by Karen Chance
He screamed and somebody cursed. My head jerked up, expecting more trouble, only to see my own pissed-off form glaring at me. “Get out of the way!”
I dodged to one side just in time to avoid the spell that Pritkin hurled at the guy, which sent both him and the remains of the shed flying. But we were definitely dealing with a war mage, because he managed to concentrate enough even with a face full of liquid metal to get his shields up. The blow threw him into the air, but his shields cushioned the landing and saved him from the hail of flying shed fragments. I stared incredulously as he rolled to his feet and took off.
My fingers closed over the holster at last, and I struggled to my feet, gun in hand, only to be dumped back on my ass by Skinny. He also decided on retreat but took off in a different direction than his buddy. The dark swallowed him before I could get a shot off.
Pritkin jumped to his feet—or, more accurately, my feet—and ran full-out after Adidas. “Stay put!” he yelled over my shoulder.
“Pritkin!” He didn’t even slow down. I gave up on Skinny and took off after my fast-disappearing body. Without his usual strength or his portable arsenal, he could end up getting me killed.
With the wind slapping me in the face and the rain in my eyes, it was tough going. Not to mention the waterlogged coat, a new, lower center of gravity and feet that felt too far from the ground. I stumbled twice and almost lost sight of them three or four times, but Pritkin’s vision was better than good, and despite the heavier musculature, it was amazing how fast his body could move. By the time we crested a hill near the tree line, I’d almost caught them.
Pritkin and Adidas went plunging down the other side. I started to follow when something slammed into my left arm. The pain was so vivid that it blocked everything else out for a moment. Then a movement caught my eye and I turned in time to see that Skinny hadn’t abandoned the fight after all—and to meet the force of his body as he leapt at me. We went down together, rolling and cursing and getting pummeled by the rocks hidden in the tall grass almost as much as by each other.
We crashed into a tree at the bottom of the hill, and luckily Skinny took the brunt of the collision, his head smacking against the trunk with a wet, thudding sound. It was hard enough to stun him or worse, but at the moment, I didn’t care much. I’d taken a glancing blow myself, and a stab of agony ran through my temple before spreading over the rest of my skull, competing with the pain in my arm.
I looked down to find a second slash in Pritkin’s sleeve and blood welling up to soak the leather. It took me a second to realize that I’d been shot. I took a steadying breath, yanked off his belt and tied it high on my arm, above the wound, using my teeth to draw it tight. If the mages didn’t kill me, Pritkin was probably going to when I returned his body stuck full of holes.
“Are you going to let her tackle Jenkins alone?” someone demanded from behind me.
I spun to find that the farmer had caught up with me. His glasses caught the light, making him look like some other-worldly owl as he bent to relieve Skinny of his potion belt. He seemed awfully blasé for someone who had just witnessed a magical battle. But I didn’t have time to figure out what his deal was. Down the hill, Adidas was being tackled by a small, determined figure.
I should have known Pritkin wouldn’t give up on a pursuit just because he was weaponless, in unfamiliar territory and, oh yeah, using someone else’s body. Damn it! I was going to end up shot in the ass again.
I left the farmer where he was and ran after them. The opalescent light leaking through the thick cloud cover was enough to show me the hellish fight going on. I winced as my body took a vicious kick to the stomach and wished Pritkin would do as he’d advised me and get out of the way. I was a lousy shot, but at this range, even I might be able to hit the target.
I never had a chance to find out. Pritkin took another hit, this one to the head, and stumbled back a few steps. But before I could fire, twin spells exploded in the night. One, from behind me, took out the mage’s shields, and the other, from Pritkin’s outstretched hand, sent him tumbling head over heels into the dirt.
For a moment, I thought I saw some odd flashes around him—in colors that didn’t appear in nature. I blinked and they weren’t there anymore, but I could still smell them, musky sharp and strange, and taste them on the back of my tongue, a jumble of sour and bitter and cloyingly sweet. And then I reached Pritkin and was too busy checking him for injuries to worry about anything else.
