Gunmetal Magic (kate daniels)

by Ilona Andrews

  My new alpha was offering me food. Another show of loyalty and submission. Breaking elbows wasn’t enough, apparently. I bit the cupcake and licked the creamy icing. Mmm, cream cheese. Fighting made me hungry.

  The waitress departed.

  “You do know what the beta job entails?” Aunt B asked.

  Of course. “Enforcer, gatekeeper, errand girl, bouda nagger.”

  Aunt B cut a small cupcake in half and bit off a piece. “You forgot babysitter.”

  “I’m sorry. How silly of me.”

  “Why the sudden change of heart?” B asked.

  “Two things. First, Jim came to visit me this morning. He brought eight people with him. They occupied my apartment and when some cops showed up trying to take me in, they were met with firm resistance.”

  “And?”

  “And I realized that if I was in trouble, the Pack would back me up and I would back up the Pack. All my friends are in the Pack. I like to belong. I need it, need the structure.” I licked the icing. “I’m tired of starting over. I’m not likely to stop being a shapeshifter, so I might as well make the best of it. I will be the best bouda I can be.”

  “Better than me?” B arched her eyebrows.

  “Yep. I plan to eclipse your fame.”

  Aunt B smiled. “Aiming high.”

  “Always.” I sipped my tea.

  “And the second thing?” Aunt B asked.

  “I spoke to Martina and realized that to take the clan away from you, I need to earn their loyalty first.”

  “Oh, so you plan to take over?”

  I licked the icing off my lips. “In a few years. Once I am sure they will follow me.”

  Aunt B leaned back and laughed.

  “You’ve done such a good job for such a long time,” I said. “Don’t you feel you deserve a nice retirement?”

  Aunt B kept laughing. “Very well. I will speak to Curran. In light of the investigation, I’m sure the lion will grant us an extension on having you officially admitted into the ranks. As long as it is known that you and I have an understanding and an application has been made, you won’t encounter problems.”

  Lika returned from the bathroom, rubbing her arm, plopped at the seat next to me and waited until B waved her toward the food. Lika snagged a red velvet cupcake. “Yummy.”

  “I need you to go to Milton County,” B said.

  Uh-oh. The sheriff of Milton County and I didn’t have the best relationship. He was the one who had locked us up after the hot tub incident.

  “Where to?” I asked and sipped my tea. Earl Grey. Tasty.

  “To the Milton County Sheriff’s office,” Aunt B said.

  I choked a little on my tea.

  “Some of our people got arrested last night,” Lika said. “Including your boy.”

  My boy? Oh. “What did Ascanio do this time? Last I saw him, he was with his mother.”

  “Nothing,” Aunt B said. “Wrong place, wrong time. There was some sort of bar brawl. I could go to Kate with this, but you see, she is spending all her time with Curran. Something to do with the Vikings, not sure what exactly.” Aunt B waved her spoon. “Involving her right now means involving the Beast Lord and I don’t feel like setting his tail on fire. He’ll growl and fuss and I’d rather avoid all that. So I need you to go down there and make this problem go away. I understand you and Beau Clayton have a special relationship.”

  Yeah, he’d thrown my bikini-clad butt into a jail cell. “I can do that,” I said and stole a second cupcake.

  “I’m so glad,” B told me.

  We all drank some tea.

  “I know you’ve spoken with my son,” B said to me.

  “Yes. He seems to have gone insane.”

  “The mating frenzy will do that,” Aunt B said. “And I’m not talking about the blonde. He has never been dumped before, dear. He has no idea how to handle it.”

  Lika snickered.

  “I told him we were through, and he broke into my place, scratched MINE into my table,” I told her. “And then he moved his things into my apartment.”

  Lika stopped eating. “Seriously?”

  I nodded.

  Aunt B grinned. “He was always such a clever boy.”

  There it was, the final proof that Raphael could do no wrong. I had just told her he had gone nuts, vandalized my furniture, and was guilty of breaking and entering, and she was bursting at the seams with pride.

  “What would you do in my situation?” I asked.

