“Looking for something?” Dali came up from the hallway.
“No, I’m dancing the can-can.” Ask a dumb question . . .
Dali blinked at me. “Would you mind making coffee while you’re dancing? I smell it on the bottom shelf, either first or second jar on the left.”
I opened the first jar and looked inside. Coffee. The label said BORAX.
“What’s up with the labels?”
Dali shrugged. “You’re in the house of a cat whose job is to spy. He thinks he’s clever. I’d be careful with the silverware drawer. There might be a bomb in it.”
I extracted a small pot and set about boiling coffee.
“How’s Derek?”
“I don’t know. The door’s still closed. They’ve been in there for hours.”
The coffee foamed up. I held it away from the fire, put it back, and let it foam a second time. Dali got the cups. “I found out more about the jewel.”
I poured coffee into her mug. Dali watched me do it. “I always spill half of it,” she said. “Mine always runs down the side of the pot.”
Manual dexterity—just about the only thing I was good at. “So what about the jewel?”
“A couple of old texts say that Rudra Mani has the power to calm beasts and take away the suffering of man.”
A deeper meaning hidden in the description: the power to suppress a shapeshifter’s animal nature and keep him locked in his humanity. “Does it? Take the suffering away, I mean?”
Dali looked into her coffee. “Having a shard in you is like having part of you cut off. It’s a terrible feeling. I would prefer to be killed.”
So would I in the same situation. It was akin to surrendering my magic. I hated the man who’d given it to me. Aspects of it repulsed me and I refused them. But it was a part of me. With it, I felt whole for better or for worse. Using magic made me the person I was born to be. Keeping people from being themselves drove them insane.
“Rudra is a one of Shiva’s names,” Dali said. “It means ‘strict’ or ‘uncompromising.’ ”
How fitting. That was what the shapeshifters were, a compromise between beast and man. The gem forced them to become one or the other. I had been thinking about this on the way to the house, while riding the ley line. By then I had grown too numb to worry about Derek—I had described his condition for Julie and it had been like opening an old wound. At first there’d been the sharp slash of pain of a scab being ripped off, and then I’d bled, and the wound had gone numb.
I thought about the Order instead. About Ted and his true believer’s inability to compromise. Ted wanted humans to remain human no matter the cost.
A dark storm gathered on the horizon of my mind, with Rudra Mani firmly in its center.
“Does the name ‘Sultan of Death’ sound familiar to you?” I asked.
Dali paused, considering, and shook her head. “I have no clue who that is.”
That reminded me—I still hadn’t checked on the analyses of the molten silver the rakshasas had poured onto Derek’s face. The magic had fallen while I was asleep. I pulled the phone to me. Dial tone. Finally. The phone was one of those erratic devices that sometimes worked during magic. Most people had no idea how it worked. To them, it was almost magic, and sometimes magic waves shared that view.
I punched in Andrea’s home number. She answered on the second ring. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I’ve got your results right here,” she said. Not a hint of humor in her voice. “It’s not silver. It’s electrum.”
Electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold with a pinch of copper thrown in, was incredibly potent magically. It was also extremely toxic to shapeshifters.
“You don’t rank high enough to know the rest, so they won’t tell you,” Andrea said, “but I do. This particular alloy is very old and very poisonous to shapeshifters. You know how high my silver tolerance is. I can’t even hold it, Kate. Do you remember the agreement we made during the flare?”
“Yes.” We had agreed that I would never reveal to the Order that she was a beastkin and she would never reveal that I knew enough specific information about Roland to induce a collective seizure in the entire Order.
“There is only one person who has access to this alloy in a large quantity. The composition is very specific. It’s—”
“About fifty-five percent gold, forty-five percent silver, three percent copper, and the rest is random crap.”
“Yes.”
Samos electrum, from the coins struck on a small Greek island in the North Aegean Sea in 600 BC. My heart dropped. Logic had lost and my unreasonable paranoia had triumphed.
“I guess you know what that means, then,” she said.
“Yes. Thank you,” I said.
“Be careful.”
I hung up.
Roland. Only he had a large supply of the ancient Samos electrum. No doubt he meant for it to be used sparingly, perhaps as bullets or stakes, but instead the rakshasas had melted the lot of it just so they could pour it on Derek’s face. Dumb.
Roland was the Sultan of Death. If I continued to oppose the rakshasas, I would come into a confrontation with his agents. I would be discovered.
“Are you alright?” Dali asked.
“Never better,” I said.
A hot anger swept through me. If I was discovered, I would fight him to the end with everything I had, just like my mother had. I was fucking tired of paranoia and panic. It was an irrational, totally idiotic thought, and I reveled in it.
