A shadow detached itself from the bathroom doorway and crossed the floor to me. His scent reached me first, that taunting, comforting, infuriating scent. Raphael knelt on my bed, resting one arm on the headboard, and leaned over me until our eyes were level. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing. What makes you think there is something going on with me?”
His blue eyes scrutinized me. “You came out of sedation with bite marks on your stomach and mud on your feet.”
“Many shapeshifters come out of sedation early.”
He shook his head. “This is Doolittle’s sedation we’re talking about. What’s going on?”
I clenched my teeth to keep the words from getting out.
“Andi, I’m right here. Look at me.” He leaned closer. “Look at me.”
Looking at him was a fatal mistake. The words made a break for it and I couldn’t keep them down any longer. I put my arms, the good one and the one in a cast, around him. My cheek brushed his, his skin against mine, and I kissed him. I kissed him with as much tenderness and love as I could, because one way or another I would lose him.
“He wants my body,” I whispered into Raphael’s ear. “He wants to use it instead of his, because I have better shapeshifter magic.”
His arms tightened around me.
“I have to volunteer.”
“And if you don’t?” he whispered.
“Bad things will happen.” I kissed him again, my arms gripping him. “I’ll fight him. I’ll fight him with everything I have, but if it comes to that, whatever I do once he takes me over, whatever I say, it’s not me.” I whispered, my voice so quiet, I wasn’t sure he heard it. “No matter what happens, I love you. You will always be my mate. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry we ran out of time.”
Raphael squeezed me, pressing me to him. “You listen to me.” His whisper was a fierce promise. “He won’t have you. We will kill him together. Trust me. I won’t let go.”
“You may have to,” I told him. “You have to promise me that if he gets my body, you will walk away, Raphael. You’ll go on, you’ll find someone to love, you’ll have children…”
“Shut up,” he told me.
“Promise me.”
“I’m not promising shit,” he said. “I would die before I lost you.”
“Raphael!”
“No.”
He slid in the bed next to me, holding me in his arms. His scent enveloped me, and I held on to him, until I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 15
In the morning I awoke alone in the hospital room. Doolittle delivered a huge breakfast to me and stood over me while I ate every last piece of scrambled eggs, sirloin tips, and pancakes. I gobbled it up and escaped the medical ward to go look for Roman.
I found the priest of the Evil God in a corner of the northern courtyard. It was one of those small outside spaces within the Keep, shielded by a tall wall and made to provide relative privacy. To get to it, I had to pass through the stone arch, cut in the bottom of a stocky tower, and midway to it, I heard high-pitched giggles.
The black volhv sat on a bench, surrounded by a gaggle of kids, and was making small things disappear from his hands and reappear behind their ears and in their hair. A female werejackal discreetly watched him from the wall. Visitors to the Keep were never left unsupervised, especially around children.
I leaned against the wall and watched the volhv, too. There was something so joyous about Roman. It was as if part of his life was so bleak and dark that he felt the need to live the rest of it to its fullest, squeezing every bit of fun and happiness out of it. Even his martyred, put-upon sighs had a slightly mocking quality about them, as if he only pretended to be upset.
Roman saw me. “Okay, that’s enough magic for today. Scatter now. Scatter, scatter, scatter.”
The kids took off. Roman spread his arms. “Can’t help it. I’m just popular.”
I smiled and sat by him on the bench. “I have a serious question.”
“I will give a serious answer.”
“Can a god be killed?”
The humor drained from Roman’s face. “Well, that depends on if you’re a pantheist or Marxist.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The first believes that divinity is the universe. The two are synonymous and nonexistent without each other. The second believes in anthropocentrism, seeing man in the center of the universe, and god as just an invention of human conscience. Of course, if you follow Nietzsche, you can kill God just by thinking about him.”
Ask a priest a question, get an enigmatic answer. Didn’t matter what religion…“Roman,” I said. “Can I kill Anubis?”
