Tempt the Stars

from earth to their home world. Presumably, they were referring to the ley lines running from here into Faerie, and the portals cut through them.”
    Caleb just sat there, looking stunned. And making me feel even dumber than usual, because I didn’t see what difference any of this made. “So? We knew they came from somewhere else,” I pointed out. “All the legends talk of them going back home, to Asgard or Olympus or wherever, on a regular basis. This isn’t news.”
    “Then perhaps this is,” Pritkin said, leaning forward. “The gods stayed on earth, even though they could not feed there. Why? Why was it so important to them? Why were they so enraged when your mother found a way to banish them? Why have they been working so hard, and for millennia, in order to get back?”
    I frowned at him. Now that he put it like that, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. “I don’t know. Maybe they liked being worshipped?”
    “Enough for everything we’ve seen them do? Enough to risk dying, for nothing more than an ego stroke, and from a people they treated as little better than animals?” He shook his head. “No.”
    “Okay, then, what’s your theory?”
    “It’s not a theory. I’ve spent months on this, and it wasn’t easy. The only beings who had the information I wanted were not keen to discuss the subject. But I managed to get a hint here, some confirmation there, and then another piece from—”
    “Pritkin! Just tell me.”
    Green eyes met mine. “The gods weren’t interested in earth for its own sake. They wanted it for its role as a . . . a watering hole . . . if you like, for their real prey.”
    “What prey?” I asked, starting to get a really bad feeling about this.
    “The gods can’t feed off human energy, not because they can’t process it, but because it is so weak it does almost nothing for them. Your mother could have drained a city and been very little the better for it. But there were creatures on this side of the divide who lived far longer, gained energy much better, and stored it up far more efficiently—”
    “Cows!”Casanova said, waving his glass. “Ever’body’s jus’ somebody’s cow.”
    I frowned at him, not least because he’d just splattered hell juice all over my arm. But Pritkin nodded. “It’s not a bad analogy.”
    “That we’re
cows
?” I demanded, vainly looking around for something to mop up with.
    But everything in here was already dirtier than I was.
    “No, we’re grass,” Pritkin said. “The demons are the cows.” He saw my expression. “Think of it this way, Cassie. Humans can eat grass, correct?”
    “Yeah, I guess. Technically.”
    “But nobody does. Why is that?”
    “I don’t know . . . because it’s
grass
.”
    “It’s lacking in nutrition, in calories, in all the things we need for life, yes?”
    I nodded.
    “A human would starve on a diet of grass. But a cow . . . a cow does quite well on it. Gets fat, even. And then, if a human eats the cow—”
    “Okay, wait,” I said, my head spinning. “You’re telling me . . . that the gods came to earth, found a bunch of fat demons chewing up all the human grass, and decided to have a barbecue?”
    He nodded. “Something like that. Remember, demons live much longer lives than humans, and have the capacity to store up a great deal more energy. In some cases, from thousands of feedings over hundreds of years. And not merely from earth. But from all their home worlds, as well.”
    “But their home worlds don’t yield as much,” I said, recalling something Rian had said.
    “No. Which is why earth was so prized when my father’s people, and others, stumbled across it long before the gods ever did. And then started coming in droves, to feed off the humans who couldn’t detect them and had virtually no defenses against them.”
    “But someone’s always higher on the food chain,” Caleb said, with a certain grim satisfaction.
    Pritkin nodded. “And when the gods discovered the demons, they felt toward them the way the demons had felt toward the human population. Here was a huge source of energy, ripe for the plucking, who had almost no defenses against them. Yes, they could buck and kick a little, but does that stop a lion from taking down a gazelle? And only the greatest of them could even manage that much of a response.”
    “Then why didn’t the demons just stop coming?” I demanded. “Once they knew the gods were here—”
    “Do gazelles stop