Magic Breaks

18

THE RUINED CITY slid by outside the Jeep. Atlanta. Ugly and beautiful, decaying and rising, life and death at the same time. Home. For better or worse, home. The sun was just beginning to set and the sky burned with a riot of orange and red. Curran drove, his face somber.

“This isn’t the way to Bernard’s.”

“The Conclave isn’t being held at Bernard’s,” Barabas said from the backseat. “We’re going to Lakeside.”

“What’s Lakeside?” I asked.

“It’s a new development where North Atlanta High School used to be.”

“The one that was overrun by boars with steel quills?” I remembered that. Took the city two years to boar-proof the area.

“Yes. Supposedly it’s been constructed by the same firm that made Champion Heights.”

Champion Heights was the only surviving high-rise in Atlanta. “It’s a tower?”

“Twelve floors.”

I laughed. What else was there to do?

“Did I miss something?” Barabas asked.

“You should drop me off and bail,” I told Curran.

“What, and miss the fun? Not a chance. We’ll pound him into the ground.”

We couldn’t win. I knew it. He knew it. But I loved him so much for those words, he didn’t even know.

We turned onto Northside Parkway. The ground rose, forming a hill, and on top of it a tower perched above a long, narrow lake. Built with yellow rock and turquoise glass, it faced the setting sun and the sky set its windows on fire.

Curran parked in front of the tower near a row of black SUVs that probably belonged to the People. A row of Pack Jeeps sat at the opposite end of the parking lot. The party was all here. Now I just had to bring the entertainment.

“Who is running security?” Curran asked.

“Derek,” Barabas answered.

Well, the place would be secure. Also, Derek would probably die. I needed to get him and our people out of the building.

The second Jeep parked next to us and spat out Jim, Andrea, Thomas, and Robert. When I tried to suggest Robert should stay behind, both wererats acted mortally offended. I let it go. I was tired of trying to talk people out of this mass suicide.

We walked through the double doors, manned by two guards. The taller of the men on the right stepped forward. Curran looked at him for a second and the two guards turned around and decided to look somewhere else.

We crossed the lobby.

“The elevator doesn’t work yet,” Barabas informed me. “The bottom floors aren’t finished. Only the top three are.”

“That’s fine. We’ll take the stairs,” Curran said.

We climbed the steps. I knew stairs would be the death of me one day.

Twelve floors went by fast. I opened the door and we stepped into a wide hallway lined with green carpet. Six journeymen stood on the left, six vampires sitting by their feet. Across from them Derek and five of our combat-grade people stood on the right. Derek saw us and pushed himself from the wall.

If I knew anything at all about Derek, this wasn’t the totality of the Pack’s forces in the building. They would have people stashed on the roof, on the floor below, in the parking lot.

“No need for everyone to die,” I murmured.

Curran nodded at Derek. “Clear the building. Take our people out.”

He didn’t even blink. “Yes, Lord.”

“Everyone, Derek,” I added. “A complete recall.”

“Yes, Consort.” He turned to the shapeshifters. “Full evac.”

They turned and took off toward the stairs. He followed them, his voice raised, talking to people with supernatural hearing above and below us. “Full evac. I repeat, full evac. Clear the building.”

The journeymen looked at each other. One of them, a young girl with red hair, barely a woman, ran toward the door at the far end of the hallway. Curran and I followed. We weren’t in a hurry. We wanted to give our people enough time to leave Lakeside.

The hallway ended. Curran pushed the door open and walked into the room. A hundred feet long and about half as wide, the room housed two long tables, one at the left wall and the other at the right, each covered with a tablecloth, the floor between them empty. The alphas of the Pack Council sat on the right. The People sat on the left. I saw familiar faces, Mahon and Martha, Raphael, Desandra . . . Everyone was here.

We took our seats. I reached under the table and squeezed Curran’s hand. He squeezed back.

“We’re about to be attacked,” Curran said.

“We know,” Mahon said.

Across the room, the seven Masters of the Dead gaped at me, each holding two vampires arranged in a precise line against the wall behind them. Six familiar faces, and one new, an older man with gray hair. The red-headed journeyman was whispering to Ghastek. He glared at us and waved her off. “I don’t care who Lennart pulled out of the building.”

