Hijack the Seas: Seismic (Cassandra Palmer #13)

Chapter One

A n arrow flew by my ear and would have taken it off, except that I shifted out of the way just in time. I stared around in confusion when I landed on the opposite side of a small clearing because I wasn’t Supergirl. I hadn’t heard the arrow.

I’d shifted because of a tangled mass of roots on the forest floor ahead which I suspected of being the grabby variety, because Faerie’s trees liked human blood. I also liked it—in my veins—so I’d learned the hard way: stay clear of the damned trees. But that was hard to do in a forest, and anyway, it wouldn’t help with the arrows.

Why was somebody trying to kill me? I didn’t know; I couldn’t see much here, with the canopy overhead turning a sunny day into twilight. But it wouldn’t be the first time something like this had happened.

In fact, it’s pretty much a weekly occurrence. My name is Cassie Palmer, and I’m Pythia, the Chief Seer of the Supernatural World. Nifty title; crap job, and one that frequently resulted in—

Shit!

I had to shift again before I could even finish my monologue because whoever was out there was good. And had eyes that worked better in deep shade than mine. Damn it!

But I could cross territory faster than them since I didn’t cross it at all. I spatially shifted from one spot to another. It was one of the Pythian gifts, along with time travel and a bunch of time-related powers, only about half of which I’d had a chance to learn because somebody was always doing that , I thought furiously, as an arrow parted my hair.

Okay, now I was getting pissed.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the idea of being pursued by a bunch of murderous fey through a forest would have freaked me the heck out. Especially when I was sans weapons, sans allies, and sans the map I’d lost a while ago. But I’d learned a few things since then and managed to keep my cool despite arrows smacking into stuff all around me.

I’d barely finished that thought when I had to shift away from an incoming barrage, which was tearing up the leaves in my direction and which slammed into a tree in the shape of my body a second later. There must have been twenty arrows quivering out of the bark, mostly grouped in the head and torso region. So, plenty of enemies, and nobody was shooting to wound.

Not that I’d thought they were, but now I had confirmation. And had to decide what to do with that. Or with that , I thought, my head jerking up as something started shrieking.

It didn’t sound human. Not that I’d expected it to, considering where I was, but the terrible soul-rattling shrieks didn’t sound fey, either. Or not any fey that I’d ever encountered or wanted to.

Damn it! Why was everything here so hard? And why were the shrieks not stopping, since whatever it was should have asphyxiated or paused for breath by now!

I crouched in the shade of a clump of bushes I’d shifted into the middle of, holding my hands over my ears and thinking about leaving. Thinking hard, because the shrieking had been joined by yells and curses and a bunch of other stuff indicating that a diversion was going on, if not one that I’d had anything to do with. I could use it, though, to get the hell out of here, to figure out where I was, and maybe to get back on track.

But then the shrieks leveled up in anguish, and I sighed.

Being Pythia came with a boatload of duties, mainly concerning patrolling the timeline, fighting gods, and helping the little guy. And a little guy was yelling his head off. Which did not change the fact that I had shit to do and did not have time for this!

But the wails were pitiful, and I was stupid and— damn it . I spotted a perch in a tree in the direction of the screams and shifted there before I had time to talk myself out of it. The perch was in a pine tree, or since this was Faerie possibly not, and there wasn’t much cover.

Not that it mattered, as nobody was looking at me anyway.

A bunch of dark-haired fey—think humanoid, if humans were regularly seven feet tall, long-haired, and supercilious looking—had gathered in a clearing where the sunlight had managed to find a hole in the trees. The fey faded into the background thanks to their dark green and brown leather ensembles, which mimicked the shadows even without magic being needed, although they had no shortage of that. But something else didn’t.

Something else stuck out like a sore thumb because it was in the middle of the spotlight the sun was providing. Or because it was the focus of all eyes, some of them horrified. Or because it was a monster.

I blinked at it, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have a good view. I had an awesome view, a center balcony view, a could-only-be-better-with-binoculars view, and I still had no idea what I was looking at. And didn’t want one because that . . . was just nasty.

