Magic Slays

Chapter 18

I AWOKE ON OUR COUCH. MY WHOLE BODY ACHED, deep down, all the way to my bones. Pain was good. Pain meant I was still alive and healing.
Curran leaned on the windowsill, silhouetted against the window, where the dusk or dawn bled crimson onto the sky. The sun was in the east. Morning then. I'd slept for several hours.
Muscles tensed across Curran's wide back. He knew I was awake.
No matter where I was or how much trouble I was in, he would come to get me. He would demolish the city to find me. I didn't have to go at it alone.
Several floors below, Julie was sleeping while her body worked to betray her. My Julie. My poor kiddo. Some people awoke to escape their nightmares. I awoke into one.
"Any change?"
"She is still asleep," Curran said.
"Doolittle sedated me, that old bastard."
He turned around. "No. He was chanting your wounds closed, and you fell asleep. I brought you up here. Does it hurt less now?"
I shrugged. "How do you know it hurt in the first place?"
"You held your breath when you walked."
"Maybe I was just pissed off."
"No." He came toward me. "I know when you're pissed off. It's the way you stand. I know the look."
He noticed the way I stood. What was I supposed to do with that? "Grendel?"
"He's in Doolittle's infirmary. Nothing serious. A few bruises and a sliver of wood stuck in his paw. Andrea returned to the Keep. She says they were eating and he took off on her with no warning. Went through the restaurant's window."
Silly poodle. How had he even known we were in trouble?
Muscles played along Curran's jaw. "We should've found Leslie. We'd tracked her all over the city. Her scent was less than three hours old in Palmetto. If we had found her, none of this would've happened. You can't save everyone. I've made my peace with that. We should've saved Julie ..." "I love you," I told him.
Curran stopped in midword and strode to me. I kissed him, sliding into his arms. "I don't want to talk," I whispered. My cheeks were wet and I knew I was crying. My voice didn't tremble, but the tears kept coming and coming. I'd lost my mother, my stepfather, and now in two days, my kid as well. It was time to pay the piper.
Curran kissed me, his lips sealing on mine. His tongue slid into my mouth, his taste so familiar, so welcome. I clenched his shoulders, pulling him closer, pulling his shirt off. He moved the sheets aside and broke apart from me for the tiniest second to peel my tank top off. I kissed his mouth, my fingers in his short hair, asking for his strength. His hands slid over my breasts, the rough skin of his palms scratching at my nipples. He lifted me to my knees and licked my left breast, the heat of his mouth piercing through all of the pain swirling inside me. I let go of it all and lost myself in him, kissing, licking, stroking, wanting to be one.
He rose above me, I wrapped my legs around him, and when he thrust inside me, the world took a step back. There was only me and him. We built to a smooth hard rhythm, faster and faster, each thrust lifting me higher, until finally heat blossomed inside me, drowning me in a cascade of pleasure. He shuddered and emptied himself. We stayed like that for a long moment, then he moved to the side, gathering me up to him. We lay, curled up together, as the day uncurled outside the window.
I refused to let Julie go. There had to be a way around it. There had to be something I could do. She wasn't a loup yet, damn it. There had to be a way.
"We'll kill them," Curran said, his voice laced with so much violence I almost shivered. "We'll stamp them out."
Yes. "A year from now nobody will remember they existed." There would be no more Lighthouse Keepers after we were done. It wouldn't help my kid. But it might keep other Julies from being hurt.
A knock resonated through the door.
"What?" Curran growled.
"Jim is here, my lord," Barabas said.
I pushed off the pillow.
"Tell him to wait," Curran said. He turned to me. Gray eyes looked into mine. "I love you, too."
Maybe he truly did. "Promise me that if we leave, nobody will touch Julie until we return."
Gold rolled over Curran's eyes and vanished. "Not if they want to live."
"Not even an alpha of a clan." I didn't know how dark the inside of Jennifer's head was. "Not even an alpha. Julie is sedated and restrained in her bunk. The access to her room is restricted, and Derek is staying with her. He's gotten it into his head that if he and Ascanio hadn't gotten into it, the bouda kid would've put up more of a fight. Jennifer doesn't have a prayer of getting past him, nor would she try. That's not who she is."
He swiped his sweatpants off the floor.
