by Karen Chance
“You okay?” Zheng asked, bending down to put a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt on John’s back.
John glared up at him, his face probably as red as a tomato—what parts weren’t swollen and bloody, that was! “Why do you ask?” he croaked savagely.
“You don’t look okay.”
John thought of an appropriate response to that, but was jerked up again before he could make it. He was about to demonstrate to the smirking guard who’d grabbed him exactly what he was still capable of, but wiser heads prevailed. Namely Zheng’s, who suddenly clasped his right wrist, and a terrified temple dancer’s, who was whispering “cool it, cool it, cool it,” into his left ear.
John cooled it, at least enough to realize that a large, square mirror on a frame was being wheeled out from the darkness beyond the dais. It was as big as a shop window and reflected fully half the room. Including the two torches that had just sprang to life on the wall behind the emperor, John supposed so that everyone could see who they were talking to.
For a moment, he felt a surge of relief course through his system. And not just because he might finally be able to make a report. But because, if money would fix this, it might solve more than one problem.
The vampires seemed immune to the enthrallment spell, perhaps because they functioned as a hive mind. The only way to control them would be to gain power over the master, and whoever was behind this did not seem to have managed that yet. Meaning that John could use them to round up the rest of the enthralled mages, who they could then sell back to the Corps.
But, of course, it wasn’t that easy.
“Careful,” John’s sexy version of a Babelfish whispered, straight into his ear canal. “The Shikken say he let you pay ransom, then kill them anyway.”
Which probably explained why Hye-Jin was looking happier suddenly, and why Zheng-zi was frowning. But he didn’t say anything else, mentally or aloud, which probably meant that he’d done all he could. Leaving this up to John.
Who found himself abruptly pushed toward the mirror.
Chapter Ten
I t was the phone booth experience all over again, except that the silver head emerging from the mirror to take John’s number was a lot more obsequious. Unlike a certain white-haired menace on the other end of the line. Betty Armitage looked up from her typewriter, obviously annoyed at being disturbed again, and scowled at John.
Who stared back at her, hoping that “special agent” wasn’t just a courtesy title.
He couldn’t tell, since the air of annoyance and vague exasperation she wore were the same as always. Narrowed gray eyes scanned the room, going from the dais of deadly creatures behind him, to the phalanx of guards surrounding him, to the far side of the big space, where the edge of the metal cages could just be seen. John doubted that she could tell what was in them from this angle, but he couldn’t be sure. Her only reaction, if reaction it was, was a slight tightening of already thin lips.
“Mage,” she finally said, not using his name, which was protocol in situations where that information might get someone killed. Unfortunately, it was also standard when Betty was annoyed, so it didn’t tell him anything. “You wanted something?”
“The Lord Protector, please,” John rasped, out of a half-collapsed throat. “I need to discuss a potential five-fifty-five—”
“Watch it,” Hye-Jin snapped.
“—a conference to discuss a prisoner exchange,” he added, for her benefit. “Is he available?”
Betty flipped open a day planner. “I’m not sure he’s in yet. He doesn’t have anything on his schedule until this afternoon.”
John stared at her some more. A five fifty-five was not a conference call. It was an SOS, an “agents down, more in peril, request immediate extraction” cry for help. Something the Corps should be able to provide, at least for everyone except John, who was still in his old sweats and trainers.
But the rest of them weren’t.
And while the vampires had been smart enough to strip off their captives’ weapons, their war mage pins remained in place. Originally designed to keep a man’s cloak together back when such things were fashionable, they now served a variety of other functions. Including housing a homing device that allowed mass recall in times of emergency.
Because the bad guys weren’t the only ones who could open a goddamned portal!
John most decidedly did not have the strength to do it again, but the Circle had magic to burn. And, yes, it would burn a terrific amount to force a portal open halfway around the world, but they could do it. The vampires had thoughtfully grouped their captives all together in one small space, which was the main prerequisite for an extraction.
At least it would be, if Betty understood what the hell he was talking about!
“One moment,” she said, before John could get his thoughts together. “I have a call on another line.”
“No! Betty! I mean, special ag—” The screen went blank.
The Korean master, Hye-Jin, looked pointedly at John.
“She’s, er, she’s a bit . . . eccentric,” he said awkwardly.
This provoked a string of what sounded like Korean profanity, but may have just been contempt.
“She say she don’t know why everyone worries about war mages, if this what you like,” his personal translator informed him.
Right then, John didn’t know, either.
And then Betty was back.
“Could you check, please?” he said quickly. “The Lord Protector is usually in by eight, and it must be half past by now.”
Eight thirty, Betty, he thought, wishing he had the vamp’s ability with mental communication. Eight Three Zero. Portal evacuation, damn it; you must have had this in training!
Betty did not appear to have had this. Or maybe her training had been so long ago that they’d called it something else. Or perhaps she’d just forgotten, because she wrinkled her nose in irritation again.
