Magic Strikes

by Ilona Andrews

  And that was where the fairy tale ended and we would check for a knife under my bed and then I would go to sleep, hoping to kill my natural father one day.

  Wherever we went, whatever we did, Roland’s presence followed me. He was my target and the reason for my existence. He gave me life and I would take his.

  I knew him intimately. Voron had been his Warlord for half a century, and would’ve served him through the ages, kept young and virile by Roland’s magic, if my mother hadn’t come along. He taught me everything he learned about his former master. I knew what Roland looked like. Voron had shown me his photo and I had committed it to memory before we burned it. I recognized his face on the statues in old history books and found it once in a Renaissance painting of a battle. I read the Bible passages about him, what little there was. I knew his lieutenants, his weapons, his powers. And Roland’s age had given him vast power. He could control hundreds of undead at once. He wielded his blood like a weapon, solidifying it at will to create devastating weapons and impenetrable blood armor. It was his fucked-up blood that accounted for my power.

  Voron had been a supreme warrior. He took every crumb of his knowledge and he poured it into me, tempering me like a blade. Grow stronger. Survive. Kill Roland. End it forever. Until then, hide.

  Four months ago I made a conscious decision to stop hiding. I had questioned it ever since. I lacked the strength and experience to face Roland, but now I was playing out in the open, and our eventual confrontation was inevitable.

  An instinct told me he was the Sultan of Death. Which meant that if I kept tugging at this tangled mess of a problem, I might end up running across someone from his inner circle. The idea filled me with dread.

  I was afraid of Roland. But I was scared for Derek even more. And I was scared for Curran.

  When I finally drew up to the shapeshifter safe house, the morning was in full swing. I pulled back the tarp. Jim slept atop the corpses. He’d reverted back to his human form and was naked as a jaybird. I shook him a few times, but he seemed to have gone into a Sleeping Beauty-like stupor and I wasn’t going to kiss him to wake him up.

  I knocked on the door. No answer. I tried the handle—and the door swung open. I stuck my head in and called a few times but nobody materialized to assist me.

  Brenna was supposed to have watched the door. The only thing that could’ve drawn her from it was . . . Please don’t let Derek be dead.

  At the thought of going down to the basement, my legs nearly gave out. I wasn’t sure I could take seeing him dead.

  I needed to go down there but I couldn’t make myself move. I swallowed and stared at the doorway.

  The bodies. I better go get the bodies. That’s a good idea.

  It proved surprisingly difficult to maneuver a four-armed corpse through the door. I tried it for a full three minutes before my patience ran dry. But by the time Brenna appeared at the top of the gloomy staircase, I had matters well in hand.

  “Is Derek dead?”

  “Not yet.”

  Relief rolled though me. I needed a nice place to sit down. “I thought you were guarding the entrance,” I said, sliding Slayer under my arm.

  “I was. I had to let someone in.” She stared at the corpse at my feet.

  “It’s not Curran, is it?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Great.” I gathered up the four severed arms and nodded at the stub of the body. “Would you mind getting the bigger piece?”

  DOOLITTLE HAD TAKEN ONE LOOK AT ME AND prescribed an immediate shower. Half an hour later, showered, patched up, and given a mug of coffee by Brenna, I felt almost human. Doolittle had disappeared into the depths of the house to continue his constant vigil on Derek. It was just me and two corpses. At about half a mug, Jim wandered into the room, looking mean and hungover. He favored me with an ugly scowl and flopped into a chair.

  “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  “What for?”

  “My expert. She’s with Derek now.”

  We sat for a while. I was still out of it. Doolittle was the best medmage in the business, hands down. My back almost didn’t hurt and the pain in my side was a distant echo. But I was so tired I could barely see straight.

  I had to check with Andrea on the results of the silver analysis. I tried the phone. No dial tone.

  A young woman strode into the room. She was barely five feet tall and very slender. Her skin was almond dark, her face wide and round. She looked at the world through thick glasses and her eyes behind the Coke-bottle lenses were very brown, almost black, with a touch of Asian ancestry to their cut. She stepped into the apartment and peered at me as I closed the door.

  “Indonesian,” she announced, shifting a tote bag on her shoulder.

  “What?”

  “You were trying to figure out what kind of ’nese I am. Indonesian.”

  “I’m Kate.”

  “Dali.”

  She looked to where Jim sat. As she swept past me, I caught a glimpse of a book in her tote bag: a long, lean blond man brandishing an improbably enormous sword posing with three girls strategically arranged at his feet. One of the girls had cat ears.

  Dali fixed Jim with her disconcerting stare. “You owe me. If he finds out I’m here, I’ll be dead meat.”

  He who? He better not be Curran.

  “I take responsibility,” Jim said.

  “Where are the corpses?” Dali asked.

  “Behind you.”

  Dali turned and stumbled over the four-armed freak’s legs, and would’ve executed a beautiful nosedive if she were an ordinary human. As it was, she managed to jump away and land with perfect balance if not perfect grace. Shapeshifter reflexes to the rescue.

