Reap the Wind (33 page)

“He killed nothing,” Adra told her, smoothing down the small moustache he’d acquired since I last saw him, I guess trying new ways of dressing up the pudding face. It was as blond as his hair, though, so didn’t make much of a difference. “He was saved by the Pythia, if only momentarily.”

“Momentarily?” I asked, looking back and forth between them. “Wh-why momentarily?”

“But it’s dead!” Rian shouted. “That’s what you wanted, entertainment for your creatures—”

“This isn’t about entertainment,” Adra said.

“—and you’ve had it! Now let him go!”

“When he has defeated an opponent on his own. He broke the law, invaded a sovereign state—”

“What state?” I asked, suddenly seriously afraid that I knew.

The almost invisible brow went up again. “You were there.”

“Rosier’s.”

I received a slight nod that I didn’t need, because getting Pritkin out of his father’s court had required getting into said court in the first place. And that had required Rian, who, as one of Rosier’s succubi, knew it like the back of her hand. But, unfortunately, the reverse was also true.

She was known by sight to too many people, who might have guessed what we were up to if they’d glimpsed her. So she’d needed to travel inside her host’s body, said host being the unfortunate Casanova, where she was all but invisible. And she’d said she could protect him, that he wouldn’t be in any danger, and we’d both believed it—

And now we’d just gotten him killed.

No
. I
had gotten him killed. I had put the damned mission in place; I had convinced Rian to help; I had ordered Caleb, a war mage friend of Pritkin’s, to drag Casanova literally to hell and back, kicking and screaming and protesting the whole way. And now he was paying for it.

“He did it on my orders,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. Because I doubted demons liked weakness any better than vamps.

“Yes!” Rian said, latching on to the comment. “Yes! The Pythia gave the order, and she just defeated your creature! This is over!”

“This is not over,” Adra said mildly.

“You’re supposed to be helping me find my acolytes,” I pointed out, trying to keep my voice level. “Not depriving me of an ally.”

“A poor ally.”

“He managed to raid one of your courts.”

“Yes.” Adra glanced over the balcony. “I am sure he was a huge help.”

I didn’t look to see what Casanova was doing. I probably didn’t want to know. “Then why punish him?”

Adra shrugged. “Process of elimination. The prince was punished already. You are a needed ally, and in any case, your power makes any such contest . . . unequal. Rian informed her master of your intent, and thereby won a pardon. And the war mage you used—” He snapped his fingers.

“Caleb Carter.”

“Yes. He is protected by a treaty we have with the Silver Circle. And even were he not, the case could be made that he was functioning as your bodyguard and was therefore under your control.”

“And Casanova? Why can’t he be considered a bodyguard?”

Gray eyes looked behind me. I turned to see Casanova fleeing from a group of tiny bug things, none bigger than the size of my hand, that were hopping along the dust cloud behind him, nipping at his heels.

I turned back to Adra and tried another tactic. “Why punish anyone? No harm was done. Rosier isn’t even—”

“I beg to differ. Harm has been done. Our borders are inviolable; have been so since the Sufferings following your mother’s time, when vast armies held them at great cost. The armies are no more, long since disbanded. But the idea remains. To allow anyone, even you—especially you—to violate their sovereignty with impunity would be to challenge that idea, and could lead to untold misfortune.”

“You’re going to make an example out of him,” I said, because of course they were.

I felt a lead weight drop into my stomach.

“We’re allies.” I tried again. “New ones. As a gesture of friendship—”

“But I am already making such a gesture, am I not? And it is not only I who have a say. The council will be hard-pressed to find a reason to return to you the one with whom you breached our borders.”

I swallowed.

Yeah.

That could be tricky.

“Cassie, please!” Rian said. And then whirled on Adra. “How can you—”

But he held up a hand. And focused somewhere behind my head. “Ahh,” he murmured.

I would have turned around, but I didn’t really want to know what the head of the demon council thought worthy of that sound. And because I was trying to scan the arena, to see if there was anything Casanova could possibly use as a weapon. But I guess those weren’t allowed. Because all I saw was the huge oval, terribly pitted now, and filled with scattered scurrying things. And a massive gate of iron-banded wood at the far end, which was currently closed but which several lumbering creatures were plodding toward from either side.

I didn’t want to know what was behind that door.

