by Karen Chance
They’d liked it even less after he managed to kill one of them.
They hadn’t mourned the creature in question; they hadn’t liked him any better than John had, for the beast had been foul even by their standards. But his death had made them worry. About how easily a senior demon had gone down. About the strange fey magic John had evidenced in battle. About what else he might be able to do.
About which of them was next.
John could have told them the answer to that: no one. He didn’t want to exterminate the demon high council, even if he could have. As bad as they were, chaos would be worse, without the restrictions the council put on who was allowed to come to earth and what they could do there. Chaos would mean a lot of dead humans. Chaos might mean all dead humans. So, no, John was no threat to them.
But, of course, they hadn’t believed that. And even if they had, why take a chance? It wasn’t the demon way.
As a result, John had seen himself change from a bright eyed, curious young man into an angry, resentful, more-than-slightly paranoid one, character traits he'd never fully managed to excise, even after all these years. But Cassie . . . she hadn’t been brought up in hell, no, but could a vampire's court—especially that vampire's—have been much better?
Somehow, he doubted it.
Just a few of the things she'd said at times, casually, as if describing normal behavior, had painted a picture that was frankly appalling. Brutal, vicious, conniving, and dangerous: the creatures she'd rubbed shoulders with growing up had deserved those terms every bit as much as the demons he'd known. Yet how different their reactions had been!
John didn’t understand her, even after spending the last four months almost glued to her side. How she’d remained so sane, so caring, so . . . different, both from them and from his own bitter, world weariness, was nothing less than amazing. And now—
Gods, he didn’t want to see her hurt now! Didn’t want to see her follow in his footsteps, that bright optimism fading into his own savage cynicism, that strange light that she carried within her dimmed or extinguished. He didn’t want to see any of it.
Not that he would.
He was going to die.
The demon high council had been looking for an excuse to kill him for centuries, and now they had one. They weren’t going to give that up. But he wasn’t dead yet, John thought, and wiped a thumb across her greasy lower lip, because life was beautiful, she was beautiful, and he wanted her to know that before the end.
Five minute later, they were being called away to hear the verdict, and John felt his feet rushing instead of dragging, the stupid hope bubbling up in his veins strangely euphoric. This day had been a day of wonders, of revelations, of wildly improbable events, the greatest of which was the expression he’d seen shining out of her eyes. Five minutes had changed his world; five minutes had done the impossible. Maybe, just maybe, it could happen again.
Or maybe not.
The verdict came in a blaze of spell light so bright that it all but blinded him. Only one thought had been in his mind, in the split second he’d had to think anything, and that was to knock Cassie to the side, to make sure that it didn’t hit her, too. In that he’d succeeded, but there had been no way to evade it himself.
It landed like a freight train, knocking his soul out of his body and back through his life, shedding years like seconds as they flew by in the wrong direction. The shock and pain had made thinking almost impossible, leaving him rushing through a kaleidoscoping tunnel of his past, one changing so quickly that he could barely make anything out. It had felt like being caught in a raging river, hitting stones and obstacles occasionally along the way, but mostly drowning under the whitewater rush.
But despite his panic and horror, there were brief moments of lucidity when he’d known what was happening to him. When he’d realized that the demon council hadn’t been content just to kill him. No, he’d made them afraid, something that no one had managed in millennia, and for that he had to pay. And perhaps they had thought it fitting that the man once known in legend for aging backwards should die that way.
And he should have.
The spell they’d used was ancient and terrible, sending the soul speeding back through time to its birth, and then beyond. He wouldn’t simply die; he would be written out of existence. Vanishing, in a puff of magic, as if he’d never existed at all.
It was the worst fate they could imagine, to know the end was coming, yet be unable to stop it. And they’d been right—it had been absolutely terrifying, his mind surfacing only long enough, here or there, to cry out for help that no one could give him. And by the time the spell finally started to slow down, he was too far back in his past for even the stubbornest time-traveler to reach him.
Only, somehow, she had.
He remembered her catching up twice: once in what had looked like Amsterdam, on a frozen canal with snow in her hair. Everything had been a blur around him, everything but her. He’d been desperate, confused, almost out of his mind, but for a split second, he’d seen her—he knew he had.
But a moment later, he’d been snatched away again, and she was gone. And that had been it, the farthest back she could possibly have reached, for he hadn’t been to Amsterdam in centuries. And before that had been a lengthy sojourn at his father’s court in hell, where her magic didn’t work. By the time he’d emerged back into the cool greens and deep blues of earth, back into sunshine and clear skies and a beauty the hells had never known . . .
It was almost over.
In my beginning is my end, John had thought. He’d read that somewhere, along with its codicil: in my end is my beginning. But the latter wouldn’t be true for him. He was fifteen hundred years away from where he’d started, and she couldn’t reach him.