The gray-haired man rose, walked over, and knelt on the floor directly across from me. Oops. Looks like I sat down too soon.

“Sharrim.”

I’d heard his voice before. When we tried to escape Hugh’s burning castle, before Aunt B died, Hugh had sent vampires after me. I had slaughtered the undead, ruining the minds of the navigators who had piloted them, but I left one alive. When that vampire had spoken to me, it spoke in this man’s voice.

The People stared at us. Rowena was blinking rapidly, stunned. Ghastek leaned forward, focused on me with a laser’s precision. I wondered what Landon had told him. Maybe nothing. Wouldn’t that be funny?

“Sharrim,” the man repeated.

Showtime. I got up and walked over to him. He looked up at me, his hands folded on his lap.

“You are young,” the Master of the Dead said. “You have the power, but lack control. Think of all the things he could teach you. Think of the secrets that would open to you.”

I felt a power gathering beyond the walls of Lakeside, like a distant storm flashing with lightning on the horizon. The windows didn’t permit me a view of the sky, but I bet it churned with storm clouds. My father was coming.

“Think of what you could become.”

Oh, I was thinking about it. I did nothing but think about it the whole time it took me to get from Jester Park to Atlanta.

The arcane storm drew closer, terrible, swirling with power currents.

There were twenty-two vampires in the immediate vicinity. Six in the hallway, twelve in the room, and four in the adjacent room.

It would have to be enough. There was one power I didn’t demonstrate to my father. It was about time.

“There is no need to fight a battle that can’t be won.”

The storm swelled just outside the building, about to break on us.

“Think of who you are.”

The hurricane of magic burst. Lightning flashed outside the narrow windows and smashed into the wall in front of me. The stone cracked. I grabbed the vampires and pulled them to me. The navigators’ minds kicked and bucked like runaway horses. Rowena cried out. The Masters of the Dead pulled back, struggling to keep control.

I opened my mouth. “Hesaad.” Mine.

The power word tore from me, cracking like a whip. The navigators’ resistance vanished. The Master of the Dead in front of me got to his feet and pressed himself flat against the left wall. The vampires streamed to me.

The wall in front of me split open. Chunks of stone moved back, away from me, held apart, hung in the air for a long moment, and plunged down. The sky was black and gray with the full fury of a storm, and below the clouds, the sunset bled onto the sky. Icy wind bathed me, tugged my hair.

The mass of vampires circled me, forming an undead maelstrom around my feet.

Golden light burst into the space where the wall had been. Tendrils of pale smoke rose from it. The wall of light shimmered with yellow and white as if someone had ripped away a chunk of the sun’s corona and thrust it into Lakeside. My father’s face filled it, enormous, his eyes blazing with power.

His voice shook the tower. “DAUGHTER.”

I looked into the power roaring into my face. “Father.”

“Father?” someone squeaked to the left. Ghastek might have just had a heart attack.

Power reverberated through Lakeside, shaking the stone. “COME TO ME. STAND BY MY SIDE.”

The light and flame surged forth and I saw myself wearing crimson armor. A golden crown rested on my head. I looked like my grandmother.

I pushed with my power and the vampiric heads surrounding me exploded. Undead blood flooded the floor. I raised my left arm and sliced across it with Sarrat. My blood streamed down, mixing with the dark ruby liquid by my feet. My magic shot through the undead blood like fire down a detonation cord. The undead blood streamed to me, pliant and obedient. It curved around my feet, coating my clothes, slid over my arms, and drained down Sarrat, widening the blade as it coated the saber in crimson.

“TAKE YOUR PLACE.”

“No.”

The blood armor surged up, sheathing my body. The image of me wearing a crown burst and shattered.

I raised my head. “This is my city. Get out.”

The coronal fire in front of me swelled. A spear shot out, colossal, forged of golden light and power, aiming at me. The claiming.

I lunged, swinging my new blood sword. Sarrat connected with the spear.

Magic revolted, bursting and screaming around me. The impact nearly took me off my feet. It was like playing tug-of-war with a tornado. The blade shook and shuddered in my hands.