I put my clothes on. "It wouldn't have mattered about Ascanio. She was a trained render. You could've killed her. B. Mahon. Jezebel, maybe. Jim ..."
"Kate," Curran said. "And now the entire Keep knows it."
I stopped with a boot in my hand. He was actually proud of me. I heard it in his voice. Oh hell.
He was looking at me with a smile, like the cat who ate the canary.
"What did I do with my other shoe?"
"You're holding it."
"Ah." I sat down on the couch and put my boot on.
Curran slipped on his T-shirt and went to the door. I followed. Curran opened the door, revealing Jim. His cloak was back on. Andrea stood behind him. The right side of her face was black and blue as if she'd been hit by a five-pound dumbbell. She looked ready to kill something.
Jim's face was grim. "The Keepers activated the device at Palmetto."
"When?" Curran snarled.
"Half an hour ago."
Curran swore.
THE JEEP BOUNCED OVER A METAL PLATE IN THE road, went airborne, and landed with a crunch. Jim drove the way he did everything--just on the edge of reckless but never out of control.
In the front seat Curran rolled the window down and leaned, trying to read a grimy road sign. "Three miles." He rolled the window up before the roar of the Jeep's enchanted motor made us all deaf.
The Roosevelt Highway rolled past the window, the trees one long greenish smudge. Next to me Andrea held her crossbow. We didn't have a chance to talk, but we didn't need to. We just needed a target.
"The Keepers brought the device in sometime during the night," Jim said. "The Spring Farm Fair is in town this week. That's where most of Palmetto makes a good chunk of their money. School is canceled for the week and all the church services are moved to eight o'clock to accommodate the fair. The Keepers set the thing up in the middle of a busy street and bailed. The Fair has two fields' worth of weird magic crap. Nobody would've given Kamen's device another thought."
The people of Palmetto had walked right past the ticking bomb and watched it charge. And then it activated and killed them.
"Why not hit the fair itself?" Andrea asked.
"Because they wanted witnesses," Jim said. "People will travel in for the fair, see a dead town, and rush back to spread the panic."
"So it's over?" I asked.
"Yeah," Jim said. "We had people combing through the town yesterday, looking for Leslie. This morning I sent a man from the Keep to brief them on the Keepers and tell them to clear out. They were on the road to Atlanta when they saw the light behind them. They stayed the hell away from it. From what they say, white light appeared above the town, glowed for several minutes like the northern lights, and vanished. The whole thing took about ten minutes."
To the left, four hyenas, two wolves, four jackals, and a weremongoose burst from the brush and flanked the car. Barabas, Jezebel, and others. The entire bouda clan howled for blood.
"Our source says the device can't be moved by a water car," Jim called out over the engine's noise.
Good call not mentioning Saiman by name.
"He says it kills the enchantment in the water. And they can't carry it--too heavy. They have to move it by cart and horse. There are four roads out of Palmetto. Used to be five but Tommy Lee Cook Road is shut down. There is a gap across it a quarter of a mile wide. I have people on every road. The machine pulls magic in a circle starting from the perimeter and going inward. The perimeter of the blast zone is clearly visible. They aren't getting out."
"Can we enter the zone after the blast?" Andrea asked.
"The source said he walked through the blast of the first prototype. He seemed no worse for wear," I told her.
An old billboard loomed from between the trees, advertising some gun show.
Jim stood on the brakes, spinning the wheel. The engine sputtered and died. The Jeep's tires squealed and the vehicle veered left and screeched to a stop. Fourteen bodies lay across the road. Men, women, children, dressed in good clothes. To the right, a church rose, its doors wide open. A preacher lay on the stairs, his Bible still in his hand. On the other side of the road, in a wide enclosure, carts waited for the owners who would never come. Horses snorted and whipped their tails at flies.
"Dear God," Andrea whispered. They must've been Seventh Day Baptists, going to church for the Saturday-morning service. Whole families. Adam Kamen was right. If you had enough magic, the shock of losing it killed you.
Why? Why the hell were the Keepers doing this? What the hell were they hoping to achieve?
A naked man ran out from behind the church and made a beeline for us. Short brown hair, lean build ... Carlos, one of the rat scouts. He came to a stop next to us and bent over, out of breath. "Can't go into it in a half-form. Turns you human or animal. You're weaker, too."
