Ignite the Fire: Incendiary

by Karen Chance

  Chapter Thirteen

  I felt it when Zeus realized what had happened, when he stopped testing me and threw his real strength into the fight, when the strand of lightning between us flared and crackled and strained. But it didn’t go flying out of my grip, as he had probably expected. And, frankly, as I had expected.

  Alone, I was no match for a god, much less their king.

  But right now, I wasn’t alone.

  Which was why the lightning threading through the skin of my arm . . . started to recede.

  It looked like an animal sheathing silver claws, giving way to a black and red landscape of ruined flesh. But I could deal with that, I thought, daring to hope. I could definitely deal with that!

  Only I didn’t know if I’d get the chance, since the retreat was going slowly and stutteringly, pulling back one minute and advancing the next, as if a battle was happening inside me. Which I guessed it was. It looked like I’d become the new combat zone, that my body was the current theater of war. Something that would have been terrifying even if I hadn’t seen what had happened to the Thames.

  But Pritkin wasn’t done.

  He began to thrust, in long, practiced strokes, exactly the way I liked them. Or the way I would have liked them, only my fantasies didn’t usually involve imminent death! Or my ex.

  Of course, Mircea was feeding, and on a god’s power at that. That tended to be an orgasmic experience for vamps, even under normal circumstances. Perhaps he was preoccupied . . .

  And then I noticed—his pulls from my body had synched up perfectly with Pritkin’s thrusts into it, and okay.

  Done thinking now.

  Pritkin made that easy, starting slow, letting me feel the thick glide of his flesh through mine, every inch of it, as he caressed me from the inside. Slow, but not too slow, deep, but not too deep, searching for just the right angle. Then gradually building momentum when he found it, the sensual glide becoming quicker as I squirmed, as I gasped, as my body stretched to accommodate him.

  That part wasn’t so easy; he was big and I was unprepared, in more way than one. But this was a half incubus, and one that knew me all too well. He bent forward, the scratch of his stubble a welcome distraction from the strange whiteness of his body. I closed my eyes, and immediately received another shock, when a warm, wet mouth closed over a nipple.

  He began to suck, gently at first, a sweet caress, the roughness of his tongue sweeping around the areola, peaking the tender flesh. And then harder, while squeezing and kneading my body with his hands, until I writhed and muttered things, I’m not sure what. And then came off the bed, crying out his name when he bit down, nipping the little nub he’d made.

  And sending a new kind of lightning sizzling through me.

  He showed me no mercy, immediately returning to his former occupation, and even speeding up slightly. Faster and harder, not pounding me, not yet, just enough difference to make me feel it, to make it resonate all the way to my bones. I had a flash of sensation: sweat from his hair, a few drops, landing on my stomach; callused hands, warm on the bare skin of my ass, adjusting me; fingers digging into my skin, not enough to cause me pain, not that I’d probably have noticed right then. Just enough to help establish a perfect, passionate, toe-curling rhythm that had me panting in seconds.

  And with every move, his power increased. I could see it in my mind, the bands of glittering black, pulsing in time with his movements. In seconds, it looked like we were caught in a galactic maelstrom, trapped at the center of a universe of wildly skewing stars and distant nebulas, one that was spinning faster and faster and faster, with my heartbeat racing right alongside it.

  Part of that came from not understanding why we weren’t burning up. We’d set fire to a hotel the last time we’d tried this, and had almost gone up ourselves. And the dangerous feedback loop that characterized incubus magic had caught.

  I could feel it every time it swooped back around, rushing through me, hard enough to leave my heart pounding and goosebumps flooding my skin. It had me writhing against the bed, breathing hard and then crying out, half in pleasure, half in shock. Because the loop was raging harder than I’d ever felt it, and moving faster, so quickly that it almost seemed like Pritkin was forcing it into my body with every thrust.

  We were generating so much magic that I was afraid it would incinerate us all if it got away from him. But it didn’t get away, and after a moment, I realized why. Because all that power . . .

