Magic Burns

by Ilona Andrews

  “Like my do? I’ll tell you who did it. Of course, it won’t look as good on you as it does on me.” She winked.

  “I’m sure. So how much does it cost to get a gas burner installed on your head?”

  She guffawed and handed me a sandwich. “You’re okay. Here, brought you some grub.”

  I sniffed the sandwich. “So what’s in it? Jism? Ground tiger testicles?”

  “Salami. Eat it. It’s good and you look like you need it.”

  I didn’t think I’d hold it down, but as soon as the first bite hit my mouth, I knew I would want seconds.

  “How is she?” I asked between bites.

  “She’s doing good.” The werehyena raised her eyebrows and nodded. “She’s one tough bouda.”

  “Buddha?”

  “Bouda. Werehyena. Although if you want to get technical, your girl is…” She cut herself off. “If you want to get technical, it’s not my place to tell you. Call us boudas. That’s the proper way to do it.” The bouda sniffed. “Company. I love visitors for dinner.”

  A familiar man strode from the trees, moving with a purpose. Six two, with skin the color of coffee grounds, he looked like he wanted to punch somebody. A long black leather coat hid most of him, but what little showed of his chest under a black T-shirt suggested he was all muscle. His swagger suggested he was all mean. In daylight on a busy street, crowds did an excellent impression of the Red Sea before Moses at his approach.

  He stopped a few yards from the porch.

  “Wow, knock me over with a feather. The chief of intelligence himself at our doorstep.” The bouda grinned and her smile wasn’t friendly.

  “Hi, Jim,” I said.

  He didn’t look at me. “The man wants to know what’s going on. And he wants her at the Keep. Now.”

  “Talking about yourself in the third person now, are we?” The bouda smiled.

  Jim leaned back, his chin high. “Curran wants information. Don’t make me walk into this house uninvited.”

  The bouda’s eyes flashed crimson. She let loose a strung-out hysterical cackle and leaned forward, showing him her teeth. Her face twisted into a hungry grimace. “Make a move, cat! Break the law. Test the jaws of Kuri’s daughter, if you dare. I’ll smile wide when your bones snap under my teeth.”

  She snapped at him and licked her lips. Jim’s face wrinkled in a snarl. Two hyenas circled from behind the house like sharks, clicking and growling.

  I got up and nodded to Jim. “Give me a minute. As a personal favor.”

  His face gave nothing away. Slowly, deliberately he took two steps back and waited.

  Inside the bathroom, Andrea sat on marble, barely visible behind the female and Aunt B. The male bouda ran his fingers through the wet mass of blond hair on her head, searching for something.

  “I have to go…”

  The boudas parted, revealing Andrea. She was covered in short fur, her skin dappled with uniform black spots. I’d never seen a body that proportionate in beast-form, except for Curran’s. The only flaw was her arms: they reached down too low, almost brushing her knees. It took me a second to register the fact that she had breasts. Normal human breasts. Most female shapeshifters in half-form had tiny breasts or a row of tits.

  She looked at me. Her blue eyes and her forehead said human. Her dark muzzle and jaws signaled hyena. They melded seamlessly into each other. The effect was a revolting but somehow unified whole.

  “Found it.” The male hooked something with his claws.

  Aunt B braced Andrea’s head. “Do it.”

  The male plucked a small dark object from Andrea’s skull, sending a few drops of blood flying. She groaned quietly. Aunt B let go, and the male leaned in and licked Andrea’s neck gently.

  “I do believe Raphael’s in love.” The female bouda grinned.

  Andrea clumped a wet towel to her head and looked at me. “Kate? Where are you going?”

  The words came through startlingly clear, her voice completely unchanged.

  “Curran wants to talk to me. He sent Jim, and it’s best I go.”

  Andrea took a deep breath. “I’m beastkin.”

  By the way she pronounced it, I understood the word must have some sort of deep significance but it flew completely over my head. My face must have said as much, because Aunt B folded her hands in her lap. “Do you remember Corwin?”

  “The catwere. He died protecting Derek.” Lyc-V was an equal opportunity virus. It infected humans and animals alike and stole fragments of its victims’ DNA, sometimes inserting human genetic code into an animal. Very rarely the result was a beastwere, an animal that shapeshifted into a human. Most were idiots and died quickly, but some, like Corwin, learned to speak and became individuals in their own right.

