Embrace the Night

  I mimicked his movements, my governess Eugenie’s mantra in my ears: speed, timing, balance. Slide your feet across the ground, don’t jump about like a frightened rabbit! I was a lousy shot and was beginning to doubt that I was ever going to get much better. But I did know the basics about swords. Eugenie and Rafe had sparred with me often enough growing up to ensure that. Eugenie had defended the lessons to Tony by claiming that they were more exercise than combat training.

  She’d lied.

  Watch for the shift in weight, the drop of a shoulder, the slight tensing of muscles that precipitates an attack. And above all, don’t think! Don’t think about your opponent, who he is or how well he fights or what you believe is going to happen. You don’t know. Be confident but not overconfident. Stay open, flexible and ready to act or react.

  Pritkin’s blade swept down, then suddenly reversed its stroke as he stepped into a perfectly balanced thrust. On every wall, his mirrored self lunged with him—at empty air, because that feint was one of Rafe’s favorite moves and I hadn’t fallen for it. He recovered almost immediately, pivoting out of one pattern into another, far too fast for me to get behind him.

  Hit the person, not the sword! It isn’t the sword that’s trying to kill you. And remember, taller opponents have a longer reach, but they often leave their legs exposed. It isn’t only torsos and heads that are targets, girl! I made a slashing move on a downward arc, and got a glancing hit on Pritkin’s left calf as he danced out of reach. I doubted it would even bruise, but with a real sword, it might have drawn blood.

  Eugenie could have taken his leg off with it, but I didn’t have her skill. Despite her best efforts, I never would. But unlike Rafe, she had never pulled her punches. We’d fought with wooden swords, too, which was how I knew they hurt like hell when they hit. And she’d had no compunction about spanking me across the shins or backside with the flat of her blade if I was giving less than my best. Over the years, along with a lot of bruises, I’d accumulated rudimentary skill that, it seemed, hadn’t completely deserted me.

  Remember to breathe. We may not have to, but you do, so use it. Strike on the exhale, it gives you more power. Great advice, but the trick was managing to land a blow at all, which was suddenly a lot harder. Parry, retreat, strike, lunge—I was moving on autopilot as Pritkin kicked it into high gear. I guess he’d decided playtime was over. And I hadn’t even realized that was what we’d been doing.

  Within a minute, the burn of tired muscles was working its way through my arms and shoulders, down to my spine. Sweat was dripping in my eyes, turning my vision hot and grainy, and an exhausted headache was building inside my skull. But Pritkin’s sneaker-clad feet made hardly any sound against the polished wood floor, and he’d stopped telegraphing his movements. While the mirrors threw back images of him as an almost living extension of his weapon, his word flowing seamlessly into muscle and sweat and bone, I had to concentrate just to stay in the fight and not trip over my own feet.

  There’s no such thing as a fair fight! Use what you have, all you have: throw sand in their eyes, kick dirt, hit below the belt. Remember, your goal is survival, not a prize for chivalry. That last was one lesson, at least, that I’d never had to be told twice. I ignored the blade coming at me, concentrated on the space behind Pritkin, and shifted. A second later, I had the point of my sword in the small of his back.

  I hesitated, foolishly assuming that would end it, but Pritkin apparently had other ideas. He whirled, his weapon catching mine and spinning it out of my hand, his sword point under my chin, all practically before I could blink. “I wondered how long it would take before you remembered you can do that.”

  I shifted before the look of amused superiority on his face had completely coalesced, and grabbed my sword from where it had skidded to a stop under the windows. I turned to find him almost on top of me, having crossed the room at a run, and I shifted again just before he got a hand on me. I tried something a little fancy, hoping to save the few seconds it would take me to turn around, and ended up facing him.

  Unfortunately, my inner ears didn’t appreciate the sudden change in direction and a wave of dizziness cost me more time than a spin would have. It also made me stumble into him as he started to turn and we tripped and went down to the floor together, trying to move our swords out of the way before we fell on them. I tried to pin him, but he rolled us over and grinned down at me, eyes bright, face flushed.

