Embrace the Night

Page 55

“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.