Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5

by Karen Chance

  And a dead end.

  I stared around frantically, but there was nowhere to run or even to hide, not that that was likely to work, anyway. No windows, no closets, not even a bathroom cubicle. Just a fake wood desk, a sickly plant and gray industrial carpet tiles, several of which needed a change.

  They’re about to get one, I thought blankly, and then Pritkin grabbed me by the shoulders. “We have to split up!” he yelled over the sound of the building imploding.

  “What?”

  “I hit it with a spell to blind it. I doubt it took entirely, but its vision should be blurry. If we can get it off our tail, I can lead it away—”

  “First of all, no. And second of all, hell no!”

  “This isn’t a discussion!”

  “The hell it—”

  I cut off when he flung something against the floor and then flung us against the wall, his battered shields taking another blow as an explosion blasted a chunk out of the floor. And then we were sliding through the new exit into the office below, which, apparently, took up the entire story. There were no halls here, just a ton of cubicles with plants and family portraits that I really hoped nobody was all that attached to, because a second later, something tore through the ceiling after us.

  And suddenly, there was nowhere left to go. The space was huge and the creature was in between us and the stairs. The only other door was impossibly far away, and I doubted we’d have made it even if there hadn’t been a maze of tasteful gray partitions in the way. We couldn’t punch through to the next floor with it right on our ass, and judging by the desperation on Pritkin’s face, I didn’t think his shields were going to hold up to another firestorm.

  It really is game over, I thought, and then he threw us out the window.

  We burst back into the night along with a storm of paper and a suicidal watercooler. It kamikazied someone’s car below, caving in the roof like a body would, just as Pritkin’s makeshift glider caught us. And then it caught a draft, wafting up the side of the building just as a swell of fire burst out below, incinerating the mass of fluttering paper midair.

  The creature paused on the window ledge, looking even more impossible when framed by modern glass and steel. And then it threw back its head and gave another screeching cry, loud as a foghorn, loud enough that I thought my eardrums might burst in my head. Loud enough to shiver the mirrored side of the building across the street, making its reflection shudder.

  I watched it ripple like a stone thrown in water as we rode a circular air current a few stories above the creature’s head. Pritkin wasn’t even trying to move away from the building, and I didn’t have to wonder why. If we couldn’t outrun that thing on land, we sure as hell couldn’t in the air. Not in something that had little steering and no propulsion.

  Seconds ticked by as it peered around, its firelit eyes searching for us in the darkness, the nauseating smell of half-cooked flesh mixing with the ozone taste of its magic. I held my breath until I was dizzy, while my heart tried its best to beat through my chest. Because all it had to do was crane its head; all it had to do was look—

  And then it spotted us, and I didn’t even have time to draw a breath before it launched itself into the sky, huge wings carving the air with deadly precision. It’s still strangely beautiful, I thought dizzily. Streamlined and elegant, a magnificent instrument of death, even in its ruined state.

  Right up until it crashed into the opposite building.

  And our reflection.

  It hit like a bullet before exploding like a grenade, pieces of the once-powerful body flying off in all directions. I saw what remained smack down amid a waterfall of glass, saw it flatten a car like a pancake, saw the spatter fly up three stories high. And then I didn’t see anything else, because we were falling, too.

  Pritkin’s overtaxed shield gave out a few seconds too soon, sending us tumbling through the air, with me desperately trying to shift, even knowing it wouldn’t work. And all I could think in those last few, furious seconds was that we’d won, against all odds we’d won, damn it, and it still wasn’t—

  And then we were jerked up, so hard I thought my bones might separate.

  I just hung there for a moment, bouncing on air, too dazed to feel much of anything except some blood slipping ticklishly down my spine. Then I noticed Caleb overhead, leaning dangerously far over the side of the convertible, something close to terror on his habitually calm face. And his hand outflung in an odd gesture.

