Magic Bites

by Ilona Andrews

  An ancient blue Honda came to a stoplight in the left turn lane next to us. A man and a woman in the front seat were talking. I couldn’t see the man except for his darkened profile, but the woman’s face wore a blissful, slightly dreamy look as if she was remembering some happy moment. A small brown-haired boy sat in the backseat.

  In a moment he would see the monster in my car. I braced myself for a scream.

  The boy squinted and grinned. I glanced in the rearview window. The wolf-man was pretending to pant, black lips stretched in a happy canine smile. The gloom of the car hid most of his face and only the muzzle, illuminated by the outside light, and the glowing eyes were visible.

  The boy mouthed something that might have been “Good dog.” The light changed and the Honda drove on, vanishing into the night and carrying away the child and his parents, their reminiscing undisturbed.

  We drove on, winding our way northeast toward Suwanee. It took us nearly an hour to reach the shapechanger compound and we had to leave the city behind to get there. All but invisible from the highway, the fortress sat in the middle of a clearing, defined by a dense wall of brush and oaks that looked decades older than they had any right to be. The only sign of its existence was a single-lane dirt road that veered so abruptly from the highway that I missed it despite my guide and had to double back.

  The trail brought us to a small parking lot. I parked next to an old Chevy truck and held the door open for the wolfman. He stepped out and paused in a kind of silent salute to the building. The compound loomed before us, a forbidding square building of gray stone nearly sixty feet high. Darkness pooled in the narrow arched windows, guarded by metal grates. The place looked like the keep of a castle rather than a modern fort.

  The wolf-man raised his narrow muzzle and let out a long, wailing howl. Icy fingers of fear clawed their way up my spine and clutched my throat. The howl lingered, bouncing off the walls and filling the night with the promise of a long, bloody hunt. Another voice joined it from atop the keep, a third came from the side, then a fourth . . . All around us the sentries howled and I stood still in the whirlpool of their war cries. A bit dramatic, and yet it had the likely desired effect of turning a badass like me into just another frightened ape shivering in the darkness.

  Satisfied, my guide strode toward the keep and I walked after him listening to the last echoes of the blood hymn flee into the night. The wolf-man stopped before a large metal door and knocked. The door swung open and we stepped inside, into a small chamber lighted with electric lamps.

  A short woman with very curly blond hair waited for us. Some unspoken communication must have passed between her and my guide, and she looked at me. “This way, please.”

  I followed her through another door to a round room. A spiral staircase pierced the floor, stretching both up and down. I looked up and saw coils of stairs merging with darkness.

  “This way, please,” the woman repeated and led me down the stairs. We descended, making several loops, until my escort stepped into a dark side hallway. The hallway terminated in another heavy wooden door, and the woman pushed it open, motioning me inside. I stepped through.

  A huge oval room lay before me, bathed in a comfortable glow of electric lights softened by opaque glass. The room sloped down gently, like a college auditorium, to culminate in a flat stage. On the left side of the stage, next to a door, fire burned brightly in a foot-wide metal brazier, its smoke sucked away into a vertical shoot. A smooth slanting path led from the doorway to the stage.

  The rest of the sloping floor was terraced, segregated into five-foot-wide “steps,” and on the steps, on uniform blue blankets, rested the shapechangers. Most were in a human form; some reclined by themselves; some sat together with their families, one family to a blanket, as if they had gathered for some sort of underground picnic. With a shock I realized there were more than three hundred of them. Many more.

  And Curran was nowhere in sight.

  The door closed behind me with a click. As one, the shapechangers turned and looked at me.

  I wondered what they’d do if I asked to borrow a cup of sugar.

  Behind me the door opened and two large males stepped inside, breathing down my neck. I got the message and started down the path to the stage. Ahead several males stood up from their blankets and barred the path midway down.

  The welcoming committee. How nice.

  I crashed to a halt before the men. “You’re in my way,” I said.

