Tempt the Stars

Chapter Seven

“I didn’t mean you,” I said viciously, when we materialized in the middle of a dark, foggy field a few minutes later.

Pritkin was too busy scanning the area Special Ops–style to bother answering. Just like he hadn’t mentioned that he intended to grab me just as I started to shift. I should have figured it out when he suddenly got cooperative, but I’d been distracted trying to make the too-short emerald T-shirt he’d loaned me fit over my ass.

It wasn’t working that great.

I pulled it down again, wishing that he was taller or that I had a coat. It was chilly, and the thin tee wasn’t doing a lot to keep goose bumps from popping up. Or a couple of other things.

“Is it obvious that I’m not wearing a bra?” I asked nervously. I hadn’t given a lot of thought to what I would wear when I went to visit my parents, but a thin old T-shirt with nothing underneath wasn’t on the list.

“I . . . hadn’t noticed,” Pritkin told me.

I looked down at the offending mounds, which were straining the soft green cotton. And making a couple of points about my lack of underwear. “Do you think anyone else will?”

He glanced at me and then looked quickly away. “Well . . ”

“Well what?”

“They are a bit . . . jiggly.”

“Jiggly?” I looked down in horror. I wasn’t jiggly; I was too young to be jiggly. I bounced a little on my toes, and they moved, sure. But that was normal. Wasn’t it? “They’re not jiggly!”

“Perhaps it was a bad choice of word.”

“You’re damn right, it was!”

“I merely meant that they tend to sway a bit when you . . ”

“When I what?”

“Do anything, really.”

I sighed and hunched over. “Does this help?”

Pritkin didn’t say anything.

“Well?” I demanded.

“They’re a little . . . large . . . to be easily concealed by—”

“They’re not large!” I did not have large, jiggly boobs, damn it. I had nice, pert breasts. I’d always been proud of my breasts. I just didn’t want to flash the parents, that was all. “They’re the perfect size!”

“No arguments here.”

I stared at him, because coming from any other guy that would have sounded flirtatious. But Pritkin didn’t flirt. He did, however, pull off the hoodie he was still wearing and put it around me.

It was warm from his body and it smelled like him. And the fact that he was being an ass didn’t stop me from clutching it for a second, and the hands that were trying to zip it up, not wanting to let him go. Stop it, I told myself harshly. I was going to get him back. I was going—

“Where are we?” he asked softly.

I just looked at him silently for a moment. And then said what had to be said. “I’m taking you back.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“And how are you planning to stop me?” I looked pointedly down at his hands, which had tightened on the soft cotton of the hoodie. “By chaining me up? Because that doesn’t work so well.”

“No. By expecting you to use your brain. You said you need weapons—”

“And you have them. So hand ’em over!”

A lip quirked. “They are tools. I am the weapon. Without me they would do you little good.”

“I’ll take that chance!”

“No, you won’t,” he told me again, sounding certain. “You’re smarter than that.”

“If I was smarter, I’d have figured out some other way to do this!”

“Perhaps there is no other way.”

“Perhaps I’m losing my mind,” I muttered.

“It’s not so bad, once you get used to it,” he said, making me do a double take. Because Pritkin didn’t do funny, either. “Can you at least give me the general layout?” he added, before I could comment. As if we’d settled something.

And I guess maybe we had, since I automatically replied, “There was a parking lo—no. That came later. There should be a bunch of trees, like a small wood.”

Pritkin nodded at something behind me. “Those trees?”

I looked over my shoulder, and then turned around. The fog made sure I couldn’t see too well. Not even Tony’s house, which should be somewhere off to the right, assuming the gray lumps along the horizon were the trees in question. I couldn’t tell for sure, since I didn’t remember there being quite that many. And because my eyes weren’t interested in trees.

They were looking for patrols, one of the ones Tony always had messing about, and which could be gliding silently through the fog toward us right now. Although, if memory served, they’d spent most nights under the covered driveway out front, smoking and gossiping, since who the hell broke into a vampire’s stronghold anyway? Of course, Jonas and I had, but that would be years from now, after my parents were long dead. So even if it caused the patrols to be more vigilant afterward, it shouldn’t affect—

“Cassie?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to focus on the maybe-trees when my eyes wanted to look for vamps. Not that they’d see them. That was the problem. You never saw them . . . until they wanted you to. “I should probably mention that there’s a chance, um, that there might be somebody else around—”

“Somebody else?” Pritkin frowned. “You mean other than the demon army?”

“—so we should probably keep this quiet.”

