“No.” Curran gripped me tighter. “Too risky.”
“He’s sanding the skin off your back.”
“I’ll heal, you won’t.”
Until he let go of me, he couldn’t maneuver. If he did, the mage would cut me down.
The jet that pinned us was only a foot wide. I pulled out a throwing knife. Slayer was too long for close-up fighting. “Throw me.”
Golden eyes looked into mine.
“Throw me at him.”
He grinned, showing me his teeth. “Over or under?”
“Under.”
“Say please.”
Red spray hit my lips. Magic nipped at me—I tasted shapeshifter blood. The water was scraping the skin off his back, but he didn’t give an inch.
When this was over, I would rip his head off. “Throw me, please!”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
He spun, twisting, and hurled me like a bowling ball. I slid across wet floor and broken glass, the twin water jets shooting above my head, right at the mage standing in a ten-inch whirlpool. Water drenched my face. The mage’s bare feet loomed before me. I grabbed his left ankle. The momentum jerked me behind him, and I sliced across the Achilles tendon of his right leg.
The mage dropped to his right knee, his back to me, his filthy cloak pooling about him. I knocked his left leg out from under him and sank a throwing knife deep between his ribs. He twisted to me. I saw the fist coming, but could do nothing to avoid it. The blow smashed into my jaw like the strike of a sledgehammer. I slid across the wet floor, through the whirlpool, and rolled to my feet on instinct. The world shuddered and swam sideways in a haze of pain. I stumbled back, shaking my head. Things snapped into focus.
The mage grinned at me from twelve feet away. Pale hair framed a narrow face. Mid-twenties, maybe a bit younger. His tattered cloak hung open, revealing a martial artist’s body: hard, crisply defined, and completely nude. Too short. Five ten at most. I had a guy in a cloak, he was naked, and he wasn’t the Steel Mary. Only I could be this lucky.
The jets behind the water mage kept spraying, changing direction. He was still tracking Curran and Jim. How the hell did he do that?
Water swirled around his feet, surging up. A needle-thin jet hit me, burning my left thigh. A narrow cut sliced through my jeans and skin, like a slash from a scalpel. Another jet singed my ribs. He was playing with me. If he hit me straight on with one of those, the water would punch right through me. As long as he didn’t hit heart or eyes, I would survive. Everything else medmagic could fix.
The mage pulled my knife out of his side and looked at it. “Nice knife.”
The voice was deep but female.
I threw my second knife. The blade bit into the mage’s chest. Shit. Missed the neck. “Here, have another one.”
The mage laughed. Definitely a female voice. The only way he could sound like a woman would be if he . . .
A demonic shape leapt above the man: a seven-and-a-half-foot tall muscled monster, sheathed in gray fur, half-human, half-beast, all nightmare. He came sailing above the water as if he had wings, huge arms opened wide, eyes burning with gold on a terrible face.
God damn it. “No!”
The mage spun about. Water shot from him in dozens of sharp narrow jets. Curran backhanded him. Bones crunched. The mage’s head spun on his shoulders, turning completely around: hair, face, hair again.
The mage’s body froze, rigid. He toppled back like a log, crashing on the wet floor with a splash. The whirlpool fell apart.
Broken neck, severed spinal column, instant death. There goes my chance at a chat. I swore. “Did you have to kill him?”
Gray eyes stared back at me. Prehistoric jaws opened, revealing enormous teeth. “Yes, I did.” The words came out perfectly. Curran’s control over his warrior form was absolute. “You’re welcome.”
You’re welcome, my ass. I pulled Slayer from the back sheath and strode to the corpse. Why the hell was I so relieved that Curran was mostly unhurt? I wanted to strangle him, not celebrate the fact that he was in one piece. “Thank you for killing my suspect before I could talk to him.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Jim trotted over and sniffed the mage’s body.
I reached them and crouched by the corpse. Jim decided it was a good moment to shake. Wet spray hit me in the face.
“Thanks. That’s just a cherry on my day.” I wiped wet jaguar out of my eyes and stabbed Slayer into the mage’s stomach.
