Embrace the Night Page 31

  I heard him falling, but I couldn’t help him. I lost my grip on the orb, which went bouncing down the stairs, disappearing around a turn and leaving the stairwell in complete darkness. The only reason I didn’t follow it was because I’d gotten my fingernails into one of the narrow windows, the only possible traction. The stench from the potions was unbelievable, but the cold night air from the window allowed me to breathe. I clung there, straining to hear over my own gasps, but there was no sound other than the wind outside.

  “Are you hurt?” I finally yelled, but only echoes answered. I didn’t hear so much as a groan from below. The stairwell was suddenly eerily quiet.

  I bit my lip, but there wasn’t really anything to think about. Even if I hadn’t been worried about Pritkin, there was no other way out. There was only one staircase from the bell tower and I was on it. And ley-line travel was impossible, even if I was willing to risk that again, with the orb at the bottom of the staircase.

  After another deep breath, I took the plunge, through a miasma of fumes and shattered vials that crunched under my boots. At the bottom of the stairs, the orb had halted at a wooden door, presumably leading outside. Next to its small puddle of light, Pritkin lay on his side in a crumpled heap, not moving. I forgot about caution and ran down the last few steps, kneeling in the small area before the door, desperately feeling for a pulse under the skin of his neck.

  He was warm, which I took as a good sign, but for a long moment I couldn’t feel anything else. Heavy strands of hair had wrapped around his neck, and I tugged them loose before trying again. I almost sobbed with relief when I finally found it, a tiny pulse that beat strong and sure under my fingertips. But a sticky wetness dripped off his jaw onto my hand, and after a little exploration, I found a nasty-looking cut on his scalp and another on his upper arm.

  I propped open the door to let some of the vapors out, and turned back to find Pritkin on his feet. “It’s only fair,” he said nastily, before grabbing me by the shoulders and slamming me back against the unforgiving stone of the wall.

  “Let go of me!” I twisted and fought, but he held me there while his eyes did a visual strip search by the faint light of the orb.

  “Give it to me!”

  “I don’t have it!”

  “No more lies!” Pritkin hissed.

  “I never found it!” I yelled, pushing at him but getting nowhere. “Now let me go or I swear—” He shut me up by kissing me, hard and angry, so angry that I didn’t know what to do except let him, silenced by him swallowing all my air. It was oddly like he was yelling at me in a new way, since all the old ones hadn’t worked. I felt the scrape of stubble and the indent of his fingers through the silk, pressing me closer, then he tore away, those icy eyes vibrantly green.

  “Tell me!”

  Startled out of fighting for a moment, I stared up at him, panting. There was drying blood tightening the skin on his forehead and a blooming bruise on his chin, but his eyes were glittering brighter than I’d ever seen them. A sweet, heavy warmth started to spread through me, and despite the cold I could feel sweat springing to the surface of my skin. Suddenly the idea of Pritkin as half incubus seemed plausible for the first time.

  The suggestion surged through my veins, almost like a drug. “I was looking for it when you attacked me,” I said, not fighting it. I was telling the truth, and I needed to save my strength to escape. “I thought you had it on you, but it wasn’t in your clothes.”

  “I said no more lies!” Pritkin kissed me again, hard, taking my lower lip in his teeth, biting. His lips were cold and a little chapped from the winter wind, but his kiss was deep, hot and hungry. My heart sped up, flight reflexes kicking in, but I wasn’t pushing him away. Suddenly my hands were clutching his shoulders, my nails clawing at the bunched muscles they found there, and I was kissing him back, brutally.

  I wrapped my right leg around his, feeling him hard against my silk-clad thigh, while he tore at the lacings on my back. I wasn’t wearing much underneath the dress—the tight fit had made a bra unnecessary—which became obvious when he pushed the dress down to my waist. The feel of the freezing air on my skin slammed me back into my body, as he ran his hands over me. The only minor satisfaction was that he didn’t look much better than I did. His skin was shiny with sweat, and it was running out of his hair and down the back of his neck. And despite everything, I wanted to bury my face in that limp hair, to lick that glistening skin, to bite that flexing shoulder.