Jim came up the stairs. “He’s up and talking.”
I rushed down, abandoning my coffee.
CHAPTER 24
HE SAT ON THE BED, HIS LEGS COVERED BY A BLUE sheet. He was human and his color had returned to its normal skin tone. His hair was still dark brown. And that was about all that remained of the former Derek.
His face had lost its perfect symmetry. Its lines, so sharply defined before, had thickened and grown harsher. His features gained a rough hardness, and from the top of his mouth to his hairline, his face seemed slightly uneven, as if the shattered bones of his skull didn’t quite mesh. Before if he walked into a rough bar, someone would whistle and tell him he was too pretty. Now people would stare into their drinks and whisper to one another, “Here’s a guy who’s been through some bad shit.”
He looked up. Dark velvet eyes regarded me. Usually a hint of sly humor hid there behind the solemn composure of a Pack wolf. It was gone now.
“Hi, Kate.”
His lips moved but it took me a second to connect the low, raspy voice with Derek’s mouth.
“Damaged vocal cords?” I asked.
He nodded.
“It’s permanent,” Doolittle said softly. He stepped out of the room and closed the door. It was me and Derek now.
I perched on the side of the bed. “You sound like you kill people for a living,” I told him.
“I look like it, too.” He smiled. The effect was chilling.
“Is there a spot on you that’s safe to punch?”
“Depends on who’ll be doing the punching.”
“Me.”
Derek winced. “Then no.”
“Are you sure? I have a lot of baggage to release from the past couple of days.” My voice was breaking. I struggled for control.
“Positive.”
All of my guilt, all of my worry, all the anxiety and pain and regret, everything I had carefully packaged and stuffed away into the deepest recesses of myself so I could function, all of it swelled into an unbearable pressure. I fought to contain it, but it was like trying to hold back the tide. A hint of relief was all it took. The flood burst through my defenses and drowned me.
My spine turned to wet cotton. I clamped my arms to my sides, trying to hold myself rigid and keep myself from slumping over. A hard, hot clump blocked my throat. My heart thudded. It hurt, it really hurt, and I didn’t even understand where the pain emanated from. I just knew I hurt all over. Cold and burning up a
t the same time, I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Kate?” Derek’s alarmed voice demanded my attention. If only I could speak, I’d be okay.
I wished I could cry or something; I needed, desperately wanted, a release, but my eyes were dry and that pressure remained locked in me, battering me with pain.
Derek pushed from the pillow toward me. He’d gone pale, his new face rigid like a mask. “I’m sorry.”
He put his forehead against my hair, his arms around my shoulders. I hung suspended in my own painful world, like a speck in a storm.
“You can’t do this to me again.” My voice sounded rusty, as though it hadn’t been used in years. “You can’t show me you’re in trouble but not let me help. Not let me do anything.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
“I can’t deal with the guilt.”
“I promise, I won’t.”
Everyone I dared to care about died, violently and in pain. My mother died putting a knife into Roland’s eye, because he wanted to kill me. She was stolen from me before I had a chance to remember her. My dad died in his bed. I didn’t even know how or why. He had sent me on a training run, three days in the wilderness, just me and a knife. The smell had hit me ten yards from the front door. I found him in his bed. He was bloated. His skin had blistered and fluids had leaked from his body. He’d disemboweled himself—the sword was still clamped in his hand. I was fifteen.
Greg died on assignment. We’d had a fight a few weeks before his death and we didn’t part on good terms. He was ripped to pieces, his body shredded as if it had gone through a cheese grater.
Bran was stabbed through the back. He was almost immortal, and still he died, in my arms. I so desperately tried to keep him alive, I nearly brought him into undeath.
It was as if Death stalked me, like a cruel and cowardly enemy, taunting me, eating away at the edges of my world by stealing those I cared about. It didn’t just kill; it obliterated. Every time I got distracted, it would snatch another friend from me and destroy him.
Derek had fit that pattern to a T. A part of me had known with absolute certainty that he would die just like the others. I had imagined it so vividly, I could picture myself standing over his corpse.
Explaining all this would be tedious and painful. “I thought you would die,” I said simply.
“I did, too. I’m sorry.”
We sat for a long time. Finally when the storm inside me calmed, I stirred, and Derek let go and turned away, hiding his face. When he looked back at me, he’d put his Pack wolf composure back on.
“Some hard-asses we are.”
“Yeah. We’re tough,” he said with a grimace.
“Tell me about the girl.”
“Her name’s Olivia,” he said. “Livie. I met her at the Games. She’d slip away once the bouts started and we’d talk. She’s young. Her parents have money. They love her, but she was unhappy.”