  I thought that might have something to do with the faint golden glimmer wrapped around Pritkin and me like—well, like a lasso. Nice catch, I didn’t say, because my mouth didn’t seem to work. Until Pritkin slumped against me, his face slack, his body a deadweight in my arms, and I got a good look at his back.

  And screamed.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “What happened?” Caleb demanded, as two mages carefully hauled us over the side of the car. Caleb had hold of me, but I threw him off and pushed through to where they were laying Pritkin facedown on the backseat. “Cassie!”

  “It was that last blast,” I said numbly, staring at him. God, it looked worse from this angle. Red and black and white all mixed up together, blood and burnt leather and bone—

  “This wasn’t caused by fire,” someone said.

  I didn’t even look up to see who it was. I was watching them carefully pull away the remains of his coat. It was spelled to repair itself, but I didn’t think that would be happening this time. A few filaments were gamely trying to knit themselves back together, but there wasn’t enough left to work with. Despite the armor spells woven into it, almost the entire back of the coat was simply gone, eaten away in huge, bloody holes with little more than leather “lace” between them. And the body underneath—

  “My God,” someone said as the remains of the coat were peeled back, taking some of his flesh along with it. The stars spun dizzyingly around me.

  “Dragon blood,” Caleb spat, and somebody cursed.

  I looked up. “But that can’t . . . we were nowhere near—”

  “It must have spat it at you before you escaped,” he said roughly. “Get us to Central. Now!” he ordered the driver.

  “He’s not going to last that long,” one of the other mages argued. “We have medical staff on the scene. They just arrived—”

  “And you think they’re going to be able to handle this?”

  “If they don’t, he’s gone. I’m telling you, we can’t—”

  “Get out,” I said softly, my eyes on the ruined map of Pritkin’s back.

  “And if we try the emergency unit and they can’t do anything?” Caleb demanded. “We’ll have lost any chance of—”

  “There’s no time for anything else!”

  “I said, get out!” I snarled, pushing at the nearest mage. “All of you, except for Caleb!”

  “What?” the mage who’d been arguing with the boss, a young Hispanic guy, turned to look at me. “What are you—”

  “If you want him to live, get the hell out of here!”

  “Do it,” Caleb rasped, watching my face. I don’t know what it looked like. I didn’t care.

  “Drive,” I told him.

  The mages bailed over the side, taking a protesting Fred along for the ride. Caleb climbed into the front seat and I bent over Pritkin. The stench of burnt leather mingled with the metallic tang of blood was bad enough, but there was something else there, too, something dark, something wrong.

  “Don’t touch him,” Caleb said harshly. “The stuff’s like acid. You get any on you and it’ll eat through you, too.”

  I ignored him. I couldn’t do this without touching. I wasn’t sure I could do this at all. Pritkin was part incubus, which meant he could feed off human energy, almost like a vampire. It was the part he hated most about himself, the part that had once resulted in the death of someone he loved. But it was the only thing that might save him now.

  I’d fed him once before, in a similar situation, but I’d had one major a
dvantage then: he’d been conscious and an active participant. I didn’t know what to do with him out cold. If he’d been a vamp, I’d have opened a vein for him, held it over his mouth, made him take what his body desperately needed. But he wasn’t.

  And incubi fed only one way.

  I slid down to the floor by the seat, so that our faces were on a level. And realized that I had another problem. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned toward me, and there was precious little undamaged flesh that I could reach. I ran a hand through his hair, and as always it was soft, despite the dust and sweat that currently matted it.

  I combed my fingers through it anyway, before trailing them over his equally dirty brow, down the too-large nose, across the too-thin lips. He hadn’t shaved today, maybe not yesterday, either, and the bristles rubbed my fingers as I smoothed over his cheeks, his jaw. My hand began to tremble as I reached his chin. The adrenaline that had kept me going for the past half hour was wearing off, but that wasn’t the only reason my hand was shaking. Part of it was fear for Pitkin, but part of it—

  Part of it was fear of him.

