Q&A #56

Some more questions in today. Most are Reap the Wind specific, so please keep it in mind if you haven’t read the book.

1. Just finished reading Reap the Wind and am now over-bubbling with anticipation for Ride the Storm. Reap the Wind was a humongous book!! It was awesomely long!! Which I loved, loved, loved. And the Dory crossover again but from Cassie’s POV – so exciting. Loved it all.

I got to thinking about the powers of the vampires though and was wondering, if one first-level master vampire is the equivalent of a bunch of armies and the power decreases from there depending on what level master you are, the how the heck have the mages managed to fight them off all these years and not let them take over? The poor mages never seem to win any of the battles between them and vampires (or is that just because we see more from the vampires POVs?)

Well, first, because masters are scarce. Like, really scarce. You don’t see that so much in my books, because they are dealing with Mircea’s family and the senate, etc. But there aren’t many masters around at all, which is why Mircea wanted Cassie’s help in building him an army. Mages outnumber vamps, but they really outnumber masters. So, while a mage versus a master vamp would be toast, a mage versus a regular old run of the mill vamp . . . well, that’s a very different thing. Plus, kill enough run of the mill vamps, and you start to cut at their masters’ power base.

And, second, because mages are tricky. They are constantly coming up with new spells, etc. to balance the scales with the senate. And they’ve pretty much done so, at least to the point that neither side is willing to risk war.

2. In comparison to a first-level master, how powerful is modern day Pritkin? He was stopped in one of the earlier books by a bunch of masters when he tried to kill Cassie but there seemed to be a big scuffle before they could restrain him.

Pritkin gave up a huge amount of power when he lost his incubus abilities. But even without them, he was still a very strong war mage, still knew a lot about three different magical systems (demon, fey and human) and had a great deal of knowledge gained from hundreds of years of study and experience. All of which explains why the senate had trouble with him in TTD. Well, that and the fact that they were trying to restrain him without killing him (and thus coming into conflict with the Circle), and without giving anything away about their abilities that he couldn’t already have known. That put the brakes on some things that would have ended that fight really fast.

3. Would he be as powerful as a first-level master if he could use his incubus powers as well as his mage powers?

It would depend on the master.

4. Could he take on a bunch of first-level masters?

Again, which ones? And are they all fighting together? And what do you mean by take on? Immobilizing them, shielding against them, hiding from them would all be pretty easy with his incubus powers restored. You saw him elude an entire battlaion of fey in Reap the Wind, and that’s not easy. Killing them, however . . . well, killing first level masters is crazy difficult, plus most of the ones available are on his side! For those who aren’t . . . let’s say it would be a hell of a fight.

5. Is he secretly more bad-assed than any of them? Will Cassie ever rescue his soul?! Okay, you don’t have to answer that last one.

Lol! He’s certainly far more formidable with his power fully online, so to speak, than with it hobbled. But that’s the thing, and the point Artemis was making to Cassie in their conversation in Tempt the Stars: Pritkin doesn’t really know what he can do/who he is. He’s never had a chance to find out. He shut out the demon side of him early, after his first trip into hell seriously traumatized him, and has never really explored that side of himself since. Just passively, his incubus abilities gave him a good deal of extra strength. But what else can they do? And what can they do combined with the other strains of magic in his genetics? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t really even know much about his ancestry, at this point. So the answer to your question is still up in the air. But one thing is certain: he couldn’t grow or explore with Rosier’s prohibition on him, which basically left him in a state of suspended animation for a century. If it ever gets lifted . . . well, then we’ll have to see. :-)