Tempt the Stars

Chapter Thirty

I don’t know what I’d expected. Maybe a courtroom or a boardroom, something made to look comfortingly familiar to human eyes. But all that had ended at the door. I guess if you made it this far, you either weren’t supposed to need comforting or weren’t thought to deserve it.

I wondered which category we fit in as I gazed around, trying to get a grip.

It was a little hard, since there was nothing to grip on. It was like we’d stepped out of a spaceship into a star field, being suddenly confronted by a big, dark space and hundreds, maybe thousands, of versions of the light creature I’d seen on the drag. Some were small and dim, others large and brilliant, but I couldn’t tell if that had to do with power or if some were just closer than others.

I couldn’t tell much of anything else, either, since I literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. There was plenty of light in here, but it didn’t seem to reflect on anything. It was like the space between the stars, limitless and black, just a featureless void.

And creepy as hell.

It was also really inconvenient. Not only couldn’t I see Pritkin’s face, or Caleb’s or even Casanova’s despite the fact that he’d been right beside me a second ago, but the utter darkness was playing havoc with my sense of direction. I kept thinking I was about to fall over but couldn’t seem to do that, either. Or maybe I already had. My brain kept sending me weird sensations, like maybe I wasn’t entirely vertical anymore.

It sort of felt like we were floating, just random spirits washing along on the tide, me, the guys, a bunch of pissed-off demon lords . .

“We all float down here,” Caleb muttered, somewhere off to my left, as if he’d heard me. And yes, that’s what I need right now, Caleb, I thought viciously, Stephen freaking King. But, for once, my brain didn’t latch onto the prompt and start torturing me. Maybe because it already had that covered.

It was so unbelievably quiet. After that initial statement, nothing else was said. I didn’t know if they were waiting for us, if we were supposed to do or say something, but nobody was. Including Pritkin, who had been here before, so presumably knew the drill. So I didn’t, either, but it wasn’t fun.

I’d read somewhere that the human brain doesn’t do so well when deprived of the usual sources of input. Like when people go into those sound-deadening chambers that cut out normal background noise. It would seem like it should be restful, peaceful even, all that quiet . .

But after a few minutes, their input-starved brains start to freak out, because they need that kind of stuff for navigation and balance and to not start imagining monsters in the corners.

Not that that was an issue here.

But only because this place didn’t have corners.

No, it just had a crap-load of things that went bump in the night and who didn’t like me much and who ate people anyway and who probably thought they were due some payback after everything Mom had put them through and—shut up, Cassie.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be good. Except that when I shut down my mental babble, I started having trouble with the auditory stuff, half-heard whispers and distant, not-found-on-earth sounds. And odd rustlings, like if I could see behind the collective light show, what was there wouldn’t look entirely human. Or, you know, at all.

And okay, maybe I’d been wrong.

Maybe dark wasn’t so bad.

And then it suddenly wasn’t anymore.

Two things happened at once: my mother popped into the middle of the huge space, shedding a large halo of light around her, and a massive power drain hit, hard enough to send me staggering.

Not a normal I’m-so-tired drain, like the one I’d been experiencing lately . . . like ever since I visited her. And yeah, maybe I should have put that together before now. But this was worse, and also a lot more literal, as if all that power I hadn’t been able to access for things like shifting and fighting and saving my life had been welling up, like a wall of bright water behind a dam. A dam that had just been breached.

And oh, crap.

I could almost see it, a sparkling river of power flowing from me to her, curling around her feet in a glistening stream. Or maybe a flood because this was way, way more power than I used for shifting or stopping time or . . . or anything. Way more than I’d ever channeled at once before in my life.

And that was despite the fact that she wasn’t really here. I could see stars through her on the other side, although she wasn’t a ghost. I knew ghosts. It was more like she was on an intertemporal version of Skype.

And the signal was running straight through me.

So it took me a moment to pull myself together, to pay attention to something besides the forceful complaints of my too-human body, and to notice—that she looked exactly the same.

Okay, maybe not exactly. There were a few changes; the mane of bright hair was a copper flame in the darkness, the violet eyes were huge and luminous, the porcelain skin glowed like it had its own light source. But she was still dressed in simple white, she wasn’t thirty feet tall or a mass of boiling energy like the last god I’d seen, and she wasn’t carrying any of the props I suppose I’d subconsciously expected: bows, arrows, shield, crown. . .

It wasn’t that I was disappointed . . . exactly. It’s just that, well, we could have used a little intimidation factor right now. Instead, she took a moment to survey the scene and then smiled, almost coquettishly. “It has been a long time, my lords. Miss me?”

Not cool, Mom, I thought a little desperately, as an unhappy rumble reverberated around the room.

