Blood Heir
Page 32
* * *
DA: I’ve read them. His points were valid, but we had more urgent things on our plate. What happened to Daniels?
* * *
BD: She unclaimed the land and went back to living in the suburbs with her ex-Beastlord husband.
* * *
DA: Just like that?
* * *
BD: Just like that. Here’s the kicker. You remember the aunt she killed? Erra, the Plaguebringer? The one with all the titles?
* * *
DA: Yes.
* * *
BD: She got resurrected on the battlefield.
* * *
DA: Bruce, death is forever. In all the decades since the Shift nobody has ever come back to life.
* * *
BD: Well, she did. Rumors said she wasn’t fully dead, and she and Daniels have some sort of arrangement. Shortly after the dust settles, she leaves. And here is another tidbit for you. Years ago, Daniels rescued a street kid, a little girl named Julia Olsen. Lennart and Daniels formally adopted her. Julia, they call her Julie, was a sensate and had some weird powers. Word is, she and Erra left together. Their whereabouts are officially unknown.
* * *
DA: So, we have an ancient warlord princess running around the country, possibly starting plagues and, good news, she found an apprentice with weird powers. Fantastic. How sure we are that Roland is no longer a threat?
* * *
BD: One hundred percent sure. Daniels is unconcerned, and she would be his primary target. As to Erra, we will find her.
* * *
DA: What makes you so sure?
* * *
BD: Because she looks like this. [passes photograph]
* * *
DA: … How tall is she?
* * *
BD: Six two.
* * *
DA: When you said she was thousands of years old, I didn’t expect… that.
* * *
BD: No. I know this look.
* * *
DA: What look?
* * *
BD: Damian.
* * *
DA: Yes? Is there something you want to tell me off the record?
* * *
BD: No, I want it on the record. It’s Timothy’s job to record every word that passes here, and I want to be damn sure that he puts this in writing. Do you understand, Knight-Secretary Hanson?
* * *
TH: Yes, Knight-Inquisitor.
* * *
BD: This woman is a weapon of mass destruction. She can do things we can’t even imagine. She can make indestructible weapons and armor out of her own blood. She has centuries of education and experience. The Shift happened less than fifty years ago. Our most advanced mages are babies compared to her. Leave it alone.
* * *
DA: Mhm.
* * *
BD: I’m dead serious, Damian. This woman is trouble. Don’t get involved. I mean it.
* * *
DA: I heard you. Thank you for the report, Knight-Inquisitor. The Order appreciates your efforts.
* * *
BD: I warned you. Besides, it’s Julia Olsen we need to focus on. Roland had taken an interest in her. She was seen at his Swan palace and his subordinates referred to her as talmir, that means disciple. Daniels taught her to use bladed weapons, Roland taught her magic, and now, Erra took her with and God alone knows what she’s teaching her. Three individuals from that family have chosen to pour their knowledge into this child. Why? On top of that, this girl had a front row seat to the mess that is Atlanta’s politics for years. She has close ties to the Pack and the Witch Covens. Also, she’s welcome at Hugh d’Ambray’s Kentucky castle. She worries me.
* * *
DA: She’s what, eighteen?
* * *
BD: Just about. We don’t have an exact birth date.
* * *
DA: Young. Impressionable. And probably has a shit load of power. Find her for me, Bruce. We can’t get Erra, and we lost Daniels, d’Ambray was never an option, but we can still get Julie Olsen. We can’t afford to pass on this one. The ruling family of Shinar isn’t the only one waking up. We need the knowledge in her head, or we’re going to get outclassed fast.
* * *
BD: I’ll find her. The question is, how are you going to convince her to join us?
* * *
DA: She is an impressionable eighteen-year-old kid. Between the knights and the support staff, we have eighty thousand people who chose our side. Just get me to her, and I’ll take it from there. Make this a priority, Bruce.
* * *
BD: Understood, Grand Master.
* * *
Knight-Inquisitor Dolivo left the room.
* * *
DA [holding photograph of Erra]: What do you think about woman, Tim?
* * *
TH: She’s very dangerous, Grand Master.
* * *
DA: I’m sure she is. What was it Bruce said? Trouble.
* * *
TH: Yes, Grand Master.
* * *
DA: When you get to my age, Tim, you realize that playing it safe isn’t always the best strategy. After all, what’s life without a little trouble? Don’t write that down. We wouldn’t want Knight-Inquisitor Dolivo to lose his beauty sleep.
The King of Fire
* * *
Four years after the battle of Atlanta
* * *
“Why do you do this to yourself?” Grandfather sighed.
