“Elaborate.”
“I’ve been assigned to bodyguard you.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Derek snorted.
Ascanio pretended not to hear it. “The Beast Lord spoke to me this morning. I’m responsible for your well-being, and if you get injured, I’ll answer to him personally.”
Oh, that bastard. Found the kid an impossible job, did he?
Derek laughed quietly.
Ascanio finally deemed it necessary to acknowledge Derek’s existence. “Is something funny?”
“I don’t even know you, and I feel sorry for you.”
Ascanio turned a shade paler. “Are you saying I’m not capable of protecting the Consort, wolf?”
Derek let out a derisive chortle. “You got arrested by two human cops while getting your freak on at a morgue. You’re not capable of protecting yourself, let alone her.”
“They were female cops,” Ascanio said. “And I had a fun time. When was the last time you got laid? Let me know if you need some pointers.”
Derek bared his teeth.
I hit him with my hard stare. “I’ll be right back. Stay here. Don’t touch each other.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Ascanio said. “I can’t speak for the wolf, but I prefer women.”
“Zip it.”
I turned around, marched back into the Keep, picked up the first phone I saw, and punched 0011 into it. The phone rang once and Curran’s voice answered. “Yes?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Many, many things.”
“I’m not taking him with me. He’s a kid.”
“He is a fifteen-year-old male bouda. He maxes out his bench press at three sixty and his alpha tells me he has a decent half-form.”
“Curran!”
“I love it when you say my name. It sounds so sexy.”
“I’m investigating people who sacrifice trained killers to dark gods.”
“Perfect. It will keep him occupied.”
Aaargh. “No.”
“He needs an outlet for all that energy, and you could use him.”
“In what capacity?”
“Bait.”
Why me, why? “I hate you.”
“If you don’t take him, the ball is back in my court and I have to give him hard labor. The last time I sentenced him to the Keep building, he was bench-pressing rocks to bulk up ‘for the girls.’ He has a brain, and hard labor accomplishes nothing in his case. This way he can waste his energy trying to bodyguard you and might accidentally learn something in the process. It might be what not to do, but that’s also useful. When Raphael comes to liberate him, he’ll be kissing his boots.”
“Curran, I’m not running a nursery here. This shit is going to turn hairy. You know it and I know it. The kid might get hurt.”
“I have to bloody him sometime, Kate. He came to the Pack late. Most kids his age have already had their first fight with real consequences. He hasn’t. B has a soft spot for him, because he is male and he had a rough childhood. She won’t take him in hand, and even if she did, there are seventeen males in the bouda clan right now, all of whom are under the age of ten or over twenty. He has no peers and he’s isolated.”
“So put him with other kids his age.”
“No. He can’t be challenged, because he’s a minor, but adolescents fight for dominance among themselves. He doesn’t get the pecking order, and he thinks it’s all a big game. He’ll run his mouth, and they will beat him, which will accomplish one of two things: either they will break his spirit or he’ll snap and kill somebody, and then neither B, nor you, nor anybody else in this Pack can protect him. He needs to learn how to be a Pack male.”
“And you think that I can teach him that?”
“You—no. But Derek can.”
Ah. Now it all became clear. He’d arranged this whole thing, like moving chess pieces on a board. I unclenched my teeth. “I’m really pissed off at you right now. You could’ve told me all this last night and asked me to take him. Instead you manipulated me into a corner. I don’t like feeling manipulated, Curran. I don’t appreciate being put into this position, and in case you’ve forgotten, I’m not one of your flunkies. I don’t need to be managed and led by the hand.”
His voice dropped into a measured patient tone that made me want to rip his head off. “You’re blowing this out of proportion. You’re trying to make a fight out of nothing.”
I hung up.
The phone rang. I picked it up.
“Kate,” he snarled.
“Guess what? I don’t have to listen to you.” I hung up again and marched outside. Derek and Ascanio stood on opposite sides of the vehicle. I pointed at Ascanio. “Into the car. Now.”