But it didn’t seem to bother her. Long eyelashes shadowed porcelain cheeks for a moment as a wry smile tugged at her lips. “No. I suppose not.”

“We know you, oh, Ninmesarra.”

One of the stars dropped from the sky, transforming into a pleasant-looking man in a dark business suit. He was blond, like Rosier, but the similarities ended there. His hair was thin and sleeked back, his face was round and not particularly memorable, except for a noticeable cleft in an otherwise unremarkable chin. He looked young, maybe my age, maybe a few years older, and his voice was mild, almost sweet.

I frowned at him.

He had no business being a demon.

“What we do not know is why you come before us,” he added, stopping a few feet away from the glow Mother was shedding on—yes, there was a floor down there, I guess for the use of us corporeal types. I could see it when he walked, in the shadows shed by his body. Because Mother’s light did throw them.

And it was amazing how much better I felt, just seeing those few square feet of normality. I picked my feet up, one at a time, and put them back down again, deliberately scraping them over the floor I could actually feel now. And the weird loop-de-loop my brain had been do

ing quieted down somewhat.

Too bad it didn’t do anything about the power drain.

Mother glanced at me. “Communication using Seidr is difficult for humans, and my daughter must carry the burden alone. I will therefore be blunt, for my time here is brief. She has come to ask you for the life of one man. I . . . have not.”

That did get a reaction, in the form of a dull blink, from me. And a mental replay of some of Pritkin’s history lesson. Please tell me I haven’t fucked this up, I thought blankly. Please, please, please . .

“Then why are you here?” the man asked, frowning slightly. As if he wasn’t any happier with her answer than I was.

“To grant you a boon, Adra. Or should I say, another?”

“When has the World Destroyer ever done us anything but harm?” It was a harsher voice this time, but I couldn’t tell where it came from.

Until a shorter, stouter figure stomped onto the bit of floor Mother’s light was illuminating.

And, okay, that was better. The first guy might have lulled me into a false sense of security, had I met him anywhere else, but that wasn’t an issue with this one. Not that that meant a damn—for all I knew, the new guy was a pushover. I’d learned from dealing with vamps that it didn’t do to judge on looks.

But that was kind of hard when the looks in question were so bizarre.

He—and I was guessing that solely based on voice— was pasty-pale and lumpy under a dark robe. And as far as I could tell, he had no facial features a human would recognize. He did have a head; at least I was assuming that was what the bulge on what I was also assuming were shoulders could be called, although it was a toss-up. But in place of eyes, nose, and mouth, he had a bunch of feelers or tentacles or, hell, I don’t know, white waving things emerging from pustules on the lump like the strands on an anemone. They were surrounding a hole lined with what had to be at least a couple of hundred tiny, pointy teeth.

And okay, maybe that was the mouth. I didn’t know, because I didn’t want to get close enough to find out. And yeah, that was me being species-ist and bigoted and whatever, but . .

I still didn’t.

But Mother didn’t look bothered. She lifted a single eyebrow, the way I’d never been able to do. Every time I tried it, both of mine went up, leaving me looking surprised instead of elegantly amused. But she nailed it.

“When, Asag? When I killed Ninurta, and set your people free from ten thousand years of bondage. When I slayed Pazuzu along with half his legions, and thus put an end to the war you could not. When the great Kamish fled from me, bleeding from a thousand wounds, and weak enough to allow you to hunt and exile him—”

“You did none of that for us! You were not trying to save us!” The voice was furious.

“Of course not. But the result of my actions was helpful, was it not? Or have you forgotten how they scourged you, the ones you now term ‘Ancient Horrors,’ but whom once you called lords and served humbly along with all your kin? Have you so quickly forgotten how they gloried in blood and war, while your people suffered in want and endless fear, waiting to be called up again and again, for no victory was ever enough, and no defeat deemed final . . . ?”

Mom kept talking, but I was having real trouble concentrating on her.

I was experiencing something like the electric frisson I’d felt with Mircea, only that was like saying a raindrop felt like a deluge. And okay, yeah, this might explain a few things. Like how I kept popping into other people’s heads, or them into mine . . . or it might have if I knew what the crap was going on. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t focus with what felt like a few thousand volts running along every vein.

Help, I thought vaguely.

“They left you bleeding on the battlefield,” Mother was saying. “Fodder for the carrion eaters. Or cowering behind your wards, alone on your little worlds, unable to grow or interact or explore, for fear of what prowled in the night—”

“You chief of all!” The demon sounded like he was choking.

“Oh, not chief, Asag, surely. Not for you. I only preyed on the powerful.”