“He’s dead already,” Curran told me.
“The Casino was attacked this morning.” I leaned closer, watching the skin around Slayer’s blade. “Two elemental mages fried some vampires and enhanced the Casino’s walls with a lovely burn pattern.”
Curran shrugged his monstrous shoulders. “Stupid, but not remarkable.”
“They registered magenta on an m-scanner.”
Jim snarled.
Curran wrinkled his muzzle. “Undead mages?”
It was my turn to shrug. “We’ll see in a minute. Fire, air, water are all part of the same brand of magic.”
The mage had spoken in a female voice. The room was noisy with the sounds of running water, but I had heard a woman laugh. The body before me was unmistakably male. The only way he could speak like a woman would be if he was undead, and a female navigator was riding his mind. But I’d never heard of any other types of undead being piloted. Vampires, yes. But nothing else.
Well, no, wait, I’d seen undead mermaids being piloted, too, but they weren’t undead in the traditional sense of the word.
I leaned closer to examine the wound. My saber liquefied undead flesh and consumed it, building thickness onto the blade. If this was a vampire, the wound would’ve sagged by now.
A thin streak of white smoke curled from the blade. It could be something, or it could be just Slayer reacting to me being pissed off out of my mind.
“Clerk?” I yelled.
“Hey!” The Clerk’s head appeared above the third-story balcony rail. A moment later more heads joined it. That’s the Guild for you. Would it have killed one of them to shoot the damn bastard with a bow? I didn’t say it out loud. They would’ve laughed. People inclined to help others ended up in PAD or the Order. These guys were exactly where they wanted to be. Unless money or their hide was involved, they didn’t give a damn. They weren’t getting paid, so why bother?
“You all okay up there?”
“We’re fine,” Juke called back. “Touched you care.”
Slayer hissed. I tapped the saber with the tip of my index finger. It careened to the side. The edges of the wound drooped, as if the man’s flesh were heated wax. I pinched the muscle near the wound and watched a telltale burgundy fluid seep from the cut.
Curran inhaled next to me, sampling the scent. A grimace troubled his nightmarish face. “Undead.”
“Yep.”
Just like the two undead mages who had attacked the Casino with elemental magic. It would be a miracle if they weren’t connected.
There were things I could do with an undead body that I couldn’t do with any other corpse. I had to hurry. I’d need magic and herbs for this. The herbs waited in my apartment and there was no telling how long the magic wave would last.
I looked up at the Clerk. “What happened?”
“He came in through the front,” the Clerk shouted. “I saw he was naked and cleared out. He busted the pipe and went after you.”
Except it wasn’t me he was after. True, the People hired me to investigate the attack, but I hadn’t had a chance to do anything warranting this sort of retaliation. No, he went right after Curran. He and Jim were the primary targets. I was a bystander.
“Get the firebugs to torch the floor and call PAD.”
“Who’ll pay for the torching?” Mark called out.
“The Guild will, Mark, unless you’d like us to keep walking around in undead blood.”
If Mark had any other objections, he decided to keep them to himself. Th
ere were at least a few pyro-talented mercs, and once they were done with the floor, all traces of the undeath and of my blood would be gone.
I raised Slayer and sliced across the corpse’s neck. It only took one cut—Curran had broken his neck and tore the muscle, leaving only skin for me to sever. I grasped the head by the hair and got up to my feet.
“The Order accepts the offer of aid from the Pack,” I said quietly. We had an audience and this wasn’t something I wanted them to hear. I was about to force Curran into a corner, and while he might come to terms with it in private, in public he would immediately refuse. “With the understanding that the Order is in the position of authority and our agreement can be terminated at will. This is mine.” I showed the head to Curran. “The rest is yours. We compare results later.”
“Changed your mind?” Gold rolled over Curran’s eyes, but he kept his voice low. To the peanut gallery above, we appeared to be having a pleasant conversation.
“I can now take this to Ted. It’s hard to refute eyewitnesses. If I fight hard enough, he’ll let it stand. Let Jim know what Doolittle finds out about the body.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Jim’s better.”