  “Where is it?” He grasped me by the shoulders, shaking me roughly. The motion caused the dress to slide even farther, the silky lining slipping over my skin with a soft hiss until it crumpled around my feet, the transparent fabric looking like a heap of plastic wrap. I was left standing there in the freezing cold, wearing only panties and thigh-highs and Pritkin’s oversized boots.

  Rage and hurt thickened my throat for a moment, so that all I could do was look at him, eyes burning, as he continued his search. He didn’t strip me, but his hands ran over every inch, stopping only at the tops of my stolen footwear. “You don’t have it on you!” He glared up at me accusingly, his hands still on my calves.

  “As I told you!” It took everything I had not to kick him in the face.

  “You had time to hide it!”

  He started on the laces to his boots, while I furiously tried to think. I didn’t think another denial was likely to do me any good, not when he wasn’t even listening to me. “It drains your power, doesn’t it?” I said instead. “Seducing someone who resists you?”

  In a flash, he had my wrists pinned against the rock, his hips pressed up against me, between my legs. “Not when they’re practically starved for it,” he said softly. “It must be unsatisfying, lying with a corpse, night after night. I can feel the frustration in you, the desperation, the need.”

  I stared up into green eyes that glittered so brightly they might have been on fire. And for an odd, out-of-body moment, I really wanted to claw them out. “At least I know what Mircea is!” I spat. “Can your lovers say the same?”

  Shock lit those eyes for an instant, before it was masked behind the certainty that I was bluffing. “And what am I?”

  He’d had to guess about my weak spot, sensing the buildup of emotion from weeks of battling the geis but not knowing the real cause. But I didn’t have to speculate about his.

  “I knew as soon as I saw you,” I said flatly, hating myself even as I uttered the words. It’s never easier to twist the knife than with someone who once trusted you enough to bare his secrets. But I didn’t have a choice. If he tried another suggestion, I honestly didn’t know if I had the strength left to fight it. “You’re half incubus.”

  A look flashed across Pritkin’s face for an instant, like he’d been slapped, hard, and was trying to hide how much it hurt. “How did you know?”

  I ignored the question. I had to do this while I actually had his attention, or there was no telling where this would end. “If I’m lying, why did I take your things?” I demanded, my heart hammering. “I could have been long gone before you showed up, if I hadn’t taken the time to search your belongings. Why do that if I already had the map? Now let go!”

  For a second, something like doubt flickered behind his eyes. Then his chin jerked out in familiar stubbornness. “I will let you go when you return my property.”

  “I can’t return what I never had,” I snapped, throwing everything I had into wrenching out of his grip. He didn’t come after me and I snatched up my dress, before remembering that it was useless for concealment. I put it on anyway—the stairs were damn cold. “If you wouldn’t mind,” I said through gritted teeth.

  His gaze moved down my body again and my skin tightened from just the pressure of his eyes. Then he blinked and looked away. With a quick gesture from him, my dress suddenly became a lot more opaque. I didn’t thank him for it.

  I headed for the door, only to have it slam in my face. “We are not finished here,” Pritkin barked.

  I whirled
, so angry I couldn’t even see, and tripped on the too long skirt. He helped me up and without a word turned me around and did up the lacings. His fingers were cool against my overheated skin, and swiftly competent. The only reason I let him touch me was the certainty that if I returned to Mircea like this, he’d kill Pritkin.

  Not that that didn’t have a certain appeal.

  “Let go of me,” I said icily as soon as he’d finished. I felt betrayed and absolutely livid, but my body wasn’t smart enough to know it. It had liked the feel of his hands, wanted more of it, wanted it now. It was almost like there were two of me, one who heartily approved of the mage and one who would have dearly loved to see him dead.

  Then something occurred to me that I should have noticed before. “The geis. It didn’t flare.”

  “You said it yourself,” Pritkin said tightly. “I am half incubus. I can break through geasa during feeding.”