The spear of power pushed. The enormity of my father’s magic pressed on me, crushing me, grinding my bones into dust. Pain started from the tips of my fingers and washed down over me. I burned. From the top of my head to the soles of my feet, I burned. My eyes couldn’t see any damage, but my senses screamed that my skin was bubbling from the heat.

If I gave up now, Roland would claim Atlanta. I couldn’t let that happen. He would not take this city. People I knew, people I loved, wouldn’t bow and kneel to him as long as I stood.

“Amehe,” I whispered to my blade. “Amehe. Amehe.” Obey. Obey. Obey.

My bones cried out. In my head my muscles began to unravel, fiber by fiber, frayed nerves shaking in the raging wind. But I would not move.

I would not move.

“This is my city. These are my people.”

I tasted the sharp bite of my magic on my lips. My nose was bleeding. Tiny red drops rose from my cheeks and floated to join the blood coating Sarrat. My eyes were bleeding, too.

My arms shook. My feet slid back half an inch. Another half an inch.

A muscular arm wrapped around my stomach. Another closed over my chest. A deafening lion roar, proud and furious, thundered over my shoulders. Curran braced me. His magic mixed with mine.

My feet stopped moving.

My father pushed and we pushed back.

Thin, painfully bright cracks appeared in the spear where it met my blade.

The strain was ripping my body apart. I poured even more of my magic into the force of my strike. I thought I had given it all I could, but it kept coming and coming, fountaining from inside me.

The cracks widened.

Just a little more . . .

The spear shattered.

I tried to pull back, but I couldn’t. The magic continued to rush out of me, as unstoppable as a flood, more, more, more . . . I struggled to contain it, but it refused to stop. It ripped me out of Curran’s arms and jerked me off my feet into the air. My blood armor crumbled into dust. Words appeared on my hands and arms, strange words written in dark ink. The air around me turned red. The ceiling above me exploded. My body bent back, my arms opened wide, my back arched. The building swayed, shaking. Below me, people crouched by the walls, trying to hide from my power.

The magic inside me erupted. My voice rolled like the sound of an enormous bell.

“HESAAD.” MINE.

A pulse of pure red shot out of me, spreading in a ring over Atlanta. The blast wave rolled with a sound like thunder. I felt it slide over the city all the way past the outskirts, past the Keep until finally it dissipated. The magic soaked into the ground and it responded, sending a surge of magic back to me.

Oh no.

I had claimed the city. I had marked Atlanta as my dominion.

My father smiled and disappeared.

I plunged down and landed on the hard floor in front of Curran, still in his warrior form. The two of us looked at each other. Chunks of something that probably used to be the roof rained down around us.

Curran unhinged his monstrous jaws. I braced myself.

“Show-off.”

I just stared at him. My brain couldn’t string any words together.

He grinned at me. “Come on, baby. We’re going home.”

• • •

WALKING DOWN TO the bottom floor of Lakeside and then to the Pack Jeep was a lot harder than anticipated. Someone had already started the enchanted water engine for us. I got in on the passenger side. I was so numb. I just kept moving forward on autopilot. I should’ve felt something. Relief, fear, some sort of human emotion, but there was nothing there. Only cold detachment.

Curran pulled a spare set of sweats from the back of the Jeep Wrangler, shifted into human form, put them on, and slid into the driver’s seat. He shifted the Jeep out of park and steered it onto the street. A caravan of Pack Jeeps joined us.

The storm clouds had long since dissipated. The sunset had burned itself out, leaving a mere smudge of red in the sky, a distant memory of its dying. The sky above us turned a deep purple.

My mouth finally moved. “Don’t.”

Curran looked at me.

“Don’t take me back to the Keep. They’ll want an explanation. I can’t do it right now.”

Curran made a sharp right turn into a snowed-in lot between an office building and a ruin. The car screeched to a stop.

Behind us the caravan of vehicles stopped. The leading vehicle’s door opened and Jim trotted out and to our car. Curran rolled down the window, letting the earsplitting noise of the enchanted water engine into the vehicle.

“What’s the problem?” Jim yelled over the noise of the motor.

“No problem,” Curran yelled back. “Go ahead without us.”

“What?”

“Go ahead without us!”

“Why?”

“Because I want to spend some time with my wife in peace!” Curran roared.

