Blood Heir

by Ilona Andrews

  The blood armor snapped together, covering me from head to toe. Only my eyes and nostrils remained uncovered. I needed sight and air for the next few seconds.

  My feet touched the spikes, heat burned me, but I kept running, my blood boots blunting the sharp points, shaping an arrow out of my blood as I ran. The edge loomed in front of me. I wasted a precious half-second to crouch and jumped straight up. The priest’s shocked face flashed before me, only twenty-five feet away.

  A cone of fire roared toward me, impossibly hot.

  I shut my eyes, letting the blood armor flow over my entire face. Deaf and blind, I took the shot.

  I landed badly. My left ankle rolled under me, heat burning the soles of my feet through the armor.

  There was no air. I held my breath and waited. It felt like I was being cooked alive. I had sprinted so hard. My body screamed for air.

  I staggered forward. The few precious moments of oxygen my movement cost me would make no difference.

  Twenty seconds.

  Thirty.

  Fuck it.

  I let the armor slide off my face. It fell off in black chunks, crumbling in midair, its magic exhausted.

  The ma’avir hung from the wall in front of me, no longer fire, but pale flesh. My arrow had pierced through his heart, or through the place it used to be.

  Got him. I got him. “Why are you here? Why do you want the divine beast who killed the priest? Tell me!”

  His light eyes focused on me. “I can see now. I understand why he wants you.”

  “Why does he want the beast?”

  “He who consumes the heart of the beast will be given a brief glimpse of the true future. Once seen, that future will not change.” The priest’s voice faded. “Forgive me. When you ascend to his side, I will serve you in the afterlife.”

  His eyes rolled back in his head. I dropped to the ground, building a new face shield from what little blood I could still take.

  The high priest detonated.

  11

  Tulip moved through the streets at a steady, even pace. The sky had lightened to a luminescent pre-dawn grey, and the ruined Midtown slid by on my left, dark against the pearlescent backdrop. My blood armor had turned coal-black, its magic gone. It crumbled away at the joints with the motions of the horse, breaking into black dust. The wind caught it and carried it off.

  Everything hurt. I floated in a sea of pain, anchored by it to reality. The ride would end eventually. I just had to wait it out.

  Tulip turned onto our street. Familiar landmarks crept by. The heap of rubble with a chunk of a wall tiled in bright turquoise sticking out of it. The tall oak tree where Turgan liked to sit. The edge of the yard. The front door.

  I slipped off Tulip’s back in a shower of black specks. Untacking her took superhuman effort, but it had to be done. I settled her into the stable, made sure there was clean water, and willed myself to walk to the front door. I passed through the two outer wards, entered the house, and locked the door behind me. The air smelled of herbs, a thick pungent aroma. Conlan had found my aunt’s purification bundle and burned it in the brazier to cover up his scent. If any shapeshifters showed up, the smell would make them nose blind.

  My brother was amazing.

  I dragged myself to my sanctuary.

  Turning the key in the lock hurt.

  The door slid open, revealing the familiar limestone floor and columns. Water murmured in the channel, flowing slowly.

  I shut the door of the sanctuary behind me, heard the thick metal bar of the lock slide into place, and finally let go. The blood armor cracked, losing what little integrity it had left. I walked down the path slowly, and as I moved, the last chunks of my armor fell off me, shattering on the floor into clouds of dark dust.

  I zeroed in on the metal rose on my desk. Almost there. Just a few more steps.

  Almost.

  My fingers closed about the cold stem. I plucked the flower from the vase with my ruined fingers. Made it.

  The sack of herbs was next, an ordinary bag with five pounds’ worth of a priceless herbal mix, tucked away into the corner of the third shelf. When you want to hide something precious, put it in plain sight.

  I carried the bag and the rose into my bedroom. The water in the bath lay placid. The stream kept it filled, and the magic coils buried under it made sure the water stayed warm when the magic was up.