  “That’s thrice now, practically back to back. What’s your limit again? Four?”

  I shifted out from under him and heard him fall to the floor with a thump as I grabbed my sword back. Or maybe it was his; my hair was in my eyes, along with a lot of sweat, and I wasn’t seeing too clearly. “It varies,” I panted, denting the sweatshirt over his heart with the point. “On the motivation.”

  Pritkin’s leg caught me behind the knee, and I stumbled, barely managing to move the sword before I impaled him with it. A hard body slammed me the rest of the way to the floor before I could recover, and warm breath was in my ear. “You’re not sure?”

  “Haven’t had reason…to find out yet,” I said savagely, trying to buck him off. Of course, it didn’t work.

  “It’s a good trick,” Pritkin said, not letting me up, “but of limited use if it’s the only one in your arsenal. We’re going to have to work on—”

  I gave a final heave, and when it had no more effect than the others, shifted once more. It was perceptibly harder this time, and the dizziness on landing was a lot stronger. I’d aimed for the far side of the room, but by the time I recovered, Pritkin was almost there. “Enough, already!” he yelled. “Making yourself sick isn’t going to—”

  “You’re just…a sore loser,” I panted, trying to get my breath back. Shifting the first time had been like running up a couple of stairs; this one had felt more like ten flights.

  “I wasn’t aware that I had lost,” he replied, sword point getting friendly with my ribs. But he wasn’t taking me seriously, wasn’t watching my body language, probably expecting me to shift again. So I didn’t.

  A twist and a step took me inside his reach, the pommel of my sword caught his chin and my foot hooked around his ankle. With a pull we were on the floor again, but this time I was on top, with a wooden blade against his neck. He made a choked noise of surprise, or maybe it was protest over the fact that I had pressed a little too hard. It wasn’t enough to break the skin, but it left a mark, red and raw-looking. I rolled off, my heart threatening to pump out of my chest, my legs rubber.

  I leaned back against a mirror, chest heaving. I would have liked to gloat, since I’d likely never have the opportunity again, but I didn’t have enough air. “I win. So talk.”

  “What would you like to hear?” he asked, sitting beside me. His tone was even—the bastard wasn’t even breathing heavily—but he dragged the sword point across the floor hard enough to scratch the wood. “That that creature forced himself on my mother, knowing she would die in childbirth like the hundreds of other women he’d assaulted? That only the small amount of Fey blood she possessed gave her the strength to survive until their child was born? That I exist solely because of his perverse curiosity to see if such a thing was even possible?”

  I blinked. I’d had a mental list of arguments lined up to talk him into telling me something, all of which now had to be trashed. The one thing I hadn’t expected was for him to just come out with it like that, with no embarrassment, no twitching. And therein lay the problem with every single conversation Pritkin and I had ever had.

  I was used to the way vamps quarreled, in convoluted, subtle conversations, a dance of lies and hidden truths, more silent than spoken. I knew that dance, those steps. But with him, there were no convoluted discussions, implied threats or discreet bargains, just blunt statements of fact that left me oddly confused. I kept looking for the hidden meaning when there wasn’t one. At least I hoped there wasn’t.

  “I’m beginning to understand why you hate demons,” I finally sa
id.

  “I hate demons because they exist solely and utterly to plague humankind! They have no redeeming qualities—they are pests at best and scourges at worst—all of which should be hunted down and destroyed, one by one!”

  “You’re saying that in an entire race there isn’t one good—”

  “No.”

  I knew what it was to grow up feeling that something important was missing from life, to have no reason to mourn people I never knew, yet to feel their absence like an ever-present ache. Pritkin certainly had reason to hate Rosier, maybe even demons in general, but I thought genocide might be taking things a little far. “And you’ve met them all?” I asked, trying not to flinch under that burning green gaze.