I sat on the floor of the library, basking in a pool of gentle light slipping through the narrow, arched window behind me. Blood and dirt smeared my jeans and my T-shirt. Everything hurt, and sorting through the maze of pain and aches was exhausting. My body was pretty much a single bruise. The right side hurt the most, sending a sharp spike of agony through my insides every time I inhaled. The seventh rib was broken. Probably when the bigger one kicked me. I was covering my head at the time, and the broken rib was the lesser of two evils. I was working on it, but I had to conserve magic. They would be coming for me soon.
“I have my reasons,” I told him.
“Are they good reasons?”
“The best.”
Grandfather sighed again. His handsome face, edged with a neat silvery beard, wore a long-suffering expression.
My brother stalked over from the spot by the wall. He moved on all fours, silent like a ghost on padded paws. When I materialized in Grandfather’s palace, he’d taken one look at the blood on my face and changed shape in a burst of flesh. In his human version, he was three feet eight inches tall, a perfectly reasonable height for a five-year-old. I knew this because we measured his height every six months. The current freaked-out iteration was about my height, armed with powerful muscle, leonine jaws with four-inch fangs, and claws that could gut a human like a fish. His fur was so dark, it was nearly black, and against that darkness, his gold eyes glowed, two blood moons hypercharged with shapeshifter hormones.
“It’s not that bad.” It was worse.
My brother pawed at the thick chain stretching from the shackles on my leg into empty air.
“Please leave it,” I told him.
He caught it with his right hand and pulled, testing the strength.
“Stop.” If he yanked it out of the wall, my whole plan would collapse.
He whirled around. The massive jaws gaped and snapped shut, fangs sliding against each other like teeth of a steel bear trap.
“That’s not nice.”
He snarled.
Grandfather stepped forward and rested his hand on my brother’s shoulder. “You are late for dinner.”
The kid let out a soft half-growl, half-sigh that turned into a whine.
“I know. Your sister never does anything without a plan. Off you go.”
“Do I get a hug?” I held out my arms.
He grumbled, but padded over, and nudged himself into my arms. I hugged him, petting the soft fur. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.�
��
He sighed and then I was holding empty air.
“He missed my fingers by less than an inch.”
“Your brother is upset.” Grandfather snapped a huge old book closed. “Can you blame him? I am upset. Your mother, if she knew, would be upset.”
* * *
If my mother knew, she would drop everything and ride out to save me. I had to keep that from happening at all costs.
“Your grandmother will be livid.”
My grandmother was the one who sent me into this hell in the first place. She wanted to come herself, but she was too much. Too tall, too strong, too beautiful, and too full of magic. She would draw attention and be treated with fear and caution her power deserved, while I had learned to hide my power. I was unknown and easily overlooked as a threat.
“Why Moloch?” Grandfather asked. “Why now?”
“There are children in the hell fortress. He has over five hundred people building his citadel. You should see some of them. They’re walking skeletons. You look into their eyes and there is nothing there.”
The stench of it, sweat, urine, blood, feces, rot of infected flesh permeating the narrow tunnels filled with cells, barely lit with oppressive watery fey lanterns. The voices. The newer captives cried, the ones who had been there for a little while moaned wordlessly, like animals, and those who have lasted the longest just stared, wordlessly, glassy-eyed. The air saturated to the brink with a miasma of pain and misery. I’d cried when they dragged me to the cell from the sheer impact of so much human suffering. I had to get out. It was that or I would break and do something rash. That’s why I came here. I had to anchor myself to something light.
“This is what Moloch does,” Grandfather said. “He views his people as fuel to be consumed in order to achieve his means. He feels no remorse. He believes it is as it should be. This is the danger of proclaiming yourself to be a god-king. You start believing your own press.”
“He isn’t a god.”
“No. He is a man, but he is at least as old as me with all of the education and magic his ancient line bestows and that makes him infinitely dangerous. I know you are aware of this fact, so I will ask again. Why are you there? You can answer me, or…’
“Or?”
“Or I will tell Kate. Your choice.”
I was out of options. I would need his help anyway, eventually. “The seer of the Witch Oracle called me.”
Grandfather’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know you kept in touch.”
“We’re friends. She is only two years older than me. We used to have girl days and shop for makeup together. I call her once in a while.”
Grandfather frowned, obviously struggling with this information. I gave him a moment.
“Is there a prophecy?”
“There is.” And she’d called me frantic in the middle of the night to deliver it.
“Let’s hear it.”
“When magic crests at its peak, the King of Fire will leave his citadel of misery in the Western Desert to travel east to devour the queen who doesn’t rule and sever bloodline reborn. Only the one who shares his power may oppose him.”
As soon as I heard it, I told my grandmother and we were on the leyline to Arizona before the sun came up.
I met Grandfather’s gaze. “He’s going to kill Kate.”
Nobody would ever harm Kate. Not as long as I was breathing.
