by Karen Chance
“I didn’t know mages could levitate without a platform,” Fred said, his voice preternaturally calm.
“They can’t!”
“Then how’s he—Oh, I see.”
“See what?” I asked, heart in my throat. I couldn’t see anything—except the creature coming up fast, ponderous wings beating the air, great maw gaping for another bite. And then veering off at the last moment for no obvious reason.
“He’s using his shields like a rope.” Fred pointed up at the chewed-off floor, to where a faint glimmer of blue was wrapped around the drive train. “He must’ve slung it up here when he got close enough.”
I stared from the flimsy lifeline to Pritkin and back again, paralyzed by a fear that made my previous panic seem like nothing. Because no mage could project more than one shield at a time. And if Pritkin was using his like a rope, he wasn’t using it to protect himself.
The thought broke my panic fast enough to leave me dizzy. “Keys!” I screamed, grabbing Fred.
“What keys?”
“Our keys!”
“Car keys?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, I don’t know where those—” Fred said, before I threw him aside and lunged for the steering wheel.
The keys were still in the ignition. I ducked under the driver’s seat, forcing myself not to panic, but I was shaking so much, it took two hands to turn them. I mashed my hand to the overhead gas pedal, but for a long second, nothing happened, not even the ominous clicking of a dead battery or a flooded engine. Goddamnit, please—
And then it caught.
“Is it working?” I rasped.
“Is what—Oh,” Fred said. “It’s pulling him up. That’s really—”
He broke off as Pritkin slammed into the drive train and the creature slammed into us, almost at the same moment. And for a brief, horrible second, there was nothing but shrieking metal and screeching creature and a car literally exploding from the inside, as everything behind the front seat disappeared in another huge bite.
I grabbed the back of a seat, staring at the sight of the thing hanging in midair, powerful wings beating madly as its outstretched claws ripped at something above us. I craned my neck, but I still didn’t see anything but black sky and a sliver of moon, looking serene and ethereal in the midst of the chaos. But a moment later, a huge gash was ripped in our attacker’s wing, and it gave a screech that I felt all the way through my skull.
And then I saw them, Caleb and four war mages I didn’t know, hanging over the edge of Pritkin’s beat-up jalopy, firing spells and bullets that bounced off the impermeable hide, appearing only to be making it mad. But not for long. The great tail lashed out, sending both cars tumbling backward, and in the case of the convertible, end over end. But I didn’t get a chance to worry about Caleb.
Because the creature was coming straight at us.
It turned in a sinuous, flowing movement like an eel in water, all sleek muscle and shining scales, and then it dove, the bulk of it blocking out the sky. Breath caught in my throat, my chest, spiked heavy through my lungs. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry. Fred was babbling something incoherent beside me, or maybe I just couldn’t understand him. Not with beautiful death slicing through the air toward me.
And then Pritkin grabbed me and a gun and before I had time to wonder what he thought he was going to do with that, he fired. But not at the creature. Instead, he aimed at the mass of crumpled metal still clamped in its huge maw.
Including one shiny, like-new gas tank that he nailed dead center.
The tank ignited in a whoosh of deadly flame, and since it was halfway down the creature’s throat, that’s where the majority of the blast went, too. For a split second, fire boiled under its skin, red and orange and roiling, glowing between those glittering scales. It was strangely beautiful, separating each into a single, perfect diamond of polished ebony for one last, trembling instant—
And then the creature exploded, sending bones and blood and dark, wet meat flying everywhere—along with about a thousand knife-edged scales.
Pritkin had gotten a partial shield up, which saved our bodies, but the SUV was sliced to ribbons around us, peeling away even as the blast hurled us backward. One second we were kneeling on the curve of the mangled roof, staring out at a beautiful nightmare. And the next we were falling, his arms around my waist, my legs wrapped around him to keep him close, cinders and smoking ash stinging my skin.
I saw Fred get snatched out of the air, a lasso spell grabbing him by the ankle and jerking him up like a great elastic band. I saw part of a wing go spinning into the night, visible because of the fire eating its way across the surface, highlighting the delicate tracery of veins. I saw the ground rushing up at us with impossible, deadly speed—
And then something caught us with a lift and a jerk, sending us hurtling back up on a great wash of air.
At first I thought it had to be a lasso, that Caleb had somehow gotten one around us, too—only he hadn’t. I looked up to see an amorphous mass of blue over our heads, like a shield chute, only not. It was flat instead of rounded and lumpy instead of smooth, with thinner areas here and there that the dark showed through. It was also sort of wedge-shaped, with filaments that had reached down to attach themselves to Pritkin’s arms and—
“You can hang glide?” I asked incredulously.
“It isn’t . . . recommended.”
“Why not?”
“Steering problems.”
“Steering problems?”
And then I didn’t have to ask, because a building was coming straight at us. Pritkin tried to miss it, but apparently he was right—shields weren’t designed for aerial acrobatics. We sluggishly moved to the left, but the arc was too faint and the wind was wrong and we were going to be bug splatter on the bricks before we could turn or land or—
And then a spell detonated against a window in front of us, sending an explosion of shards inward as we burst through what was left, slid across someone’s desk, tore through a flimsy partition, and took out half a dozen cubicles. Right before something the size of a semitruck came crashing through the wall after us. I got a glimpse of a huge head and glowing eyes, and then a wash of flame obscured them both as Pritkin flung us through the fire door.
It must have been pretty highly rated, because it actually lasted a couple of seconds before bursting out over our heads. But by then we were down a story, jumping over the railing and landing painfully. But not as painful as burning to death, I thought wildly, as we tore down the stairs, taking three and four at a time and barely touching down, almost fast enough to qualify as flying again.
Only it wasn’t fast enough.
Pritkin slammed us back against a wall, just in time to avoid a column of crimson fire that ripped down through the middle of the stairs. I only got a glimpse of our attacker through the flames, but that was enough: blackened, smoking bones, some still burning, ruined wings with one tip missing, great rib cage half gone and outlined with gory flesh, huge maw edged with cracked, charred teeth that were nonetheless still hideously sharp—
I stared at it in utter disbelief. It was dead; it had to be dead. When the gasoline ignited, the car parts in its mouth had turned to deadly shrapnel, literally ripping it apart from the inside. Nothing could have survived that amount of damage. Nothing.
And yet there it was.
And for some strange reason, the emotion uppermost in my mind wasn’t terror or even incredulity; it was outrage. I felt cheated, bitter, furious. You killed the dragon and you got to go home. It was some sort of rule—dead dragon=game over. Every video gamer, Hollywood producer and sixyear-old kid knew that.
Only it looked like my life hadn’t gotten the memo.
And then the firestorm ended and we were running again, through a door and down a hallway, four tons of pissed-off dragon crashing through the wall behind us.
For something so huge, it was ungodly fast, maybe because it didn’t bother with little things like hallwa
ys. It just tore through the walls, as easily as if they were cardboard, judging by the sounds coming from behind us and the huge cracks running ahead of us. I glanced behind once to see doors flying through a storm of drywall, and then I was yanked through a door and into an office.
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 ener
gy, 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 advantage 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.
