Magic Rises kd-6

by Ilona Andrews

  I checked my side. Doolittle was a miracle worker. The shallow gashes were already closing and stripes of paler skin crossed my tan. I picked up shampoo and worked it into foam in my hair. It smelled like jasmine. I took a washcloth and began scrubbing: neck, breasts, stomach, shoulders . . .

  Curran reached over my shoulder. I realized he was nude, standing in the shower with me.

  He took the washcloth from my fingers and scrubbed my back. The water splashed over us. He closed his arms around me and I felt his muscular body press and slide against my back. In the whole world, there was no better place than being wrapped in him.

  His arms were tense. The tightness vibrated in his muscles, like an electric current under his skin.

  I turned in his arms. He rested his forehead on mine. I closed my eyes. Being attacked by strange beasts I could handle. Being in the same room with Hugh . . .

  “One word,” he whispered, his voice taut with suppressed anger. “Say one word, and I’ll rip him apart. He won’t see the sunrise.”

  I looked into his eyes and realized he would. He would step out of the shower, shift his shape, and fight Hugh until one of them stopped breathing. If I stood next to him, he would fight Hugh so I would be free, and if I chose to run, he would fight him so I could get away. Nobody in my entire life had loved me this much.

  And because of me and Hugh, and because of Jarek, now Curran was trapped with me in this castle. Fury boiled inside me.

  “No,” I forced myself to say. “We still need the panacea.”

  Curran locked his teeth.

  I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to the Keep. I’d cut off my arm to teleport all of us back there and forget we ever came here. The frustration built inside me, fueled by fear and anger. There was absolutely nothing I could do about it now. Running in there and fighting Hugh, as great as it would feel, would condemn everyone who came with us and everyone who stayed back home.

  I put my head on his shoulder. My hands squeezed into fists on their own.

  He held me. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  We stood like that for a long time, water washing over us. Gradually, I became aware that my breasts were pressed against him, that he was hard, and that we were both nude.

  I leaned in and kissed Curran, licking him in the sensitive point under his jaw. My tongue tasted the raspy stubble. My body came to attention, suddenly aware and rejoicing in the fact that I was alive. I caressed his face, sliding myself against the slick, hard wall of his chest.

  A low male sound came from him, frustration and need rolled into one. “Does your side hurt?” he whispered.

  I wanted him so desperately. I needed to be in that place where only the two of us mattered and nothing except love existed. It felt like if I couldn’t have him, I would burst. I shook my head and kissed his mouth, with my eyes open, and saw the precise moment he let himself off the chain. His lips closed on mine. His tongue slid into my mouth. The taste of him, the smoky, male taste, was intoxicating. My body shot into overdrive. Every cell focused on him, screaming, More, more, more! I felt his hands caressing my back, I tasted his mouth, I sensed every hard inch of him pressed against me. I slipped my hand down and stroked the hot length of him.

  He made a rough noise, a growl born of pleasure.

  Dear God, I had to have him now or I would cry.

  “I want you so much,” he whispered.

  I opened my arms.

  Our fury, our worry, our frustration, and our need collided. He picked me up and hoisted me on his hips, his hands under my butt. I felt so alive. I locked my legs around him. The muscles of his shoulders bulged under my fingers, strong like steel cables. He was looking at me, his gray eyes luminescent with golden sparks and filled with such raw, honest need that I felt light-headed.

  He kissed my throat, stoking the fire inside me. I leaned back and let him kiss me more. He licked my breasts, sucking on my nipples. The jolt of desire pulsed through me, molten and electric, and when he thrust inside me, hot and hard, I no longer cared about anything but him. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to feel him touch me.

  My back pressed against the cool tile. He slid inside me again and again, pumping in a smooth rhythm into the liquid heat. A yearning need built inside me, each thrust sending a pulse of slick pleasure through me, propelling me higher and higher. My nipples were so tight, it hurt. My legs shook. My joints turned fluid. The anticipation swelled inside me, like a tidal wave threatening to crest. He thrust again. Bliss exploded inside me. The wave crested and drowned me in pleasure, each contraction of my orgasm an ecstasy in itself. I cried out. A moment later he grunted and emptied himself inside me.

