Magic Burns kd-2

by Ilona Andrews

  I sighed. “My father served as a warlord to a man of unequaled power. This man called my father ‘Voron,’ which means Raven, because death followed him. Voron had never been defeated with a blade. Had he remained as a warlord to lead the army he had built and trained, the world would be a very different place.”

  “Is there a point to this tale?”

  “He left it all behind for my sake.” And he did it all for a child not of his own blood.

  “Then your father was a fool and now I know why you’re one.”

  I closed my eyes. “There is no reasoning with you. Let me sleep.”

  I heard him jump off the rail and land next to me, and then he poked my shoulder with his finger.

  “I’m trying to understand.”

  I opened my eyes. Explaining my moral code really wasn’t my forte. “Imagine you’re being chased by wolves. You’re running through the woods, no settlement in sight, and you come across a baby lying abandoned on the ground. Do you save the baby or do you leave him for the wolves?”

  I saw the hesitation in his dark eyes. “I’d leave the little bastard,” he declared, a bit too loudly. “Would slow the wolves down.”

  “You had a doubt.”

  He raised his hand but I shook my head. “I saw it. You had a doubt. You thought about it for a second. The same force that drove that doubt is what makes us fight. Now leave me be.”

  I curled up on my blanket and closed my eyes. The wind gently stroked my face and soothed me into calm sleep.

  * * * *

  Derek awoke me a couple of hours later. I looked at the sky. The sun rode high—it was just past noon.

  I didn’t want to die.

  Derek’s face was grim. “Jim has something for you downstairs.”

  He took me to the first floor and held the door open for me. I entered a small room, where Jim sat in a chair, testing the edge of that same knife with his thumb. In front of him, on the floor, sat Red. He was filthy. His left eye was swollen shut with a magnificent shiner. A long metal chain stretched from the wall to clutch at a metal collar around his neck. God help you if you offend the Pack, because they didn’t need a K-9 unit to find you.

  I crossed my arms and looked at him. He was only fifteen. It didn’t excuse his betrayal of Julie but it precluded me from doing all of the things I would normally do under these circumstances.

  Red squinted at me with his good eye. “You gonna beat me, go ahead.”

  I leaned against the wall. At the first hint of my movement, he ducked, covering his head. “Why didn’t you tell me about the necklace?”

  “Because you’d steal it.” He bared his teeth. “It was mine. My power! My chance.”

  “Do you know what happened to Julie?”

  “He knows,” Jim said.

  “Do you feel responsible at all?” I asked.

  He scooted back from me. “What the fuck do you want me to say? Am I suppose to make nice and cry and tell you how sorry I am? I took care of Julie. I watched out for her for two years. She owes me, okay? They had their claws on my throat. Right here!” He clamped his neck with his grimy fingers. “They said, you get the girl or die. So I got the girl. Any of you assholes would’ve done the same. You gonna stand there and look down on me like that, well fuck you.”

  He spat on the floor.

  “If you didn’t care for her at all, why did you ask me to guard her?”

  “Because she’s an investment, you dumb whore.”

  He wasn’t a person, he was just a ball of hate. We could beat him, we could starve him, we could lecture him, but no amount of punishment or education would make him understand that he was wrong. He was lost.

  “What are you going to do with him?” I asked Jim.

  Jim shrugged. “I’ll give him a blade, put him on the field. He can show me how tough he is.”

  “He’ll stab us in the back.”

  “I’ll have people watching him. We found him once, we’ll find him again. He stabs someone, I’ll skin him alive. Piece by piece.” Jim smiled at Red. Most people saw Jim smile only once, just before he killed them. The smile had the desired effect: Red cringed and paled so light, I could see it even through the layer of dirt smudging his skin.

  “Objections?” Jim asked me.

  “Do what you will.”

  * * * *

  In the yard, two huge buses roared, their engines fueled by magic-infused water. That’s the trouble with magic-fueled vehicles: they were slow, thirty-five, forty miles an hour max and they made enough noise to wake the dead and make them call the cops. I’d get to ride to the battle on a bus. The Universe had a mordant sense of humor.