“Are you crazy?” I shook him, but he appeared too dazed to care. There were no obvious holes, but it looked like the mage’s elbow had come close to cracking my skull.
“I’m fine,” Pritkin said, and took a nose-dive into the dirt.
I pulled him up and picked wet grass off his face. “You’re still in one piece, right?” I asked, just to be sure.
“You tell me.” His eyes focused on my reddened sleeve. “What’s that?”
“A gift from Skinny.”
“Who?”
“The other guy.”
“Where is he?” Pritkin’s gaze flashed around, although with my eyesight I doubted he could see much.
“He’s out cold. At the moment, I’m more worried about this one.” I toed the mage, but he didn’t budge.
“You needn’t be,” Pritkin said shortly.
I gazed down at the utterly still form and realized what was odd about it. Even unconscious bodies breathe, but I hadn’t seen this one’s chest rise and fall once. “You killed him?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“But he’s a war mage.”
“Ex-war mage. He has served other interests since leaving the corps.”
“But . . . you’re in my body!”
Pritkin wiped gunk out of his eyes. “You have magical ability. The fact that you haven’t been trained doesn’t negate that.”
“I don’t have that kind of power!”
“You have sufficient,” he said tersely. “And knowledge is half the battle. That particular spell was esoteric enough that he didn’t know it—or how to counter it.”
I hunched Pritkin’s shoulders against the chill night air and stared at the body at my feet. The guy had tried to gut me, something that tends to erode my sympathy. But it was still frightening to think that my magic could do something like that, could kill a man with a few muttered words. I shivered; my adrenaline was running low and the sweat under my clothes was drying cold against my skin.
“Come on.” I got an arm around Pritkin and was surprised at how little he weighed. I really wanted my own body back, but I had to admit that I envied Pritkin his strength. “We need to get out of here.”
“Switch us back first,” he said. I hesitated, wondering how to phrase this. “You said you could do it!”
“I can! At least, I’m pretty sure, with some time to think about it—”
“Get us back where we belong!”
“It’s not that easy!” I wasn’t exactly an expert at out-of-body experiences, but I’d done it enough times by now to have the basics down, at least as far as getting my spirit back in its rightful place. The problem was Pritkin, or, more precisely, his spirit, which I didn’t know how to stuff back inside his skin. And until I figured it out, I couldn’t leave his body unattended. It couldn’t live without a soul in residence, and mine was the only one currently available.
I explained this, but it didn’t seem to improve his blood pressure. Neither did the fact that I couldn’t shift. “Why not?” he demanded, glaring at me. The expression was eerily familiar despite being on my features, but it wasn’t as intimidating as usual. Possibly because he currently looked like a very wet, very pissed-off Kewpie doll.
“I don’t know.” My head was throbbing in time with my elbow, and the wet, matted grass was starting to look really comfortable. “Maybe even your energy levels are too low.” But that didn’t feel right. It was more like something had blocked my attempts.
“Try again.”
“If I end up with a bra
in aneurysm, it’ll be in your head,” I reminded him.
“I’ll take the risk,” he said immediately.
So much for the gentler sex. Pritkin as a woman was exactly like always—prickly, demanding and paranoid, looking at the world through narrowed eyes. “What does it matter if we rest for five minutes first?”
“It matters because these two weren’t alone.”
“And how do you know that?”
He jerked his head, and I followed his gaze to where a group of dark shapes were running for us from the other side of the field. They weren’t close enough to identify yet, but then a spell sizzled past, close enough that I could feel the tingle of its energy against my cheek, and identification became moot. Mages.
Pritkin grabbed my hand and we ran for the opposite tree line. An adrenaline rush hit my veins, opening up my lungs to the cool night air, wiping out the fatigue that had been dragging at me. But Pritkin wasn’t doing so hot. Even with my help, he was taking gasping breaths and looking white and pinched by the time leaves slapped us in the face, and our lead was almost entirely gone. We ran on anyway, hearing our pursuers fanning out behind us, yelling to each other to make sure we couldn’t double back.
