Gunmetal Magic (kate daniels)

by Ilona Andrews

  Ghastek came close enough to be heard. “I want it to be clear: this was not an attempt to kill either of you. The journeymen weren’t supposed to be here and the guilty party will be harshly reprimanded.”

  Curran shrugged. “Don’t worry, Ghastek. If this was an attempt, I know you’d bring more than two vampires.”

  “What happened?” Ghastek asked.

  “They were having dinner,” I told him. “They seemed happy together. The boy handed her a necklace and it choked her to death.”

  “Just so I understand, Lawrence himself wasn’t personally injured?”

  “No,” Curran said. “He’s in shock from watching his girlfriend die in front of him.”

  Ghastek looked over the scene again, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “Once again, we’re dreadfully sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “We’ll live,” Curran said.

  One of the People stepped away from Amanda’s body. “The necklace adhered to her skin. There doesn’t appear to be any locking mechanism. It’s a solid band of gold.”

  “Leave it,” Ghastek said. “We’ll remove it later.”

  If I were them, I’d cut it off during tech and stick it into a hazmat container.

  A middle-aged man shouldered his way inside the restaurant, followed by a young woman and a boy who looked about seven. I glanced at the woman and had to click my mouth shut. She looked to be in her late teens, right on the cusp between a girl and a woman. Her body, full in the bust and hips, slimmed to a narrow waist. Her long slender legs carried her with a natural grace. Her hair streamed from her head in a shimmering cascade so precisely matching the color of gold, I would’ve sworn it was gold if I didn’t know better. Her face, a pale oval, was angelic. She glanced at me in passing. Her irises were an intense deep blue and her eyes were decades older than her face.

  She was beautiful.

  She was also not human. Or she had bargained with something not human for that body.

  Curran was watching her. His nostrils flared a little as he inhaled, sampling the scents and I felt a punch of jealousy right in the gut. Well, this was a new and unwelcome development.

  Ghastek focused on the woman as well, with the kind of clinical interest usually afforded to an odd insect. “Here come the grieving parents. I’ve met them before.”

  “Is that her sister?” I asked.

  “No, that’s Mrs. Aurellia Sunny, her mother. The boy is Amanda’s brother.”

  Not human.

  The middle-aged man saw the female navigator, whose body the People had just loaded on the gurney. “Amanda! Jesus Christ, Amanda! Baby!”

  “No!” Aurellia cried out.

  He dashed to Amanda. “Oh God. Oh God.”

  His wife chased after him, the boy in tow. “Don’t go near her!”

  The man grasped Amanda’s hand. The golden band of the necklace popped open. An eerie soft light ignited within the necklace, setting the gold aglow.

  “Oh Go—” Amanda’s father fell silent in the middle of the word, transfixed by the necklace.

  His hand inched toward it.

  “Stop!” Curran barked. The man froze, arrested by the unmistakable command in that voice.

  I was already moving.

  The golden-haired woman pushed past him, yanked the necklace from Amanda’s neck, spun, and thrust it at the boy’s throat. The gold band locked on the child’s neck, adhering to his skin. I missed it by half a second.

  The boy gasped but didn’t die. His father shook his head, as if awakened from a dream.

  Aurellia stared at me with her old eyes and smiled.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I snarled. “That necklace just killed your daughter.”

  “This isn’t your affair,” she said.

  “Take it off. Now.” Before it kills again.

  She sneered. “I can’t.”

  She knew exactly what that necklace did. She had made a conscious choice between her husband and her son.

  The boy dug his fingers into his neck, trying to pry the necklace loose. It remained stuck. The skin around the band of gold was turning pink. We had to get that thing off of him.

  The man stared at her. “Aurellia? What’s going on? What’s the meaning of this?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the woman told him. “I’ll explain it later.”

  “No, you’ll explain it now.” Curran moved next to me.

  “I have to concur,” Ghastek said.

  The woman raised her chin. “You have no authority over me.”

