Page 84 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

I scowled because that had sounded pretty final. “Look, I get it. I’m asking a lot—”

“You have no idea.”

“—but that curse could drive him mad if it’s anything like the one we battled in London. And as you told me once, you are him—”

“Like he’s ever admitted that!”

“—so it threatens you as well—”

“So does he!”

“—and you’ve helped me before, several times. Maybe I can help you now—”

“You can help by leaving me the hell alone!” the incubus snarled. He threw off the hand I’d put back on his arm, leaned his head against the wall, shut his eyes, and looked asleep. Or like he wanted to be.

And maybe he did. Maybe Bodil’s Somnolence was still active on him, too. Or perhaps he just wanted to forget I was here.

I stared at him, but he had that same mulish look I knew so well, that set-jawed, stone-faced stubbornness Pritkin got sometimes that never boded well for me. Or anyone else trying to reason with him. For such an intelligent man, he could be really stupid sometimes.

Especially about anything to do with demons.

His incubus half and his human/fey half had had their own little war going on for most of his life. That hadn’t been true when he was younger, growing up quite happily among humans and human/fey hybrids in old Wales. I’d met his previous self there and had been astounded at how easily he laughed, at how mischievous he was, at how at home he felt in his skin.

I’d never known that man.

Pritkin’s incubus half had been repressed for over a century, ever since it got carried away on his wedding night and drained his wife to death. That had sent Pritkin into a tailspin for years, filled with grief, guilt, and self-recrimination. For the first time, he had truly felt like the monster everyone thought him to be.

But that explanation for what had happened to Ruth hadn’t told the whole story. Pritkin’s wife had been part demon, too, and had wanted to increase her status and exchange her crappy life on Earth for a much more powerful, luxurious one in the hells by hitching her star to Rosier’s only son. But not simply by marriage.

She had wanted power in her own right, which was why, on their wedding night, she had instigated the power exchange that demons view as sex and which the incubus royal house was particularly adept at.

Unlike other demons, who could give or receive some of their partner’s energy in coitus, the incubi royal house could multiply it. Many, many times over, thus making an already pleasurable act a very lucrative one for both parties, as power was the only real currency in the hells. Rosier had made it the foundation of his wealth and influence, picking his partners carefully, as the power boost he offered was something the great demon lords would give almost anything for.

But great demon lords already had power to burn, which they needed as the process took before it gave. And it took a lot. More than a reckless, greedy, half-demon girl had had.

The result had been a shocked Pritkin suddenly holding the shriveled corpse of his wife in his arms while power surged through his horrified veins. He had blamed his demon half, but it had had very little to do with it. Ruth hadn’t told him what she’d planned, and it happened so fast that no one had had a chance to react before it was over.

And she was dead.

With her had died a big part of Pritkin. Or should I say, with her death, a big part of him had been imprisoned, for he’d never trusted his demon half again. They’d already been at odds over some of the things that Pritkin had seen in the hells after his father came to Earth to claim him, and that had put paid to any reconciliation that might have happened over time.

Instead, he’d locked his incubus away, pretended it didn’t exist, and denied himself the massive power boost it gave. And that was where things had stood for something like a century. Until I was being tortured in that camp, helpless and alone, and there was only one way to get me out.

Sex to an incubus was a conduit to someone’s power, just as blood was to a vampire. And the sexual torture those silver-haired freaks had put me through, and the sick lust it had raised in them, had been all the access that Pritkin had needed. He’d used it to grab hold of their life essence, doing to them on purpose what he’d done to his wife accidentally, and drained them of every bit of their power. Until they tumbled lifeless to the floor or puffed away on a breath of wind.

I’d used the chance to escape, while his incubus had used it as a way out of his cage.

Pritkin usually would have been furious about that, but in some of the memories Faerie had shared with us through the Common, we’d seen another side of his wife. She hadn’t been just a down-on-her-luck part-demon desperate to escape a life of poverty and powerlessness. She’d been an assassin, doing a job.

And guess who she was doing it for?

Enter Zeus, who had a problem. He was plotting to circumvent the protection spell that Mother had cast millennia ago, blocking the gods from Earth. And also blocking them from the hells and all those fat demon lords full of power that were waiting to be feasted on.

He needed the gods to hold this place against said demons, who disliked being lunch. But having the pantheon return risked a repeat of the situation he’d faced with Mother: a mad scramble among the gods for power, with anyone who turned out to be better at it than him trying to unseat him. She had done that after killing Rosier’s father, the previous prince of the incubi, and absorbing his ability to multiply magic.

She’d used the gift to greatly expand the power that all those demon lords she’d been hunting had given her, then turned it on her fellow gods, killing or vanquishing them from this realm. If she hadn’t been drained so low in the great battle for Earth that she nearly died herself, she could have fed using that same gift, replaced the magic she’d lost, and ruled here alone as she’d always wanted. But to receive you first have to give, and give a great deal, as Ruth had discovered to her cost.

And mother hadn’t had enough left.

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