  Aunt B nodded. “Corwin was a good person. He came here a lot.”

  “He liked to play,” the female bouda added.

  “Yes, he did. He was shooting blanks. No harm done.” Aunt B looked at me.

  “That’s to be expected, the beastweres are sterile,” I said to say something.

  Aunt B’s face stretched a bit. “Not always.”

  “Oh.”

  “Occasionally, very, very occasionally, they make babies.”

  “Oh.”

  Andrea sighed. “Sometimes babies survive.”

  “You’re a child of a hyenawere?” I just blurted it right out.

  Everybody winced.

  “Yes,” Andrea said. “I’m beastkin. My father was born hyena.”

  Now it made sense. She didn’t catch Lyc-V from the attack, because she was born into it. “Does Ted know?”

  “He might suspect,” Andrea said. “But he has no proof.”

  I shrugged. “I won’t tell him if you don’t. What happened to Julie?”

  “Just like that?” the female bouda interrupted. “It doesn’t bother you that she is a child of an animal?”

  “No. Why should it? Anyway, what happened to Julie?”

  The boudas looked at Aunt B. Aunt B looked at me. “The Code says we’re human first. We’re born human; we die human. That is the natural form, the dominant form. We must assert it and set it above the beast, because that is the natural way.”

  “The beastkin are born beast,” Andrea said softly. “It follows that beast is our natural form, but as we grow, we lose the ability to become beast, because we’re hybrid. Therefore I’m an animal that’s crippled at birth. Unnatural.”

  Oh for crying out loud. “Andrea, you’re my friend. I don’t have many of those. How you were born, what you look like, what anybody else thinks makes no difference to me. When I needed help, you helped me and that’s all that matters. Now, can you please, please tell me what happened to my kid?”

  Andrea twitched her nose. A nervous cackle spilled from her and she choked it off. “A homeless boy came to the vault.”

  “Red.”

  “Yes. Julie told me he was her boyfriend. He was covered in blood and he collapsed by the door. Julie went hysterical. I opened the door and he threw something at me, a powder.” She frowned, exposing white teeth. “I carried a shaman charm in my skull to keep from turning during the flare. Usually I have no trouble, but the magic ran too high. Whatever he did…” She raised her hands. “It interfered with the charm. I started turning, but I couldn’t finish. He grabbed Julie and dragged her out.”

  Red made me very, very angry.

  “Your sword’s smoking,” the female bouda said.

  “It does that occasionally.” My voice sounded flat. That little shit. What the hell was he doing? And where was I going to look for him? The city was full of spots where two street kids could hide. Ten million to one, the reeves would find them before me.

  Aunt B leaned forward. “By tradition, all beastkin are killed at birth. If any of the older shapeshifters find out she’s here, I’ll have a mob at my doorstep.”

  The male bouda licked his lips. “It might be fun.”

  Aunt B reached out and casually smacked him on the bac
k of the head.

  “Ow.”

  “Is that Curran’s cat outside my door?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s caught Andrea’s scent by now and he’ll report. You’ll have to tell Curran something. It’s better not to lie.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.” I walked out.

  CHAPTER 20

  CURRAN’S HAIR FELL TO HIS SHOULDERS. LONG, blond, luxuriously wavy, it framed his face like a mane. He sat in a room in the Pack Keep, reading a battered paperback under a cone of electric light from a small lamp. He didn’t raise his head as Jim ushered me into the room and closed the door.

  Just me and the Beast Lord. And the night, spilling into the room through the wide-open window.

  Jim hadn’t said a word to me on the way over here. I was on thin ice.

  “What’s the deal with the hair?”

  Curran tore his gaze from the book and grimaced. “Grows every flare. Can’t help it.”

  We stared at each other. “Waiting for the Fabio joke,” he said.

  The fatigue rolled over me in a sluggish wave. When I opened my mouth, my voice sounded dull, stripped of all life and inflection. “I brought a sick beastkin to the bouda house. She’s my friend. If you’re going to kill her, you’ll have to go through me.”

  He closed his eyes tight, put his hand over them, and rubbed his face. I sat in a chair and kept my mouth shut, letting him work through his pain.