Ascanio climbed into the Jeep. I turned to Derek. “What are you doing here?”
“I quit.”
“Quit what?”
He smiled. “My job.”
What in the name of all that was holy . . . “Why?”
Derek shrugged. “Just felt like it.”
Like pulling teeth. I tried to speak slowly and form coherent sentences. “What precipitated you quitting your job?”
He looked up at the night sky above us. “Curran and I had a conversation.”
I wondered if kicking him in the head would make the whole explanation pop out of his mouth in one chunk. “What did he say?”
“He said that I was doing a good job. He asked what would be the highest a bodyguard could go in the Pack. And I said, protecting the Beast Lord and his mate.”
“Aha.”
“He nodded and asked how old I was.”
Curran knew perfectly well how old he was. “You said, ‘Nineteen,’ and?”
“He said, ‘Okay, what’s next?’ ”
Now it made sense. Derek was wasted on bodyguard duty, and Curran knew it. Derek had talent and a will to make something out of it. He couldn’t climb any higher up the bodyguard ladder, and he was comfortable where he was. Apparently my sugar woogums decided it was time to make him uncomfortable. That still didn’t explain what the boy wonder was doing here.
“So what is next?”
Derek looked at me, his dark eyes luminescent with telltale shapeshifter glow. “I said, ‘Next I fight Jim for his job.’”
I felt an urge to hit my head against something hard. “Brilliant move, boy wonder. What did Curran say?”
“He said, ‘In about thirty years, maybe.’ ”
“Put fighting Jim out of your mind. You’re not there yet.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “Yes, His Majesty explained to me in detail how if Jim sneezes in my direction, I’d have a weeklong stay in the hospital.”
“Jim is deadly. It’s not an exaggeration, it’s a fact. Also, he’s been at this game for a lot longer than you. No fighting Jim. Yes?”
“Yes,” Derek agreed.
Maybe he had some sense after all.
“So . . .” Derek shifted from foot to foot. “Can I have a job?”
I closed my eyes and counted from ten backward.
“Kate?”
“The last two times you and I crossed paths, you got your leg ripped up and had molten metal poured on your face.”
“The metal was my fault, not yours.” All humor fled from his eyes. A wolf looked at me, a vicious wolf with a scarred face. “I’ve worked for Jim for three years as a ‘face.’ I went in undercover, I obtained information, and I brought it back, safe. After that, I ran Curran’s personal security for six months. I know the security protocols, I know procedures, and I’ve proven I can effectively use resources at my disposal. If you hire me, I would be a valuable asset.”
“Very nice. How many times did you rehearse this speech?”
“I’m serious, Kate. I can be useful to you. Besides, you need somebody to ride shotgun. You gave Grendel to Andrea, so you don’t have a wingman. I can vomit better than a shaved poodle, I promise. And honestly, you could use a driver.”
“What
are you implying?”
“I’m not implying, I’m saying it. You’re the opposite of Dali. She drives like a maniac, you drive like an old lady . . .”
Bloody hell. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t tell him no and he knew it.
“Are you okay?”
“I need you to go to the garage and get another Jeep, because mine only seats two. Then I need you to follow me in that Jeep. And if I hear as much as a whisper about my driving abilities, I’ll fire you on the spot.”
“Thanks, Kate.” He grinned and took off running.
Curran got rid of Ascanio and saddled me with not one, but two bodyguards. God help anyone who dared to look at me funny. They would rip him to pieces, just to outdo each other.
NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I VISITED THE CASINO, it always took me by surprise. After the hard freezes of a freakishly cold winter, the early spring painted Atlanta in black, brown, and gray. Grim ruins thrust here and there, like dark husks stained with cold spring rain. Bleak houses glared at the streets with barred windows. Mud stained the streets, churned by the current of horses, mules, oxen, and an occasional camel. Wagons creaked, engines growled, drivers barked curses at each other, animals brayed . . . And then you turned the corner and ran into a castle straight out of the Arabian Nights. Pure white and almost delicate, it all but floated in the middle of a huge lot, flanked by elegant minarets and wrapped by a wall with a textured parapet. Long fountains stretched toward its ornate doors, and Hindu gods, cast in bronze and copper, posed frozen in time above the water.
