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“Too bad she thought of you as cattle,” I snapped.
Rosier didn’t look perturbed. “Yes, no doubt. And that is part of your problem, isn’t it?”
I debated not answering, but I needed to know what he meant. I needed to know why Pritkin was just sitting there drinking, instead of yelling or conniving or . . . or doing something to try to get out of this mess. I needed to know why he looked like we’d already failed.
“What is?” I finally asked.
“You haven’t put it together yet?” Rosier sighed out some smoke. “But then, you always were a little slow, weren’t you?”
“Then make it simple,” I grated out, wishing I had something, anything, that would work on this son of a bitch. But it’s a little hard to age someone out of existence when that existence is measured in millennia.
“Very well,” he said, suddenly brisk. “The so-called gods might have fed off us, but it seems they weren’t much kinder to their human bait. Except for your mother, who decided that they were destroying the creatures to which she’d foolishly allowed herself to become attached. Or so she said.” He let out a sigh and looked at me through the haze of smoke. “I’ve always found that excuse to be rather . . . paltry . . . for someone decidedly not steeped in sentiment.”
I glared at him. “So? What does any of this have to do with—”
“Think about it, girl, assuming you have the capacity! She wants to protect her beloved humans, she determines that her fellow gods must go, and her gift—which was rather stronger than your little version, by the way—would allow her to banish them and slam the gates shut behind them. The trick, of course, was ensuring that they did not return.”
“She used a spell,” I said, wondering why my stomach had just dropped.
“Yes, a spell. Which she had to cast herself, and then maintain until her little Silver Band or what have you could grow strong enough to do it themselves. And there was sure to be opposition, sure to be a mass of forces battering the other side. By denying her fellow gods the free run of earth, she was also denying them their only way into the hells. No more fat . . . cows, was it? No more free meals. Without earth, they were restricted to the heavens, and if that wasn’t enough, she cut them off from Faerie, as well! I suppose she had to; better to block the whole bridge than half, and she had so many faithful worshippers among the fey. . . .”
Rosier paused, but I didn’t say anything this time. Because he was right—sometimes I didn’t pick up on things as fast as Pritkin or Caleb. Sometimes this crazy new world I’d somehow stumbled into made my head hurt trying to comprehend it. Sometimes I’d bitched about wishing I had an instruction book, something to lay it all out, to make it simple.
Right now I was kind of glad I didn’t.
Because right now my brain was coming up with answers I didn’t like.
“Starting to make sense?” Rosier asked evilly. “A huge spell, a god-denying spell, and not just around one world, but encircling two. And then to hold it, against all comers? To reinforce it as needed, until the weak, pathetic humans could take over? Where did she get that kind of power, hmm? She was strong, yes, but not that strong! Not anything close. So where do you think it came from?”
I looked at Pritkin, but his eyes were on his father. He hadn’t said anything, but one hand was flexing slightly. I didn’t like that. I liked Pritkin loud and bitching, in other words, his normal state. I didn’t like it when he got quiet.
Nobody else usually did, either.
“Where?” Rosier asked, and his hand hit the table, hard enough to make me flinch. “You can’t be that dim-witted!”
“She hunted demons for it,” I said, because he was right; it was obvious.
“Yes” came out as a hiss. “But not just any demons. She’d always gone after big prey in any case, preferring a challenge. Why should this be any different? And, really, small fry wouldn’t help her. She needed so much power, only the biggest, juiciest prey would do. She hunted, oh yes—Artemis the huntress, Hel with her fiery hunting dogs, Diana with her bow! She hunted in whatever name they call her, whatever confused, tortured, muddled memory they have, the people in my world, in yours, across hundreds more, they may have forgotten much, but they remember that yes, she hunted.”
There was no pretense of amiability now, no calm demeanor, no mask. Rosier was on his feet, backing me into the wall, the face that was usually so like his son’s suddenly alien as it twisted in pain, in fury.
“Through thousands of years, across hundreds of generations, even your people could not forget the vague but persistent memory of the greatest hunt of them all! It’s in your statues, on your vases, in virtually every depiction of her ever made. The memory of the methodical, the tactical, the relentless butchering—”
“No!”
“Yes! The butchering of the greatest among us. The Great Reaping of the demon lords.” My back hit the wall, but he didn’t stop coming. “Just where, my dear, do you suppose my father went? Why am I Lord of the Incubi, and not him? Did you never wonder what became of him? Never crossed your mind? No?”
I shook my head. This couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be. The demons . . . they could be terrifying, but they weren’t . . . they couldn’t have deser
ved . . . it wasn’t true.
“She killed him on a whim. Happened across him one day when she was raiding elsewhere and followed him home. Might not have bothered to venture into our world otherwise, as her daughter would so recklessly and thoughtlessly do, for we incubi, we’re not worth the effort. But when he fled for his life, in mortal peril, the instinct of the hunter—”
“I don’t believe you! Why should I believe you?”
“You don’t need to take my word for it. You wish to have your day in court? Please. Feel free. Go plead your case in front of the survivors of your mother’s massacre, and see how far you get! But this one,” Rosier said, grabbing the shoulder of the son who still hadn’t moved. “The one you took from me, as your mother took my sire—no. No, little child of Artemis, no. Him you do not take!”
And suddenly, something came over me at the sight of Rosier’s hand clenching on Pritkin, of his fingers digging into his flesh. Something wild and strange and unexpected. Something I didn’t understand except as a trickle of that dark emotion I’d felt on seeing Pritkin again, trapped and coddled at his father’s court, dressed in finery he had no use for, surrounded by sleek, sterile perfection instead of his usual cheerful mess, with none of the things he loved in sight, no potions, no books, no crazy weapons for fighting the creatures that were his jailers now.
