Chapter Twenty-Four
P ritkin didn’t look like he knew what I meant, but someone else did. The brilliant green of the eyes, almost neon bright a moment ago, darkened, flooding with black and starlight, like a beautiful night sky. The face changed, too, not in features but in attitude, in how he carried himself, in a thousand things that told me before he spoke that I wasn’t facing the same man.
And that the man I was facing was not happy. “No.”
“I haven’t even said—”
“Oh, forgive me,” Pritkin’s incubus said with a sneer. “I was under the impression you were about to ask me to fall on my sword!”
“Not for me—”
“I would hope not. As I recall, I don’t owe you anything.”
“—but for him—”
“My dear jailer, you mean?” He lifted an eyebrow in a deliberately provocative move, then flopped onto the straw pallet with the air of a man who had no intention of ever leaving it. And he probably didn’t. Feltin’s men were out there, so the safest place for us was in here.
“You have the rest of the power that Pritkin absorbed in that camp, don’t you?” I asked, coming to the point. Because I wasn’t going to outthink Pritkin or outcharm an incubus. The truth was all I had to work with here; luckily, it was compelling.
“Bollocks,” he said succinctly and got up again as if he would like to get away from me, but there was nowhere to go. I sat down because chasing him around the little room wasn’t likely to help his mood, and it was already pretty foul. Only I didn’t know why.
“I thought things were improving,” I said. “Between the two of you—”
“So did I!”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else.
“He took responsibility,” I added. “That night in the forest, he told me—”
“I know what he told you!” He walked over to the door and jumped up to peer out of the small, high-set window, although he had to grab the windowsill to do it since it was at fey height. But I guessed he didn’t find anything helpful because he jumped back down.
And turned around, leaning against the door and looking frustrated. Maybe because Pinkie and the Brain were nowhere in sight. I assumed that was who he was looking for, but I didn’t expect them. Bodil wouldn’t have attacked us if she didn’t already have a plan for dealing with them.
But she better not have harmed them, or there would be hell to pay, I thought, thinking of Pinkie’s loyalty.
“I need a cigarette,” the incubus said abruptly, making me blink.
“Does Pritkin know you smoke?”
“I don’t smoke,” he said savagely. “I don’t do anything. And I don’t have what you want, so leave me be!”
“But you do,” I insisted. “You wouldn’t have been able to surface just now if you didn’t. And there’s been a ton of other indications—”
“There has not!”
“You’re not as good of an actor as you think you are,” I told him dryly. “Pritkin would have never worn that crazy get-up to dinner, court protocol or not. He’d have worn what he liked, which would have probably included a lot of weapons—”
That got a snort of laughter, at least, because it was true.
“—and if others didn’t like it, they could lump it. Yet last night, he dressed like an Aquaman extra, a particularly sexy one, and didn’t think twice about it.”
“Around here, that get-up, as you call it, is positively monkish,” the incubus informed me. “You saw what the rest were wearing.”
He looked envious, as if he’d have preferred to go to dinner looking like Lord Bling and outshining everyone. I, for one, was glad he hadn’t, but still. My point remained: he had influenced Pritkin’s choices to a degree at least, which meant he had more power than he should have.
A lot more.
“That wasn’t the only thing,” I said. “He also doesn’t flirt, even mildly, with pretty waitresses. He doesn’t even flirt with me all that much unless you count sword practice—”
“And knowing him, he probably does!” the incubus said scornfully, but he returned and sat down.
“—and yet last night it was almost automatic,” I continued. “Pritkin also doesn’t stroll along with feline grace. Or pull admiration from a pissed-off fey woman who’d just had her stuff raided by a giant wad of snot—”
That got another small snort.
Well, at least I’m funny, I thought, my temperature rising.
“—or try to charm a ten-thousand-year-old demigod and almost succeed! Bodil was going to recruit us until she met me. Until I reminded her too much of my mother, and she threw a fit. And Pritkin never did that, never charmed someone like her. I’m more charming than he is, and I’m not charming at all—”
“You have your moments,” he said dryly.
“—so, yeah, you’ve been surfacing a lot. And that takes power, power you didn’t have before but do now, and I need to know how much .”
“Not enough.” He started to get up again, but I pulled him back down. And he let me, even though he didn’t have to. My skinny arms weren’t trapping him; knowing how much trouble we were in was doing that.
I just had to get him to admit it.
“I thought you two were reintegrating!” I said. “Pritkin told me he took responsibility for what happened with Ruth and knew you weren’t at fault. He said—”
“A lot of things!” As it turned out, black eyes could flash, too. “He was feeling horrified over what happened to you in that camp and was beating himself up over it—as usual. But in the light of day, nothing changed. He still doesn’t trust demons, especially me. He still doesn’t listen to anyone, especially me! And he isn’t going to.”