For a moment it took your breath away. And then you saw the vampires, smeared in purple and lime-green sunblock, patrolling those snow-white walls and the reality came back real fast. There was something so alien and foreign about the undead crawling over all that beauty. I wanted to pluck them off like fleas from a white cat.
I parked in the far lot and shut off the engine. A moment later Derek pulled his vehicle next to mine, parked, and stepped out. “Are we going in?”
“We are.”
“With him?” He nodded at Ascanio.
The kid bared his teeth. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
I turned to him. “Who is the primary enemy of the Pack?”
Ascanio hesitated. “The People?”
I nodded. “We have a very uneasy truce going. I have to go into the Casino to talk to Ghastek. He’s a Master of the Dead. Because I’m the Consort, I can’t go in there without a proper escort.” Now I was calling myself the Consort. Kill me, somebody.
“If Kate goes in by herself, the People could claim that she did something to break the truce,” Derek said. “Or something could happen to her. This way we’ll act as witnesses.”
“You have a choice: you can stay with the vehicles or you can come with us,” I said. “But if you decide to come, you follow Derek and you keep your mouth shut. You don’t flirt, you don’t crack jokes, you give the People absolutely no excuse to take any kind of offense. One wrong word, and we’re at war. Do I make myself clear?”
Ascanio nodded. “Yes, Consort.”
“Good.” I took a manila folder from the front seat of my Jeep and locked the car. “Put your badass faces on and follow me.”
We crossed the parking lot, with me leading the way and Derek and Ascanio behind, stone-faced and emanating a willingness to kill, in case any stray People got out of line. Two solemn sentries with curved yatagan swords guarded the Casino doors. We walked right past them, across the floor filled with slot machines jerry-rigged to work during magic and card tables to the back, to a small service room. A young woman in the Casino uniform of black pants and dark purple vest looked up at me from behind the desk.
“Kate Daniels,” I told her. “To see Ghastek.”
She nodded. “Please have a seat.”
I sat. The two boys remained standing, one on either side of my chair. The noise of the crowd floated through the door, a steady hum interrupted by periodic outbursts of laughter and shouts.
The side door opened and a blond man stepped out. “Good morning. I’m so sorry, but your escort will have to remain here.”
“That’s fine.” I rose.
“Please follow me.”
I followed him up the stairs and through the hallways, to a stairway. We went down, lower and lower, one floor, two, three. The air smelled of undead, a dry, revolting scent, laced with a tinge of foul magic.
We turned on the landing and another flight of stairs rolled down, ending in stone floor and a metal door. A vampire clung to the wall above it, like a steel-muscled gecko, its dull red eyes tracking our movement. Before the Shift, corporations installed cameras. Now the People installed vampires.
The blond man opened the door and led me into a narrow concrete tunnel, its ceiling punctuated by glowing warts of electric lights. The underbelly of the Casino was a maze of claustrophobic tunnels. Loose vampires weren’t great with direction. In the event the locks on their cells malfunctioned, the personnel of the stables would evacuate, and the loose vampires would wander through the tunnels, confused and contained, until the navigators secured them one by one.
The tunnels ended, opening into a huge chamber filled with cells, set back to back in twin rows angling toward the center of the room like spokes of a wheel. The side walls and the backs of the cells were stone and concrete, but the fronts consisted of thick metal grates, designed to slide upward. The stench of undeath hit me full force and I almost gagged. Vampires filled the cells, chained to the walls, pacing behind the metal bars, crouching in corners, their mad eyes glowing with insane hunger.
We reached the empty center of the room and turned down another row of cells. In front of us, a glass-covered balcony protruded from the wall. The tinted glass panels looked opaque from this angle, but I’d been in Ghastek’s office before. From the inside, the glass was crystal clear.