“That is not the correct time, mage. You should get your watch fixed.”
She winked out again before John could reply, although this time, she’d put him on hold. Giving him the surreal experience of waiting around a storm-tossed, vampire-filled, filthy warehouse while elevator music tinkled out of the mirror’s surface. It appeared to be an acoustic version of Evanescence’s “Going Under”.
Appropriate, John thought, as the vampires crowded ever closer. Only, unlike the lyrics, he was pretty sure he couldn’t save himself this time. He really, really hoped he didn’t have to.
Before the song ended, Betty was back, adjusting the old-fashioned cat’s eye glasses she wore because she worked deep in HQ’s underbelly, and vision spells didn’t play well with the powerful wards there.
“I was mistaken,” she told him crisply. “It appears that he is in, after all. Oh, and by the way, it’s 9:55. Do set your watch, mage.”
“What,” John said blankly.
“Set your watch. It’s 9:55 . . . now,” and John’s eyes widened. And then darkened, when he threw the heaviest black out spell he knew over his vision.
He was barely in time. Darkness descended, pure and deep and absolute, at least for him. But judging by the all the screaming, yelling and cursing suddenly going on around him, that that wasn’t true for everybody else. He didn’t know how long it would take the vamps to realize that they needed to break the mirror to cut off the searing sunlight blazing everywhere, but it probably wouldn’t be long.
He bolted.
The spell was one of those that had been developed back in the bad old days when humans and vampires struggled for power. It weaponized the sun’s rays, ramping them up enough that it created a white out effect that could extend for several city blocks. It also burned retinas in seconds, blinded permanently in less than a minute, and cooked the skin right off your body if it went on long enough—and that was for humans.
John didn’t know what it did to vampires, since he’d never seen it utilized, but the sudden storm of ash clogging his nostrils and f
illing his mouth as he stumbled forward was telling.
Seemed not everyone here was a master, he thought, right before he slammed into the cages.
And almost had his head taken off by a spell.
He dropped to the ground, crouching on the balls of his feet, his hand clenched on a cage bar. The mages, he thought, remembering the group who had glared at him when he came in. And they didn’t seem any happier now.
More spells crashed by overhead, but they were too high, the men making the amateur mistake of only firing at normal height. John didn’t fire back—as if he had the strength—nor did he shield, thus giving them no help in locating him. The small black out spell he was using was lost in the magic pouring from the mirror, and they were adding to the problem by grouping themselves too closely together. The spill over from their own power was helping to camouflage him, and John didn’t wait around for them to figure that out.
He crawled around the side of the cage, using the bars as a guide, toward the knot of magic that shimmered in the air just ahead. It crackled and sparked in his mental eye, lighting up the mages almost as well as if he’d been wearing night vision goggles. That was especially true around one at the edge of the group, with magic lacing his fingers because he was about to release another spell.
Which he did, just after John leapt up, grabbed him and turned him on his friends.
John heard a bunch of bodies drop, but he wasn’t sure he’d gotten them all. And he didn’t have time to find out. Because the mage he’d grabbed was fighting him and fighting hard, and the vampire guards were suddenly all over the place, probably drawn by the sound of combat.
He dropped the man with a savage blow to the neck just as a bunch of fanged horrors sprang at him, looking like the reverse of the mages in his mind’s eye. They were dark instead of bright, blacker-than-black outlines against the background of John’s spell. They were cooler, too, like deep wells of shadow on a hot day. He realized that, if he concentrated, he could detect them with some accuracy.
But the reverse did not appear to be the case.
John jerked back out of their reach, into the thick of the crowd, while they fumbled and stumbled about. They should have been able to locate him by scent alone, which was as much a primary sense for their kind as sight was for his. But the panicked sweat of the crowd, some of which were humans, the smell of singed hair and burning meat, and the general chaos of a mass of screaming people all trying to reach the exits at once, seemed to have disoriented them.
It wasn’t doing John a lot of good, either, who took an elbow to the head and a blow to his already sore back, and was then almost run down. Which might explain why the guards weren’t attempting to follow him. After a moment, they turned and went back to the cages, taking up positions all around them.
Because, John realized with a lurch, they knew the corpsmen were his target, and that he was unlikely to leave without them. They were waiting for him to come to them. And that was basically worst-case scenario.
Portals only had so much capacity. If this one was to take a few hundred men out of here, and from so far away, it couldn’t afford to have an army of vamps crawling all over it, too! He was going to have to lighten the payload.
He cursed silently, having planned to go along for the ride, since there wasn’t much more he could do here in his condition. But there was one thing, he thought grimly. And then he was cursing out loud, screaming his fury and pain and hopelessness at the guards.
A second later, John found himself surrounded. And a second after that, he was staggered by the power drain as his blood started to flow out of him in particles too small to see. A master’s power was impressive enough all on its own, and if these vamps were still standing and functional, they definitely fit into that category. But all of them together . . .
Was like a punch to the gut.
