Ignite the Fire: Incendiary

by Karen Chance

  I sighed again.

  There were two types of people at the Pythian Court. The first were those like me, who were kind of a mess. We weren’t untalented—in some cases, quite the opposite—but we didn’t fit the graceful stereotype. That included people like Tessie, a tall, beefy girl who was only sixteen, but who already resembled a linebacker and hit about as hard. I’d dueled her once, and once was enough. Or Ermengarde, who was short and boxy and about as graceful as I was, but who had the rare ability to discern even minute disturbances in time. She was like a bloodhound on the scent, easily able to track down dark mages who were violating the Time Rules or visiting Pythias who were up to no good.

  They proved that we misfits could be useful, but we didn’t exactly make the promotional material.

  Iris did.

  She could have been the poster child for Pythian recruitment if they’d had had one. She was the second type of acolyte: beautiful, serene, and poised. Tonight, she was wearing a pair of small, pearl drop earrings that gleamed softly in the candlelight and completed the young Grace Kelly impression she was giving off. And—of course—a white lace dress. Only on her it looked regal, almost princess-like.

  Definitely Grace, I thought, as I clutched my blood-and-salve-stained robe with a pair of badly skinned knuckles.

  “Uh, hi,” I said.

  “Lady.” She curtsied—elegantly, of course—and when she came up, her face looked relieved.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “No, my apologies. I was just here when . . . when they brought you back. I am pleased to see you looking so much better.”

  Better?

  What the hell had I looked like before?

  I had a sudden flash of panicked faces and running feet; of blood and lightning and horrible pain; of whips made out of living gold and strange beings in brilliant white, like erotic angels; and of watching myself burn to death, my body turning black and red and dead, dead, dead—

  I shut those thoughts down—hard—before I started hyperventilating, and concentrated on not screaming. Just don’t scream, I told myself harshly. Just don’t do it.

  “Lady?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m . . . better.”

  “That is good.” She smiled, and it was lovely, too. “They didn’t let me stay, but I heard . . . that is, there was a great deal of confusion. I assumed the stories were exaggerated.”

  The same wild thoughts battered the inside of my skull, striving for attention, but I shoved them back. Later. Deal with it later.

  Act sane right now.

  I tried a smile of my own, although it felt more like a grimace. “Yeah. Exaggerated. But I’m afraid you’re going to be upset.”

  “Upset?”

  “About your coat. There was an, uh, unfortunate accident—”

  “An accident?”

  “—and it didn’t make it. We ran into some trouble on the river and—”

  I stopped, because the confusion on her face had just changed into something closer to horror.

  I thought that was kind of over the top for a coat. But with my luck, it had been her favorite, gifted to her by her dying granny or something. In which case, lending it to Calamity Cassie had not been a great move.

  “Look, I’m really sorry—”

  “Is that what you think,” she whispered. “That I’m worried about a coat?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  That did not appear to be the right answer.

  “I’ll replace it,” I offered.

  “I don’t care about the coat!”

  I don’t know what was on my face, but her expression was half angry, half gob smacked. “Okay?”

  “Yes! Yes, it is! I would never—” she stopped for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “My apologies, lady.”

  “For what? I burnt up the coat.”

  She stared at me some more, then closed her lovely eyes. And when she opened them again, the serene smile was back, and so was the elegant curtsy, which she showed off again for some reason. “The Lady would like to speak with you, if you are able?”

  I almost remarked that of course I was able, I was talking to her, wasn’t I? But she was acting a little weird. “Okay. I’ll be there in . . .” I looked down at my rumpled, salve-stained self. “An hour or so?”

  She nodded, curtsied for a ridiculous third time, and fled. I stared after her in confusion. Sometimes, I didn’t get this place at all.

  I pulled my head back into the room.

  And was immediately reminded that I had a demon in it.

  “Shit!” I jumped back, hitting the now closed door, as a shadowy figure lurched at me out of the darkness.

  “I find you entirely frustrating,” Pritkin’s incubus informed me, boiling blackly.

  I didn’t even respond to that. I just sank down onto my haunches with my back to the door, put my face in my hands, and let the cascade of wild images pour over me. A few moments later, I finally had a complete picture of the day, most of which I didn’t want.

  Kind of like my companion.

  A flash of guilt accompanied that last thought, and then more than a flash. If I was remembering correctly, he had helped me—like a lot. But that was the thing—was I remembering correctly?

  My brain felt like it had been forced through a sieve, a couple of times. And what was left was not firing on all cylinders. Physically, I felt better, if alarmingly sore, as if my mind had finally figured out that I wasn’t being tortured anymore.

  But mentally?

  I wouldn’t trust myself to get my name right just now.

  I was definitely not in the headspace to match wits with a demon, much less one with Pritkin’s intellect. But that looked like what we were doing. Which was why I looked up, scowling.

  And found him scowling back at me.

  Or, at least, I thought so. It was kind of hard to tell now that he was no longer in a body, assuming that he’d been in one before. I was a little hazy on that point, along with a lot of others.

  Like what had happened to the empties?