Carlos strained. Fur sprouted along his back as bones snapped. A moment and a wererat stood in front of us. Carlos opened his long jaws. "Thank Goshhh. I wash worreed."
A distant wolf howl echoed through the air.
"South." Curran pulled off his clothes. His skin split. Muscle boiled, fur sprouted, and he dropped to all fours, dark stripes like whip marks over his pelt. Jim shrugged off his shirt and a jaguar in warrior form landed next to Curran.
The monstrous lion head opened its jaws and Curran's voice rolled forth, the words perfect. "We'll cut across the fields, along the edge of the blast zone."
"I'll take the car."
Jim threw the keys at me and I snapped them out of the air.
"Don't break the device," I said. "You break it, it explodes, we all find our wings in a hurry."
Curran growled. "Later, babycakes."
Babycakes. Asshole. "Good hunting, sugar woogums."
I jumped into the driver's seat. Andrea pulled a rifle from under the passenger seat and hopped in to ride shotgun.
Curran dashed into the field, powerful muscles carrying him off. The shapeshifters followed him in a silent flood. I turned the key and the gasoline-burning motor purred in response. No magic. Right.
I made a wide circle around the bodies and stepped on the gas. The vehicle shot forward, picking up speed.
"Whoa." Andrea rubbed her face. "It's like somebody put a bag over my head. I can't hear that well. I can't smell anything either."
"What happened to your face?"
"She made me leave," Andrea said through clenched teeth.
I glanced at her. "Aunt B. We needed to have the talk. Oh no, she couldn't wait to have that talk. She had to have it right away, so she could explain to me in detail how I needed to become one of her girls. I shouldn't have gone, but I wanted to avoid a fight in front of the children. We sat at Mona's and ate pie, while the render tore the kids apart, so her ego would be satisfied. I told her this. You know what she said? She said it was my fault because if I had run over like a good little bouda when she first called me, we wouldn't be in this mess. So I slapped her."
"What?"
"When we got to the Keep and I found out about Julie, I walked up and slapped Aunt B in the face. In front of everyone."
Holy crap. "Have you lost your mind?"
"You should've seen the look on her. It was worth it." Andrea threw me a defiant glance. "Then her face went all psycho. The old bitch backhanded me. I don't actually remember being hit. I just remember rolling down the stairs. I guess she knocked me off the landing. She is fucking strong." A crazy light sparked in Andrea's eyes. "I'd do it again. I'll make it my mission in life to take her down."
And people said I was nuts.
Andrea raised her hand. "This is the hand that slapped Aunt B."
"Maybe you should have it gold-plated."
"Here, you can touch it, since you're my best friend."
"Is your hand connected to your brain at all? Are you going to keep attacking her until she kills you?"
Andrea shrugged. "I might kill her instead."
"And run the bouda clan?"
She blinked. "No."
"And how do you think Raphael would take it? I know you still love him. You think he'll be happy his mother is dead?"
Andrea let her breath out in a long sigh. "Listen, me and Raphael ..."
"Your master plan has holes big enough to drive a truck through."
"Now look, you ..."
The trees ended abruptly as the road shot us into the center of the town. Words died on Andrea's lips. Bodies lay in the streets. Laborers. Mothers with their children. A group of men armed with crossbows, probably just passing through. A cop, a short blond woman, her uniform pristine, lying face down on the pavement two steps away from her police horse.
Oh my God ... We drove through it all, surrounded by death on both sides, as if gliding through Armageddon.
On the far right, a man stumbled, walking through the street, with a lost look on his face, trying to come to terms with his world ending. A child cried in the distance, a thin uncertain sound.
This wasn't just bad. It wasn't just criminal, or cruel; it was so deeply inhuman, my mind had trouble comprehending it. I've seen death and mass murder, I've seen people slaughtered out of bloodlust, but this had no emotion behind it. Just a cold clinical calculation.
Another howl broke the silence. Closer this time and to the east. Andrea swiped the map off her lap. "They're probably hitting Fayetteville Road. Turn left at the next intersection. Church Street."
I made a hard left at the next intersection. In front of us a crumbling overpass barred the way. I steered the Jeep on the side, over the overgrown hill, praying the tires didn't blow up, and rolled over the hill. The vehicle plunged down, its seat springs squeaked, and we landed back on the road. I stepped on the gas. The Jeep hurtled forward.