  Aunt B cut another slice off her cupcake. “I was never one to let a man get the better of me, dear. If someone dared to treat me in this manner, I would rub his nose in everything he had lost by his idiotic stunt. I would do something…spectacular. Something he would never forget. And I would make sure everyone knew what a fool he was.”

  “If I spring the boudas out of jail, what are the chances of Raphael spending this evening away from his house?”

  Aunt B smiled at me above the rim of her cup. “I would say those chances are very, very good.”

  I got up. “I’d best get on with it, then.”

  Aunt B’s eyes sparked with an amused ruby light. “Lika will fill you in on the details. Good luck, dear.”

  I would need every drop of it, too.

  “And Andrea?” Aunt B said. “You and I have made a deal today. I trust you to hold up your end of the bargain.”

  It was like she had looked into my head and seen that inside I was still wobbling. I talked the talk and walked the walk, but somehow she had sensed my hesitation.

  “If Curran sets the date for your admittance and you fail to show up, it would be truly disastrous.”

  “No worries,” I told her. “I’ll be there.”

  To say that Beau Clayton was a good old Southern Boy would be an understatement. The man kept a can of green boiled peanuts on his desk, for crying out loud. For some reason, it was half-filled with bullet casings.

  Beau looked at me from behind his desk, which was organized to within an inch of its life. He was big as all hell and half of Texas, a massive bear of a man, with lineman’s shoulders and power-lifter’s arms that strained the sleeves of his crisply-ironed khaki uniform shirt. His dark brown, wide-brimmed sheriff’s hat rested on a hook on a wall, within easy reach. Above it a rapier hung, a beautiful sword with an ornate basket hilt. I was pretty sure I had seen it before, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall where.

  “It’s always nice to see you, Ms. Nash,” Beau drawled.

  I gave him my most dazzling smile. If he thought he could out-Southern me, he was in for a shock. “May I ask why you have bullet casings in that can, Sheriff?”

  “Every time someone shoots at me, I put the casings into the can,” he said.

  Alright then.

  “So what brings you to the sunny skies of Milton county?” Beau asked.

  “You have some of the Pack’s people in lockup.” And my first test as a beta was to get them out.

  “We’re always glad to have guests in our jailhouse,” he said. “We almost never get lonely.”

  I licked my lips, moistening them, and Beau’s gaze slid down. Well, how about that? Hehehe.

  “I understand you have three of our boys,” I said. “How would I go about getting them released?”

  Beau leaned against his chair. “Well, this is where we run into a problem. From what I understand, your boys caused a disturbance at the Steel Horse, assaulted two men, and damaged some property there.”

  I crossed my legs. “As I recollect, the Steel Horse is in Fulton County.”

  “You recollect correctly, but you see, your boys were out for a hell of a night. Not satisfied with that bit of fun in Fulton, they continued their brawl down Gawker Alley, which put them twenty feet inside Milton County when they were subsequently apprehended.”

  Drat.

  Beau’s eyes sparkled a bit. “Eyewitness accounts indicate a female was involved.”

  I smiled at him. “A female is always involved. So how d
oes your version go?”

  Beau clicked the recorder on his desk. A young man’s voice filled the room. “So we were just sitting there and then there was a girl and she was looking at Chad and me.”

  Slurring his words a bit. Not quite sober. Not by a long shot.

  “And Chad said, ‘Hey, pretty, come hang with us,’ and the big black dude said, ‘Shut your mouth, white boy.’”

  I arched my eyebrows at Beau. The big black dude would be Kamal, who had never said a nasty word to anyone in his entire life.

  “And he said, ‘Shut your mouth,’ and I said, ‘We just talking’ and the other black guy said, ‘We gonna beat your ass if you keep running your mouth.’ And then he made one of those hand signs. You know, one of those gang things.”

  Oh, this was just getting better and better. Beau was making a valiant effort to remain stoic, but his face betrayed the long-suffering look of someone who had to listen to something patently idiotic.

  “What happened next?” an older female voice asked.

