I heard Crest walk into the room. He sat next to me.
"So that's what you do?" he said.
"Yeah."
We sat silent for a few breaths.
"I can live with it," he said.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. He shrugged. "I'm not going to watch again, but I can live with it." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Have you ever met someone and felt… I don't know how to describe it, felt a chance at having something that eluded you? I don't know… Forget I said anything."
I knew what he meant. He was describing that moment when you realize that you are lonely. For a time you can be alone and doing fine and never give a thought to living any other way and then you meet someone and suddenly you become lonely. It stabs at you, almost like a physical pain, and you feel both deprived and angry, deprived because you wish to be with that person and angry, because their absence brings you misery. It's a strange feeling, akin to desperation, a feeling that makes you wait by the phone even though you know that the call is an hour away. I was not going to lose my balance. Not yet.
I moved closer to him and leaned against his shoulder. We both knew that sex was out of the question.
"Do you mind if I stay anyway?" he asked.
"No."
I fell asleep leaning on him.
CHAPTER 6
I AWOKE BECAUSE SOMEONE WAS WATCHING ME.
"Don't you know it's not polite to stare, boy wonder?"
Derek gave Crest a derisive glance. The boy wonder was wearing sweats I didn't recognize. They didn't come from Greg's wardrobe. He must've gone out. Where exactly did he go?
During the night we had moved into a somewhat reclining position and I was lying on Crest's chest. I sat straight. "You disapprove?"
He shook his head. "It isn't my place."
"You don't like him all the same, though."
"He and you…" he made a put-together motion with his hands, fingers spread coming together but not quite touching. "You don't look right together."
"Why not?"
"You're harder than he is."
"What's wrong with that?"
"The man's supposed to be harder. So he can protect."
"Do you think I'm in need of protection?" The threatening overtone crept into my voice without intention.
"He will never tell you no," Derek said.
I stared at him until he lowered his gaze. "Very few people tell me no," I said.
"Yeah."
"How's your leg?"
"Fine."
"Did you go out while I slept?"
"Yeah. Just a short jog."
"Maybe you should go for another one."
He left without saying a word. I woke Crest. "Time to go."
He rubbed his face with his palms. "Did I oversleep?"
"It's six thirty."
"Time enough to get home and change clothes. When will I see you again?"
I thought of the Coca-Cola logo half-buried in rubble and a two-hundred-year-old vampire. Maybe never.
"How about on Friday? Gives us a couple of days to cool off."
"It's Friday then."
He left. He didn't kiss me again.
I PRIED OPEN THE PAPER CONTAINER OF GENERAL Tso's chicken and touched a piece with my finger. It was room temperature. The thought of dumping it into a pan and warming it to an edible temperature crossed my mind, but heating it on the stove would make the vegetables mushy and I hated overcooked vegetables. My father, a great believer in the nutritional properties of boiled vegetables and meat broth, had cooked hearty, hot soups. The memory of him watching in distress as I gagged on soft cabbage and half-dissolved onion flashed before my eyes. I smiled at the carton and extracted a fork from the kitchen drawer. Hot food was overrated anyway.
I speared a piece of chicken with my fork, carefully avoiding the lump of green pepper. Suddenly I was ravenous.
Someone knocked.
I paused, the chicken halfway to my mouth, and glared at the door. The knocking persisted. It wasn't Derek. His knock would be careful, almost apologetic. This bastard knocked like he was doing me a favor.
I looked at the chicken, glanced to the door, stuffed a whole piece into my mouth, and went to see who dared to make demands on my time.
The door swung open, revealing Curran. He wore old jeans and a green sweatshirt and carried a brown paper sack. He raised his face and sucked air in through his nostrils in the manner of shapechangers. "Tso's, seafood delight, and fried rice," he said. "You're going to share?"
I leaned against the wall. The door was open but the ward still blocked his entrance, affording me a bit of leisure. "Oh, it's you." I dug in the container with my fork. "I thought it was somebody important."
