Dali shrugged. “That’s where the food is.”
Jim glanced at me. “We must get the Diamond.”
“Agreed. The Diamond is too dangerous to the Pack. The rakshasas intend to use it as a weapon against you.” I stole a cookie from the stash. “We have to get the Diamond. And Cesare’s head.”
They looked at me.
“Why the head?” Doolittle asked.
“Because it’s easy to carry and I can torture it for a long time.” And I didn’t just say it out loud, did I? I checked their faces. Yep, I did.
“How do you torture a head?” Dali asked.
“You resurrect it and make it relive its death.”
Jim cleared his throat. “We can’t steal the Diamond and we can’t buy it.”
“The only way to get it is through the Games,” Raphael said. Apparently Jim had brought him up to speed.
“You got something in mind?” Jim asked me.
“The tournament begins the day after tomorrow. It’s a team event. We get Saiman to enter us into it.”
“What makes you think he’ll do it?” Jim asked.
“The question is, how did the shards get from the gem to the rakshasas? Somebody is helping them. Somebody with access to the stone. Saiman hates them. They threatened him, attacked him, and embarrassed him by killing his minotaur.”
Dali came to life. “He had a minotaur?”
“Yep. He dragged him here all the way from Greece and Mart nuked him in ten seconds flat. Saiman hates the Reapers.” I smiled. “But he can’t really do that much to them. Once he finds out that somebody provided the Reapers with shards, he’ll be livid. We offer him two things: a chance to go against the Reapers in the Pit, and an opportunity to find out who within the House is aiding them and why. He won’t pass it up.”
“Okay,” Jim said. I realized he had already worked through it in his head. Why exactly was he using me for his mouthpiece?
“What about Livie?” Derek asked.
“They are very arrogant.” I glanced to Dali for confirmation. She nodded. “Once they recognize you, chances are they will surmise we have entered the tournament to rescue her and will bring Livie out to taunt us. That’s our only shot at her, because there is no way we could storm their flying barn and survive.”
“They should be too overconfident to pass it up,” Dali said.
“Once we go in, there is no turning back,” Jim said. “It’s the Reapers inside and Curran outside. If you’re going to back out, now is the only time you can do it.”
The kitchen fell silent. They mulled it over.
Jim reached behind him and handed me the phone from the counter. I dialed Saiman’s number. He picked up immediately. It took me less than a minute to outline my proposal.
Ominous silence claimed the other end of the phone.
“How sure are you of this?” he said finally.
“I’m in possession of five shards and two corpses,” I told him. “You’re welcome to examine them if you wish. Can you get us into the Games?”
“This is rather short notice,” Saiman said. “But yes. I can. Provided I go as Stone.”
“Done,” I said.
“You’ll need seven fighters.”
I made writing motions. Everybody except the doctor looked for a pencil.
“I’ve never seen such a collection of idiots in my whole life.” Doolittle shook his head. “If you participate in this lunacy, y’all will get yourselves killed. Then don’t come crying to me.”
Now that would be a neat trick.
Dali handed me a pencil. No paper materialized and I scribbled on the tablecloth.
“Stratego, Stone, Sling, Swordmaster, Shield, Shiv, and Spell. They must all be at the Games by tonight at nine p.m. We’ll be sequestered for the duration of the Games. Once you enter, there is no going back, Kate. You don’t get to change your mind and go home. You fight until you can’t continue.”
“Understood.”
“You need a name.”
I covered the receiver for a moment. “We need a team name.”
“Hunters,” Raphael said.
“Valiant Knights of the Fur,” Dali said.
“Justice Group,” Jim said. “Since Justice League is taken.”
“Fools.” Doolittle shook his head.
“Fools,” I said into the receiver.
“Fools?” Saiman asked.
“Yes.”
“It will be arranged, then. The crew?”
“We’ll have a doctor,” I said.
“No, you won’t!” Doolittle declared.
“Very good,” Saiman’s tone was brisk. “Remember, every member of the team must be there by nine. Don’t be late.”
I hung up.
Jim looked at the list. “The freak is Stone. Kate, you’ll take Swordmaster. Derek?”
“Shield,” Derek said. “Defensive fighter.”
“Will you be able to fight in two days’ time?”
He smiled. Dali winced again and said, “You have to stop doing that.”
“You should take Stratego,” I told Jim. “You have the most experience.”
That left us with three.
Raphael’s knife touched the list. “Shiv,” he said. “Fast fighter.”
“Are you sure?” I glanced at Raphael.
“If the lot of you survives, Curran will flay the skin off your backs,” Doolittle said.
