Hunt the Moon

Page 56

“Out,” he said roughly, pushing us at the door. “It’s getting too close to morning. There’s going to be people showing up soon, and we got enough to explain as it is. And that vampire’s on the phone, fit to be tied.”
“Which one?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew.
“Marco. Said you either call him or he’s accusing us of kidnapping you.”
He handed me a phone and I took it with a sigh. I punched in the suite’s number and it was picked up on the first ring. “Cassie, what the hell—”
“You know what the hell. Am I still a prisoner?”
“You know damn well you aren’t!”
“Then I’ll be back. Now stop calling.” I hung up.
Caleb just looked at me. “That was it?”
“That was it until I figure out what story I’m using.”
“I know the feeling,” he snarled, and pushed us toward the office.
Chapter Twenty-eight
We walked back into the little space and Caleb slammed a bottle of Jack down on the desk. “Talk about whatever the hell it is you need to talk about, and get your story straight. I have to make out a report before the bosses show up, and it needs to be tight. You feel me?”
I nodded. Caleb left.
The air conditioning was on and my makeshift dress was clammy. I pulled it off and draped it over the back of Caleb’s desk chair, and wrapped myself in a towel instead. When I turned around, Pritkin had pulled the sweats back on and sat on the stinky sofa. He had his arms crossed in front of him, like a man who doesn’t want company, so I took the hard plastic chair in front of the desk.
I poured the Jack, but not because I wanted any. My stomach felt like it might be fine without anything in it for a year, maybe two. But if a guy had ever looked like he needed a drink, Pritkin was him.
“We don’t have to talk,” I told him. “I mean, I don’t mind listening, but it’s . . . I don’t need an explanation.”
“But you deserve one.”
“Do I?” I kind of thought we were even. He’d saved my life; I’d saved his. But it didn’t look like he agreed.
I handed him the whiskey and he threw it back like a pro, not even wincing. He noticed my expression and smiled faintly. “Compared to what I grew up on, this is . . . fairly mild. And yes, you do.”
I was wondering what the hell he’d grown up on—the Celtic version of rotgut? But I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer. He just sat there, cradling the empty paper cup gently in his hands.
They were still long-fingered, still refined. But they looked more like they belonged to a war mage tonight. Along with the ever-present potion stains, there was a smudge of dark brown that the shower had missed—dirt or dried blood—in the crease between the left thumb and the palm. It had run into the cracks, highlighting them like strokes of charcoal on a sketch. I had a sudden urge to reach over and wipe it off, but I didn’t.
And then he started talking, and I forgot about everything else.
“I told you once about Ruth. About . . . how she died.”
I nodded.
“But I didn’t give specifics. We hadn’t known each other long at the time and it didn’t . . . I assumed that you would never need to know.” He paused for a moment, staring at the fake wood paneling on the opposite wall, as if it held some kind of fascination for him. “I think perhaps you do now.”
“Okay.”
“Ruth had a small amount of demon blood. Ahhazu, a minor species, from her paternal grandmother. She was an eighth, or some such amount.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I knew. I knew as soon as I met her. But I assumed that, as she was living on Earth, she must feel the same way about the demon realms that I did. That they have their pleasures, but they are ultimately corrupting to whoever ventures there. Stay long enough and you lose yourself—your ideals, your values, everything you are—all in the pursuit of mindless pleasure. And in the end, there is no pleasure in that.”
“But she didn’t see it that way?” I guessed.
“No. By comparison to the glamorous, glittering courts she had occasionally glimpsed, Earth was squalid, diseaseridden and poor. It didn’t help that she was born into the middle of the Industrial Age, when, in fairness, those things were often true. The Thames stank like an open sewer, and very nearly was. The new industrial cities like Birmingham and Manchester were littered with overcrowded, filthy, ratridden tenements, filled with people dying of overwork, pollution, disease.... Even Prince Albert died of diphtheria, because of the filthy drains at Windsor. It was an ugly age, and she hated it, all the more for the brief glimpses she’d had of worlds beyond human imagining.”
“But she didn’t tell you this?” I didn’t need to guess on that one. I couldn’t see Pritkin having much in common with someone who had loved the world he hated.