  “Aurellia, what is going on?” her husband asked.

  “On the contrary. We have all the authority we need.” Ghastek snapped his fingers. A woman in a business suit and glasses popped up by his side as if by magic.

  “The necklace caused the death of a journeywoman in our employ,” the woman said. “We’ve expended a considerable amount of money in training her, not to mention the cost of the two vampires that were terminated as a result of her death. That necklace is evidence in our investigation of the incident. If you obstruct our investigation by withholding this evidence from us, we will obtain a court order requiring you to surrender the necklace to us. Should we choose to pursue this matter further, you will find yourself in a very actionable position.”

  Some people had attack dogs. Ghastek had attack lawyers. If he got his hands on the boy, he’d find a way to remove the necklace. Even if he had to behead the child to get it.

  I couldn’t let the People get the boy.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “I have a simpler solution. Take the necklace off the child now and I won’t kill you.”

  “Wait a God-damned minute.” Amanda’s father moved to stand between me and his wife. “Everyone calm down. Just calm down.”

  “Give me the boy and nobody gets hurt,” I told them. “Nobody here will stop me.”

  “That child is wearing our evidence,” Ghastek said.

  Curran’s eyes lit up with gold. He leveled his alpha stare on the woman. She flinched.

  “Give me the child,” Curran said, his voice a deep inhuman growl.

  “Fine.” Aurellia shoved the boy toward us. “Take him.”

  Curran swept the boy off the floor and picked him up. Ghastek’s face fell. We’d won this round.

  “Give me back my son!” the man demanded.

  Curran just looked at him.

  “It’s in the boy’s best interests that he stay in our custody,” Ghastek said. “We have better facilities.”

  “It’s not the quality of your facilities I doubt,” Curran said. “It’s your ethics and your intentions.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Ghastek narrowed his eyes.

  “It means the necklace is more important to you than the boy,” I said. “You’ll slice the flesh off his neck to get it.”

  “That’s a gross exaggeration.” The Master of the Dead crossed his arms. “I’ve never murdered a child.”

  “Oh, it’s never murder when you do it,” I said. “It’s a regrettable accidental casualty.”

  “You can’t do this!” Amanda’s father thrust himself before Curran. “You can’t take my son.”

  “Yes, I can,” Curran said. “We’ll keep him safe. If your wife decides to explain what’s going on, I’ll consider returning him.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” the golden-haired woman said. “Crawl back into whatever dark hole you came out of. I have no care for you or your kind.” She turned and walked out of the restaurant.

  Her husband froze, caught for a moment between his son and his wife. “This isn’t over,” he said finally and chased after Aurellia.

  “Give us the boy,” Ghastek said, his tone reasonable.

  “I don’t think so,” Curran said. “If you want to examine him later, you’re welcome to visit the Keep.”

  Around us the People tensed. In the corner two vampires leaned forward.

  I unsheathed Slayer. I had a lot of practice and I did it fast. The lawyer woman jerk
ed back. The opaque blade smoked, sensing the undead. Come on, Ghastek. Make our night.

  Ghastek sighed. “Fine. I’ll make the necessary arrangements later.”

  Curran headed out through the door. I waited a second and followed, walking backward for the first two steps to make sure that no undead would come leaping out of the darkness at Curran’s back.

  The door of the restaurant swung shut behind us. Ghastek’s voice called out, “Alright, people, back to work. Let’s process the scene tonight.”

  “What’s your name?” Curran asked.

  The boy swallowed. “Roderick.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” Curran told him, his voice still laced with snarls. “I’ll keep you safe. If anything threatens you, I’ll kill it.”

  The boy gulped.

  A giant scary man with glowing eyes and an inhuman voice just took you from your parents, but don’t be afraid, because he’ll kill anything that moves. Kick-ass calming strategy, Your Majesty.

  “He might be less scared if you stopped snarling and turned off the headlights,” I murmured.

  The fire in Curran’s eyes died.

