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It was with a feeling of distant shock that I felt him wrench away, the colder air of the room swirling between us where there had been only moist warmth before. At the same moment, the light from the window suddenly intensified, like a floodlight had gone on behind it. It drowned the room in a color so rich, so loud, that it was almost sound.
The crimsons in the stained glass glowed until they seemed to break off, floating away from the rest of the design in a firework display of red and gold. They coalesced over the bed in a sparkling cloud of light that had a strangely familiar shape. I’d seen something like it once before, but that one had been a pale reflection of this shimmering golden haze.
“All that power, and in such a pretty package. It really is irresistible.” The voice seemed to come from the air itself, whispering along my skin like a breeze.
Pritkin’s head snapped up, pure rage distorting his features. “I knew it!”
“What is it?” Pritkin and the voice both ignored me. Or maybe I didn’t say it aloud; I wasn’t sure anymore. Everything looked the way it does after a faint: all odd angles and meaningless patterns, and blood was rushing in my ears like an incoming tide.
“You will not have her!” Pritkin snarled.
Soft laughter echoed through the room. “Who said anything about me?”
The glowing veil drifted down onto the mage, making him look as if his skin had been drenched in glitter. He screamed, there was no other word for it, and it was like a dam had burst. What had been a musky fog was now a torrential rain, and I bathed in it, in him. The room suddenly felt like the tropics in July, with a steamy, heavy heat that seemed to soak into my very pores.
His lips were on mine, his hands cradling my head so he could kiss all the breath out of my body, and he was pushing me down against the bed. And then his lips were everywhere—my collarbone, the side of my neck, the crease between my breasts, my jaw—and it hit me that he wasn’t just choosing spots at random. These were places he’d thought about, and that was almost enough to send me over the edge.
But then he paused, a fine shudder rippling through him, vibrating down his body into mine. It caused me to arch upward and he gave a stifled scream, flinching as if my touch was actually painful. “Don’t,” he forced out through clenched teeth. “Don’t move.”
I realized with a sort of horror that he was trying to stop, that he was going to be noble. A crashing tide of angry despair overwhelmed me as soon as my body understood that it was going to be denied yet again, with every emotion I’d ever felt toward Pritkin surging violently through me. “No!”
I grabbed his shoulders and rolled him over, head swimming, heart racing. An alarm was blaring somewhere in my mind, but I ignored it. I buried my face against the hard muscles of his stomach. He smelled so good—salt and sweat and the sweet musk of skin, and I had to know if he tasted as good as he smelled. There was suddenly nothing real to me but need and the hands on my body, the body under my hands.
My tongue dragged a slow arc across him, just below his navel. His pulse was quick and frantic against my lips, the echo of it under my fingers as they moved to the fastening of his jeans. “Cassie—” Pritkin’s voice sounded oddly scraped and rough, but I ignored it, except to note with approval that he’d said my name again. Twice in one day—that was a record.
I was discovering that I really liked old jeans. Once the first button came undone, the others obligingly slid out of their holes with a single tug. “Oh, God,” Pritkin whispered, sounding almost panicked for some reason. He stared at me, breath heavy, and the wild need on his face warred with something close to terror. His irises were half black, with just a tiny band of green. And he was literally clinging to the bed by his fingernails, as if it was the only thing that kept the ragged torrent of emotions coursing between us from jerking him to me like a yo-yo.
I hardly noticed when the air began to move around us, drawing in toward an unseen center, catching up the clothes scattered on the floor and swirling them about. A ragged-edged cry that sounded like an incantation tore from Pritkin’s throat. And a glimmer of red appeared in the shadows, like the wet flicker of the northern lights, lapping at the outlines of a man. I blinked, and the figure behind the glow stepped through, the red mirage parting like fog. I blinked again, harder this time, sure I was hallucinating, staring in disbelief from Pritkin’s face to its mirror image.
“She has to die,” the man said, almost conversationally. He noted Pritkin’s expression and his answering smile was somehow both sweet and viciously cruel. “I promise it won’t hurt.”
“What is your interest in her?” Pritkin’s tone was filled with loathing.
“She talked to Saleh.” His double’s eyes came to rest on me, and there was no life, no heat, nothing human in them, only cold appraisal. I couldn’t believe I had ever confused the two men. “She knows.”
Before I could clear my mind enough even to frame a question, Pritkin had launched himself off the bed onto the new arrival. He hit him straight in the chest, the momentum taking them both to the floor. They rolled around the limited space, their magic crackling together in spits and sputters, while I looked around for something, anything, to use as a weapon.
I had a bracelet, which had once been the property of a dark mage, that was always up for a rumble. Unfortunately, it had a mind of its own and didn’t always follow my instructions. I didn’t dare use it now, as it was not fond of Pritkin and there was a better-than-average chance that it would attack the wrong guy.
There was enough firepower in the closet to outfit a small army, but I couldn’t reach it, and the only thing on this side of the room was the bedside lamp. It didn’t look too sturdy, but I yanked it out of the wall anyway, just in time to see Pritkin immersed in a slow-curving maelstrom of blinding white. There was a loud crackle and power rent the air, as if lightning had struck inside the room. The flash turned me momentarily blind, and then something was on me.
He—it—was touching me, holding me down, but I could feel no heat from his body, and there was no scent, not the faintest whiff of aftershave or the leather of his coat. Even though I was used to such things from ghosts, there was a kind of horror to it, being held down by such a blank. Unthinkingly, I reached out with my senses, desperate to find something human to ground me. What I saw was alive and squirming, but not human—God, not human at all.
I could feel its need building like a thousand thunderstorms, an overpowering hunger that wanted nothing more than to melt into me and feed and feed and feed. A smothering cloud descended on my skin, and now I could feel it, sliding cold hands over my body, could taste the miasma of corruption ling
ering at the back of its throat when it kissed me. The cloud began to sink into my skin, rushing into my body as I breathed in its clammy breath, pushing past my defenses until it ran through my bloodstream sickeningly.
It touched me everywhere, consuming me from the inside out. And it had lied. It did hurt, with a horrible, draining sensation far worse than a vampire’s bite. It felt like razored teeth were slicing into me everywhere, running like a blade between muscle and bone, turning even the air in my lungs to broken glass.
I was supposed to be protected from this kind of thing. My mother’s only legacy was the pentagram-shaped tattoo on my back that was one of the Circle’s strongest enchantments. She had once been heir to the Pythia position, before she ran away with my father and was disowned, and the star had been given to her as security. It packed quite a punch, but the geis interfered with it. Meaning that if I was going to get out of this, it would have to be on my own.
I tried to fight, but my arms and legs wouldn’t move, all my strength pouring into the thing holding me so gently in its grasp. My body felt as heavy and lifeless as if the creature had already finished feeding. Only I knew it hadn’t, because I could feel it gnawing through bone and into marrow, the lethargy ensuring that I couldn’t even scream as it sucked my life away. My consciousness turned slippery and unresponsive, my body trying to shield me from what was happening, from what was coming—
And then it was gone, pulled off by Pritkin’s arm around its throat. I stared at it, Pritkin’s mirror image except that it glowed as brightly as flame, energized with stolen power. And just like that, the pieces fell into place.
“You’re an incubus!” I was addressing the spirit, but it was Pritkin who answered.
“Only half,” he snarled, wrenching the creature’s neck savagely enough to have shattered a human’s spine.