  “Why me?” he said finally. “Are you on some sort of mission to fuck up my life?”

  “I try my best to avoid you.”

  “You’re doing a hell of a job.”

  “I honestly don’t mean to cause problems.”

  “You don’t cause problems. An unpiloted vampire causes problems. You cause catastrophes.”

  Rub it in, why don’t you. “Look, after this, I promise I’ll do my absolute best to stay out of your way. Are you going to murder my friend?”

  He sighed. “No. I haven’t killed any beastkin, and I’m not going to start now. It’s an old, elitist custom. I’d have cut the legs from under it when Corwin found us, but there was a lot of opposition and crushing it without hurt feelings was tiresome and time-consuming. If your friend wants to join the Pack, I suppose I’ll have to revisit the issue.”

  The sword in my sheath kept my spine from bending all the way and I very much wanted to either slump forward or to lean back. Even my vertebrae were tired. I unzipped my leather jacket, shrugged it off, unbuckled the sword, and set it in the sheath next to me. “She wants to hide. She’s a member of the Order.” He’d figure it out eventually anyway. “I’m going to help her to cover it up. After I find Julie.”

  “You lost the girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  I leaned back. “Her shaman boyfriend snatched her from my friend. He did something that caused her to start shifting, but she couldn’t finish.”

  “Go on.”

  “I found her, loaded her into a cart, and drove her to the hyenas.”

  He gave me an odd look. “You drove her from the Order to there through the deep magic?”

  “Yeah. We did pretty good except for some weirdness at a gas station.”

  He thought about it. “How long ago did all this happen?”

  “Hours.”

  “Derek couldn’t pick up Julie’s scent at the scene?” A slight growl of disapproval crept into his voice.

  I shook my head. “The shaman used too much wolfsbane. I’ll find her. I just don’t know how yet.”

  “If there is anything I can do, I’ll help. Don’t get excited. It’s not because of you. For the child. If it wasn’t for her and the flare, I’d throw your dumb ass out of this window.”

  “What does the flare have to do with it?”

  “I don’t want it to be attributed to a loss of control on my part. When I throw you out of the window, I want there to be no doubt the act was deliberate.”

  Wow, he was pissed.

  Now the muted setting made sense: a neutral room, soothing light, a book. The deep magic fed the beast within him. It took a monumental effort of will to restrain it. With the flare so close, Curran was a powder keg with a short fuse. I had to be careful not to light that fuse. Nobody outside the Pack, except for Andrea, knew I was here. He could kill me right now and they would never find my body.

  We shared a silence for a long moment. Magic blossomed, filling me with giddy energy. The short waves again. They would ebb in a minute, and then I’d be exhausted.

  Guilt gnawed at me. He could control himself in my presence, but I apparently couldn’t control myself in his. “Curran, up on the roof…That is, my brakes don’t work sometimes.”

  He leaned forward, suddenly animated. “Do I smell an apology?”

  “Yes. I said things I shouldn’t have. I regret saying them.”

  “Does this mean you’re throwing yourself at my feet?”

  “No. I pretty much meant that part. I just wish I could’ve put it in less offensive terms.”

  I glanced at him and saw a lion. He didn’t change, his face was still fully human, but there was something disturbingly lionlike in the way he sat, completely focused on me, as if ready to pounce. Stalking me without moving a muscle. The primordial urge to freeze shackled my limbs. I just sat there, unable to look away.

  A slow, lazy, carnivorous smile touched Curran’s lips. “Not only will you sleep with me, but you will say ‘please.’”

  I stared at him, shocked.

  The smile widened. “You will say ‘please’ before and ‘thank you’ after.”

  Nervous laughter bubbled up. “You’ve gone insane. All that peroxide in your hair finally did your brain in, Goldilocks.”

  “Scared?”

  Terrified. “Of you? Nah. If you grow claws, I might get my sword, but I’ve fought you in your human shape.” It took all my will to shrug. “You aren’t that impressive.”

  He cleared the distance between us in a single leap. I barely had time to jump to my feet. Steel fingers grasped my left wrist. His left arm clasped my waist. I fought, but he out-muscled me with ridiculous ease, pulling me close as if to tango.