  I put the rose on the edge of the tub and emptied the contents of the sack into the bath. Herbs, flowers, and powders tumbled into the water, releasing swirls of blue, then red. Dried leaves and blossoms unfurled slowly. Ground blue thistle, shaved mandrake, Solomon’s seal, pasqueflower, goldenseal, sage, ginseng, lavender, valerian, French mallow… All treated with magic, carefully processed, and prepared for me by my aunt. I had just dumped twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth into the tub.

  The mirror on the side wall had no mercy. The entire front of me was fire-engine-red. The armor had kept the damage contained, but now blisters broke open all over my face and neck.

  I pulled a knife off my belt and cut through my T-shirt. My chest and stomach were a constellation of blisters. The heat had cooked me like a lobster in the shell.

  I sliced through my bra. It came apart. Pain jolted me, and I whimpered. I just had to hold on long enough to get out of my clothes.

  The boots were the worst. The soles of my feet were gaping raw sores with charred edges, all skin gone. I pulled the tie out of my hair, releasing the bun. My hair fell around me. The armor had protected it from direct fire, but even if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t be bald for long.

  The water in the bath had foamed and turned a nearly opaque eggplant-purple. Petals and leaves covered the surface. I dipped my foot into the liquid. I knew it was just warm enough to let the herbs steep faster, but it felt scalding hot. I grit my teeth and forced myself into it, sinking onto the small shelf. The heat was unbearable. I submerged, again and again, soaking my face in the mix.

  Slowly, the pain grew dull, blunted by the analgesic herbs. I wanted my rose, but I had left it at the other side of the tub, far out of reach, and getting there right now was beyond me. I’d dropped the cut T-shirt on it accidentally, and I could just make out the hint of metal petals peeking out from under the lymph-soaked cloth. Good enough.

  A rush of agony twisted through me, the magic I stole from Moloch and made my own eager to repair the damage. It hurt now, but I knew it would hurt more before my body was fully healed. I rested my head on the smooth edge, the water just below my lips, inhaled the aromatic mist rising from the medicinal bath, and let saffron, lemon balm, and valerian soothe me into sleep.

  I wasn’t alone.

  The realization filtered in through my drowsiness, triggering an internal alarm. Someone was with me in the room. I reached for magic and found nothing. The tech was up.

  Nobody should have been here. I had locked both doors behind me. I was absolutely sure.

  Tepid water brushed against my neck. I was still sitting on the shelf of my tub.

  I tried to open my eyes. I managed a tiny sliver of light, blocked by some sort of translucent curtain. What the hell? Had I gone blind?

  I sat up. Something ripped with a dry crunch, and the curtain fell away. A thin, almost transparent layer of my skin peeled off my face and fell into the water. Ewww.

  Across from me, past the other side of the bath, Derek sat on the floor.

  My heart hammered in my chest, as my brain grappled with what I saw, trying to make sense of it in a feverish rush. I was awake and lucid. He wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t a hallucination either. First, everything else looked normal, and second, if my medicine-addled brain were to serve me a version of Derek, it wouldn’t have dressed him in a modern ninja suit stained with blotches and dots of black and grey. I had never seen him wear anything like this in my whole life.

  No, it was him. In the flesh. Sitting on the floor of my bedroom and staring at me with fiery eyes, while I shed dead skin like a snake.

  I
stared back. He looked hard and cold, sharper, more awake somehow than I remembered. The thin network of scars crisscrossed his face. Years ago, some creatures poured molten silver on his face. He should’ve died. He had survived against all odds, and the scars were the price he paid. Before the scars, people used to describe him as handsome. Now they used other words. Dangerous. Scary. Lethal.

  He sat relaxed, as if finding a camouflaged fortress filled with strange magical artifacts and weapons in the middle of Atlanta was just one of the things he’d done today. He wasn’t bothered by it. He wasn’t bothered by me sitting naked in the dark water or my healing rituals. He just watched, his headlights stuck on bright. Dad’s gold was like the sun, hot and yellow. Derek’s glow was icy golden moonlight.

  I forced myself to not hold my breath and searched his eyes for recognition.