The spell had finally slowed down, being almost out of energy, but it didn’t need to travel much farther. The next moment would be his last, or the one after that; it didn’t matter anymore. But at least it was jumping now, in fits and starts, less an unbroken reel of film and more a glitching video cassette, allowing him a final glimpse of the world he’d known. Wales was beautiful all year round, but John had always liked the summer best. And summer it was—
When he saw her again.
He’d opened his eyes on one of the brief respites between jumps, not on the fine sunny day he’d expected, but on a flaming night. A tent flap was beating back and forth in a high wind, like a bird trying to take off. And she was sitting beside him, watching the sky burn and sparks fly past the tent’s opening, thick as rain, while armies clashed in the distance and the skies above them cracked open like all the fires of hell were descending. The unimaginable spectacle should have caught the eye.
It didn’t.
All he could see was her.
He’d tried to form words, tried so hard, realizing that he didn’t have much time, but wanting to know: how she’d found him, how she’d traveled so far, why she’d risked it. But he couldn’t seem to speak. All he could do was stare at her dumbly, the strange light from outside staining her blonde hair pink, her dress blowing against her body, the sparks reflected in her eyes.
And her name . . . what was her name? His scrambled brain had searched and searched for the answer, like it was a lifeline, like it was the most important thing in the world. And to him, right then, it had been.
But he couldn’t remember, not until she started to cry, silently, almost stoically, tears slipping down her exhausted, dirty face as she stared at the carnage outside. And, suddenly, he knew. “Cassie,” he’d said hoarsely. “Your name is Cassie.”
John came back to himself slowly, while his brain fought to separate past from present. It wasn’t easy. He could feel the memories tugging at him, and for once, he wanted to stay with them, to relive again the moment when she’d finally turned to face him, her expression surprised and relieved and then, for some reason, chagrined.
Until she’d gotten to her knees, taken his face between her hands, and told him the last words he
’d ever expected to hear: “My name is Cassie Palmer, and I love you.”
The demon council had wanted him dead, with no way back to torment them, and so had used one of the biggest weapons in their arsenal.
They just hadn’t realized: he had a bigger one.
He could see it all again, so perfectly: the ancient god, forcing his way through a tear in the sky, countless stories tall, a giant the color of blood and framed in fire. It had seemed like the end of the world, but when Cassie stole his breath in a kiss, when his arms wrapped automatically around her, when their bodies met and melded and a new kind of fire caught between them, he had felt an answering power of a completely different kind.
He’d always hated his demon heritage, but in that moment, he’d been glad, exultant even, that his father was prince of the incubi, and that he held within his veins the ability to multiply magical energy through passionate union. And passionate it had been.
And searing and frightening, because he’d never done this before, never had the kind of relations that demons called sex. Not the mere meeting of bodies as the humans did, but the fusing of souls, of lives, of power, so much, so hot, so overwhelming, that every time the feedback loop came back around, and energy poured out of her into him, he was sure it would be the last time, that it would rip him apart.
Yet, every time, his incubus took all she could give, exulting in it, feeding from it, and magnifying it, many times over, before sending it back. Until finally it was too much, until his blood had felt like lava and his hair had literally smoked, until he knew they were both about to come apart at the seams because no one could contain this. He’d sent it back, one last time, and watched, exhausted and confused, still thrumming with the power his demon had fed from, and had still not made a dent in what Cassie took.
And used to rip open the skies, to tear apart the pathways between worlds and to bring another old god into the fight.
John had stared in awe as two ancient beings clashed in the skies above him, and almost felt like he could join them. He still did, weeks later. Power thrummed in his veins, tingled his fingertips, snapped behind his eyes.
Which suddenly flew open as the realization hit: that was where all the extra power he’d been using had come from. The left-over energy from the vast amount that had been used to kill a god. The energy that he and a demigod had made together.
He threw back his head and laughed, laughed in spite of it all, laughed at fate, which never ceased to play with him, but for once had smiled on him, too.
Like Cassie, who had saved him again, and didn’t even know it.
And then something gave way beneath him, and he fell three stories with a rope wrapped around his leg, suspended from what looked like a trash heap laid across the space between a couple of closely packed buildings. And ended up swinging back and forth in front of the biggest goddamned vampire he’d ever seen. For a moment, John just stared, the laughter dying in his throat, because the creature had to be seven feet tall and was built like a tank.
He hit like one, too.
But weirdly enough, it didn’t look like he’d planned to. He started to say something, then shot a glance over his shoulder, where the sound of running feet were coming down the small alley. Then he sighed and turned back around.
Sorry, he mouthed, making John blink.
And then the world exploded, along with what felt like John’s head, and he knew no more.
Chapter Eight
S creaming and drums.
Screaming and drums.
Screaming and drums, drums, drums.