  I stared at him, speechless, as a myriad of pieces clicked into place. Rosier could overcome the geis, so of course his son should have been able to do so. But he hadn’t, at least not in our time. He’d preferred to suffer excruciating pain, on more than one occasion, rather than…what? Risk getting too close to me? Be tempted to repeat what had happened with his wife? A wife this Pritkin hadn’t had yet, I realized. No wonder he wasn’t so worried about using his abilities, wasn’t so careful to avoid touching anyone.

  A memory of how much touching had just been going on flashed across my mind and I felt a wave of heat rise in my cheeks. God, I hated him. But I hated the geis just a little bit more.

  “I want the geis removed,” I said abruptly. “That’s why I need the Codex. Can you do it?”

  He looked at me incredulously. “You expect me to believe that you have gone to such lengths for no more than that?”

  “Why do you want it, if not for a spell?” I countered.

  “To destroy it! It is the only way to be certain that it never falls into the hands of people such as yourself!”

  “Give me the spell to reverse the geis, and you can do anything with the Codex you damn well please! I won’t care.”

  There was dead silence for a minute, while he stared at me with a half-bewildered, half-angry expression. For the first time he looked like my Pritkin, the brash, sardonic, brutally honest man I knew. “Why did you not merely say so?” he finally demanded.

  “I just did! Now, are you going to give it to me or not?”

  Pritkin passed a hand over me, and I could feel my aura crackle. “You carry two geasa, not one,” he informed me after a moment. “And they are oddly intertwined. I have not seen this configuration before. How did it occur?”

  “It’s a long story.” And not one I could tell him anyway. “Can you lift it?”

  “Perhaps. If you return my map.”

  “How many times do I have to say this? I. Don’t. Have. It.”

  “If you didn’t take it, then where—” his eyes widened. “My cloak!”

  It took me a second, but I got it. A wide grin broke over my face that I didn’t even try to make less than vicious. “That would be the one you were wearing when you stole the map, wouldn’t it? The one Mircea grabbed before we left?”

  Pritkin snarled and I grinned wider. He said a few words, none in a language I knew. Probably some ancient British version of “screw you.”

  “Are you going to give me the counterspell or not?” I demanded.

  “Persuade the vampire to give me the map, and I will give you the spell,” he finally said, although it sounded like it choked him.

  I sagged back against the wall, suddenly exhausted. “Done.”

  We retraced our steps, but the cellar was empty and the raucous tavern on top of it was filled with people who were not Mircea. “Would he go after the Codex on his own?” Pritkin demanded.

  “I don’t think so.” Mircea was after me, not the Codex. “But he’ll know that you’ll discover it missing pretty soon. He’ll expect you to come after him. And he’ll expect a fight. So he wouldn’t have stayed here—it’s too public.”

  “Where would he go?” Pritkin demanded.

  I opened my mouth to point out that mind reading wasn’t one of my skills, but abruptly shut it again. The rose window, I thought, seeing it lit up in my memory like a huge Christmas ornament. It was the middle of the night, and the streets around the cathedral had been deserted. Where better to hold a showdown?

  I said as much and Pritkin made a noise that in anyone else would have signaled an incipient heart attack. But he pulled me back into the cellar and ripped a ley line open almost savagely, like tearing the air. A moment later, after another wild ride between worlds, we were pushing open the main doors of the old church.

  On either side of us were long stained-glass windows, glowing faintly with the reflected light of a few dozen candles. Not surprisingly, they looked a lot more authentic than the ones in the casino, with the glass rolling in subtle lines toward the bottom of the panes, thicker there than at the top, brittle with age even two hundred years ago. More candles lit a sweeping line of similar masterpieces leading toward the darkened front of the church. Where Mircea stood, washing up at a holy water font.

  “That is not possible,” Pritkin said, staring at him in disbelief. He couldn’t have sounded more shocked if Mircea had been sipping blood from a communion chalice.

  Mircea must have heard us come in, but he continued what he was doing. He stood with his back to us, the candlelight on his bare skin causing his muscles to fall into sharp relief. He’d washed the river gunk out of his hair and now he threw it back, the water droplets shimmering in the light. The scene looked for all the world like a really good romance novel cover.