  Dali adjusted her glasses and shot me an irate look. “I’m not that blind,” she said. “I’m absentminded.”

  Perhaps she was also telepathic.

  “No,” she said. “I’m just not stupid.”

  Okay.

  Dali surveyed the four-armed corpse. “Oh boy. Polymelic symmetry. Any other supernumerary body parts? And did you have to hack his arms off?”

  “Yes, I did. He wouldn’t go through the door.”

  “You say it like you’re proud of it.”

  I was proud of it. It was an example of quick thinking in a difficult situation.

  Dali shrugged her tote to the floor, knelt by the corpse, and stared into the gaping hole where the creature’s heart used to reside. Jim had really done a number on it. “Tell me everything.”

  I described the ward, the jungle, the flying palace, the ruins, the stone chariot with multiheaded driver, and the fight, with an occasional comment from Jim. She nodded, raised the corpse’s front left arm to take a look at the back set, frowned . . .

  “So who isn’t supposed to know you’re here?” I asked. Please don’t be Curran, please don’t be Curran . . .

  “The Beast Lord,” Jim said.

  Damn it.

  “Technically she’s under house arrest.”

  “What for?”

  “I went for a drive.” Dali picked up the corpse’s foot and studied the claws. “Nice and pliant. No rigor mortis at all.”

  “He put you under house arrest because you went for a drive?”

  “She slipped a roofie to her bodyguard, hot-wired a car, and went drag racing on Buzzard’s Highway. In the dark.” Jim’s face held all the warmth of an iceberg.

  “You’re just upset that I made Theo look stupid.” Dali dropped the hand. “It’s not my fault that your lethal killing machine was so excited by the prospect of getting his hands on my tiny boy-breasts, he forgot to watch his drink. Quite frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “You’re legally blind, you can’t pass the exam to get a license, and you drive like shit.” Jim’s lip wrinkled in a silent snarl. “You’re a menace.”

  “Drivers on Buzzard don’t come there to be safe. They come there for thrills. If they knew I was legally blind, it would just make things
more interesting for them. It’s my body. I can do whatever I want with it. If I want to get in a wreck, then I should be able to do so.”

  “Yes, but you drove to Buzzard’s Highway,” I said. I really needed more coffee. “What if you wrecked on the way and hurt yourself, or worse, hurt somebody else, another driver or a pedestrian, a kid crossing the street?”

  Dali blinked. “You know, that is precisely what Curran said. Almost word for word.” She sighed. “Let’s agree that, in retrospect, it wasn’t one of my brightest moments. Do you have anything else besides the corpses?”

  Jim handed her the rolled-up mural. She pulled the paper open and frowned. “Here, you hold this end, and, Jim, you hold this end. Okay, separate.”

  She actually wanted me to move. She must’ve been out of her mind. We walked apart until the paper was unrolled. She glanced at it for a second, nodded, and waved her hand. “You may let go. So, do you have any ideas as to what corner of mythology your friend belongs?”

  I took a wild stab in the dark. “Hindu. First, we have a jungle, the ruins of what looked like a Dravidian temple to me, then a stone chariot drawn by elephants, and a humanoid with many arms and heads. We also have a tiger monster and he has four arms. Not that many mythologies feature extra sets of arms or that many extra heads in a humanoid. Several heads on dragons or giants, yes. Extra limbs and heads on a humanoid, no. Also, the girl called one of the Reapers ‘Asaan.’ I looked it up and it’s a term for a guru or practitioner of Dravidian martial arts.”

  Dali looked at me for a long moment. “You’re not stupid either.”

  “Yes, but that’s all I got.”

  “I believe this is a rakshasa.” She nudged the four-armed corpse with her toes. “And if I’m right, the two of you are in deep shit.”

  “AT FIRST THERE WAS VISHNU, EXCEPT AT THAT point he was Narayana, the embodiment of Supreme Divinity.”

  Dali sat on the floor next to the corpse.

  “Narayana floated in endless waters, wrapped in a great albino serpent and having a marvelous time, until a lotus grew from his navel. Within the lotus, god Brahma, the creator of worlds, was reborn. Brahma looked around, saw Narayana being content to float, and for no apparent reason became obsessed that his water would get stolen. So he made four guardians, two couples. The first couple promised to worship the water, and they were yakshasas. The second couple promised to protect the water, and they were rakshasas.”

  “Talk strengths and weaknesses,” Jim said.

  “Rakshasas are born warriors. They were created for this purpose. According to legend, they are conceived and carried to term in a single day, and upon birth, they instantly grow to the age of their mother. They are carnivores and have no qualms about consuming human meat. They come in a vast variety of shapes and sizes. They’re excellent illusionists and magicians.”

  I sighed. This just got better and better. “For some reason I thought rakshasas were humanoid tigers, like a shapeshifter in a warrior form but with a tiger’s head.”