  “Really?” The kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old, with an open face and longish brown hair. His brown eyes laughed at me, and I knew this was a setup. And I knew who orchestrated it. They wouldn’t blow their noses without Curran’s say-so.

  “Really,” I said, knowing what was coming.

  “From where I’m standing, you’re in our way,” an older, stocky male said. A corner of his mouth curved, trying to hide a smile. He enjoyed the game.

  A tall male, shaggy with red hair, called out from his blanket, “Hey, Mik, don’t you know to step aside for a lady?”

  “I don’t see a lady here.” The stocky male leered at me.

  A wave of catcalls and growling rolled through the room, so sudden it might have been choreographed. Mik kept sizing me up. Even his leer seemed rehearsed. There was no threat here, only a test of what I would do. I had to resolve it quickly and without direct violence or the Pack would never work with me. The sheer stupidity of the situation was staggering.

  The males grew bolder. The kid grinned. “What do you say, baby, let’s you and me go to the side and I’ll show you a good time.”

  The group exploded with laughter—this one must have been an improvisation. The kid, pleased with himself, reached out and his fingers brushed my cheek. The moment his skin touched mine, I whispered a single word so quietly that even I couldn’t hear my voice.

  “Amehe.” Obey.

  The word of power pulsed through my skin to his. The rush of so much magic leaving my body nearly brought me to my knees. The kid stiffened. The others did not notice, absorbed in making noise.

  “That’s a good one, Derek,” Mik said. “I think she could take all of us on, unless you mind sharing.”

  I looked at the kid and said, “Protect me.”

  His body exploded into motion, the mist of body fluids drenching the floor. A sleek lupine shape hit the older male, knocking him off balance. Mik fell on his back, and the huge gray wolf was on top of him, fangs bared in a vicious feral snarl a hair away from his throat.

  “Hold him,” I said.

  The wolf growled low, black lips quivering.

  The room was suddenly quiet as a tomb. I hoped it wouldn’t be mine.

  “Derek,” Mik said in a hoarse voice, the weight of the wolf on his chest making it difficult for him to speak. “Derek, it’s me.”

  The wolf snarled.

  “Don’t move,” I advised, reaching back and pulling Slayer from its sheath. It made a soft metallic whisper as it left the scabbard and the gazes of the shapechangers fastened on the enchanted blade.

  A woman rose from her seat to my left. Her lips quivered in a telltale precursor to a snarl. “What the hell did you do to him?”

  I glanced around the room. The mood had changed. The game had ended, and their eyes burned like fire. The hair on their heads bristled, and the smell of murder was in the air.

  “This is Slayer,” I said, holding the saber so they could see it clearly. The saber seethed, and luminescent tendrils of smoke clung to its blade. “It has had many names. One of them was Wolfripper. Push me and I will show you how it got that one.”

  “You can’t take all of us,” a male snarled to the right.

  “I don’t have to.” I lowered the blade onto the neck of the wolf. “Move and I’ll kill him.”

  They became utterly still. Pack loyalty overrode their anger, but I didn’t dare to push them any further.

  “That’s enough,” Curran’s voice said.

  The shapechangers
melted from my path and I saw Curran standing down by the fire. I looked at the wolf.

  “Come.”

  Hesitantly the beast took his paws off Mik’s chest. I stepped over the stocky man and walked toward Curran, the wolf trotting at my side like an oversized guard dog.

  I stepped onto the stage. Curran’s irises were streaked with gold—he was pissed off. Ignoring him, I stepped toward the brazier, pulled up the right sleeve of my sweatshirt, and passed my forearm through the flame. Pain licked my arm. The stench of scorched skin and burned hair permeated the air. The room murmured. I proved my humanity and my control to the Pack as any shapechanger would. No shapechanger who abandoned the strict discipline and allowed his Beast to take charge could touch the fire. It was a vital and very private ritual, one they did not expect me to know.

  Curran’s face was stone. “Come,” he said and the wolf and I followed him off the stage, through a door, into another, much smaller room, where eight people sat in padded chairs. They rose at Curran’s approach and remained standing, three women and five men. Jim was one of them. So my old buddy was a member of the Pack Council. Fancy that.