He pondered my words. His eyes grew distant and for a moment a different man emerged from his wise and kind facade, younger, harder, vicious and sharp, like a shark coming to a surface from the depths of the ocean. The immortal wizard-king who nearly killed everyone he loved to rule the world. Ah, Grandpa. I missed you.
“You cannot kill Moloch.”
“I’m going to give it a very good try.” I had planned a lot of fun surprises.
“No, child. When I said you cannot kill him, I meant he regenerates. Our family bred for power over the lands we claim. His line bred for the ability to restore themselves.
“I’ll chop his head off. I’d like to see him regenerate that.”
“He will,” Grandfather said. “I haven’t seen it, but my father has.”
He was serious. My careful plan collapsed on itself like a house of cards. “How is that possible?”
Grandfather shrugged. “Magic of a bygone age. The best you can do is destroy enough of him to buy you time to get out. The magic of this moment in history isn’t strong enough for rapid reconstruction and the periods of tech will slow him down even more. Inflict enough damage to assure a temporary death and he won’t be a problem for at least a few months. Dismemberment is your friend.”
I gave him my sweet smile. “Thank you.”
“You didn’t ask the most important question.”
He paused. This was a test. If I asked the correct question, I would be rewarded. If I failed, he would be disappointed. I needed his help desperately.
I ran through it in my head. Magic at its peak, the King of Fire, citadel, Western Desert, the queen who doesn’t rule, the one who shares his power…
Here goes nothing. “How do I share in Moloch’s power?”
Roland smiled, his magic shining from within. The sun had risen, the clouds parted, the flowers bloomed, and the world smiled with him.
“The eyes, Julia. Moloch’s power is in his eyes.”
The library vanished. I was back on the piss-soaked straw in a dank cell, chained to the wall. The gaunt woman across gave me a blank stare. She probably didn’t even notice I was gone.
The heavy footsteps echoed through the hallway. A metal bar clanged open. Men filed into the room. Hands grabbed me and hauled me up, as someone unlocked my shackles. I hung limp. It was time.
I climbed to the apex of the hill, scrambling up the rocky slope. A strong hand caught my wrist and hauled me up like I weighed nothing. My grandmother grabbed me and squeezed me in a crushing hug. All my wounds cried out with a trickle of blood.
“How did it go?” she asked.
I glanced over my shoulder at the citadel burning behind me. The flames roared, turning the fortress into one massive bonfire staining the night with orange.
“He took my eye,” I told her.
Erra sucked in a sharp breath.
“That’s okay,” I said and opened my eyes wide, one brown and the other a brilliant glowing green. “I took one of his.”
Acknowledgments
This book was started during the first wave of COVID pandemic, when pictures of bodies loaded into refrigerated trucks were coming out of New York. It came about because an ICU nurse emailed us and asked us to post something, anything, because reading our work on her short break between grueling shifts kept her sane. We don’t have permission to share her name, but she has our deepest gratitude for everything she and other medical professionals, first responders, and essential workers have done for us.
We’d like to thank out agent Nancy Yost, and the awesome crew at NYLA: Sarah Younger, Natanya Wheeler, and Cheryl Pientka, for their support, friendship, and very hard work.
We are grateful to Rebecca Brewer, Stephanie Stogiera, Stefanie Chin, and Katherine Heasley for their editorial services and shaping the manuscript into a book and to Jill Smith and Jessica Haluska, who have read it on short notice and offered feedback.
A lot of people generously helped us make the book better. We’d like to acknowledge Rev. Dr Victoria Hart Gaskell for help with Christian research, Lail Edelsztein and Shani Hochberg for the assistance with Hebrew language and coming up with the name for Moloch’s priests, Pamela Freeman for helping us with Marten’s nickname, and Jesse Wendel, Camilla Cracchiolo, and Karen L Beasley, MD for their knowledge of injuries and medical expertise. We apologize if we have forgotten someone. All errors of fact are our own.
Finally, we’d like to thank our fans. You wanted this book and here it is. We hope it will be fun to read.
Also by Ilona Andrews
Kate Daniels World
BLOOD HEIR
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nbsp; * * *
Kate Daniels Series
MAGIC BITES
MAGIC BLEEDS
MAGIC BURNS
MAGIC STRIKES
MAGIC MOURNS
MAGIC BLEEDS
MAGIC DREAMS
MAGIC SLAYS
GUNMETAL MAGIC
MAGIC GIFTS
MAGIC RISES
MAGIC BREAKS
MAGIC STEALS
MAGIC SHIFTS
MAGIC STARS
MAGIC BINDS
MAGIC TRIUMPHS
* * *
The Iron Covenant
IRON AND MAGIC
UNTITLED IRON AND MAGIC #2
* * *
Hidden Legacy Series
BURN FOR ME
WHITE HOT
WILDFIRE
DIAMOND FIRE
SAPPHIRE FLAMES
EMERALD BLAZE