by Karen Chance
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” the healer said. “He’s dying anyway. By the time they start fading, it’s usually too late—”
“So we let Dorina shish kebab him? Because I’m not getting how that helps—”
“Well, you would if you’d listen!” the redhead said, shoving crackling hair out of her face. And then proceeded to tell the brunette what John already knew.
And, damn it, he was out of time! The Irin’s other arm had faded now, too, and his legs were fast following suit. Only the glowing torso remained relatively solid, and the head, which looked as angelic as ever.
Even with John’s knife sticking out of the heart.
“There,” he rasped, jerking his blade back, and hoping he hadn’t just made a huge mistake. “Now maybe we’ll see—”
That, he finished mentally, as a spear of light tore out of the ruined chest. It was so bright that it caused the little dhampir to stumble back against him, shielding her eyes. And so probably missed the body’s sudden collapse, like a discarded bit of clothing, as the light transformed itself into the huge, glowing figure of a man. One who towered over the rest of them by at least a foot and a half.
And whose eyes found John’s a second later, the ephemeral lips twitching with something that might have been a smile.
Hello, princeling, echoed in John’s head.
Well, fuck.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
T he Irin’s spirit smiled at the woman. “Still getting in over your head, I see.”
“You know each other?” John asked sharply.
“A little,” she said, looking at the creature with something like awe. The Irin’s light, now more obvious with no body to hide it, reflected in her eyes, making her look like an acolyte staring up at her god.
“You’ve, uh, you’ve lost your wings,” she gestured.
The Irin’s smile broadened. “I’ll have them back soon enough.” He picked up the hand that was still clenched around the knife, and kissed it. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“That is for what you will do.”
John bristled, his apprehension flooding back. Had he been right the first time? Were they were working together, after all? Damn it! He ought to have let the creature die!
He hadn’t even finished the thought when the Irin’s dark velvet gaze switched to him. A moment later, he heard the distinctive voice again, deep, hypnotic, deceptively soothing. From inside his head.
Fear not, princeling. I am not your enemy. Neither is she. You manage that well enough on your own.”
“And what have you been doing?” the dhampir demanded, before John could think up a suitable response.
The voice was that of her alter ego, and it didn’t sound any more pleased to see the demon than John was. It occurred to him that, while her more human side might consider the Irin to be a friend, her vampire half wasn’t so sure. He warmed to it slightly.
At least someone had a brain.
The Irin also seemed to realize that he was speaking to someone else. His gaze refocused on her face slightly, as if meeting a different pair of eyes, and his head tilted. Another smile tugged at his lips, but this one was different: less the jaded, world weary one he had given John and more the delighted expression on a child’s face when surveying the presents on Christmas morning.
There was nothing these creatures liked more than a mystery.
And the Irin clearly didn’t know much more about dhampirs than John did.
“Look and see,” he told her, gesturing at something behind him.
There was nothing there but the walls of the gallery, which were lined with wooden built-ins full of small apothecary drawers. From the smell, they were filled with the herbs, roots and teas that formed part of traditional Chinese medicine. There was also a cabinet for holding larger items, which the dhampir opened with the hopeful expression of someone expecting a cask of jewels.
And instead found something altogether different.
A lot of somethings.
The fearsome predator was suddenly inundated by a waterfall of bright yellow blooms, which just kept coming. There must have been thousands of them, packed so tightly into the old cabinet that opening the door had resulted in an explosion of flowers. Very strange ones.
They were as thick as succulents, with crooked, knife-edged petals that moved under their own power. Most were sluggish, just a squirming pile now waist high around the dhampir. But others were more active, aggressively curling and then stabbing out at anyone close.
Including John, who stepped back as one lunged at his ankle. They weren’t like anything he’d ever seen, but they smelled oddly familiar, reminding him of the rich, loamy swamps of Faerie, where they had no doubt originated. John felt a sudden pang of longing under his breastbone, followed immediately by the sound of the Irin’s mental voice.
You should be longing for the hells, not some alien world.
Stay out of my head!
The Irin ignored him. You are but a little human and less fey, but you are half demon. Although you do not acknowledge it.
I decide what I am! Not some happenstance of birth!
Yes, that is the old debate, isn’t it?” the Irin mused. “Even the humans acknowledge it: nature or nurture. What makes us who we are—
We do!
Yes. But what are “we” if not the sum total of our background and experiences? Yet you do not allow yourself to experience anything of the biggest part of you. Your demon blood calls to you, but you deny it, choosing instead to live as half a man, with less than half of your power—
Trust a demon to make it all about power!
And trust a confused, frightened boy to make it all about pain.
John felt his blood pressure skyrocket. You know nothing about me! And be careful who you call boy!
The Irin’s voice in his head laughed, but it didn’t sound mocking. Rather gently amused. But boy you are, to one as old as I. Yet I remember being young and confused once, too. I would help you—
There’s only one way you can help me! Yet you stand here, wasting time!
“Oh, God!” Ray gasped, stumbling back from the flora. “What is that?”
