Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

My shudder echoed through him and we groaned together that time, a desperate sound, and a moment later, I was desperate for another reason.

Because, when I looked up, it was to see the black eyes I’d encountered before, and once again, they’d completely eclipsed the green. I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t sure who I would have been speaking to, or who I was currently making love with. He pumped into me, long forceful strokes that felt so familiar, shuddering my body, making me cry out. But above me were a stranger’s eyes. Ones that glowed brighter and brighter with each thrust.

It was a terrifying thought, but my body didn’t interpret it that way.

My body had a mind of its own.

It growled “faster” and clamped down on him hard. He snarled back, like a tiger being ordered around by its mate, but sped up. And found that one spot, hitting it at just the right angle, over and over again, making me pay in the sweetest possible way. Colors ran behind my eyes, laughter bubbled up in my throat, fighting for a voice with the scream already building there. I didn’t know what to do or how to feel, or how to express the emotions that built and built and built—

And then released, when all the power that Pritkin had been absorbing came rushing back into me. A massive flood of it that had me writhing on the bed and staring up at him in shock, feeling like my hair was on fire. My eyes didn’t work right, either, or else he was actually glowing, the skin burnished gold, the eyes emerald flame.

But whatever the cause, the shock brought me back to myself somewhat.

And getting rid of the power, at least for the moment, seemed to have done the same thing to him.

He shook his head, his eyes bleeding back to normal, even as his body kept pumping into mine. “Release it! Cassie, let it go!”

I tried. But either the part of him running this show had timed things perfectly, or else I was too busy shuddering through the most intense climax of my life to concentrate. And it didn’t get any easier.

Energy arced and sparked over the bed, which was now steaming. Pritkin’s hair was a wild halo around his flushed face, while his lips moved in a spell. But whatever it was, it didn’t work or it wasn’t strong enough. Because I screamed through orgasm just as the power rushed back into him.

I collapsed back against the bed, my limbs trembling, my skin singing, my breath coming harsh and ragged in my throat. But that was nothing to what was happening to my partner. His eyes were neon fire, his veins showed clearly through the skin as if they were filled with light instead of blood, and his body convulsed, spasming into mine like a man possessed.

Which, for all I knew, maybe he was. I didn’t know how this strange symbiosis worked, and doubted that he did. But I knew one thing. Pritkin might be a prince of the Incubi, but that didn’t make him indestructible, not when he’d had a mostly human mother.

And his human part was struggling.

I didn’t know what was different about this time; he hadn’t looked like this in Wales. But he was shuddering and convulsing, trying to absorb the power and failing. Just like me. Because the feedback loop wasn’t stopping.

The flood of energy, so much bigger, so much hotter this time, slammed back into me like a few dozen freight trains. I screamed, half in pain, half in ecstasy, because I’d never felt anything like it. Pritkin was still inside me, and the combination made me come all over again, made me wring orgasm after orgasm out of him, because he couldn’t seem to stop, either.

It was easily the most intense experience I’d ever had, but it wasn’t going to last. Because we weren’t. If we couldn’t get rid of it, we were going to die. This time, next time, but soon.

Very soon.

Pritkin was yelling something as I convulsed, which sounded like “shift!”

I didn’t know what he meant at first, couldn’t think. But then I realized: the power we were creating was getting too big even for the Circle’s wards to contain. Last time, I’d used it to tear open a hole in the sky, and release a god from another dimension to battle Ares. But I couldn’t do that here. If I did that here—

People died.

Hell, half of our army died!

Was that what this was about? I thought, panicking. Was that what Jonathan had been waiting for? For his incubus ally to try again what it had failed to do in London, and steal enough power to burn down HQ and everybody in it?

“There must be three.” Me, Pritkin, and Pritkin’s incubus?

But no, that couldn’t be it. If Pritkin died, his incubus did, too! Didn’t he?

I didn’t know. I didn’t understand how this worked; not any of it. But I tried to do what Pritkin had said, and shift us away. Somewhere, anywhere—a desert, a mountaintop, a swamp—with no people in it, where we could release all of this safely.

But I couldn’t. Instead of having too little power, my problem now was that I had too much. So much that it felt like acid in my veins, like my heart was pumping lava instead of blood. And my senses—

My senses were going haywire.

The usual incubus effect had hit, magnifying and distorting everything. It was as if the whole room was blending together, to the point that I could taste laughter, hear tears, smell emotions. Pritkin was gasping out another incantation, and I could see the words as they left his lips, spicy red and peppery, the color smearing as they floated over the bed. As if we’d fallen into some crazy comic.

Using the Pythian power required concentration, and right then, I didn’t have any.