by Karen Chance
I started to scream, as a new wave of agony swept over me, but my companion distracted me. He grabbed my shoulders, slid a hand under my sweaty hair, and cupped the good side of my face. “See me. See only me.”
And then he kissed me.
I didn’t know how he could bear it in my current state, or how he could think that he could do anything for a half-burned corpse—one that was still on fire. I was going to set the bed alight, I thought wildly. Possibly even burn the whole house down as I self-immolated. I was going to save everyone the trouble and cremate myself—
Pritkin pulled back, his face furious. “See me!” he roared. And the next moment, I did. My eyes flew open as incubus energy flowed around me, through me, a roaring tide of it that gave me the first real shot of strength I’d had since I woke up, and that ripped my thoughts away from everything else—
Until someone else ripped them back.
It was a rainy afternoon, with gray skies churning overhead and rain plunk, plunk, plunking down everywhere. Not surprisingly, Gertie’s back garden was deserted, with no acolytes whispering to each other in the corners, over a love note sent from an admirer, which they weren’t supposed to have. Or maids beating out rugs flung over the walls, while billows of dust scattered everywhere. Or little initiates running about, their ringlets bouncing and their white dresses—much more poufy than the acolyte’s version—bearing sashes made out of brightly colored ribbon.
There was always some activity in the big, walled garden, except for today. Today, the only other inhabitants were a couple of little wrens. One of them, who I assumed was the female, was bathing in a puddle, while the other was staunchly standing guard.
They reminded me of me and Pritkin for some reason, maybe the grumpy look on the male’s face, which made me smile. I wiped off the little wrought iron table with my hand, wrapped the paisley shawl that I’d grabbed from a hook beside the back door closer around me, sat down and pulled my feet up. I’d forgotten shoes, and the flagstones of the courtyard were cold and unwelcoming on my bare toes.
There was no sound except for the rain hitting the flagstones and dripping off the roof, and very little to see. Just gray: sky, stones, even the air had taken on a grayish tinge, bleaching the usually jolly red bricks and turning the saturation of the brightly colored tree way down. I closed my eyes and just breathed for a moment, enjoying the freshly washed air—so rare in London—and the peacefulness.
The shawl was one of those huge old Victorian things, meant to go over the bustles that nobody wore anymore, so it covered my feet, too. It was warm, and thawed my toes soon enough, but it wouldn’t help for long. The rain was settling in for one of those all-day soakers, where you keep thinking it’s going to stop, but it never does. Just slacks off for a few moments to get your hopes up.
It had slacked off now, but it was almost impossible to tell, since the massive old oak was leaking onto my head. I looked up, and got a drop right in the eyeball for my trouble. I blinked it away and sat there, cold but not cold enough to move, wet, but not wet enough to go inside. I was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what.
And then the sun came out.
Not shyly, the way you’d expect on a day like this, peeking through the clouds as if not to startle anyone. But suddenly, abruptly, flooding the courtyard with color. It was bright enough to leave me blinking.
And staring around at a suddenly completely dry space, lacking rain or puddles of any kind. Except for the droplets that sprayed out of my hair as I twisted my neck, searching for the next threat. He wasn’t hard to find.
“So, this is the famous Pythian Court.”
The man sitting in the sunshine on the chair opposite mine looked like a proper British gentleman. His three-piece suit was a navy pinstripe, with a brighter blue tie and pocket square, the same color as his eyes. His beard and hair were white and neatly trimmed, and a bright gold watch chain glinted at his waist. He could have been any well-dressed businessman ready to head out for another day of wheeling and dealing, and crushing the little guy.
He wasn’t.
Well, except for maybe that last part.
And, suddenly, I was furious.
“What are you doing here?” I got up, abruptly enough to overturn my chair. “How are you here?”
“The latter is easier to explain,” he said, lighting a cigar. “I’m here because you’re here.”
“To do what? Threaten me some more?” Because I had no doubt about who he was. He hadn’t introduced himself, but he didn’t need to. The power flooding off him said everything, all on its own.
He glanced up in feigned surprise. “Oh, that’s the why. We’re still on the how. My power in your veins allows us to communicate, although not for long. You used most of it chastising poor Aeslinn—”
“What you aren’t using to attack me!”
He smiled slightly. “But not to kill you. Not yet. I thought we might revisit our previous conversation first.”
“Why, if I’m going to be a corpse in a minute?”
“That, my dear, is entirely up to you. Come, sit, let’s have some tea.”
A proper tea service appeared on the table, much like the one that Gertie and I had shared.
I stubbornly continued standing.
“You do so remind me of your mother,” he sighed.
“Don’t you dare to speak of her!”
He looked surprised again, this time genuinely. “Why? She wronged me, not the other way around. But I bear her no animosity. She paid for her crimes, as all must in the end. But it would be a shame for you to share her punishment.”
“You didn’t seem to think that way on the river.”
He shook his head. “That little stunt was Aeslinn’s idea. One that I do believe he is regretting.”
“Is he dead?”
“No, although he’s in quite a bit of pain. He’s also furious.”
“What a pity.”
