by Karen Chance
“I wasn’t taking any chances,” he replied impatiently. “We don’t use that sawdust crap in the nicer suites. This is hard wood.” He threw aside what had been part of a very nice mahogany armoire. Goddamnit.
“I was referring to your attack on the master,” the mellifluous voice said, taking on the patient tone he particularly hated.
“Screw your master,” he hissed, struggling to heave aside what remained of Marco’s smoking corpse.
“I have. I do not think it will help us in this instance, however.”
Casanova narrowed his eyes. Sometimes, even after this long, he couldn’t tell when she was joking. And then he noticed that his coat was on fire.
“We need to discuss this,” his demon continued calmly, as Casanova danced around, trying to get the coat off without letting any stray sparks touch his body.
He finally fought his way free and threw the jacket onto the ground, resisting the urge to scream. He stripped off his fine cotton shirt and wrapped it around his hand, running it nervously over his pale slacks. If one little ember touched his flesh, it would be enough to start a conflagration that would consume him. Mercifully, he didn’t find one.
It was the only mercy he was likely to receive today.
He stood there, feeling the sun bake his brain and grimly watching $2,000 worth of couture go up in flames. Brimstone. Typical. They’d layered enough spells over that room to make the air thick from all the magic floating around. An alarm went off every time that damn girl got a hangnail, yet not one of them had managed to detect the real threat.
“The master never ceases to surprise,” Rian murmured. “I would not have expected this of him.”
Casanova scowled. “Don’t talk to me about your master. I have one, too, remember?”
“But hardly on the same level of menace.”
“Oh, no?” He kicked what was left of Marco’s body aside. Then, just for the hell of it, he kicked Pritkin, too. “Tell that to my staked corpse!”
“I do not think our body is in any immediate danger. At least, not from Lord Mircea.”
“It’s not ‘our’ body,” he reminded her. “It’s mine. You can go get another, but I’m stuck with this one. And I prefer it in one piece!” He kicked Pritkin’s limp form again.
“Did you save him merely to kill him yourself?” his demon inquired mildly.
“No. Although the idea does have a certain charm.”
“Why did you do it? You obviously have no love for him.”
“Exactly.” Casanova started waving an arm, trying to flag down one of his employees to help drag the man inside. Of course, it didn’t work. Damn useless things. “Mircea is going to want blood for this. Better the mage’s than mine.”
“You plan to blame this on him, then?”
“It’s his fault!” Casanova snarled. “Everything has gone to shit since he arrived.”
“He always was a great deal of trouble,” Rian agreed. “And is about to be more so, if you persist in helping him. The master clearly wants him dead along with the girl.”
“He can have whatever Mircea leaves.” Casanova threw the body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and headed for the back door. One of his security members finally saw him when he was two-thirds of the way across the trash heap of a parking lot. The man held up a cell phone, but Casanova ignored it. For right now, if it wasn’t Mircea—and it wasn’t—he didn’t care.
“How do you know it isn’t?” Rian asked curiously.
“You know, sometimes I wonder what you do all day,” he snapped. “How long have we been together now?”
“Over two hundred years.”
“Yet you still don’t understand how this whole thing works.”
“How what works?”
“Masters. Their reputations. Revenge,” Casanova waved a hand, but had to stop or risk dumping Pritkin’s heavy ass in the dirt. “For this, Mircea won’t use the phone. I’ll either get a searing mental message soon, or—worse—I won’t hear anything at all. I’ll just disappear one night.”
“Are you certain you are not being slightly paranoid?” Rian’s voice was soothing. “I’ve always been under the impression that Lord Mircea is quite lenient.”
Casanova closed his eyes and there she was, sitting on her favorite rock by the sea, combing out her long, dark hair. Normally, the sight of that tall, slender body, clad only in moonlight, was enough to calm him. It wasn’t working so well today.
“Yes, because that’s how you get a senate seat. By being a nice guy.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm,” she chided. “And I have always found him charming.”
Yes, particularly when he was about to go for the jugular, Casanova thought, right before something slammed him in the face. He shrieked and dropped Pritkin, preparing to flee. Then his eyes popped open, bringing him face to face with—his own face. It took him a few heart-clenching seconds to realize that he’d run into the mirror on the side of a truck.
“You need to calm down,” Rian said mildly as he leaned against the vehicle, trying to swallow his heart back down where it belonged.
“You calm down! Your neck isn’t on the line!”
“Neither is yours unless you persist in involving yourself in this,” she said, more sharply. “Emrys and his father have been feuding for centuries. No one who gets between them ever prospers.”
“At the moment, I’d settle for survival.”
“That is why you need to listen to—”
“No, you listen,” he hissed, crouching behind the truck. “The master and the girl had a bond. At the very least, he knows that something has gone terribly wrong. At worst, he already knows she’s dead. If he’s decided I’m at fault, there could be assassins on their way here even now.”
Or perhaps there was no need to send any, he thought, spying a few of his men loitering suspiciously nearby. Maybe some of his own people had taken the job, the ungrateful bastards. He wouldn’t put it past them.
“They’re your vampires,” Rian admonished.