  “You grew up with vampires,” Pritkin said savagely. “Would you care to guess where I spent my formative years?”

  A little late, I remembered Casanova saying something about Pritkin being thrown out of Hell. I’d assumed he was exaggerating. Or not, I thought, as Pritkin jumped up and began pacing, his face redder than when we’d finished practice.

  “You grew up with those creatures, yet you defend them! I have never understood that, how any human could align herself with the very beings who feed on her!”

  “You’re confusing demons and vamps again.” He’d had that problem all along, and living around Casanova, the only incubus-possessed vamp, probably hadn’t helped.

  “Am I?” Tension radiated from his body, and his mouth tightened to its usual downturned line. “They’re self-centered, morally bereft predators who feed off any humans foolish enough to give them the chance. I fail to see a great deal of difference!”

  I was beginning to understand why Pritkin had never been a big fan of vamps. The way they and incubi fed might seem a little too close for comfort. Vamps took blood, while incubi fed directly on the life force itself, accessed through the emotions. But the distinction might get a little blurry for someone with his background.

  “It’s not that simple.” I struggled to my feet, trying not to wince at the ache along my spine. I’d twisted too fast or stepped wrong, and rolling my head left, then right didn’t seem to help. Pritkin noticed, but I didn’t get a neck rub. Somehow, I hadn’t expected one.

  “Some vamps, like Tony, are monsters,” I agreed, “but I strongly suspect he was that way before the change. There is no typical vampire, any more than there is a typical human.”

  He stepped closer, pain and anger warring on his face. “There is a typical demon! Rosier is no different from your friend downstairs, or from any of the others. Except in the amount of power he possesses, in the amount of pain he can cause.”

  “My father may not have been a monster, but he worked for one,” I reminded him quietly. Pritkin wasn’t the only one who’d had to face a few unhappy truths about his background. “I’ve had to come to terms with that, to accept that just because he refused to hand me over to Tony, doesn’t mean he refused to do other things—”

  “Your father was human,” Pritkin hissed, the abrupt lash of his anger hitting me like a slap, backing me up a step.

  “So are you!”

  He laughed his short, humorless laugh, and I realized that I’d never heard him laugh for real. He had smiles of wry amusement occasionally, but that was as close as he came. And even they were mostly in the muscles around his eyes. I wanted to see him really laugh, just once. But, somehow, I didn’t think today would be the day.

  He moved suddenly, so that we were pressed together from thigh to hip to shoulder, but I refused to give ground again. “Am I? Have you never wondered why your geis reacts so much stronger to me than to anyone else, sees me as so much more of a threat?”

  “It doesn’t seem to feel that way lately.” The goose bumps running up my arms were proof of that.

  “Because he was here! He wanted to make a point, to have me demonstrate yet again that I’m no better than he is.”

  “Wait—Rosier can block the geis?”

  “He is a demon lord. Human magic has no power over such a being.”

  “Could he remove it?”

  Pritkin grabbed my arms, his fingers digging into my flesh until they were haloed with pale, bloodless outlines. “You will not seek out that creature!”

  “I don’t usually go around trying to find people who want me dead!” Enough of them found me all on their own. “But if whatever he did could be duplicated, maybe by another incubus—”

  “No. No one else is that powerful.” His words were suddenly calm again, but his eyes slid away from mine.

  “Pritkin, if there’s even a chance you could do something about the geis, I need to know.” Before I went to MAGIC and did something really, really stupid.

  “What do you think I’ve been doing?!”

  “I know you’ve been looking for a solution in human magic, looking hard. But you hate demons so much, I wasn’t sure if you’d considered…another alternative.”

  “There is no alternative,” he said flatly. “Even Rosier could not break the geis, and he has no need to do so. His power can override it long enough for him to feed, long enough to drain you of your life and the power of your office—a fine meal indeed!”

  “Is that what he wants? The power of my office?”