“Not at all.” He paused to take a puff or two, little ones, to get the cigar started. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry; it wasn’t him bleeding out on the bed. “He made the mistake of underestimating you. He’s paying the price for that.”
“You don’t sound too disturbed.”
He shrugged and blew a smoke ring skyward, enveloping and then leaving behind a falling leaf. “Should I be? At least his hubris gave me the chance to get a look at you.”
“And you couldn’t do that before?”
He smiled around the cigar, showing big, strong, white teeth. He was pleasant looking, a grandfatherly type, the kind you’d smile back at on a sidewalk somewhere if you didn’t know him. It bothered me.
Villains should look like villains, like Ares, the towering, red embodiment of hatred. Nobody looked at him and thought ‘what a nice old gent.’ Of course, nobody who looked at him thought anything, because they didn’t live long enough.
But still.
Zeus, on the other hand, set off no warning signals. A fact that set off warning signals all by itself, because I’d known guys like this before. Tony, my old guardian, was fat and jolly and charming in his own way, when he felt like making the effort.
Right up until he wasn’t.
I’d seen him have that same pleasant smile on his face while watching somebody be ripped apart.
“No, no I could not,” Zeus said. “Nor could I talk to you properly. And once you use up the rest of my power, that will be true again.”
“You managed it well enough in my suite—”
“No, I managed it in transition. I absorbed a little goddess, some years ago, who had power in the byways, as she put it. It gives me some control over the spaces in between—worlds, moments, what have you.” He waved a hand, as if he hadn’t just admitted to cannibalism. “When you gatecrashed Aeslinn’s party, we were able to follow you into your—shift, I believe you call it? But not to land.”
“Aeslinn didn’t seem to have that trouble,” I said tightly. He’d run like a whipped dog through that porta
l of his.
“Aeslinn forgot what I’d said,” Zeus corrected. “That if we tried to leave transition, the time stream would wash us back to where we started. You could have escaped us at any point today, merely by shifting back into real time.”
“Good to know.”
He smiled. “You managed well enough, as it happens.”
“And you’re lying,” I said, getting tired of the pretense of civility. We intended to kill each other; this whole thing was obscene. “If you were telling the truth, Aeslinn would be the one from the past, who had no reason to attack me. He didn’t even know me then!”
Zeus let out a breath of smoke. “Impressive. Most people would not be clear minded enough to fish for information in your current situation.”
“I’m not fishing—”
“Of course, you are.” Sharp blue eyes found mine through gaps in the smoke. “You already suspect the truth—you destroyed his court, but didn’t find him there. What better place to hide than back in time? And in a world where the Pythian power doesn’t work and cannot spy on you.”
I blinked; I hadn’t expected him to just come out with it like that. Candor from him worried me, made me doubt myself. Not that I wasn’t doing that already.
“You’re saying he can time travel.” It came out harshly. I didn’t care. If Aeslinn could travel in time, and channel the power of a god while he did it? Yeah, my life was about to infinitely suck.
Which considering how it was already going, was saying something.
But Zeus shook his head. “No. His servant, that disgusting necromancer—Jonathan, I think he was called?”
I nodded tersely.
“He took us back in time before he died. He harvested part of that girl’s soul—what was her name?”
“Jo.”
It came out calmly enough, I’m not sure how. Jo featured in my nightmares on a regular basis, although not just because of what she’d done. But because of what had been done to her.
I could still see it, that vague impression of a face, screaming silently from underneath the skin of Jonathan’s side. The eyeballs pushing against their fleshly covering and constantly working, as if trying to see out; the nose grotesquely distending the flesh, not that Jonathan had seemed to care; the wide-open mouth. I hadn’t been able to tell what she was saying, if anything.
I hadn’t wanted to know.
She hadn’t deserved that fate; nobody did. But the Circle wouldn’t have been much kinder. She’d been a Pythian acolyte who was seduced by the gods to betray her vows, although they hadn’t had to work too hard in her case. She’d been mad at the world for years and looking for a way to get even.
She’d found one.
But helping Ares to return hadn’t panned out. And the party had ended with Jonathan slicing and dicing her soul and grafting a piece of it onto his own, to give him the ability to access the Pythian power. She and Jonathan were both dead now, so they wouldn’t be joyriding around the timeline anymore.
It should have been a relief, but I was finding that a hard emotion to summon at the moment.
“I take it Jonathan learned to graft souls from you?” I said, also calmly. I was pretty sure that I was numb at this point. “I heard the gods were into that.”
“Some, not me.”
“No, you just eat them whole,” I said, before I thought. But I didn’t flinch at the warning flash in those baby blues. Because it was true, and because I was dying anyway.
I found it weirdly liberating.
“Fearless,” Zeus mused, after a moment. “But then, I don’t know what else I expected.” He took a puff and let it out, watching it drift slowly skyward. “In any case, they were right to kill him—filthy beasts, necromancers, playing with the dead—”
“As opposed to feasting off their souls? Tell me, did Metis scream when you ate her alive?”
Again, the words were out before I could stop them, making me wonder what was wrong with me. Was I trying to provoke him? Had I actually gone crazy?
But Zeus learned fast, and there was no reaction this time.