It was large, gelatinous, tentacle-strewn, and formless. If not for the tentacles, it would have looked like a giant had horked something up of the phlegm variety, only not so attractive. It was vile and oozing is what I’m trying to convey, and was grossing the fey out just as much as it was me.

And then I realized there were two of them.

They slorped away from each other like an overgrown cell undergoing mitosis, or maybe one had just been on top of the other. Couldn’t tell; didn’t care. I just wanted to leave now, and that was before the smell hit me.

What the . . .?

My hair, which was blond and scraggly after the last few days shifting around the wilderness, wilted even more in the funk coming off the oozing pile. And I was pretty damned high in the tree, meaning that it had to count as some kind of germ warfare down there. I gagged and tried to do it quietly while a fey lost his lunch in the bushes.

The rest didn’t give him hell for it, maybe because they looked like they were considering joining him. But then one decided to be brave, grabbed a stick, and gingerly poked the nearest bit of horror. The monsters did not appear to mind this or even notice because they were busy.

Screaming at a cow.

I had been too preoccupied with the horror show to notice before now, but that was definitely a cow. And it looked to be of the Earth variety. That wasn’t too strange, as the fey had co-opted stuff they liked from Earth over the centuries, including pigs, chickens, and cows, which they found to be as useful as we did.

Some of those had ended up being crossed with fey animals, resulting in some pretty strange hybrids, but this did not appear to be one of them. This was just a cow. A mostly white with brown spots cow standing on the edge of the glade eating grass.

Or rather, it had been doing so, as a tuft was still sticking out of its mouth. Now it was just standing because its tiny cow mind did not know what to make of the current state of affairs. Right there with you, buddy, I thought fervently.

I also thought about leaving again. Because there was a whole host of things I didn’t understand here and didn’t need to and nobody was bleeding. Until one of the monsters started scrambling away from the horrible spotted monstrosity, that is.

He was looking at the cow with the same expression that everybody else was using to look at him and backing off as fast as his tentacles could manage, which was pretty fast. And not looking where he was going, either because he was panicked or because he only had one eye and it was on a stick. Anyway, he crashed into a fey, who freaked the hell out and promptly stabbed him, and that he did notice.

And then he ate the fey.

It happened so fast that I barely had time to realize what was happening before the blob opened half his body, stuffed the fey inside, and closed again. Leaving the shocked-looking warrior peering out of the mostly translucent flesh of his captor while his buddies stared back in disbelief. Giving said creature a chance to take off with his lunch, lurching up and scrabbling through the forest like all the demons of hell were after him.

Or a bunch of really, really freaked-out fey.

The pointy-eared group tore through the undergrowth in pursuit, leaving me, the other monster, and the cow behind. Things were pretty loud for a minute, with the fleeing creature wailing, the fey yelling, and various bits of flora biting the dust as the ball of weird mowed them down. And possibly ran over a few fey in the process; I couldn’t really tell.

But then everything calmed back down, as the cavalcade of crazy got too far away to hear, and the forest resumed being quiet and strangely beautiful, which was how Faerie often looked in between cycles of violence.

The cow went back to chewing its grass. The remaining monster sat on the ground, its tentacles spread around it, and began to cuss. And I finally caught a clue and shifted down beside it.

Or rather, I shifted down beside him because the monster wasn’t a monster, at least not of the oozy variety. As evidenced when its translucent blobbiness opened up to disgorge a rather beat-up-looking man. A very pissed off, very familiar, beat-up-looking man covered in transparent slime.

“Pritkin!”

A dripping blond head jerked up, a pair of green eyes skewered me for a second in utter disbelief, and then the cussing ramped up to epic levels.

“Shhh!” I grabbed his shoulder and then pulled back with a handful of ooze. Which I ignored because I had bigger problems right now. “They’ll hear you!”

This was undeniably true. The warriors’ ears might look a little strange, but they worked just fine and even better than the human variety. Of course, they were currently busy chasing down a ping-ponging, shrieking nightmare, but still.

There might be others.