  Was going straight into the battle with Zeus. It wasn’t burning us, because it was burning him, and he was . . . not happy. I switched to my mental vision and could actually see the result of his rage pulsing down the link between us, being met by our own, and flaring up into a firestorm of magic on the metaphysical plane that left me gasping and swearing and tearing my vision away, because I couldn’t bear to look at it.

  Which left me looking at the two men surrounding me instead, which . . . was disturbing for a different reason.

  Because the hands on my body were no longer white.

  Mircea was gripping my arms, cradling me against him, with one hand sliding down to my elbow and back up again, over and over, in a soothing rhythm. It was sun bronzed and shapely, with well-tended nails, and was wearing his heavy gold signet ring. The jewelry was solid, with a metal coolness as it pressed against my overheated skin, and felt every bit as real as the long, dark hair spilling over my shoulders.

  I made a breathless sound, half pleading, half shocked, and wished I could see his face. I’d no sooner had the thought than my mental vision skewed, showing me a dark head bent over me and a half-obscured visage, but what I could see had color, too: the lashes black against his cheek, the skin flushed with power, the lips stained bright red. And the one eye that I could see glowing cinnamon amber, and brightening further with every pull of his mouth, with every helpless thrash I gave, with every heavy thrust from our third—

  Who wasn’t looking so much like a statue anymore, either. Or, if he was, it was one liberally streaked with paint. I could still see the stark white in places on Pritkin’s powerful body, but there were also brightly colored brushstrokes everywhere, like a crazed artist had had a fit.

  They splashed the hard lines of his chest, with one nipple still stark white, while the other was peach-pink and almost lost in golden body hair. They crossed his face diagonally, like a swath of woad on an ancient Celt, leaving one eye in blind relief and the other a brilliant, glowing green. They painted his lower body, too, with patches of color showing through the marble-like sheen, and tiny golden hairs glinting on his thighs.

  And every movement was filling him further in.

  Thrust—his hair took on a golden tint.

  Thrust—his lips, colorless lines a moment ago, were now faintly pink, with strong white teeth just visible behind them.

  Thrust—and I cried out, my orgasm building fast, and color spilled up from the connection between us to flood Pritkin’s entire lower body. He was like an artist dipping his brush in paint, and I was the paint. I didn’t understand it, but I’d seen something like it before . . . somewhere. I just couldn’t think . . .

  Maybe because the changes were happening to me, as well.

  Only I wasn’t adding color; I was losing it. Specifically, I was losing more of the silver filaments that had been multiplying in my flesh. A moment ago, they’d been bright, so bright, that they were almost too much to look at, spilling over my skin practically everywhere. And while they hadn’t been advancing anymore, they’d clung to my body like they planned to be permanent, like liquid metal tattoos.

  Now one of the biggest was drawing up under the hand that Mircea had placed in the middle of my chest, getting smaller and smaller until he plucked the remainder up like a dropped handkerchief or an annoying cobweb, and tossed it away. It wasn’t happening all at once; Zeus was making us fight for every inch. But it was working.

  And so was something else.

  Overhead, the glittering black bands of incubus magic
had been joined by ones of another color. Sparkling silver-white, they twined around and through the rest, as if two wildly different galaxies were dancing with each other. I stared up at them, entranced by their otherworldly beauty, but not sure what I was seeing.

  Was that some of the lightning that Mircea had taken out of me? Was he turning Zeus’s own strength against him? Because that was how we’d gotten rid of Ares.

  But that would be dangerous, so dangerous, with the All Father still in command of his power. Mircea had long ago been nicknamed Mircea the Bold, and he didn’t shy away from risk. But he also wasn’t stupid.

  But then, what was it?

  I put up a hand, felt it brush against my fingertips, felt it resonate deep inside me. I knew this power, as much as I knew Pritkin’s, instinctively, immediately. Because it came—

  From family, Mircea confirmed, with vicious satisfaction in his mental voice.