“Poor little rich girl?”
He nodded. “Livie never knew her real dad. Her mom married her stepdad when she was two. She said her mom dressed her up like a little doll. They both treated her like she was a golden child. Like she was special. And then she grew up and realized she was pretty but not that special: not that bright, not that talented, not gifted with magic. She told me she’d make up stories about her dad being some magic prince.”
“She wanted very much to be more than what she was?” I guessed.
Derek nodded.
It was hard to grow up believing yourself to be a star and smash headfirst into the realization that only your parents thought you were one.
“She got herself a ‘special’ rich boyfriend. She didn’t even like him that much, but he treated her like she was walking on clouds, just like her mom. He brought her to the Games and they ran into the Reapers. The Reapers recognized her. Jim said you know about rakshasas. Well, they told her she was half. If she joined them, they’d let her go through this rite to unlock her powers. She would be able to change shapes like them and to fly. There was one catch: once she started the rites, she couldn’t stop.”
A sick feeling claimed my stomach. “Did she agree?”
“She did.” Derek grimaced. “She said she wanted to go back to the clubs where all her friends hung out and show off her new powers.”
“That’s shallow and stupid.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“Did she complete the rite?”
“Not yet. It’s long, takes several weeks. They started her on small stuff. Killing some animals. At first she liked it a little. I could tell by the way she told me—she was excited, proud of herself. She thought she was hard-core. But it got real bad in a hurry.”
“How bad?”
“They made her do some really sick shit.” Derek shrugged. “Some of it might have been for a purpose, but some . . . They made her torture other rakshasas who needed punishment. I don’t know if the rites were actually meant to unlock anything. I think they just got off on watching her pervert herself. She decided she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Only there’s no way out,” I said.
“Yeah. She asked me for help. I told her I’d help her, but alone I wouldn’t be enough. It would have to be a trade for the Pack to be involved. She agreed to tell us everything about the rakshasas and the Diamond. She said some mysterious guy made a deal with them. They’re supposed to get the Wolf Diamond and use it against the Pack. She’d tell us all about it if we got her out.” He sighed. “Most of the rest you already know. I went to Jim with it, and he said no and cut me off. I went to Saiman to steal the tickets, gave you the note, arranged for the transport, and headed to the spot to pick her up. When I got there, they were waiting for me. At least I put up a good fight.”
“Was she there?”
He nodded.
“What did she do?”
“She watched,” he said.
“Didn’t try to help? Didn’t protest?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me about the beating.”
“They jumped me, four on one. I had two shards in me with the first punch. Then there was more of them. Cesare, the big one with tattoos, supervised it. His ink slides off his body and twists into snakes with several heads. When they bite, it burns like ice. Not much to tell. I fought. I lost. It hurt.”
Cesare was going to die.
“You’re going after the girl?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“As soon as I’m strong enough. Shouldn’t be long now. Doc says that the virus in my body was suppressed but it still multiplied while the shards were embedded. Now I’m healing at a record rate. I’ll be on my feet in a few hours.”
“You understand that she doesn’t love you?” I kept my voice calm.
“I know that.” He swallowed. “For the final rite, she has to eat a human child. She’ll do it because she is weak and then there will be no turning back.”
“If your roles were reversed, she wouldn’t do the same for you. She’s using you.”
“It doesn’t matter what she does. It only matters what I do.”
He quoted me. Nice. Hard to argue with your own words.
I dreaded what I had to say next, but it needed to be said. “Rescuing her won’t resurrect your sisters.”
He winced. “I was weak back then. I couldn’t do anything. I tried, but I couldn’t. I’m stronger now.”
And there it was. Four years of being trapped in a house with a loup father who raped, tortured, and ate his children one by one, with Derek powerless to do anything about it. He saw his sisters in Livie’s face. He couldn’t let go any more than I could let go of my blood debts. He would persist until the rakshasas killed him.
THE INVALID DECIDED HE WANTED TO BE MOBILE and I lent him my shoulder. Together we managed the trip to the kitchen, where Jim, Dali, Doolittle, and Raphael were eating little chocolate cookies. Dali was nursing another cup of coffee next to Jim.
Across the table, Raphael was
playing with a steak knife. The good doctor on his right looked like a man who’d run to Marathon and then was told he had to run back. He saw Derek and his eyes bulged. “So help me God, I shall have to kill you myself, boy. What are you doing out of bed?”
Derek grinned. Dali winced. Doolittle’s eyes bulged a bit more. Jim remained stoic and Raphael just smiled.
I deposited Derek into a chair. “Why is it that you always gather in the kitchen?”
Magic Strikes Page 23