Curran leaned to me. Bones crawled under his skin. His jaws shrank, his muzzle shortened, his claws receded. Gray fur flowed, melting into human skin. In a blink, he stood nude in front of me. A month ago I would’ve needed a moment to cope. Today I just looked straight at his face.
“I’ll call you,” he repeated.
“If you call me, I won’t pick up the phone.”
“You will wait by the phone for my call, and when it rings, you will pick it up and you will speak to me in a civil manner. If you don’t know how, ask someone.”
That did it. I pivoted to him. My voice came out quiet and cold. “Do you need me to draw you a chart? You stood me up. You made me think there was something between us. You made me want things, things I thought I could never have, and then you crushed it. Don’t come near me, Curran. Don’t call. We’re done.”
I turned and walked away, heading to the Guild changing room, where I still kept clothes in a locker. I had to strip off my soggy rags, seal my cuts, and drag the head home. I needed to ask it some questions.
CHAPTER 8
THE WEATHER DECIDED IT WASN’T UGLY ENOUGH. Usually our winters ran to rainy and dreary. Once in a while it would snow, but mostly it wouldn’t stick. For some reason, for the last few years winter in Atlanta had decided to play Russian roulette: three times out of four we’d get the usual sludge, but about a quarter of the time it hit hard with snow and deep freeze. Some said it was because of magic; some said it was the side effect of global warming. Whatever caused it, I didn’t like it. By the time I arrived at my apartment, every inch of me was frozen.
I dragged myself up the stairs and reached for the door. The ward spell licked my skin and drained down in a wave of blue, letting me in. I opened the door and saw a huge slimy pile of dog puke cooling in the middle of my hallway carpet. The attack poodle sat nearby, an expression of perfect innocence on his narrow mug.
I pointed at the puke. “That was a dick move.”
The attack poodle wagged his tail.
I stepped over the vomit and headed to the kitchen. The magic still held but the wave could end at any moment. If the magic fell, I could as well play soccer with the head for all the good it would do me.
I pulled out a large silver platter from the cabinet, set it in the middle of the table, and collected the herbs. I’d premixed most of them, but some things had to be combined on the spot or their effect would have worn off with time.
Seeing Curran again hurt. The rock in my chest just got heavier and heavier. A bastard and a liar.
I came to you with broken bones . . .
In ten minutes I spread the herb mixture on the platter, retrieved the head, and set it onto the aromatic mix, stump down. Necromantic magic came naturally to me. It repulsed me, but still I gravitated toward it, as if it were an itch I had to scratch. My revulsion might have been nature, but most of it was nurture. Voron did his best to suppress this part of me, since I was a baby. Strange that I found myself needing to shrug off his training more and more often.
I slid a shallow baking pan under the platter and poured an inch of glycerin into it. The attack poodle watched me with a very focused expression. “Watch out,” I told him. “It’s about to get ugly.”
I nicked my thumb with the point of a throwing knife and let a drop of my blood fall onto the herbs. Magic surged through the dried grasses, like fire along a detonation cord, and exploded into the head. The undead flesh shivered, revived by the burst of power. I touched my thumb to the undead forehead, driving a spike of magic into the brain. “Wake.”
The head’s eyes snapped open, focusing on me. Its mouth gaped, contorting. Foul magic flared about it in a swirling storm of malice, furious and hungry.
The poodle bolted like the road runner from an ancient cartoon. I waited for a second to see if the carpet would catch on fire in his wake. Fortunately, no ACME fire extinguishing equipment needed to be used.
I leaned to the head. “Show me your master.”
The words weren’t necessary. The old Arabic woman who taught me the ritual when I was eleven said they helped one concentrate, so I said them all the same.
The magic convulsed. A foul stench rose from the herbs. The head shuddered. Thick burgundy blood slid from the tear ducts, dripping down the cheeks into the herbs, then into the pan, spreading on the glycerin in a thick dark stain.
“Show me your master.”
The stain swirled. Faint glimpses of a face appeared in its depths.
“Show me!”
