by Karen Chance
How’s that working for you, I thought, half hysterical laughter bubbling up in my throat. How is that working?
I let my emotions out after a minute, despite knowing it would hurt, and I was right. My abused vocal cords made me sound like a winded donkey, braying snorts instead of anything resembling a human sound. I didn’t care. I laughed and laughed, until I was dizzy again, then sat on the windowsill and laughed some more. I finally ran out of strength and leaned my head against the panes, staring in wonder at my reflection in the darkened glass.
How in the hell had I gotten out of that alive? Any of it? How in the—
Hey.
I paused, and squinted into the makeshift mirror that the window had become, thanks to the darkened street. It was rain splattered and a little grimy, but as good as the others I had in here. Or maybe not.
Because the face being reflected back at me was . . . strange.
Instead of wide, relieved eyes, mine were narrowed to slits, and instead of stretching into a sloppy smile, my lips were . . . kind of scary. My lips were set on snarl, and I didn’t know why. I was definitely not feeling like snarling. I wasn’t feeling like much of anything except finding a towel and going back to bed. Just sitting there was taking all the strength I had, and even with that, I was trembling slightly.
So, what was up with my mouth?
I stared at it some more. It continued to snarl. Stop that, I told it sternly.
It did not stop that. It did, however, start to speak. Which freaked me out so much that I got up and staggered back a few steps.
Because the words . . . weren’t mine.
Chapter Eleven
W hat the hell are you doing?”
I started and stared around at the empty room. “Zeus?” I said, feeling slightly ridiculous. And then wondering what I was doing, because if this was another attack, I was screwed. I had nothing left—absolutely nothing—to fight with, which meant that I didn’t need to sit around, chatting with this thing! I needed help and I needed it now, which was why I bolted for the door the next second.
I didn’t make it, tripping over my own two feet and going down half way. A wave of pain went through my already bruised knee, but I ignored it and lunged for the doorknob. I even got a finger on it, before my hand was knocked away.
“Augghhh!”
“Stop screaming or they’ll hear—” my own voice told me.
“Good!” I cut myself off, and no, that wasn’t freaky at all!
“Then we won’t be able to talk—”
“Wouldn’t that be a shame?” I said wildly, and grabbed for the doorknob again. Only to halt halfway through the movement and crabwalk backwards, like some possessed thing, which . . . yeah. “Get out, get out, get out!”
“Will you please stop yelling and listen to me?”
“No,” I said, and tried to scream for help again, only to have a fist close around my throat.
It didn’t help with the imminent panic thing, because it was one of mine.
“Augghhh! Augghhh!” I whispered, while choking myself.
“Stop it!” The voice echoed in my head. It didn’t sound like Zeus, but right then, I didn’t care. “Stop fighting me; I don’t have much time!”
Well, that was encouraging, I thought, and redoubled my efforts.
“Stop it or Emrys will hear!”
I stopped it, mostly out of surprise. There weren’t too many people who knew the name that Rosier had given his son, and which Pritkin never used. And even fewer of them could be talking to me right now.
But one could.
I felt a surge of pure rage flood through me, hot enough to drive out everything else. “You!”
“Anger is as difficult to read through as fear,” Pritkin’s incubus said, after my hands loosened slightly. “I need—”
“I don’t give a damn what you need!”
“You don’t understand. We have to talk—”
“I don’t understand? I don’t?” I felt my skin flush. “You tried to rape me, barely a month ago, in this very room! And now you have the utter gall—”
“I was trying to take power from you so we could talk!” the creature said, and actually sounded insulted. “I was too weak to do that without a power boost, which incubi get through sex, and since you’re already having regular intercourse with—”
“Him! Not you!”
“I am him. I have always been him. There is no diff—”
“Son of a bitch, let me up!”
To my surprise, he did. The hand on my throat released, and I lay there, staring at the ceiling and breathing hard. The candle had guttered, leaving only moonlight for illumination, but I managed to see my traitorous right hand rise into the air when I told it to. And then my body follow as I slowly got back to my feet.
I caught my expression in the washstand’s mirror, and it was furious, but this time, the emotion was all mine—and for good reason!
When I first met Pritkin, I didn’t even know that he was part demon. He didn’t use his incubus powers, substituting human and fey magic instead, and eventually he explained why. His incubus nature had gotten away from him exactly once—on his wedding night—when his bride had tried to initiate the feedback loop of power that incubi royal house used to magnify magical energy, both theirs and a partner’s.
She was part demon, too, but weak, which had constantly left her on the outside looking in where demon society was concerned. She’d planned to change that by switching on Pritkin’s abilities, and unfortunately for her, she had succeeded. Pritkin didn’t know how to shut down the loop once it began, having never previously utilized that particular talent, and before he could figure it out, his demon side had drained her dry.
She’d never received anything back, having not had enough power to fuel a single loop, leaving him with a lifeless husk in his arms, a feeling of crushing guilt, and a burning hatred of his other half. He’d kept it on a hard lock down thereafter, starved it of power, and tried to pretend that it didn’t exist. Which had worked pretty well—right up until the fight with Ares.