  He widened my field of vision, showing me the great Basarab clan, all the multiplied thousands of them, each donating a tiny bit of power to the fight, because a master never fought alone, either. It was like a tug of war with a multitude on one side, and only one on the other.

  But when that one is a god, maybe that’s all you need.

  Or maybe not. Because there were two power streams in operation: one going into Mircea and thus into the great well of the family’s power base, and one coming out of him, into the fight. Where it was being magnified by Pritkin’s power and thrown back at Zeus. And, suddenly, I got it.

  You are using his power.

  Laundered through the family, yes, Mircea confirmed. Our people sequester it away from him, and donate some of theirs in return. He can’t use theirs against us, and he can’t reach his, broken down into so many pieces, and spread across so many lives.

  I stared at the multitude of tiny filaments, each shining brightly against the darkness, and each coming from a different member of the family, and felt my heart well with love for all of them. Some were massive ropes all on their own, the ones from Mircea’s masters, I assumed. Others were tiny, barely-there threads, gleaming silver bright, from the newly turned. None of them would have been sufficient on their own, but twined together, they made a gleaming cable of power that Zeus didn’t own and couldn’t command.

  And for the first time, I believed that we could do this; I believed we could win!

  But we weren’t there yet, and I was starting to get overwhelmed.

  Okay, that was a lie. I was overwhelmed, and had been since this whole thing started. But the feeling had been building and building as things progressed, to the point that I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. Being caught between incubus magic on one hand and a vampire’s bite on the other was not normal.

  They were both designed to increase a partner’s pleasure and thus prolong the feed, and I’d felt them individually before. But not together, and not with their strength being magnified many times over. I was starting to feel like I might explode, might just tear apart from within with no need of godly help.

  I writhed some more, moving helplessly against the bed, groaning and panting and twisting, trying to cope with the sensations pouring through me. Was this supposed to be fun? I wondered desperately. Because this was not fun. This was—

  “Augghhh!”

  I cried out, and then continued to do so, over and over, as wave after wave of impressions hit: Pritkin’s body in mine, hard, almost punishing, pounding me into the mattress now; Mircea’s hair sliding over my breasts, his eyes brilliant fire, his fangs in my flesh; and the constant thrum, thrum, thrum of incubus magic running through everything, magnifying it out of all proportion, turning every sigh into a hurricane, every touch into an orgasm, every sight into a memory seared into my brain.

  I suddenly couldn’t look at them, couldn’t process any more. I closed my eyes, pushed away the crazy mental vision I’d been stealing from somebody, and tried just to breathe for a moment. And discovered that that worked a little too well.

  For in the darkness, the men surrounding me weren’t metaphysical warriors taking on an elder god, they were just men: ones I loved, whether I was supposed to or not; ones who were risking themselves for me, as they always had, as they always would. I’d never had anyone in my life like that. I’d gone through twenty-three years with no one, and now I had two, and I didn’t deserve them, didn’t deserve this. But I had it. For a brief moment, I had it.

  And crazy battle or not, just for a moment, I let myself feel it.

  I let myself feel them.

  Not just the physical sensations, but everything that went with along with them: Mircea’s hands on my body, giving me a sense of safety, even as the battle raged inside me. I saw him in my memory standing up to Tony, making the fat man back down, the first person I had ever seen do that; I saw him claiming me in front of the senate— “this one is mine” –despite the fact that I was Pythia, and that doing so could have easily resulted in a duel; I remembered him making me his second, the most powerful figure in a vampire family after the master himself, trusting me to care, not only for him while he was incapacitated, but for the entire clan.

  And, yes, he’d had ulterior motives; he was a vampire, after all. But that hadn’t changed the pride I’d felt when he put his faith in me, or the sense of belonging—for the first time ever—to anyone, anywhere. Or the love . . .