I really didn’t.

Even more, I didn’t want to fight it. Adra could probably keep this up all day, but I couldn’t, and neither could Casanova. We needed another solution. We needed one now.

What we got instead was more trouble.

A slender wrist draped over the balcony railing, right beside mine. It was honey-colored and elegant, with emerald green nails, and had a viper curled around it like a bracelet. The snake flicked a slender black tongue out at me.

I closed my eyes.

“I don’t need this,” I whispered.

“And may I ask,” a familiar, sibilant voice asked, “what ‘this’ is?”

I turned around and saw what looked like the whole damned Senate milling about the balcony, looking a lot less blasé than usual. Including Mircea, darkly handsome in a navy business suit, and standing behind the queen with the snake fetish. He looked slightly surprised, which was the vamp equivalent of gob-smacked, but right then I didn’t care.

Because why didn’t I think he’d gotten here through a portal?

“Wrong number?” I asked sharply.

“Right number, wrong address,” he murmured, all but confirming it. They must have planned to drag me into some kind of metaphysical teleconference via the link in Mircea’s brain, but got dragged somewhere themselves instead.

Good, I thought viciously. Maybe it would teach them something. Although judging by her highness’s expression, I doubted it.

The Senate’s leader must have been on casual mode today, because she’d swapped the robe of writhing serpents she usually wore to freak out the humans for a flowing caftan in bright green silk. It set off her dark, sloe-eyed good looks, and would have made her look almost normal except for the twin living bands wrapped around her like a belt.

She usually looked bizarre.

She usually looked terrifying.

Right now, right here, she looked pedestrian, ordinary, almost dull.

Except for the eyes, which were sparkling and open and lacking the usual baleful ennui she reserved for most of life, but especially for me. Right now they were animated, and curious, and swiftly taking in the scene. Like a child on Christmas morning, which somehow managed to be even more creepy than usual.

I suppressed a shudder and tried to move away, but a bejeweled hand reached out and grabbed my wrist, swift as a snake.

Wonder where I got that analogy, I thought, as another of her little pets hissed at me.

I didn’t hiss back, but it was close. It was damned close, especially when those green talons started eating into my skin. I was suddenly glad that I was almost tapped out, because if I’d had the power to spare, I swear to God—

“Where are we?” she asked, slightly less politely.

“Where does it
look
like?” I snarled, which I was probably going to pay for later, but damn it, I didn’t need this right now!

“Cassie!” Rian said urgently.

“I’m thinking!” I told her. And I was. But mostly what I was thinking was that we’d just gotten Casanova killed.

And then I knew we had, when the crowd went crazy, the wash of noise like a physical blow. And the huge doors at the end of the arena opened with a sound like tearing metal, cutting through even the cacophony going on below. I gripped the railing, praying for something doable, something easy, something, anything, that Casanova might actually be able to handle.

Annnnnd that was not it.

“The
fuck
?” I said in disbelief.

“No,” Rian whispered, her hand gripping the rail tight enough to bend it.

“How wonderful,” the consul said, leaning over the balcony like a girl at a parade, trying to see better.

I seriously considered shoving her in.

But then Casanova was running back this way, no longer trailed by anything, because everything else in the arena had just dove for cover, a hundred little creatures burrowing under the sand all at once, melting away like they had never existed. Leaving him alone in the huge space except for the gigantic thing that had just crushed one of the guards under a massive claw, with a crunch that echoed off the stands and through my head. And then I was grabbing Adra by the front of his natty gray jacket.

“Why don’t you just kill him? You may as well!”

“Cassie.” It was Mircea’s voice in my ear, and his hand on my shoulder, but right then I didn’t care.

“The contest rules are clear,” Adra told me.

“This isn’t a contest, it’s slaughter!”

“And the selection is random—”

“It’s
bullshit
! Give him something else! Give him a
chance
—”

Soft gray eyes looked down into mine, but they weren’t angry. They were watchful, curious, intent. As if he couldn’t quite figure me out.

And then Rian pushed between the two of us, her beautiful face distorted by pain and fear and the same impotent rage I felt. “Let me go to him!”

Adra looked at her. “You have been pardoned.”

“I renounce it!”

“We can
do
that?” I asked, my hands clenching on Adra’s lapels.