  “It will be okay,” I told Roderick. “We just want to take off that necklace, and then you can go back to your parents. It’ll be alright, I promise.”

  If the necklace snapped his neck, there wasn’t a damn thing I or Curran or anybody else could do about it. We had to get him to the Keep’s infirmary right away. We drove there in silence.

  CHAPTER 3

  Doolittle bent over the boy, studying the necklace with a magnifying glass. Dark-skinned, his hair salted with gray, the Pack medic looked to be in his early fifties. Doolittle was the best medmage I had ever met. He had brought me back from the edge of death so many times, we’d stopped joking about it.

  There was something so soothing about Doolittle. Whether it was his manner, his kind eyes, or the soft Southern accent, tinted with notes of coastal Georgia, I didn’t know. The moment he walked into the room, Roderick relaxed. In thirty seconds they had struck a bargain: if Roderick stayed on his best behavior, he would get ice cream.

  Not that Roderick had to be bribed. It took us almost an hour to get to the Keep and the entire ride over, he did not say a single word. He didn’t move, didn’t fidget, or do any of the normal things a seven-year-old kid would do in the car. He just sat there, quiet, his brown eyes opened wide, like he was a baby owl.

  Doolittle pressed his thumb and index finger just above the necklace, stretching the boy’s skin. A vein stood out, burrowing from the gold band under his skin into the muscle of his neck like a thin root.

  “Does it hurt when I press here?” he asked.

  “No,” Roderick said. His voice was barely above a whisper.

  Doolittle probed a different spot. “And now?”

  “No.”

  The medmage let go and patted Roderick’s shoulder. “I do believe we’re done for tonight.”

  “Ice cream now?” Roderick asked, his voice quiet.

  “Ice cream now,” Doolittle confirmed. “Lena!”

  A female shapeshifter stuck her red head into the room.

  “This young gentleman is in need of ice cream,” Doolittle said. “He’s earned it.”

  “Oh boy!” Lena made big eyes and held out her hand. “I better pay up, then. Come on.”

  Roderick hopped off the chair and took her hand very carefully.

  “What kind of ice cream would you like?” Lena asked, leading him through the doorway.

  “Chocolate,” the boy said quietly, with a slight hesitation in his voice.

  “I’ve got loads of chocolate…”

  The door swung shut behind them.

  Doolittle looked at the door and sighed. “The necklace is rooted in the sternomastoid. If I try to remove it surgically, he’ll bleed out. You said his mother put this atrocity on him?”

  “Yes,” Curran said.

  “The collar glowed when the husband came near,” I said. “He was reaching out for it and she yanked it away from him and snapped it on the boy.”

  “So it was probably intended for her husband,” Doolittle said.

  “That, or it’s an equal opportunity offender,” I said. “Any neck will do and the boy was the closest.”

  “And it killed the girl instantly?” Doolittle asked.

  “Pretty much,” Curran said.

  “Strange. It doesn’t seem to be actively harming the boy at the moment beyond rooting in.”

  “Does it hurt him?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t appear so.” Doolittle leaned against the chair. “I poked and prodded at it a bit. It seems that the ‘roots’ shift under pressure so any attempt to cut the necklace will likely cause it to contract and strangle him. I don’t want to fool with it.”

  “The woman,” Curran said, “she knew better than to touch it.”

  I thought out loud. “She was unaffected by the glow, so either she’s immune or she knows how it works.”

  “The boy didn’t cry when you took him from his mother?” Doolittle asked.

  “No,” I said.

  The medmage glanced at the door again. “The child is very passive and compliant. He doesn’t speak unless spoken to. He doesn’t take initiative. This boy is doing his best to be invisible. Sometimes this is a sign of a shy nature. Sometimes it’s a sign of emotional abuse or neglect.” Doolittle crossed his arms. “Such an accusation can’t be made lightly. This is just something to keep in mind in dealing with her. If she is emotionally distant, she may not have any attachment to him. Let me run some tests. The sooner we identify what the necklace is, the better.”