So much for that plan.
It got quieter the deeper we went into the trees, the old dark branches closing ranks behind us, fallen leaves soft and silent underfoot. It also got rougher, with the cover overhead eventually so solid that the moonlight could hardly penetrate at all. I put Pritkin behind me because I could still see the dim, black outlines of the trees ahead, while I doubted that was true for him. But it didn’t help much.
He was battered by the low-hanging limbs I shoved out of the way, which whipped back to hit him in the face. And he didn’t have the advantage of protective clothing, as I hadn’t dressed for a mad rush through the woods. But he pushed on anyway, trying not to slow me down, with blood trickling down his neck and his hands torn and bloody.
We’d been half running, half walking for maybe ten minutes when he hit a tree trunk and bounced off and then stumbled over another that had fallen partway across our path. I tried to tug him farther along, but he just shook his head at me rather desperately. His pulse was a fast flutter at his throat and his pupils were dilated.
I nodded and steadied myself against a tree, drawing air into my lungs so hard it hurt. Gray, flaky bark crackled under my palm, leaking resin that stuck my fingertips together. I propped my shoulders against the trunk and unclenched my hand from around my gun, which I’d clutched tightly enough to leave a dent in my palm. I spent a few minutes just breathing and trying to listen over the pounding of my heart. I really hoped we’d lost them, because Pritkin didn’t look like he could walk, much less run, any farther.
“What do you hear?” he whispered after a few minutes.
I listened, and his ears picked up everything: the shush of wind in the treetops, the light patter of rain on the canopy above, the scurrying of some little animal—but nothing of the pursuit. I’d heard the mages stumbling around in the distance for a while, but even that was gone now. “I think we’re alone.”
But even as I said it, there were those strange flashes again, this time in the treetops. They were black against the indigo darkness of the sky but with glints of color I couldn’t name. And now that I concentrated, I noticed other things, too: here and there were sighs not caused by the wind and brief scents that had nothing to do with nature.
“Wait—there’s something here.”
“Something?”
“Yeah.”
And it was as if they’d heard. Suddenly the space around us was flooded with the cold, bitter taste of dead winter, the air thick with ragged shadows that darted before me like a tumble of snakes. One brushed past my arm, and I flinched away. Cold and hot and a thousand contradictions that my mind couldn’t handle—and none of them good.
“Describe it.”
“I can’t! The colors are . . . weird,” I said, groping for words. And then several more flew past, and it was like viewing the world through a thousand glass wings, a cacophony of darting images. I ducked and my eyes crossed, trying to see, but that only seemed to make things worse. “Sharp edges, like a bird, only not,” I said helplessly. “In the trees.” God, what were those things?
“Rakshasas,” Pritkin hissed, looking up.
“What?”
“Demons,” he spat, rooting around in my coat, grabbing things out of the belt I was wearing draped low on my hips. It was weighed down with vials, each in a little leather sheath, that contained some pretty lethal potions. “They’re shape-shifters.”
I wet my lips. It would be really nice if he was wrong, but I doubted it. Because if there was one thing Pritkin knew, it was demons. Not only was he the Circle’s best-known demon hunter, he’d once spent centuries in the demon realms courtesy of his father, Rosier, Lord of the Incubi.
Rosier had wanted to show off his half-human child, a hybrid experiment that other demons had said couldn’t be done, and had dragged his proof into the next world without bothering to ask first. Pritkin hadn’t enjoyed the experience, but then, neither had anybody else. Giving him the distinction of being the only human to be literally kicked out of hell.
I only hoped a return trip wasn’t in the cards.
Chapter Nineteen
Another of the creatures brushed past me, and something ragged and fluttering, like a broken wing, trailed over my arm. It was icy cold and burning hot and utterly, utterly repulsive. A thick coil of nausea rolled in my gut as I stumbled back a few steps. I bit my lip to stay quiet, but a stray gasp trickled out between my clenched teeth anyway, prompted as much by the memory of the last demon I’d fought as by the current threat.
