No blood. I felt the pressure of the blade but it didn’t penetrate. I bent my fingers, trying to make a fist. I made it about two-thirds of the way. About a year ago my aunt Erra had come to Atlanta intending to wreck it. I killed her. It was the hardest thing I’d done in my life. She was wearing blood armor when she died. It fit her like spandex. She had run and twisted in it, and she had no problem swinging an axe fast enough to counter me. I tried the gauntlet again. The blood refused to bend. I was clearly doing something wrong. This wouldn’t work. If I couldn’t hold a sword, I might as well sign my own death warrant.
I concentrated on thinning the blood, turning it into segments that sat on top of each other like the plates of armadillo armor. “So what’s up?”
“Two things. First, Christopher wants to talk to you.”
Speaking with Christopher was like playing Russian roulette: sometimes you got brilliance so bright it hurt and sometimes you got complete nonsense. We had rescued him from Hugh d’Ambray. He must’ve been exceptionally smart at some point and he definitely had knowledge of advanced magic, but either Hugh or my father had broken his mind. Christopher’s hold on reality frequently slipped, and once in a while we had to drop everything and run out on the parapets to convince him that no, he could not fly. I could usually talk him down, but if he was really far gone it took Barabas to make him stop.
“He’s been agitated for the last two days,” Barabas said. “I have no idea if he’s even coherent.”
“Where is he now?”
“Hiding in the library.”
Not a good sign. The library was Christopher’s refuge. Books were precious to him. He treated them like treasure and hid among them when the world became too much for him. Something must’ve really gotten under his skin.
“Did he say what it was about?”
“Just that it was important. You don’t have to talk to him,” Barabas said.
“That’s okay. I’ll speak to him after the Conclave.” I tested the gauntlet. Like having a can wrapped around my fingers. Ugh. What was I doing wrong? What? “What was the second thing?”
“Jim has assembled the Praetorian Guard and is waiting for your inspection.”
Oh joy. Jim must’ve pulled together a cutthroat crew of shapeshifters ready to protect me at the Conclave. “As I recall, the Praetorian Guard killed the Roman emperors as often as it protected them. Should I be worried?”
“Are you planning on setting the Keep on fire while playing thrilling melodies on a fiddle?”
“No.”
Barabas flashed me a quick smile, showing sharp teeth. “Then probably not.”
“Anything else?”
Barabas looked at me carefully. “Clan Nimble inquires if the wedding date has been set.”
“Again?”
“Yes. They want to prepare and choose the appropriate present. You’re really throwing them off their game by refusing to set the date.”
I never pictured myself getting married. I never picked out my future gown or looked at a bridal magazine. That wasn’t my future. My future was surviving until I was strong enough to kill my father. But then Curran threw a wrench into those plans and asked me, and I said yes, because I loved him and I wanted to marry him. My future had made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. Now I had to think about the details. I wanted a small ceremony with as little ceremony in it as possible. Quiet, private, maybe a few friends.
As soon as the engagement was announced, the Pack Clans converged and shot the idea of a quiet ceremony out of the water and then kept firing at it until it stopped convulsing and died. They wanted the whole Pack to be there. They wanted presents and rituals and a giant feast. They wanted a Wedding, with a capital W. Clan Heavy and Clan Rat both owned bakeries, and the bakers almost came to blows over who would be doing the cake. Should it be a winter wedding or a spring wedding? Who would make my gown and what should it look like? Was it appropriate for me to wear white or should it be gray, the official color of the Pack? Argh.
Every moment Curran and I spent together was ours. Just ours. And so we kept putting off the wedding. We never conspired to do it. We both were just too busy to get married and when we did have a few free hours, we hoarded them to spend with each other and Julie.
“I have had it up to here with my wedding,” I said. “The other day Andrea tried to explain to me that apparently I am supposed to have a new thing, an old thing, a blue thing, and something stolen.”
“Borrowed, Kate,” Barabas murmured.