Curran stepped forward, brushing against the ward. A flash of carmine rippled through the magic barrier and the lord of shapechangers withdrew.
"A ward," he said.
"A good one."
He put his palm against the ward and pushed. Red pulsed from his fingers, spreading through the ward like waves from a pebble tossed into a quiet pond.
"I can break it," Curran said.
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Be my guest."
Shapechangers had a natural resistance to wards, so his promise had some substance. Still, I had reinforced all of Greg's wards. If Curran did break it, the resonance from the collapse would give me one hell of a migraine, but I doubted he could. It was a good ward.
He considered it. I could see it in his eyes, and for a moment I thought he would try it. Then he shrugged. "I could break it, or we can be civil and you can let me in."
Getting tired of power demonstrations, are we, Your Majesty? I unlocked the ward. A wave of silver rolled from the top of the doorframe to dissipate on the floor. "Come on in."
He strode toward the kitchen and stopped halfway, his face a snarl. "What the hell do you have in your pantry, a dead vampire?"
"No. Only the head of one." I had double-bagged the head, sealing it in plastic, and still he smelled it.
I perched on the edge of the table and nodded toward the gathering of white cartons. "Help yourself. There's fried rice in there somewhere."
He put his paper bag on the floor, picked a carton indistinguishable from any other, took the spoon I offered him, and popped the carton open. "Peas," he said with disgust. "Why the hell do they always put peas in it?"
"So what brought you here so bright and early?"
He used his spoon to pick out the peas with great care, depositing them into the trash. "Heard that you got something."
"Boy wonder snitched on me?"
"Yeah."
"When? This morning?"
Curran nodded. "It's the blood oath. For example, if he were to get his leg ripped to shreds, it's his duty to warn us that he can no longer guard you to the best of his ability. Someone had to come and assess the situation."
"Since when is 'someone' you? Don't you have plenty of flunkies to run your errands?"
He shrugged. "Just checking on the kid."
"Last night his leg looked like it went through a shredder. He won't let me look at it, but I think the bone is intact." A shapechanger's body healed the flesh wounds within a couple of days. Mending bones took much longer.
Curran swallowed a mouthful of rice. "Figures. He's young. It's important to be stoic when you're a young guy. You didn't fuss over him, did you?"
"No. He should be limping in pretty soon."
"You're going to show me what screwed up his leg?"
"After I'm done eating."
"Weak stomach?"
"No. It's a pain in the ass to wrap it back up."
A careful, measured knock interrupted us. I went to open the door and let Derek inside. He saw Curran and stopped. He wasn't exactly at attention, but he came close.
Curran waved him in, and Derek took a chair out of the way. I looked at Curran. "Any more rice in there?"
He chose another container and gave it to me. I opened it and pushed it
toward Derek. "Eat."
He waited.
He had to be ravenous. The amount of calories his body burned to repair itself ensured that the mere hint of food filled his mouth with drool.
"Derek, eat," I said.
He smiled and sat still.
Something was wrong here. I glanced at Curran and put two and two together.
"This is my house."
They both looked at me with the patient expression Japanese traditionalists adopt when silly gajin ask them why they go through all that trouble just to drink a cup of tea.
"He doesn't eat until I tell him or until I'm done," Curran said. "Doesn't matter whose house it is."
I set my chicken on the table and crossed my arms. I could argue the point with them until I turned purple in the face and neither would relent. The low-ranking wolves didn't feed before their Pack King. It was the way of the Code. They lived by its rules or they lost their humanity.
Curran put another spoonful into his mouth. Time stretched as he chewed the food. Derek sat still. The urge to slap Curran was almost too much for me.
The Beast Lord scraped the bottom of his container, licked the spoon, reached over the table and took away Derek's rice, replacing it with the brown paper sack he had brought. Derek glanced into the sack and retrieved a bundle of waxed paper tied with a cord. He snapped the cord and unwrapped the bundle. A five-pound shoulder roast looked back at him.
Curran jerked his head toward the hallway. "Don't make a spectacle of yourself."