A subpision popped up on our right side. I stared straight ahead. I'd seen as much of the dead as I could take. Now I just wanted to make some of my own.
The road veered left, cutting through a dense patch of forest. I took the turn. Something black and large lay in the road.
"Look out!" Andrea yelled.
I swerved, catching a glimpse of a massive equine body. A mad amber eye glared at nothing, now dull, from a head crowned with a single sharp horn.
The woods ended, jerked away suddenly like a green silk scarf pulled out of place. A ribbon of straight road unrolled in front of us, before ping into the woods again in the distance. On the left side, two giant open A-frames covered by tin roofs housed rows of flea market stalls. The stalls lay deserted. Half of their owners had fled. The few who remained sprawled in the dirt, their eyes dull and lifeless.
A group of riders emerged from the woods in the distance, pushing their horses hard. Behind them a pair of bays pulled a wagon. At least ten people. The forest on both sides of the road was too dense for the wagon to pass through. They were heading away from the magic and toward us, back into the blast zone.
I turned the Jeep sideways, blocking the road. Andrea eyed the nearest A-frame. It would give her a good vantage point. But the moment she started shooting, they'd turn back. We had to keep that cart from moving. I held my hand out. "Give me a grenade."
Andrea pulled open her backpack and slid a grenade into my palm. "Wait until they start shooting the Jeep. Boom comes first, shrapnel flies second. Count to ten before you run in there. And don't blow the device up."
"Yes, Mother. It's not my first time."
"That's the thanks I get for trying to keep you alive, Your Highness."
I slipped out of the Jeep and dashed down through the undergrowth on the right side of the road. Andrea leaped six feet in the air, caught the edge of the tin roof, and pulled herself up.
Twigs and branches slapped me. I kept moving, light on my toes. If Curran had been there, he would've chewed me out for making more noise than a drunken hippo in a china shop, but with the thudding of hooves the riders wouldn't hear me. Ahead the ground leveled off, the undergrowth of fuzzy pines thick enough to provide good cover but thin enough to power through in a hurry. About a hundred yards from the Jeep. Far enough. I dropped into a crouch.
The lead horseman rode past us and stopped a dozen yards ahead. The rest of the riders halted, forming two loose lines along the road, staggering themselves to minimize the target area. The cart came to a stop with a creak right across from me. A large canvas bundle bulged in the middle of it, secured with ropes. Wooden partitions protected the device from the back and front. Perfect.
"Miss Cray," the lead rider said. "Please remove the obstruction."
A woman rode up to the leader. "Sir?"
"Ride down to the vehicle, shift it into neutral, and push it off the road. Burgess, go with her. Santos, cover them. If things look suspicious, shout."
The three riders advanced toward the Jeep, two ahead, one lagging behind, his rifle ready. I waited until they cleared half of the stretch, pulled the firing pin, and lobbed the grenade behind the cart. The metal clanged on the asphalt two hundred feet away from the cart. Far enough. Heads turned. I dropped down and pressed into the forest floor.
The explosion shook the trees. Horses shied, panicking. The device showed no intention of exploding.
"Protect the machine!" the leader screamed. "Form--" His head jerked. Andrea's bullet took him in the back of the skull and came out just under his eyes, disintegrating his face into a mush of bone and bloody flesh.
Shots rang out like firecrackers popping--they fired blindly to the front and to the back. I charged through the pines. They were packed too densely for the saber. I drew a throwing knife. Another rider dropped, cut down by Andrea's shot. A rider loomed. I jerked him out of the saddle, stabbed him in the kidney, grabbed a woman off a horse, slit her throat, and pulled another man out of the saddle. The black barrel of a .45 glared at me. I shied left. The gun barked. Heat grazed my shoulder. I stabbed him through the heart.
The cart driver snapped the reins, turning the cart around. The horses neighed and plowed through the brush, skirting the crater left by the grenade. The cart hurtled back down the road, out of the blast zone and into the magic, heading away from the Jeep. The remaining riders chased it. Damn it.
A huge gray lion leaped out of the woods, barring the cart's path, standing almost as tall as the horses. The great mouth gaped and a deafening roar shook the trees. The horses reared in sheer terror. The driver surged up and slumped over, as a red wound from Andrea's rifle blossomed in the back of his head.