And although his shields could slow the process down, they couldn’t stop it. Mages caught in the middle of a group of vamps either got help, fought free, or died where they stood. There were no other options.
Which was . . . less than optimal . . . since only one of those choices was currently available to him.
John dropped to his knees, already feeling dizzy, disoriented and seriously unwell. And then he felt something else. Something worse. Something that twisted noticeably under his gut, in a sickening motion that made him want to vomit.
Goddamn it! He couldn’t even die in peace!
But you don’t have to die, the thought whispered seductively from somewhere inside him. Your shields could be better. Your shields could be perfect.
John shuddered, feeling the loathsome presence of his demon, the legacy from his father that he’d never been able completely to excise.
He felt it uncurl from beneath his ribcage, like a snake coiled around his spine. It made his skin crawl, and not just from revulsion. It was fear that clouded his mind, trembled his hands, clogged his throat. And made concentration nearly impossible just when he needed it the most!
Because he wasn’t the only one who had been energized lately.
He felt his arms start to shake from the effort of holding two spells, and all the while he could hear his demon whispering to him, as it hadn’t in centuries. A siren’s song promising anything and everything, if only John would give in and use its power. And it had power.
In fact, it had almost all of it.
Because what he’d been experiencing lately, both the accidents at the hotel and the huge amount of magic that he’d channeled today, had been merely the spill over from that night in Wales, the small amount that his human side had been able to absorb. But the majority of that massive torrent hadn’t gone to him. It had gone to the creature now flexing and expanding in a way that it had never been able to before.
It had gone to his demon.
Don’t you want to know what you can really do? it whispered. Don’t you want to try?
And, of course, he did. He felt the well of unused power thrumming inside him, like a second heartbeat. He knew it was potent; knew it was vast. But he also knew something else: it was treacherous.
If he ever had any doubts about that, the memory of his wife’s body, crumbling like burnt charcoal in his arms, slapped him back to reality. Because it hadn’t been disease or age or a freak accident that had killed her. It had been him.
Or, to be more precise, it had been the thing inside him.
And all the caveats in the world didn’t change that. Yes, she’d started it, initiating the feedback loop of power that came with demon sex despite being far too weak to properly participate in it, and thus being drained before she could receive anything back. Yes, his father had known what she planned and hadn’t warned him, hoping that a newly powerful, part demon wife would help to lure his son back to the hells. And yes, John himself had been to blame for not having interacted with his father’s people more, and thus not understood what his wife was doing or how to stop it.
But while all three of them had played a part in the tragedy, they hadn’t actually caused it.
His demon had.
Inside him was a creature with the same hunger that had motivated his wife, despite knowing that she risked her life. It was the same obsession that had led his father to try to force John into a life of prostitution, of sleeping with powerful demons in order to generate the energy needed to shore up Rosier’s rickety throne. It was the same fixation that drove all demon kind, for the only thing they really understood was power.
And giving it to them rarely ended well.
John felt the usual creeping horror of what he was come over him, before savagely shoving it away. He didn’t need his demon side—he never had! Even less so now. Allowing it the freedom to maneuver, to get those inky black claws into him, to possibly take control—
No! He’d die before he did that!
And you just might, it whispered, right before the ground began to shake.
At first John thought it was him, the tremors in his arms having spr
ead to his legs. But then the rafters began sifting down a century’s worth of dust, the floor started bucking wildly enough to cause the stones to crack under his knees, and a new sound cut through the din, the familiar whub, whub, whub of a portal. It was powerful enough to raise the hair on his arms, what the Circle’s weapon hadn’t already burnt off, and to bring an exhausted grin to his face.
You might kill me, you fuckers, he thought. But you won’t get all of us. You won’t get . . . us . . . all . . .
He was still smiling when he collapsed against the floor, unmoving.
Chapter Eleven
J ohn Pritkin was in hell. Not the literal one—not any of the thousands of worlds that made up the hell dimension—which was a shame. Because even the most fearsome of them had nothing on this.
He slowly picked up a loofah and began to scrub.
It was one of those extended versions on a stick, for which he had been truly grateful, until he realized: it didn’t matter. Silken water slid over silken skin, until John wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began. And the sensual rubbing of the loofah didn’t help.
God, it really didn’t!
He quickly put it back down and picked up a washcloth instead, which looked to be one that Jonas had pilfered from the Corps’ locker rooms. The Corps had little in common with human militaries, except for the firm belief that hardship was good for the soul. So, the Corps’ idea of a washcloth was more akin to sandpaper, something that John had been known to complain about on occasion.
He wasn’t complaining now.
Because now, thanks to a magical clusterfuck, he found himself dealing with the unsettling experience of inhabiting a different body. That was bad enough; incubi might be spirits and possess people all the time, but his human blood had kept his soul anchored very firmly in place, a fact he had not fully appreciated until this moment. But to make things worse, it wasn’t just any body he’d invaded.