  I noticed a familiar slender figure. Myong. And next to her, Crest. He looked well: same dark eyes, same clothes, immaculate to the last crease. He was still a very handsome man, with auburn hair and warm eyes. I looked at him and didn’t care. The pang of embarrassment was gone. I was free.

  “Curran let them go. Released her from all duties to the Pack. She’s excused from the fight.” Derek wrinkled his lip. “If it was me, I’d make her fight. And then, if she did well, I might let her go.”

  Crest held the door of a narrow gray vehicle for Myong.

  “There, they are off, the happy couple excused from revenge and saving the world. Doesn’t it bother you?”

  I smiled. “Derek, in life you have to learn to let some things go.”

  We circled the bus and a wave of vampiric magic hit me. Eight vampires sat perched like statues in front of a Jeep. Curran stood by the Jeep, having a rather animated discussion with the ninth vampire. The vampire saw me.

  “Kate,” it said in Ghastek’s voice. “Your ability to remain alive never ceases to amaze me.”

  “What are you doing here? As in what are you doing here, instead of being under lockdown in the Casino?”

  “Quite elementary, my dear; I’ve come to get even. That, and the People would like to monitor the full potential of the vampires during a flare in an environment where they are free to inflict unrestricted damage. But mostly, I’m here to get even with the Shepherd. I find retribution to be a worthy cause.”

  I looked at Curran’s face and suddenly I knew exactly who would escort Bran through the tunnel.

  Chapter 25

  The bubble filled the gap. Solid, translucent, streaked with hairline cracks, it betrayed the faces of monsters within. Snouts crushed, heavy lips squished, the Fomorians stood shoulder to shoulder, packed tight like Altoid mints.

  We had ridden the buses to the Honeycomb and walked a trail to the bottom of the Gap. Curran had brought a hundred shapeshifters, all volunteers. A hundred could block the Gap long enough to give Bran a chance to close the cauldron. And if they failed, no number of shapeshifters would make things right. Curran didn’t want to put more of his people in harm’s way. Still, I would’ve taken more, but nobody asked for my opinion.

  The trail took us along the Honeycomb Gap’s edge. I saw the bloated trailers pulled up tight to encircle the lip of the Gap, where it touched the Honeycomb. Beyond the trailers waited the Honeycomb residents, armed with clubs, axes, and blades. I counted four dog handlers, holding their metallic charges on the arm-thick chains and two cheiroballistas beyond them before the path took me eastward. Should any demons make it up the trash-and spike-studded slope, they would regret it in a hurry.

  The shapeshifters had cleared the floor of the Gap enough to make it serviceable. All the sharp trash had been thrown against the bubble. It would slow the Fomorians down.

  We descended into the Gap. The Pack formed ranks about a hundred yards from the bubble. The shapeshifters stood apart, giving each other room to work. A group of women strode past me, led by a familiar witch: one of the Morrigan coven leaders. They wore leather and chain mail, carried bows and swords, and their faces were painted blue. With a look of grim determination, they elbowed their way to Curran. They spoke for a few minutes and the witches climbed up the walls, taking position among the refuse above the battle
.

  It was my turn. I walked up to Curran. “Fifteen seconds.”

  His eyes shone. “I remember. Try not to die.”

  “I’ll survive just so I can kill you.”

  “See you in the morning, then.”

  I moved aside. Behind me Derek had a wide smile plastered on his face.

  “Are you babysitting me for the fight?”

  He nodded, his smile even wider.

  Marvelous.

  A chunk of pale gray, like dirty ice, broke from the top of the bubble. With an eerie whistle, it plunged and bit deep into the bottom of the Gap, punching through the rusty garbage. The gray hissed and fizzled, evaporating into thin air. A hush fell upon the field. The shapeshifters trembled in anticipation.

  Curran’s voice carried over our heads. “We have a job to do. Today we avenge our own! They came here, onto our land. They tortured a child. They killed our Pack mates. Nobody hurts the Pack!”

  “Nobody!” answered a ragged chorus.

  He pointed at the bubble. “They are not men. There is no human flesh on their bones.”

  Where was he going with this?

  “What happens here, stays here. Today there is no Code. Today you can let go.”

