“The pervert’s right,” Curran said. “You’re contagious.”
“Mm-hm.” The symbol definitely looked like something now. I stared at the wavy pattern. Where had I seen it before . . . ?
Curran rested his hand on my shoulder. I touched his hand.
“What’s the plan for today?” he asked me.
“I’m going to the office and chaining myself to the phone. I’ve called everyone and their mom about Serenbe, so I’m going to touch base and see if anyone found any similar occurrences. Then I’m going to call about yeddimur and see if anyone got any insights from our creatures. Then I might drop by the PAD and see if they recognize our blond dude.”
“Take the Jeep. I’ll ride with Derek and buy us a second car this afternoon.”
“Thanks.” Score, I got the Jeep. “Adora should be coming back from a gig this morning.”
I’d called the Guild last night, and the Clerk told me Adora was on a harpy stakeout and due to return to the Guild this morning.
“I’ll tell her to come here to watch Yu Fong. George and Martha will be out today,” Curran said. “I can take the boy with me to the Guild.”
“Don’t you have the budget meeting?”
“I don’t mind.”
The Guild budget meetings were like intrigues from the Spanish Court: complex, rife with tension, and frequently dramatic. The last thing we needed was Conlan reacting to all that. My imagination painted my son in half-form dashing about as a bunch of mercs chased him with nets.
“I can take him with me to Cutting Edge, and then I’ll meet up with you at the Guild. It will buy you some time for the meeting.”
“As you wish,” Curran said.
* * *
• • •
WHEN I GOT to Cutting Edge, the light on my answering machine was blinking. When I pushed play, it hissed with static and told me in Luther’s voice, “Come see me. I’ve got something for you.” Experience told me that calling Luther would be pointless. Since nobody else left me any enlightening messages, I packed Conlan back into his car seat and we set off for Luther’s lair.
Biohazard, or the Center for Magical Containment and Disease Prevention, as it was officially known, occupied a large building constructed of local gray granite. A tall stone wall, topped with razor wire and studded with silver spikes, stretched from the sides to enclose a large area in the back of the center. Several howitzers and sorcerous ballistae topped the roof. The place looked like a fortress. Biohazard took the containment part of their job seriously.
I grabbed Conlan out of his car seat and walked through the big doors into the cavernous lobby. Conlan stuck his hand into his mouth and looked around at the high granite walls, big eyes opened wide. The guard on duty at the desk waved me on without a second glance. I was a frequent visitor.
I carried Conlan up the stone stairs, past people hurrying back and forth, and turned right into a long hallway. Luther’s lab lay through the second doorway on the right. Its tall heavy door stood wide open. Music drifted on the breeze, David Bowie singing about putting out fire with gasoline. Conlan squirmed in my hands.
The magic washed over us. The music died, cut off midnote. The black specks of tourmaline embedded in the granite buzzed with energy and glowed as the magic coursed through them. Conlan swiveled his head like a surprised kitten.
“Baddadada . . .”
“Shiny.”
“Shaaai.”
“That’s right. Shiny.”
I walked to the wall and let him touch it. He tried to scratch the dark shiny specks out of it, then leaned forward to the wall and licked it.
A woman wearing scrubs passed by us and gave me a weird look.
“That’s one good thing,” I murmured to Conlan. “We don’t need to worry about germs anymore.”
Luther packed a lot of magic power, thought for himself, and wasn’t afraid to take risks. His work space reflected that. Several fire-retardant lab tables bordered the walls, filled with microscopes, centrifuges, and other bizarre equipment, spawned by the need to perform research through the constant seesaw of magic and tech. A decontamination shower occupied the far corner. The wall on the left supported a shotgun, a fire extinguisher, a flamethrower, and a Viking-style axe. The sign above the odd collection said, PLAN B.
Usually a metal examination table occupied the center of the room. Today it was pushed to the side. A large chalk-and-salt circle marked the sealed concrete floor. Luther stood in the circle, eyes closed, hands raised in front of him. He wore scrubs that had been washed and bleached so many times, nobody could determine their original color without some serious divination.
“This is Luther,” I told Conlan. “He’s an important wizard. He’s also weird. Really weird.”
“I can hear you, infidel,” Luther said. “It puts its sword into the box or it doesn’t enter.”
I sighed, pulled Sarrat out of the sheath on my back, and placed it in the wooden box on the metal table by the entrance. This had been a constant ritual ever since I was pregnant. Luther claimed that Sarrat’s emissions interfered with his diagnostic equipment.
“And the knife.”
“Why the knife? It’s not magic.”
“You think it’s not magic. Everything you handle on a daily basis is stained with your magic. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
I arched my eyebrow at him.
“Box,” Luther intoned, as if it were a Buddhist prayer.
I pulled my knife out and dropped it in the box. My shark-teeth throwing blades followed, together with my belt.
“Satisfied?”
“Yes.”
“Should I put the baby in the box, too?”
“He wouldn’t fit.”
I sighed.
“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning my work space. I wish people would stop taking weird crap out of Unicorn Lane and then calling us panicking when it tries to eat the children.”