  I sighed and Pritkin turned his glare on me. “He’s a vampire!” he said, as if I hadn’t noticed.

  “Yeah. And?”

  “I believe the mage is surprised that I do not burst into flames from the holy water,” Mircea said, toweling off with what looked suspiciously like an altar cloth. I was a little surprised myself, considering that he’s Catholic. But then I got a better look at it and realized that it, like the cathedral, had seen better days.

  Boxes, barrels and casks were piled here and there, clogging all but the main aisle, which was marred by a lot of muddy footprints. Outside, I hadn’t been able to avoid noticing that the probably saintly but definitely creepy statues around the entrance had been vandalized. It didn’t look like the revolution cared for religion all that much.

  “But, of course!” Pritkin sneered. “The water is not sacred at the moment! The Jacobins made certain of that!”

  “They vandalized the cathedral before turning it into a ‘Temple to Reason,’” Mircea agreed, probably for my benefit. “Which, considering their excesses, does seem somewhat ironic.”

  “They defiled it,” Pritkin snapped. “Naturally it now embraces something equally foul!”

  “But,” Mircea continued, “as we are not of their ilk, let us make good on the name. I have found that most men can be reasonable, given the right incentive.” He held something up in two fingers of one hand, while continuing to towel his hair with the other.

  “That is mine!” Pritkin took a step forward before he caught himself.

  “And you have something that belongs to me. I suggest a trade,” Mircea said, turning around at last.

  I saw it when he recognized Pritkin; it was nothing overt, but for an instant his body stiffened and his eyes slid to me. I shook my head briefly, but stopped when Pritkin glanced between the two of us. “What subterfuge is this?” he demanded. “Do you take me for a fool?”

  “No, not a fool,” Mircea said, with the air of a man who didn’t know quite what to make of him. I wondered how long it would take him to put it together. Magical humans could live as long as two hundred years, so there might be a few still around who were alive at the time of the French Revolution. But they wouldn’t look thirty-five.

  “This is how we shall proceed,” Pritkin said crisply. “You
will take the map outside and leave it beside the ley line. I will pick it up and open a fissure. As soon as I have verified that it is authentic, I will give you the spell.”

  “He already knows the spell I need,” I explained.

  Mircea switched his incredulous look from the mage to me. “And you trust him to give it to you?”

  “I am not the one whose honor is in question!” Pritkin said, furious.

  “You kidnapped and tried to kill her!”

  “I kidnapped her so I wouldn’t have to kill her!”

  “Mage, by all that is holy, I swear—”

  “Holy?” Pritkin’s sneer was the same as always. “You dare to even use such a term, you—”

  “Shut up!” I yelled, and it echoed oddly off the sides of the cathedral, like a ghostly loudspeaker. I could not take one more minute of this. “We don’t have a choice,” I told Mircea more calmly.

  “He has already proven himself treacherous! Trusting him again—”

  “I’m not asking you to trust him. I’m asking you to trust me. Please.”

  Mircea didn’t answer, but he crossed the space and grabbed Pritkin’s arm, so fast that I didn’t even see him move. “If you harm her, you will never see the map again,” he said softly. “You will not live long enough to see anything again.”

  Pritkin tried to shrug him off, but found that he couldn’t. “If you speak the truth, I have no need to harm her!” he said viciously. “Now release me!”

  Mircea reluctantly complied, after a squeeze that made Pritkin set his jaw in pain, and we all trooped back outside. Pritkin stubbornly didn’t rub his arm, although it had probably lost circulation, and he took care to keep us both clearly in view. Mircea put the map in the center of the cobblestone pavement and moved back half a dozen yards, which in vampire terms meant he may as well not have bothered to move at all. He could cross that much space in a heartbeat.

  I looked pointedly at Pritkin. He waved a hand at me and uttered a few guttural syllables. Nothing happened. He frowned and did it again. “I didn’t feel anything,” I said, except my blood pressure starting to rise.