Curse the Dawn

Page 48

“I’m fine,” Pritkin said, and took a nose-dive into the dirt.
I pulled him up and picked wet grass off his face. “You’re still in one piece, right?” I asked, just to be sure.
“You tell me.” His eyes focused on my reddened sleeve. “What’s that?”
“A gift from Skinny.”
“Who?”
“The other guy.”
“Where is he?” Pritkin’s gaze flashed around, although with my eyesight I doubted he could see much.
“He’s out cold. At the moment, I’m more worried about this one.” I toed the mage, but he didn’t budge.
“You needn’t be,” Pritkin said shortly.
I gazed down at the utterly still form and realized what was odd about it. Even unconscious bodies breathe, but I hadn’t seen this one’s chest rise and fall once. “You killed him?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“But he’s a war mage.”
“Ex-war mage. He has served other interests since leaving the corps.”
“But . . . you’re in my body!”
Pritkin wiped gunk out of his eyes. “You have magical ability. The fact that you haven’t been trained doesn’t negate that.”
“I don’t have that kind of power!”
“You have sufficient,” he said tersely. “And knowledge is half the battle. That particular spell was esoteric enough that he didn’t know it—or how to counter it.”
I hunched Pritkin’s shoulders against the chill night air and stared at the body at my feet. The guy had tried to gut me, something that tends to erode my sympathy. But it was still frightening to think that my magic could do something like that, could kill a man with a few muttered words. I shivered; my adrenaline was running low and the sweat under my clothes was drying cold against my skin.
“Come on.” I got an arm around Pritkin and was surprised at how little he weighed. I really wanted my own body back, but I had to admit that I envied Pritkin his strength. “We need to get out of here.”
“Switch us back first,” he said. I hesitated, wondering how to phrase this. “You said you could do it!”
“I can! At least, I’m pretty sure, with some time to think about it—”
“Get us back where we belong!”
“It’s not that easy!” I wasn’t exactly an expert at out-of-body experiences, but I’d done it enough times by now to have the basics down, at least as far as getting my spirit back in its rightful place. The problem was Pritkin, or, more precisely, his spirit, which I didn’t know how to stuff back inside his skin. And until I figured it out, I couldn’t leave his body unattended. It couldn’t live without a soul in residence, and mine was the only one currently available.
I explained this, but it didn’t seem to improve his blood pressure. Neither did the fact that I couldn’t shift. “Why not?” he demanded, glaring at me. The expression was eerily familiar despite being on my features, but it wasn’t as intimidating as usual. Possibly because he currently looked like a very wet, very pissed-off Kewpie doll.
“I don’t know.” My head was throbbing in time with my elbow, and the wet, matted grass was starting to look really comfortable. “Maybe even your energy levels are too low.” But that didn’t feel right. It was more like something had blocked my attempts.
“Try again.”
“If I end up with a brain aneurysm, it’ll be in your head,” I reminded him.
“I’ll take the risk,” he said immediately.
So much for the gentler sex. Pritkin as a woman was exactly like always—prickly, demanding and paranoid, looking at the world through narrowed eyes. “What does it matter if we rest for five minutes first?”
“It matters because these two weren’t alone.”
“And how do you know that?”
He jerked his head, and I followed his gaze to where a group of dark shapes were running for us from the other side of the field. They weren’t close enough to identify yet, but then a spell sizzled past, close enough that I could feel the tingle of its energy against my cheek, and identification became moot. Mages.
Pritkin grabbed my hand and we ran for the opposite tree line. An adrenaline rush hit my veins, opening up my lungs to the cool night air, wiping out the fatigue that had been dragging at me. But Pritkin wasn’t doing so hot. Even with my help, he was taking gasping breaths and looking white and pinched by the time leaves slapped us in the face, and our lead was almost entirely gone. We ran on anyway, hearing our pursuers fanning out behind us, yelling to each other to make sure we couldn’t double back.
So much for that plan.
It got quieter the deeper we went into the trees, the old dark branches closing ranks behind us, fallen leaves soft and silent underfoot. It also got rougher, with the cover overhead eventually so solid that the moonlight could hardly penetrate at all. I put Pritkin behind me because I could still see the dim, black outlines of the trees ahead, while I doubted that was true for him. But it didn’t help much.