  I glanced worriedly at the bed, but didn’t see them, not even back in their original cottony form. The sheets currently in place were pristine and had tiny blue flowers on them, so I assumed that they’d been changed at some point. Probably by whoever had salved me up and put me into this robe.

  God, I hoped that had been Rhea!

  And then I wasn’t sure that I did, because she was . . . Rhea. Innocent, sweet, amazingly naïve for one at her power level, and only nineteen. I did not think that she was prepared for . . . whatever had happened in here.

  But then, what was the alternative? Gertie? Agnes? I winced, and then did it again, feeling a migraine start a staccato beat on my already messed up head. The universe could not be that cruel. And what the devil had she seen, anyway? What had been left of those all-too-lifelike bodies that the incubus had made?

  Had they still been . . . colorful? Anatomically correct? And what positions had we been found in after—

  No! No, that had not happened. They had fallen to pieces, back into the rumpled sheets that they’d started out as, as soon as the power was all used up. They had, they had, they had, because I couldn’t deal with it if they hadn’t!

  And that was assuming that they’d even been here at all, and that I wasn’t just imagining the whole—

  My thoughts screeched to a halt, desperately grasping onto the new idea.

  I looked it over, and didn’t find any flaws. Yeah, I thought, brightening. That was probably it.

  Yeah, that was definitely what had happened!

  My head came up.

  “That was you, right?” I said to the demon, wanting confirmation.

  “What was me?”

  “All of it. The . . . that whole thing . . . it was some incubus-induced dream you made up, some trick to fool Zeus?”

  The demon frowned. “What are you talking about? Do you still not remember what occurred?”

  “I remember,” I said, a l
ittle knot of panic growing under my breastbone. Because he didn’t look like he understood. “But I don’t really remember, right?”

  He frowned at me some more. “I have no idea. I prompted your mind so that we could talk—”

  “Yes!” I cut him off excitedly. “Yes, that’s what I mean. That wasn’t real. You did something, messed with my brain—”

  “It appears to be messed up enough already.”

  “Just tell me that you did that!” I grabbed him, and somehow found purchase on the smokey body. I used it to shake him. “Tell me!”

  “What I’ll tell you is that you need to calm down—”

  “I’ll calm down when you tell me the truth!”

  “I have told you the truth, and let go of me—”

  I did not let go of him. “Tell me that wasn’t Pritkin earlier, that it was you—”

  “Very well, if it will help. It was me.” I loosened my grip slightly, feeling a huge rush of relief flood my overtaxed body. “After all, we are one and the same—”

  “Augghhh!” I shook him some more.

  “How are you doing that?” he demanded. “I’m not in physical form—”

  “But you were! That was you in that body you made, right? Not Mircea; he contacted family, so that had to be him. But the other—that was you!”

  The demon stared at me for a moment, and then bizarrely, he shook me back. It was hard enough to make me feel like a human maraca, which was unpleasant, although nowhere near as much as the full-blown panic now clawing at my breast. I grappled with him, sending us rolling around the floor.

  “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”

  “I saved your life, you maddening woman!” he snarled. “Repeatedly! And you’re worried about—I don’t even know what you’re worried about!”

  “Pritkin! And Mircea! And me!” I stopped fighting and shoved him away, before putting my head in my hands again, although I felt more like tearing my hair out. “Tell me I didn’t just destroy my entire life!”

  I sat there for a while, rocking back and forth, feeling like I was going crazy. I thought about screaming, but my throat hurt, and the last thing I needed was to summon additional company. I rocked some more instead, telling myself that it was fine, it was fine, it was all going to be fine, but it wasn’t fine and the words rang hollow.

  Of course, it would have helped if I’d gotten some kind of comfort, or at least acknowledgement of the problem, from the demon! But he was being unusually silent. And when I finally looked up, I found him lying on the floor, with an arm thrown over his eyes.

  It was bizarre enough to leave me staring.

  After a moment, I poked him. “What are you doing?”

  “Grappling with a concept.”

  The lying on the floor, looking like an overwhelmed southern belle thing, did not change.

  I poked him again. “What concept?”

  “The concept that we just defeated Zeus, the most powerful being of the ancient pantheon—and yes, I know it was from a world away, but we beat him.” The arm was thrown off, revealing blazing green eyes, and then he came up on one arm so that he could get in my face. “We beat him as few, and possibly no, other people have ever done, and what are you thinking about? Having to discuss a threesome with your boyfriend!”

  I scowled. “It’s a problem!”

  “It is not a problem! It’s absurd! And in any case, you won’t have to discuss anything, as I brought his subconscious—”

  “What?”

  “—his conscious mind being asleep at the time.”

  “He was asleep?”

  “Yes, he was asleep, so can we finally get back to—” the demon stopped, probably at sight of the pure horror on my features. “What is it now?”

  “He was asleep? He doesn’t know?”

  “It would have taken too long to wake him up and explain everything, assuming he would have listened to me. Which is why this whole thing is even more ridiculous than—” he broke off again. “Stop looking at me like that. Why are you looking like that?”

