Magic Triumphs

by Ilona Andrews

  “Yes,” Ghastek and Rowena answered at the same time.

  Wasn’t that interesting. “The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is, what was in the briefcase?”

  “We don’t know,” Rowena said.

  The vamp at Ghastek’s desk rose, grasped a cord suspended from a roll of fabric above the window, and pulled it down, unrolling a large screen. On it, in painstaking detail, spread a map of Atlanta. In the center of the map sat a small red dot. A ragged ring of city blocks outlined in blue enclosed the dot, followed by another ring in green. Choppy lines crossed the whole thing, looking like some sort of Gordian knot. Colored dots marked other points of interest: the Casino, the Guild, and so on. The whole thing looked disturbingly like some distorted bull’s-eye centered on . . .

  “Why is there a red dot over my house?”

  “I’ve had two years to prepare,” Ghastek said. “The blue is the kill zone, the green is the outer perimeter. About”—he checked the clock on the wall—“twenty-two minutes ago, I doubled our patrols and deployed six strike groups, each member of which has memorized the dossier of the twenty-one sahanu in our database. They know their magic signatures, their movement patterns, and they will recognize them by sight. They will work in shifts around the clock and can be activated at a moment’s notice, because they will sleep here in the Casino, next to the OPS room. I know we got off to a less-than-ideal start, but I personally guarantee to you that no sahanu will penetrate our defenses and get through to you.”

  And if he switched sides, the entirety of the Casino vampire stables could converge on my house and kill my child while I was out, thinking Conlan was safe and protected. He was unlikely to change sides, but then the Pack was equally unlikely to betray us.

  Ghastek and Rowena were both looking at me.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll do it your way.”

  “I won’t fail you,” Ghastek said. It sounded like a vow and I didn’t like it.

  “Do you still have the body of the creature I sent you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Ghastek said.

  “The creatures pose an imminent threat. If you encounter them, I want them followed, and if you can’t follow them, I want them destroyed. My aunt recognized them and called them yeddimur.”

  “Understood,” Ghastek said.

  “It would mean a lot if you could analyze the body. Luther believes these creatures started out as human, and they may be contagious when alive. It would also be a great help if you could study the body or perhaps just display it somewhere where it may be observed by journeymen.”

  “And possibly apprentices?” Rowena asked.

  “Yes. Perhaps someone could be overheard using the word ‘yeddimur’ when referring to the creature.”

  Ghastek frowned. “Why?”

  “Because I want my father to know about it.”

  Ghastek thought about it. I could practically see the wheels in his head turning, but he didn’t ask. He preferred to discover things on his own, and I gave him just enough to motivate him to continue digging. My hairy abomination would get top billing now at the People’s dissection party.

  I got up. “Do you have a copy of this photo?”

  “We have others,” Rowena said.

  “Can I take this one?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  I pocketed the photograph of Avag and took my son from her. Conlan yawned and flopped on my shoulder like a rag doll.

  “I need an escort to my house.”

  “It would be our pleasure,” Ghastek said.

  The phone rang. Ghastek picked it up, listened, and turned to me. “Your husband is on his way to the Casino. He seems to be upset.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s running. There are two Guild vehicles following him, and they’re having difficulty keeping up.”

  Curran didn’t want to wait for the mercs. He ran much faster than an average human, but he was a lion, not a wolf. Long-distance running was never his thing. Either something bad had happened, or he’d found out about the fight at Biohazard and somehow tracked me down. The People worked for me now, but we’d been on opposite sides for so long that even though I’d spent a lot of time with them over the past months, every time I walked into the Casino, I snapped into alert mode. I didn’t expect to be attacked, but I wasn’t at ease either. Curran had never warmed up to the People. If he’d found out about what had happened at Biohazard and thought that Conlan and I were injured, he wouldn’t just arrive at the Casino. He would land like a bomb.

  I turned to the door, patting Conlan’s back. “Let’s go meet your dad outside before he causes an incident.”

  “I’ll never understand what you see in that man,” Ghastek said.

  “He loves me,” I told him, and escaped.

  CHAPTER

  10

  I PARKED MYSELF in front of the Shiva fountain. When Curran ran, he took on an odd shape, neither a lion nor a human but a strange beast: compact, powerful, built for speed. Most shapeshifters had two shapes, animal and human. Those with talent could hold a warrior form. I had never met anyone who could turn part of his body into one shape while keeping the rest in another. Except for Curran. He restructured his body for whatever purpose he saw fit.

  A sticky warm puddle formed on my shoulder. Conlan drooled in his sleep.

  Car horns blared. A man leaped over the vehicles that were stopped at a traffic light. He sailed over them like they were nothing, landed, and kept running, long legs pumping. That couldn’t be . . . Yep, my honey-bunny running in human form.

  I waited. He saw me. He didn’t slow down; he just adjusted course.

  A hundred yards. Seventy-five. Fifty. Damn, he was fast. He shouldn’t be that fast, not after running for several miles.

  Sweat slicked his hairline, darkening his blond hair. His longer blond hair. His hair was at least two inches longer than it had been this morning. Maybe more.