  “We got up to leave, and the girl wanted to come with us, and the first black guy, he, like, got up and he was all, ‘You’re not leaving!’ and we were all like, ‘Yes we are,’ and then I threw some chicken at them so they’d know we meant business, and the white kid who was with them, he picked up Chad and threw him through the window.”

  Drunk knights in shining armor, protecting the hapless female from the clutches of scary black guys. Give me a break.

  “Then what happened?” the older female asked.

  “Then they left and went up the street. And Chad was like, ‘We can’t let them get away with this shit,’ so we followed them. And I said, ‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing with that throwing people through windows and shit.’ And the white guy said, ‘You must like going through windows.’ And I told him ‘Fuck you’ in a polite voice and he threw me through the window.”

  Beau clicked the recorder off.

  “It’s good that he used his polite voice,” I said. “Otherwise no telling what would’ve happened.”

  Beau grimaced. “They aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed and booze didn’t improve their IQ any.”

  “And what do the Big Scary Black Guys say?” I asked.

  “They say that the kids were drunk and kept hitting on the girl who was with them. One of them wandered over, and threw some buffalo wings at them, and got thrown through the window. The girl took off and they decided to leave. The two geniuses followed them and got thrown through the front window of Chuck’s Hardware.”

  “Tossing chicken at people constitutes an assault,” I said. “By their own admission, they threw the first punch.”

  “In the instance of the situation at the Steel Horse, correct. However, your people are not being held for the incident at the Steel Horse; they are being held because during a verbal altercation in Gawker Alley, they took it upon themselves to put two people through Chuck’s window.”

  He had me there. “With all due respect, that’s a continuation of the same incident.”

  “I can see why you might think that, but it took Mike and Chad ten minutes to stagger their drunken way up Gawker. It’s two different incidents and you know it.”

  Argh. “I beg to differ.”

  “I respect your right to differ, but that doesn’t change reality. I cannot have people thrown through windows willy-nilly in my county.”

  We stared at each other. The level of politeness had risen to dangerous levels.

  “We would be delighted to pay restitution to Chuck’s Hardware and to restore his window,” I said. “We are happy to set it right. Would he be willing to drop charges?”

  “He’s a reasonable man,” Beau said. “It will cost you.”

  I shrugged. “Boys will be boys, Sheriff. You know how it is, they have fun and we pay the bills.”

  “You also have Jeff Cooper to deal with,” Beau said. “Mike’s dad. He’s in my front lobby fuming and making an ass of himself. He wants assault charges to be brought up.”

  I pulled a small plastic case from my pocket and showed him the disk inside it.

  “What’s this?”

  “Surveillance footage.”

  “The Steel Horse has surveillance cameras?” Beau came to life like a hungry wolf sighting a juicy, crippled rabbit.

  “The owner installed them after that scare they had with the pandemic.” A pandemic Kate had stopped before it could kill him and his wife. The Steel Horse welcomed Pack members with open arms, which was why they did nothing to help law enforcement when the Pack kids got in trouble. “He doesn’t advertise this fact. Besides, they only work half of the time, when the tech is up.” I flipped the disk between my fingers. “Shall we?”

  Beau took the disk out of its case and slid it into the computer on a small desk in the corner. Black-and-white images filled the screen. Three shapeshifters sitting at a table, with the girl next to Kamal. Two young guys at a table nearby with a collection of empty beer bottles said something. The shapeshifters ignored them. More taunts, this time with the waving of arms. The shorter of the two human teens picked up a basket of chicken bones and dumped it on Kamal’s head. Ascanio got up, picked the guy up, and hurled him through the window. Kamal smacked him upside the head. Ascanio shrugged. The third shapeshifter, Ian, dropped some bills on the table and the group left.

  “If Mr. Cooper chooses to press charges, we will do the same,” I said. “Please feel free to retain the disk. I’ve made copies. I do have to ask you to release the boys. I’d be in your debt and they aren’t a flight risk. You know where to find us: the big stone fortress just a few miles outside of town.”