  No trace of the Julie he knew remained. The moment I slid the Eye of Moloch into the empty orbit in my head, it began assessing my body and set about fixing its flaws. It tore my muscle and reshaped my bones. It wasn’t gentle. It was relentless. Nothing could make it stop.

  Unlike shapeshifters, who benefited from a cocktail of biological endorphins and painkillers when they changed shape, I had to endure my transformation slowly and in a great deal of pain. I had asked my grandmother about it between the bouts of agony, and she’d told me that many features we considered beautiful were simply signs of health and beneficial adaptations. The bloodline of Moloch had focused on survival for generations, and the Eye was trying to improve my chances of not dying.

  It started by making my face perfectly symmetrical, enlarging my eyes, streamlining my nose, giving me a longer neck and elegant fingers. It didn’t like the texture of my hair, so it made it thicker, wavier, and gave it a darker golden tint. It turned both of my eyes a matching light green, the same as Moloch’s. I was always frustrated with being short, and it stretched me, gifting me three inches of height, bigger lungs, and larger heart. Growing pains was an understatement.

  The strain proved unbearable. My mind unraveled. With each new torturous improvement, I slipped closer to madness.

  When the pain had become too much, Erra forged a pocket realm for me, woven of her memories. It was the only way to keep me sane. She and a dozen of her retainers went into the magically induced coma with me, so I wouldn’t be alone. My grandmother loved me so much. She had risked her own safety for my sake. She went into the dream, allowing her body to lay helplessly next to mine, vulnerable and easy to kill.

  My aunt and uncle guarded us for nine months. To me, in the dream, four years had passed.

  My grandmother dedicated that time to educating me. I lived as a princess of Shinar, the way Shinar used to be. I had lessons in magic, combat, politics, and history. I learned to speak the old language, and by the time I woke up, English was a memory and I’d picked up a slight trace of an accent. I studied, I improved, I learned the ancient magic skills I required to survive. I had dedicated myself to becoming worthy of my grandmother’s sacrifice. She believed in me.

  The Eye had picked up on my determination and once again decided to help me against my will. Even as my body assimilated its magic, it changed my appearance one more time. I wanted to be like Erra and like Kate. I wanted to belong to their family. I wanted to be strong like them.

  The Eye had found Kate’s blood in me and used it. It made me into the princess of Shinar I had imagined. When I woke up, I looked like Kate’s daughter.

  Nobody would confuse us. Our faces were too different. But if you put my grandmother, Kate, and me together, you would see the three generations of Shinar. You would see the same eye shape, the same eyebrows, and the same jawline. I was paler, blonder, with green eyes that matched Moloch’s, and sharper features, but the progression of the bloodline was plain for all to see.

  When I saw my face for the first time, I thought I’d gone mad and screamed. When my grandfather saw the new me, he stared at me in silence for several minutes while his magic pierced me until he finally said, “Well, you are truly your mother’s scion.”

  I had been examined by the best experts my grandmother could find. They concluded that the changes were permanent. If I had children, they would look like the new me. The Eye could no longer change me back. It had become a part of me and lost that power.

  The old me had been erased forever. Derek would never recognize me. He would never know why my heart was trying to jump out of my chest.

  My heart. Right. I had to find calm. If he focused, he could hear my heartbeat.

  We’d been looking at each other in silence for five minutes. One of us had to say something.

  “It’s you,” I said. Brilliant opening.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “You found my house.” I kept my voice casual and calm. No loud noises. No quick movements.

  He nodded. He seemed comfortable, wrapped in a kind of casual arrogance that came from killing a lot of scary shit. His presence filled the room. He was impossible to ignore.

  “I tried to talk to you before, but you left in a hurry.” His voice still sounded the same, a kind of gravely rasp, the result of permanent damage to the vocal cords not even Lyc-V managed to fully heal. It made him sound like a wolf in the flesh.

  “I’m a busy woman.”

  “That’s why I decided to visit you at home.”

  “Very prudent of you.”

  “I like to plan ahead.”

