by Karen Chance
And it was, but I didn’t know these people, didn’t know what might work on them even if I’d been able to think straight. “Mircea—” I said, because he was the one with the golden tongue, the one who could talk his way out of anything.
Anything except this.
“The council will ransom him back from you,” Mircea told Adra tightly, his hand clenching on my shoulder, because Casanova was his, too.
“We will?” the consul asked archly.
“Then I will ransom him!” He looked at Adra. “Name your price!”
“There is no coin you have that we want,” Adra murmured, his eyes on mine. “Explain it to me,” he told me.
“I . . . don’t know what you want to hear.”
“The truth.”
“Would you believe it?”
“Try me.”
I spread my hands, desperate, terrified. Because that thing was coming this way, shaking the ground as it walked, and I didn’t have the words, not ones someone like Adra was likely to understand. How I’d had so few people in my life I could rely on for anything, so few who didn’t use me or stab me in the back or betray me. How the few I did have were so precious, so very precious: Mircea and Pritkin, Tami and Billy, Marco, and, yes, even Casanova, surprised though he’d probably be to hear it.
“He’s my friend,” I said. “He helped me. I don’t know what your criteria for ‘friend’ are, but I don’t have to always like all of mine! He stood by me—grudgingly, but he did—and saved me when he didn’t have to, and . . . and helped me. And now I’m supposed to turn my back on him? I’m supposed to stand here and let him die?”
Gray eyes scanned mine for a long moment, and then looked away. “No.”
“No? Then I can—”
“Not you.” Adra made a small motion with his head, toward the arena. “Rian.”
And that was all she needed.
Before I totally understood what had happened, Rian had shed her human form and dissolved into a cloud of sparkling mist. And flown over the balcony, diving straight into the tiny form of her lover, so far below. And disappeared.
“What can she do?” the consul asked, leaning farther over the balcony.
“Watch and see,” Adra said, right before we all had to fall back, when a scaly head came tearing through the balcony opening, ripping off chunks of stone, bending metal girders like aluminum foil, and sending a wash of dust and a blast of fiery-hot breath at us.
But not fire. Casanova wasn’t facing a dragon, because dragons were fey, not demon. And because he wasn’t that lucky.
And then Adra, who alone hadn’t bothered to move, made a slight motion, and the thing pulled back, rejoining the mass of squirming, snakelike heads on the dinosaur-like body below.
At least, I assumed that it did, but since Mircea had dragged me almost to the door to the room inside, I couldn’t see much.
“What is it?” I asked him, trying to see.
“Hydra.”
“How do you kill it?”
“I don’t know.” His jaw was tight. Mircea wasn’t used to being a bystander. Wasn’t used to having to watch someone else fight while he stood helpless on the sidelines. Wasn’t used to being the one without power in any situation.
Welcome to my world, I thought, and then Marlowe was beckoning us over.
He had rejoined the consul, who had returned to her former position as soon as the thing was gone. And appeared to be having the time of her life, kneeling on the edge of the precipice, because the railing was now mostly gone, too. There were just a few bits of curled metal and broken glass here and there, and a lot of open air with wind blowing her long dark hair around.
“It can be done,” Marlowe said, looking up as we tried to find a clear spot.
“How?” I asked, staring down at that thing. And searching for Casanova, who I didn’t see at all.
“Hercules did it—at least according to myth.”
“Casanova is not Hercules,” Mircea said grimly.
“Hercules was an idiot,” the consul said. “Don’t go for the heads.”
“What else do you go for?” Marlowe asked as Mircea kicked some glass out of the way to make us a spot.
“The heart. It only has one of those.”
“According to myth, the body would live as long as a single head remained.”
“Have you ever known anything that can live without a heart?” she demanded. “Including us?”
“No, but . . .” Marlowe looked around. He was still in the rumpled reddish suit from yesterday, only it was more rumpled now. Like his windblown curls, which were flying everywhere. And those dark eyes, which seemed to be having trouble deciding what to focus on. “I’m beginning to think my expertise . . . may need an upgrade,” he finally said.
“You really think that’ll work?” I asked the consul, my heart in my throat.
She looked up, and for once, for maybe the first time ever, she was smiling. No, she was grinning. “Tell him to carve it out and we’ll see.”
Sounded like a plan to me.
If we could find him. But it was like he’d simply vanished. The creature seemed to think so, too, prowling around the arena, the many heads stretching in all directions. Including into the stands in a few cases, lunging at demons who spilled back out of the way, causing what looked like tidal flows in the crowd.
But there was no Casanova.
“Can she make him invisible?” I asked, wondering what kind of trick Rian was pulling.
“No,” Mircea told me. “Or, if she can, she has never chosen to do so in four hundred years.”
“What can she do?” I asked, because I didn’t think normal incubus powers were likely to help here. In fact, I didn’t know what would, minus an army. Which Rian didn’t have.
“What can he do?” Adra asked, coming over. And dropping down between the consul and me, to swing his legs over the opening.