“Who the hell even makes up those rules?”
“It’s tradition,” he said.
“Even Julie talked to me about it the other day.”
“What did she say?” Barabas asked.
“She thinks I should wear black.”
Barabas sighed. “The clans will have a collective heart attack.”
The gauntlet still refused to bend. Screw it. I yanked my magic out. The blood armor turned dark brown and crumbled into powder. “I’m done with them hounding me about it. I’d rather be shot.”
“I understand. However, if you want them off your back, I have to give them something.”
I growled in his general direction. Sadly, growling worked much better when you were a werelion.
“Could you narrow it down to the season?” Barabas asked.
“Spring,” I said. Why not. We could always put it off later.
Barabas sighed. “I will let them know.”
• • •
CONTRARY TO POPULAR opinion, most shapeshifters weren’t hardened killers hungry for blood. They were normal people—teachers, masons, human resources specialists—who just happened to practice strict mental discipline and turn furry once in a while. Some of them learned enough control to maintain a warrior form, a meld of human and animal frighteningly efficient at killing. Of those, even fewer became full-time soldiers of the Pack. The best of the best among the soldiers became renders. Renders were weapons of mass destruction and they loved their job.
To get more than five combat-grade operatives in one room was rare. Unless we were about to battle an army, which so far had happened only once, one or two soldiers were sufficient. I was looking at twelve of them. Ten combat operatives, two renders, plus Barabas and Jim. Six feet two inches tall, one hundred ninety pounds of steel-hard muscle, Jim wore black accented with the kind of stare that made people run for cover. His skin was dark, his black hair was cut short, and he was built like he could go through solid walls. You knew that if he punched you, something inside you would break. Being a werejaguar on top of all that was just a bonus.
“What, no Rambo?”
Jim scowled at me. Usually when he scowled at people, they made a small squeaky noise and tried to look small and nonthreatening. Fortunately, I managed to scrape together enough valor and not faint.
“You keep doing that, your face will get stuck that way.”
“Will you take this seriously?” he growled.
“Okay.” I surveyed the crew of vicious killers. “Let me guess: an elite unit of commandos from some evil empire invaded Bernard’s Restaurant and fortified it. Now it’s trying to secede from Atlanta and the city asked us to take it back?”
Nobody laughed. I must be getting rusty.
Jim scowled harder. Wow. I didn’t think that was possible. Showed what I knew.
“Don’t you think this is overkill?” I asked.
“No.”
Ask a stupid question . . . “Jim, there is enough manpower here to destroy a small country.”
He waited.
“Don’t you think it will communicate that we’re scared of the People?”
“It will communicate that if they even think about starting some shit, we’ll rip them into bite-sized pieces.”
I looked at the red-haired render in the front. His name was Myles Kingsbury and he was built to break bones: broad shoulders, hard chest, lean waist, and a calm look in his eyes. Myles was my age and the few times we spoke, he struck me as compe
tent and sensible.
“Mr. Kingsbury, what do you think?”
The render opened his mouth and said in a deep voice, “I think it communicates that we won’t hesitate to take the initiative to be decisively aggressive.”
I closed my eyes for a second and exhaled. “Jim, if I were Curran, would you saddle me with this many bodyguards?”
“No.”
Well, at least I could still count on the no-bullshit answer from him. “So you agree that being heavily guarded is making me appear weak?”
“Yes. However, it makes the Pack appear strong. I’m not inclined to gamble with your safety. And”—he held up his hand—“I’d make Curran have a guard as well, if that stubborn bastard wouldn’t overrule me.”
I looked at Barabas. “Do I have the power to overrule him?”
“Yep,” Barabas said.
Jim gave Barabas his hard stare.
Barabas shrugged. “Do you want me to lie?”
Jim turned to me. “If I could have a moment of your time, Consort?”
Oh, it’s “Consort” now, huh. “Sure, Chief of Security. I’d be delighted.”
