it tightened for a moment possessively before sliding back down my stomach. All the way down, past the silky scrap of my thong.
Until it grasped other things.
My breath sped up and my legs moved apart automatically. The grip tightened, rough calluses against delicate skin, and I writhed, almost in pain now. His breath sped up, too, ruffling the hair on the back of my neck as his fingers found a new nub to torture. And the desire that had been building and building suddenly caught fire, flaming out of control.
But I was trapped, caught between sinuous movements from behind, where his body still cupped me, and sure, sweet strokes from in front, those talented fingers both caging and bringing me to the brink in moments. Until the deep throb of desire blotted out everything else. A hand gripped my thigh, pulling it farther up. Leaving me open and aching as he slid slowly against me from behind, huge and hard and . . .
“Take me already!” I gasped, and heard him chuckle.
“Are you asking or demanding?”
“Either. Both.” I barely knew what I was saying as that wonderful heat kept. Missing. The target. “Can’t you find it?” I asked desperately, after another few seconds, because I was losing my mind.
“I think I can manage.” The voice was amused, but the words were punctuated by a full-length glide against me. “But I don’t take orders well.”
“Neither do I!” I told him, pushing back.
“I’ve noticed” was hissed in my ear as the wonderful, hateful pressure slid against me again. And again. And—
“Damn it, Pritkin! Don’t tease!”
Abruptly, the movements stopped. And the hands on my body tightened. And a familiar voice growled in my ear. “Pritkin?”
And then somebody knocked on the door.
I jerked awake with a little scream, staring around in confusion and instinctively grabbing for the sheet. That was lucky, because the door burst open a second later, spilling two well-armed security guards into the room. Along with a small vampire clutching large white paper bags.
The vampire’s name was Fred. He was looking a little bewildered. Possibly because of the scream, or because I was staring at him like he had two heads.
I clutched the sheet a little higher and did it anyway. My heart was in my throat, my hair was everywhere, and my nipples were hard as rocks. It was a little difficult to think clearly at the moment.
“Sushi?” he blurted out.
“Wh-what?” I stared at him some more.
“Or Indian?”
He thrust out the bags, so I stared at them instead. They looked like the kind you get at takeout places, and one of them had a greasy bottom that was about to leak through the waxed paper. It smelled wonderful.
My brain finally woke up enough to inform me that I must have fallen asleep while waiting for dinner, and that I was now freaking out Fred. And the other guards, one of whom had a hand on his gun. I licked my lips and retreated from heart attack territory, although I didn’t lower the sheet. I couldn’t because my shirt had ridden up. Had ridden suspiciously up, I thought, glancing around again.
But there were no phantom lov
ers in sight, and I knew from phantom. Just soft darkness, a dim haze from the nightscape outside the windows, and the air conditioner tossing the sheers around. I pushed sweaty hair out of my face and told myself to calm down.
It had been a dream, that was all—just a vivid dream.
Really, really vivid.
I swallowed, and turned my attention back to the small vamp.
He was silhouetted in the brighter wedge of light from the hall, a short, somewhat dumpy figure in an ill-fitting suit. It showed off his love handles but matched his large, myopic gray eyes. He had wispy brown hair that he’d let grow a little long to try to cover a bald patch, a tie that always ended up everywhere except where a tie was supposed to be, and a nose that looked like it was missing the glasses he chose not to wear because he thought they made him look weak.
I hated to tell him, but it really didn’t matter. Scary, Fred was not. However, we all have our gifts. And right then, he was holding bags from two of the local eateries that had received the Fred seal of approval. Which meant that they specialized in greasy, sugary, spicy, or fried foods, or preferably all of the above.
My mouth started to water.
“Suuuushi, or Innnndian?” he asked again, recovering slightly. And wafting the bags around.
“What . . . what kind of Indian?” I managed to say, without drooling on myself.
“Tikka masala. And tandoori chicken, just out of the oven. They had some leftover stuff in the warming pans, but I made ’em give me the fresh.”
“Poppadums?”
Fred drew himself up. “What am I, an animal? And garlic naan.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you want to know about the sushi?”
“No.” After a chase through an ice storm and a dunk in frigid water, cold fish didn’t appeal.
Fred shrugged philosophically. “More for me.”
He ambled over and switched on the lamp beside the bed, while the other two vamps looked around. Probably wondering what I’d done with Rosier. They apparently decided that I’d either shifted him somewhere or thrown him off the building, and neither seemed to worry them overly much.