“That’s the point! As my master, Mircea can control them. Any minute, one of them might sneak up on us and—augghh!”
He broke off as he was slammed into the side of the truck, hard enough to rattle his teeth. He shrieked again and tried to crawl over the hood, but was jerked back down. And found himself staring into a pair of furious green eyes.
His spine sagged with relief as he recognized the mage. Which only made it hurt more when the slamming motion was repeated. “You knew what he planned,” Pritkin snarled. “You knew he was coming! That’s why you wanted her gone—to save your precious hotel!”
Casanova would have answered, but at the feel of a sliver of wood denting the skin right over his heart, all his saliva dried up. It didn’t help that the mage was looking fairly crazed. His face was red, his short blond hair was standing up in tufts and his eyes . . . his eyes did not look entirely sane.
What else is new, he thought hysterically.
“He knew nothing,” Rian said, answering for him. “For that matter, neither did I.”
She had used Casanova’s vocal cords, but Pritkin seemed to know who was speaking, because his scowl deepened. His hand came up, threatening to crush Casanova’s throat. “You’re one of his creatures. You do as he commands!”
“But he didn’t command.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You know our Lord better than anyone. Would he trust me with a mission likely to put me at odds with my host?”
“You are far more ancient than your host,” Pritkin spat. “In a battle of wills, you might well prevail.”
“I might,” she agreed. “And I might not. Age is not the only factor. This body belongs to another, and ownership grants certain privileges. Now release him, unless you wish to have the blood of an innocent on your hands.”
“I already have that.” The mage’s voice went suddenly cold, but Casanova found himself abruptly let go. He stayed sprawled against the truck a
nyway. His knees felt a little weak for some reason.
“It was not your fault, Emrys,” Rian said, sounding sad.
“Do not call me that!”
“As you wish. What will you do?”
“What do you think?” He used a knife to slice away his right trouser leg, revealing bloody, mangled flesh beneath.
“You’re injured,” she pointed out, kneeling to examine the wound.
“And he’s drained.” Pritkin tossed his coat on the truck’s hood and stripped off his shirt.
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“If he wasn’t, he would have jumped to another body and continued the fight. In spirit form, he can possess anyone he chooses.”
“Anyone except vampires,” Rian said thoughtfully. “Yet he controlled Marco, a powerful master. I did not think even Lord Rosier so strong as that.”
“He isn’t.” Pritkin pulled out a knife and began to savage his shirt. “That is one reason we had only masters guarding her. But Marco insisted on coming back to work early, despite being almost killed recently. Now we know why. His injuries made him vulnerable and that thing took full advantage.”
“You still cannot kill him, Em—John. He’ll be at court, and you are barred from that place.”
“Save your breath, Rian,” the mage said coldly. “You know as well as I do, he isn’t going there.”
“And of course, you’re going to follow him,” Rian said, sounding resigned.
She stood up as the crazy bastard began binding his wound with the remains of his shirt. Like there weren’t perfectly good, sterile bandages available at first aid, Casanova thought resentfully. Probably thought it made him look macho, all hairy-chested and sweaty, his torso crisscrossed by scuffed leather holsters and old bandoliers.
Muscle bound Neanderthal.
“I’m not afraid of death,” Pritkin said curtly, and Casanova rolled his eyes.
“That’s not courage, John; it’s suicidal ideation.”
“Spare me the pseudo-science.”
“Death wish, then. Do you like that better?” Rian challenged, grasping the mage’s wrist.
Uncharacteristically, Pritkin didn’t bother to shake off the hold. “Say what you will,” he told her coldly. “But you will not save him. Not this time.”
“Even should you manage it, killing him will not change what has happened. You know this!”
He raised his head, the impromptu patch up job complete, and the eyes had gone olive and frighteningly blank. “I also know that if I had ended his existence centuries ago, as I should have done, this never would have happened.”
“You can’t be certain of that,” Rian said softly. “None of us can know the future.”
“One could,” the mage said, a strange, savage smile twisting his lips. “But she is dead. As her murderer will soon be.”
“John—” Rian cried, but it was too late. The mage didn’t move, but Casanova felt the wrist he held disintegrate under his fingers. A moment later, he closed his hand on nothing but air.
“All right,” Casanova said in disgust. “At least there's no way today could possibly get any—”
A wave of disorientation interrupted him, and when it cleared, he found himself back in the casino, in one of the back stairwells. Before he could even frame a question, the door to the flight below opened. He caught a glimpse of bronze faceplates and huge curved swords, and then his head was bouncing down the stairs like a gory soccer ball.
“I think I know a way,” Rian said.
Chapter Five
I n an instant, John was swept from a blindingly hot morning into a dark, cold night. His breath frosted the air in front of him, half obscuring what looked like a composite of every city he’d been in during the last fifty years. It had the same grimy buildings, the same smog-filled air, the same dark streets filled with dangers. Only the creatures who prowled these alleyways wouldn’t just pick your pocket and shiv you in the side for good measure.
They’d stay to dine on the corpse.
Of course, hell didn’t really decorate with Dumpsters and graffiti. But the city, or rather, the ancient ruins on which it was built, had been created by beings who didn’t rely on boring old three dimensions. Viewed without a filter, it made his head feel like it was about to explode.
