Ignite the Fire: Incendiary by Karen Chance
Chapter Thirty-Four
I strapped the knife belt around my waist, my fingers clumsy with haste and my legs still staggering from whatever that purple spell had been. But staggering with vampire speed is still moving damned fast. Or it would have been, if the trees hadn’t staggered along with me.
Goddamn it!
“Shoo!” I told them. “Shoo! Go away!”
They either didn’t understand or didn’t care. They stuck to me like glue, a little insta-glade of leafy guardians that wasn’t helping. Except to point out my location to anyone who was paying attention. Guinn might as well have put a neon sign over my head!
Until I put on a burst of speed and lost them in the melee. Only to have to dodge behind a wagon when some wild-eyed horses thundered past, and then to duck behind it again when a bunch of fey came running out of the woods, as if finally realizing that their prey was back at camp. They stopped abruptly and stared, but not at me.
Judging by their expressions, some of Aeslinn’s soldiers still didn’t know about the boss’s super special abilities. Maybe they weren’t great for staying under the radar and thus weren’t brought out much. Or maybe Aeslinn thought his people might think the worse of him, if they knew he had polluted his pure blood with tainted abilities.
But whatever the reason, his fey clearly didn’t know. Because they were yelling at each other after a stunned few seconds of looking upward, and then at passing fey. Some nocked arrows and others looked guiltily around, as if wondering if anybody would notice if they snuck off for a while.
But most started firing, and they weren’t pulling any punches. Boxes of what I guessed was magical ammo were run out of tents by unusually clumsy soldiers. Some contained what looked like potion grenades, judging by what spilled out of one box when a fey tripped over a rock and hit down hard. Others were packed with small, cylinder type things that were quickly strapped to arrow shafts and shot upward.
Where they exploded like firecrackers, only with devastating force. I could feel it when they hit, and I guessed the dragon could, too. Because it screeched again, like an ice pick to the brain, as the combined spells of at least a dozen fey hit it squarely in the chest.
It didn’t look like their magic got through the tough old hide, but they must have thought it could, because they weren’t running. Which made me wonder what Aeslinn thought he was doing. Hadn’t he realized how his fey were likely to react, when a massive dragon suddenly appeared overhead? Seriously, what did Pritkin have that Aeslinn wanted badly enough to risk death?
I didn’t know, but I needed to find him before the king got it.
But that was easier said than done.
Aeslinn wasn’t fighting back yet, but it was honestly hard to tell. The air stirred up by the great, beating wings felt like a hurricane, explaining some of the feys’ unusual clumsiness and sending me staggering into a tree as soon as I left the side of the wagon. Fortunately, the tree was one of Guinn’s posse, which had caught up again and huddled close, and was actually useful as a wind break.
And I could use one. A storm of leaves, a wooden bucket, some firewood that was somehow still burning, and a few pieces of laundry went hurtling by, only to get blasted by a mighty gust of air coming from the other direction that sent them back again. A shiny pot filled with someone’s dinner also tumbled past, slammed into one of the trees, and spilled a bright red stew down the side, while a stand with a bunch of dead rabbits tied to it managed to stay upright, although the rabbits themselves went flapping out like hairy flags.
Even worse, weapons were being torn out of hands and flung about. Arrows were flying that had never been shot. Potion grenades from the spilled ammo box were tumbling around and going off at random, including several which chased a panicked fey across the camp. And then a small cooking knife, caught in a particularly violent gust, slammed into the tree right beside me.
I watched it vibrate out of the wood for a second, before scrambling up the trunk, to where the spreading limbs provided a little more cover—and a better vantage point. Not that it helped much. The wind was whipping the smaller boughs back and forth, hard enough to slap me in the face, making it hard to see.
And what I could make out wasn’t encouraging.
I didn’t know if Aeslinn was trying to land, and thus getting closer, or if the cumulative effect of his presence was stacking up, but the camp was basically disintegrating. The wind was blowing hard enough to send fey staggering into each other and to rip stakes out of the ground, causing tents to go flying. Including one in the middle of camp where—
Son of a bitch.
The tree branches slapped me around some more, but I didn’t care. Every once in a while, the universe gave me an apology for all the crap it put me through. And today was one of those days. Because two men and a goat were tied up and lolling by the denuded tent pole, while their canvass covering sailed off into the night.
They looked pretty out of it, but they also looked whole and, as far as I could tell, alive. I jumped down and started toward them, only to stop abruptly, just inside the tree line. And to curse the universe for giving me false hope.