“Dragon’s Claw,” the redhead in the mirror said, the one the dhampir had called Claire. She was clutching an old blue bathrobe around her neck as she bent to peer into the mirror on her side, close enough for the tip of her nose to squash flat. “They grow in some of the deeper valleys in Faerie. The fey call them that because of the shape—”
The dhampir looked in distaste at the flower in her hand, one she’d picked up from the pile. John wasn’t sure if that was because of the scent, which was . . . pungent . . . or because it was apparently trying to gut her. He could understand where it got its name: the curling and uncurling action of the petals, the gnarled shape, and sharp, stabby ends did make it resemble the claw of some fell beast.
It appeared to be weirding the dhampir out.
He wondered what she’d think of some of the mandrakes, which could take off like little fat butted babies, darting into the woods as soon as you dug them up. And forcing the would-be potion maker to scramble after them, cursing and tripping and running headlong into trees. Only to bounce off and hit the dirt, while the little bastards peered at him through the foliage, as if waiting to continue the game.
Fey flora could be a bit more . . . interactive . . . than the earth variety.
“—and use them in medicines, lotions, perfumes,” the healer continued.
“Perfumes?” the dhampir looked at her friend in surprise. “But they smell like—”
“Ass,” Ray said, still gagging. “The word you’re looking for is ass.”
“They’re a fixative,” Claire pointed out. “Ambergris doesn’t smell very good, either, Dory.”
“This is what you were after?” the dhampir demanded, holding one out to the Irin. She looked like she expected him to say no, but he inclined his head.
&nbs
p; “Dragon’s Claw has another use,” he informed her. “One long since forgotten by the few who knew of it. But someone, it seems, has rediscovered the old alchemy.”
“What alchemy?”
He took the flower from her and blew on it, sending a small tendril of his power to infuse the plant.
John stiffened, because fey flora was a component in some very nasty potions, and he wasn’t familiar with this one. Combined with the Irin’s power, there was no telling what it might do. But there was no poisoned gas released at his touch, much less an explosion.
But there was a change.
The already bright yellow flower was suddenly radiant, pulsing with a brilliant, shifting light. It threw strange shadows on the surrounding circle of faces, which were variously awed, surprised, and in John’s case, probably reluctantly fascinated—at least until the Irin abruptly crushed it. And then the wonder shifted to something else.
“Oh, God!” Ray started to retch again, as the smell increased tenfold. It made John’s eyes water, but not so much that he couldn’t see the thick, gelatinous fluid seeping through the Irin’s fingers. And then through the dhampir’s when he held out his hand and, for some insane reason, she took it.
“When treated properly,” he told her, “Dragon’s Claw has the ability to cause one thing to assume the properties of another.”
“Like what?” she asked.
Like that, John thought, as the color of her skin—pale, with a few random freckles—suddenly bled onto the Irin’s hand. It looked like a paintbrush filled with pigment that had been plunged into water, causing the clear liquid to take on a whole new look. For a moment, the Irin almost appeared solid again, as his hand clothed itself in her flesh.
And the opposite was just as true.
The dhampir’s fingers began to glow, the human coloring overwhelmed by the Irin’s power. Or maybe there was more to it than that. Because, instead of the Irin’s gentle, golden glow, something else was happening to the dhampir.
Something that had her yelling and stumbling back against the railing, which was a reasonable response to having your hand suddenly covered in blue-white flames.
“Dorina!” she gasped, but if that was her alter ego, it didn’t seem to know what was happening, either.
John did, and it was infuriating.
Your kind always do this! he mentally yelled at the Irin. Knowledge above all and fuck the consequences!
I did not do this, the Irin responded, sounding as surprised as he looked.
But you did! You experimented on a creature you knew nothing about, just to see what would happen, and this is the result!
Someone experimented, he agreed. But it was not me.
John felt like slugging that smug face. Help her!
I . . . am not sure that I can.
Goddamnit!
“Dory, your face,” Claire whispered from the mirror.
And the next moment, the fearless, confident, powerful dhampir, screamed like a little girl. John didn’t blame her. The flames had spread across her body, lighting her up like a human candle.
But instead of burning her, they were doing . . . something else.
Her skin had gone a pale, blueish silver, bright as the Irin’s, although instead of sunlight she looked like a star tumbled to earth. The eyes glowed silver, too, matching the veins that pulsed under her skin and the tinge of her lips and tongue as she threw back her head and thrashed against the railing like a wild thing, yelling “No, no, stop it, no!”
And, finally, John understood something. Not what the Irin’s experiment had done to her, but the expression in those strange eyes. And, sure enough, she started swinging at monsters a second later, not real ones, but those churned up by a torrent of memories.
Her eyes were wild and unfocused, staring at things that nobody else could see. Her heart rate had spiked enough to send the silver ichor of her blood beating wildly under her skin. And her fists started flying, demolishing the balcony and the people on it.