The lion morphed, his fur melting, and Curran grabbed the loose reins with his human arm, calming the horses.
Shapeshifters spilled from the woods, swarming the riders. "Alive," I yelled. "We need at least one alive!"
TWO MEN AND A WOMAN KNELT ON THE GROUND, their hands on the back of their heads. Around us an empty field stretched. The blast zone lay just a few yards away, behind the tattered ribbon of the crumbling highway.
The boudas circled the captives like sharks. They wanted blood. I wanted blood.
Curran reached down and picked up the larger of the men by his throat. The man dropped his hands, letting his arms hang limp by his sides. Curran brought his face up close and peered into the man's eyes. The man shivered.
"Why?"
"Why not?" the smaller of the men said.
He didn't look like a monster. He looked perfectly ordinary, just like the hundreds of people on the street. Wheat-colored hair. Clear blue eyes.
"You killed the entire town," I said. "There are dead children lying in the street."
He looked at me. His face was calm, almost serene. "We simply turned the tables."
"How did these dead children hurt you? Enlighten me."
He raised his chin. "Before the Shift, our society functioned, because to gain power, you had to work. Success was paved with labor. You had to use your mind and your hands to climb the ladder, so you could live the American dream: work hard, earn money, live better than your parents. But now, in this new world, brains and hard work count for nothing, if you have no magic. Your future is determined by pure accident of birth: if you're born with magic, you can rise to the very top with no effort. The safeguards that were meant to keep the dangerous and unbalanced from gaining power have failed. Anyone can be in charge now. They don't have to go to the right college, they don't have to learn the rules, they don't have to prove that they are good enough to be welcomed in the circles of power. All they have to do is be born with magic. Well, I have no magic. Not a drop. Why should I be disadvantaged? Why should I suffer in your world?" He smiled. "We don't want to kill anyone. All we want is a chance to have the same opportunities as everyone else. To restore order and structure to the society. Those who can't survive in our world, well, they are regrettable casualties."
The boudas snarled in unison.
A woman walked out from behind the brush bordering the road. Her dirty dress waved about her, like a grimy flag. She came toward us, wiping her nose with a dirty hand. One of the wolves detached from the pack and moved to flank her.
I leaned closer. "One of your people attacked my office and tried to kill a child. My child. She had done nothing to you. Is she also a regrettable casualty?"
The man nodded. "It's tragic. But look at it from my point of view: your child will grow up and prosper, while me and my children will be forced to struggle. She is no better than me. Why should your child take my spot under the sun?"
Nothing I could say would penetrate his skull, but I couldn't help myself. "That's nice. They taught you very well. But in the end, you're scum. A common thug might murder a man for money, but you murdered dozens out of selfish hope. This better life you're hoping to get for yourself will never happen, or you would be living it already, magic or not. You can't think for yourself. You want an excuse for your failure and so you found someone to blame. If you survived, you would always be dirt, ground under someone else's boot."
The man raised his face. "Say what you want. I know my cause is just. You didn't stop us. You just delayed the inevitable."
He didn't do it because his religion told him to murder people. He didn't do it because he couldn't control himself. He did it out of pure selfish greed, and he didn't feel the least bit upset by it. I'd rather take on a demonic horde any day.
The woman reached us. She was past thirty, maybe thirtyfive. I looked into her eyes and saw nothing. A painful empty void. She wasn't a threat. She was a victim.
The woman stopped and looked at us. "Is it them?" she asked. Her voice was hoarse. "Is it them who did it?"
"Yes," Curran told her.
She sniffed. Her gaze fixed on the three people kneeling in the dirt. "I want a turn." Andrea stepped close to her.
"They killed Lance," she said. "They killed my babies. My whole family is dead. I want a turn."
Andrea put a hand on her arm. "Ma'am ..."
"You give me my turn!" The woman's voice broke into a sob. She clamped her hand on Andrea's fingers, trying to wrench them open. "I've got nothing left, you hear! Nothing. My whole life's gone. You let me at these sonsabitches, you--"
Curran walked over to her. She went quiet.
"If you wait," he said, "I promise you'll get your turn."
She sniffed again.
"Come on," Andrea told her, leading her to the side gently. "Come with me."
