The Cassandra Palmer Collection

by Karen Chance

  “Preferably right over her,” Sid said, when he’d finished explaining.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “It’s a good one,” Sid admitted, frowning. “The wards she’s familiar with guard against magic. Like as not, this. . . stuff . . . won’t even register.”

  “But?” John asked, because there clearly had been one in the little demon’s tone.

  Sid sighed and started returning a few scattered jars to their appropriate shelves. “Nothing. I’m just a foolish old man who remembers another time.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That in my day we did things differently. We faced our enemies.”

  John stared at him incredulously. “You think I’m being dishonorable? Knowing what she’s done? What she’ll do again given the slightest—”

  “No, no.” Sid shook his head. “I didn’t mean anything. You’re only half-demon and incubus at that. I don’t expect you to understand.” He caught John’s expression. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” John said curtly. Not being mistaken for a demon was hardly an insult. And standing and dueling a being as powerful as Ealdris wasn’t honorable, it was stupid.

  “And you’re little more than a child,” Sid said, looking down at the jar he held. A hazy smear of deep magenta curled and twisted inside, painting his skin a livid hue. “You don’t know what it was like, in our day. And how could you? Seeing what we’ve become.”

  “You mean it was worse?” John asked cynically.

  Sid glanced up at him, and smiled slightly. “You’d probably think so. It was certainly more savage, more raw. But infinitely more glorious, too. You should have seen it, John,” he said, his voice going dreamy. “There weren’t as many of us then, so you might think we were weaker, but it wasn’t so. Huge armies we had, glittering in the night, under commanders worthy of the name, marching off to victory or death—”

  “Mostly death,” John interjected, because there had been nothing glorious about the ancient wars. Just century after century of bloody chaos, as each race struggled for existence in a never-ending competition for food and resources. Ending them had been one of the few things the High Council had ever gotten right.

  “Yes, yes, but you miss the point,” Sid said irritably. “The chaff was winnowed out, but the best survived, thrived, grew stronger by their ordeals. Instead of the weakest being rewarded for how well they can toady, like today.”

  “I never took you for a Social Darwinist.”

  “I’m not anything human,” Sid told him, with a bite to his tone. “We were stronger without them, back when every resource was scarcer, every meal more hard won. Then we found their weak, soft, rule-bound race, and everything changed.”

  “I’m sure they felt the same,” John said curtly, not interested in a debate. “I’m also fairly certain that Ealdris is where I say she is. But there could be miles of tunnels through these hills and I don’t have time to search them all. I need you to narrow it down.”

  Sid stared at the map, but didn’t say anything.

  “Before the rest of your clientele goes missing,” John added.

  The little demon sighed fretfully and flapped a hand at the windows. “Check the shades, would you?”

  “I promise you, I will find her,” John said, turning to look for gaps in the dark green cloth.

  And then dropping to his knees when something slammed into him with the force of a dozen sledgehammers. It knocked him to the floor, his head reeling, pain shooting from temple to temple in a mind-numbing haze. But not so numb that he couldn’t make out the ancient being bending over him—who was suddenly glowing with a power he shouldn’t have had.

  “I believe I can guarantee it,” Sid said, as the room exploded around him.

  * * *

  “I think I wet myself,” Casanova said faintly, hugging a wall.

  It was soot-stained brick, crumbling and moldy and cold against his shoulder blades. Or at least it was for the moment. Part of the illusion they used to keep people from running and screaming at the sight of this place didn’t fool his vampire senses. But part of it did. The result was a mishmash of images that would have made his head ache if it wasn’t already threatening to take off the top of his skull.

  “We have to get out of here,” Rian told him. “We’ve lost them for the moment, but I can’t shield us for—”

  “Then why did you bring us here?” he asked savagely.

  “I didn’t know what else to do! The girl didn’t know she needed to shift and there was no time to explain and Rosier—”

  “So, you brought us to his doorstep?” The wall was stucco now, he couldn’t help but notice. Bright, buttery stucco, like on his home in beautiful Cordoba. Where he would really like to be right now instead of shivering in Hell.

  It’s freezing over, he thought suddenly, and had to bite his lip on a hysterical giggle.

  “I don’t have her power,” Rian said, looking at him strangely. “I can shift between worlds, but not between places in a world. And she couldn’t survive in most of our realms in any—”

  “Survive? You mean I’m not dead?” Cassie suddenly piped up.

  Casanova turned to stare at her, but there was no doubt about it, she was looking straight at Rian’s hazy outline.

  “Well? Are we in Hell or not?” she demanded.

  Rian looked at him, apparently nonplussed herself, and then back at Cassie. “You can see me?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Clairvoyant,” Cassie snapped.

  “But I’ve known clairvoyants before, and they couldn’t—”

  “I’m Pythia. It comes with more power.”

  “We know,” Casanova said, scowling. “That’s what’s drawing them. Demons feed off human energy and you’re lit up like a Vegas buffet.”

  “I can’t help it!”

  “You never saw me before,” Rian accused. “Did you?”