Like Mircea’s on my shoulder. “No!”

“Can we?”
I asked urgently, staring up into bemused gray eyes. Because I might be able to—

And then I was being jerked away, hard enough to almost send me to the floor, but for the arms caging me.

“Mircea,” the consul said.

“She isn’t facing that thing!”

“That’s not your call!” I told him, furious. “I got him into this—”

“And now you’ll stay out of it!”

“I don’t answer to you!”

“You are tired,” Adra said, watching me. “And your power is weak here. You have defeated one challenger, but I assure you, this one will not be so easy. Do you truly believe you can take it?”

“I know damned well Casanova can’t!”

“And you would risk yourself for him?”

“Yes!”

“He is not your kind; not your responsibility.”

“I’m making him mine!”

“Why? We were surprised that you would risk yourself to save your court, but they are yours: your power base, your coven. They give you strength as well as prestige. Allowing them to die would cut at both—”

“Is that honestly all you can see? All you can understand?”

“It is all most people understand. Why risk yourself for someone who is not yours? Why not sacrifice him and save yourself?”

“He’s a friend—”

“You lie. You don’t even like him.”

“How do you—”

“We know much. We understand much. We do not understand you.”

“What is so damn
hard
?” I said, looking down at Casanova—right down at him. Because he wasn’t running anymore. He wasn’t fighting. He was just standing there, below the balcony, staring up at us. Because he knew this was the only chance he had.

And it was, but I didn’t know these people, didn’t know what might work on them even if I’d been able to think straight. “Mircea—” I said, because he was the one with the golden tongue, the one who could talk his way out of anything.

Anything except this.

“The council will ransom him back from you,” Mircea told Adra tightly, his hand clenching on my shoulder, because Casanova was his, too.

“We will?” the consul asked archly.

“Then I will ransom him!” He looked at Adra. “Name your price!”

“There is no coin you have that we want,” Adra murmured, his eyes on mine. “Explain it to me,” he told me.

“I . . . don’t know what you want to hear.”

“The truth.”

“Would you believe it?”

“Try me.”

I spread my hands, desperate, terrified. Because that thing was coming this way, shaking the ground as it walked, and I didn’t have the words, not ones someone like Adra was likely to understand. How I’d had so few people in my life I could rely on for anything, so few who didn’t use me or stab me in the back or betray me. How the few I did have were so precious, so very precious: Mircea and Pritkin, Tami and Billy, Marco, and, yes, even Casanova, surprised though he’d probably be to hear it.

“He’s my friend,” I said. “He helped me. I don’t know what your criteria for ‘friend’ are, but I don’t have to always like all of mine! He stood by me—grudgingly, but he did—and saved me when he didn’t have to, and . . . and
helped
me. And now I’m supposed to turn my back on him? I’m supposed to stand here and let him
die
?”

Gray eyes scanned mine for a long moment, and then looked away. “No.”

“No? Then I can—”

“Not you.” Adra made a small motion with his head, toward the arena. “Rian.”

And that was all she needed.

Before I totally understood what had happened, Rian had shed her human form and dissolved into a cloud of sparkling mist. And flown over the balcony, diving straight into the tiny form of her lover, so far below. And disappeared.

“What can she do?” the consul asked, leaning farther over the balcony.

“Watch and see,” Adra said, right before we all had to fall back, when a scaly head came tearing through the balcony opening, ripping off chunks of stone, bending metal girders like aluminum foil, and sending a wash of dust and a blast of fiery-hot breath at us.

But not fire. Casanova wasn’t facing a dragon, because dragons were fey, not demon. And because he wasn’t that lucky.

And then Adra, who alone hadn’t bothered to move, made a slight motion, and the thing pulled back, rejoining the mass of squirming, snakelike heads on the dinosaur-like body below.

At least, I assumed that it did, but since Mircea had dragged me almost to the door to the room inside, I couldn’t see much.

“What is it?” I asked him, trying to see.

“Hydra.”

“How do you kill it?”

“I don’t know.” His jaw was tight. Mircea wasn’t used to being a bystander. Wasn’t used to having to watch someone else fight while he stood helpless on the sidelines. Wasn’t used to being the one without power in any situation.

Welcome to my world, I thought, and then Marlowe was beckoning us over.