I started to speak, but he didn’t let me. I’d forgotten how much this version of Pritkin liked to talk, and now that he was on a roll, I was getting a lecture. I supposed that was better than nothing, so I shut up.
“If I had the power you seek—and I’m not saying I do—giving it to him would only trap me again. Leaving me at his mercy when he doesn’t have any mercy, not for my kind! And I’m not doing that, you understand? I can’t .
“It was hard enough when I thought I deserved it, when I was doing penance for my part in that bitch’s death. But now?” He shook his head violently. “No, just no.”
I scowled because that had sounded pretty final. “Look, I get it. I’m asking a lot—”
“You have no idea.”
“—but that curse could drive him mad if it’s anything like the one we battled in London. And as you told me once, you are him—”
“Like he’s ever admitted that!”
“—so it threatens you as well—”
“So does he!”
“—and you’ve helped me before, several times. Maybe I can help you now—”
“You can help by leaving me the hell alone!” the incubus snarled. He threw off the hand I’d put back on his arm, leaned his head against the wall, shut his eyes, and looked asleep. Or like he wanted to be.
And maybe he did. Maybe Bodil’s Somnolence was still active on him, too. Or perhaps he just wanted to forget I was here.
I stared at him, but he had that same mulish look I knew so well, that set-jawed, stone-faced stubbornness Pritkin got sometimes that never boded well for me. Or anyone else trying to reason with him. For such an intelligent man, he could be really stupid sometimes.
Especially about anything to do with demons.
His incubus half and his human/fey half had had their own little war going on for most of his life. That hadn’t been true when he was younger, growing up quite happily among humans and human/fey hybrids in old Wales. I’d met his previous self there and had been astounded at how easily he laughed, at how mischievous he was, at how at home he felt in his skin.
I’d never known that man.
Pritkin’s incubus half had been repressed for over a century, ever since it got carried away on his wedding night and drained his wife to death. That had sent Pritkin into a tailspin for years, filled with grief, guilt, and self-recrimination. For the first time, he had truly felt like the monster everyone thought him to be.
But that explanation for what had happened to Ruth hadn’t told the whole story. Pritkin’s wife had been part demon, too, and had wanted to increase her status and exchange her crappy life on Earth for a much more powerful, luxurious one in the hells by hitching her star to Rosier’s only son. But not simply by marriage.
She had wanted power in her own right, which was why, on their wedding night, she had instigated the power exchange that demons view as sex and which the incubus royal house was particularly adept at.
Unlike other demons, who could give or receive some of their partner’s energy in coitus, the incubi royal house could multiply it. Many, many times over, thus making an already pleasurable act a very lucrative one for both parties, as power was the only real currency in the hells. Rosier had made it the foundation of his wealth and influence, picking his partners carefully, as the power boost he offered was something the great demon lords would give almost anything for.
But great demon lords already had power to burn, which they needed as the process took before it gave. And it took a lot. More than a reckless, greedy, half-demon girl had had.
The result had been a shocked Pritkin suddenly holding the shriveled corpse of his wife in his arms while power surged through his horrified veins. He had blamed his demon half, but it had had very little to do with it. Ruth hadn’t told him what she’d planned, and it happened so fast that no one had had a chance to react before it was over.
And she was dead.
With her had died a big part of Pritkin. Or should I say, with her death, a big part of him had been imprisoned, for he’d never trusted his demon half again. They’d already been at odds over some of the things that Pritkin had seen in the hells after his father came to Earth to claim him, and that had put paid to any reconciliation that might have happened over time.
Instead, he’d locked his incubus away, pretended it didn’t exist, and denied himself the massive power boost it gave. And that was where things had stood for something like a century. Until I was being tortured in that camp, helpless and alone, and there was only one way to get me out.
Sex to an incubus was a conduit to someone’s power, just as blood was to a vampire. And the sexual torture those silver-haired freaks had put me through, and the sick lust it had raised in them, had been all the access that Pritkin had needed. He’d used it to grab hold of their life essence, doing to them on purpose what he’d done to his wife accidentally, and drained them of every bit of their power. Until they tumbled lifeless to the floor or puffed away on a breath of wind.
I’d used the chance to escape, while his incubus had used it as a way out of his cage.
Pritkin usually would have been furious about that, but in some of the memories Faerie had shared with us through the Common, we’d seen another side of his wife. She hadn’t been just a down-on-her-luck part-demon desperate to escape a life of poverty and powerlessness. She’d been an assassin, doing a job.
And guess who she was doing it for?
Enter Zeus, who had a problem. He was plotting to circumvent the protection spell that Mother had cast millennia ago, blocking the gods from Earth. And also blocking them from the hells and all those fat demon lords full of power that were waiting to be feasted on.