"Where were you taking the device?" Jim asked.
The smaller of the men raised his head. "We'll tell you nothing. We are not afraid of death."
Curran glanced at the boudas. A large spotted hyena moved forward, her strides slow and deliberate. Jezebel. She dipped her head and stared at the three captives with unblinking predatory focus. She would kill them. We wouldn't get much out of whoever she attacked. She needed to avenge Joey. After she was done, nothing would be left of them.
I wanted to join her. I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to mince them to pieces, slice by slice, and watch them suffer. But if we didn't squeeze every drop of information out of them now, I'd have to look at more dead bodies.
No. No, this ended now. They might not be afraid of death, but they were terrified of magic, of being enslaved by those who wielded it. They'd given me all the ingredients for their own personal nightmare.
I looked to Curran. He raised his hand. Jezebel halted. She didn't want to, but she stopped.
I turned to Jim. "Which one of them is the least valuable?"
He glanced at the smaller man. "He probably knows the most."
I stopped before the larger man. "We'll start with him, then." Anticipation of the terror was always worse. I wanted the smaller man to stew in his fear a bit.
The captive stared at me. "What are you going to do to me?"
"You think we're abominations." I pricked my palm with the point of my throwing knife. A drop of red swelled. I squeezed my hand, letting the drop grow. "Let me show you just how abominable magic can be." I thrust my hand at the larger man's forehead. My blood connected with his skin, and I whispered a single power word. "Amehe." Obey.
It hurt. Dear gods, it hurt, it hurt like a sonovabitch, but I didn't care. Julie in a hospital bed, Ascanio torn and broken, Joey dead, corpses in the streets, children in their best clothes lying in the dirt, looking at the sky with dead eyes ... They would never rise again. They would never walk, never laugh, never be. The rage inside me was boiling over.
The man froze, the line of magic between him and me taut with power. I'd promised myself I'd never do this again, but some promises had to be broken.
"Rise," I told him.
He stood up.
"What did you do to him?" the female Keeper cried out, her voice squeaking.
Curran was watching me, his face unreadable like a slab of stone.
"Rope." I gave the man a mental push. Sweat broke out on my hairline. The magic drain crushed me. It felt like I was dragging a chain with an anchor on the end of it.
Slowly he walked to the cart, untied the knots, and pulled the rope from the device. I pointed to the ringleader. "Tie him."
Jim grabbed the ringleader's wrists and pulled him up. The larger man looped the rope around the man's waist.
"There is nothing you can do to me," the ringleader said. The Keeper woman watched us with open horror.
I picked up the other end and showed it to the larger man. "Hold."
He clamped it.
I glanced at the shapeshifters. "He'll need help."
Jezebel shed her fur and took the end of the rope. Good. The change would tire her out. She was strung out too high. She needed to burn off some of that edge.
"Give me room."
The shapeshifters parted. The ringleader stood by himself.
I took a deep breath. "Ahissa." Flee.
The shock of the power word nearly took me to my knees. The ringleader screamed, a sharp high-pitched shriek full of animalistic, mind-numbing fear, and ran. On the left, one of the boudas dashed away in panic, caught by the edge of the magic.
The rope snapped taut. The man fell and clawed the dirt, kicking, trying to swim away through solid ground. His larger friend held him, a blank expression on his face. The ringleader raked the soil, again and again, trying to get away, howling in hysterical frenzy. The shapeshifters watched him with stone faces.
"How long does it last?" Curran asked.
"Another fifteen seconds or so."
Moments stretched by. Finally the man stopped digging, his screams fading to weak hysterical sobs, echoed by the woman crying behind me. His fingers were bloody stumps, his nails torn off. I closed the distance between us and leaned over him. He looked up, slowly, his eyes brimming with echoes of panic.
"I bet the people of Palmetto would've screamed too, if you had given them a chance," I said softly. "What do you say we do it again? I bet I can turn your hair gray before lunch."
The man scrambled away from me and sprang to his feet. He managed a good sprint for about three yards and then the rope jerked him down. Jezebel gripped it and pulled him back, dragging him across the ground.
"No!" the man wailed. "I'll tell you anything, anything!"
Didn't take much after all. I braced myself and let out another power word. "Dair." Release.