He had rejoined the consul, who had returned to her former position as soon as the thing was gone. And appeared to be having the time of her life, kneeling on the edge of the precipice, because the railing was now mostly gone, too. There were just a few bits of curled metal and broken glass here and there, and a lot of open air with wind blowing her long dark hair around.

“It
can
be done,” Marlowe said, looking up as we tried to find a clear spot.

“How?” I asked, staring down at that thing. And searching for Casanova, who I didn’t see at all.

“Hercules did it—at least according to myth.”

“Casanova is not Hercules,” Mircea said grimly.

“Hercules was an idiot,” the consul said. “Don’t go for the heads.”

“What else do you go for?” Marlowe asked as Mircea kicked some glass out of the way to make us a spot.

“The
heart.
It only has one of those.”

“According to myth, the body would live as long as a single head remained.”

“Have you ever known anything that can live without a heart?” she demanded. “Including us?”

“No, but . . .” Marlowe looked around. He was still in the rumpled reddish suit from yesterday, only it was more rumpled now. Like his windblown curls, which were flying everywhere. And those dark eyes, which seemed to be having trouble deciding what to focus on. “I’m beginning to think my expertise . . . may need an upgrade,” he finally said.

“You really think that’ll work?” I asked the consul, my heart in my throat.

She looked up, and for once, for maybe the first time ever, she was smiling. No, she was
grinning
. “Tell him to carve it out and we’ll see.”

Sounded like a plan to me.

If we could find him. But it was like he’d simply vanished. The creature seemed to think so, too, prowling around the arena, the many heads stretching in all directions. Including into the stands in a few cases, lunging at demons who spilled back out of the way, causing what looked like tidal flows in the crowd.

But there was no Casanova.

“Can she make him invisible?” I asked, wondering what kind of trick Rian was pulling.

“No,” Mircea told me. “Or, if she can, she has never chosen to do so in four hundred years.”

“What can she do?” I asked, because I didn’t think normal incubus powers were likely to help here. In fact, I didn’t know what would, minus an army. Which Rian didn’t have.

“What can
he
do?” Adra asked, coming over. And dropping down between the consul and me, to swing his legs over the opening.

“What?”

“What abilities does he have?”

“What difference does that make?” Nothing he had was going to help him now.

But Adra didn’t seem to agree.

“It makes all the difference. That is what possession does. Occasionally, yes, it can give you powers you wouldn’t normally have. But far more often, it simply increases the ones you do have.”

“Increases by how much?” Marlowe asked sharply.

Adra smiled at him and kicked his legs some more.

The consul wasn’t the only one having a good time, I thought.

“That would depend on the demon,” Adra said. “But while incubi are not among the more powerful of our kind, Rian has been on earth for a rather . . . extended stay. She has acquired a great deal of power, and therefore has more to lend.”

“But what can she do?” I repeated.

Adra shrugged. “What can your vampire do?” he asked again. “Possession for humans will not increase their power greatly since, you’ll forgive me, they have little to enhance. But a vampire . . . well. Strength, speed, all the senses, and any master’s powers the vampire may have would be greatly augmented.”

“You know about master’s powers?” the consul asked.

Adra looked at her. “My dear.”

“How greatly?” Marlowe repeated.

Adra shrugged. “See for yourself.”

And, suddenly, we were. Casanova stepped out from behind the giant, hollowed-out shell, which by now was all that remained of his former opponent. He looked impossibly tiny from what had to be a couple of football fields away. Unlike his opponent, which saw him at almost the same moment we did, and went boiling down the length of the arena toward him.

“Mircea—” I said, gripping his hand.

“I’ve told him what we know. It will be enough or it will not.”

He sounded calm, but his hand was almost squeezing mine in two.

But I hardly noticed, because the hydra had already crossed one football field’s worth and was tearing up the second, and Casanova still just stood there. Not flinching, not moving, not panicking. Not doing anything—until the creature was almost on top of him. And then he moved, so fast I couldn’t even track him with my eyes.

But I could track the results.

The giant beetle shell suddenly popped up out of the ground and went sailing through the air, cutting a dark swath across the arena like a massive Frisbee. A massive Frisbee with a knifelike edge and enough force behind it to have bisected a mountain—or a dozen thick, snakelike necks, snipping them off like tender flower stems.