“How quiet?”

I cringed slightly. “Like too-low-for-vampire-ears quiet?”

The frown tipped over into a scowl. “How many vampires?” he asked grimly.

“That would depend on how loud . . ”

Pritkin swore—quietly—under his breath.

“Can you do a silence spell?” I asked hopefully.

“No.” He started switching around some of the weapons in his holsters.

“But Jonas—”

Pritkin’s head came up.

“I mean, he could, or he said he could, uh, rig something—”

“Yet you didn’t bring him, did you?” Pritkin asked sweetly.

“He was . . . busy. . . ”

Pritkin shoved some more weapons into new holsters and muttered something that sounded like “smart man.”

“But if Jonas could do it,” I persisted. “You must be able—”

“It isn’t the spell that’s the issue,” I was told shortly.

“Then what?”

“Magic is linked with human energy.”

“So?”

“So human energy attracts demons!”

Well, shit.

Pritkin gestured at the lumps. “Are those the damned trees or not?”

I squinted. They looked a lot more ominous than the thin line I remembered, almost like a forest. But they were also the only ones in sight.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so. Maybe?”

Pritkin muttered something else. He was doing that a lot tonight. “Let’s go.”

It was the right group of trees. I could tell as soon as we got close enough to see the spears of light shining through the branches. It wasn’t moonlight—too bright and the wrong color—more like firelight or soft electric. But the mostly oaks with a scattering of white pine made it impossible to be sure, since I couldn’t see the house.

And what I could see, I didn’t like.

The weird lighting caused strange crisscrossing shadows to fall everywhere, turning the area under the trees into a half-lit maze. A foggy, half-lit maze, with the light beams sifting apart, like the eerie, otherworldly illumination UFOs gave off in the movies. I swallowed, suddenly really wishing for a Scully from The X-Files—some thoroughly prosaic presence to inform me that everything in life had a nice, comforting, scientific solution.

Of course, she’d gotten knocked up by some alien, hadn’t she? So maybe it was just as well that my companion was more like Mulder. A coked-out Mulder with a lot of weapons, who knew that the monsters under the bed were real and would gut you.

Pritkin was certainly looking more than usually cautious. Or maybe he just didn’t like fighting something he couldn’t even name. Whatever the reason, he stopped at an outlying oak, standing like a vanguard a dozen yards in front of the rest, and pulled the weird, big-barreled gun I’d seen at Dante’s.

“What is it?” I asked, suddenly tense. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t sense anything.”

“But . . . that’s good, right?” I asked, watching him spin open the cylinder like an old-fashioned revolver.

“That’s good if your information was wrong,” he told me grimly, shoving some weird bullets from a leather case into place. They looked like tiny potion vials, with different-colored liquids sloshing against the transparent sides. I didn’t know how something that looked so delicate would survive being fired from a gun, but then, I guessed they weren’t actually made of glass. “How sure are you?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Then it’s not so good,” Pritkin said dryly.

“Meaning?”

“One of two things. Either there are no demons in there . . ”

“Or?” I prompted, because he’d trailed off to scan the tree line again.

“Or we’re dealing with something old enough and powerful enough to shield itself from detection—even in numbers.”

I tried to fit my spine a little more snugly into the unyielding bark behind me. “So . . . that would be bad.”

“Yes. Which is why you’re staying here.”

I started to say something and then bit my lip, because that had been in his don’t-argue-with-me voice. Which I tended to pay attention to since it only got trotted out when the shit was already on its way to the fan. “You may need to leave fast,” I pointed out, after a second. “I can get you out of there quicker than any weapon.”

He clicked the gun shut. “Not if you’re dead.”

“If we stick together, I won’t be. I’m telling you—”

I suddenly found myself jerked to within inches of a face with a tight jaw and hot green eyes. “No. You tell me nothing, not about this. You do what I say.”

“Damn it, Pritkin!”

The moonlight had washed all the color from his face, leaving it stark black and white. Uncompromising, like the hand on my arm, or the low timbre of his voice. “There are only two choices. You listen to me and we go forward; you refuse and we go back. You asked for my help; you do this my way. I haven’t spent more than a century battling these creatures not to know exactly how dangerous they can be. Do you understand?”

Yeah, I understood fine. The problem was that he didn’t. He thought he was protecting me, but if he ended up dead because I wasn’t there to shift him away, we’d both be screwed. But I couldn’t explain that, without explaining more than was safe for him to know right now.

“How much of a risk are you planning to take?” I whispered.