The larger man sagged on the ground, his mind suddenly free. For a second he just sat there, a sad, abandoned expression on his face, and then he collapsed, curling into a ball, and bawled like a lost child.
"They're all yours," I said to Jim, and forced myself to walk to the Jeep. Every step took an effort. Someone had filled my shoes with lead while I wasn't looking.
We had won. It had cost hundreds of human lives, but we had won. We had the device. We'd rout the Keepers. Maybe I'd catch a break and Julie would survive.
"We're building another one!" the man behind me yelled through the sobs.
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I turned slowly.
He cringed on the ground. Curran leaned to him. His face unreadable, his voice almost casual. "Run that by me again?"
"We had a man, a man on the inside." The man's words came out too fast, tumbling over each other. "He copied the inventor's plans. We've been building it for weeks. We just needed a working prototype to fine-tune it. It's three times as big as this one." Damn it all to hell.
"Range?" Curran asked.
"Five miles," the man stammered out.
Enough power to wipe out everything from the city center all the way to Druid Hills. They could kill most of the city. All they needed was a strong magic wave.
Curran pointed at Jim. "Tell that man everything you know. Location, time, names, everything."
Jim grabbed the man by the throat. His lips parted in a feral grin. "Don't keep anything to yourself."
"Barabas!" Curran roared.
The weremongoose stepped from the Pack. A hundred pounds, sheathed in reddish fur, Barabas opened his mouth filled with sharp teeth and licked his fangs. The narrow horizontal pupils slit his coral-red irises in half, making him look demonic.
"I need you human," Curran ordered.
Fur split, melting. A moment and Barabas stood in front of Curran, nude, his eyes still glowing with madness. "Lord?"
"Call the Conclave."
The Conclave started as a quarterly meeting between the Pack and the People, officiated by a neutral party, usually someone from the Mage Academy, and held at Bernard's, an upscale Northside restaurant. It gave the Pack and the People a chance to resolve problems before things spiraled out of hand. The last two times, representatives of other factions had attended to resolve their own issues. I had attended only one so far, because the meeting over the Christmas holiday had been canceled by mutual agreement.
"Should I schedule it at Bernard's?" Barabas asked.
"No. There." Curran pointed to a lonely Western Sizzlin' steak house sitting on a low hill. The building was all glass and stone. The tall windows overlooked the town. To get to the place, the leaders of the factions would have to ride through the graveyard that was Palmetto.
"When?"
"Four. Sunset is at six. I want them to see the town. Invite the mages, the druids, the witches, the Guild, the Natives, Norse Heritage. Invite everyone."
"Except the Order," I added. "The Keepers may have infiltrated it."
Curran nodded. "And if the cops restrict access to the area?" Barabas asked.
Gold rolled over Curran's eyes. "Buy the place. They can't restrict access to our own land. Go."
Barabas took off running.
"The volhvs have the inventor," I said. "We need access. I need to make some phone calls."
"I'll take you," Curran said.
We walked to the car. I was so tired, I could barely move.
"Curran?"
"Yes?"
Today was apparently the day for finding out what mating with me really meant. I nodded at the men. "One of them has my blood on his forehead. The blood must be destroyed or it can give me away if someone scans it."
Curran gave me a look usually reserved for the mentally challenged. "Someone would have to find the bodies, first."
Behind him the sounds of enraged boudas tore through the silence, followed by a cacophony of screams.
"In that case, cut off his head," I said.
Curran gave me a look like I was stupid.
"My father made the damn vampires. I don't know what my blood will do to a dead body. Cut off the guy's head before you bury him."
"Should I stuff his mouth with garlic?"
"Curran!"
"Fine," he said. "I'll take care of it."
I got into the car and slumped against the seat. The fatigue mugged me. I was hanging by a thread and I clawed onto it, desperately trying to stay awake. I had paced myself, but three power words in a row equaled a lot of magic spent far too quickly.
The screams went on and on, and I was too weak to get my slice of the revenge pie. I just sat there and listened to them shriek. Finally the howls died down. Curran approached the car and got into the driver's seat. "It's done." The woman in the dirty dress stumbled into our field of vision. Her hands were bloody. She swayed, wiped the red dripping off her fingers on her dress, forced her way through the old dried weeds onto the road, and kept going, back toward the town.
"She had her turn," Curran said.