Jim nodded, gave us a thumbs-up, and went back to his Jeep.

Curran rolled the window up. “It’s like living in a fucking fishbowl.”

The Pack vehicles passed us. Curran turned the Jeep and drove in the opposite direction, southwest.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

The city slid by the window, the dark silhouettes of buildings, some crumbling, some sturdy and new, highlighted by the blue glow of feylanterns. It was my city now. Truly mine. I’d claimed it and now I was responsible for it.

“I claimed the city,” I told Curran.

“Would you like me to build you an office?”

What? I stared at him.

“You could have a little plaque with your name on it. Kate Daniels, City Owner.”

“It’s not funny.”

“We can get you one of those bank line setups with stanchions and velvet rope and a little pillow in the front, so people can form a line and kneel before you in humble supplication . . .”

“Will you stop?”

“We can get Derek one of those dark suits and aviator shades. He can look menacing and give out numbers. ‘You are seventh in line to bow before Kate Daniels.’”

“I’m going to punch you in the arm,” I growled.

“We can get you a throne with snakes. I’ll stand next to you and roar at anybody who fails to grovel. Fear Kate Daniels. She is a mighty and terrible ruler. Grendel can anoint the petitioners with his vomit. It’ll be great . . .”

Oh God. I put my hands over my face.

“Come on, baby,” he said. “I’m just trying to cheer you up.”

“I claimed territory that my father wanted. He’ll lose his shit completely now. Not only that, but every ambitious idiot with a drop of magical power will know that this area is claimed and will look for whoever claimed it. Not to mention that right now the Witch Oracle, the neo-pagans, and the People are all having a fit of apoplexy. I was supposed to prevent the claiming, not take the city. The Pack Council will be having kittens.”

“The Witch Oracle and the neo-pagans can bite me,” Curran said. “They’ll get over it. If anybody comes to challenge you, we’ll kick their ass. We’ll find a way to handle Roland. And if the Pack Council produces any kittens, we’ll give them to Jim to raise. He needs to mellow out anyway.”

I looked at him.

He took his hands off the wheel and held them apart about six inches. “Cute fluffy kittens. Just sitting on Jim’s lap.”

I pictured Jim with his badass-chief-of-security expression covered in small fluffy kittens. It was too much. The numbness inside me broke, like a dam. I giggled and laughed. Curran laughed, too.

“Cute kittens, meow-meow,” I managed. In my head, Jim held up his finger and sternly lectured a pack of kittens. Oh God. “He’d make them all hard-core.”

“He’d take them to the Wood to hunt deer,” Curran said between the bouts of laughter. “They’d . . . pounce.”

I would’ve doubled over if the seat belt had let me.

We were still laughing like two idiots when he pulled into a parking lot before a dark apartment building. The place looked familiar. Oh. This was my old apartment building. I had inherited an apartment from my guardian, Greg Feldman, and made it my own during the time I worked for the Order. But my aunt had gutted it. The last time I saw the place, it was completely destroyed.

“There’s nothing there,” I told him.

“Let’s go see anyway,” he said.

Why not?

I got out of the car. Surprisingly my legs held me. We went up the stairs together. A new door barred the access to my apartment. A mechanical combination door lock secured the door. A column of numbers, one through five, each with a button by it, waited above the lock.

“Four, four, one, two, three,” Curran said.

I pressed the buttons in order. The lock clicked. I swung the door open.

A clean, furnished apartment looked back at me. The floor in the hallway was wood. I could see a little bit of the kitchen through the doorway, backlit by feylanterns. New oak cabinets had replaced the broken wrecks of the old ones. I stepped inside. On the left, the living room, which I had used as a bedroom, stood perfectly intact. The walls had been repaired and painted in soothing blue-green. A queen-sized bed with a dark, soft comforter stood against the wall. Another feylantern hung above it. A plush beige rug lay on the floor. Across the room, by the window, a flat TV set was mounted on the wall, next to bookcases filled with books. Gray curtains matching the comforter framed the window. Outside the glass windows, steel and silver bars glowed weakly, reacting with magic and the light of the rising moon.

I moved through the living room and glanced into the small room that Greg had used as his bedroom and I had turned into a library. Bookcases lined the walls, waiting for books to be put in them.

