Ride the Storm

by Karen Chance

  “But . . . but spirits manifest with bodies in Faerie,” I said, because this was starting to sound weirdly possible. “I don’t know if that works with spirits who are already inside one, but if it does—”

  “It doesn’t. Adra tested it, with the help of your senate, yesterday,” he said, talking about the head of the demon high council. “It was a very short trip, but no one exploded.”

  “Exploded?” Jules said faintly.

  “Yesterday?” I repeated.

  “When we ally with someone, we don’t waste time,” Rosier said proudly. “Your lot have been . . . Well, frankly, I don’t know what you’ve been doing. But in case you haven’t noticed, we are under siege. And the people inside a castle’s walls, facing a determined enemy, don’t just sit around waiting for the enemy to find a way in! Walls buy you time; good ones buy you a great deal of time. And however much I may despise her, your mother built a damn good wall. But it won’t hold forever.”

  “Exploded?” Jules said, again.

  The baby vampire ate cookies with a vengeance.

  I just sat there, realizing that I’d been had. “Casanova—that whole thing with him, it was a setup, wasn’t it?”

  I was talking about a contest two days ago, between the world’s whiniest hotel manager, who also happened to be the world’s only demon-possessed vamp, and a monster from literally the pits of hell. Adra had set it up, supposedly to punish Casanova for an infraction of demon law.

  Or, you know, to find out if a hybrid warrior would really work.

  “Call it a test,” Rosier said, seeing my face.

  “Casanova was almost killed.”

  “And what do you think we’re going to be? We can’t keep having to win every battle just to stay at stalemate! This is the best chance either of our people are going to have—”

  “But there are ways to do things. You don’t just sell out your own side!”

  “Yeah, like sending a vamp through a portal, with a demon inside,” Jules said, low and angry. “One that might just manifest a body and rip him to shreds!”

  “He didn’t die,” Rosier said, casting an irritated look at Jules. “Neither of them died—”

  “But they could have!” I said, because he still didn’t get this.

  “People die in war all the time,” he told me, proving my point. “But far less of them will do so this way. And vampires aren’t just useful as troops. Reconnaissance is easy when you don’t have to breathe or have a heartbeat or show other signs of life unless you choose. And then there’s transport, for those who prove capable—”

  “Transport?”

  “That’s what Adra and I were discussing when you interrupted us a few days ago, or whenever it was. I can’t tell anymore. But if a vampire can carry one passenger, so to speak, why not two? Or a hundred? Or a thousand?”

  “A thousand?”

  “All right, possibly not a thousand. Possessions of that type tend to turn . . . odd.”

  “Imagine,” I said, my head reeling.

  “But a hundred is certainly—”

  “And just how are these ‘passengers’ going to help when they’re trapped inside a body?” Jules asked, leaning forward.

  “Why trapped?” Rosier said crossly. “Is any spirit trapped? One vampire can transport a whole squadron of demons, with no one being the wiser. Like a fanged version of a Trojan horse. Get inside a fortress and hey, presto. Instant army.”

  “But how do they get back out? Once they’re corporeal, they can’t just climb back into the tank, can they?”

  “No. Which gives them a damn good incentive to take the proposed target, doesn’t it?” Rosier asked evilly. “They’ll need its portal to return to earth. Plus, while they are in residence, so to speak, they can give the vampire thousands of years’ worth of information, tactics, strategy, advice—”

  And a splitting headache, I thought dizzily.

  “—it’s perfect.”

  “It’s not perfect,” I said.

  “It’s perfect if they do as they’re told. What you just told me is troublesome, however. I’ll have to let Adra know—”

  “You can let him know something else while you’re at it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as vamps don’t do possessions.”

  “They don’t,” Jules agreed. “They really, really don’t.”

  “The senate seems to think otherwise!” Rosier snapped.

  “The senate can think anything it wants,” I said. “But remember Don? Vamps aren’t robots. You can’t just order a bunch of them to load up on demons, go into Faerie, and fuck shit up! Oh yeah, and if you fail, you’re stranded there for good because there’s no way to get you out!”

  “Yes, we can.”

  I sat back. “Well, okay, you can. And maybe you could tape it for me—”

  “Damn it!” Rosier turned on me. “Casanova—the whiny little bastard! He was possessed for centuries with no ill effects. If anything, Rian was the making of him!”

  Rosier was talking about Casanova’s girlfriend, or his succubus, anyway. When they met, Rian had just left her second host, the famous Italian playboy, and was looking for her third. And she’d been looking carefully.

  The incubi on earth were limited to three hosts before they had to return home to make room for other hungry demons. The demon council had imposed the limits to avoid overfeeding, and there was no way around them. Three strikes, that was it, and she was on her last one. She’d needed to make it count.

  And she did.

  Casanova, who was known as Juan Carlos before he adopted her former host’s name, had been the newly made vamp she’d propositioned. From her perspective, it made sense: he would likely outlive the average human, possibly by centuries. Centuries in which she could continue to stockpile power long after her compatriots went home. From his perspective, he was getting the company of a lovely lady, who taught him how to get even more lovely ladies, along with virtually anyone else who caught his fancy. He just hadn’t known one thing.

