The idea of just passing out, dirt and all, was starting to look really attractive. But no. I couldn’t sleep like this.
I had to tug the shirt off over my head one-handed, as the heat of Caleb’s spell had turned the buttons into melted lumps and my left arm still didn’t work. I glanced in the rapidly fogging mirror and, despite everything, had to smile. Pritkin was the only person I knew whose hair came out of a move like that completely unchanged.
But the fun part was still to come: trying to strip off the still-damp jeans with only one workable hand. It was harder than I’d expected, as sodden denim tends to cling. I stumbled into a towel rack and almost fell on my borrowed butt fighting them off. But as Pritkin had never adapted to the newfangled idea of underwear—apparently they hadn’t had tightie whities in the sixth century—that was that. Except for a whole lot of dirt.
The shower was hot and I stood with my face directly in the spray, despite the fact that it woke up a thousand cuts I hadn’t noticed before. It didn’t make the welt on my ass, where I’d landed on the fence post, or the raw, red patch on my chest too happy, either, but nothing’s perfect. It did help with the mud, which had ended up smeared all in Pritkin’s hair and down his neck.
Soap hurt, but I lathered up anyway, scrubbing away the worst of it and trying not to think about the fact that I had actual hair on my chest. And on my legs, I noticed, as I bent to wash between Pritkin’s toes. They were long guy hairs that the water had turned from dark blond to light brown, acres and acres of them and not just on my calves. They climbed up my thighs too, I saw with mounting horror. And how freaking wrong was that?
I rested my forehead against the glass and just breathed for a while. Every muscle and nerve in my body felt tight and thrumming with tension, ready to part with a brutal snap if I so much as breathed wrong. Why was it always the little things that got to me? I could handle vast numbers of people wanting me dead—that wasn’t new—or demon attacks or crazy ex-war mages or even the weight that definitely
should not be there
dangling between my legs. But for a moment I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, handle the hair.
I’d possessed people before, I reminded myself. I tried like hell to avoid it, but that hadn’t always been possible. So why did this feel so different? Maybe it was because my previous trips into other bodies had been short, with the longest lasting a couple of hours. Maybe it was because I’d just almost died—again—and, hey, that never got old. Or maybe it was because it was Pritkin.
I’d possessed only one other person I’d known beforehand, and that had been by accident. It had lasted only a few very confused minutes, which had been more than long enough. This, on the other hand, was already promising to take my and Pritkin’s relationship to a deeply weird level, and there was no end in sight.
The horrible itching under my skin suddenly stopped. I cautiously ran my fingers over the wounded arm, the movement sending a little more mud and some dried blood slushing down the drain. But underneath, I felt only whole, unbroken skin, without even a ridge to show where the injury had been. Pritkin’s body had healed as if he’d never been hurt, all in the space of about an hour. It seemed that there were advantages to having a demon father.
Of course, there was a downside, too.
It was something I’d been doing a little reading on, lately. The old accounts were spotty and often contradictory, not to mention having been embroidered on shamelessly by every writer who heard the tale. But the earliest legends, before the romantic additions, all had one thing in common: they were pretty damn grim.
After Merlin’s mother died in childbirth, her family disowned her half-demon child. He somehow survived anyway, becoming a local curiosity who lived alone in the woods. Some said he was a madman, others a prophet, still others whispered of an unusually powerful wizard, whose human magic was strengthened by demon blood. None had thought to speculate about what it had been like, growing up alone, shunned and regarded as a freak of nature.
And then there had been the sojourn in hell. Pritkin had once told me that, although hundreds of years had passed here on earth while he was gone, it had felt like he was away only a decade or so. But a decade in the demon realms didn’t sound like fun to me. I didn’t know for certain what it had been like, because he never talked about the things he’d seen. He was the most guarded person I’d ever met, with conversations about anything remotely personal quickly running into a wall of silence. But he never spoke of demons except with contempt or hatred, and he’d hunted the more dangerous ones mercilessly since his return.