Pritkin seemed to agree with my thoughts because he lowered the tone of his voice, if not the viciousness. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, getting back to his feet, probably to shake me.

Or maybe to hug, I amended, leaning into it because I hadn’t seen him in a while, and so much had happened since then. The hug was moist and slimy and smelled like the creature he had just been thrown up by, but it was so good to be back in those arms that I almost sobbed anyway. But I bit it back, which was just as well because then the shaking commenced.

Of course.

I would have protested, but the blobby thing had reconstituted itself, plumped back up, and was watching us with an interested eye. I regarded it warily until the shaking increased, and I had to smack Pritkin’s hands away. “I came to find you, and what is that ?”

“You should know,” he said savagely, turning on the blob. “Get away from there!”

It had been sidling up to the cow while it watched us and had almost been close enough for a touch from a strangely hesitant tentacle, but at Pritkin’s comment, it jerked back. And said something in a screechy whine that had my ears wanting to close up and never open again. “Auggghhhh!” I whimpered.

“Stop it!” Pritkin snapped, and we both did. And then the monster and I looked at each other because neither of us knew who he’d meant.

“Um. I’m Cassie,” I said since there seemed to be some intelligence there.

“It knows who you are! You sent the damned thing!” Pritkin informed me while trying to scrape some of the smelly sludge off his clothes.

It didn’t work, just sort of smeared it around. He finally gave up and settled for glowering at me instead. I didn’t return the favor, being too happy to see him and also too confused.

“ I did?”

“Yes!”

I regarded the blob some more. I had seen a lot of strange things since becoming Pythia, like a lot a lot, but I thought I’d remember that. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Oh, for—you sent them to guard Mircea!”

I looked from Pritkin to the blob and back again and wondered which of us was having a senior moment. Considering that the war mage currently dripping in goo looked thirty-ish but was hundreds of years older than that, I knew who I’d put my money on. And I guessed my face showed it because he cursed some more.

“Did you or did you not ask Adramelech for help guarding Mircea?”

Mircea was the third member of the triumvirate of power we shared, a spell that connected the three of us down to the magical level and greatly expanded all our abilities. He was also my ex-lover, which was sometimes awkward as Pritkin was my current one. Or so I hoped, although he was not looking too happy with me at the moment.

“Adra? I only asked him to—”

“Stop calling him that!” Pritkin sat on a root that had conveniently grown into a nice perch, probably so that weary travelers might decide to plop down and be more easily attacked. This whole world was one huge Venus Flytrap, only it didn’t eat flies!

But Pritkin saw the smaller root that was inching toward him through the dirt like a snake, with the pointy end serving as its one fang, and shot it a look. “Try it,” he invited.

The root paused, then shivered a little before sinking back into the earth with a pissy little wiggle.

The cow chewed on.

I plopped down on the dirt because I was tired and hoped it wouldn’t eat me. “It’s his name,” I pointed out.

“You do not give the head of the Demon High Council a nickname—or a diminutive!” he added before I could protest. “And did you or did you not ask him to assign two of his best demon guards to Mircea?”

“Sure, back when I thought the consul was planning to have him killed.” AKA the good old days, when all I had to worry about was a jealous, two-thousand-year-old vampire queen instead of . . . everything. Just everything. I decided not to think about it. “But what does that have to do with—”

I stopped, a horrible thought intruding.

Pritkin just looked at me with a little smile on his face.

My eyes slid over to the blob, which was sidling toward the cow again and trying not to look like it. “Don’t eat that,” I said before I thought.

He understood me or chose that exact moment to stop and turn that one eyestalk in my direction.

“It’s not your cow.”

He did not seem to think much of this argument.

“Eat it, and I’ll kill you,” Pritkin added, at which time it plopped down again, and the eyestalk drooped despondently.

He was hideous and smelly and slimy, with a sheen of mucous-like substance that was already wetting the ground around him. But the eye had ridiculously long lashes, and the tentacles were waving about sadly and plucking up random things—a leaf, a stick, a rock—and examining them before tossing them away. I felt a surge of pity.