“I’m trying to answer. Anubis is a deity, a collection of specific concepts and beliefs. You can’t kill a concept, because to do so you must destroy every human being who is aware of it. Your best bet would be to identify everyone who entertained the idea of his existence and shoot them in the head.”
“So the answer is a no?”
Roman sighed. “I didn’t finish. You want simple answers to very complicated questions. The wrong questions. The question you should be asking isn’t whether a god can be killed, but what is Anubis. You must understand the nature of a thing before you can end its existence. In Anubis’s case, his divinity is partial. He requires a mortal form to survive the periods of technology. His mortal form is just that—mortal. You know its nature. You know where to cut and how you can break it. You can end Anubis’s mortal form. Will it end Anubis? There are no certainties in this world, but I would theorize that no, it will not. As long as there is a cult of Anubis, devoted to veneration of his specific concept with a specific image, he will continue. He will be reborn.”
“How quickly?” I asked.
“How quickly will he come back if you nuke him?” Roman frowned. “His grasp on his corporeal form is tenuous. The fact that he could be killed in itself is devastating to his divinity. People don’t like to believe in gods who can be murdered and remain dead; they much prefer to believe in rebirth. If I were him, I would’ve waited a couple hundred years before I decided to get my toes wet in this magic and technology mess. So the simple answer is, he will return. But not in my lifetime and likely not in that of our children or grandchildren. I would prepare anyway, because when he does come back, he’ll be pissed off.”
“So his mortal body can die?”
“Yes. It’s just a body. Unfortunately, it’s a body with huge magical potential. I don’t know what his reserves are, but he’ll use every drop of them to defend himself. He’s been very conservative with his shows of power so far, which probably means he’s hoarding it for this final battle with Apep in case we fail.”
If the mortal body was the most likely target, then fighting him in my dreams would be futile.
Roman patted my back. “Cheer up, deadly girl. Things have a way of working themselves out.”
Not this time. But I wouldn’t go meekly to the slaughter. No, I would fight him for the lives of the people I loved to the bitter end. Win or lose, Anapa would regret meeting me.
Raphael strode through the arch, followed by Ascanio. Raphael was in black jeans and a black T-shirt that complemented his hair and showed off his carved biceps. Ascanio had somehow managed to copy his outfit so precisely he looked like Raphael’s younger brother.
Raphael saw Roman, registered his hand on my back, and focused on him like a shark.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m sitting and talking to a pretty girl.” The volhv regarded him with a slightly mocking air. “We were having a lovely time until you showed up.”
“That’s nice. How about you go somewhere else,” Raphael told him.
“I’m really tired of you telling me what to do,” Roman said.
They’d bickered the entire way back from the fight with the draugr. My arm hurt too much to pay attention, but apparently during the battle on the hill, someone had run the wrong way an
d the two of them had managed to collide, which disrupted Roman’s binding. They blamed each other. The fact that Raphael and I had barely gotten back together and he wasn’t inclined to tolerate men in my vicinity wasn’t helping either.
“Go. Away,” Raphael said.
The volhv leaned back, his arms behind his head. “How about you go fuck yourself.”
Nice repartee. Not.
Raphael smiled. “Big talk for a man in a dress.”
“It’s not a dress. It’s robes, which are my work clothes. You know, work? The thing real men do?”
Uh-oh.
“Real men, huh?” Raphael was still smiling, and the hint of insanity in his eyes made him look slightly unhinged.
“What was your job again?” Roman frowned, pretending to think. “Ah yes. Don’t you stand there and look pretty to impress female visitors? You’re really good at that. No real skill involved. Not much of a retirement for that kind of thing, though. Doesn’t help to keep a wife and kids fed either. Unless you find a rich old lady and hope she puts you in her will…”
He did not just say that.
Raphael froze, momentarily stricken speechless.
“How old would the old lady have to be?” Ascanio asked. “Old like forty?”
