It was no secret that his line could multiply power. That was why Rosier commanded such great fees from other demons for a single night in his company, and why he’d wanted Pritkin back in hell, enough to make his son’s life miserable for years. Because the two of them together could generate enough power to hold his throne against all takers.

I had even experienced the effect myself a few times, and thought I understood it.

I’d been wrong.

Pieces of what looked like a star flung sky, if glimpsed through towering black storm clouds, were suddenly whirling around us. They were thick enough to blot out the room, to leave us in the middle of a glittering swath of boiling power, both alien and familiar at the same time. And I realized: I’d never seen Pritkin’s power before, had I? Just what it acted upon.

But I was seeing it now, and feeling it, when one of the rotating bands brushed against my arm, raising gooseflesh all over my body. And then my mind’s eye showed me two more hands, dark as night but sparkling with power, grab onto the thin thread of barbed lighting in my fist. That made six of them now: mine, Mircea’s, and Pritkin’s.

And, all of a sudden, Zeus had a fight on his hands.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

I felt it when Zeus realized what had happened, when he stopped testing me and threw his real strength into the fight, when the strand of lightning between us flared and crackled and strained. But it didn’t go flying out of my grip, as he had probably expected. And, frankly, as I had expected.

Alone, I was no match for a god, much less their king.

But right now, I wasn’t alone.

Which was why the lightning threading through the skin of my arm… started to recede.

It looked like an animal sheathing silver claws, giving way to a black and red landscape of ruined flesh. But I could deal with that, I thought, daring to hope. I could definitely deal with that!

Only I didn’t know if I’d get the chance, since the retreat was going slowly and stutteringly, pulling back one minute and advancing the next, as if a battle was happening inside me. Which I guessed it was. It looked like I’d become the new combat zone, that my body was the current theater of war. Something that would have been terrifying even if I hadn’t seen what had happened to the Thames.

But Pritkin wasn’t done.

He began to thrust, in long, practiced strokes, exactly the way I liked them. Or the way I would have liked them, only my fantasies didn’t usually involve imminent death! Or my ex.