  They lived the Code. They followed it with fanatical discipline. Obey, perform, account for yourself. Ever diligent. Always in control. Never let go. Curran had promised them the one thing they could never have. One by one their eyes lit amber, then flared blood-red.

  “Remember: it’s not your job to die for your Pack! It’s your job to make the other bastards die for theirs. Together we kill!”

  “Kill!” breathed the field.

  “Win!”

  “Win!”

  “Go home!”

  “Go home!”

  “Kill! Win! Go home!”

  “Kill, win, go home! Kill, win, go home!” They chanted it over and over, their voices merging them into a unified avalanche of sound.

  Another fraction of the dome tumbled to the grass. As one, the shapeshifters stripped off their clothes. Around me people gripped their weapons. I smelled sweat and sun-warmed metal.

  With the ear-splitting roar of a crumbling ice flat, the gray dome fell apart revealing the sea of Fomorians. They shifted forward a few steps and stood silent, a chaotic mass dappled with green, turquoise, and orange, monstrous like an old painting of hell.

  “Turn!” Curran roared.

  Fur burst along the shapeshifter ranks like a fire running down the detonation cord. Beasts and monsters shrugged their shoulders and bit the air. Curran snarled and rose above his troops, an eight-foot-tall bestial nightmare.

  Behind the Fomorian horde, Morfran stood on a small knoll of garbage. He thrust an enormous, double-edged axe to the sky.

  The Fomorians bellowed.

  A hundred roars answered them from thick furry throats: wolves snarled and howled, jackals yipped, hyenas laughed, cats growled, rats screeched, all at once, and through it all, unstoppable and overwhelming, came the lion roar.

  The Fomorians hesitated, unsure.

  Morfran thrust his axe straight up. He pretty much seemed to have one sign for everything: poke a hole in the sky.

  The front ranks of the horde started forward, first slowly, trudging, then faster and faster. A stretch of trash-strewn ground as long as a football field separated them from us. The ground shook from the pounding of many feet.

  “Hold!” Curran snarled.

  A low chant of female voices rose behind us. The magic moved and shifted, obedient to the power within the voices. The ground quaked like a giant drum being struck from within. Vines burst before the Fomorian front ranks and slunk along the ground, twisting around their feet, tripping, binding. The demons halted, tearing themselves free.

  A witch screamed. Guttural cries answered her. The sky came alive with glittering shapes. The Stymphalean birds took to the air and plunged at the demonic horde. Feathers whistled through the air and howls of pain echoed them as the razor-sharp metal sliced into flesh. Here and there the demonic forms went liquid. The cauldron would bring them back to life. I remembered what Bran screamed while watching the fight in the Oracle’s turtle. He screamed, “Maim.” If we could maim a large number of them, incapacitating them but not killing, it would work better than dispatching them only to be reborn. We needed to engage their attention, to occupy them and to thin their ranks to buy Bran safe passage.

  The demons had untangled themselves from the vines and started forward again, a roiling mass of flesh and teeth and horns.

  My cue. I ran forward, light on my feet, farther and farther away from the shapeshifter line. Ahead, the Fomorians swelled before me.

  I dropped all the guards. All the leashes, all the chains, everything that ever restrained me through the discipline and fear of discovery, I let all of it go. No need to hide. Magic flowed through me, intoxicating, heady, seductive. It mixed with my bloodlust and I realized that’s how my father must have felt when he led his armies into battle. I was raised by Roland’s Warlord. I’d dropped my shackles and they would bow to me.

  Magic sang through me. Drunk on its strength, I held nothing back and barked a word of power.

  “Osanda!” Kneel.

  The magic erupted from me like a tsunami. The ground shook as hundreds of knees hit it in unison. The Fomorian ranks collapsed to the ground in a spray of blood and crunch of broken leg bones, as if a giant had stomped an enormous bloody footprint in their midst. My pain was so slight, I barely noticed it. The pressure of magic within me finally eased.

  Faced with its vanguard writhing on the ground in pain, the horde halted in horror. I saw Morfran across the field, his disgusting face distinct before me with preternatural clarity, his eyes shocked. I drank that shock in. I reveled in it and I laughed.