I remembered his pale face and tried to ignore a prickle of worry. Pritkin had grown up with impossible events as a way of life and usually took them in stride, but this was different. Before he met me, possession was something he’d associated only with the more powerful demons. Being suddenly thrown into someone else’s body probably reminded him a little too closely of the part of himself he preferred not to think about. I wondered what his reaction was going to be tomorrow with no assassins or exhaustion to blunt the effects. Why didn’t I think it was going to be good?
After a while, the darkness behind my eyelids and the hot water pounding my skin leached away some of the tension from a day that, even by my standards, had sucked. I was almost calm again, or as close as I was going to get in this body, when a ghost stuck his head through the shower door. I yelped and jumped back, and my foot slipped on a sliver of soap. I ended up on Pritkin’s butt, chest heaving, staring up at Billy Joe.
“What the hell?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
I dragged myself up, wincing, using the spigot for a handhold, which twisted and sent a spray of boiling-hot water raining down on me. I leapt out of the shower, biting my lip on a scream, and grabbed a towel. “What are you doing here?”
“You first. Because I’ve been looking for you for hours and when I finally locate you, what do I find?”
“Sorry you’ve had such a bad day,” I said viciously, patting at my red flesh. Damn, that had hurt.
“Not nearly as bad as you’re going to have when you get back. People are freaking out. Francoise told everyone the Circle has you, so the Senate demanded your return and, of course, the Circle told them to get bent. When I left, that vampire of yours was threatening bodily assault on Saunders if he didn’t give you up.”
“Why? The Senate knows where I am. They have a trace on me!”
“Yeah, and it told them you’re with the old head of the Circle.”
I felt the blood leave my face. “Have they mentioned that to anyone? Saunders, for instance?”
“Is that a problem?”
“If the Circle finds out I’m talking to Marsden, I can forget about us reaching any kind of deal!”
“Yeah. ’Cause that looks so likely anyway.”
“Can you find out if they’ve said anything? It’s important.”
“I can try.”
“I really need this, Billy. There’s some kind of internal power struggle going on and I don’t want to get caught in the middle of it. I have enough problems.”
“I can see that. Speaking of which, in case you weren’t dying or stuck in one of the Circle’s cells, Tami said to remind you that a bunch of kids are still missing. And that Alfred doesn’t have a driver’s license.”
“I know. Tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“And that will be . . . ?”
“That depends. Among other things, Marsden has a charm on a cord around his neck. He used it to bring me here.”
“And if you don’t get it, he can use it to bring you back.”
“Right. So can you—”
Billy shook his head, cutting me off before I even finished. “No way, Cass. I had to use a hell of a lot of energy to find you. I can’t carry anything in this state. Now, if I had a draw . . .”
“You aren’t the only one who’s exhausted,” I said, peering outside the door. Sure enough, there was a small pile of neatly folded clothes sitting there. “I’ll get some sleep and eat a good breakfast and you can have a draw then.”
Billy didn’t answer. I turned from closing the door to see him eyeing the frothy mass in my hands. I ignored the slowly spreading grin on his face and sorted through the results of Marsden’s shopping trip. I guess he hadn’t expected me to bring a friend, because all the stuff was for the body I no longer had. None of the lacy, frilly things was going to fit my new form, even if I’d been willing to risk Pritkin’s wrath and put them on.
I paused over the bottoms of a pair of pajamas. They were the plainest things there, light blue cotton with only a little lace around the ankles. But even they wouldn’t work. Pritkin had too much leg muscle.
“If the mage sees you in those, he’s gonna have your ass,” Billy said gleefully. He waited a beat. “Of course, come to think of it, he already does.”
A low throbbing ache had settled below my right eye. “Billy! Just go.”
“Okay, okay,” he laughed. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. No, wait—you can’t.”
“Billy!”
He faded away, still laughing. I was glad someone was having fun. I decided that I was too damn tired to even try to come up with a solution to the clothing problem, draped a towel around me and went to bed. It wasn’t hard to find my assigned room—Marsden had left the door open and the bed turned down in the room next to Pritkin’s.