Normally walking a few feet was sufficient to get out of earshot, but everyone in the Keep enjoyed the awesome benefits of enhanced hearing. Jim and I marched fifty yards down the hallway.
“We’re at less than half of our normal strength,” Jim said. “Curran is away from the Keep. Whether accurate or not, you are viewed as much less of a threat than he is. If I were planning something, I’d hit us now and I’d hit us where it hurt.”
I kept my voice low. “This spy-on-the-Council thing is really getting under your skin.”
He inhaled slowly and looked at me. “Are you trying to say I’ve lost my perspective?”
“Maybe a little.”
He bent closer to me. His voice shook slightly, not with fear but with controlled concentrated anger. “Three months. Sixteen of my best people. Over a thousand hours of surveillance. I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. We have a mole and I have no idea who it is.”
Curran was so much better at this shit than I was. “Do you remember the hydra?”
Jim grimaced.
It happened years ago, in my first year in the Guild. We’d had a hell of a winter, and while I was trying to figure out how to stay warm in my old house, a coven of amateur witches near Franklin was throwing odd things into a giant pot. I didn’t know what the hell they had been hoping to cook up, but what came out of the pot became known as the Franklin Hydra. It wasn’t a classic dragon with many heads. It was something tentacled, with spikes and mouths with shark teeth in places mouths shouldn’t be. It ate the witches and slipped into the frozen depths of Lake Emory. Under the ice, it turned the lake into sludge and ate anything that came close. The town asked for assistance and allocated some funds. Two weeks later twenty mercs and a National Guard unit walked out onto the ice. It broke under us. Four people survived.
I shouldn’t have been one of those four. I fell through the ice into the sludge up to my chest and kept sinking while spiked tentacles slithered around me. I knew I was done, and then some merc I didn’t know slid across the ice to me and tossed a belt my way. It fell out of my reach.
If I thrashed, the tentacles would tighten and pull me under. So I inched forward, one painful centimeter every few seconds.
“Do you remember what you said to me?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“You said, ‘Don’t tense up. No sudden movements. Take it nice and slow.’”
He looked at me without any expression. Bull’s-eye. Score one for me.
“Bernard’s is neutral territory where no weapons are permitted, including vampires.” And my sword, about which I wasn’t happy. “The People will come to this meeting unarmed. Our people are always armed, because they can turn at a moment’s notice. Bringing this many combat-trained shapeshifters could be perceived as a threat. With the alphas from the other Clans, we will outnumber the People two to one.”
I nodded at the posse of biological weapons arranged for my inspection. “This is a sudden move. You’re escalating things. The People will feel pressure to retaliate. It will make diplomatic relations a lot harder.”
Jim chewed it over. “Fair enough. However . . .”
I was beginning to really hate that word.
“I have intelligence that indicates that the People bought one of the buildings next to Bernard’s and set up a command center inside. Tonight it will hold several journeymen and at least six vampires. You know what six vampires can do.”
Six vampires could depopulate Atlanta in a week. Six vampires piloted by navigators would do it in three days. A vampire telepathically guided by the navigator was a precision instrument with the destruction potential of a small nuclear bomb.
“It’s a precaution,” I said. “Ghastek isn’t about to jeopardize his rise to the top.”
The most skilled navigators were known as Masters of the Dead. There were seven of them in Atlanta, and two of them, Ghastek and Mulradin Grant, were currently scheming and plotting, trying to gain control of the chapter. My money was on Ghastek. We had cooperated before out of necessity. He was smart, calculating, and ruthless, but he was also reasonable. It was his turn to attend the Conclave.
“Maybe a war with the Pack is exactly what he wants,” Jim said. “I don’t want to take chances. Hold on.” He peered at the far end of the hallway.
A man with pure-white hair turned the corner and sped toward us. Stick-thin, he moved at a near run, holding a stack of books to his chest. His jeans sagged on him, and his turtleneck, which would’ve been tight on most people, had a lot of spare fabric. Christopher occasionally forgot to eat. Sooner or later Barabas caught it and made him consume three meals a day, but Christopher never seemed to put any meat on his bones.