  “You make me crazy,” he told me.

  “Look who’s talking.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later, rewashed and tired, we left the shower. Curran sprawled on the bed. I forced myself to dress—we could end up jumping out of bed straight into a fight—and collapsed next to him. Above us the absurd purple canopy shifted gently in the night breeze. The cool wind felt nice on my skin.

  He leaned over on his side, held me, and whispered in my ear, so quietly I thought I imagined it. “I meant it. One word and you’ll never see his face again. In the morning, this castle will be a bonfire and we’ll sail home.”

  I’d have to word this carefully. People were listening to us. I whispered back to him. “If we sail down the coast southwest, we’ll pass by the ruins of Troy. Do you remember the story of Paris and Helen?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Troy’s favorite son and badass archer, Paris, had sailed to Sparta. He came under a banner of truce. The Spartan king treated him as an honored guest, and then Paris stole the king’s wife, Helen, and emptied his treasury. Nobody really knew if he kidnapped Helen or if she went with him. Her husband could’ve loved her or beaten her every day. But the whole of Greece united against Paris. At the end, Troy was a smoking ruin.

  I kissed his jaw. “The bow and arrow was never your thing.”

  He locked his teeth, making his jaw muscles bulge.

  We promised to be impartial. We came in peace. If we broke that peace and started a bloodbath, we’d get a bloodbath in return. Nobody would see it as an act of a man trying to save the woman he loved from her father’s warlord. The European packs would spin it as an act of betrayal from a man who couldn’t handle being insulted.

  Attacking Hugh would be an act of war. Not to mention that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that even if both of us fought him, we’d survive that confrontation. Whatever the outcome, Roland would have an excuse to burn the Keep to the ground. He already viewed the Atlanta Pack as a threat, and this would be the tasty icing on his massacre cake. By the time we got home, people we knew and cared about would be dead.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “It’s because of me.” I was the reason we were all trapped here. I didn’t cause it, but I was the reason for it.

  He pulled me to him and squeezed me. “You’re worth the fight,” he said in my ear.

  He had no idea how much I loved him.

  “We all volunteered,” he whispered. “And without you, we wouldn’t have a shot at the panacea. We need it desperately.”

  We fell silent. For a long moment I simply enjoyed being next to him. If only this could last . . .

  “He hasn’t attacked me on sight,” I whispered. “That means he’ll want to talk to me.”

  “No,” Curran said. “Not alone.”

  “Sooner or later this conversation has to happen. If he planned on killing me, why go through all this trouble? He knew where I was. He could’ve just put a sniper on the roof across the street from Cutting Edge and put a bullet through my head as I unlocked the office.”

  Curran exhaled his frustration. “I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “And I’ll do the same for you.”

  We should
n’t have come here. I closed my eyes. I had to sleep. Tomorrow would be another day, another fight. Tomorrow Hugh would approach me and I had to be sharp. Once I figured out what his angle was, things would become a lot simpler.

  CHAPTER 9

  I opened my eyes. The magic was down and Curran was gone. The clock said ten past seven. Plenty of time to get dressed and make it to Doolittle’s quarters in time for the meeting.

  A plate waited for me on the table, covered with a piece of paper. The paper said in Curran’s rough scrawl, Went to talk to Mahon. Packs want to meet to “discuss issues.” Don’t forget to eat.

  Under the paper, the plate contained two eggs and a lion-sized piece of ham. I ate a third of it, brushed my teeth, put on my jeans, and strapped on my sword. New day, new battle.

  Our bags had been brought in from the ship. I dug through them and pulled out my beat-up copy of the Almanac of Mythological Creatures. I’d read it cover to cover so many times that I had memorized entire pages, but sometimes looking at it helped me connect the dots.