  “Bring your army, little god! My sword is hungry!”

  He jerked as if whipped, and I knew he’d heard me. The axe thrust, pointing at me. He screamed and the horde started forward again. I was still laughing, giddy with so much magic spent so quickly, when the shapeshifters swarmed past me onto the crippled demons.

  A hand jerked my shoulder and Derek’s face thrust into my view. “Kate! Snap out of it! Kate!”

  I laughed at him and unsheathed my swords. Scabbards hit the ground and then I was running.

  What happens here, stays here.

  A roar arose as the opposing lines of fighters collided like two great ships ramming each other. The first demon swung a blue axe at me. I disemboweled him, almost in passing, and moved on to the next one.

  I sliced and cut, my blades biting like two steel snakes with hungry mouths, and no matter how much Fomorian flesh they consumed, it failed to satiate their hunger. I saw nothing, I felt nothing. All melted into the scent and warmth of blood, the scorching heat of the sun, and the liquid lubrication of my own sweat.

  They kept coming, enclosing me in a tight ring of flesh. I killed without comprehension, not knowing whom I had dispatched to the cauldron’s depths. They were shapes, obstacles in my way to Morfran, and like a well-tuned machine, I mowed them down, unthinking, unrepentant. Every maneuver I tried worked. Every cut found its victim. A curious elation came over me—they were so many and I hoped they wouldn’t end. This was what I was born for.

  I could go on killing forever.

  The ground grew slippery with the fluid of Fomorian death. Slowly a ring of carcasses began to grow around me: we had overloaded the cauldron of rebirth, slaughtering the Fomorians faster than it could regenerate them.

  Suddenly the Fomorians broke and fled the gluttony of my swords. The field opened before me. The combatants crashed against each other, thrown back and forth, the lines between attackers and defenders no longer clear. Mad shapeshifters ripped into monsters, their eyes crimson with rage. Witches howled, loosing spells and arrows. The air steamed with blood. The clamor of swords, the pain-laced cries of the injured, the screams of shapeshifters, and groans of the dying melded together into an unbearable c
acophony. Above it all the merciless sun blazed, bright enough to blister the skin. This was hell and I was its fury.

  I raised my sword and killed again, with a smile on my face.

  * * * *

  When I saw the sun again, it hung above the horizon, bleeding crimson onto the sky, puffy clouds soaking in red like bandages on an open wound. We had fought for nearly two hours.

  A pair of vampires landed on the mound of corpses.

  “Golf Tree, big mob two o’clock, kick lift?”

  “Golf Too, Roger.”

  The vampire on the left grasped the undead on the right, spun and hurled it like a discus. The undead cleared twenty-five feet and landed atop a giant with a shark’s head. Claws sliced and the Fomorian went down.

  Vampires. That meant Bran had made it.

  A body flew past me. I turned and saw him. Grotesque, enormous, he strode through the field, just yards away.

  To the left a scaled Fomorian hurled a harpoon. It shot through the air, hit Bran square in the gut, and bounced off. The monster that was Bran grasped the harpoon with a shovel-sized hand and tugged the chain, jerking its owner off his feet. As the Fomorian flew through the air, Bran kicked him like a soccer ball. The blow caught the harpooner’s gut and sent him flying.

  The Fomorians fell on him four, five at once, and he scattered them like a flock of birds, swinging back and forth, lopping off heads and stomping the bodies like a toddler rampaging in a field of dandelions. As he chased after them, breaking backs and crushing skulls, his upper body began to glow red like a dying coal.

  What was he doing? He wasn’t suppose to spasm until he got to Morfran. I turned and saw Morfran, right there, practically next to me. In my spree, I had carved my way to him.

  Morfran’s hands moved, his lips whispering. His eyes tracked Bran. He was casting a spell.

  No, you don’t.

  I charged up the knoll, screaming.

  The attack came, sudden and vicious. Morfran chopped at me in a great overhead blow, moving with preternatural quickness, light on his feet. I leaped aside and launched a barrage of strikes, faster and faster, moving around, flashing my blades. Concentrate on me, you sonovabitch.