He was battered by the low-hanging limbs I shoved out of the way, which whipped back to hit him in the face. And he didn’t have the advantage of protective clothing, as I hadn’t dressed for a mad rush through the woods. But he pushed on anyway, trying not to slow me down, with blood trickling down his neck and his hands torn and bloody.
We’d been half running, half walking for maybe ten minutes when he hit a tree trunk and bounced off and then stumbled over another that had fallen partway across our path. I tried to tug him farther along, but he just shook his head at me rather desperately. His pulse was a fast flutter at his throat and his pupils were dilated.
I nodded and steadied myself against a tree, drawing air into my lungs so hard it hurt. Gray, flaky bark crackled under my palm, leaking resin that stuck my fingertips together. I propped my shoulders against the trunk and unclenched my hand from around my gun, which I’d clutched tightly enough to leave a dent in my palm. I spent a few minutes just breathing and trying to listen over the pounding of my heart. I really hoped we’d lost them, because Pritkin didn’t look like he could walk, much less run, any farther.
“What do you hear?” he whispered after a few minutes.
I listened, and his ears picked up everything: the shush of wind in the treetops, the light patter of rain on the canopy above, the scurrying of some little animal—but nothing of the pursuit. I’d heard the mages stumbling around in the distance for a while, but even that was gone now. “I think we’re alone.”
But even as I said it, there were those strange flashes again, this time in the treetops. They were black against the indigo darkness of the sky but with glints of color I couldn’t name. And now that I concentrated, I noticed other things, too: here and there were sighs not caused by the wind and brief scents that had nothing to do with nature.
“Wait—there’s something here.”
“Something?”
“Yeah.”
And it was as if they’d heard. Suddenly the space around us was flooded with the cold, bitter taste of dead winter, the air thick with ragged shadows that darted before me like a tumble of snakes. One brushed past my arm, and I flinched away. Cold and hot and a thousand contradictions that my mind couldn’t handle—and none of them good.
“Describe it.”
“I can’t! The colors are . . . weird,” I said, groping for words. And then several more flew past, and it was like viewing the world through a thousand glass wings, a cacophony of darting images. I ducked and my eyes crossed, trying to see, but that only seemed to make things worse. “Sharp edges, like a bird, only not,” I said helplessly. “In the trees.” God, what were those things?
“Rakshasas,” Pritkin hissed, looking up.
“What?”
“Demons,” he spat, rooting around in my coat, grabbing things out of the belt I was wearing draped low on my hips. It was weighed down with vials, each in a little leather sheath, that contained some pretty lethal potions. “They’re shape-shifters.”
I wet my lips. It would be really nice if he was wrong, but I doubted it. Because if there was one thing Pritkin knew, it was demons. Not only was he the Circle’s best-known demon hunter, he’d once spent centuries in the demon realms courtesy of his father, Rosier, Lord of the Incubi.
Rosier had wanted to show off his half-human child, a hybrid experiment that other demons had said couldn’t be done, and had dragged his proof into the next world without bothering to ask first. Pritkin hadn’t enjoyed the experience, but then, neither had anybody else. Giving him the distinction of being the only human to be literally kicked out of hell.
I only hoped a return trip wasn’t in the cards.
Chapter Nineteen
Another of the creatures brushed past me, and something ragged and fluttering, like a broken wing, trailed over my arm. It was icy cold and burning hot and utterly, utterly repulsive. A thick coil of nausea rolled in my gut as I stumbled back a few steps. I bit my lip to stay quiet, but a stray gasp trickled out between my clenched teeth anyway, prompted as much by the memory of the last demon I’d fought as by the current threat.
My heart thudded steadily faster, adrenaline ratcheting me into flight mode. I couldn’t go through that again; I just couldn’t. I turned blindly, preparing to run, not caring if the mages heard because I’d prefer to face the whole damn Corps than to ever feel those hands on me again.
Pritkin caught me. For a minute, I didn’t see him but another face. I had a sudden flashback to the feel of Rosier’s touch and the clammy, shudder-inducing sensation of his tongue on my flesh, lapping my blood as he slowly gutted me. A scream bubbled up in my throat.
A hand clasped hard over my mouth, but it was smaller than it should have been and softer, a woman’s hand. My hand. The realization jolted me back to some semblance of control as I gazed down at my own furious blue eyes.
“Don’t panic!” Pritkin whispered. “They’re like vultures, drawn to fear as to approaching death. It will only bring them on faster!”