And that was especially true if he was one of the previously invisible demons Adra had placed as bodyguards on Mircea. They had been spirits, allowing them to watch over him more easily without anybody being the wiser. Including him because I hadn’t known how he would take my possible paranoia.

Sometimes, it was easier just not to ask.

But then he ended up in Faerie, and I guessed his bodyguards got pulled in with him? I wasn’t sure how that worked, but it would explain why this one looked so confused. Spirits manifested bodies in Faerie, something that had probably surprised Adra’s guys, who might never have had corporeal form before.

It didn’t look like this one was enjoying it.

“Is he hungry?” I asked, a little worried. “Should we find something to feed him or—”

“You are not. Going to sympathize. With that bloody thing!” Pritkin yelled.

I frowned at him. “There’s no need to yell.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. Only the fey started shooting arrows at me and—how did you end up with the demons?” I asked because I still wasn’t clear on that point.

Pritkin took off a boot, and a gob of slime slugged its way out. “They became lost after following Mircea into Faerie, and before they could adjust—to that and to suddenly having bodies—they encountered some fey. Who immediately became hostile—”

As if they were ever anything else, I thought, being slightly pleased that something I’d done had managed to traumatize the fey for a change.

“—causing the idiot twins to run off, thus making them more lost. They finally calmed down, realized what had happened, and became determined to find Mircea again and, thus, a way home. I believe they planned to stuff him through the nearest portal—”

I very deliberately didn’t say anything.

“—but they followed the wrong man. They aren’t used to having human-like senses, and I smell more familiar, being half demon. . .” he shrugged.

“And the fey were shooting at me because?”

“They weren’t shooting at you; they were shooting at me,” he said tersely. “You got in the way and are damned lucky you didn’t take an arrow through the head. You need to leave.”

I frowned as he pulled his slightly less slimy boots back on. “Wait. Why were they shooting at you? They looked like Alorestri. Aren’t the Green Fey supposed to be your people?”

Or partly, anyway. Genetically speaking, Pritkin was a bit of a patchwork quilt, but his great-grandmother had been Nimue, Queen of the Green Fey. Which explained what he was doing here because the queen had recently passed away. That had come as a shock to everyone because fey didn’t die all that often, other than in battle, and that went double for one who was a daughter of Poseidon and thus a demigod.

But dead she very definitely was, and thus a successor was needed. So, all the claimants, those closely enough related to the queen to qualify and crazy enough to try it, had been invited to participate in a contest to vie for the throne. Or to die trying, which appeared more likely.

But as far as I knew, the contest hadn’t started yet, so what the hell? The Green Fey might not like Pritkin much, considering him demon spawn due to his father’s blood, but they didn’t usually try to kill him. He was one of their princes, after all.

That won me a short bark of a laugh when I pointed it out, although Pritkin didn’t sound happy. “Tell them that.”

I would if they’d stop being homicidal weirdos for five seconds, I didn’t say, because I wanted to stay on track. “Don’t they know you might be their next king?”

Pritkin had more colorful phrases in reply, perhaps because it was the last thing he wanted on Earth—or Faerie. He’d once longed to be accepted by his mother’s people but had finally realized that a part human/part demon/part fey child would never be good enough, even if his fey blood was from the royal house. He had, therefore, concentrated on the human part of his lineage and left his dreams of being a fey prince behind.

But we were currently in an all-out war for survival against another king of the light fey, Aeslinn of the Svarestri, and his godly allies, and needed all the help we could get. Nimue’s army was strong and battle-tested, and they knew Faerie as we did not. And as king, Pritkin could command it.

But he had to win it first, which was why I was here. I had no problem at all cheating my ass off if it helped him and damned if I cared what the fey thought about it. There was just one thing I didn’t understand.

“Is trying to kill you part of the contest?” I asked, just as Pritkin’s head jerked up.

He was staring at something in the trees I couldn’t see, but I threw up a time shield anyway because Faerie.

And had no sooner done so than a dozen spells lashed it in a storm of magic that made the whole world crackle around us.