  “You were in a body before. I see spirits. And will somebody please answer the damn ques—”

  “Yes, you’re in hell,” Rian told her. “A hell, in any case, there are a number of them.”

  “Hundreds,” Casanova interjected absently. He was watching the wall out of the corner of his eye, and he was pretty sure it was playing with him. Because now it was covered in the hideous wallpaper one of his mistresses had had in her bedroom in Seville. The one in which she’d entertained three other men, occasionally at the same time, whenever he chanced to be out of town . . .

  “More than that,” Rian said. “But it doesn’t matter now. What matters is—”

  “Then I am dead,” Cassie said hollowly.

  Casanova reached over and pinched her, hard. “Do you feel dead?”

  She jumped. “Cut it out!”

  “Yes,” Rian agreed, shooting him a look. “We have to decide what to do.”

  “Yes, I’m dead?” Cassie said sharply.

  “I was talking to him,” Rian told her, starting to look confused.

  “What to do is obvious,” Casanova said impatiently. “We need to find somewhere to hide. As soon as the mage kills Ealdris—”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “He will. He’s good at killing things.”

  “Most things. But you know as well as I do that Ealdris isn’t just any—”

  “Will somebody please tell me if I’m dead or not?” Cassie yelled, before Casanova clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Do you want to be something’s dinner?” he hissed.

  Rian shut her eyes for a moment, and then spoke very slowly and distinctly. “You are not dead. Humans come here from time to time. Powerful mages can transition to the upper hells and back—the ones which can support human life, at least—and occasionally someone is brought here—”

  “As a snack,” Casanova finished for her, “which is what we are going to be if we don’t get out!”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying!” Rian tossed her hair agitatedly. “But we can’t go back to the casino. If Rosier isn’t still the
re himself, he’ll have people—”

  “Then take us somewhere else!”

  “I just told you, if I transition back to your world, it will be where I left it. I would need a portal to go somewhere else, and the master knows that. He’ll have someone—”

  “Another hell, then. Somewhere safer.”

  Rian looked at him like he might have lost his mind. “A safer hell?”

  “We won’t be there long! We only need to hide until Pritkin deals with this.”

  “Deals with what?” Cassie asked.

  “He’s supposed to kill Ealdris,” Casanova informed her shortly. “As soon as he does, Rosier can’t hurt you. He swore a binding—”

  “Who’s Ealdris?”

  “What difference does it make? All you need to understand is that Rosier blackmailed him into going after her, thinking that he’d kill you while Pritkin was on his little errand. But the mage anticipated that and sent me to watch you. And now all we have to do is stay out of the way until—”

  “Who. Is. Ealdris?” Cassie was looking strangely red in the face.

  “An ancient demon battle queen,” Casanova said, right before he was slammed against a wall for the second time that day.

  “And you let him go?”

  “¿Cómo?”

  “You let Pritkin go after this thing, knowing the risk—”

  “He’s doing it to protect you—”

  “How many times do I have to say this?” Little fingers dug into his flesh, surprisingly hard. “I don’t want to be protected! Not if it costs someone else’s life! Don’t you get it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course? Then why—”

  “I ‘get it’,” Casanova told her nastily. “I just don’t care. I don’t work for you, chica, and for that matter, neither does the mage. It’s his life. If he wants to risk it, I don’t see where that’s any concern of—”

  “It’s my concern because I’m the cause!” Cassie whispered furiously, her hands letting go of his arms only to bunch in the expensive fabric of his lapels. “And you do work for Mircea. And by vampire law, I’m his wife, so you work for me. And if you’d like to continue to work for me, you had damn well better learn to care!”

  Casanova glared at her. “Why, you vicious, ungrateful little—”

  “Will you two stop it?”

  Casanova ceased prying Cassie’s hands off his jacket and looked at Rian. Because she never used that tone, much less with him. But then, she never glared at him like that, either.

  “We have to decide what we’re going to do,” she said severely. “The master will be here at any moment, and I cannot hide us from him!”

  “How could he possibly know where you took us?” Cassie demanded.

  “Because there aren’t that many options. Most of the hells require permission to enter—”

  “And this one doesn’t?”

  “It’s neutral ground, a meeting place, a market—” she waved a restless hand. “Anyone can come here. And as soon as he does, he’ll follow my trail right to you. All incubi can sense another’s presence. But if I leave, I can’t shield you from—”

  “Can you do it?”

  Rian looked confused again. “Can I do what?”

  “Find another incubus.”

  “Yes, but what does that—”

  “Then I know what we’re going to do,” Cassie said, jerking Casanova’s face down to hers. “And I know who’s going to help me.”

  Chapter Six

  B ump, bump, bump.

  It sounded like someone was hammering on a door, John thought vaguely. He wished they’d stop. Or that someone would answer the damn thing. He couldn’t sleep with all this pounding going on.

  Bump, bump, bump.

  Or with all this pain. Every thud made agonized lightning zigzag behind his eyeballs, to the point that he was getting nauseous with it. It reminded him of a few of the hangovers he’d had in the bad old days, when he’d found solace, or what passed for it, in the bottom of a bottle.

  Bump.

  Except this hurt more.