“Go back to Aunt B and stay with her,” Raphael said. His voice was eerily calm. Uh-oh.
“Yes, Alpha.” Ascanio spun on his heel and took off.
Raphael had removed him from immediate danger.
“What are you two doing?” I asked them. “Don’t we have a bigger fish to fry?”
“Stay out of it,” Raphael told me. “This is between him and me.”
I knew that look. It was his “I will do this or die trying” look.
“I have to concur,” Roman said. “This is an A-B conversation.”
Two idiots. “Fine,” I said. “Knock yourselves out.”
Raphael focused on Roman with the unwavering concentration of a predator sighting his prey. “Right now. Let’s go.”
Roman grinned. “Sure.”
Raphael stretched, rolling his head left to right.
Roman stood, picked up his staff, and spun it like a Shaolin monk bent on a rampage. Raphael squared his shoulders.
Men. Enough said.
Roman leaned forward. Wind swirled around his feet. The black volhv shot forward, as if his black boots had wings. Raphael stepped out of the way, letting Roman pass him, spun, jumped up, and kicked Roman between the shoulder blades.
The wizard flew into the wall, but didn’t hit it, because an invisible cushion of air stopped his fall. He dropped down to his feet and turned. “Hmm.”
Raphael had a frighteningly grim look on his face.
Roman’s lips moved. A cocoon of black threads slid from the ground in twisted streams, wrapping themselves around him, not quite touching.
Raphael lunged, shockingly fast.
The black threads snapped, binding around Raphael’s wrist. Roman leaned back and drove a crushing sidekick into the top of Raphael’s hip. It sounded like a sledgehammer pounding into a stud. I’d seen it before. It was a sambo kick, part of a personal defense martial art the Russians practiced. Ow. Ow, ow, ow.
Raphael grabbed the black threads and pulled. Roman strained, pulling back.
A small boy ran through the stone arch and headed for the two of them. I jumped off the bench, ran, and caught him.
“Hi!” he said.
I lifted him off the ground. My rebroken arm screamed a little and I shifted his weight to the other. “Hi.”
“They’re fighting!” the boy told me, pointing at the two men.
“Yes, they are. Where are your parents?”
A couple ran through the arch, a tall man and a dark-haired woman in her late thirties, followed by a teenage girl.
“Dylan!” The woman reached for the boy. “I’m so, so sorry. We just wanted to pay our respects to the alpha. We were told he would be here. We didn’t mean to interrupt. We’re trying to get admitted into Clan Bouda…”
I looked at her face, and recognition punched me in the gut.
Michelle.
Michelle Carver, who put a nail through my hand when I was five, because she thought it was funny to hear me scream. Michelle Carver, who pelted me with bricks, after Candy broke my legs. All I could do was crawl and Michelle chased me and threw bricks and rocks at my head. Michelle, who cheered while the bitch alpha beat my mother to a bloody pulp. Michelle “Hit her again, Candy!”
I had killed every last one of them. Every last one, except her. She had gone missing a couple of years before I came back and wiped that sadistic clan of bouda bitches off the face of the planet. I had tried to find her, but she had done a good job of covering her tracks.
Raphael let go of the threads. “Andrea?”
I was holding Michelle Carver’s child in my hands.
I let go of the boy. He slid to the ground.
“Andrea?” All blood drained from Michelle’s face. “Andrea Nash?”
She backed away from me.
Raphael started toward me.
“Do you know what she is?” A hysterical note vibrated in Michelle’s voice. “She’s beastkin.”
The world suddenly became very simple. I moved. Her mate tried to stand in my way. I backhanded him, and he went flying. I grabbed Michelle by her throat and drove her into the wall, pinning her in place. My arm had fur, and my hand had claws, and Michelle’s blood squirting under her skin through her jugular tickled my fingers.
“Tell me again what I am.” I smashed the back of her head into the brick. “Tell me again.”