  The eight looked at the wolf, at me, at my arm, and then at Curran. Jim opened his mouth to say something and clamped it shut.

  “Derek,” Curran called.

  The wolf glanced at him. The blaze of Curran’s eyes seared him and he sat still, mesmerized. Curran made a strange sound, half growl, half word, but an unmistakable command. The wolf shuddered. Curran repeated the order. The wolf shook harder, his lean body convulsing, and whined weakly.

  The lord of the shapechangers glared at me. “Release him.”

  “Is that a request or an order?”

  A twitch ran through Curran’s face as if the lion in him wanted to claw its way out. “It’s a request,” he said.

  I kneeled by the wolf and touched his thick fur, making contact with the skin underneath. The beast trembled.

  “Is the room warded with containment?”

  Curran nodded. I looked at the wolf and whispered, “Dair.” Release.

  The strength of the power word rocked me. Red circles swam before me and I shook my head trying to clear my vision. The wolf sagged to the floor as if all strength suddenly left his sinewy legs. Curran growled, and the animal vanished in the dense mist, leaving the kid naked and wet on the floor.

  “I couldn’t,” he groaned.

  “I know,” Curran said. “It’s okay.”

  The kid sighed and passed out. One of the women, a long-legged lean brunette in her thirties, covered him with a blanket.

  Curran turned to me. “Take one of mine again and I’ll kill you.” He said it in a conversational manner, matter-of-fact and flat, but in his eyes I could see a simple certainty. If he had to, he would kill me. He would not lose any sleep over it. He would not give it a second thought. He would do it and move on, untroubled by ending my existence.

  It scared the shit out of me, so I laughed in his face. “You think you can do it by yourself next time, big guy? On second thought, you better bring some of your flunkies to box me in again—you are getting soft.”

  Behind him someone made a strangled sound. That’s it, I’m dead, flashed through my head. Curran’s face jerked. Bloodlust flooded him and then, with a single massive exertion of will, he regained control. The effort was almost physical. I could see the muscles of his face relax one by one as his anger imploded. The rage in his eyes died to smoldering amber and he stood before me, relaxed, loose, and calm. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.

  “I need you for now,” he said. Glancing at his Council, he asked, “Is Corwin ready?”

  “Yes, my liege,” boomed an older man. Barrel-chested and thick, with enormous shoulders and arms that would make any blacksmith proud, he looked to be in his fifties, his curly black beard and thick mane of black hair sparkling with isolated strands of gray.

  “Good. Take her to the room. I’ll join you shortly.”

  The black-bearded man approached the door on the left side of the room and held it open for me. “Please.”

  I made my exit.

  We walked side by side through a winding corridor, the man with the black beard and I. “My name is Mahon,” the man said. His deep voice held the slight burr of a Scottish accent.

  “Nice to meet you,” I murmured mechanically.

  “It would have been much nicer under different circumstances,” he chuckled.

  “Knowing the extent of the Pack’s welcome, I would’ve preferred Unicorn Lane.”

  “You must understand that Curran can’t permit anyone to take something that’s his. If he allows it to happen, his authority would come into question and some’d ask if you couldn’t do the same thing to him as you did to Derek.”

  “I’m aware of the Pack’s mechanics,” I said.

  “And you are an outsider. The Pack is distrustful of outsiders.”

  “I’m a human outsider. The Pack treated me as if I were a loner. With Curran’s permission.” Very rarely, a shapechanger chose to follow the Code in his own way, refusing the Pack. Such individuals were called loners. They were the ultimate outsiders, treated by the Pack with suspicion and dislike.

  Mahon inclined his head, supporting my assessment of the situation. “Curran never does anything without a reason,” he said. “I was told you’d met him. Perhaps you indirectly challenged him at that meeting.”

  Indirectly? I had challenged him deliberately.