“What?”
“What abilities does he have?”
“What difference does that make?” Nothing he had was going to help him now.
But Adra didn’t seem to agree.
“It makes all the difference. That is what possession does. Occasionally, yes, it can give you powers you wouldn’t normally have. But far more often, it simply increases the ones you do have.”
“Increases by how much?” Marlowe asked sharply.
Adra smiled at him and kicked his legs some more.
The consul wasn’t the only one having a good time, I thought.
“That would depend on the demon,” Adra said. “But while incubi are not among the more powerful of our kind, Rian has been on earth for a rather . . . extended stay. She has acquired a great deal of power, and therefore has more to lend.”
“But what can she do?” I repeated.
Adra shrugged. “What can your vampire do?” he asked again. “Possession for humans will not increase their power greatly since, you’ll forgive me, they have little to enhance. But a vampire . . . well. Strength, speed, all the senses, and any master’s powers the vampire may have would be greatly augmented.”
“You know about master’s powers?” the consul asked.
Adra looked at her. “My dear.”
“How greatly?” Marlowe repeated.
Adra shrugged. “See for yourself.”
And, suddenly, we were. Casanova stepped out from behind the giant, hollowed-out shell, which by now was all that remained of his former opponent. He looked impossibly tiny from what had to be a couple of football fields away. Unlike his opponent, which saw him at almost the same moment we did, and went boiling down the length of the arena toward him.
“Mircea—” I said, gripping his hand.
“I’ve told him what we know. It will be enough or it will not.”
He sounded calm, but his hand was
almost squeezing mine in two.
But I hardly noticed, because the hydra had already crossed one football field’s worth and was tearing up the second, and Casanova still just stood there. Not flinching, not moving, not panicking. Not doing anything—until the creature was almost on top of him. And then he moved, so fast I couldn’t even track him with my eyes.
But I could track the results.
The giant beetle shell suddenly popped up out of the ground and went sailing through the air, cutting a dark swath across the arena like a massive Frisbee. A massive Frisbee with a knifelike edge and enough force behind it to have bisected a mountain—or a dozen thick, snakelike necks, snipping them off like tender flower stems.
Heads rolled everywhere, rivers of blood spurted, and a tiny figure of a man leapt for the thrashing body before it could regrow anything it had lost. I didn’t see what he used for a knife—maybe another piece of shell. But whatever it was, it worked, piercing deep and sending the thing rolling onto its back, writhing in a spreading stain while the crowd went wild and Casanova stabbed it, over and over like a madman, until he was coated with as much black gore as the sand.
And the consul was yelling—yes, yelling—dignity forgotten, hair in her face, as jubilant as the crowd. Marlowe was staring, from Casanova to her to Adra and back again, his face blank but his eyes burning. And Mircea’s arm was tightening, dragging me back into the other room.
Chapter Thirty-four
Immediately, the deafening sounds from the arena dimmed, leaving me with ringing ears and pulsing vision as my eyes tried to adjust to the darker interior. “What are you doing?” I asked as Mircea kept on going, past the buffet table and almost to the elevator doors on the other side of the room.
“Strange, I was about to ask the same of you!”
“You saw—”
“Yes, I saw!” He whirled on me, dark eyes glittering. “I saw you risk your life—again—needlessly, foolishly! I am beginning to believe—”
“It was necessary!”
“—that you have some sort of death wish! What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that he needed help! I was thinking that someone asked me—”
“Then you tell them no!”
“He was my responsibility—”
“Your responsibility is there!” It was vicious and punctuated by a slash of his arm in the general direction of the buffet.
Where I belatedly noticed Jules standing awkwardly, holding a champagne glass and trying to look like he wasn’t there. It was a little difficult, because he and a no-longer-suspended Marco were the only ones left in the room. Everybody else had cleared out, all the finely dressed men and women now picking their way through the debris outside to clap politely for the victor.
While in here, another battle was brewing, and it wasn’t one I was prepared for.
I had just woken up. I was still in the pink cotton nightie I’d slept in, my hair was everywhere, and my stomach was growling, demanding breakfast. I did not want to do this.
But Mircea obviously did, and he was standing there, visibly angry, which for a master vamp usually meant he was close to wrecking the room. I didn’t even want to know what it meant for the Senate’s chief negotiator, who usually kept his cool even when everyone else was on meltdown. I didn’t want to know.
But I was about to, because I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted.
“I can’t change Jules back,” I began.
“And why not?” It was clipped. “I explained the procedure. All you have to do is age him. I will handle the rest.”
“Okay, ‘can’t’ might not have been the best choice of word—”
“Then do it. We are running out of time.”
“Out of time for what?” I glanced over, but Jules was apparently finding his champagne glass to be fascinating. “Is Jules going somewhere?”
“Our army is going somewhere—into faerie!”
I frowned. “I’m not making you an army, Mircea. I told you that last night.”
“And you have now had time to reconsider.”