Because the fey around the missing tent weren’t moving.
Or, rather, some of them were, racing back and forth, bringing quivers of arrows and more magical munitions to the ones firing at the dragon. But another group, at least a couple dozen strong, were as motionless as Gibraltar in a storm-tossed sea. Only their long, fair hair and the tips of their spears were whipping in the wind.
Why hadn’t they run? Were they crazy? Suicidal? Stupid?
And then I noticed: the fey in question were facing outward.
They weren’t there for the captives, who didn’t look like they required much guarding at the moment. They were there for me. Or for anybody who might try to deprive Aeslinn of his prize. The fey must have reported that they’d taken prisoners, and the news had made its way up the chain of command to the king. Who’d realized who they had stumbled across and instructed his fey to make damned sure that nothing happened to them until he arrived.
I didn’t know how he’d gotten here so fast, when his capitol had to be hundreds of miles away. But he had, and I was out of time. I had to think of something, something good, something now.
And then I was thrown to the ground again by Arsen the Asshole.
Goddamnit!
“I’m not doing anything to you!” I said, thrashing against his hold. “Let me go!”
But Arsen wasn’t looking like a guy you can reason with. Arsen was looking nuttier than his king, all of a sudden. And furious besides.
Well, crap, I thought, and punched him.
I wasn’t trying to punch through his skull, which Mircea’s abilities might have allowed, but I was trying to get away. Which was why the pretty head shot back and the pretty mouth split open. And the pretty gray eyes flashed tawny gold for an instant, right before the ground shook all around me.
It felt like an earthquake was happening in the small area right under my body. And before I could scramble up, pieces of dark stone shot up out of the soil and snapped around each of my limbs. And then retracted, slamming me back against the ground painfully.
And this time, vampire strength didn’t do shit. When I pulled and squirmed and struggled, it felt like I was trying to lift a mountain. And whenever I came close to breaking one of the rings, more rock flowed up and reinforced it, until I was wearing shackles fit for a giant.
Which wouldn’t have mattered if I’d had my own power, but I didn’t!
And without it, I wasn’t going anywhere.
My leafy bodyguards had started forward, but stopped abruptly when Arsen pulled a knife and held it to my throat. It was cold and pressing in hard enough that I could feel my pulse pounding against the side. I didn’t think he’d broken the skin, not yet, but he could finish me in a second and the trees seemed to know it.
I saw them twining roots, as if holding hands or maybe talking to each other. Then one broke off from the back of the pack, I guessed to go for help. But it wouldn’t be soon enough.
Because Armageddon had arrived.
Another ear-piercing shriek from above was followed by a wash of fire ripping across the camp, splashing our faces with a strange, bloody light. It looked like the king was losing patience, I thought numbly, as the blast took out a dozen tents, disintegrating them into ash that immediately streamed away on the wind. But Arsen barely seemed to notice.
He grabbed my hair, what he’d left me of it, and got his face in mine. “Now, tell the truth! Why did you bring me here? And what did you mean about the king?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I was too busy staring at the sky in stupefied awe: at a dark, velvety night spangled with stars, at spell bolts shooting upward and dragon fire raining down, at strange, unearthly colors bursting overhead like the world’s biggest firework display as the fey threw everything they had at their attacker, and at multicolored sparks falling everywhere, being blown into swirls of unearthly colors by the wind. And, through it all, silver haired fey leaping over burning debris like gazelles—
Arsen pressed in with the knife, causing a trickle of blood to roll down my neck.
And, okay, yeah; that’ll focus your mind.
“Tell me!”
I opened my mouth to tell him to go to hell, but that wasn’t what came out. Instead, a soft groan escaped my lips, an almost sexual sound, which surprised me as much as it seemed to do him. I didn’t understand it, until I saw a pair of eyes in my mental vision—and they were full of stars, too.
“I—it won’t do any good,” I said, staring at Arsen’s face, but talking to the eyes. “My power doesn’t work here.”
“You persist with that lie?” Arsen demanded. “When you’ve already proved the opposite? Now tell me what you meant about the king!”
“I haven’t said anything about the fucking—”
“To your allies!” he snapped, because I guessed he’d been eavesdropping. “You said he’s a monster—”
“He is a monster. He kills demigods, or anyone with a trace of godly blood in their veins, and steals their abilities. That’s him up there,” I nodded at the dragon, because I couldn’t currently point, not that it felt like I would have been able to anyway.