“She told someone, but it wasn’t me.”
“Rosier.” I don’t know how I knew. Maybe because Pritkin only got that particular look on his face when he discussed his father.
A curt nod. “She went to see him, gained admission by mentioning my name. He later told me that she said she’d lived her life like a child in a candy store—one without any money to purchase anything. Able to see the beauty of her other world, but unable to gain access to it.”
“Because of her mixed heritage?”
“No. Demons aren’t like some of the Fey, jealously guarding their bloodlines, afraid of any impurity. They regularly mix races, among themselves, other types of demons, humans, Weres, Fey—anyone who has an attribute they think might be useful. Anyone who might give them an edge over a rival.”
“Then why couldn’t she just change worlds if she wanted? If she didn’t like it here—”
He shook his head. “It shouldn’t be difficult for you to understand. In that regard, as in others, your vampires are very similar to demonkind. What is the only thing that really matters to a vampire?”
I hesitated, not sure where he was going with this. “There are a lot of things—”
“Are there? In that case, why is your friend Raphael not the head of his own family? He is arguably one of the greatest artistic talents the West has ever produced, and yet he serves a sniveling, wretched nobody like that Antonio.”
“He doesn’t anymore. Mircea broke Tony’s hold.”
“But he did until recently.”
“Not by choice. Rafe is a master, but he isn’t that powerful—”
“And there you have it. Power. The one thing, perhaps the only thing, your vampires respect. It is the same with demons. And Ruth had almost none.”
“But she was part demon—you said so.”
“Yes, but demons are like any other species. Mix the genetics and you never know what will come up. Even full blooded Ahhazu aren’t that strong, and in her case . . . she may as well have been the human she pretended to be.”
“But you’re part demon and part human. And you told me yourself that the incubi aren’t considered one of the more powerful species, either. But you—”
“Yes, but my other half was magical human; hers was not. And that, or the small amount of Fey blood I inherited from my mother, or the way the genes combined—something worked to boost my abilities. I ended up stronger magically than I should have been, instead of weaker. If I had not, I doubt I would have ever known who my father was. He would have rejected me as another failed experiment and moved on. And the same was true for Ruth. Without power, she was of interest to no one.”
“No one except you.”
Pritkin was silent for a long moment. And when he spoke his voice was different from usual, softer, almost tentative. As if he had to find the words because he never spoke about this and didn’t have them ready.
“She saw me, I think, as an entrée into a world she could only imagine. She knew I was part demon from the moment she met me. It is difficult to hide that from another of our kind, but it is also difficult to tell which species one belongs to if the human side is dominant. I think—I would like to think—that she didn’t know until I told her. That her affection for me had some basis other than the fact that my father was the prince of one of the most magnificent of the courts. It is far from the most powerful, but in opulence, in decadence, in wealth . . . it would be difficult to name another more entrancing. Certainly, it entranced her.”
“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think what else to say. No one liked to feel they were wanted only because of what they had, or, in his case, who they were.
“As am I.”
He was quiet for a while, the whoosh of the air conditioner and the faint buzzing of the overhead light the only sound. It was peaceful, and the small office was oddly cozy. It felt like an island away from the craziness of our usual lives, another moment stolen out of time. Maybe that’s what did it, or maybe, like me, he just wanted to tell someone. Have somebody understand.
“Demons do not . . . have relations . . . the same way humans do,” he finally said. “Or, rather, they can—the more humanoid of the species, in any case—but it isn’t considered a real joining. That comes only from merging with another, gaining power by feeding off their energy, having them feed off yours.... If done between two full demons, it can result in an exchange of power, enabling both to grow stronger. Some matings are done specifically for that purpose, to allow beings with complementary abilities to enhance them, possibly even mutate them into something neither had experienced before.”
I frowned, trying to grasp what he was telling me. “So instead of making a new life, you . . . remake yours?”
“In a way. Of course, a joining can result in both outcomes, although that’s exceedingly rare. But demon lives are long and experimentation is . . . almost a universal hobby. It is like the human fascination with genetics, the attempt to make oneself better through whatever means are available.”