  Bump, bump, b—

  Bugger it! If someone didn’t get that damn thing—

  John opened his eyes, just in time to close them again in a tortured wince as—ump—the back of his cranium came down, connecting with what felt like solid rock. A disoriented moment later, he realized that it was rock, specifically an uneven floor that he was being dragged across by the legs, his head allowed to bounce along behind the rest of him as best it could.

  Which probably explained why it felt like a particularly ill-used football.

  He tried to take stock, but it was a little difficult. He couldn’t see bugger all, being in almost complete darkness; his arms were bound to his sides and his coat was gone, which explained the raw meat texture of his back. But his weapons . . . one of them was somewhere nearby.

  He could feel it, the enchantment it carried chiming along his nerves like a glissando of bells. Cool and sweet, it was soothingly familiar. And loud, so loud that he had to be almost—

  It was the small knife next to his right calf. John blinked, taking a moment to absorb the fact that some idiot had actually left his boots on. And had compounded the folly by not even checking them for weapons first. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted, but on the whole he thought he’d go with—

  BUMP.

  —seriously fucking up whoever was responsible.

  He dragged the tattered threads of his concentration together, focusing them on that tiny chime. He could usually do this without thinking, an almost automated response after so long, like breathing. It was more difficult now, but he finally felt the connection snap into place and all that dormant magic spring to life, eager to leap to his defense at a whispered—

  “No!” someone yelled, slinging him against a wall. Which hurt like the devil, since he had no way to avoid hitting face first. But on the whole that bothered him less than the supernova that suddenly erupted all around him.

  John instinctively turned his head further into the wall, but that only seemed to make things worse. Light seared his eyeballs even through the lids, spearing straight through to his brain. For a brief instant he could see every blood vessel on the inside of his head, feel every scraped-raw nerve lit up in excruciating clarity.

  And then something hot and intense shot though his body like a bolt of lightning before grounding itself in his spine.

  Someone let out a not-so-manly mewl of pain and he hoped it wasn’t him. He didn’t think so, actually. Because he was fairly certain that his tongue had just fused to the roof of his mouth.

  Someone else didn’t have that problem. He recognized Sid’s voice, cursing up a storm in some long-dead language, but he couldn’t see him. Not even when the light finally dimmed, the wildly jumping aftereffects ensuring that John remained blind as a bat. Hoping that that was true for his attacker as well, John pried his tongue loose and started an incantation, only to stop when a knife was pressed hard against his jugular.

  “Not if you want to live,” Sid rasped, and the words died in his throat.

  But not because of the threat. The blade currently denting his skin was well-oiled and razor sharp—and bleating at him alarmingly because it was his weapon. Sid must have caught it mid-flight, which would have been impressive except that a syllable from John would send it plunging into the demon’s gut before he knew what had hit him. But John didn’t utter that syllable. Because he didn’t think the stark panic in Sid’s voice was fake.

  And a moment later he knew it wasn’t when his eyes finally adjusted.

  “Do you see?” Sid demanded.

  John saw. It was rather hard to miss, since every surface of the low-ceilinged tunnel they were in had turned as translucent as alabaster, lit from within by hundreds of glowing red lines. They spidered through the rock like veins in marble—or under skin, because these pulsed with some strange, unearthly fire that brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed, as if dri
ven by the beating of a distant heart.

  It was like being in the belly of a huge, still-breathing animal, John’s brain helpfully supplied, until he snarled at it to shut up. But the impression was damn apt, heightened by the unhappy rumbling in the stones around him and the heat generated by all that trapped energy. At least that explained why the shreds of his T-shirt were plastered to his body, he thought blankly.

  Or maybe that was terror.

  “To answer that question you asked earlier,” Sid said, his voice dripping sarcasm, “they mined brimstone here. It’s why I could magic you up here, but not in here.” The little demon pulled the knife away from John’s throat and shook it at him, before tucking it away in his waistband.

  John’s eyes followed it, but he made no effort to call it to him. Because the substance known on earth as ‘brimstone’ resembled the demon variety only in the overwhelming smell of rotten eggs. It didn’t rain fire from the heavens, as some human legends insisted, or destroy entire cities. He’d always suspected that those accounts were ancient memories of the last of the demon wars, a few battles of which had been fought on Earth. Then the sky had burned, along with huge swathes of land, obliterated by single blasts.

  Of the stuff glowing a few inches away from his face.

  “It’s laced all though these rocks,” Sid informed him, slapping the side of the corridor hard enough to make John wince, even though he knew that wouldn’t set it off. Sid could stick a pick axe through the wall and it would make no difference. Brimstone responded to only one thing.

  Unfortunately, it happened to be the thing that John needed rather badly right now.

  * * *

  Casanova had spent years perfecting the alluring quality of his voice, imbuing it with the charm, the grace, the honeyed tones that often did much of his seduction for him. Rian had taught him some of that, but he was proud to say that much more came from his own Castilian roots, from a people who understood the lyrical potential of the spoken word in a way that few of the braying descendants of the British Isles ever would. He was an artist with his voice. He could make women, and the occasional man, weep with his voice.