“You’re right, they should just let it devour their young.”
“Har-har. So funny. As it happens, I had to drop everything and do an emergency analysis of a child-threatening item yesterday, and the tech interrupted me, so I had all sorts of residual mess in this containment field.”
He clenched his hands into fists. A pulse of magic burst from him, drenching the circle. “There. Good to go.”
He stepped over the magic boundary and froze, his gaze fixed on Conlan. A moment passed. Luther sputtered and pointed.
“Yes, it’s a human infant,” I told him.
“Give!”
“I’ll let you hold him if you swear by Merlin’s beard.” Because it would be funny.
“By Merlin’s beard, whatever, give.”
I handed Conlan to him. Luther took him, carefully, as if my son were made of glass. Conlan stared at him with his big gray eyes.
“Hello there,” Luther said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Aren’t you a wonder?”
The wonder farted.
I laughed.
“When did he awake?” Luther asked.
“Around six this morning.”
“That’s not what I am asking! When did his magic manifest?”
“A couple of days ago. Something scared him, and he reacted.”
Luther gazed at my child in awe. They looked kind of adorable, my baby with his kitten eyes and head of soft dark hair and Luther, a slightly unkempt, eccentric wizard.
“It’s like holding a nuclear bomb,” Luther said.
“You ruined it.”
“He’s bursting with magic. Glowing with it. I had no idea this was inside him.”
“He doesn’t know how to cloak yet.”
Luther squinted at me. “Is that what you look like? Show me.”
Yes, and for my next trick
I’ll dance and sing a song. “No.”
“I’ve analyzed your dead varmint for you. Free of charge.”
“It was your duty as a public servant. You would’ve done it anyway.”
“Kate! Don’t be difficult.”
“Fine.”
I dropped my magic cloak. Luther blinked. He stepped forward very carefully, deposited Conlan into my hands, and stepped back.
A blond woman wearing scrubs appeared in the doorway. “What is it with all the magic splashing? Damn it, Luther, can’t you control your . . .” She saw us and stopped. Her eyes widened.
“Wow,” she said softly.
“I know, right?” Luther said quietly.
For a while they just looked at us. Conlan squirmed in my arms.
“Is this what we will be one day?” the woman murmured. “Future us?”
“This is what the past us were.” Luther sighed. “Better put it away before Allen runs over here. We’ll spend the whole day trying to get him to leave.”
I hid my magic.
The woman lingered for a few moments, shook her head, and left. I sat Conlan down on the floor. He ran to the chalk circle, puzzled over the line, and reached out, waving his hand in front of his face.
“He feels the boundary,” I told Luther.
“That’s sickeningly cute.” Luther grabbed a handle on one of the square metal doors on the wall and pulled a body shelf out. On it lay the remnants of my monster.
Conlan hopped in place by the chalk line, achieving about an inch of lift.
“Do you want to jump?” Luther said.
“Don’t encourage him.”
“It’s good for him to try. It’s a major developmental milestone. Toddlers learn to take tiny jumps around two years old. It’s very exciting for them.”
“How do you even know this?”
Luther spared me a look. “I have nieces. There is no harm. All he can do is a hop.” He waved to Conlan. “Don’t listen to your mom. You can do it. Jump!”
Conlan gathered himself into a tight ball. I’d seen Curran do this a hundred times.
“You can do it!” Luther prompted.
Conlan leaped three feet into the air, cleared a full twelve feet, and landed in the circle. Luther’s jaw hung open.
Conlan giggled and jumped out of the circle. Then back in. Then out.
“So,” Luther said. “He is a shapeshifter.”
“Oh yes. You’re slipping, Luther.”
“I’m not slipping. He is emitting all sorts of magic, and I don’t sniff or lick other people’s children, even to diagnose their magic. That would be creepy.”
In and out. In and out. When we got home, I would draw a circle for Conlan. It would keep him busy for a couple of minutes.
“He is a shapeshifter,” Luther said again.
“We’ve established this fact.”
He faced me. “Kate. He is a shapeshifter with magic.”
“Dali is also a shapeshifter with magic.”
“Dali is a sacred animal. Completely different. All her magic is divine-based. She curses and purifies. He is a shapeshifter and he has magic. Mountains of magic. Oceans of magic. There has never been anything like it.”
Tell me about it. “Any progress with Serenbe?”
“So you’re just going to blatantly change the subject.”
“Yep. Any progress?”
Luther shook his head. “No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing beyond what I sent you. The GBI is interviewing the surviving relatives. Nobody was courting the dark gods. Nobody was summoning anything. Most of them had little magic. There were a few plant mages and firebugs. The usual. One of them was an ex-merc. You might have known him. He went by Shock.”
“Shock Collins?”
“Yes.”
“He left the Guild when it almost went bankrupt. I had no idea he moved out there. You know for sure he disappeared?”
“Yes. We found his wallet in his house, with driver’s license and Guild ID in it.”