  Beau walked to the door and stuck his head out. “Rifsky, get our shapeshifter guests processed out for me, will you? Also, Ms. Nash here is going to leave her information with you for Chuck’s to get his window squared away.”

  I suddenly remembered where I had seen the sword. It used to hang in Kate’s apartment. It was her guardian’s sword. Pieces of the puzzle clicked together in my head. She’d used it to get me out of jail. I felt ashamed.

  Beau turned to me. “Don’t leave town and all that, Ms. Nash.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Now I owed Beau a favor. Wonderful.

  Ten minutes later three guilty-looking shapeshifters met me on the steps. Kamal saw me and did a double take. “I thought Lika was coming.”

  I gave him my thousand-yard stare. He shifted uncomfortably in place.

  “Let’s try this again, from the beginning. You say, ‘Hello, Beta. Thank you for coming all the way here and subjecting yourself and the Clan to public embarrassment because of my stupidity.’ And I don’t break your arms off.”

  “Thank you, Beta,” Kamal and Ian chorused.

  I looked at Ascanio. He dropped his gaze to the stairs. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, you are.” I started down the street to the parking lot. The three boudas followed me.

  A man shoved the door open behind us. Beefy, in his late forties. His face had a lovely red color that probably meant he was about to blow his gasket. “Hey! Hey, you! I want to talk to you!”

  I kept walking. “You threw two humans through two different store windows. Enlighten me, what happens when a shapeshifter goes through a sheet of glass?”

  “Nothing,” Ian volunteered.

  “Stop,” the man snarled. “Stop, God damn it.”

  “What happens when a human goes through a sheet of glass?”

  Nobody wanted to answer.

  “I’ll enlighten you, then: they get bruises, possible broken bones, and multiple lacerations. And because they don’t have the benefit of Lyc-V, their broken bones will take weeks to heal and the lacerations can kill them if the broken glass happens to slice them at the right place. You almost killed them over a bucket of chicken. What in the world were you thinking?”

  We turned the corner, hidden from the building by the stone wall.

  “We just wanted to intimidate them,” Ascanio said.r />
  The man behind us took the corner at high speed. “You fucking bitch, I said stop!”

  The beastkin-crazy Andrea was about to surface. I could feel it.

  I looked at him. “Jeff Cooper, I presume?”

  “That’s right. You degenerates think you can just come here and push people around.” He stabbed his finger into my chest.

  The three boudas went from chastised to baring their teeth in a blink.

  “Don’t put your hand on me again,” I said.

  He poked his finger into my chest again. “Well, I have something to tell you: don’t let the sun set on you in this county, because…”

  I grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward, tripping him with my foot. He went down back first and I caught him by his throat, three feet above the ground, lifted him up a bit and bent down to his face. My eyes glowed with murderous red. My voice turned rough with an animal growl. “Listen well, because I won’t be repeating myself, you racist prick. If you make any trouble for me or my people, I’ll hunt you down like the pig you are and carve a second mouth across your gut. They’ll find you hanging by your own intestines. The next time you hear something laugh and howl in the night, hug your family, because you won’t see the sunrise.”

  I opened my fingers. He crashed on the ground, his face white as a sheet. He scrambled backward, rolled to his feet, and took off.

  The three shapeshifters stared at me, openmouthed.

  “That’s how you intimidate people. No witnesses and not a mark on him. Get your asses to the car.”

  CHAPTER 12

  It was close to noon when I finally walked through the doors of the office. Kate sat at her desk. Grendel sprawled by her feet, an enormous black monstrosity that had more in common with the hound of the Baskervilles than with any poodle I had ever seen. He saw me and wagged his tail.

  I paused to pet his head. “The Consort in the flesh. You grace us with your presence, Your Majesty. I’m so honored.” I pressed my hand to my chest, hyperventilating. “I shall alert the media posthaste!”

  She grimaced. “Har-de-har-har. Did you have lunch yet?”

  “No, and I’m starving. I could eat a small horse.”

  “Acropolis?” Kate asked, rising.