“No.” Blue eyes met mine coolly through a haze of smoke. “I caught her by surprise.”
I didn’t have anything cute to say to that. The rush of adrenaline fueling my bravado gave out abruptly in the face of true evil. There was no emotion on his face, no happiness at the thought of her death, but no remorse, either. Just cold calculation.
He smiled at me. “In any case, we followed you into your shift, where I could talk to you—”
“Where you could threaten me while you tried to kill me, you mean.” My mouth seemed to be on autopilot, while my brain reeled in terror. But it was true enough. After this morning, there was no longer any doubt who had provided a distraction at just the right moment for me to become untethered in time.
One to you, Gertie, I thought.
One to you.
But Zeus brushed it away. “A test, and an insultingly easy one—I see that now. The second attempt was better, although its outcome remains . . . uncertain.”
“What do you want?” I asked thickly, because this was clearly meant to be a bribe. Do what I ask and I’ll let you live.
Zeus raised an eyebrow. “If I were allowed, I would say once more that you remind me of someone else. She was also . . . disturbingly blunt.” He put out the cigar he’d barely smoked. “And you know what I want.”
“To ravage the Earth, and for me to get out of the way while you do it.”
“Not ravage. Would it help if I tell you that I’ve learned a few things since my last visit to your world?”
It was my turn to laugh, which surprised me, bursting out in sheer reaction. “No.”
“It’s the truth, nonetheless. As is this: you can’t win, Cassie. Not against me.”
“Which is why you’re spending so much time trying to convince me of that.”
“Our previous conversation was a bit crass, I admit,” he shrugged. “But you’d be surprised how often that sort of thing works.”
“And how often does this?
“Oh, but this is special—and rare. This is me being honest.”
“About what?”
He looked rueful. “See, there’s the rub. I could simply tell you—and I have partly. You do not win this contest, no matter what you do. But there’s more to it than that. However, explaining that part . . . could be counterproductive.”
“How? If I’m not going to win anyway, what does it matter?” I knew he was lying about most of this, maybe all of it. But our side needed any help we could get, and maybe he’d slip up and reveal something.
He smiled again, almost admiringly, and it was disturbing how much my heart leapt at the sight. He was literally currently killing me, with part of me gibbering somewhere in terror. And yet some other part still wanted his approval. I was insane.
And then I proved it when he laughed, and I felt an answering smile come to my lips.
I bit it back.
“I’d prefer to be plain with you,” he said. “But if I do, it increases the odds that you won’t believe me. I can’t blame you; when I first figured it out, I didn’t believe me—”
“Figured what out?”
“See, again, that’s where we run into trouble. I want to tell you, but it is vastly better if you discover the truth for yourself, as I did. I will give you a hint though. If you survive this: read your mail.”
I hit the floor abruptly, as if falling from a height, but no rough flagstone met my fingertips. Just old wooden boards, worn smooth and almost velvety to the touch. The dazzling sunlight of the courtyard was also suddenly absent, replaced by soft darkness and a little moonlight. I stared around my bedroom at Gertie’s, and for a second, wasn’t sure where I was—or when.
This felt like the present, as if I’d finally exited all the overlapping snippets of memory, likely because my brain couldn’t take anymore. But I wasn’t sure. I lay there, clutching the floor and waiting for a god or a ghost or something to jump
out at me, only nothing did.
The floor stayed reassuringly still, if surprisingly wet, and occasional sprinkles of water hit my body from time to time. I didn’t wonder where they were coming from. Didn’t think at all, afraid that I might trigger another memory. I did, however, eventually get up and sit on the chair by the dressing table, which I must have fallen out of when the memory shattered.
And even that wasn’t the best move.
Going from horizontal to vertical made my head spin, to the point that I thought I might black out. I hugged the table for a while, feeling the smooth surface of the wood against my cheek and smelling the old resin—kind of lemony—in my nose. The thick solidity of the piece was comforting, having been built for sturdiness rather than beauty. It was the Ford Escort of dressing tables: not real flashy, but it got the job done . . .
Why was I thinking about dressing tables?
Maybe so I didn’t have to think about anything else.
I decided that was a plan, and just listened to the rain kamikaze the window for a while. There was a lot of it, like a storm had blown in while I was out. One that was wetting the floor, I realized, because someone had left a couple inches of the pane pushed up.
After a few moments of watching a puddle form, I got up and went to close the gap, only to pause and do the opposite. I pushed the stiff old sash further up and stood there in the spray, breathing it in. The street below was wet and shining in the moonlight, and deserted, probably because it was also freezing. Which meant if my robe got wet, I was screwed since I didn’t have another one.
I didn’t move.
I stood in the spray, letting it hit me, letting it soak me, enjoying shivering because I was alive to do so. And felt a weird smile stretch my lips. I felt strangely euphoric, a feeling I hadn’t expected just after being threatened by the king of the gods.
Only it wasn’t ‘just’, was it? That must have happened hours ago, shortly after they brought me back, yet I was still here. I had no idea how, but suddenly, it didn’t matter so much anymore. I’d lived. I’d healed. I was here and Zeus was gone and Aeslinn was off somewhere, trying to regrow a hand.