This was bad news. Shock Collins had been a careful, skilled merc, who turned nasty when cornered. He’d survived several bad gigs that should’ve killed him, and he could electrocute an attacker in a pinch. He wouldn’t let himself be jumped.
“Signs of struggle in the house?”
“No.”
“What the he . . . heck?”
Luther lowered his glasses and looked at me. I pointed to Conlan over my shoulder. Motherhood made you watch your mouth.
“I do have something on your furry monster friend,” Luther said. “At first glance, it appeared to be a new species of post-Shift ugly, until we cut this hideous specimen open and played with his innards a little bit.”
He pushed a metal table over to the body shelf and flipped the metal door up, revealing a handle. He grabbed the handle, pulled it, and the body neatly slid onto the examination table. Luther rolled the table forward, to a stand with a fey lantern. I followed.
He pulled back the sheet, revealing the neat autopsy scars. With it dead, the impact wasn’t quite as strong, but the revulsion squirmed through me all the same.
“What do you feel when you look at it?”
“Hungry,” Luther said.
“You need help,” I told him.
“I haven’t eaten breakfast today, or lunch.”
“Seriously, Luther, do you get a sense of wrongness?”
“No.”
I sighed.
“Unless you’re referring to the corruption miasma so thick you can cut it with a knife and serve it with ketchup. Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course I feel the miasma. You would have to be blind, deaf, and anosmic to not react to it, and even then, you would still feel it.”
“Why does it do this?”
“Because she might have started as human.”
“I figured as much. Julie said they were blue, so they likely had a human ancestor.”
“No, not ancestor.” Luther grimaced. “She was born human.”
I pointed to the furry twisted creature. “That was born human?”
Luther coughed. “Yes. Probably.”
“So, what is it, some strange form of loupism?”
“That was the working theory for a bit, but we found no Lyc-V in her system.”
“Are you sure? Because they were really hard to kill.”
“I’m sure. The body did undergo profound changes. All of the human organs are still there, but everything has been altered. The fascia, which is . . .” Luther coughed again. He sounded choked. “. . . fibrous connective tissue enclosing organs and musculature, has been . . . reinforced . . .” He doubled over, coughing.
Behind him, a cloud of emerald-green dust poured into the room through the doorway. The powder licked the boundary of the circle and recoiled.
Luther straightened. A puff of green powder escaped his mouth. His eyes stared at me, glassy and cold.
There were four feet between me and the circle. I cleared them in a single jump, caught Conlan in midleap, and backed away toward the center of the ward.
The dust filled the room now, shifting like diaphanous emerald veils all around us. Only the surface of the circle remained clear. And Sarrat and all my weapons were conveniently stowed in Luther’s stupid box, deep in green dust. Great.
Luther stepped to the circle, rigid, like a marionette pulled by its strings. “Traitor,” he hissed in a sibilant voice.
Conlan growled in my arms.
Oh good, it wanted to talk. “Who did I betray?”
“Stupid traitorous bitch. Unworthy.”
Was this a box thing? “Of all the insults out there, this is what you come up with? Pathetic.”
“He’s done everything for you. You’re not fit to lick shit off the so
les of his boots.”
“Shit eating is your job.” The more I pissed it off, the more it would talk and the faster I would figure out what the hell was going on. “Try harder.”
Luther moved in short jerks. He was fighting whatever it was. He was also a distraction. If you wanted to launch a surprise attack, it helped if your target focused her attention on someone else. Luther was meant to keep me preoccupied. When the attack came, it would be at my back. I was still holding Conlan. I would have to drop him to defend us and trust that he’d stay in the circle. He was only a year old. He had no sense. He licked walls and ate soap, for crying out loud.
“He gave you life.”
Not a box thing. A Roland thing.
“He is God. He is life. He is holy. You’re an abomination.”
Only one group of people thought Roland was holy and their path to heaven. The dust belonged to a sahanu.
I rifled through my mental roster of sahanu Adora had told me about. This didn’t match anyone in particular, but she’d said that sahanu kept their powers hidden.
“My father is a liar.” The spot between my shoulder blades itched. The sahanu had to be right behind me.
“Blasphemy!”
Religious fanatics. Reasonable and understanding people, easily persuaded by facts and logical arguments.
“There is no heaven waiting for you. He fed you lies and you gobbled it up. My father is too smart to ever become a god. When you accept godhood, your thoughts and your actions are no longer your own. You would know this if you weren’t blind and deaf. Thinking for yourself, try it. It will help.”
Using power words against my father’s assassins was risky. Some of them had the benefit of my father’s blood, which made a blowback likely. A lot of them used power words themselves. With Luther infected, there was a good chance that any power word I used would hit him as well.
Luther leaned forward, baring his teeth. “I’ll kill you. I’ll eat your flesh and then I’ll eat your baby. I’ll swallow his soft flesh and then I too will be a god.”
Cold rage burst through me. The world turned crystal clear. “And what will my father do when he finds out you tried to devour his grandson?”
“He will praise me. He ordered your death. He wants your son brought to him, but I’ll eat him instead.”
Magic Triumphs Page 13