Jim turned and watched him close in. No love lost there. Jim viewed Christopher as a puzzle box. It could open to reveal a treasure or a bomb, and Jim didn’t like not knowing which it was.
“Remember all those bodyguarding jobs we used to run?” Jim asked.
“I remember. Are you trying to tell me I’m being a difficult body to guard?”
“Something like that.”
Christopher reached us. His blue eyes were opened wide. Some days they were like a clear summer sky, not a thought in sight, but right now they were focused with a single-mindedness bordering on obsession. Some idea had grabbed hold of him and driven him off a cliff. He probably didn’t even know he was carrying books.
“Mistress!”
I had given up on telling him to call me Kate. He always ignored it. “Yes?”
“You can’t go!”
Jim’s eyebrows came together.
“Go where, Christopher?” I asked.
“To that place.” Words came tumbling out of him. “I’ve been trying to be in my right mind.”
“Aha.” When in doubt, stick to simple words.
“I know what I used to be, but I cannot be that anymore. I try. I try so hard. But my mind is unraveled and the threads, they’re too tangled. There are pieces of me floating. I’m shattered. He broke me.”
“Who broke you?” Jim asked.
Christopher looked at him. His voice was a mere whisper. “The Builder.”
My father. The Builder of Towers. Anger spiked inside me. I wished I could reach across time and space and punch Roland in the face.
Christopher turned to me. “If I had known what it was like to be shattered, I would’ve rather died.”
Oy. “Don’t say that,” I said.
“It’s the truth.”
“Christopher, you matter to me. Shattered or not. You are my friend.”
Christopher opened his arms. The books fell to the floor. He clutched at me, long fingers gripping my shoulders. “Don’t go. Don’t go to that terrible place, or he will shatter you and then you’ll be alone. You will be like me. Don’t go, Mistress.”
Jim moved, but I shook my head.
&nb
sp; “What terrible place?” I asked, keeping my voice soothing.
He shook his head and whispered, “Don’t go . . . Don’t leave.”
“I won’t,” I promised him. “I won’t go, but you have to tell me the name of the place.”
“You don’t understand.” Christopher looked at me, and in his blue eyes I saw pure panic. “You don’t understand. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, but not there. I cannot go there again.”
I wouldn’t go there either, if I knew where “there” was. “It’s okay. Just tell me . . .”
He shook his head. “No. No. It’s not.”
“It will be okay.”
He reached out, touched the strand of my hair that had slipped out of my braid, and yanked it, ripping some hair out.
Ow.
Jim lunged at Christopher, knocking him back. The thin man fell on the floor. I rammed Jim with my shoulder. “No!”
Christopher scrambled to his feet, wild-eyed, a few strands of my hair in his hand. “Don’t trust the wolf!”
He turned and fled down the hallway.
“What the hell?” Jim growled. “I’m going to have him sedated.”
“He knows something,” I told him. “I don’t know if he had a vision or someone told him something, but it freaked him out and he can’t explain it. Let’s see what he does with the hair. I might be able to figure it out from there.”
Hair, like body fluids, retained the magic of its owner once removed from the body. A year ago I would’ve killed Christopher to retrieve the hair, because studying it would reveal all my secrets. But my secrets were about to burst into the open anyway. Hugh knew the truth, Roland probably knew as well, and sooner or later everyone would know. I had come to terms with it.
“If someone told him something, it has to be either someone in the Pack or divination magic,” I thought out loud.
Even now the Keep held at least two hundred shapeshifters, and strangers weren’t welcome. Christopher never left the Keep and the grounds.
Jim growled. “I’ll put a guard on him. Someone discreet. If he’s getting his information from some apparition that manifests in his bedroom at night, I don’t want him sharing your hair with it.”
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