My limbs were heavy all of a sudden, and wanted to stretch languorously over my head, but the restraints wouldn’t let them. The stone shackles held me down, leaving me helpless. And something about that sent a shiver across my skin.
Arsen didn’t seem to notice. He was staring upward as well, with confusion on his face, which changed to anger when he looked back down at me. “You lie.”
“You keep saying that. Is it because you want to believe it?”
“It’s because you are a liar! Else I must believe the king is an abomination—”
“He murders people and eats their souls. What else would you call him?”
“For what cause?” he snarled. “What possible reason—”
“That is what I’ve been trying to find out. Best guess right now? To help him win the war or bring back the gods, although I suppose those are one and the same from his perspect—”
I stopped talking, because Arsen was suddenly looking at me like I’d lost my mind. And then he shook me, which was more than a little uncomfortable under the circumstances. Damn, I wished I had my power!
“What do you mean, bring back the gods?”
I stared at him, with much the same expression that he’d just used on me. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Well . . . what do you think this war is about?”
“Invasion!” he spat it at me. “Your people joined our old enemy and attacked us—”
“For what? Shits and giggles?”
“For resources! For lands! For Caedmon’s hubris—”
“And why would we give a crap about any of that? Our people can’t live in Faerie, and your resources frankly scare us. We don’t want your stuff; we want you to leave us alone—”
More shaking commenced, to the point that Arsen’s fingers were biting into my arms. “You lie! Caedmon bribed you!”
“With fucking what?” I demanded, getting angry now myself, even through the languor that a certain incubus was trying to spread. “I told you, we don’t want your shit! We have laws against imports from Faerie, which cause all kinds of hell in our world. We don’t want anything to do with you—”
“Then why help him?”
“What did I just say? Your king is trying to bring back the gods, who are going to kill us all! We’re trying to survive!”
And then a new sound cut through the din: the tromp, tromp, tromp of many booted feet. Arsen twisted his head to look, but I didn’t need to do likewise. I was already facing the road, and through the blowing limbs of a willow, I saw them: Svarestri troops, what looked like hundreds of them, double timing it through the trees.
The dragon screeched again, before suddenly wheeling and flying off. Aeslinn had known how the fey would react, I thought, watching him. He’d known they would attack him on sight, but he’d also wanted to be here, to make sure that his prize wasn’t snatched out from under his nose again before the cavalry could arrive.
And now they had, pouring out of the small road in rank after rank, and flooding the camp.
Son of a bitch!
And then I felt it again, only far stronger than before: the languorous call of incubus magic, dialed all the way up to eleven. It flooded the air around us, turned the night sultry and calm, and faded the sounds of the battle to a pleasant background noise, like the drone of bees. It did something else, too.
Arsen was still partly turned away, to where a barrage of spells from the new arrivals were lighting up the night. They painted the strands of his hair pink and gold, and splashed his face with color. They were so pale, these Svarestri, so cold. But suddenly, he was warm, with the spell light gilding his skin, and causing color to bloom in his lips and cheeks.
He swallowed, clearly unsure whether to believe me or not. I followed the motion of his Adam’s apple with my eyes, and then let them drop lower, to the finely sculpted chest and arms that I’d barely noticed before. His shirt had ripped at some point, showing off much of his torso, and it was definitely worth seeing.
I wondered how I’d been so blind.
He was well made, beautifully in fact. And when I made another of those helpless little sounds, pulling his attention back to me, I gasped in surprise. Because that face . . . was a work of art.
“What are you doing?” he said suspiciously, despite the fact that I wasn’t doing anything. I couldn’t do anything but look, so I did, admiring the perfect features, the silver eyelashes over sharp, pewter colored eyes, the slightly flared nostrils as he took my scent, the faint, almost invisible flush of real color in his cheeks now, as his heart rate sped up.
I wasn’t in his head anymore; everything that had happened had knocked me out, some time ago. But I didn’t need to be to see his eyes narrow, and a pulse begin to beat in his neck. His tongue flickered out, as if to lick his lips, only to immediately withdraw. He shook his head as if to clear it, and I almost laughed. Because no, that wasn’t so easy, was it? Not with a powerful incubus pulling him toward me.
But I still didn’t know what Pritkin’s incubus thought it was doing. Having more energy would be nice, as I was frankly exhausted, but it wouldn’t change anything. My power still wouldn’t work here.