In quick succession, her servant was clocked upside the head, the mirror had a fist slammed through it, and the wall received a dozen blows as if from a pile driver, shattering the small drawers and sending the herbs and teas scattering everywhere.
Until John tackled her and took her down, slinging a spell as they fell into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
T he market square was dark, with a lot of half tumbled down, gray stone buildings, yet it wasn’t a ruin. Sturdy wooden patches covered missing pieces in the roofs; colored awnings fluttered out in front of merchant stalls; and a fountain burbled away, albeit so overgrown with mold that the central figure was merely a fuzzy lump. And there were shoppers, shoppers everywhere.
That wasn’t surprising, as this was the demon world known as the Shadowland due to its perpetual twilit dimness, or the Great Market, since that was its primary function. Everyone came here, from thousands of worlds, to trade, to negotiate, and to cheat each other under the enforced peace maintained by the demon high council. Including humans, John thought, pulling back into an alley as a group of them suddenly appeared, not ten yards away.
Damn it, how had they found him?
He did a quick check, flipping from Arcane, to fey, to demon magic, but there was no tracking charm on him that he could discern. They must have done it the old-fashioned way, and trailed him through the streets from his father’s court, where he’d first seen and evaded them. And he’d had his head too far up his own arse to notice!
The same way he’d missed the shadow that lunged at him out of the dark.
John managed to get a shield up in time, leaving him looking at a pair of glowing amber eyes, a slim body, and a snarling face pressed against his protection like she planned to eat her way through it.
Which she just might, because it was that crazy dhampir!
“What the devil?” he whispered, his pulse pounding in his ears for something like the hundredth time today. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I’m trying to give you something,” she agreed, and shit. That was her vampire voice, the controlled monotone that was such a stark contrast to her fierce expression.
It was a concern, but less so than the way the whole scene around them had blurred, like a half-dried painting plunged into water. The colors ran, the lights bled into streamers, and the buildings lost focus. And then it all snapped back to normal, leaving John’s head reeling.
The dhampir didn’t look any happier.
“Where are we?” she demanded.
John glanced around again, wondering if he’d just experienced some new kind of magic. But it didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like anything he’d ever encountered, except for trying to wake up from a dream, while spectral fingers did their best to drag him back under.
Was that what this was? Another dream? Because if so, why did it seem to be malfunctioning?
And what the hell was she doing here?
“Answer me!”
Patience did not appear to be the dhampir’s strong suit, because now she was shaking him. Or, to be more precise, she was shaking his shields, making the contents slosh about like waves on the high seas. It didn’t help John’s stomach, which was already more than a little queasy, or his head, which was spinning enough on its own.
“What are you doing in my dream?” he asked thickly.
“Dream?” It was sharp. “What dream?”
He gestured around.
She glanced at the square, but nothing registered on her face. Probably because she couldn’t see that much. The only light came from some torches at the periphery and the tinted glass lamps that swung on chains outside a few shops.
The wind was up tonight, so the light wasn’t constant, the torches jumping and the lantern wicks flickering with every gust. Dim circles of watercolored illumination moved across the dirty stones below, before being swallowed up by the darkness. But they managed to occasionally highlight the furtive face of a buyer, or the too-wide smi
le of a merchant, about to make a killing.
Or someone planning another kind of killing, John thought, as a knot of mages spread out across the market. They were starting what was obviously a search—for him, if his dream was anything to go on. And why did he have the impression that it would be a bad idea to let them find him?
“We need to move,” he said tersely.
But the dhampir wasn’t budging. “You cast a spell as we fell! I heard you!”
“Yes, to activate a stasis pod.”
“A what?”
He dropped his shields and grabbed her arm, before darting behind the covered wagon-like structure of one of area’s more portable shops. “We use them for creatures too powerful for the cuffs,” he explained softly. “They isolate you somewhere quiet and dark, or rather, the larger ones do. The smaller work on the mind—”
He heard a rumble, deep in her chest.
“That isn’t what this is!” John whispered, starting to move swiftly but quietly behind a row of wagons, while the mages stalked the market out front. “We don’t have pods that look like hell!”
“Hell?” The dhampir suddenly grabbed him back. “What do you mean, hell?”
“This is a demon world,” John began, before finding himself slammed against a wall, and held there by a single slender hand.
“You’re a demon, playing with my mind!”
“Half demon,” John said, wondering why he’d dropped his shields. “And I was trying to help you recover. Nothing I did brought you here!”
He was grateful for the lamp in front of their current wagon, which gilded the shadows behind. It showed him only a dark outline with firelit eyes, but it was a woman’s outline. He would have thought a full-grown tigress was back here with him otherwise.
Of course, he wasn’t sure a tigress wouldn’t have been preferable.
“Then who did?” she growled.
“The damned Irin! It’s what they do.”
It was why people in the hells with secrets—which was most of them—paid large sums for spells to block the bastards out. Or else they’d steal your memories, and the bits of soul they were attached to, bottle them up, and trade them on. Or sell them to the highest bidder, if you had anything really unusual.