Derek rose, gathering the roast, and disappeared into the depths of the apartment. I glared at Curran.
"I like fried rice," he said with a shrug. He slid the spoon under the paper flaps of the other small paper box, forced them open, and proceeded to pick out the peas.
The low rumble of a predator feeding came from within the apartment.
"Keep it down," Curran said without raising his voice.
The snarling died.
"So what do you have?"
I sketched it out for him, concluding with the vamp's head. The undead flesh had liquefied over night, turning into putrid black goo. The stench of rot was so strong that by the time I opened the second trash-bag both the Beast Lord and I were gagging in the most undignified manner. Curran took one look at the distorted skull and tied the bag shut.
"Should've done it before we ate," he observed when we managed to secure the head.
"Yeah." I opened the window, letting a gust of cold wind into the kitchen.
"So you're planning on taking this on by yourself? No backup?"
"No."
"Going to notify the cops?"
I grimaced. It had nagged at me since I awoke. To go to the cops would mean bringing in the Paranormal Activity Division, and as soon as the Division gave the MSDU their mandatory notification, the military would try to step in and eat the whole pie by themselves. The Division would cry jurisdiction and the whole thing could stretch for several days. By then my friendly nemesis could be gone or worse, he could have gained leadership of the People. The fact that I had a lot of assumptions and a strange skull wouldn't exactly make the authorities abandon the departmental rivalry and hurry on my account.
The Guild would offer no assistance. There was no money involved, and if I as much as squeaked to the Order that some asshole tried to start a war between the Pack and the People and herded two-hundred-year-old vampires to do it, Ted would take me off the case faster than I could exhale. On the other hand, trying to confront a rogue Master of the Dead by myself was suicide. I was homicidal but not stupid.
I became aware that Curran was watching me. "I don't know," I said.
"I can solve that problem for you," he said. He was offering the Pack's resources. I would be crazy not to take him up on that offer.
I bent an eyebrow at him. "Why?"
"Because I have sixty-three rats who buried their alpha three days ago. They've been howling for blood, while I've been sitting around with my thumb up my ass."
"That's a big risk to take just for the sake of appearances."
He shrugged. "Power is all about appearances. Besides, who knows? It did snow in May once, so even you could be right."
I let the barb go. "And if I'm not?"
"Then at least I've tried."
It made sense in an odd way. "Who'll come?"
"A few people."
"Jim?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because someone from the Council has to stay behind to hold the Pack together if I die. The alpha-wolf has hurt himself, and Mahon stayed behind the last time. The new alpha-rat doesn't have enough experience."
"What happened to the alpha-wolf?"
"LEGOs."
"Legos?" It sounded Greek but I couldn't recall anything mythological with that name. Wasn't it an island?
"He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement and tripped on the old set of LEGOs his kids left on the stairs. Broke two ribs and an ankle. He'll be out of commission for two weeks." Curran shook his head. "He picked a hell of a time. If I didn't need him, I'd kill him."
I ARRIVED AT THE COCA-COLA BUILDING UNMOLESTED and hid in the shadowy alcove of an abandoned phone booth, half a block from the ruined skyscraper. The logo lay partially buried in the remains of what must have been a magnificent building in its time—even now its skeleton covered the entire block. It had been only ten years old when the flair, a freakishly strong magic fluctuation, took it down.
The shapechangers were nowhere in sight. Across the street a ravaged building careened amidst waist-tall heaps of dusty broken glass. Good place to hide. It took me a minute to find a gap in the crumbling wall. I squeezed through and found fiery eyes glaring at me.
They were battle ready. Pink and black tongues licked mismatched jaws and huge teeth, and long claws made faint scraping noises on the concrete floor. Eight pairs of eyes sought prey, fueled by hunger. The primitive savage of my subconscious howled and yelped in terror.
"Oh, it's you," Curran's voice said quietly. "I thought it was an elephant."