But what about the gods’?
The idea came out of nowhere, to the point that I wasn’t sure whether it was my own, or someone else’s. But it stopped me in my tracks, because the gods had ruled in Faerie, hadn’t they? All those centuries ago? So, their power must have worked here.
And while the Pythian power had been tethered to Earth, probably to make sure that we couldn’t get too out of line, the gods had been free to go where they liked. And I was a demigoddess. I didn’t look like one; didn’t feel like one; most of the time, didn’t act like one. But my mother’s blood ran through my veins, nonetheless.
And Arsen had gotten here somehow.
I abruptly tried to shift, putting everything I had into it, but I didn’t go anywhere. But that didn’t necessarily mean that I was wrong. I’d started out exhausted from yesterday, had traded breakfast for crawling around Romanian hillsides with Gertie, and had then come here. The most sustenance I’d had all day was a pot of tea.
And I couldn’t channel magic when I was exhausted and starving to death!
But something smelled good, all of a sudden; something smelt amazing, like sun warmed skin and fruity drinks and hot dogs being grilled on the barbecue. And steaks, I thought, putting a hand around Arsen’s neck, and barely registering that one was free now. And chicken—God, yes, some barbequed chicken, I thought, and kissed him.
He kissed me back, immediately, which didn’t surprise me at all. I looked like hell, if that brief glimpse in his bedroom mirror had been accurate, with a dirt-streaked face from falling on it one too many times, bruises blooming everywhere from Guinn’s slap fest, a torn lace blouse, and a pair of sadly soiled bloomers that hadn’t been great to start out with, and were now approaching tragic. Not to mention a number of cuts and scratches and a bleeding arm.
But incubus magic overrode all of that, which suddenly seemed trivial—even irrelevant. Like the damned codpiece pressing into me when I twined a leg around his, and pulled him close. Or the hard arms encircling me, or the experienced tongue plundering me, or the knowing hands—
Okay, getting better, I thought, deepening the kiss.
Much better, because something was tasting familiar. Something was tasting sweet. Something was flowing out of him and into me and it was everything, everything I’d wanted. And unlike with Zeus, this power didn’t burn.
It didn’t bite or tear or hurt. It was soft and gentle, and made me think of that little boy again, running across the terrace with his kite, watching it fly into the air, soaring high on the perpetual winds that blew across his city. The kite had been shaped like a bird, a beautiful eagle, and in his joy in its delicate craftsmanship I thought I saw the seeds of the adult’s gryphon obsession.
And then I saw that adult, scaling a frighteningly high peak under soaring, bright blue skies. He stopped for a moment to stare about at the unfamiliar territory, and to catch his breath. Caedmon’s lands spread out below him, beautiful, strange, and shockingly green. And forbidden—he could be killed just for venturing here. But there was no one around for miles, no person, at any rate. And the nest he sought was just ahead.
He laughed, and tucked his silver hair back under his hood, in case any of Caedmon’s people flew by. He’d be flying himself, soon enough. He’d be flying—
Arsen broke the kiss, and I felt him gasp for air underneath me. Our positions had somehow ended up reversed, and I looked down into a face that was no longer flushed, but as pale as alabaster. Like the body I held, which was quivering, although not from lust. How much of his strength had I taken? I thought, suddenly afraid. How much had I—
Sound broke over me again, a startling wash of it. The newly arrived solders were getting closer, driving the trees this way. They’d be on us in a moment, and although I was completely free now and had to hurry, I knelt in the dirt over the trembling fey with tears in my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean—”
Some soldiers ran by, just outside the glade, with torches in their hands. But they kept on going, and I looked back down to find Arsen staring up at me strangely. “Are you alright?” I asked. “Did I hurt you?”
“Why do you care?” It was a whisper, a barely-there sigh on the air.
“Because I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anybody!”
“But you’re one of them, aren’t you?” His hand held onto mine when I would have gotten up. He couldn’t force me to stay, could barely manage to grip me at all, but I let my hand stay in his for a second anyway. I owed him that much.
“One of who?”
“The gods you say you fight.”
I didn’t know how he knew, or why he thought that. But I didn’t have time to debate it. “My mother was Artemis,” I said quickly. “She was a goddess, but she threw them all out. All of the ones like her, because they were monsters, just like your king. If they come back, they’ll be worse than a thousand Aeslinns. Think on that, when you serve him!”
And then I pulled my hand back, and shifted.