  His shoulders were broader than I remembered. His body bigger, harder. His clothes weren’t skintight, but I could see definition on the arm he rested on his knee and a hard contour of muscle on his thigh. With magic down, my arsenal had shrunk, while he still had the benefit of superior speed, strength, and regeneration. The old Derek would never attack a human woman without provocation. This new Derek was an unknown commodity. If he decided to fight me, my odds were crap.

  But shapeshifters were still human, and their regeneration wasn’t instant. I knew where to strike and how to cut to incapacitate a shapeshifter. The real question was, could I bring myself to cut Derek’s throat if he forced me?

  I had to avoid this fight at all cost.

  “So you tracked me down and let yourself into my home. How can I help you?” I asked.

  “Do you need a medic?”

  My mind tried to make a ninety-degree turn with him and failed. “What?”

  “Last night someone set the old VA hospital on fire. It’s still burning. Metal melted. Concrete walls cracked from thermal shock. Your scent is all over the street leading to it, and your yard reeks of charred human flesh. So I’ll ask again, do you need a medic? I know a good one.”

  “No.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Stop wasting our time and tell me what you want,” I said.

  “I’d like you to tell me about Pastor Haywood’s murder.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I have a personal interest in the matter.”

  “And that personal interest caused you to break into my house and intimidate me while I sit naked in my bathtub? Do you think Pastor Haywood would approve?”

  He hit me with his alpha stare. “I broke into your house because you hold crucial information and I thought you might be dying. If I were you, I’d focus on answering my questions.”

  His gaze pressed on me like a physical weight. I wanted to either explode out of the bath, slicing at him, or jump out and run for my life.

  So that’s how it is? Okay, buddy. I’ll play.

  I stared back at him with disdain, the way I looked at those who threatened the New Kingdom when I wanted them to back away with tail between their legs. I am Shinar reborn, shapeshifter. I do not submit.

  Silence filled the chamber, cold and oppressive. Why did I keep goading him? If he was anybody else, I would’ve maneuvered the conversation where I wanted it to go by now. Instead I turned it into a standoff.

  He hadn’t looked for me. He hadn’t called. He hadn’t written. Gods, I wa
s so angry at him. I hadn’t realized how much until this moment. It burned my common sense to ashes.

  Emotion boiled in Derek’s eyes. I couldn’t place it. Frustration, rage? A bit of both? Not, that wasn’t quite it. Whatever it was, it was clearly driving him nuts. He looked at me like I was everything that was wrong in his life.

  A faint sound came from the other room. A man walked in and halted in the arched entrance to the bedroom. In his early twenties, tan, with a mane of soft reddish-brown hair he had tied back from his freckled face. He wore a similar grey outfit, and when he moved, he walked with the fluid grace of a shapeshifter. Not a wolf. Something else. Something smaller.

  Derek kept looking at me. “Yes?”

  “The hyenas found Jerome. He is leading them on a merry chase.”

  A slight trace of a Slavic accent.

  The shapeshifter hesitated. “Perhaps I could help you communicate…”

  “No,” Derek and I said at the same time.

  “Okaaay. I’ll just go away then.”

  The shapeshifter retreated.

  “I’m not leaving until I get some answers,” Derek said.

  “Then you’ll die of old age at my house.”

  “I thought you were severely burned, but maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps you hit your head instead and can’t see this situation clearly.”

  “Enlighten me. What is it I’m failing to see?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m hungry. I’m going to get up and find something to eat, so you can get out in privacy. Use this opportunity to think about…”

  I stood up. The last shreds of my discarded skin fell into the bath.

  Derek stared at me, caught mid-word.

  I tossed my hair out of my face, flinging water and loose petals back into the tub, stepped out, and walked past him to my closet to get dressed.

  When I came out of the bedroom, Derek was sitting in my sanctuary at my kitchen table spreading a thin layer of honey mustard on a slice of bread with a wicked-looking knife. Another slice with an inch-thick slab of smoked ham waited on his plate. He put the top slice on top of the ham.