“I know it’s not an exact duplicate,” Curran said, turning the valve on the radiator. He’d had a radiator installed. Wow. The super must’ve finally caved and fixed the damn boiler. “But I thought you might want to come back here one day.”

It wasn’t an exact duplicate. It looked like a brand-new apartment and that was so much better. Too many memories had been tied to the old one.

Curran strode through the room, coming closer. He moved with a kind of smooth contained power. His gray eyes focused on me. He looked at me as if I wore nothing.

We were alone. In an apartment. The door was locked.

I unbuckled the belt that kept Sarrat’s sheath on my back, slipped out of it, and put it on the night table.

He closed the distance between us. His arms closed around me, one across my back, the other pressing in on the curve just above my butt. He pulled me to him. My breasts brushed against his muscular chest, my legs bumped against his hard thighs, and the rigid length of him pressed against my stomach. I was caught in his arms. He had collected me and trapped me. His body caged me. I could barely move.

My survival instinct kicked in, screaming at me to escape. My eyes widened. My breath quickened, each rise of my chest pushing my nipples against him. My body tightened, as if before a fight, the muscles gathering themselves in anticipation. I breathed in his scent, familiar and tempting. It said Curran. Male. Sex. Lust flared inside me like a well-laid-out fire.

He stroked my ass, pressing me closer against him. A narrow predatory smile lit his face. He caught me. I was his and he was determined to enjoy every second. A tiny spark of instinctual alarm flared in me and mixed with an overwhelming need to have him, like spice adding a punch of heat to a dish. A needy warmth spread through me, turning into liquid heat between my legs.

“Mmm,” he said. “Kate Daniels, the great and powerful.”

I raised my chin. My voice was a challenge. “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?”

He grinned a crazy feral smile and kissed me. His mouth sealed on mine, his lips hot, capturing my breath. We connected and the pure exhilaration of that contact resonated through me in an electrifying rush. The dread of the claiming’s consequences and the memories of Mishmar that hung around me like a dark tattered shroud vanished, annihilated in a rush of lust, need, and love.

He buried his hand in my hair, pulling me closer. My body snapped to attention as if I had been asleep for ages and suddenly woke up. I loved the way he kissed me. I loved how he tasted. His tongue thrust into my mouth, possessing, seducing, enticing, pulling me in, deeper and deeper. I loved him so much. I loved him more than I could say. I locked my arms around him and kissed him back. I love you. I want you.

We broke apart. He made a low masculine noise, halfway between the happy half-growl of a predator catching his prey and the deep chuckle of a man confident he was about to get laid.

“I’ll tell you what you can do for me,” he growled. “Better, I’ll show you.”

My breath was coming in ragged gasps. My nipples tightened. I wanted him in me now. “Decided to do some claiming of your own?”

“Yes.” His eyes shone with gold. “Mine.”

He pounced on me, trapping me again, and kissed me. His hands roamed my body, caressing my back and my butt. It wasn’t a kiss; it was an assault. If I had put up any defenses, he would’ve demolished them, but I offered none. I just let him ravage my mouth and I reveled in it. He tasted male, hot, and eager. He tasted like Curran, my Curran. If someone threw a mountain between us now, he would rip right through it just to get to me and I loved it.

I slid my hand into his sweatpants, found the hard length of his cock, and ran my hand up and down its shaft.

He pulled my shirt off me, tore off my bra, and sucked at my nipple, grazing it with his teeth. An electric burst of pleasure radiated from my breast all through me. I shivered. I sank my fingers into his hair. He pulled my jeans open and slid his hand inside, sliding it against the short curls of hair, over the sensitive folds, and dipped his fingers into me. I gasped. He dragged the slick liquid warmth up and stroked my clitoris. Bursts of pleasure rocked me, sliding through my body, turning it pliant, flexible, and hot. I ground against his fingers, lost in chasing the ecstasy, wanting more. More . . .