  I’d only seen him feed the one time, and he’d been oh, so careful. And with cause. The power he possessed could not just take some of a person’s energy; it could take all of it. Not that he would, not if he was awake and in his right mind and able to think clearly. But he wasn’t now. And while I’d never seen an incubus drain someone, I’d seen master vampires when they were seriously injured, seen what they left behind when they—

  I cut off, breathing hard. Panic and exhaustion vied to put me down for the count, but I pushed them away angrily, along with my stupid, stupid cowardice. Pritkin would risk it for me. He’d do it for me.

  I bent and found his lips with my own.

  The kiss, if you could call it that, tasted like dust and ashes. I felt his breath on my face, faint and warm, but nothing else. There was no response at all.

  I pulled off my tank top and unhooked my bra.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Caleb demanded. “I told you not to touch—”

  “Caleb. Whatever you see, whatever you hear, you forget,” I said harshly. “That’s an order.”

  “Have you gone completely—”

  “And here’s another one. Shut up.”

  I picked up Pritkin’s hand, limp and lifeless but so familiar. I knew every bump, every callus, every line. These hands were the ones that had taught me the right way to hold a gun, that had corrected my stance in martial arts, that had done their best to teach me to throw a proper punch. And for a few, brief moments once, they had held me in passion.

  I really, really hoped some part of him remembered that now.

  I held his hand to my breast and kissed him again.

  There was still no response, at least not from him, but I felt something, a brief tremor of sensation when his calluses dragged over sensitive flesh. Incubi raised lust in their partners because it was how they tapped into human energy. It was the conduit they used to feed, as blood was for vamps.

  But if my brief sensation awakened anything in Pritkin, I saw no sign of it.

  It didn’t help that I’d never felt less sexy in my life. It wasn’t the dirt or the exhaustion or the audience, although that sure as hell didn’t help. It wasn’t even the blood. Mostly it was the panic. The growing certainty that I was going to lose him if I couldn’t do this made it that much less likely that I could.

  “If you can hear me, stop being a stubborn son of a bitch,” I whispered desperately. “Help me.”

  I didn’t get a response, and we were running out of time. I could see it in the pallor of his face, hear it in the shallowness of his breath, sense it in some undefined way I couldn’t have named, but knew just the same. Tears of frustration welled in my eyes as I kissed him again, pushing it deeper, willing him to feel something, anything—

  “That has to be the most pathetic display I have ever seen,” someone said, and my head jerked up. Because it hadn’t been Caleb’s voice.

  I stared up at the glimmering outline of a man shot through with stars, perched casually on the back of the seat. He was barely visible against the night, but then we slipped into a ley line and the jumping blue energy bent around a familiar set of features. They were the same ones as on the body I held, but they looked so very different with that particular mind behind them.

  “Rosier,” I spat, feeling my flesh crawl.

  “What?” Caleb asked, and since he was still driving and not lunging over the seat with weapon drawn, I assumed he couldn’t see the demon who had somehow hitched a ride.

  “I told you; just ignore everything,” I said roughly, as the deadly creature bent over his son. “Don’t hurt him!”

  “Hurt who?” Caleb asked, confused.

  “Just drive!” I snapped, trying to push Rosier away. He had a body when he chose, but he obviously wasn’t using it tonight. Because he was as insubstantial as a column of mist, and my hand went right on through.

  “It seems you’ve done well enough on that score yourself,” Rosier said drily. “I always said you’d be the death of him.”

  I felt tears welling up, of frustration, of anger and of mind-numbing fear. It made it hard to think, hard to breathe. Because he was right. I should have stayed in the damn hotel suite, should never have left it. This was my fault, completely and utterly, as much as if I’d put a gun to Pritkin’s head. He was going to die and I couldn’t help him, and I was going to have to sit here and watch it happen—

  Just like Eugenie.

  The very thought paralyzed me in horror. “No,” I whispered.

  “Why are you sitting there, blubbering?” the demon demanded. “We’ve work to do.”