My heart thudded steadily faster, adrenaline ratcheting me into flight mode. I couldn’t go through that again; I just couldn’t. I turned blindly, preparing to run, not caring if the mages heard because I’d prefer to face the whole damn Corps than to ever feel those hands on me again.
Pritkin caught me. For a minute, I didn’t see him but another face. I had a sudden flashback to the feel of Rosier’s touch and the clammy, shudder-inducing sensation of his tongue on my flesh, lapping my blood as he slowly gutted me. A scream bubbled up in my throat.
A hand clasped hard over my mouth, but it was smaller than it should have been and softer, a woman’s hand. My hand. The realization jolted me back to some semblance of control as I gazed down at my own furious blue eyes.
“Don’t panic!” Pritkin whispered. “They’re like vultures, drawn to fear as to approaching death. It will only bring them on faster!”
“Approaching death?!”
“Be silent!” He looked around and bit off a curse.“Where are they? In your body, I can’t see them properly.”
And didn’t I wish I had that problem, I decided hysterically as another half-perceived thing stopped in front of my face. It hovered in the air, only I had the impression that “air” wasn’t right. Whatever currents it was riding, they weren’t in this world.
And then I realized why I couldn’t see them too well either, even using Pritkin’s eyes. They weren’t in this world, at least not entirely. I watched, horrified and mesmerized, as the thing flickered in and out, like an image seen in running water. It didn’t make logical sense; it didn’t fit this world’s rules about things like three dimensions and proper light spectrums. It was as small as a hummingbird and as big as a house, with no discernable face.
It reached for me, somehow giving the impression of a grin anyway, and I shrieked and stumbled back. Pritkin cursed and threw something, and whether by following my line of sight or pure luck, he hit it head-on. The thing’s screech echoed inside my head, a deafening, unending roar that sent me stumbling to my knees, while it writhed and boiled and cursed.
And somehow I understood what it said, knew it was cursing me, cursing Pritkin in a dozen languages I shouldn’t know, furious that this body still lived, still breathed, still protected me from it. “Not fo
r long,” a hundred voices purred, a low, hoarse sound that made my skin try to shudder off the bone.
And it winked out of existence.
I fell to all fours in shock, unable to breathe, and Pritkin knelt by my side. “Are there any more?” he demanded, but I couldn’t answer with my brain gibbering hysterically. “Cassie!”
I finally sucked in a breath and choked, trying to tell him about the gathering flashes in the treetops and the rainbow of alien colors circling above our heads. Like vultures, he’d said, and, oh, God, that couldn’t be good. But then there was a flash of light, and a stab of bright pain ripped into my injured arm.
I hurled myself sideways instinctively, my feet skidded out from under me and the forest erupted with crashes, curses and spells. A flock of birds hiding from the rain burst out of the treetops, Pritkin cursed, and things got ugly—fast. The mages had caught up with us.
They seemed to view me as the chief threat, because three of them concentrated on me while only one bothered with Pritkin. Which was probably one too many in his condition, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I’d returned fire even as I fell, crashing onto my right side and immediately rolling to one knee, trying to keep the gun up and aimed. A lot of my bullets connected—at point-blank range, even I’m a good shot—but they weren’t doing any damage. The mages had shields up and the bullets trampolined off or were absorbed.
I gritted my teeth and kept firing, scurrying backward like a crab to present a moving target, until my back hit a tree and my bullets gave out. I managed to pop out the spent clip but reloading was a problem with my left arm now useless, like a dead limb attached to my body. The mages realized that and grinned, watching me fumble one-handed in the coat’s many pockets, trying to find another clip.
It was obviously useless—even if I came up with one, they would kill me before I could slam it home—but I kept up the comedy routine anyway. I’d thought it might give Pritkin a chance to get away. Only that didn’t seem to be what he was doing.