  “Your knowledge of our customs is unusual,” he continued. “For a human outsider. How did you come by this information?” His voice promised no confrontation.

  “My father,” I said.

  “A man of the Code?”

  “In his own way. Not your Code but his own.”

  “You’ve learned well.”

  “No,” I said. “He taught me well. I was difficult.”

  “Children can be sometimes,” he said.

  We stopped before a door.

  “Do you need some ointment for your arm?”

  I looked at the angry red welt marring my skin. “No. Unless you catch it right away, the ointment won’t do any good. But I appreciate the offer.” I shook my head. “Tell me, do you always pacify irate guests of the Pack?”

  He opened the door. “Sometimes. I suppose I have a calming influence on misbehaving children. Please.”

  I stepped through the door and he closed it behind me. The room was small. A single lamp threw a sharp cone of light onto a table in its center. Two chairs stood by the table, the farther one occupied by a man. He had purposefully positioned himself so the light was turned away from him.

  The setup reminded me of the spy movies from my childhood.

  “Finessed you, didn’t he?” the man said. His voice had a scratchy quality to it. “I bet another ten minutes and you ready to apologize.”

  “I don’t think so.” I pulled up a chair to the table. The man leaned back, remaining in the shadows.

  “Don’t beat yourself over it. He do it to everybody. Why I don’t talk to him.”

  “You’re Corwin?”

  “No, I’m Snow White.” He rocked back, balancing on the back legs of his chair.

  “And who’s the man that walked me here?”

  “Mahon,” he said. “The Kodiak of Atlanta.”

  “The Pack Executioner?”

  “The very same.”

  I digested the news.

  “He raise Curran, you know,” the man said.

  “Oh? And he calls him lord like the rest of you?”

  The man shrugged. “That what Curran is.”

  “She has trouble with that concept,” Curran’s voice said from behind me.

  I was learning. This time I didn’t jump. “You may be their lord. You sure as hell aren’t mine.”

  Curran was leaning against the wall.

  “Where are the rest?” I asked. There had to be more people watching, probably the eight that greeted me in the room where I alm
ost talked myself into death. The alpha male of the wolf pack, the head of the rats, the person that spoke for the “scouts,” the smaller shapechangers, and someone who stood for the larger beasts.

  “They are watching,” Curran said, nodding toward the wall.

  For the first time I noticed a one-way mirror.

  I looked at Corwin. “Why don’t you move into the light.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He leaned forward, letting the light play on his features. His face was horrible. Large, flint-hard eyes sat deep in his skull, overshadowed by heavy eyebrows. His nose was massive, his jaw too heavy and prominent to be human; he looked like he could bite through a steel wire with little effort. His reddish hair, thick and textured like fur, was combed back into a ponytail. Long side burns hung from his cheekbones almost to his chest, framing tall, pointed ears with small tufts of fur on their ends. The same hair, only shorter and thicker, sheathed his neck and his throat, leaving his chin bare at such a precise line that he must have shaved.

  His hands, resting on the table, were misshapen and out of proportion to his body. Despite short, thick fingers, each hand could enclose my entire head. Clumps of reddish fur grew between his knuckles.

  Corwin grinned. His teeth were huge and pointed.

  Sickle claws shot from the tips of his stubby fingers. He spread his fingers in a catlike kneading motion, scraping the wooden surface of the table.

  “Oh, boy,” I said. “How do you fluff your pillows at night?”

  Corwin licked his canines at me and glanced at Curran. “I like this one.”

  “Let’s start,” I said.

  “You haven’t asked me what I am.” Corwin tapped the table with his claws.

  “I’ll figure it out.” The familiar words from the long sessions at the Academy resurfaced. “I’m Kate Daniels. I’m a lawful and documented representative of the Order. I’m investigating a murder and you are one of the suspects. With me so far?”

  “Yes,” Corwin said.

  “I’m here to question you with the purpose of establishing or eliminating you as a primary suspect. If you’ve committed this murder, you may incriminate yourself by answering my questions. I can’t compel you to answer.”