He needed the gods to hold this place against said demons, who disliked being lunch. But having the pantheon return risked a repeat of the situation he’d faced with Mother: a mad scramble among the gods for power, with anyone who turned out to be better at it than him trying to unseat him. She had done that after killing Rosier’s father, the previous prince of the incubi, and absorbing his ability to multiply magic.
She’d used the gift to greatly expand the power that all those demon lords she’d been hunting had given her, then turned it on her fellow gods, killing or vanquishing them from this realm. If she hadn’t been drained so low in the great battle for Earth that she nearly died herself, she could have fed using that same gift, replaced the magic she’d lost, and ruled here alone as she’d always wanted. But to receive you first have to give, and give a great deal, as Ruth had discovered to her cost.
And mother hadn’t had enough left.
But Zeus did.
Mother might have slain the great king of the gods, but she hadn’t gotten all of him. Wiley old Zeus had become suspicious about her frequent hunting trips into the hells and the power she was amassing. He had, therefore, persuaded a demon lord to carry part of his soul into those realms, where Mother’s gift for traveling between worlds allowed her to easily go but where he and the other gods had struggled.
And what he’d discovered there, too late, was that she’d found a way to make war on them all—and to win.
He couldn’t save himself from her wrath, but that small piece of his power, disguised in the demon lord he’d overwhelmed, had endured. He leeched off the creature’s power until he found Aeslinn, a more willing puppet, and jumped ship. And began trying to recreate Mother’s success, only with the incubi grandson this time.
Ruth had been paid to trap his prize for him, but one of Aeslinn’s functionaries had changed the order at the last minute, knowing what would happen if his lord obtained all that power. So, Pritkin had become her target instead. And she’d almost succeeded where far more powerful enemies had failed, by serving him poison after he helped her get home following an attack by some street thugs.
But the demon lord who had carried Zeus all those years also knew of his plans and got there in the nick of time. He proposed a different outcome to her: watch Pritkin, get close to him, and only kill him if one of Zeus’s operatives found him again. He had plans that involved the incubi and wanted Pritkin alive—and soon, so did Ruth.
After a while, she realized that no matter what she was offered as payment, it was nothing to what she could gain from Pritkin himself. So, she, too, had tried to emulate my mother and use an incubus to magnify her power. And had died for it.
Once Pritkin found out all of this, and his incubus helped save me from Zeus and then the fey camp, I’d thought they would mend their relationship. And work together as they’d been meant to all along. Reintegrating into one man of unimaginable power and far more peace. Only apparently not.
But perhaps I had one card left to play.
“What if I could give you more power?” I asked idly. “Like a lot more?”
The incubus cracked an eye at me because that was the one word that always got their attention.
“Won’t work,” he said flatly.
“What won’t?”
“Waiting for the Pythian energy to return and using my abilities to magnify it, thus breaking Zeus’s damned spell and getting us out of here in one fell swoop.”
I blinked at him. “Why not?”
“You know damned well why not! Every time we do that, it gets out of control. We burnt a pub down—”
“We burnt a god down!”
It was true—or close enough. We’d helped defeat Ares by engaging in the same activity that had drained Pritkin’s wife. But I was not a half-demon with barely any strength; I was a half-goddess with the added boost of the Pythian power.
And for the first time, Pritkin’s incubus had been able to feast.
First on my power, and when he was sated, he had magnified and expanded what he’d taken a hundredfold and fed it back to me. And then fed again on that , over and over, in a cycle of creation that had left the two of us glowing like a star. And feeling like we were about to be ripped apart because Pritkin hadn’t known how to handle it.
But his incubus did.
I was sure he did because he’d eaten the life essence of hundreds of fey without a burp! Like he’d helped me to send all that glowing power we’d made in Wales into the battle with Ares, directing it to rip open a portal in space-time and release another god onto the field. He was a Prince of the Incubi; he was born for this!
“This room is sealed, Cassie, not just warded,” he said harshly. “It means the wards are ancient, to the point that they’ve seeped into its very bones. If we call up that kind of power, there’s nowhere to send it if it gets away from me. The wards could reflect it back and immolate us both!”
“Or it could save us both, as it did in London—”
“In London, we had Mircea’s help. His family took the load, dispersed it among themselves, and acted as a safety valve. And in any case, you were locked in a battle with the king of the gods; there was nothing to lose. There is here!”
“Yes, there’s you!”
But the chin stayed mulish, the eyes closed again defiantly, and the head went back. Saying without uttering a word that he wasn’t budging on this. He wouldn’t risk my life trying to make more power, and he wouldn’t give what he already had to a man he didn’t trust.
And the fact that the man was him made no difference at all!
The incubus wouldn’t rely on someone who had imprisoned him all those years, and Pritkin wouldn’t trust the demon who probably reminded him too much of his father. That also explained why he didn’t want to acknowledge his maybe nephew, for fear that Rosier would come for his namesake if he knew and drag him off to the same hell that Pritkin had endured.
And I didn’t know what to do about any of it.