“I’m not going to reconsider.”
“Damn it, Cassie!” The explosion made me jump, because Mircea didn’t speak like that. Not to anyone, and especially not to me. But then, he didn’t usually look like that, either. The playful, daring, humorous lover was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I was facing a man who was visibly stressed and angry, like he’d had too little sleep and too much pressure, way too much, maybe over a long period of time. And what the hell had happened last night?
“This is for your good as much as ours,” he told me tightly. “How many times have our enemies tried to kill you? How many assassins have they sent? How many times do you think you are going to get lucky—”
“Why is it,” I cut in, getting a little angry myself, “that when someone else dodges a bullet, it’s down to skill, but whenever I do it, I’m ‘lucky’? I killed a Spartoi; I don’t get credit for that? I just took on that . . . that thing . . . out there and what? It was just its time to go?”
“You have power, yes, something that can help us greatly in this war if it is properly utilized—”
“By you, you mean. Funny, Jonas seems to think the same thing.”
“—but that is useless if misdirected—”
“Misdirected?”
“—and no matter how great the weapon, it must be—”
“I’m not a weapon, Mircea!”
“I am well aware of that—”
“Are you? Because I’m starting to feel like everyone thinks I’m just a gun for them to fire. But I’m not. My power is not. It came to me because I’m best able to use it—or to decide when not to,” I said pointedly, looking at Jules.
“Jules wants this.”
“Last night he didn’t know what he wanted.”
“He does now!”
“Do you?” I asked Jules, because some input here would be nice.
Annnnd now he was perusing the prosciutto stand, and trying to tease a paper-thin slice off with a little fork.
“Jules!” I said, and saw him jump.
“I—didn’t have lunch,” he said awkwardly.
“Have you decided?” I asked again. “Because Mircea seems to think you have.”
“I . . . well . . . that is . . .” He looked at Mircea.
“Don’t look at him! This is about your life.”
“My life.” Jules gave a burst of laughter, and then quickly shut it down.
“You can laugh if you want to,” I told him. “You can do whatever you want. You don’t have a master anymore—”
“I know!” He flung out a hand, and an arc of champagne went with it. And then he looked down at his empty glass and grimaced. “I know, all right?”
“Then what do you want to do?” I asked again. And got a half-angry, half-helpless stare in return. “Jules, you were a master. You’ve been able to make up your own mind about things for a long time—”
“Yes, but this isn’t about things, is it?” he asked. “This is about everything. My whole future. My whole—I thought things were set. I thought—” He looked helplessly at Mircea. “It’s not . . . I appreciate, so much, all you’ve—I’d be dead without—I was going to do it, I was going to jump, and you saved me—”
“And I will again,” Mircea told him.
“Yes, but . . .” That helpless look was back, screwing up his face and fluttering the hand not holding on to his glass. Jules had always had such expressive hands, an actor’s hands. And now this one was all over the place, painting stories in the air I couldn’t read, but I guess he could, because his eyes were suddenly distant. “I never figured it out, you know,” he finally said. “Life. I just . . . never had the knack. Other people seemed to get it—they married, had kids, seemed to understand, to fit, in ways I never did. . . .” He
trailed off.
“But then you became a vampire,” I prompted, because I wanted him to get to the point already.
And it seemed to help, because he nodded vigorously. “That’s just it. I was a lousy human. I wasn’t even that great of an actor, to be honest, and that was the closest . . . I thought it would be different, after. I thought, maybe this is it, maybe the reason I didn’t fit in as a human was because I was never supposed to be one. Maybe this is what I was meant for. . . . But I wasn’t. I was a lousy vampire, too!”
“You were a master,” Mircea said. “You know how few—”
“Yes, I know!” Jules said, cutting him off. And then looked stricken because you didn’t interrupt your master in the vamp world. You just didn’t. “You see?” he said, voice almost a whisper. “That’s me, right there. That’s why you sent me to Cassie. That’s why you sent me away.”
“I didn’t send you away,” Mircea said heavily. “I sent you where you could be best utilized. You are—were—powerful but not subtle. But Cassie needs defenders, not diplomats—”
“But I didn’t defend her, did I?” Jules interrupted again, unconsciously, and I bit back a smile. He really was almost completely tactless, which must have really sucked in a household renowned for its charm and diplomacy. “I tried, I really did, but she ended up having to defend me!”
He looked at me. “You asked what I want. How am I supposed to know? Maybe I’d be better off as a human again. Maybe a childhood not knowing when you’re going to eat next, or if you are, of being traded to whoever has a few dollars to rent your pretty face for a night, of being told you’re good for nothing when it was your work supporting the whole damned lot of them—” He broke off, lips tight.
“Jules . . . I’m sorry,” I said.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
“It was a long time ago,” he told me. “But I always wondered if maybe the start I had in life was what screwed it up for me. If maybe I’d had a different family, one who gave a damn . . . But you really can’t go back, can you? You can make me younger, but you can’t erase what happened—”