We walked through another door, up an access tunnel, and to a wooden door marked with Ghastek’s symbol: an arrow tipped with a circle. My guide stepped aside. I knocked.
“Enter,” Ghastek’s voice called out.
Oh goody. I pushed the door and it swung open soundlessly under the pressure of my fingertips.
A large room greeted me, looking more like a living room than the lair of a Master of the Dead. Shelves lined the back wall, filled to the bursting point with books of all colors and sizes. At the far wall a pair of medieval shackles hung on hooks, displayed like a priceless work of art. A crescent red sofa sat in the middle of the dark floor, facing the glass balcony that offered a floor-to-ceiling view of the stables. At the far end of the sofa sat Ghastek, dressed in tailored black trousers and a turtleneck. He was already thin, and the severe clothes made him seem almost gaunt. He was drinking a frothy espresso from a small brown cup. Two vampires sat on the floor by him, one on each side. The vampires clutched knitting needles, moving them with dizzying speed. A long swatch of knitted cloth, one blue, the other green, stretched from each of them.
Alrighty then. If this wasn’t a heartwarming Norman Rockwell painting, I didn’t know what was.
The needles clicked, chewing up the yarn. I could control several vampires at a time, but I couldn’t make even one knit, even if the needles were as thick as its fingers and I were moving them in slow motion. Ghastek had two running at once. I fought a shiver. He could send one of those bloodsuckers forward and stab me in the eye, and I wasn’t sure I’d be fast enough to stop it.
“Is this a bad time?” I asked. “I can come back if you and the twins are having a private moment.”
Ghastek’s gaze fastened on me. “Don’t be crude, Kate. Would you like a drink?”
To drink was stupid; not to drink would be an insult. But then I doubted Ghastek would go through the trouble of poisoning me. It wasn’t his style. “Water would be nice.”
The left vampire dropped its needles and scuttled into another room.
I shrugged off my cloak, folded it over the sofa’s armrest, and took a seat. “You can’t blame me for
thinking you might get kinky. You have shackles on the wall.”
Ghastek’s eyes lit up. “Ah. Those are interesting, aren’t they? They’re from Nordlingen in Germany, late sixteenth century.”
“The Witch Trials?”
Ghastek nodded.
“Do you think you would have been burned at the stake in the sixteenth century?”
“No.”
“Because you’re not a woman?”
“Being a woman made little difference. Most witches burned in Iceland and Finland were men, for example. No, I wouldn’t have been burned, because I’m not poor.”
The undead returned and crouched by me, holding a glass of water with ice in its long claws. A narrow slice of lemon floated on the water. The vampire’s mouth hung open, the narrow sickles of its fangs stark white against the darkness of its maw. Service with a smile.
I took the water and sipped. “Thank you. So why the cuffs then?”
The undead returned to its knitting.
“People view us and our vampires as abominations,” Ghastek said. “They call the undead inhuman, not realizing the irony: only humans are capable of inhumanity. Four thousand years of technology, with magic shrinking to a mere trickle before the Shift, yet the world was just as evil then as it is now. It’s not vampires or werewolves who committed the worst atrocities, but average people. They are the serial killers, the child rapists, the inquisitors, the witch hunters, the perpetrators of monstrous deeds. The shackles on my wall are the symbol of humanity’s capacity for cruelty. I keep them to remind myself that I must fear those who fear me. Given your present affiliation, I would suggest you do the same.”
That hit close to home. If my bloodline became known, people would be lining up around the block to either kill me or banish me as far as they could to keep themselves safe from Roland’s wrath when he and I had our happy family reunion.
Ghastek took a sip of his espresso. “Strictly out of curiosity, what was the deciding factor in selecting the Beast Lord? You had options, and life with him must be regimented. He seems like the type to assert his dominance, and you always seemed like a person who dislikes being dominated.”
“I love him.”
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