  I felt it all again, wrapping around me like a warm blanket; felt them, the thousands of people we were connected to, the first family I’d ever had and the one I would always belong to, no matter what happened; felt the tears on my cheeks, the ones I was leaking now and the ones of that orphan who had finally found a home.

  His head came up as I let mine fall back against his chest, hearing his heartbeat. His lips met mine, allowing me to taste the metallic tang of my own blood. It was the strangest sensation, cradled between the two of them, bookended by two totally different kinds of strength, but it felt right.

  Pritkin’s hands adjusted my hips, guiding me as my pleasure built toward a crescendo. I looked down my body and into his eyes, and somehow knew he understood. He didn’t say anything, even when I reached up and let my hand comb through his hair, spiky rough against my palm as I pulled him down to me. Like the stubble on his face, tickling me as he bent to kiss my stomach, making me laugh.

  He made me laugh all the time, this dour, supposedly taciturn man; I wasn’t sure how. It wasn’t just the dry sense of humor that still surprised me, catching me off-guard at a tense moment, expressing itself in subtle ways—the quirk of a lip, the amused flash of an eye, the fondly exasperated sigh when he caught me doing . . . well, any number of things.

  Because Pritkin seemed to find me endlessly hilarious.

  I didn’t mind. He didn’t strike me as someone who had laughed all that much in his life, and whenever I managed to bring a smile to his lips, it lifted my spirits, too, and brought an answering smile to my face. I felt my lips stretch again now, laughing in spite of it all, because we’d been here before, so many times. In the middle of some crazy fight, with all the odds against us, and everything going straight to hell, yet laughing, laughing at the absurdity of it all, or at the fact that we weren’t dead yet, or at the way that fate seemed to rage all around us and yet kept missing the target.

  I laughed now, felt Zeus feel it, felt his fury and the increase of his power, but it didn’t seem to matter. I caught Mircea’s Adam’s apple between my teeth, bit down and saw him throw his head back in pleasure. I arched up under Pritkin’s mouth, then pushed him back and sat up, taking him deeper inside me, gasping at the angle change. We fell into a rhythm, the man in front of me, thrusting up as I rode him; the man behind me, pressed against my back, hard and ready. And all of us moving in a sensual dance as old as time.

  It was beautiful, with even the clouds overhead pulsing in time with our movements . . .

  And, I noticed, getting obviously thinner.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I did a double take,
hoping that I was seeing things. But I’d been right the first time: what had been a maelstrom only a few moments ago was now a winter’s gale, still powerful, still scary. But patchy, as if some of its power was being drawn off.

  Maybe because it was.

  My inner eye focused on the battle for the first time in a while, and saw something concerning: the locus of the fight had shifted closer to us, as our advantage was slowly but steadily eroded. It wasn’t enough to make a difference, but it soon would be, because we were now the ones in retreat.

  And for once, I thought I knew why.

  I stared up at the circling clouds, black and silver, still twining together, still beautiful . . . but incomplete. There was no third color there, no bright flash of gold among the starker shades. Something was missing.

  The Pythian power was absent.

  I suddenly realized why all those claws in my flesh had been drawing up. Not because we were winning, but because that was what we were using as a power source—the energy that I’d stolen from Zeus and that Mircea had been laundering through the family. And only that, since my own power remained completely absent.

  And without it, we had begun to falter.

  Pritkin fell back against the bed a moment later, panting and spent, and stared up at me with confused panic on his face, the first time I’d ever seen that emotion from him. “Why isn’t it working? Why isn’t it working?”

  Because we’re facing a god, I thought dully. We’d made power—a lot of it. Enough to have vanquished a hundred other foes. But it wasn’t enough for this one, and at this point, I didn’t know what would be. Because, if Pritkin didn’t know what to do . . .

  It was over.

  He was the smartest man I’d ever met. He knew a dozen languages, sped through massive old tomes like they were comic books, had forgotten more magic than most people ever knew. If he didn’t have an answer, it was probably because there wasn’t one.