“No more than need be. I will find and draw off whatever is in there. When you see my signal, run for the house. Shift back here when you’re done and I’ll be waiting. But only move when I signal you. If I do not, you stay put.”

“And if you don’t come back?” I asked angrily.

“Then get out of here. Go back to your time—”

“The hell I will! I won’t just leave—”

“Then I won’t go.”

And the infuriating man crossed his arms, leaned against the tree, and looked at me. Calmly. Pleasantly. Like he had all freaking night.

I glared back. “And here I thought you’d been getting better lately!”

“I’ve been indulging you.”

“Indulg—” I tightened my lips on a torrent of words, none of which I could say. And not just because we needed to be quiet. Because for a second there I was actually rendered speechless.

Indulging me didn’t involve treating me like a Parris Island recruit. It didn’t involve questioning every order I ever gave. And it damned sure didn’t involve trading his life for mine without even asking what I thought of the idea.

Or how I’d feel afterward.

Somehow, in all the crying I’d done over the man in the last week, I’d forgotten what an absolute bastard he could be.

Like when he calmly started to pick at a fingernail.

“Stop that!” I knocked his hand away.

He looked up, bemused.

“You . . . you’ll get a hangnail,” I snapped, because I couldn’t say anything else.

“And that would ruin my evening.”

I stood there for a moment, seriously considering just starting for the trees. He’d have to come along or watch me possibly get eaten by whatever was in there. Only, no. Any other man would have to.

Pritkin would knock me out with something in his arsenal, throw me over his shoulder, and cart me off God knew where. And that would be that. Except that I’d wake up tomorrow no closer to a solution than I was right now.

And I was getting damned tired of dead ends.

I crossed my own arms. “Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“Fine, we’ll do it your way.” Like I had a choice.

Whatever his faults, Pritkin didn’t gloat. “Wait for my signal,” he reminded me. And then he was off, running hard for the tree line. Where, a second later, he disappeared.

And the minute he did, I was sure I’d made a mistake. It would be totally my luck to get the man killed while trying to save him. I peered around the trunk, my hands eating into the rough bark hard enough to send splinters under my fingernails.

Come on, I thought desperately, as the minutes clicked by. Come on, come on, come on.

But nothing happened. There was no sound, no movement, no anything. Just a soft breeze bringing the scent of rain and resin, and a hushed quiet making a mockery of my fears.

Until somebody started screaming.

I was running before I remembered the signal and then fuck the signal, because I’d never heard Pritkin scream. And I was desperately hoping I wasn’t hearing it now. But it sounded human—if a human was being eaten by a bear or roasted over a fire or torn limb from limb or—

I shut my brain down before it shut me down, and put on an extra burst of speed. I should have just shifted, but I couldn’t see clearly and anyway, it was too late now. The ground was growing uneven underfoot, the trees were closing in overhead, and I was slipping and sliding on a bunch of black-rotten leaves down an incline and through a wall of scratchy limbs. Before bursting out the other side and into—

What the fuck?

What looked like jerking red afterimages filled my vision, half blinding me, even though I hadn’t been staring at any bright lights. Just like I wasn’t out of breath, but the whole area pulsed in and out, like a marathoner’s vision. It looked like a demon disco and felt like standing in the middle of a tumbling kaleidoscope, while that unearthly scream went on and on and—

Stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

It took the lights along with it, which would have been great. If it hadn’t left me reeling in utter darkness, my heart pounding, my pulse racing, and my mind gibbering somewhere in terror. But as usual, my mouth was doing okay.

“Pritkin!” I called thickly. “Goddamnit, where—”

“Over here.”

The voice was surprisingly calm. Or maybe my ears, which were still ringing from the howling, weren’t able to discern subtleties. Like my legs didn’t seem to be able to walk a straight line anymore. Not that they could have anyway with the slip-’n-slide going on under my feet. And my knees. And my butt as I stumbled and fell and recovered and then hit a particularly nasty patch of leaves and slid the rest of the way to the bottom.

Where Pritkin was kneeling in the muck, in the middle of a space with slightly fewer trees. The thicker cover around the sides formed a natural wall, which the misty drizzle would have faded to the same wet gray as everything else, if not for the otherworldly light show going on. But he seemed perfectly whole and unbothered.

At least he did until he looked up at me. And frowned. “What are you doing here?”

“I . . . what?” I asked unevenly, because the clearing was still spinning. And because that had been a damned stupid question.

“You were told to wait for the signal.”

“You were screaming!”