I hit the cool sheets and stopped caring that I was in a strange room and a strange bed. The bathroom might be antiquated but the mattress was top-notch. I stretched, luxuriating in the way it took my weight, in how every muscle in my body was slowly going liquid—and fell asleep before my brain could remind me of all the things I had to worry about.
I saw myself standing alone in the middle of a field, with rolling hills spreading out to the horizon on all sides. I was wearing a simple white sheath and looked happy and unconcerned. It was bright and sunny, and a small breeze bent the grasses, toying with the hem of my dress.
With no warning, clouds rushed in from every direction, strangling the day. Their undersides were swollen and bruise-red, flooding the land with a hellish light from one horizon to the next. Thunder groaned and rain began to fall, but the droplets had the same ruddy tinge as the clouds. And along with the taste of lightning in the air was an acid tang with a dark undercurrent of sweetness.
A drizzling cascade of thick, scarlet blood hissed down, like the leavings of a slaughterhouse, spattering my skin, my hair, my pale linen shift, before running in rivulets down my body. It drenched the gown and pooled under my feet, soaking the soil until it softened, until it opened up and I began to sink. And still the rain came, pouring into the earth, widening the fissure until I couldn’t see myself anymore, until it swallowed me whole.
The red tide didn’t stop there, but spread outward in all directions, like water rippling from a thrown stone. And where a moment before there had been abundant life, green and lush and full of health, there was only dust and decay, everything brown and withered and so very still.
I woke in a pool of sickly green light—moonlight filtered through the vines that draped the only window like curtains. I lay there, my heart hammering in my chest, and tried to tell myself that it had just been a nightmare. I was overdue for one, and my subconscious had never been subtle.
But that hadn’t had the flavor of a dream, not even of a nightmare. I’d had enough visions to know one when it hit me between the eyes. Something was wrong.
I mentally rolled my eyes while trying to calm my rapid breathing. Of course something was wrong! The Circle was trying to kill me, I’d let Tami down, I’d just witnessed a wood full of monsters and, oh yeah, I was in the wrong body! It would be more surprising if something went right for a change!
But somehow, the litany of my problems didn’t sound quite right. None of those matched the apocalyptic visions my power kept showing me. A dead Vegas, an abandoned highway turned cemetery, and now a scene of destruction with me at the center.
I shivered in the warmth of the suddenly claustrophobic little room, dizzy and half sick with too many swirling emotions. Ever since the destruction of MAGIC, it had felt like a storm was building. Something behind the scenes that I couldn’t quite see, couldn’t quite grasp, but something important nonetheless. Something vital.
I rolled onto my side and stared at the darkness. This last vision had been the most disturbing of all. Because it seemed to be saying that the destruction started with me. I hadn’t summoned the bloody storm, but it had focused on me, almost as if it was using me to spread the wave of death.
Was my power trying to warn me that if the Circle succeeded in killing me, we’d lose the war? That would certainly explain the devastation. If we lost, I was under no illusion about what Apollo would do. The magical community had been the direct cause of his banishment; he wasn’t likely to leave any of us alive to do it a second time. Even his dark mage allies might be surprised at the “reward” they received for helping him out.
I flopped onto my back, frustrated as hell. That interpretation seemed to fit, but I didn’t see what I could do about it. I was already doing my best to come to some kind of deal with the damn Circle! I couldn’t force them to accept me, any more than I could force them to get their heads out of their butts, look around and realize that we were in the middle of a war! We couldn’t afford the infighting, as I’d been pointing out for some time.
Only nobody seemed to be listening.
I groaned and put my pillow over my head. I really wished Mircea was there to knock me out again. I didn’t want to dream. Especially not when the only thing I got out of it was a lousy night’s sleep.
I woke a second time stiff with pain. There was a dull throb in my right ankle from some injury not noticed yesterday, soreness in my back and lingering tenderness in the injured arm and the abused throat, all of it slowly forming a picture of a body again. A body with stubble scraping bright against my cheeks and hair a lot
spikier
than normal.