“That’s what I always love about you, Doctor.” Raphael grinned. “You’re a cup-halfway-full kind of guy. All flowers and sunshine.”
“He isn’t joking, Raphael. You don’t have to do this.” I looked at him.
Raphael’s smile got wider. “I’m a bouda, Kate. I’ve got no principles and no honor, but you scratch one of our own, and I’ll kill you.”
“I’m touched,” Derek quipped. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“About you? I don’t give a fuck.” Raphael looked slightly deranged. “No, I care about her. They tried to kill her in a parking lot.”
“Since when am I beloved by boudas?”
“Since you drove one of us through the flare so she wouldn’t die,” Raphael said. “Nobody would do that for us. Not even the other clans. Ask the cat.”
Jim didn’t say anything.
“I’ll take Shiv.” Raphael tapped the list again. “Andrea will take Sling. Don’t argue, Kate. She’ll shoot us both if we keep her out.”
“Andrea is a knight of the Order,” I said. “I don’t think she can compete.”
“Neither can any of us,” Raphael countered and reached for the phone.
“That leaves Spell,” Jim said.
We stared at it. Spell. Obviously a magic user. “Any of your crew?”
Jim shook his head.
“You should ask him where his crew is.” Doolittle’s face wrinkled in disgust. “Go on. Tell her.”
Jim didn’t look like he wanted to tell me anything.
“Where is Brenna?”
“On the roof, keeping a lookout,” Jim said,
“And the rest?” Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any of them since we came out of Unicorn.
“Apparently there is a band of loups near Augusta.” Doolittle leveled an outraged glare at Jim. “I’ve been listening to it on the radio. The city’s on the verge of panic. Odd loups these. Mellow. Although they apparently performed shocking acts of animal mutilation within plain view of the farmhouse, the farmer’s family slept through the whole thing. Curiously, no humans were harmed.”
I almost laughed. No loup would attack livestock if human prey was available. They craved human flesh.
“They’re creating a diversion,” Jim said.
Raphael halted his conversation with Andrea to emit a short, distinctly hyena guff. “That’s the best plan you could come up with?”
“Apparently he thinks that Curran’s a moron.” Doolittle shook his head.
“I’ll take Spell,” Dali said.
The kitchen was suddenly silent.
“No,” Jim said.
“You have nobody else.” Dali’s jaw took on a stubborn tilt. “I’m not a fragile flower. I can do this.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
She drew herself to her full height. “I curse.”
“This isn’t a game. You can die in that Arena,” Jim snarled.
“I’m not playing,” Dali snarled back.
Brenna burst through the door. “Curran!”
Oh shit.
Everybody jumped to their feet. “How close?” Jim growled.
“Two blocks, coming fast. He’s heading straight for us.”
“Back door! Now!” Jim ordered. “Kate—”
I shook my head. “Take Derek and go. He can’t get you out of the Arena. I’ll delay him. Go!”
Jim swiped Derek into his arms like a child and took off. The rest followed, including Doolittle. They galloped down the stairs, right past Julie, who stumbled to the hallway, her face looking like she had slept on it. I grabbed her by the shoulder. “Get out the back door and hide someplace close until you see me come out.”
She took off without a word. That was my kid.
I FINISHED ARRANGING THE BLANKET AND A PILLOW on the floor to make it look like someone had slept there. I stepped away to admire my handiwork. Good enough. I took out Slayer and backed away. About a foot from the blanket should do it . . .
The door burst off its hinges and flew into the room, revealing Curran. His teeth were bared in a snarl and his eyes were feral. He was wearing the Pack’s trademark sweatpants and a T-shirt. Bad. Very bad. Sweatpants meant he expected to change shape. Curran in a warrior form was my ultimate nightmare.
Curran bared his fangs. “Kate.”
“Took you long enough.”
“Where are they?”
I arched my eyebrow. “Why would I tell you?”
“Kate, don’t make me force you to answer.” The muscles in his thigh tensed, straining the fabric of his sweatpants.
“What happened to your seduction plan? Or are you man enough to come close only when you’ve kicked my sword under my bed, where I can’t reach it?”
He cleared the room in a single leap. I jumped up and kicked him in midair as hard as I could. My foot collided with his chest. Like kicking a brick wall. He dropped on the makeshift bed. The blanket gave and he crashed down into the loup cage sunken deep into the floor.
I slammed the top frame shut. The complex lock clicked closed and I slid the thick bars in place, locking it down.
Curran ripped apart the blanket. His face was pure rage. He grasped the bars and recoiled.
I sat on the edge of the floor and rubbed my leg. It had gone numb from kicking him. I’d have to thank Julie for this idea. She’d almost fallen into the cage twice.
