by Karen Chance
Ignite the Fire:
Incendiary
KAREN CHANCE
Copyright 2021
Karen Chance
Ignite the Fire: Incendiary
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Karen Chance
Author’s Note:
This is the eleventh Cassie Palmer novel, following Shatter the Earth. It is the first part of a two-part novel as the story was too large for a single book. It continues in Ignite the Fire: Inferno.
Chapter One
I was in hell.
No, that wasn’t right. I’d been to hell, and it was better. Like, by a lot.
And that was before Pritkin started to swear.
John Pritkin was an irascible war mage, the magical equivalent of a platoon, with a mouth that would make a sailor blush—and that was on a good day. This was not a good day. His usually spiky blond hair was extra spiky from the cold, frozen into pointy tips that looked like they’d stab you if you got too close. His expression matched them when he turned around to look at me out of furious green eyes.
“What?” I said.
“You didn’t mention them!” he accused, from the high perch of the coachman’s seat.
“Them? Them who?”
I leaned forward, but couldn’t see anything from here. I also couldn’t hear, with another icy blast howling down the cavernous riverbed far below and whipping by our coach, which was barely clinging to a narrow bridge as it was. Pritkin swore some more, this time at the horses, who bucked and caused us to rock alarmingly. I was treated to a brief, dizzying view over the railless side of the bridge: rushing water studded with shards of ice, snow-covered rocks sparkling in weak winter sunlight, dead looking trees stretching their skeletal limbs skyward as if grabbing for us, trying to stab, to drag us down, to—
And then we righted again, with a thud and a shake, and I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood.
At least I didn’t scream, I thought, clutching the door. Six months ago, I would have been screaming my head off, and flailing my way out of the open carriage we were in despite it being freeze-your-ass-off degrees outside. And slip sliding my way back down the icy bridge, hoping that none of the finely dressed monsters in the carriages behind me were hungry.
My name is Cassie Palmer, and six months ago, I was a down on my luck secretary who read Tarot in a bar. I clipped coupons, shopped yard sales, and knew fifteen different ways to dress up ramen. Had anybody told me that, by December, I would be Pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world, and on my way to a vampire ball full of traitors, I’d have either laughed or edged slowly away, depending on how crazed they looked.
I wasn’t laughing now.
I was swallowing blood and looking up to find my second companion on his feet, his dark hair flying out behind him on the wind, his hand gripping the back of the coachman’s seat. “Where?” he demanded.
“By the portcullis,” Pritkin said, his voice tight. “You see?”
I assumed it was a rhetorical question, since a vampire’s eyes didn’t miss much, especially this vampire's. Mircea Basarab was a first-level master, the highest vampire rank, which came with a lot of nifty bonus features. That included eyesight with a telephoto ability that I’d found out about recently when Mircea and I had briefly shared power.
In fact, that was the whole reason I was here, freezing my silk covered ass off: Mircea had discovered a spell that allowed two or more people to share magical gifts, assuming that they were lovers—or in our case, had recently been lovers.
It sounded like a nifty idea—until you learned the catch. The spell wasn’t really about power sharing; that was just a byproduct. It was about soul sharing, linking you to someone else at the deepest level, which also didn’t sound too bad.
Until you realized: at that level of connectedness, when one of you died, you both did.
Yeah.
I wasn’t a fan.
People had been trying to kill me ever since I got this job, because we were at war and a Pythia was a formidable opponent. Especially a young Pythia who wasn’t frail and half dead from poison like the last. And then completely dead, because they’d gotten Agnes in the end, despite the fact that she was as wily as they came.
But they hadn’t gotten me.
Only they didn’t have to, because my ex-boyfriend was going to take care of that for them, risking his own neck along with mine and Pritkin’s, too. Pritkin was my current lover, which roped him into the enchantment as well, and explained why he was here. He was afraid that Mircea was going to get us all killed, because the spell was just fine with ménages à trois.
Unfortunately, Pritkin wasn’t.
I’d tried to play peacemaker by pointing out that the spell wasn’t a problem right now, since Mircea had had it removed. And had sworn never to have it cast again, in exchange for me taking him on this one last mission through time. Assuming we survived, that was.
That last thought must have occurred to Pritkin, too, because my attempts at diplomacy had not been well received. The tension had been a little thick in the carriage as a result, and it didn’t look like things were improving. Mircea’s expression had turned dark and scowl-y, and his nose was twitching.
I surreptitiously sniffed myself, wondering if my panicked sweat had broken through the rose-scented perfume I was wearing. But seriously, who could tell? All I could pick up was cold and horse, and I couldn’t see anything huddled under my heavy fur blanket, or talk without possibly being overheard by the dozens of carriages around us.
So, I stood up, too. Another gust of freezing wind hit, making me shiver and causing our horses to do another jig across the slick, icy stones. But, this time, I barely noticed. This time, I was riveted by something even scarier than a plunge into the void.
Shit.