  “Vamps don’t do possessions,” I repeated. “Casanova was too young to know any better, but the vampires you’re talking about aren’t. They’re not likely to open themselves up to the control of somebody—or something—even for a war. And if you think they are, you don’t know them very well.”

  “I don’t know them, other than Casanova, and I’ve frequently wished I didn’t know him,” Rosier said. “But the senate does. And they think it will work!”

  “I’ll have to see it.”

  “You’re about to,” he told me, and looked up.

  At the cloud of demons, now diving for the line of horrified-looking vamps.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “Shit!” Jules yelled while I ducked, Rosier grinned, and the baby just sat there, crumbs spilling from his suddenly slack lips.

  But the other vamps weren’t so paralyzed. The signs of nervousness I’d seen before had been kept in check, out of pride or fear of their masters. But that tore it.

  They broke and ran, scrambling in all different directions. Until booming calls went out, ordering them back into line. And giving Rosier a really good look at Don’s strategy in action.

  Because nobody had remembered to say where this line should be.

  The result was an incredibly organized group of rioters, who reformed only to tear by us in a nice, straight line, despite the fact that some were still yelling their heads off. And ripping apart the heavy metal door like it was tissue paper, before trampling the battling vampires outside. Until their masters ordered them back again, which resulted in a neat about-face, but no slowing down.

  And vamps in a hurry can move. The master’s section itself was plowed into a second later, almost fast enough to give me whiplash, bleachers collapsing, people cursing, demons back to hovering overhead. And if a cloud could l
ook nonplussed, they were managing it.

  It looked like they’d been led to believe this would be easier.

  I turned to Rosier. “You said Rian was the making of him—”

  “What?”

  “Casanova. You said Rian was the making of him. What did you mean?”

  He told me.

  I stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Jules said, gripping my arm.

  Only he appeared to have grown two left hands.

  I looked down to see that the baby had latched on, too. The big brown eyes, made even bigger by the glasses, were pleading. He still couldn’t talk, but the idea was conveyed, all the same.

  “I’m not going far,” I told him.

  “We’ll go with you,” Jules offered, even while eyeing the door. Which was wide open and hanging off its hinges.

  “You can go if you want,” I said. “Both of you—”

  “Not if you’re staying.”

  “You’re not my bodyguard anymore, Jules,” I reminded him, because I didn’t need another repeat of the scene outside.

  “I know that! But there’s things you don’t know about vamps—I know, you grew up with one. But Tony wasn’t a senator. They could try to put something over on you. I can help.”

  The baby nodded enthusiastically—why, I had no idea. Maybe because he didn’t want to be left behind with Rosier. I sighed. “Come on, then.”

  The senate had been standing on the far side of the gym, I guess to get the best view. It had been a little crowded over there when I came in, packed with senators and assorted flunkies. It was a lot less so now, since many of the latter were helping to retrieve their wayward children. It made it easier to find a familiar face.

  Well, sort of familiar.

  As usual, it had the nondescript pudding quality of bad glamouries everywhere: round, blond, and unassuming. Its owner kept doing the Mr. Potato Head thing, trying out different stuff—a cleft, a mustache, or for today’s version, dimples—to dress it up. None of it helped. It still looked like what it was, a more or less human facade to cover the not-at-all human thing inside. The not-at-all human thing that, I strongly suspected, would tip me the rest of the way into madness if I saw it, so I was content with the pudding.

  I smiled.

  Adra, better known as Adramelech, smiled wider, and held out a couple of warm hands to take the one I offered. “Pythia, how fortunate. We were just talking about you.”

  “How nice,” I said, smiling at Kit Marlowe, standing to the demon’s left, who was definitely not smiling back.

  The senate’s chief spy was a little disheveled, which wasn’t a bad look on him. Tousled brown curls, an in-need-of-a-trim goatee, a gold earring sparkling in one ear, and a rumpled, only mostly buttoned-up white dress shirt left him halfway between Renaissance bad boy and Captain Jack Sparrow. Only both of those versions were more fun.

  “Perhaps we should postpone,” he muttered, to his other, not so genially smiling companion. Or to be exact, his frowning-slightly-in-annoyance companion, which she still managed to make look good.

  The consul of the North American Vampire Senate was a golden-skinned, sloe-eyed, dark-haired beauty with a fondness for completely over-the-top dress. She’d toned it down today, maybe in consideration of the state of her house, to an Indiana Jones cosplay consisting of a pair of skintight brown leather pants, matching boots, a white silk “blouse” that revealed more than it covered, and two huge diamond studs in her ears—as in, Hollywood starlets had smaller engagement rings. Because we couldn’t take this peasant thing too far, could we?

  “Is Mircea here?” I asked Marlowe, since I was slightly more likely to get a response from him.

  “He was delayed. Family matter. He’ll be here shortly.”

  “Thank you.” I looked at Adra. “Could I have a word?”

  “Certainly.”

  We moved off. “Can you do a silence spell?”

