Which was suddenly in mine.
The breath could have stopped traffic for a ninety-mile stretch. Drool was drip, drip, dripping onto the bed linens in slimy strings. Eyes bigger than my head were reflecting the still-burning fire, along with a vision of my body as I slowly, slowly, slowly bent down. And picked up another foot. And held it out— And felt a wash of hot breath over my arm, which was somehow raising goose bumps anyway, maybe because my skin was still trying to get the hell out of there. And then a tongue, big and heavy as a rug, wrapped around my flesh. And withdrew, along with the tiny, tiny offering, but not with the arm itself, because I guess I didn’t compare with good old pork.
And really, what does? I thought hysterically. If I had bacon, I could probably make him fetch— Rosier grabbed my arm, his fingers like a vise. “Get. On. The. Bed.”
“I . . . am on the bed.” Well, I was pretty sure.
“Oh.”
He snaked a leg off the side and gave a little push. I felt the hell wind start to ruffle my hair as we started down the hell road with the hellhound shaking the street behind us, while I lobbed pig foot after pig foot into its gaping maw. It didn’t miss a one.
Until the darkness overhead suddenly congealed into a second hound, even larger than the first, which went for its throat. And then another crowded the street, which was almost too small to hold them despite being big enough for a couple city buses to pass each other with room to spare. But hellhounds are not buses and there was no room here, and that was before the council’s guards decided to show back up, running up the hill toward us.
And abruptly turning and running back the other way as we began picking up speed, the night boiling behind us, all black smoke and sleek, shifting fur and firelit eyes.
And sailing pig feet, because I was throwing them both-handed now.
“Put out your hands!” I told Rosier frantically.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no,” he said, grunting and straining, trying to break through the damn Victorian ironwork, which must have been forged in the same factory where they made tanks if they had tanks. I didn’t know. I just knew it wasn’t freaking budging.
“That isn’t working!” I yelled the obvious.
“You can’t throw those things and get these damn cuffs off me at the same time!”
“And when I run out? What then?”
“You’re not going to run out. As soon as we get far enough to clear the river, I’m going to shift us back!”
I blinked. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay! Sounds like a plan.”
A slight bit of color came back to his face. “Yes, okay.” He grinned at me suddenly, wide and relieved and startlingly like the younger version of his son for a second. “Okay! We’ll do that!”
I nodded.
And then the street erupted in fire.
Chapter Three
“It was a good plan,” Rosier said.
“It was.” I ate pork.
“The Victorians weren’t the most hygienic of sorts,” he told me, eyeing my last trotter.
“They boiled it.”
“And we carried it through hell.”
“It was on a bed,” I pointed out. “It didn’t get anything on it.” Except for a few fuzzies.
I picked one off and kept eating.
“I don’t know how you can eat with that stench down there,” he said, peering over the ledge we were sitting on, and glaring malevolently at the Thames.
It was shining under a full moon, which was glistening off the water. And off the streets, because it must have rained while we were gone. Time worked differently in the hells, so that might have been anything from a couple hours to a couple days. But whatever it was, it had left Victorian London looking almost pretty, with roiling gray clouds and shining streets and fresh air because the rain had washed the coal dust away.
We were sitting on the edge of what I called Big Ben and Rosier called the Clock Tower, overlooking the city. It wasn’t a choice; I was feeling a little clearer-headed, but not enough to shift back yet, which was why I was eating. It seemed to help.
“I don’t know how you can smell anything with no nose,” I said.
“I have a nose.”
“You don’t even have a body.”
It was true. The mages had shown up, unseen by us, and collectively lobbed a spell we hadn’t noticed until it nuked the air around us. Rosier had thrown himself over me and shifted us back to earth, all at the same time, and in doing so had saved my life.
And lost his.
Well, his body, anyway. Fortunately, a demon lord’s spirit is a bit sturdier, meaning that he could generate a new one . . . eventually. In the meantime, I was used to hanging out with ghosts, so the fact that I could see the city through the shimmering veil of my companion’s form didn’t wig me out too much.
Unlike his sacrifice.
I knew he’d only done it because he needed me, but still. I couldn’t figure Rosier out, and it bothered me. Half the time, he was oh, so easy to hate, a rotten, self-centered, narcissistic asshole I could have cheerfully pushed off the ledge if it would have done any good. But the rest . . .
The rest of the time I just didn’t know.
But at least his current form was too dim for Gertie to sense, so we were enjoying the view unmolested, if not the noise. The huge mechanism was tick, tick, ticking, almost in sync with my heart. This close, it was uncomfortably loud, like it was yelling hurry, hurry, hurry.
“How much longer do you think we have to save Pritkin?” I asked Rosier, after a minute.
“A day. Maybe two. No more.”
I didn’t say anything, but he shot me a glance.
“There’s time.”
I laughed suddenly, and it hurt, because my throat was sore from screaming. One of these days, just once, I’d like to be the cool action figure type, like in all those movies. The one who casually walks away when a building is exploding right behind her, instead of shrieking and ducking for cover and possibly wetting her pants.
Of course, I’d always wondered how many of the people who made those movies had ever been in an explosion. Had felt the heat, smelled the smoke, and thought for a second their eardrums were going to rupture from the noise. And been sure that they were about to be burned alive any second now.
Like Rosier had been.
For me.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, “sitting” on the ledge. Meaning his butt was hovering a couple inches over the top of it.
I glanced at him. “Time. I’m supposed to be master of it, but there never seems to be enough.”
“Strange. I usually feel the opposite. But then, I’ve never been human.”
“Try being Pythia. I’m expected to know . . . so much. Just so much. It’s . . . overwhelming sometimes.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Like what?”
I hesitated, because I hadn’t expected him to ask. But it wasn’t like it was a secret. It wasn’t like the whole damn supernatural community didn’t know anyway. “Like everything. Like how to use the Pythian power with no one to teach me. The stuff you’ve seen Gertie do? I can’t do half that—”