  I’ve never heard of shapeshifters turning into winged cats, but since Lyc-V was present in the blood, most likely the mechanism of the transformation was the same: the virus infected some creature and then infected a human. The first step was to figure out what the creature was.

  Winged cats weren’t the most common motif in mythology, but they did occur. Freja, a Norse goddess, had a chariot that was pulled across the sky by two giant cats, Brygun and Trejgun, who probably had wings. They were blue and not orange and didn’t change shape. The Sphinx was a feline with wings and a serpent’s tail, but also a female face. It had the power of speech, and again, no scales. Griffins had eagle heads, so I could rule them out. I’ve seen a manticore, and that was not one.

  I dug through the bags, looking for more books. The Heraldic Bestiary informed me that a winged lion was a symbol of Saint Mark and Venice. That didn’t exactly help, unless Lorelei was from Venice and had brought over a posse of winged predatory cats to kill all of us and kidnap Curran.

  Boy, she really managed to get under my skin.

  No, most likely Saint Mark’s lion was a reference to the four prophets from Ezekiel. Matthew was portrayed as a human, Mark as a lion, Luke as a bull, and John as an eagle. I could check Revelation; it was always good for all sorts of strange beasts . . .

  Something nagged at me. I concentrated on it. Revelation. To really understand Revelation, one had to read the book of Daniel. At some point I must’ve come across something in the book of Daniel that was relevant to this, because my brain was telling me to go and look at it.

  Let’s see: Qur’an, Mythology of Caucasus People . . . I had to have packed a Bible. I know I did.

  I flipped the bag upside down. Books scattered on the floor. A small green edition of the Bible flopped down. Got you.

  I sat down on the floor and flipped the pages. I was concentrating so hard that when I finally found it, I just stared at it for a few seconds to make sure it was really there. It was in chapter seven, where Daniel described seeing magic beasts in one of his prophetic dreams.

  The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  A shapeshifter. A feline shapeshifter with wings, who had the ability to transform into a man.

  I racked my brain, trying to recall what I knew about Daniel. He was a Jewish noble who, together with three others, had been taken to Babylon around 600 BC to serve as an advisor at the court of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, whose chief claim to historical fame was the construction of the Hanging Gardens for his main squeeze. Daniel had many prophetic and apocalyptic dreams and by all accounts lived to a ripe old age, managing to survive the toxic Babylonian politics.

  What could Daniel have possibly encountered in Babylon to have this vision? The only remotely similar creatures were the Assyrian lamassu, but there were no records of them being shapeshifters. The Assyrian Empire lay in a region I knew well. The ancient Assyria, Babylon, and Nineveh all were around long before recorded history. They were the cemetery flowers that grew from the dead body of my father’s once-mighty empire.

  The clock said it was almost time for the meeting. I’d have to come back to it later. I stacked my books in the corner of the room, grabbed the Bible and the Almanac, made a beeline for Doolittle’s room, and rapped my knuckles on his door.

  “Come in!” Eduardo called.

  I opened the door. A large room stretched before me, easily as big as Desandra’s suite. Two doors stood open, one on the left leading to a bedroom, the other on the right opening into a bathroom. To the left two tables had been set in the shape of an L. Glass vials and beakers lined the surface. Doolittle sat in the corner of the L looking through a microscope. To the right, two oversized plush couches flanked a coffee table. Derek sat on the closest one, holding cards in his hand. He’d pushed them together into a single stack. Across from him Eduardo lounged, taking an entire couch by himself. He held his cards in a wide fan.

  “What do you mean, come in? You don’t even know who I am.”

  “Of course we know who you are,” Derek said.

  “He smelled you coming,” Eduardo said.

  Life with werewolves. Why me?

  I dropped into a chair by Doolittle’s table.

  He looked at me. A pair of glasses perched on his nose.

  “Why do you wear glasses? Doesn’t Lyc-V give you twenty-ten vision?” I asked.