Two figures stood at the end of the death trap of a causeway, in long dark cloaks that billowed out on the wind like the banners on the castle ramparts above. If they were trying to look human, it wasn’t working. For one thing, they dwarfed the guy that they’d just snatched off a coachbox, and for another, one of them had turned him upside down, holding him easily by one leg and shaking him until the knives hidden about his person fell out and rattled against the stones.
Seven feet tall, super strong, and with long, silver hair that whipped in the wind when one of their hoods fell back?
Shit, shit, shit.
I guess Pritkin felt the same, because the howling of the wind, the creaking of the carriage wheels, and the whinnying of the horses abruptly cut out, when he threw a silence spell around us.
“Son of a bitch!” he snarled, turning around, and Mircea shot him a warning glance.
“They can still see you,” he said, talking about the vamps in the other carriages, I assumed.
“Like I give a damn! We aren’t getting in there!”
“We are.” It was implacable.
“What are the fey doing here?” I asked, trying to avoid a fight, possibly literally.
“Checking every carriage,” Pritkin snapped. “And I’m part fey—”
“Which is why you shouldn’t have come,” Mircea said flatly.
Pritkin’s eyes narrowed, taking on a color closer to the turbulent, icy water below. “Which is why you need me—”
“I’ve dealt with the fey before—”
“And how many men did you lose?”
Pritkin asked sweetly. Because sure. This was the time to poke the bear.
“Can we stay on target?” I asked. We were only three carriages away from the fey, with the huge portcullis behind them close enough to remind me of a mouth full of jagged teeth, ready to consume us. It didn’t help that icicles had formed on the pitted iron, turning the teeth into elongated fangs. Which was appropriate considering how many more of those there were in the surrounding crowd.
Damn, I wanted out of here!
But we had a job to do first.
“—vampires,” Mircea was saying tersely. “Not men. And I know how much that thought disturbs you.”
“It disturbs me that our forces are dwindling—of whatever kind,” Pritkin growled. “I would prefer that number not include us!”
“A little late,” I pointed out, because we were almost there. The carriage with the stupidly armed driver had been allowed to pass, with a fey at the reins after the man himself was tossed carelessly over the parapet. We were now second in line.
I need a drink, I thought vaguely, trying not to listen for the coachman’s terrified scream to abruptly cut out. I didn’t hear it—the bridge was freakishly high, and the wind was doing a banshee impression—but my brain kept insisting that I did, and rerunning the sound on a loop. Scream, splat, scream, splat, scream, splat.
Mircea pulled a flask out of his coat as if he’d heard my thoughts, but the alcohol didn’t go into me. It went onto Pritkin, who snarled and grabbed the now mostly empty piece of silver. “Are you mad?”
“They can’t smell you this way,” Mircea informed him, unperturbed.
“They don’t need to smell me! They’re fey. They can sense—”
And then it was our turn.
The carriage in front of us—a closed one, to keep the late afternoon sunlight off delicate vampire skin—had been waved through almost at once. I didn’t know who had been in it, but they must have been trusted enough to bypass the goons, leaving us holding up the line. Pritkin had no choice but to brave it out, snapping the silence spell and clicking his tongue at the horses, causing them to move slowly forward.
I knew I should sit back down, should smooth the fur over my knees, should try to act normal. But my blonde updo had taken a beating in the wind and was coming down around my cold-reddened and probably terrified face, so I doubted it would help. Plus, I couldn’t reach the guys that way.
And I had the feeling that I was going to need to reach the guys.
My hands tightened on Mircea’s arm and Pritkin’s leg, as I stared up at the portcullis some more. I probably looked like I was mesmerized by it, and I almost was, although not for its fearsome appearance. But for what was swirling around it.
It was panting like a great beast, but the steady in- and exhales weren’t of air but of time. Time was the realm of the Pythias, the medium through which all our magic was done. Time usually soothed and comforted me, wrapping me in a warmer embrace than my fur, a sweet reassurance that my power glimmered at my fingertips, ready for use.
It wasn’t glimmering now. It was stuttering, upset and worried, because it could only feel me intermittently. Because the castle . . . wasn’t really there.
Well, part of it was. The outside part, to be exact, where the portcullis was, and which had been carved from the same dull gray stone as the surrounding mountains. It was old and weathered and half tumbled down, but it was real enough. But the inside . . . well, who knew where that was.
What I did know was that I’d seen this trick before.
In the supernatural world, when you absolutely, positively didn’t want interruptions from nosy parkers like me, you had an option. You could park yourself outside of Earth, outside of time, outside of everything, smack in the middle of a ley line, one of the rivers of metaphysical energy that flowed between our planet and the realms beyond. Because, while you traversed the space between worlds, you weren’t really anywhere—or anywhen.
You could fix yourself there, like a ship dropping anchor on storm tossed seas, and provide your guests a single doorway into your temporary oasis. Once they stepped through, they were somewhere that you controlled absolutely. And if you later shut that door?
Well, then even time itself couldn’t reach you.