  Pritkin didn’t answer; I doubt he even heard me. He picked up a strand of my hair and gave it a sharp tug. “You see how strong this is, how resilient? Do you know what someone looks like after an incubus drains them entirely? Hair brittle as straw, skin thin and aged, youth gone, everything—” He turned away abruptly. “I have a long list of reasons to hate that creature,” he said after a moment, with a bite in every word, “but at the very top is his failure to warn me about my nature, to take even one minute to help me avoid becoming what he was.”

  “You aren’t a demon, Pritkin!”

  “Tell that to my victim.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He whirled to face me, and I flinched just from his expression. “Then let me make certain that you do. When I returned from my sojourn in Hell, I decided to make a normal life for myself. I met a girl. In time, we were married. And on our wedding night, I drained her of life the same way that thing almost did to you.”

  I blinked. It occurred to me that I might know who the girl in the picture was, and why Pritkin had kept it. I should have known: it wasn’t out of sentiment; he was using it to flog himself. I could have reminded him that it hadn’t been his fault, that he hadn’t had anyone to ask about his abilities, to warn him of the danger. I could have told him that if it had been me, I wouldn’t have wanted him torturing himself over my death for more than a century. But I knew what response I’d get. The glare he was already sending me could have melted glass.

  “It was an accident,” I finally said. “You didn’t know—”

  “And I am certain that was a great comfort to her as she lay gasping her last,” he said, biting off each word. I’d never heard his voice so clipped, so cold. “Betrayed by the one who should have protected her, by the one she trusted most. Seeing me in the end for what I truly am, and being horrified by it—as she should have been all along. As you would be, if you had any sense at all.”

  “Pritkin—”

  He backed me up until I ran into the wall and there was nowhere left to go. The air around him crackled so restlessly that it was uncomfortable to look at him. “But they bred it out of you, didn’t they? You don’t mind the monsters feeding from you. You’ve convinced yourself that they’re just like you, merely humans with a disease. Would you like to know how your vampires actually feel about you?”

  I’d grown up around creatures who could kill me with the same effort I would need to squash a bug. I knew how they saw me, how they saw all humans. But just because you can kill something doesn’t mean that you do. Not if that something is far more valuable alive. It was the tightrope I’d walked long before I ever knew I was on one. “I already know—”

  His eyes went very green and flat, like when he’d been killin
g people who were too stupid to run away when they had the chance. “I don’t think you do. Believe that they care, believe that they love, believe anything that makes it easier not to see the truth. But understand this. To them, you are food. Nothing else. Anytime you forget that, you become vulnerable. And if you make yourself a target often enough, they will destroy you. Not because they hate you, but because it’s their nature. And nothing will ever change that.”

  I didn’t try to tell him again that this was old news. Because he wasn’t talking about vampires anymore, and we both knew it. And because he already looked like he’d lost a fistfight with himself. A pulse beat in his neck and his cheeks looked hot, but his eyes were shadowed. “Don’t tell me what I am. Just learn how to defend yourself. From them, or from me!”

  It wasn’t until after he’d left that I realized I still didn’t know why Rosier wanted me dead.

  Chapter 18

  “What, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes?” Billy hissed. No matter how many times I body-swap—not that it’s been all that many—I still get a weird tingle hearing my voice saying words my brain didn’t think up. Maybe I’ll get used to it eventually, but I doubt it.

  I glanced at the darkened window and saw what I’d expected: a swarthy, saturnine type in a too loud suit, with slick black hair and a slight overbite. Not the prettiest face around, but also not one to attract anyone’s attention. I’d have to remember to thank Alphonse for strong-arming his man into this.

  Possession tends to weird vampires out, mainly because it’s supposed to be impossible. Even low-level vamps are able to evict an unwanted guest with a little effort, and the stronger ones have shields formidable enough to ensure that nothing takes up residence in the first place. But Marcello had preferred allowing a hitchhiker aboard to suffering his master’s punishment. So far, he’d behaved himself, staying quiet and not attempting to wrest back control. I wondered how long that was going to last.