by Karen Chance
“What is it?” Pritkin asked stiffly.
Caleb didn’t answer for a moment; then he shrugged. “Nothing. Just never met a legend before.”
“A legend is merely a man history decided to bugger,” Pritkin said harshly. “I’m the same person I always was.”
“Yeah, maybe. It’s gonna take some getting used to.”
“Then get used to it.”
“Don’t take that tone with me when I’m risking my ass—”
“Then don’t look at me as if I’m a laboratory specimen on a slide!”
“Well, forgive the hell out of me for being a little fucking traumatized—”
“Will you two shut up?” I yelled.
They both turned to look at me. I hadn’t actually intended to shout, but it seemed to have worked. And Pritkin was right; we needed to figure something out before Jonas showed up with his fussy little ways and his too-sharp blue eyes and his seemingly innocent questions, and we were screwed.
“We need to deal with this,” I told them.
“I think that’s been established,” Caleb said nastily. “But unless you know—”
“What I know is that people like simple explanations for things. Especially weird things—”
“According to who?”
To every vampire I ever met, I didn’t say, because it wouldn’t have helped. “It’s a fact of human nature,” I said instead. “People don’t like complicated answers. They like simple, easy-to-imagine ones. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you give them two solutions—a really complex truth or a really simple lie—they’ll take the lie. It’s just easier.”
“Okay, so what’s our simple lie?”
“That I did it.” I glanced at Pritkin. “We’ll say I bubbled you. Like with the apple.”
“But you can’t do that yet.”
“So? They don’t know that.”
“I am fairly certain that Jonas does,” Pritkin said drily. “We need to come up with something else.”
“We don’t have anything else! And we don’t—”
“What are you talking about?” That was Caleb.
“A trick,” I said, glancing at him. “Or, really, it’s not a trick; it’s something Agnes could do with her power—speeding up time in a small area. I’ve been practicing—”
“And you can do that?” he interrupted.
“In theory.”
He cursed.
“Look,” I said impatiently. “The point isn’t whether or not I can do it—”
“Then what is the point?”
“That I’m supposed to be able to do it! That a real . . . that a well-trained Pythia could do it. And it will be a lot easier for people to imagine that than a legend coming back to life and hanging out in their damn cafeteria!”
“If you could do it,” Caleb said. “Maybe so. But you can’t, and the old man knows you can’t. So how is that—”
“He knows I usually can’t, but that’s not the same thing. I can do it, just not on demand. But occasionally I luck out and my power works for a change. And that’s almost always in a crisis or when I’m pissed off or—”
“Which makes little sense,” Pritkin said, interrupting me.
I looked at him. “What?”
“You said it yourself: you can use the power. You have proven that on a number of occasions—you prove it every time you shift. And the power is the power; it doesn’t change. Merely your perception of it does.”
“Meaning what?”
“That if you can use it under duress, you should be able to use it all the time. You should be able to use it at will.”
“But I can’t. I told you before: once in a while I get lucky, but most of the time—”
“Then perhaps you have been trying too hard. Did you not tell me that Lady Phemonoe said the power would teach you, that it would show you what it can do?”
“Yes, and I keep waiting—”
“And it has been showing you things, has it not? Or did Niall somehow teleport himself to that desert?”
“Niall?” Caleb asked.
“Jonas shouldn’t have told you about that!” I said, flushing.
“He didn’t do it to embarrass you,” Pritkin said. “But as an example of your progress.”
“Niall Edwards?” Caleb persisted.
“I’m not making progress!” I said furiously. “I haven’t made any in weeks!”
“Not since the last crisis.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Niall I-fell-asleep-at-the-beach-and-that’s-why-I’mlobster-red Edwards?” Caleb asked.
Pritkin ignored him. “In a crisis, you forget to tell yourself that you can’t do something. You forget your anxieties and your fears, your nervousness and your self-doubt, and you reach for your power. And it responds. It has been doing so since the first. I believe you have always been able to do what you need to do. You simply have to learn to get out of your own way, so to speak.”
“If it was that easy, do you really think Initiates would need years of training?”
“There’s more to being Pythia than manipulating the power, Cassie. You’ve primarily been dealing with that end because you’ve had no choice. From the beginning of your reign, we have been at war. I doubt Lady Phemonoe fought as many battles in her entire time in office as you have already done. But that is not normally the case, and a Pythia in peacetime has a number of other functions—”
I didn’t say anything, but Pritkin cut off anyway. I guess my face must have spoken for me. “You can do this,” he said simply.
I just stared at him. I wished that were true. I really, really did. But the fact was, I wasn’t Lady Phemonoe, beloved Pythia. I wasn’t even Elizabeth Palmer, heir extraordinaire. I was just Cassie, ex-secretary, lousy tarot reader and allaround screwup.
And coronation or not, I had a terrible, sneaking suspicion that I always would be.
“This is all very interesting,” Caleb said. “But can we get back to the—” He broke off when a door slammed somewhere down the hall. Booted footsteps started coming our way, a lot of them, echoing loud on the cheap laminate tile. “They’re back,” he said, pretty unnecessarily.
