“And yet where are you and where is she?”
I shook my head. “And even if I could, even if I ever get this stuff down, that doesn’t scratch the surface. I’m supposed to know a couple thousand years of supernatural politics when I don’t even know everybody’s name yet. And to make up for a lifetime of magical training when I can’t even do a proper protection spell. And to understand everything about the vamp world, including how to deal with the senate, when I grew up at the court of the vamp version of Tony Soprano! There’s no time!”
“I know,” Rosier said calmly.
“You know?” I adjusted my position so I could see his face again. “How do you know?”
A ghostly eyebrow rose, in an elegant arch. “How do you think it was for me? I went from carefree, bachelor prince to beleaguered ruler overnight, with damn little training myself. I think my father thought he’d have another son eventually—or a daughter. It’s much the same with us. Someone, in any case, who would be more like him. I was never like him. I was more like my mother, he always said, but not fondly.”
“They didn’t get along?”
He smiled slightly. “They got along famously, for as long as it lasted—our kind rarely forms permanent bonds. Her spirit, her joie de vivre, her vivaciousness, were all assets in a consort. But, like fathers for time out of mind, he assumed his son would take after him. Be strong, statesmanlike, astute. When I turned out to be . . . less than that . . . he didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. Nor did he provide the training I was never supposed to need.”
“And when you did need it—”
“You think you’re lost? Try waking up one day to find that your father has been slaughtered, your court is in complete panic, and your enemies are taking the opportunity to invade. And that you, with your completely inadequate training and a power you’ve mainly been using to seduce sweet young things, are expected to save the day. That day. Right then.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Or maybe it was just uncomfortable on my part. Because my mother was the reason he’d been in that mess.
As hard as it might be to believe, looking at me, she’d been one of the creatures humans had once called gods. Not because of their morality, which they mostly seemed to find a foreign concept, or their justice, mercy, and wisdom, which they didn’t have any of, either. But because what else do you call beings so powerful that they just mow down everything in their path?
Including Rosier’s father, powerful demon lord though he had been, because even a mediocre god was on a whole different level.
And while my mother had been a lot of things, mediocre had never been one of them.
She’d been the goddess with a thousand names, who showed up in one form or another in virtually every culture on earth. But the one the world remembered best was Artemis, the Great Huntress. And guess what she’d best liked hunting?
And she wasn’t the only one. The whole misbegotten pantheon had been thrilled when they discovered earth, while exploring a rift between our universe and theirs. Not because of humans, who they thought fit only for slaves. But because earth offered access to their real prey: the demons.
As I’d discovered on my search for Pritkin, the hells were composed of a vast array of worlds populated by a wide range of creatures, from the mostly innocuous incubi, to beings even the other demons called “ancient horrors” and did their best to lock away. But they all had one thing in common: they fed off other species—humans, other demons, even fey if they could get them. And they stored up much of that power for later.
Or, at least, they did until the gods showed up, to turn the tables and hunt them instead.
Most of the gods had stayed on their staging ground, earth, and waited for the demons to come to them. But my mother hadn’t been content to just wait around. She’d gone into the hells themselves, searching out the fattest, juiciest prey, the ones with enough energy stored up to not need to hunt on earth. The ones who had ultimately made her more powerful than any of her kind. The ones who had allowed her to cast a spell throwing the other gods out of their new acquisition, and slamming the door behind them.
Leaving it all for her.
It would have been perfect, if her fellow gods hadn’t fought back. But some did, and the battle drained her more than she’d expected. To the point that she was forced to hide among the human population, to avoid retaliation from the demon hordes who were now hunting her. She had become weaker and weaker over time, unable to hunt, to feed, at least enough to make a difference, for fear of betraying her whereabouts to those with memories as long as her own.
Most of the world didn’t have that advantage, and they largely forgot great Artemis and her hunt. But the demons never did. Especially not Rosier, whose father had been one of my mother’s last victims. Which made it both awkward and seriously ironic that we were having to work together now. But while the demons might not like me, they understood one thing.
We were all on the same side now.
It was why the demon council of my day, who wanted the thorn in their side named John Pritkin very, very dead, had nonetheless relented and given me the counterspell. Not because they wanted to help the daughter of their greatest enemy, but because their paranoia was only eclipsed by their pragmatism. And they knew there was something worse out there.
Namely, the ancient beings that my mother had tossed out on their godly butts, who were currently pounding at the door, trying to get back in. And she was dead now and the spell she’d cast all those centuries ago to bar the way was starting to feel a little threadbare. And if it fell, it was going to be open season on all of us, whether weak and puny or old and powerful, because to the gods, we all pretty much looked the same.
And died as easily.
I glanced at Rosier, to find him staring out over the moon-flooded city, lost in his own thoughts.
“How did you do it?” I asked, because I really wanted to know.
“How did I do what?”
“Survive.”
He shrugged. “The only way I knew how. I started bellowing orders in my best imitation of Father, acted like I knew what I was doing, cornered a few of his old advisers and stuck them to my side like burrs, and . . . made do. Mostly because of Father’s excellent preparations, but people gave me the credit anyway. And afterward, I simply kept going. Listening to my own judgment sometimes, which I discovered wasn’t so bad, after all; getting advice from people who might actually know what they were talking about when I could; and hoping for luck when nothing else worked.”
I scowled. Great.