The room laughed, if slightly uncomfortably. It didn’t do much to break the tension. I had a feeling nothing would.

“Whatever you may think of me,” Mother continued, “the fact remains that the killing of the great ones allowed saner voices to prevail at many courts, helped to bring about the end of the ancient wars, and did much to usher in the current era of, if not peace, at least of more stability than you have ever known.”

“And we should thank you for this?” the one she’d called Adra asked mildly.

“No, but you should, perhaps, thank me for thousands of years of freedom from my people’s depredations. When I barred them from earth, it cut them off from your worlds as well. You may think I took a heavy toll on your numbers, but how many would they have taken? In more than four millennia, how many?”

“Do you hear?” Asag demanded. “She is our benefactor now!”

“It is difficult to hear anything,” another voice interjected. “Over your chatter. Some of us would prefer to hear the Queen of Heaven.”

“Heaven is where she should have stayed. Along with the rest of her kind!”

“But we did not stay. We will not stay,” Mother said sharply. “You asked me why I came; it was to tell you this. My people have become desperate. They feasted in the good years, and grew strong. But also far more numerous. And unlike you, they did not restrict their population. They come now because they must; our world cannot support so many, even at a basic level. And when they come, whatever the price, they will come for you. And they will not take merely the ancient ones and be done with it, as I did. They will take you all.”

“Suddenly, they can return, after being barred for so long?” the one she called Adra asked. “Suddenly, your great protection fails?”

He sounded less crazed than the other guy, but I wasn’t sure he was any less skeptical. I guess I couldn’t blame him; it sounded like she’d played them pretty well in the past. But if she was going to bring them around now, she’d better hurry.

I’d passed tingly, traveled through fiery, said good-bye to scorching. And was starting to approach whatever it was called when one of those cartoon characters pushed a finger in a light socket and it lit him up, showing the skeleton through the skin. Even my hair felt crunchy. A human wasn’t meant to channel this much raw power.

And this one wasn’t going to be doing it for much longer.

“No, but as their hunger grows, so does their desperation,” Mother said, more quickly. “They will now risk things they once would have scorned. And I am no longer here, to be a bulwark for the twin worlds, or for you.”

“That sort of bulwark we can do without!” Asag said. “Do you not see what she is doing?” he asked his fellow demons. “Even from the grave she strikes at us! She uses her human child to speak to us, just as she would use her and the incubus’ spawn to finish what she began. And destroy us all!”

“My son has nothing to do with this!” Rosier’s voice rang out from somewhere. “I told you, it’s that girl—”

“Be silent! If you had not opposed his execution years ago, we would not be facing this peril now!”

“The peril you face is not of their making, Asag,” Mother said mildly. “Your paranoia is as strong as ever, and as ever it is misplaced.”

The demon started to respond, but was cut off by the demon Mom had called Adra. “You may voice your concerns afterward, my lord. For now, let her speak.”

“It is not Asag’s ramblings that you need to fear,” she said. “Or others like him. It is those too timid to speak now, but who, when I am gone, will cloak their fear in the voice of reason. We will do as we did before, they will say. We will take refuge behind our walls, behind our locked and barred gates, and wait. It saved us once; why not again? And from enemies who may never return, or who if they do will not have the same skill as She Who Controls the Paths. They did not dare to hunt us before, in our own lands. They will not dare now. We are safe. . . ”

She trailed off, gentle mocking in her tone, and the room became deadly quiet.

“I come to tell you that you are not safe. You were only so before if you did not interest me. I could have taken any of you, anytime I pleased, and there are those now as powerful as I once was. They do not have my gift, no. But they have others. And they will use them.”

“Lies!” Asag exploded. “Lies! Who is the only one who hunted us, who used us, for whom we swore eternal hatred? Have you so quickly forgotten?”

“We have forgotten nothing,” Adra said. “And I have warned you once.”

At least, I thought that’s what he said. I could barely hear over my heartbeat anymore, I couldn’t feel my legs, and my whole body was trembling like I had a fever. I felt someone’s hand on my arm, clenching tight, but I couldn’t tell whose. Someone who was trying to keep me upright, but I was past caring. I didn’t need to be on my feet; I just needed this to be over. I just needed . .

To give her time to finish.

Mother’s eyes swept the room, and there was no amusement in her voice now, no banter, no teasing. It was flat and uncompromising, the voice of an oracle in full control of her power. In spite of everything, it sent a wash of gooseflesh over my arms.

I wondered if anyone else realized; she wasn’t just talking anymore.

She was prophesying.

“You are poised on a razor’s edge. Join my daughter. Fight with her. Give her the incubus and whatever other help you can. For if you do not, there will come a time, very soon, when you will wish you had.”