  “I believe I can manage.”

  I felt it click shut behind us, but I kept my back to Marlowe just in case. I looked up, and found Adra totally expressionless. Enough to leave me blinking, and staring at something completely masklike, with no signs of life at all.

  Which gave the nondescript, faintly pleasant features the quality of a doll in a horror film as it slowly turns to look at you.

  “My apologies,” he said as life flowed back into the mask. “That’s the problem with glamouries, if you aren’t human. You have to remember to animate them all the time. Else they just . . . sit there.”

  Yeah, because there were no human features underneath for it to latch on to, were there?

  I licked my lips. “If I help you, will you help me?”

  The blond head tilted. “Help me how?”

  “Get the vampires to do what you want. To accept the possession.”

  “And in return?”

  “I want Mircea protected. And you want it, too,” I added quickly. “Vamps like nothing better than to argue. If he dies, they could spend weeks, even months, debating over a successor. It could derail the entire war.”

  “And why would he die?”

  “People die in war from all sorts of things. Even their own allies.”

  “I can assure you, my demons won’t—”

  “No, your demons won’t.”

  Two pale eyebrows arched. They didn’t look like he’d put any thought into them, leaving them the plain half-moons of the glamourie, but they managed to convey surprise nonetheless. And a question.

  “I want two of your strongest as his personal bodyguards,” I said. “He doesn’t have to know about it. It would probably be better if he didn’t know about it. But they absolutely need to watch him all the time.”

  “Even when he’s with friends?” The pale eyes lifted, to take in the knot of people behind us.

  “Especially when he’s with friends.”

  Adra smiled, a brief quirk of fake lips. “So be it.”

  We walked back over to the group. The vamps had been dug out of the collapsed stands, and were milling about, looking miserable. And likely getting mental tongue-lashings from the masters they’d just embarrassed, because, of course, that was the most important thing. Among the smaller, senatorial group, talk was ensuing.

  It stopped when we walked up.

  Adra beamed at them. “Cassie would like to address our subjects.”

  “Why?” Marlowe asked immediately.

  “To help with our unfortunate enthusiasm gap.”

  “You’re saying she can fix this?” a harassed-looking master demanded. He was tall, Asian and handsome, a Chow Yun-Fat clone, if Chow was younger and had a sleek tiger tat prowling around his face. Since it matched those on two of the vamps now being settled onto another section of bleachers, I assumed he had skin in the game. His boys were adjusting the cuffs of their finely tailored suits, trying to look cool and calm and more pulled together than the rest.

  Which might have been easier if they hadn’t just been fleeing in terror.

  “I’m saying new vamps are new,” I said, forcing him to have to actually address me. “I’ve been watching babies run into walls for the last hour because they’re still trying to see the human way. They don’t even know how their eyes work yet. These guys aren’t that bad, but they’re still a lot closer to what they were than what they will be.”

  “Which means what?” he demanded.

  “That masters at your level haven’t been human in so long, you’ve forgotten what it feels like. They haven’t. You want them to overcome their fear and do what you want? Not grudgingly, but full out, with enthusiasm? Then treat them as you would a human.”

  “And?”

  “Give them an incentive.”

  Nobody said anything else, so I took that as a yes and walked over to the vamps. They didn’t appear happy to se
e me. Of course, right then I doubt they would have been happy about much.

  It was why I’d have preferred to do this later, after they’d had a chance to calm down. Or to take them somewhere else, where their masters wouldn’t be glaring daggers at them the whole time. But I didn’t have a later, and not just because of my own schedule.

  But because it was almost dawn.

  And while older vamps might not get as fuzzy-headed and slow as the infant variety, it still affected them. I could already see it in some of the younger ones, in nervously tapping feet, jerky movements, and agitated glances—although that last could have had something to do with the hovering horde. They weren’t right on top of us. In fact, it looked like they’d pulled back a bit, possibly at Adra’s command. But they drew the eye.

  Unlike me. Few of the vamps were even looking at me, and when they did, their eyes didn’t linger. And why should they? They had bigger problems than some barefoot girl who was almost as nervous as they were.

  But Adra would only keep his word if I kept mine. That was how the world worked; nothing was free, nothing was ever free. And I couldn’t let Mircea go into Faerie without protection.

  Not if I wanted to see him come out again.

  I cleared my throat. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Cassie.”

  It wasn’t quite as bad as the vamps on the door; a few of them, especially the ones in the front row, were listening politely—or pretending to. Probably because anything was better than what they’d be doing otherwise. But the rest were talking quietly, or staring at their masters, or glancing surreptitiously at a nearby exit, as if they were still planning to bolt.

  I knew the feeling.

  But instead I focused on the door, one I hadn’t seen before, hidden between two sets of bleachers. And the plain wooden chair that was propping it open. Which a second later was propping me up, because yeah. That felt better.

  I looked up, and found a lot more eyes on me suddenly.

  It took me a moment. And then I realized: most vamps weren’t my long-suffering bodyguards, and weren’t used to shifting. Or whatever they thought I’d just done to make a chair appear out of nowhere.