It was the first coherent thought John had, as he swam back to consciousness, with the second being the realization that he was bouncing against a gigantic spread of flesh and muscle that he assumed was someone’s back. John was no lightweight, being between a hundred and seventy and a hundred and eighty pounds in his underwear, depending on how hard he’d been hitting the gym of late. Yet he’d been thrown over a massive shoulder and was being carried about as easily as a child.
Vampires, he thought, slowly coming back to his senses.
As soon as he was able, he cast a silent spell to glamour his eyelids, allowing them to look closed while he gazed around. It was a simple enchantment, but it shouldn’t have worked. The magic itself was minimal and might have gone undetected, but John’s breathing and heartrate had sped up, and there were probably other signs detectable to a vampire that he was awake. Yet, if he noticed, the creature carrying him gave no sign.
Or perhaps he did, for who could tell in here?
It sounded like they’d just entered the seventh circle of hell.
Instead, it appeared to be a ramshackle wooden building the size of a warehouse or large barn. It was poorly made, with numerous gaps between the roughhewn planks that formed the walls, and appeared to date back centuries. But the story wasn’t the building, but what it contained, which looked like every damned vampire in the city.
All of whom were yelling their heads off.
John couldn’t see them very well since there was no artificial lighting. Merely lines of greenish gray storm light from outside leaking in through the gaps in the walls and striping the scene. But he had a hazy impression of a wooden dais at the far end of the room, set four or five feet off the floor, and crowded with people. There were even more people hanging off multi-tiered seating on either side of a large open space covered with sawdust, which reminded him of the bleachers he’d torched back in Vegas.
He fervently wished he could summon some of that fire now. But he didn’t have the strength, having given his all back in the alley. Not to mention that this many vampires—because ninety percent of the room appeared to have fangs—could drain him in an instant, even through shields he wasn’t sure he could raise anyway. It didn’t help that it felt like his skull had been cracked open, to the point that he wondered if the wetness leaking down the side of his face was brain fluid.
Something splattered darkly on the floor beneath him.
No, only blood.
John couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or not.
Before he could figure it out, he was dumped onto some old wooden boards that had been used to patch an even older stone floor. He was outside of the big open area, if only just, near a collection of barred metal cages almost as tall as a man but too small to hold the number of war mages who had been crammed into them. Far too small.
For a moment, John felt his heart stop.
But there were tell-tale signs of movement here and there—the flutter of fingers, the rise and fall of a chest, the twitch of an eyelid—so they weren’t all dead. But they were close. One of the men’s faces was pressed against the bars of the nearest cage, and he already looked like a corpse: pale lips, pale skin, and sunken eyes that spoke of dehydration, but not of the water variety.
Drained, John realized, or partly so, like all the rest. Leaving them alive but too weak to do anything about their condition, if they were even aware enough to know what it was. He expected the same thing to be his fate and braced for an attack, but nothing happened.
Except that the large vampire said something to a man working to open the nearest cage, and the next moment, John found himself being dragged back and lashed to a barrel instead.
It was one of three that were standing near the cages, filled with sand and cigarette butts, helping to delineate them from the seating area on that side. They looked like they’d been doing the job for centuries, leaving them brittle and mouse eaten, with their iron bands almost rusted through. They were an altogether terrible choice for their current occupation.
Or they would have been, except that they were surrounded by about five thousand vampires.
None of whom were paying any attention to John. The crowd was celebrating their victory, yelling and stomping their feet on the wooden benches, making it sound like an orchestra of drummers was doing a routine. And laughing and drinking and jeering, even singing in a few cases. To the point that, if John hadn’t already
had the grandmother of all migraines, they would have given him one.
The only people staring him down were a group of nearby mages, presumably ones working for the vampires. John was certain they couldn’t see through his glamourie, but they might be able to detect that he had one, or that he was using some form of magic. He saw one of them say something to a nearby guard, but the vampire, with the breed’s usual contempt for humans, ignored him.
John’s hands were tied behind his back, out of sight, so he started working to get them free, dislocating a thumb and then snapping it back into place after sliding it under the ropes. It hurt, but so did everything else; his body felt like a giant bruise. Maybe because of the thatch of old bamboo poles and assorted junk back in the alley, which the locals appeared to have used as an outdoor storage system. It had broken his fall and almost certainly saved his life, but it had had its own set of problems.
Like a hunk of junk that he was fairly certain had left a permanent divot in his back!
It didn’t matter; he’d been trained to think past pain. The problem wasn’t thinking, it was what he had to think about. He needed to get the corpsmen out of here before the fanged monsters finished what they’d started. He needed to talk to Jonas and find out if there was any spell that might break the enthrallment. And, most of all, he needed to find out who had brought them here and how and why and he didn’t know how to do any of it!
And then a tiny voice spoke in his ear.
“Mage Pritkin!”
It almost made him jump out of his skin, and giveaway the fact that he remained semi lucid. Because it was right there, like an insect buzzing in his ear canal, only this wasn’t an annoying whine. It was—