“Which is usually a sign to stay away,” he said, frown intensifying. “It also wasn’t me.”

“Then who—”

“Not who. What,” he said, and tried to hand me something.

Since it strongly resembled a slime-covered snake, I shied back. “What the—”

“Didn’t that vampire you lived with ever take you to a toy store?”

I stared. “What?”

“For a special occasion, a birthday . . . ?”

“Tony believed in getting presents, not giving them,” I said, bending to peer at the creepy thing he held. It was long and black and lifeless, and still looked like either a short snake or a long slug. “Are you telling me that’s a toy?”

“Was. The enchantment’s played out.”

Thank God.

“You mean that wasn’t some kind of battle spell?” I demanded, gesturing around indignantly, and almost falling over in the process. Okay, that was getting old. “And what the hell’s wrong with me?”

“A prank,” Pritkin said, lips quirking in his version of a smile. “The magical equivalent of a whoopee cushion. But instead of embarrassment, the visual component of the spell causes havoc with the optic nerves. It’s best not to look at it.”

Now he told me.

“Careful. There’s likely more of them,” he said as I started to take a step.

“How do you know?”

“They wouldn’t be much use as an alarm, otherwise.” He held up a finger with a slender cord draped over the top. He gave a gentle tug, and a long line of it rose from the muck, with a “snake” dangling down every six feet. It looked like a banner for an Addams Family birthday, with all the balloons predeflated.

“An alarm—okay, that’s just stupid,” I pointed out.

A blond eyebrow rose. “If it looks stupid but it works . . . then it’s not stupid.” He indicated a small silver thing near the top of the nearest snake. “Removing the cap sets them off. Luckily, I stepped on this one instead of tripping over the line and pulling out all the caps at once. That much noise would wake the dead.”

“Wake the—oh, crap,” I said, staring around.

“It’s not a bad system,” he commented, carefully laying the slimy thing back in the gunk. “Crude, but effective, and uses too little magic to be easily detectable. Of course, it presupposes an intruder would come through here. But given the thickness of the trees on either side, that’s not too much of a stretch.” He looked at me with narrowed green eyes. “The question is, why does someone with a demon army need a child’s plaything for security?”

“That’s a good question,” I agreed, and tried to grab him.

But he was already on his feet and backing out of range. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that we’re about to have company!” The demons around here might be deaf, but I knew some people who damned well weren’t.

“Try again,” Pritkin said. “I doubt there ever were any demons here.”

“Screw demons!” I said, grabbing for him again. And again getting dodged. “Damn it, Pritkin! Tony’s guys could have heard that from across the state—”

“Tony’s?”

Shit.

Blond eyebrows came together. “The house we’re looking for belongs to your old guardian?”

Shit, shit.

“I—no,” I said lamely, trying to think up the lie I hadn’t bothered with before. Which would have been easier if the damned forest wasn’t still doing the cha-cha. I gave up. “Tony’s place is over there.” I gestured back toward the way we’d come. “But it’s close enough to have heard all that, so we need to go!”

“Agreed,” he said grimly, reaching for my hand. “And then we need to talk.”

Only it didn’t look like we were going to be doing either. His hand closed over mine, warm and real and steadying. But apparently not enough.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, after a few seconds, when I just continued to stand there and look at him.

“It isn’t working.”

“You mean your Pythian power?”

“No, my singing ability,” I snapped, trying again. And again went nowhere. Maybe because I couldn’t concentrate with my brain sloshing around in my skull like this. “How long did you say these effects last?” I asked desperately.

“I didn’t. And it depends on the person. Perhaps half an hour—”

“Half an hour?” I looked at him in horror. It might as well be the end of time.

And for us, it probably would be.

“I can only tell you what some of my colleagues said, after a visiting toddler turned one of these loose at Central. No one had shields up, and a few people were seen stumbling about for approximately that long—”

“Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?” I said, trying for calm when I knew, I knew, we were screwed. Pritkin was good, but he was only one man and Tony could send dozens, many of them masters. And while they might not have magical party favors, they did have lots of things that went bang and crash and blew people’s heads off. And we couldn’t even shoot back, because we might get unlucky and kill one of them, and that would alter time and then—

“Perhaps no one heard,” Pritkin said, not looking nearly concerned enough. “This many trees have a sound-deadening effect, and we are in a depression—”

“Yes, Pritkin! Because that’s the kind of luck we get!” I said shrilly, because the calming thing wasn’t working.

And that was before something started crashing through the trees across the clearing.