  What the hell? The only time his hair grew into a mane was during a flare. We weren’t due for one for another two years.

  Twenty-five yards.

  It’s hard to look sexy with a drooling child on your shoulder, but I did my best. “Come here often?”

  He slowed. For a moment I thought he’d stop, but he moved forward in a slow, sure way, not walking, but stalking, foot over foot. His hair was definitely longer. It framed his hard, handsome face. Gray eyes looked me over, checking for wounds. Our stares connected. A lion looked back at me and my heart sped up. Suddenly I was aware of every inch of distance between us.

  He closed that distance, moving with a dangerous, borderline-feral edge. He looked like my husband, was my husband, but there was something alarming in the way he held himself. I turned to keep him in view.

  He pounced. It was lightning quick, and if I’d wanted to get away, I wasn’t sure I could’ve matched his speed. I didn’t want to get away. His arms closed around me and he kissed me. The kiss scorched me, so intense it was almost a bite. I gasped into his mouth.

  “Okay?” he asked me.

  I had been until he kissed me. “Yes.”

  “Conlan?”

  “Fine. Just tired.”

  He squeezed me to him. “What happened?”

  “Had a run-in with a sahanu at Biohazard. You’re crushing me.”

  He let me go.

  “That’s twice in two days. We have to stop meeting like this,” I told him.

  “Are you planning on continuing to run into fights?”

  “I didn’t run into her. She hunted me down.”

  Two Toyota Land Cruisers emerged from traffic and roared their way to the parking lot. Each of those carried eight people. Great. First, he dramatically ran over, then he kissed me like the world was ending in public, and now he’d brought a crew of mercs with him, enough for a small siege. All the navigators
piloting vampires on the walls of the Casino had to be loving the show.

  “You brought two meat wagons with you? Did you expect to fight an army?”

  “They followed me.” He grinned at me, baring his teeth. “What happened to the sahanu?”

  “She’s dead. I’m not. The People patched me up. I need to talk to you. And Barabas.”

  “Good, because I’m not letting you go anywhere without me.” Gently, he took Conlan off my shoulder.

  “Letting?”

  “You heard me.”

  The doors of the nearest meat wagon opened, and people waved at us.

  “Where did you park?” he asked me.

  I pointed at our Jeep on the left.

  “I’ll get the car,” he said, and took off with Conlan.

  Okay.

  I trotted to the closest meat wagon. Faces looked at me, some dirty, some blood-spattered. Douglas, Ella, Rodrigo . . . Curran’s elite team. The roar of the enchanted water engine was deafening, so I had to scream.

  “What the hell are you all doing here?!”

  “We followed him!” Ella yelled.

  “So, what, you just pile into cars whenever he gets a thorn up his ass and chase him around the city?”

  “We were on the job,” Ramirez told me in his bass voice. “We were finishing up the gig when he said his wife was in trouble and took off.”

  “We chased him all the way from Panthersville,” Ella added.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  “Thanks for coming!” I told them.

  “Where is the fight?” Douglas demanded.

  “I already killed everybody,” I said. “You gotta be faster next time.”

  They jeered at me, and I jogged to the Jeep. Five minutes later we rolled out of the parking lot.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Just had a feeling,” he said.

  “That’s it? A feeling?”

  He nodded.

  Odd.

  Maybe it was me. Maybe I’d subconsciously called him while fighting. I’d have to ask Erra if that was possible.

  “What’s happening with your hair?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. It keeps growing.”

  “Are we about to have another flare?”

  “I don’t know. How bad was the fight?”

  “It wasn’t bad.”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” he said quietly. “You went to the Casino.”

  “I got scared. She said she would kill our son and eat him. I bashed her face in. It was overkill.”

  He reached over and squeezed my hand.

  “Curran, he can’t cloak. Ever since he turned, he’s been shining like a star. And I was so used to having him with me, it didn’t even occur to me that he can be tracked. That’s how she found us. I put our kid in danger.”

  “It’s okay.” He squeezed my hand again. “You protected him. You will always protect him. You’re his mother. They would have to kill both of us to get to him. Think about it.”

  They would have to go through the two of us. Many had tried before, and all of them had failed. Even my father.

  “We’ve got this,” he said. “We’ll kill them all.”

  Our son snored in his car seat without a care in the world. As he should.

  Curran was right. We would kill them all.

  * * *

  • • •

  ONCE UPON A time the Guild was housed in an upscale hotel on the edge of Buckhead. Tall buildings didn’t weather magic well, and the hotel proved no exception. Its shiny tower had broken off and toppled, leaving a five-story stub. The Guild put a makeshift roof on it, cleaned it up a bit, and called it a day.

  A couple of years ago, as the Guild teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, a giant had made some exciting modifications to the roof with his fists, which forced a remodel. About that time Curran and Barabas joined the Guild and eventually took it over. Barabas ran the admin side, Curran served as the Guild Master, and a year and a half ago, the mercs unanimously voted me in as a Steward, which meant whenever the mercs had problems or grievances with either of them, they ran to me and I fixed it. I’d needed the added responsibility like I needed a hole in the head. In fact, I wasn’t even at the meeting, because I’d gotten held up getting a boggart out of a local middle school. The mercs conveniently voted in my absence and then presented me with the Steward’s scroll when I showed up, dripping slime and picking trash out of my hair.