Pritkin looked at me. “What are we going with?”
I spread my hands. “What I said. It’s all we’ve got.”
“Then we got nothing,” Caleb said. “Speeding up healing might work on a cut or bruise or broken bone. But something like this? If you sped up time, it might speed up his healing, but it would also speed up the action of the corrosive. He’d just die faster!”
“But not if she slowed it down,” Pritkin said thoughtfully. “You can say—”
“I can say?”
“Well, I can’t be seen here in perfect health,” he pointed out impatiently. “Not for a few days, until I could reasonably have been expected to heal. And Cassie is hardly up to an interrogation at the—”
“So you guys sneak out the back, and what? I stay here and lie my ass off?”
“Yes. Is there a problem with that?”
“Is there—” Caleb broke off, face flushing. “Oh, hell, no. Why would I possibly—”
“Good. Then all you need to say is that Cassie slowed down time around the car, except for you and her.”
“Which would have made you die slower and nothing more!”
“Not if you used the opportunity to clean out the wound.”
“With what? That stuff eats through everything it touches!”
“But some things take longer to dissolve than others,” Pritkin said, looking pointedly at Caleb’s shabby old leather coat.
Caleb clutched a lapel possessively. “No.”
“Have you a better idea?”
“Yeah! I’ll say we used your damn coat!”
“You can’t. Too many people saw the shape it was in. There wasn’t enough left to work with by the time—”
“Well, we’re not using mine!” Caleb said angrily.
“I’ll buy you another o
ne—”
“I don’t want another one! I’ve had this coat for twelve damn years—”
“Then perhaps it’s time for an upgrade,” I pointed out, grabbing a sleeve.
“Like hell! I just got it spelled the way I like—”
“I’ll help you spell a new one,” Pritkin told him, tugging at the back.
“Get off me!”
“Caleb,” I put a hand on his arm. “Please?”
He looked at me and his lips tightened. “You’re damn right you will,” he told Pritkin. “And none of those little pansy-ass spells, either. I want the good stuff.”
“You can make me a list.”
“Fuckin’ A I’ll make you a list,” Caleb muttered, and stripped off his coat. “You know, legend or not, you’re still a royal pain in my ass.”
Pritkin nodded approvingly. “Now you’re getting the idea.”
Chapter Thirty
Five minutes later, Pritkin and I were haring across a dark parking lot that was rapidly becoming less so as sunrise toyed with the horizon. But nobody was around, and we had enough darkness left to get away clean and things seemed to be looking up. Until I put a hand on the door of his beat-up jalopy—and froze.
Draped over the passenger seat and trailing halfway onto the floor was Pritkin’s battered old potion belt. It was just a strip of worn leather, darkened in places from handling, with the nicks and scratches you’d expect from long use. A few enchanted vials filled with sludgy substances were still in place, like oversized bullets on a bandolier. Others had been used in the fight, leaving lighter places on the leather, like a toddler with missing teeth.
There was nothing remotely sexy about it. But I had a sudden, visceral image of the last time I’d seen it, arcing against the night as it was thrown over the front seat of the car. And I shivered, hard.
Pritkin glanced at me sharply, and his face tensed. “It will pass,” he said roughly, and threw the belt in back.
I bit my lip and nodded, which was pretty much all I could do with a sensory memory of pleasure ripping through me. It tightened my body, blurred my vision and sent goose bumps washing over my skin in waves. It was . . . shockingly realistic. He was on the opposite side of the car, not touching me, not even close. But suddenly, I could smell his scent, taste his sweat, feel his lips on my skin. They were warm and soft, unlike the hard fingers digging into my hips as he held me in place, as he—
I made a small sound and shuddered again, my breathing picking up, my hand tightening on the side of the car hard enough to hurt. I prized my fingers off and wrapped my arms around myself and rode it out. I was suddenly really grateful for the trench, which was too thick and too loose to show any inconvenient signs of my little flashback.
After a minute, I got in, not because it had stopped, but because cars were starting to come back in larger numbers, popping out of the ley line in strobes of blue-white light, sending cracks like thunder echoing against the building. Pritkin put the car into gear and we pulled out the normal way, I guess to avoid the metaphysical traffic jam. We eased through a fence, a ward rippling around us like water, and slid into the empty streets of predawn Vegas.
This far out, it was mostly asphalt and industrial buildings, in between empty lots of hard-packed red soil, a few desert plants and blacktop. It didn’t look much like the glitzy, glittery city of the tourist brochures, but it had a stark kind of beauty nonetheless. Distant scarlet veils of dust turned the sunrise spectacular and painted the buildings in black and gold. I watched the landscape pass by blearily, so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, and so aroused I wanted to scream.
Yeah, this was fun.
“This didn’t happen last time,” I finally said, mostly as a distraction.
“I didn’t feed as completely last time,” Pritkin told me, as I tried to control my breathing and failed utterly.
I swallowed. “How . . . how long?”
“Usually five or ten minutes. Do you want to stop?”