Michelle croaked in my grip. She made no move to shift. She had no warrior form. She was never the strongest. No, she just liked to yip on the sidelines, picking on someone weaker out of fear. It changed nothing.
“This woman did something bad to you?” Roman asked.
“This woman tortured me and my mother.”
Roman shrugged. “If you want to do her, do it quick. I’ll go watch the entrance for you.”
He was gone. All that was left was me and Michelle’s pale, soft throat. The world was red. So, so red, and every time I exhaled, it was growing angrier and redder.
Raphael’s hand rested on my shoulder. He stroked me, firm fingers caressing my fur. “You have the right. It would feel good.”
It would feel great. He had no fucking idea how great it would be. I wanted to tell him that I finally caught her. I had told Raphael about her before. I wanted to tell him now how much I wanted to rip her apart, but all that came out was a snarl.
“I know you.” Raphael put his arms around me, his mouth close to my ear, his voice soothing. “If you kill her in front of her children, it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Let go, babe. Let her go.”
No! No, she didn’t get to get away with this. No! Everybody else had paid, she would pay, too.
My injured arm hurt. The pain was so raw, so fresh.
She would pay. This weak, cruel waste of a human being. This piece of shit that tormented my childhood. She was the reason I’d woken up holding the fucking butcher knife. She was the reason Doolittle had had to take a saw to my arm. She would pay!
“Let her go, honey. Let her go, Andi. For your own sake. For me. For us.” Raphael kissed my fur just below my ear. “Let her go.”
I wanted to sink into the red. I wanted to see her blood on my hands. But his voice held me back.
“Stand down,” he said. “Her children are watching. Stand down, honey.”
I heard a tiny high-pitched sound, wailing at my side, and I realized it was the little boy bawling in hysterical fear. His sister sobbed.
“You are better than this, Andi. Do the right thing. Walk away.”
As I forced my fingers open, all the pain of my memories and all my frustration tore out of me in a sharp short scream. I spun and walked away, to the other wall, as far away from her as I could.
“She’s beastkin,” Michelle breathed out. “She’s
—”
“She’s the clan beta and my mate,” Raphael said.
Michelle staggered back as if he had hit her.
Raphael’s eyes were two burning pools of blood-red fire. “Your application to the clan is denied. Gather your family and leave. If you’re in my territory by sundown, I’ll hunt you down and drag you before the clans to be tried for torture, abuse of a child, and whatever other charges our lawyers will level against you. You will be found guilty, you will suffer, and you will be executed. Your children will become the wards of the Pack and they’ll loathe your name by the time they grow up.”
Michelle picked up the prone body of her husband. Her daughter grabbed the boy and they ran out.
Raphael walked to me and wrapped his arms around me.
My anger broke out in tortured sobs. Tears wet my eyes. “I had her.”
“I know.”
“In my hands.”
“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, I’m proud of you. It was the right thing.”
“No!” I couldn’t stop crying. I wasn’t sad, I just couldn’t contain it. “She should be dead. That would be the right thing.”
“For her, but not for you. It would eat you alive. It’s not who you are.”
I crumpled down on the ground and cried. I’d learned not to cry back then, because the more I cried, the more excited they would get, but I could cry now. Nobody would stop me, and so I sat there and let it all pour out, while Raphael held me and whispered calm, loving nonsense into my ears.
I could not kill Michelle. I couldn’t scar her children the way she had scarred me. But I could join the Pack and make sure that no other little girl had to face my choices. No other little bouda would be hiding, scared and alone, dreading to be found and abused again. Not on my watch. Not as long as I breathed.
Gradually my sobs died down. We sat together, Raphael and I.
“For the record, I had him,” Raphael said. I could tell by his voice he was baiting me. There was comfort in the familiar needling, and right now I desperately needed it.
“Didn’t look that way from where I stood. He had you all wrapped up.”
“That’s what you think,” he said.
“That is what I think.”
Gunmetal Magic (kate daniels) Page 33