Despite the weather, I felt my palms start to sweat.
That was why I hadn’t just shifted us inside to begin with. I couldn’t risk it when my power was stuttering like a candle in a high breeze. Especially not while carrying three. And three it had to be, because my two companions were both Alpha males determined to help me, but who instead were giving me cancer. Pure cancer, just any time now.
“—know who I am?”
That was Mircea, of course, talking to the guards and, despite what we’d just seen, sounding as imperious as the prince he’d once been. And looking like it, too, because the cold loved him. It made my face flush like I had a fever, sent enough static electricity through my hair to make it frizz and crackle, and caused snowflakes to gunk up my eyelashes like old mascara. But Mircea . . .
Looked like the goddamned god of winter.
The cold heightened his color, but just enough to faintly tinge the high cheekbones and redden the shapely lips. The glorious mane of thick, dark hair was loose and flowing on the breeze, the usually dark eyes were starting to glow amber bright, with striations of color spiraling up from the depths as his temper rose, and the rich, dark blue, mink lined robes he wore, old fashioned even in the seventeenth century, fit the scene perfectly.
They were from the time when his family had ruled this region with an iron fist and a lot of pointy wooden stakes, or at least his brother had. But Vlad the Impaler was just a legend now, and not one that the fey appeared to have heard of, because they weren’t even looking at the current family scion. They also weren’t paying any attention to the blond huddled under a blue greatcoat and reeking of alcohol in the driver’s seat.
They were staring at me.
I looked back in surprise, because I was just supposed to be Mircea’s date for the evening and should have been beneath their notice. The Svarestri type of fey didn’t think much of their own women, and believed the human variety to be beneath contempt. My outfit ought to have helped with that, consisting of a frilly, shell pink dress with enough lace to choke a horse, and the currently fashionable “Spaniel ears” hairstyle, which looked exactly like droopy dog ears on either side of my head with a bun in back. If anyone had ever looked like the human version of a fluffy bunny, it was me.
Yet the fey didn’t seem to think so. Twin pairs of pewter colored eyes, almost the same pale gray as the sky, stared into mine. Thanks to the height of the carriage, and the fussy, watered silk high heels I was wearing, we were almost eye to eye. And theirs were wide and getting wider.
“Um,” I said, a brief, reflexive sound, barely a huff on the freezing air. But it had an outsized effect.
Two powerful fey warriors, probably centuries old and covered with weapons, abruptly turned tail and ran, with one screaming something in a language I didn’t know. They disappeared through the portcullis, both of them yelling now, and two more pairs of eyes turned on me. One was now amber bright and one was as green as a new leaf, but they held identical, accusing expressions.
I looked back, nonplussed. “What?”
And then we found out what.
The portcullis started to lower—faster than I would have expected for something that rusted—and the sound spooked the already unhappy horses. They started forward again, which threatened to bring the heavy iron thing crashing down on top of us. But Pritkin applied a quick lash to a couple of shiny russet backsides and they jumped ahead, slipping us through at the last possible second.
Which would have been great except for the couple hundred fey now thundering toward us across a courtyard.
“Shit!” I said, and shifted, the last swirl of my power taking us to the top of one of the castle’s turrets, just before the great gate clanged down.
“What did
you do?” Pritkin demanded, jumping up from the floor of a narrow, watchtower like surround, where he’d landed in a still-seated position. “What did you—”
I didn’t answer, being too busy staring back at the portcullis, which had just effectively cut me off from my power. And because the army of fey were now climbing up the castle walls after us, as if their feet were velcroed to the stones. And because a rain of arrows had just headed our way.
We ducked behind the crenelated battlements, seeking cover, but a shaft took Mircea in the shoulder, nonetheless, courtesy of some fey still in the courtyard. He pulled it out without so much as a curse and jammed it through the eye of the first guard over the wall. Blood spurted, the fey’s body fell back, already lifeless, and I screamed.
“No!” And got a mouthful of ash for my trouble.
It took me a second to realize that it hadn’t come from a chimney, which the castle didn’t seem to have anyway, but rather from Pritkin. He’d just sent a massive fireball at the next five guards leaping for us, which had hit them mid jump. The spell had been hot enough to dust them to ash and a few charred slivers of bone, which the wind whipped at us and at their friends now flooding over the battlements.
I spat out pieces of fey and tried to talk, but my gag reflex kicked in.
“Shift,” Pritkin suggested, because the assault hadn’t so much as slowed our enemy down.
I hacked and coughed and tried to explain that I couldn’t, but I didn’t get the chance. Because Mircea was opting for the better part of valor, and taking me with him. I felt a hard hand grip my waist and then nothing under my feet, as we took a flying leap into the air. We landed a second later, with me coughing out “Pritkin!” and Mircea finally cursing as half a dozen arrows slammed into his body from behind.
They would have slammed into me, too, but he was keeping me in front of him, something that would have been marginally less terrifying if we hadn’t been sliding down an absurdly tilted roof of slick clay tiles, straight toward—