"Don't mind him," murmured a lean shape to the left. "He was born rude." A lupine female in a midform. That bordered on cheeky. She was either his main squeeze or the female alpha of the wolves.
An enormous shaggy Kodiak bear towered to the left, a dark mountain of fur and muscle, his muzzle light with old scars. Mahon had changed all the way. Next to him rose something huge, almost eight feet tall. Vaguely humanoid in shape, it stood on two columnar furry legs. Hard muscle corded its frame, and a shaggy, grayish mane crowned the head and the back of the massive neck. Long stripes criss-crossed its chest, faint like the smoke marks on the pelt of a panther.
I glanced at its face, and the power in its gold eyes rooted me to the floor. Goose flesh marked my limbs. I couldn't move. It could have pounced on me and I couldn't have done anything to stop it. The mammoth muscles of its neck bulged as it rolled its head one way, then another, stretching. The twin pads of its upper lip split, revealing three-inch-long canines. The monster licked his lips, long lines of whiskers twitching, and spoke in a deep growl. "Pretty, aren't I?"
Curran. In midform. I broke from his gaze. "Adorable."
The nightmare made a barely perceptible nod, and a ratman scuttled forward with superhuman agility and leaped, finding purchase on sheer wall. Up he went to the gap twelve feet above the floor and dove through it. The scout was off.
Curran turned and walked to the wall, where a long crack split the side of the decrepit building. A furry, taloned hand hit the crumbling barrier, and the wall exploded outward, pelting the street with concrete and rock dust. The King of the Beasts ducked through the opening he had made and we followed, single file.
CURRAN HALTED. TO HIS LEFT THE BEAR RUMBLED to a stop. To the right, Jennifer, the female alpha-wolf, carefully put her clawed foot down into the grime and stood still. We froze in silence, a scattering of bizarre statues in the Gorgon's backyard, waiting for something I couldn't see or hear.
We stood in a wide foyer, its once polished tiled floor now a dusty mess of dirt and rubble. Massive cracks creased the filthy walls, growing into dark uneven holes. To the left a wide fissure slashed through the floor. Ahead rock dust and garbage choked the once splendid staircase. The new Coca-Cola building was on its last breath.
The faint sound of claws scuttling on stone came from the left. A pair of red-coal eyes blazed from the darkness of a crack in the concrete wall, and the sleek furry shape of the ratman filled the gap and dropped to the floor. While the werewolves were nightmarish, the ratman leaned toward repulsive. Thin and shaggy, he was covered with dark fur, except for the face, forearms, and wood-hard calves, where the exposed skin was light pink and looked soft, almost human. He had huge feet and hands, the size resulting from the long, large-knuckled digits tipped with sharp claws. The beginnings of a misshapen rodent muzzle guarded the mouth, filled with uneven yellowish teeth. Jerky, quick twitches troubled the ratman as he moved, and his human eyes darted to glare in random directions.
The ratman closed the distance to Curran in short rapid leaps, his paws raising small clouds of dust from the foyer floor.
"Dourrnstahrs," he said, his horrid jaws crippling the word. "Big roum."
He offered something white to Curran. The Beast Lord took the object into his massive hand, glanced at it, and tossed the thing to me. I caught it. A human femur. Someone with sharp teeth and a lot of persistence had stripped away the cartilage that once sheathed its ends, leaving narrow scratches on the shaft. I turned it, trying to make the most of the dim moonlight filtering through the fissures in the walls and the crooked arch of the entrance. Stripes of smoother, glossy connective tissue crossed the bone in two places—the mark of the Lyc-V knitting the shaft together after it had been broken. I held the femur of a shapechanger.
The ratman scuttled across the foyer to the gap in the floor, and we followed. The fissure ran some ten feet in length and about three feet wide at the widest place. I leaned over the edge and peered into it. There was a clear drop to the floor, sixteen feet below.
Behind me the Bear made a rumbling noise. Curran nodded and the enormous Kodiak turned away. He would never fit.
Kate Daniels Book 1 - Magic Bites Page 15