The magic raged and boiled. The image flared, fuzzy but clear enough to recognize. My own face stared back at me from the stain.
What in the world . . .
I scrutinized the ghostly image. It was distorted, but I saw the matching skin tone, long dark hair, and dark eyes. Me.
I let go. The magic collapsed on itself.
I leaned my elbow on the table, rested my chin on my fist, and looked at the head. I’d done the ritual six times in my life. Always with vampires. It never failed.
Why did it show me?
The head stared at me with unseeing eyes. The surge of magic during the ritual cooked the Vampirus immortuus pathogen, and once it vanished, the vampire heads decomposed in minutes. This one looked no worse for wear. I needed someone with more expertise. I got up and tried the phone. No dial tone. Argh.
Enthusiastic barking echoed from under my bed. A moment later someone knocked.
“Who is it?”
“Kate?” Andrea’s voice called. “You’re home?”
“Nope.” I opened the door.
Andrea grinned at me while tapping a manila envelope against her palm. “I suppose I walked into that. What is that stench?”
“Something I have in the kitchen.” I stepped aside, motioning her in. “Don’t land in the dog vomit.” Which I now had no excuse not to clean up.
She stepped over the attack poodle’s offering to the digestive gods and saw the head and the herbs sitting on the platter in the kitchen. Her face stretched. “That’s just not right. What is that stuff it’s lying on?”
“Herbs. Rosemary, coriander—”
Andrea’s blue eyes went wide as saucers. “If you’re going to cook it, I’ll barf next to the dog.”
“Why would I cook it?”
“Well, it’s lying like a turkey on a roaster and you have herbs under it.”
I marched into the kitchen, grabbed the head, and stuffed it back into the plastic bag. The bag went into the fridge, the rest went into the garbage. “Better?”
“Yes.”
I went to clean up puke, while she set the water for tea on the kerosene stove. Magic robbed us of electricity, but kerosene still burned and I kept a camper burner in my apartment for small jobs. It once saved my life and Julie’s.
As so
on as the offending evidence of his disgrace had been removed, the attack poodle deemed the area safe. He emerged from under the bed and licked Andrea’s hand.
“He looks good with his hair off,” she said.
“He thinks so.”
The poodle licked her hand again. Andrea smiled. “You don’t mind my scent, do you, dogface? Maybe he was raised around shapeshifters.”
“You’re not a regular shapeshifter.”
She shrugged. “I still smell like my father.”
Given that Andrea’s father was a hyena, the poodle was showing remarkable restraint.
We went into the kitchen, where I poured us some tea. “Before we do anything else, let me tell you about my guy in a cloak.”
Fifteen minutes later she frowned at me. “So male shapeshifters go berserk.”
I nodded.
“What about the female shapeshifters?”
“I don’t know.”
She tapped the edge of the table with the envelope. “So there is a good chance that the other me will make an appearance. Clearly my life hasn’t been complicated enough.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
Don’t let Ted put you on this, if I fail. Her eyes told me that if I said that, she’d suggest I stick my opinion where the sun didn’t shine.
Andrea suppressed the part of her that was beastkin. She’d made it through the Academy, earned knighthood, served with distinction for five years. She carried a handful of medals and the Iron Gauntlet, the fourth highest decoration the Order could award to its knights. A year ago she was well on her way to take the step up from knight-defender to master-at-arms, firearm. To earn the designation of a master in a weapon or magic use was a great achievement.
All of it came crashing down one night when Andrea and another knight had gone out to check the report of a loup sighting. The trip left several loups dead, including Andrea’s partner, who caught Lyc-V and tried to turn Andrea’s stomach into an “all you can eat” buffet. Standard procedure after an encounter with loups mandated comprehensive tests to confirm your humanity. Andrea passed the m-scan and tests. She did it by means of an amulet embedded in her skull and a silver ring under the skin of her shoulder, which had almost cost her her arm. She was pronounced free of the shapeshifter virus and fit for active duty, and then her Chapter shipped her off to Atlanta to ease the trauma.
Magic Bleeds Page 9