He snarled and clasped the bars. I had to give it to Curran—he lasted a full five seconds. The bars bent under the pressure but held. Made to withstand the fury of an insane shapeshifter, the cage had enough silver to burn the skin off a shapeshifter’s hands. When Curran let go, gray stripes of flesh marked his palms.
Curran cursed. “It won’t hold me.”
No doubt. Good that it wasn’t meant to hold him, only to delay him. The feeling still hadn’t returned into my leg.
Gold flared in Curran’s eyes. His voice became a bestial growl. “Unlock it.”
The force in his eyes was so intense, I thought my heart would stop. “No.”
“Kate! Release me.”
“Not a chance.”
“When I get out, I’ll make you regret this.”
I frowned. “When you get out, I’ll be in the Arena of the Midnight Games, probably on my way to becoming a fresh corpse. I’ll be regretting a whole lot of things, but you in this cage won’t be one of them.”
Curran stepped back. The rage vanished from his face. He simply quashed it, pulling calm composure on like a helmet. It had never failed to terrify me before, and it did so now.
“Very well.” He sat cross-legged on the floor of the cage. “You haven’t run off so you want to talk. I will hear your explanation now.”
“Really, Your Majesty? So good of you to condescend. I’ll try to use small words and go slow.”
“You’re wasting my time. I know Jim betrayed me and you’re covering for him. This is your chance to dazzle me with your brilliance or baffle me with your bullshit. You won’t get another. When I get out, I won’t be in the mood to listen.”
“Jim didn’t betray you. He worships the ground you walk on. They all do and I don’t understand why. It’s the great mystery of the universe. But nobody betrayed you. They did it to spare you.”
I unloaded. I told him the whole story. He said nothing. He just sat and listened to me, emotionless and arctic.
“Are you finished?” he asked at the end.
“Yes.”
“So let me make sure I understood you. My chief of security deliberately and knowingly disobeyed my first law, because he thought he knew better than me, dragged one of my best people into it, and got him permanently disfigured, beaten, and nearly killed. And he didn’t tell me?”
The lion roar vibrated in his voice.
“Then he convinced you to cover up for his insubordination, and together you attacked a group of mythological killers, aggravating the conflict between them and my Pack instead of repairing the damage. And now he and three others are going to willfully and knowingly break my law again, flaunting it before thousands of people, so there is absolutely no possible way I can sweep it under the rug, even if I had the slightest inclination to do so, which I don’t. Have I gotten it right?”
“Well, yes, it sounds bad when you say it like that.”
He leaned back and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. If the cage fell apart at this point, overwhelmed by his fury, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“Curran, the gem is dangerous. I think that Roland is the Sultan of Death, and if I’m right, that means you’ve grown too powerful to be ignored. He will keep trying to eliminate you. The Wolf Diamond is trouble in the hands of the rakshasas, but it would be even more trouble in the hands of the People or the Order. Rakshasas aren’t too bright. Roland is a genius. And it’s not just him. If the Order got their hands on it, they would try to duplicate its magic and then inoculate your people with it. It’s a key to genocide against your kind.”
“And you care why?”
“Because I don’t want to see you hurt. Any of you. My best friend is beastkin. They will plug a shard into her in a minute. Andrea might not like her animal side, she might reject it, but the choice to do so should be hers.”
Pushing the words out was like trying to carry a rock the size of a house up a mountain. “I should’ve come to you. I would have if we hadn’t found a cure. Anyway, I’m sorry. I tried to help my friends. I don’t have many and . . . you should’ve seen Derek. I thought he was dying. I could actually picture myself burying his corpse. You’d have to kill him if he’d turned loup and . . . I didn’t want to see you hurt.” I turned away. “Julie will let you out of the cage in one hour.”
He didn’t say anything as I left the room. He just sat in the cage, his eyes blazing with towering wrath.
Outside Julie emerged from her hiding spot between the buildings and ran up to me.
“The Beast Lord is locked in a loup cage upstairs. Here is the key.” I handed her the big steel key. “Put it into the keyhole, do a quarter turn, then release the top bar, so you can swing the top open. Curran knows how to open one; he’ll guide you through it. Wait one hour before you let him out. This is very important, Julie. Don’t go near him before then, because he’ll talk you into opening the cage. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Once you’re done, if he lets you get away, call this number.” I handed her a piece of paper. “That’s Aunt B’s phone. Explain that you are alone. Someone will come and pick you up.”
“I want to come with you.”
“I know. I’m sorry, but you can’t. It’s not a good place and I might not get out of there in one piece.” I hugged her. “One hour.”
“One hour,” she agreed.
Magic Strikes Page 24