In order to defeat the god of war, he and I had had to engage the feedback loop. On the plus side, it hadn’t drained me as it had his wife, since it had pulled from the Pythian power, giving it plenty of energy to feed on. And then to multiply, many times over, before sending it back to me, allowing me to distract the god of war while a member on our side reflected one of Ares’ own battle spells back at him, thus killing him.
But everything comes with a price, and for Pritkin, the price of victory had been a newly reinvigorated demon side. It had retained some of the power from the exchange, and had been using it to try to influence me ever since. First, by making me feel sorry for it—poor little demon, all locked away—and then by attacking me, trying to drain my power during a previous trip to Gertie’s.
I didn’t know what its end game was, but I didn’t think I’d like it.
And I didn’t want to deal with it right now, goddamn it!
“How did you possess me?” I demanded.
“I haven’t. I—”
“Liar!”
I saw a flash of annoyance cross my face in the mirror, and then a look of . . . almost defeat. I actually felt bad for a second, before reminding myself sharply that this was an incubus. They traded on emotion, manipulated it, twisted it to get what they wanted. They did more gaslighting than Victorian England! I did not feel bad for it!
“I am not an it,” it informed me stiffly. “I am part of him, part of your lover—”
“Bullshit.”
“—and I have saved you, more than once. More than once today, in fact.”
I didn’t bother replying that time, just walked over and sat on the bed, my legs shaking slightly in reaction, although to what I wasn’t sure. I had so much to choose from. I hugged my knees to stop the tell-tale movement, and stared into the darkness resentfully. I wanted to curl back up and go to sleep. I wanted to pull the blankets over my head and pretend that thi
s stupid, horrible, screwed up day never happened. I wanted the weirdness to stop already!
But first I had to deal with this, whatever this was.
I got up again and dragged over the little washstand.
“Yes, use the towel. You are wet and cold,” the demon informed me. Like I didn’t know that. “And shut the window—”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
“You need to warm up,” it said stubbornly, in my voice. “Or you’ll catch your death.”
“I don’t have to catch it; it’s stalking me like a motherfucker.” I had a sudden idea. “If I shut the window, will you leave?”
“No—”
“Well, then.”
“—but I’ll fade soon enough anyway. And getting pneumonia will teach me nothing!”
I decided it had a point. I used the towel. The candle had ended up on the floor, extinguished by the puddle that had formed there. I picked it up, put it back on the nightstand, and closed the window, then used the towel again on my wet feet.
“Happy?” I asked, sitting back down on the bed, and pulling the blanket around me.
“I do not think that word best describes today,” the demon said grimly.
Okay, give it two points, I thought, peering into the mirror at my face, now lit only by moonlight. I didn’t see any more signs of possession, and I looked slightly less scary. I was still pale, but so was everything under the glistening rays, which bleached the world of color. My eyes were dark pits, thanks to some next level bruising, but in this lighting, that could have been mistaken for a shadow.
In moonlight, I looked almost normal.
Yeah, like I’d ever been that. Like the world had ever let me be that. I grabbed one of the long, fat, feather-stuffed bolsters and hugged it for comfort I didn’t feel.
“You don’t want to be normal,” I saw myself say.
“What do you know about me?” I shot back.
“A good deal more after today.”
And then something freaky happened—what a surprise—and a shadowy figure appeared on Rhea’s chair, a barely-there smear of color against the night. But I could pick out the pale blond of the hair, with its golden sheen faded by darkness, to the point that it almost looked like Aeslinn’s. I could also see a glimmer of green in the eyes, which I shouldn’t have been able to in this light, but then, he wasn’t real, was he? And, yes, I was going with ‘he’ because this was my brain and I could be contradictory if I wanted to.
And because calling him ‘it’ was freaking me out.
Kind of like his body, which was letting off some weird black smoke from around the edges. He looked strangely like a dark ghost sitting there, a thought that brought a new flash of pain to an already bleeding mental landscape, so I shoved it away. If I thought about those I’d lost in this war, I’d break, and I wouldn’t break!
“No, you won’t,” he agreed, causing me to snarl.
“What the hell do you know?”
“As I said, a good deal.” The almost invisible man shifted position, to one that Pritkin—my Pritkin—would never have used. He looked like Rosier suddenly, sprawled lazily on the chair, with one leg crossed carelessly over the other. It was an unconsciously sensual pose, and one that pissed me off for some reason.
“What do you want?”
He ignored the question as easily as Zeus had done. Instead, he answered a previous one. “I saw the real you today, out there on the water. For the first time, I saw her.”
“Did you possess me just to talk in riddles?”
“I didn’t possess you.” The face changed, giving me the impression of a frown. “How much do you remember about today?”
“Plenty.” Never give a demon an advantage over you—Pritkin had taught me that—like admitting that I had a brain like a sieve at the moment. And a pounding headache—and damn it, why wouldn’t he go away?
But he stubbornly sat there and smoked at me. He didn’t appear to believe my lie, judging by what little I could see of his face. But he didn’t call me on it.