  I looked up to find the pale outline more blurred than before, and forced myself to focus. I dashed angry tears away. “Why should I believe you want to help him? You tried to kill him!”

  “Him, no. I tried to kill you, if you’ll recall.”

  “You sent the damn Rakshasas after him!”

  Rosier shrugged, as if sending a hit squad of soulless demons after his own son was a minor issue. “They were meant as a scare tactic—they couldn’t touch him while he was alive, after all.”

  “They touched him plenty!”

  “Only because you insisted on pulling him outside of his body. But do let’s discuss this while he finishes slipping the mortal coil, shall we?”

  I stared at Rosier, the hateful, lying, deceitful bastard that he was, and just didn’t know. Pritkin hated his father, and while I didn’t know all his reasons, I assumed they were good ones; I had plenty of my own. Trusting him now—

  “My dear girl,” he said, with a patient drawl in his voice. “If I wanted him dead, why would I be here at all? A few more minutes in your tender care should take care of things, with no interference from me.”

  And he was right. Despicable as he was, he was right. I was sitting here mourning the man, and he wasn’t even dead yet. But he would be, would be very soon, if I didn’t get my shit together, if I didn’t figure something out. I pushed at Pritkin’s inert body, trying to turn him on his side, to gain more access, but he was heavy and I didn’t see how this was going to—

  “Oh, for the love of—What he sees in you, I will never know,” the demon said, in evident amazement.

  “What do I do?” I asked frantically.

  “If you want someone to eat, you must first prepare the meal. And he is hardly in a position to do it for you. Here,” he said, with a sigh. “Let Daddy help.”

  And without warning, something snapped in the air around us. It felt like an electric current, only softer, warmer, infinitely more enticing. It pulsed through me like a wave, making my skin flush, my nipples peak and my heart beat harder in my throat. I stopped pushing on Pritkin and curled up next to him instead, sighing as my hands slid into the front of his coat, seeking warmth, seeking skin.

  I slipped them under his T-shirt, feeling hard muscle and soft hair, and kissed his neck. That
didn’t get me anywhere, but when I gently bit the knob of his Adam’s apple, I felt it bob faintly under my lips. So I did it again, before moving up to take his lower lip between mine. It gave under my teeth, a damp, swollen heat, and somebody moaned, but I wasn’t sure which of us it was. I didn’t care.

  Except about one thing. There were too many straps and buckles and obstacles in the way. There were holsters and belts and vials and guns, when I craved skin on skin.

  But that wasn’t a problem for long. I watched in bemused fascination as a buckle on his shoulder slid out of its loop all on its own, the little prong popping loose from its leather jail , before the whole thing slithered to the floor. The same was happening with the belt around his waist, which turned loose and then jerked out from under him, tossing itself into the front seat. And then the zipper on his jeans slid open, as if an invisible finger was pushing it down.

  I don’t remember much of the next few minutes. Everything went fuzzy, a warm, golden haze that caught the seconds, stretching them like taffy. I do remember a man’s chest, hard muscle under my hand, a sweeping ladder of ribs, the smooth rise of a hip . . . and Pritkin jerking back, his breathing heavy, his jaw like iron.

  His weapons were gone, and most of his shirt, too, although, oddly, he still wore one arm of his coat. The jeans were also still in place, but they were sagging in front, showing off a ridged abdomen and a light brown treasure trail. I pushed at them impatiently, got them mostly off his hips, before a hand grabbed mine and forced it back against the seat.

  “You don’t want this,” he told me harshly.

  I didn’t say anything; I couldn’t think clearly enough to put into words just how wrong he was. I’d never wanted anything more in my life.

  I slid the other hand behind his neck, tried to pull him down to me, only to have the same thing happen. My other hand hit the seat, trapped in his as securely as in a manacle. Pritkin wasn’t touching me otherwise, but he was right there, bare chest heaving, skin damp and moist, his one bare arm corded with muscle as he held me against the seat, helpless.