  We left the infirmary and walked down the long hallway, heading toward the stairway leading up to the top of the tower, to our rooms. The Keep’s hours were skewed toward the night. For most people ten p.m. meant evening and probably bedtime—both electricity and the charged air that powered feylanterns were expensive and people tended to make the most of daylight. For shapeshifters ten p.m. was closer to four in the afternoon. The hallways were busy. Random shapeshifters ducked their heads as we passed them.

  Something had occurred to me. “When the journeyman handed Amanda the necklace, did it seem paler to you?”

  Curran frowned. “Yes. Almost white gold.”

  “And now it’s almost orange.”

  “You think it feeds on the host?”

  “It would make sense. Maybe it develops hunger. The girl died instantly, because the necklace was hungry. Now it’s satiated, so it’s biding its time.”

  “We’ll need to talk to the journeyman,” Curran said. “And the boy’s mother.”

  “Yes, the woman. The supernaturally beautiful woman with long flowing hair…Can’t forget her.”

  Curran turned his head to look at me.

  “What?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll speak to the journeyman tomorrow.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  And why would he want to do that? I pictured trying to conduct an interview in the presence of the Beast Lord. The journeyman would take one look at him and run for the hills screaming.

  “No.”

  “You always say that word,” he said. “Is it supposed to mean something?”

  “It means I don’t want you to come with me. The moment you muscle your way into the room, he’ll clam up out of sheer self-preservation. Let me handle this.”

  We started up the stairway. Our quarters were at the very top and I really could’ve used an elevator right about now.

  Curran kept his voice even. “Somehow I have managed to deal with the People just fine for almost fifteen years without your help.”

  “As I recall, you almost had yourself a war. And I won’t be dealing with the People. I’ll be dealing with one specific journeyman, facing sanctions and scared out of his mind.”

  “If you think you’ll be able to get anywhere near Ghastek without me, you’re crazy,” Curran said.

&n
bsp; I stopped and looked at him. “I will take my boudas and personal guard, dress them in black, put them on horses, and ride up to the Casino. Then I will pick the scariest-looking shapeshifter in the bunch and send him in to announce that the Consort seeks an audience. Do you really think the People will keep me waiting for long?”

  It’s good that we didn’t have any kindling or paper around or the sparks flying from our butting heads would set the Keep on fire. We were both tired and pissed off.

  Above us Jim rounded the corner on the landing and came to a dead stop, obviously wondering if he could get away with turning on his foot and going back the way he’d come without our noticing. Curran turned to face him.

  That’s right, you’re busted.

  Jim sighed and headed toward us at a brisk pace.

  Tall, his skin the color of rich coffee, and dressed all in black, Jim looked like he was carved from a block of solid muscle. Logic said that at some point he must’ve been a baby and then a child, but looking at him one was almost convinced that some deity had touched the ground with its scepter and proclaimed, “There shall be a badass,” and Jim had sprung into existence, fully formed, complete with clothes, and ready for action. He was the alpha of Clan Cat, the Pack’s chief of security, and Curran’s best friend.

  He braked near us.

  “Have you vetted the Wolves of the Isle yet?” Curran asked.

  “No.”

  “Who are the Wolves of the Isle?” I asked.

  “It’s a small pack from the Florida Keys,” Curran said. “Eight people. They’re petitioning to join us and for some odd reason our security chief is dragging his feet on the background checks.”

  Jim waved the stack of paper in his hand. “The security chief has two thefts, four murders, and an abandonment of post to deal with.”

  “Murders?” I asked.

  Jim nodded.

  “I gave my word to the wolves,” Curran said.

  “I’m not opposed to admitting them.” Jim spread his arms. “All I’m saying is let me make sure the people we have are safe before we add any more to them. By the way, Kate, did you review the Guild documents I sent you?”

  Deflecting attention, are we? I gave him my tough stare. It bounced off Jim like hail from the pavement. “Somewhat. I was busy.”