Fortunately, the current inhabitants felt the same way, and had laid a spell that supplied a generic environment to keep everyone from going mad. It pulled images from the viewer’s memory, meaning that everyone saw it slightly differently.
The last time he’d visited, it had looked like Victorian London. The time before that, it had been Revolutionary France. Still earlier it had been an Iron Age village on the edge of a forest, where the trees looked back at you if you stared at them for too long. And while the basic layout never changed, the human mind relied on visual cues that shifted greatly in between incarnations.
He therefore needed a moment to get his bearings, but found that he didn’t have one.
The runes he’d used to transition were still glowing faintly in the air when he heard it—a sound like leather sheets flapping in the wind, followed by a screech that rent the night. Something huge sailed by overhead as John sprinted for the cover of a nearby alley. He moved as quickly as his leg would allow, even knowing that it wouldn’t be fast enough.
It wasn’t.
A tattered shadow rippled grotesquely over the surrounding buildings as the creature banked and turned. This time it was a hunting scream that echoed off the buildings on either side—it had spotted him. John cursed himself for a fool and felt around under his coat, finally locating the right vial about the time the creature landed a few doors down.
Vetalas had notoriously bad eyesight, relying mostly on an acute sense of smell for hunting. That could be an advantage—unless you happened to be covered in sweat and gore. John dashed the neutralizer potion all over himself, then held his breath, not knowing if it would be enough.
He didn’t normally come here drenched in blood. Of course, he didn’t normally come here at all anymore. A death order signed by the demon high council was something of a deterrent.
Not that there weren’t plenty of others.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of slow, heavy pants and the incongruous tap, tap, tap of claws on cement as the creature prowled up and down the sidewalk, looking for the tasty tidbit it had glimpsed from above. John stayed utterly still, not even breathing. It wasn’t likely to help.
Vetalas were rare in the city, preferring the wild hinterlands beyond. But when they did come in, no one challenged them. They were frighteningly fast, immensely strong, and cunningly smart. And they could hone in on human magic as easily as scent. Throwing a silence shield or a cloaking spell over himself would only help it to find him faster.
But not being able to move was driving him crazy. His hand itched to tense, to grab a weapon, to fight. But vetalas hunted in packs, and the others wouldn’t be far away. And meeting a group of flesh-eating predators in his current condition would make this a very short trip.
Finally, through the cobweb strewn packing crates at the entrance to the alley, he glimpsed it—a fantastic beast, sleek as a viper and built for raw power. Like a nightmarish cross of hyena and bat, it was a mass of contradictions—silky russet fur that melted into leathery black wings, a delicate, fine-boned head that ended in a razored snarl. Grace seamlessly combined with terror, it was the perfect instrument of death.
And it was wagging its tail.
John slumped against the cold bricks behind him, faintly dizzy from relief and lack of oxygen. He decided that perhaps God didn’t hate him as much as he’d always believed. Because of the thousands of the creatures who ravaged this strange world, he’d stumbled across the only one he knew.
Or perhaps it had stumbled over him, because before he could emerge from the alley, it bounded over the crates, knocked him to the ground and deposited a ton of enthusiastic slobber onto his face.
“Ber
en—Beren get off,” he growled, which did no more good than it ever had.
Glossy fur gleamed over hard muscle as a monster the size of a large car slumped in a playful crouch. It thought he wanted to wrestle, which was more than a little dangerous in the confined space. The vetala’s heavily barbed tail had gotten caught in one of the packing crates, a problem Beren solved by thrashing it back and forth against the two sides of the alley. Nails and shards of wood went flying everywhere—including into John’s flesh.
It occurred to him that it would be exactly like him to get killed in a city full of enemies by a friend.
In desperation, he made one of the sounds he’d perfected as a young man, a pretty good approximation of the cry young vetalas used to let their nest mates know when they’d bitten too hard. He’d hardly begun the haunting mewl of distress before Beren was pulling back in an undignified waddle, until only its head was in the alley. It snuffled around his hurt leg, its muzzle careful not to nudge the wound, its body language apologetic.
“It’s all right,” John said, sitting up. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
The great head pushed its way under his arm, pretty much forcing him to scratch it behind the ears. He obliged, and found the rumble of its breath and the impression of barely contained violence familiar and soothing. He’d never been able to own a dog. After Beren, they seemed so cringing, so subservient. They were carrion eaters and beggars of scraps; Beren was a proud member of an ancient race of hunters, and he preferred his food alive.
Fortunately, he’d never viewed John as food. Why was still open to question. Beren hadn’t been an abandoned waif John had rescued or a starving outcast. He’d been pretty much as he was now when they’d met, after Rosier had moved his son to his secondary court in the demon realm humans called the Shadowland.
It had been the second upheaval for John, who had been snatched from life on Earth to Rosier’s main court only a few years before. That had proved to be a hot, brightly lit desert world, full of spice and color and debauchery—and intrigue and danger and hatred for the half-human child who was suddenly the focus of his father’s interest. After the fifth failed assassination attempt, Rosier had moved him here.