  Doolittle tapped his glasses. “Yes, but these give me twenty-two.”

  His voice with its coastal Georgia overtones made me so homesick, I almost hugged him.

  “How’s the head?”

  “Fragrant.” Doolittle opened a cooler that sat next to him. Inside the severed head rested, wrapped in plastic and half submerged in ice.

  “Anything?”

  Doolittle leaned back. “It’s a shapeshifter. The blood reacts to silver and shows the presence of Lyc-V.”

  “Aha! So I’m not crazy.”

  “You are most definitely crazy,” Derek said. “But in a deranged, endearing way.”

  Eduardo snorted.

  “Don’t make me come over there.” I looked at Doolittle.

  “They are rambunctious this morning,” he told me. “Unfortunately my resources here are limited. I don’t have access to any of the genetic sequencing methods I have at home.”

  There was more to it, I could sense it. “But?”

  “But there is the Bravinski-Dhoni test.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  Doolittle nodded with a small smile. “That’s because it’s not very useful under ordinary circumstances. It’s not precise. It is, however, very reliable.”

  He pushed a wooden rack of test tubes toward me. Each was half filled with blood. A small label identified each test tube: Bear, Wolf, Bison, Hyena, Mongoose, Jackal, Lynx, Badger, Lion, and Rat.

  Most of these probably came from our team. “Where did you get the jackal, lynx, and rat?”

  “The locals,” Eduardo said.

  “Hibla got upset,” Derek elaborated. “When you fought, someone deployed a gate that sealed the hallway. The gate mechanism was guarded.”

  “Let me guess, the local guard was murdered in a horrible way.”

  “Probably,” Derek said. “The body is missing but there was a lot of blood. Hibla wants to know what’s going on.”

  Doolittle picked a pipette and dipped it into the Wolf test tube. “The essence of the test is based on the assimilation properties of Lyc-V. When faced with new DNA, it seeks to incorporate it.”

  He uncorked the Bear test tube and let two drops from the pipette fall inside. The blood turned black, swirled, and dissolved.

  “Assimilated,” I guessed. The Lyc-V had chomped on the foreign DNA.

  “Precisely.” Doo
little picked up a test tube marked Bear II. “The blood in this test tube is from Georgetta, but the blood in front of you is from her father.”

  He sucked a couple of drops from George’s test tube and let them fall into Mahon’s blood. Nothing happened.

  “Same species.”

  “But wouldn’t the difference in human DNA affect it?”

  “It does, but you won’t see a dramatic reaction.” Doolittle leaned forward. “We’ve tested the blood from the man you killed against all of these. Every single one gave a reaction.”

  “Even the lynx and lion?”

  Doolittle nodded. “Whatever it is, it may look feline, but it’s not. If it is, its DNA is significantly different from that of a lynx or a lion.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “We try to get more samples,” Doolittle said.

  That would be problematic, to say the least. I tried imagining walking over to the Volkodavi or Belve Ravennati and telling them, “Hi, we suspect that one of your people might be a terrible monster; can we have your blood?”

  Yeah. They would just fall over themselves to donate a sample.

  “I could pick a fight,” Derek said. “Get some blood that way.”

  “No fights. We start nothing. We only react.”

  “That’s exactly what I said.” Doolittle fixed Derek with his stare. “Also, Kate, if you do run across another specimen, do try to keep him or her alive until I get there.”

  Ha-ha. “Will do, Doc. My turn.” I opened the Bible and showed him the verse from Daniel.

  Doolittle read it, raised his glasses onto his forehead, and read it again. “I’ve read the Bible hundreds of times. I don’t remember reading this.”

  “You weren’t looking for it.”

  Derek came over and read the verse.

  I brought them up on Daniel’s brief history. “The beasts in Daniel’s dream are usually interpreted to mean kingdoms, in this case Babylon, that will eventually fall from glory. But if taken literally, it could mean a shapeshifter.”