  Dali nodded. “They are most often depicted as monsters resembling tigers, because a tiger is the scariest thing an Indian sculptor or artist could reasonably picture. Elephants are larger, but they are vegetarians and mostly keep to themselves, while tigers are silent, deadly, and actively hunt people.”

  A humanoid tiger, equipped with extra arms and human intelligence, would be the stuff of anyone’s nightmares.

  “Rakshasas realize that tigers are frightening and often adopt this form; however, legends say that they can be ugly or beautiful. Out of three rakshasa brothers, one could be lovely beyond description, one could be a giant, and one could sprout ten heads. It really varies. Some sources insist that one can never know the true form of a rakshasa; only the form they favor most at the moment.”

  “Anything else?” Jim asked softly.

  “They can fly.”

  Delightful. “Ours didn’t fly. They mostly jumped unnaturally high.”

  “That could be due to low magic, incorrect information, or an insufficient number of people believing in the myth. Or all three. Take your pick.”

  “Can these rakshasas do something that would stop you from shifting?” I asked.

  Dali thought about it. “They’re shapeshifters but not in the same way we are. They deal in illusion. You said they pulled their human skins off. Where are the skins? You brought his ripped clothes. I find it very hard to believe that between the two of you, you forgot to pick up torn human hide.”

  I concentrated, recalling the scene as we left the house. “The skins disappeared.”

  Dali nodded. “That’s because technically there were no skins. Magic or no magic, you couldn’t physically pack that”—she kicked the four-armed corpse again—“into a human hide. Rakshasas don’t actually flay a human and pull on his skin. They consume a human in some way, physically, mentally, or spiritually, or all of the above, and then they assume the shape.”

  Light dawned in my head. “The skin ripping was an illusion. An intimidation tactic.”

  “Exactly. They pretended to cast off human skins because they wanted to disturb you. Rakshasas are exceedingly arrogant and cunning but not too bright. Their mythical king, Ravana, is a prime example: ten heads but very little brain. The flying palace you saw, assuming both of you haven’t gone insane, is most likely Pushpaka Vimana, an ancient flying machine. Ravana appropriated it from its original owner and was flying around on it to and fro when he came upon Shiva the Destroyer during his rest.” Dali paused for dramatic effect.

  Hindu mythology wasn’t my strongest suit, but even I knew about Shiva. Any god titled Destroyer of Worlds wasn’t to be taken lightly. When not enjoying his home life with his loving wife and two sons, he ran around the woods wrapped in cobras and wearing a torn tiger skin still dripping blood. He stripped pelts from fearsome beasts with a touch of his pinkie. His wrath was likened to Rudra, a roaring storm. In his malignant aspect, he was absolutely terrifying. In his benign aspect, he was easily amused. His forehead hid a third eye, which, when directed outward, burned everything in his path and periodically destroyed the universe. Anything associated with Shiva had to be treated with kid gloves while wearing a Level IV biohazard suit and preferably a tank.

  Dali smiled. “Ravana managed to annoy Shiva, and the Destroyer of Worlds put him into a cage of stone bars. Ravana had to sit there and sing until Shiva got tired of listening to him and let him go. Ravana was the ultimate rakshasa: arrogant, flashy, and ruled completely by his impulses. He was what they would aspire to be. You’re dealing with terrible show-offs, convinced of their own superiority. To them you’re amusing food slash adoring audience. They’ll milk everything they got for dramatic effect and they get off on playing to the crowd.”

  Jim and I exchanged glances. If you got your jollies by getting the herd high, the Midnight Games was the place to do it.

  I turned my cup upside down, looking for more coffee. None came out. Still, the crowd-pleasing factor had to be just a bonus. They were after the gem. Why? I was swimming in a sea of random information and it refused to make itself into anything logical. I opened my mouth to ask Dali about the topaz, but Jim jumped ahead of me.

  “Can you explain the jungle?”

  She made a face. “I have no idea. It could be some sort of pocket of deep magic. Or a portal into a magic jungle land. I’d need more information to answer this question. By the way, I’m so thirsty, my tongue feels like paper.”

  Dali licked her lips and Jim went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water, which he handed to her. She drained half of it. “So, the rakshasas hate us.”

  “ ‘Us’ as in shapeshifters or ‘us’ as in normal humans?” I asked.

  “Both. This takes us back to Ravana. Ravana was an upward-climbing type of individual. He had ten heads, and every century he sacrificed one of his heads by hacking it off. Finally he had only one head and the gods could stand it no longer, came down in all their heavenly glory, and asked him what the h
ell did he want to stop doing that. He asked for immunity from every race except that of men and animals. He thought us to be too puny and lowly to harm him. Once he got his immunity, he set about conquering Heaven, burned the city of the gods, killed all the dancing girls . . . And then Vishnu decided he had just about enough of that, went to Earth to be reborn as a human, Rama, marshaled together an army of animals, and nuked him.”

  If rakshasas were as arrogant as she said, they would hate humans and animals with the passion of a thousand suns. And shapeshifters were both. Bonus genocide. Now the Reapers’ half-breed revulsion made sense.