  Bob, of the Four Horsemen, had held the unofficial position of Steward before me and apparently put himself in the running, but after he tried to raid the pension fund, his street cred took a beating. He never did warm up to either my or Curran’s presence. His Furriness, never one to waste resources, sent him down to Jacksonville to run the brand-new satellite Guild. Within three months Bob tried to stage a coup and declare independence, and the Jacksonville Guild expelled him. We had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

  One of the first things the three of us did was to fix the Guild itself. Curran fortified every place he frequently occupied. I had to talk him out of walling in our subdivision. But with the Guild, Barabas and I gave him free rein. Some battles weren’t worth fighting.

  The walls had been reinforced, the new masonry seamlessly blending in with the skeletal remains of the hotel. The upper floor sported arrow slits. A brand-new roof, equipped with four howitzers and four sorcerous ballistae, crowned the building. A massive metal door blocked the entrance, and behind it was a second door just in case someone breached the front. It was a wonder he didn’t dig a moat around the place.

  We parked and went inside. Conlan was still out, so Curran carried him in the car seat. The inside of the Guild matched the outside: clean, functional, professional. I nodded to the Clerk at his counter, and we made a left to the glass walls of Barabas’s office.

  The former Pack lawyer and current Guild admin sat behind his desk. Lean, wiry, pale, Barabas brought a single word to mind: sharp. Sharp eyes, sharp teeth, sharp mind. Even his bright red hair, which stood straight up on his head, looking like a forest of needles, gave the impression of sharpness.

  Christopher sat in a chair, reading a book. The first time I’d seen him, he’d been locked in a cage. He’d looked fragile and brittle, a ghost of a man, with hair so pale, it seemed colorless. Despite both Barabas and me trying to keep him eating, he had looked like that until about two years ago, when he finally remembered his powers. Christopher was a theophage. My father tried to merge him with Deimos, Greek god of terror. Christopher had resisted, and in a last desperate act of defiance, Christopher had shattered his own mind. As punishment, Roland had delivered what was left of Christopher into the tender care of his warlord, Hugh d’Ambray.

  Now he was broad-shouldered and muscular, with a powerful athletic build. Where Barabas was all sharp lines and quick, precise movements, Christopher possessed a kind of quiet calm. Sitting in a chair now with a book, he seemed almost unmovable. Of course, the calm lasted only until Barabas or one of us was threatened, and then Christopher sprouted wings and fangs and went berserk. The human and divine had merged inside Christopher, with the man having the upper hand over the deity. Barabas was forever paranoid that people would start worshipping Christopher and that balance would tip the other way, but so far it hadn’t happened.

  They were so different. Christopher was in love with Barabas. Barabas loved him back, but since he’d taken care of Christopher while the other man’s mind had been fractured, he faced an ethical dilemma. The last time we’d spoken about it, he’d been worried that Christopher’s feelings weren’t love but misplaced affection for a caretaker. Barabas didn’t want to take advantage. They continued to live in the same house. They looked like a couple. They acted like a couple. Neither of them volunteered any information about their relationship. We respected their privacy, and nobo
dy asked.

  Both men looked up at us.

  “Bad news?” Barabas asked.

  “Yes.” I shut the door behind us. Curran gently put Conlan on a big pillow on the floor. Shapeshifters had an unholy love of floor pillows, and even though Barabas spent most of his day in his chair, he refused to give his up.

  I sat in the other chair.

  Barabas sniffed in Conlan’s direction. “What’s different? Something’s different.”

  “He shifted,” Curran said quietly.

  Barabas sat up straighter. Christopher’s pale eyebrows crept up.

  “Is he unusual like you?” Barabas asked Curran.

  “He’s worse,” I said.

  “Worse how?” Christopher asked.

  “He can hold a warrior form,” Curran said.

  Barabas choked on empty air. “What do you mean, he can hold a warrior form? For how long?”

  “For as long as he wants to,” Curran said.

  “Also, he’s unable to cloak,” I said. “So, anyone familiar with my or Roland’s specific magic signature can track him down. We were attacked by a sahanu this morning. I killed her, but according to Robert, Razer is in the city. My father must’ve given a general order to kill my son. So there will be more.”

  Christopher leaned forward and rested his hand on mine. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m fine,” I told him.

  Christopher got up, poured a cup of hot tea from the kettle, and brought it to me.

  “Thank you.” I took the tea and drank.

  “The Pack says Roland is mobilizing,” Curran said. “What are the scouts saying?”

  Scouts? “You have people watching Roland?”

  “We,” Curran told me. “We have people watching Roland.”

  “He’s doing the same thing he did a year ago,” Barabas said. “Pulling personnel in from neighboring states. Last time nothing came of it. This time, it’s too early to tell.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “He has to move a large number of troops to Atlanta from the Midwest. Last time he sent people to evaluate the ley line route,” Curran said.