“You’re not possessed,” he repeated. “We’re linked through the Lover’s Knot spell, something that has taken me some time to figure out. Ingenious magic, like nothing I’ve ever encountered. But I have learned to navigate it, and after the power you sent me—”
“I didn’t send you anything,” I said resentfully.
“Spillover, from what you sent to the vampire. You received added energy that way. Are you surprised that I did, also?”
“And you used it to come here and keep me from my sleep?”
“No, I used it to try to talk to you, something I have been attempting for some time. But the one you call Pritkin has been especially watchful lately, and when I finally did get an opportunity, what did I find?”
I didn’t get a chance to reply, not that I was planning on it, because he showed me.
The space in between us lit up with more hazy imagery, although it wasn’t as indistinct as he was. Maybe because this newest picture was filled with the watery light of a cloudy day—this day. And it was showing me the Thames where—
A battle for the ages was going on.
It was a replay of what had happened this morning, only this was late in the game. There were already wrecked hulks everywhere, the remains of once robust river traffic. There were miniature bonfires scattered across the scene, the leftovers of the great one that our fight had dispersed far and wide. And there were drifts of smoke obscuring parts of the landscape, even from the bird’s eye view I seemed to have. But the smoke wasn’t so thick that I couldn’t make out what was happening below, which . . .
“You see?” Not Pritkin said. “I arrived, became disoriented, and pulled back for a wider view. You can imagine my surprise at what I saw.”
Yeah, I thought, leaning forward. And momentarily forgetting that this was crazy, and that he was dangerous, and that I should be calling for help. Although what Gertie could do against a demon hopped up on godly spillover, I didn’t know.
And I didn’t find out, because I was too gripped by what I was seeing to do anything but stare in amazement.
Below was a tiny figure in a ruined dress, more black than white at this point, with strange, burnt edged holes all over it, like hell’s polka dots. I finally figured out that they were the marks from the hail of burning coal, which had left the dress more missing than there. But the person wearing the ruined outfit didn’t look beaten down and defeated, as I’d have expected. She also didn’t look like me. A halo of stolen power spilled out around her, lighting up the murky water and gilding the gloomy day. Her face was so bright that I could barely look at it, her hair was a radiant sunburst about her head, and her eyes . . .
Shone like stars.
“There,” Not Pritkin said, and I realized that he had moved to the bed beside me. I still couldn’t see him very well, more like black smoke given human form, except for the brilliantly green eyes. “You see?”
I saw.
The woman in the image had coiled a massive golden whip out of her hand, and was using it to lash the giant fey in front of her. She should have been terrified; he was huge and furious, and kept slinging silver lightning bolts that I didn’t remember, maybe because my whip had grabbed them and thrown them aside as if they didn’t matter, as if they were nothing. And in between, the great golden strand darted back in, cutting bloody rents in Aeslinn’s body, ones that even his prodigious healing powers seemed to be struggling with.
The end came much as I remembered, with Aeslinn kicking up a tidal wave from the river to buy him a moment, and stepping through a portal that had opened up behind him, even as my whip tore one last gash across his face.
Then he was gone, and the image faded, leaving the room dark once more.
I hugged my pillow and stared at the hell beast beside me, and at the black steam boiling off him in waves. He didn’t say anything, maybe giving me time to absorb all that, although I didn’t know why he thought I needed it. I’d been there.
>
“You ended too soon,” I finally said. “You cut out the part where I almost died.”
“But you didn’t. Aeslinn fled before you, back to Faerie, vanquished and beaten—”
“And I almost drowned in a watery footprint!” I threw the pillow aside and got up, furious again, but too tired to wonder why. I rounded on the demon. “What do you want?”
“What I’ve always wanted: to help you.”
I laughed. “I’m sure.”
“I helped you today—or yesterday. It is difficult to keep track with all the time hopping you do. But recently, I showed Lord Mircea how to borrow an ability from Emrys, one that we absorbed from another demon once, so that he might rescue you. Or did you think he grew those wings on his own?”
I had been about to say something, but at that I stopped. “You did that?”
He brushed it away. “Vampires are easy. They love power. Show them a new one and they grab it with both hands. I had barely indicated the possibility when his new accessories were sprouting from his shoulders.” He shot me a look. “Would that others felt the same.”
I frowned.
“Later, on the river, I helped you again. You had power, but did not know how to use it, how to fight as the gods once did. I showed you—”
My frown tipped into a scowl. Now I knew he was lying. “You showed me nothing!”
“The whip? That was my idea. I planted it in your mind—”
“That was my power!”
“It was formed from your power, yes, but the idea was mine.” That last was said more sharply, and with less charm than his voice had held so far. He sounded more like Pritkin suddenly, who had never uttered a charming word in his life. Charm to him was another form of lying, of manipulation, of all the things about his heritage that he hated. He avoided it like the plague even with me, although I’d long since learned to hear the concern behind the blunt remarks.
But hearing it from this thing—
Was infuriating.
“You have a temper almost as quick as his, although you’ve learned to hide it,” the creature said. “You’ve learned to hide a great many things.”