  “Curran! Let…”

  I recognized the angle of his hip but I could do nothing about it. He pulled me forward and flipped me in a classic hiptoss throw. Textbook perfect. I flew through the air, guided by his hands, and landed on my back. The air burst from my lungs in a startled gasp. Ow.

  “Impressed yet?” he asked with a big smile.

  Playing. He was playing. Not a real fight. He could’ve slammed me down hard enough to break my neck. Instead he had held me to the end, to make sure I landed right.

  He leaned forward a little. “Big bad merc, down with a basic hip toss. In your place I’d be blushing.”

  I gasped, trying to draw air into my lungs.

  “I could kill you right now. It wouldn’t take much. I think I’m actually embarrassed on your behalf. At least do some magic or something.”

  As you wish. I gasped and spat my new power word. “Osanda.” Kneel, Your Majesty.

  He grunted like a man trying to lift a crushing weight that fell on his shoulders. His face shook with strain. Ha-ha. He wasn’t the only one who got a boost from the flare.

  I got up to my feet with some leisure. Curran stood locked, the muscles of his legs bulging his sweatpants. He didn’t kneel. He wouldn’t kneel. I hit him with a power word in the middle of a bloody flare and it didn’t work. When he snapped out of it, he would probably kill me.

  All sorts of alarms blared in my head. My good sense screamed, Get out of the room, stupid! Instead I stepped close to him and whispered into his ear. “Still not impressed.”

  His eyebrows came together, as a grimace claimed his face. He strained, the muscles on his hard frame trembling with effort. With a guttural sigh, he straightened.

  I beat a hasty retreat to the rear of the room, passing Slayer on the way. I wanted to swipe it so bad, my palm itch
ed. But the rules of the game were clear: no claws, no saber. The second I picked up the sword, I’d have signed my own death warrant.

  He squared his shoulders. “Shall we continue?”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  He started toward me. I waited, light on me feet, ready to leap aside. He was stronger than a pair of oxen, and he’d try to grapple. If he got ahold of me, it would be over. If all else failed, I could always try the window. A forty-foot drop was a small price to pay to get away from him.

  Curran grabbed at me. I twisted past him and kicked his knee from the side. It was a good solid kick; I’d turned into it. It would’ve broken the leg of any normal human.

  “Cute,” Curran said, grabbed my arm, and casually threw me across the room. I went airborne for a second, fell, rolled, and came to my feet to be greeted by Curran’s smug face. “You’re fun to play with. You make a good mouse.”

  Mouse?

  “I was always kind of partial to toy mice.” He smiled. “Sometimes they’re filled with catnip. It’s a nice bonus.”

  “I’m not filled with catnip.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  He squared his shoulders and headed in my direction. Houston, we have a problem. Judging by the look in his eyes, a kick to the face simply wouldn’t faze him.

  “I can stop you with one word,” I said.

  He swiped me into a bear hug and I got an intimate insight into how a nut feels just before the nutcracker crushes it to pieces. “Do,” he said.

  “Wedding.”

  All humor fled his eyes. He let go and just like that, the game was over.

  “You just don’t give up, do you?”

  “No.”

  The magic drained again. A dull ache flared across my back—must’ve landed harder than I thought. The ache spread to my biceps. Thank you for the squeeze of death, Your Majesty. I slumped against the wall.

  “Why are you hell-bent on their wedding?”

  I rubbed my forehead, trying to wipe away fatigue and this conversation. “You really want to know?”

  “Yes. What is it, guilt, revenge, love, what?”

  I swallowed. “I live alone.”

  “And your point is?”

  “You have the Pack. You’re surrounded by people who would fall over themselves for the pleasure of your company. I have no one. My parents are dead, my entire family is gone. I have no friends. Except Jim, and that’s more of a working relationship than anything else. I have no lover. I can’t even have a pet, because I’m not at the house often enough to keep it from starving. When I come crawling home, bleeding and filthy and exhausted, the house is dark and empty. Nobody keeps the porch light on for me. Nobody hugs me and says, ‘Hey, I’m glad you made it. I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried.’ Nobody cares if I live or die. Nobody makes me coffee, nobody holds me before I go to bed, nobody fixes my medicine when I’m sick. I’m by myself.”