  I hit him. “I have to tell him? You left me with—I have to explain this?”

  “Explain what? What we did saved your life—saved all our lives, if I may remind you? We are linked via the Lover’s Knot spell. If you had died, we would have as well—”

  I put my head back in my hands. I thought that death might be preferable to the mess I’d been left with. Pritkin hated his incubus side, and was not remotely a fan of Mircea. This hit every hot button he had and yes, I assumed he’d prefer for me not to have died, that he would understand. But what would it do to us?

  “You don’t have to tell him,” the incubus pointed out, apparently having no problem with eavesdropping on my thoughts.

  “Get out of my head! And yes, I do!”

  He sighed, and it sounded exactly like one of Pritkin’s. “I can’t get out of your head. It is the only way we are able to communicate, through the vampire’s mental abilities. And this is exactly what I mean.”

  I did not ask what he meant.

  Of course, he told me anyway.

  Chapter Sixteen

  O n the one hand, you spend most of your time acting like you are nothing but little Cassie Palmer, utterly human and frequently overwhelmed by the situations you find yourself in,” Pritkin’s incubus said, looking aggrieved. “But as soon as things go sideways, you act like your mother. Taking on an elder god, one on one—”

  I scowled at him. “As opposed to what? Zeus was trying to kill me. Was I supposed to just take it?”

  “No. You were supposed to think. You are neither of those two extremes. You are not a god, but you are not human, either. You have power, but you need allies—which you have! Yet you did not call for them—”

  “I didn’t have a chance—”

  “You did. You did on the Thames and later, in this room. You didn’t take it.”

  “I tried to contact them on the Thames! Pritkin and Mircea both!”

  “But not to summon them. You did not even attempt to shift them here to help you.”

  “And do what? Get them killed? We were fighting Zeus—”

  “Lover’s Knot! If you die, so do they! It doesn’t matter where they are!”

  I scowled at him some more, because he had a point and I hated it. “You told me they were in Faerie. That they chased that goat guy through a portal or something.” I couldn’t remember the whispered words exactly, because of when our conversation had taken place. But I knew that much! “I couldn’t have shifted them here if I’d wanted to.”

  “But you didn’t know that.” He sat up. “Tell me, what would have happened if you hadn’t accidentally given me power? If I hadn’t been energized, and able to break out of my prison and come find you? What would have happened then?”

  “You know damned well—”

  “But do you?”

  “Yes, and I don’t want to talk about it!” I’d just woken up, my brain felt spongy and bruised, I was grappling with a possible relationship-killing event, and this bastard was still yammering at me.

  I wanted to shift something, I thought savagely.

  Right back to hell.

  I got up instead and went to the dressing table.

  “But we need to talk about it,” the demon said stubbornly. “That is why I came. The vampire isn’t a problem. His kind loves power and he’s currently at war. He is grateful to have allies. And thanks to the importance of family in the vampire world, he is accustomed to asking for and receiving aid.”

  “Your point?” I asked, picking up a brush. And then putting it back down again, when the first stroke sent a cascade of dust into the air. What the hell?

  “That you are not,” the demon said. “And the one you call Pritkin is even worse. He has been on his own for so long, he doesn’t remember a time when he had reliable allies. Even in the Corps, he was known as a loner—”

  “For good reason.” I turned around and crossed my arms, trying to look less weak than I felt. The
dressing table helped by giving me a prop for my butt. “They never trusted him—because of his demon blood. Because of you. And as for allies, when did he ever have any? Rosier’s people tried to kill him!”

  “Yes, let’s revisit that, shall we?” the demon said, suddenly vicious. He was back on his feet now, too, and pacing, sending boiling black smoke across the room. “Rosier brings a part human, part fey, half demon hybrid back to court and introduces him as their prince. Naturally, the nobles were going to test him. No demon would follow a weak ruler, and none respected human blood—or trusted fey. He had to be vetted—”

  “They tried to kill him!”

  “Of course, they did—to see if he was worthy. Before putting their lives in his hands and possibly getting killed themselves! But instead of standing his ground and showing them exactly how powerful he was, what did he do? Ran away to the Shadowlands—oh, boo hoo, poor me, the big, bad demons are being mean to me!”

  “Shut up!”

  “They didn’t know what to think. Then later, after certain rule-shattering escapades, they worried that he was potentially too strong, with our old enemies’ blood running through his veins. That he might turn on them as the gods once had, since he seemed to hate them so much—”

  “So, he couldn’t win.”

  “He could have easily won. He didn’t wish to. He hated the hells, but not because they challenged him—how often did the fey do that? Did he ever tell you how many times they beat him up and threw him out of Faerie?”

  “Beating him up is not killing him.”

  “When the only thing saving him was Nimue’s blood, it isn’t that different,” the demon said dryly. “He was never going to be one of them, never going to be accepted. The human taint was bad enough, in their view, but demon, too? In the hells, on the other hand, power is all that matters, and he has that in spades. But he refuses to use it, to admit what he is, and to make us the allies we need.”

  “To let you use him, you mean.”

  The smokey head cocked. “Is that what he told you?”