“No!” The only thing keeping me from grabbing him was the fact that he was driving.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I concentrated on not writhing against the seat. It didn’t go so well. I wiped my hands on the skirt of the trench and left sweaty palm prints on the beige fabric. I stared at them, teary-eyed and hurting and desperate. God, if this didn’t stop soon, I was going to go completely—
“After Ruth died, I went somewhat mad for a time,” Pritkin said suddenly.
I blinked, because that had come completely out of the blue. And almost read my mind. “Y-you did?”
He nodded. “My memories of those days are hazy at best, but apparently I attempted to kill my father. I suppose I blamed him for her death, although I can’t say I recall the exact thought process. I do remember a strong desire to feel the bones of his neck breaking under my hands, however, which may give some indication.”
I licked my lips. “But you didn’t succeed.”
“No, but I came damned close. So close, in fact, that, along with several past . . . indiscretions . . . it convinced the demon council that I was an intolerable threat. They sentenced me to death.”
“Death?” I turned to look at him, shocked for a moment out of everything else. “But . . . but you didn’t succeed. And you said yourself you weren’t sane—”
“None of which matters under demon law.”
“But you’re still alive.”
“Yes, due to my father’s interference.”
“Your father?”
Pritkin smiled slightly. “He was livid. I don’t recall much about those days, as I’ve said. But I do recall him storming into the council chamber and accusing them of attempted robbery—of his only physical child. He said that the damage had been done to him, and therefore he, as a member of council, should be allowed to set the sentence. They agreed.”
“And what was the sentence?” I asked, almost afraid to find out.
“I was to return to court and take up my proper duties as his heir. The ones I had flatly refused to carry out before. He assumed, I suppose, that I would prefer that over death. He assumed wrong.”
“Wait. You chose to die?”
“Better that, I thought, than to live for centuries as his slave. And at the time . . . at the time I can’t recall caring very much if I lived or died. I told them to carry out the sentence and be done with it. They were about to comply when he intervened again—with a compromise.”
“What kind of compromise?” I asked warily. Because I knew it couldn’t be anything good.
“That I would be banished from the demon realms, unable to return, under pain of death.”
I frowned. “Banished where?”
“Here. To Earth.”
“But . . . but that doesn’t seem like much of a sentence. You’d been living here anyway.”
“That is what the council said. They pointed out that many full demons would give a great deal to be ‘banished’ to this world, where they can feed like nowhere else in the demon realms.”
I nodded. Pritkin had told me before that one of the main reasons the council existed was to regulate the numbers of demons allowed on Earth at any one time. Otherwise, there would have been a free-for-all.
“So why did they allow you to come back?”
“They were persuaded by my father’s argument that there can be few punishments more severe than sending a starving man into a banquet hall—and not allowing him to eat.”
“Not allowing—” I stopped, unsure I’d understood. But I’d seen Pritkin eat plenty, so I knew we weren’t talking about regular food. “You mean . . . you can’t . . . at all?”
“The agreement I made was simple: no sex, of the demon or human varieties. Else I would forfeit my ‘parole’ and be returned to my father’s court, forever to remain under his absolute authority.”
“That’s . . . but . . .” I looked around in a panic, why I don’t know. Like Rosier would be chasing us in a car. “Is he coming for you now? After what we
did?”
Pritkin shook his head. “Feeding to save my life was specifically exempted. My father does not want me dead, as you saw. He wants me alive and in his service, and I think he was afraid that not allowing me to feed in emergencies would ruin his plan.”
“He didn’t think you could do it,” I said slowly. “Stay here, I mean.”
“No. He was certain I would break, that I would be back within the decade, two at the outside. And either is a trifling amount of time for the demon races. He had waited hundreds of years already. What were a few more?”
“He underestimated you.”
“I believe there were wagers made at court as to exactly how long I would last, all of which have now expired.”
“But . . . did you know what it would be like when you—”
“No.” Pritkin huffed out a humorless laugh. “No.”
“But you must have thought—”
“At the time, I don’t believe I was capable of much thought of any kind. But insofar as I was . . . I truly did not believe I would ever want intimacy again. The very idea was repulsive, on every possible level. I was horrified at what I had done, at what I had become—”
“You didn’t become anything! It was your father’s fault, your wife’s decision. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Other than the fact that I was the instrument of her death.”
“Yes, which makes you the victim here, not the . . . the monster!”
“Not in the eyes of my fellow monsters. Unlike most of the other races, the incubi have a reputation for showing . . . some consideration . . . for their partners. It is often selfish, of course; it is easier than constantly finding new prey. But nonetheless, there were those at my father’s court who shunned me after what happened. Creatures I had long held in disdain were ashamed—ashamed—to be associated with me. And I didn’t blame them. I felt like I would never want to feed again.”
“And later?” I asked softly. It was none of my business, but I just couldn’t imagine what it must have been like. I didn’t know too many humans who could shun all intimacy like that, much less someone whose body was specifically designed to need it.
“Later . . .” His lips twisted. “I began to understand why my father had been willing to make that deal. I had understood intellectually from the first, of course, but the reality was . . . somewhat different.”