He tripped me onto the bed. I fell onto the comforter. My boots went flying. He pulled off my jeans. I was naked, gloriously unashamedly naked. I raised my arms, inviting him in. He pulled off his shirt and paused for a tiny moment, nude, powerful, muscular, long, and mine. All mine. His eyes glowed, drowned with gold. His muscles tightened on his frame, like steel under the heated silk of skin. I knew every harsh edge of that body and the sheer overwhelming strength of it. Curran’s body made me drunk from lust, his eyes seduced me, but the stubborn unbending will that drove it made me love him.

He knelt on the bed, slid his hands under my butt, and lifted me up. His tongue licked the sensitive bundle of nerves.

Oh my God. The wave of pleasure hit me and dragged me under. I cried out.

Each strumming of his tongue stoked the tension inside me. I was burning up and I was moaning his name over and over. My body tightened in anticipation, each caress winding me a little more, until I could no longer stand it.

“I want to come with you inside me.”

“That can be arranged.”

He mounted me and thrust himself inside me. The hard length of his shaft filled me. He pulled back and thrust inside me again, and I arched my back, grinding against him, faster and faster. I kissed his neck, my tongue sliding over sharp stubble. I opened my eyes and saw him, above me. Sweat slicked me.

“Harder!” I whispered.

He sped up, his pace frenetic, rocking me with every thrust. I gripped his back, desperate, wanting to be one, and matching his pace. It felt so right. This was what heaven had to be like . . . My body clamped around him. The tension was too much, almost a pain. Suddenly it crested and broke in quick contractions full of pure bliss. I cried out. Curran’s body shook, tense, muscles taut.

It felt like I was flying . . .

He growled and emptied himself inside me.

We floated through the world, spent and happy. One.

• • •

METAL RATTLED. AGAIN.

Curran raised his head and swore.

I raised my head. Once the afterglow wore off, we both realized that the apartment could be a lot warmer. We had pulled the comforter and sheets over us. Curran held me and I had just begun to slip into soft comfortable sleep.

Another rattling. It came from the window.

God, what was it now? Could we not have a few minutes of peace?

“I’m going to twist someone’s head off.” Curran rolled out of the bed and strode to the window. He was still nude. Well, at least I got a little thrill out of it.

I sat up with the sheet around me.

He pulled the drapes aside and swore again.

“What?”

He stepped aside. A vampire sat outside our window, banging on the bars with his fist. How the hell was he doing this with the wards active? Oh wait, my aunt had broken all my wards. If we kept this place, I’d have to redo them. That would be a pain.

Curran looked at the vampire. “What do you want?”

The vampire’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear it.

“No,” Curran said.

The vampire said something.

Curran’s eyebrows came together. “Ghastek, if you don’t go away, I’ll rip that thing’s head off and shove it up its ass.”

The vampire launched into a long tirade.

I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to sleep. But Ghastek was now in charge of the People. I so didn’t want to go back to being the Consort. Just for one night, I wanted to be Kate.

Ghastek kept talking. He wouldn’t go away. He would keep on and on. I surrendered to my fate. “Let him in. The sooner he gets it off his chest, the faster we can go back to sleep.”

Curran slid the window up and unlocked the metal grate. The vampire slipped in and strode toward me on its hind legs. “His daughter!”

“Was that a question?”

“His daughter! The lost child. The Sharrim!” The vampire scuttled forward and pointed a finger at me. “You didn’t tell me! We were dying and you didn’t tell me!”

I shrugged. “I can’t help it if you’re the last person to figure it out.”

“Who else knew?”

“I’ve known for a while.” Curran picked up his sweatpants and put them on. “Jim knew before me. Mahon. Aunt B. Doolittle. Andrea. Barabas. The Witch Oracle knows. Saiman at least suspects. Obviously Hugh d’Ambray figured it out.”

The vampire ran to one side of the room, turned, and ran to the other. Ghastek must’ve been pacing back and forth and so caught up in his own thoughts, that he subconsciously pushed the vampire to do the same.

“It’s basic intelligence work,” Curran said. “You should’ve put it together. The pieces were there. You need to invest in information gathering. I get that you concentrate on research and development, but you can’t run the People without a solid intelligence network in place. If you can’t do it, get someone who can. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, because really, your ignorance is my bliss.”

The vampire stopped and stared at Curran.

“You didn’t even know your rival had a bestiality fetish,” Curran said. “You were fighting him for the top spot. You needed leverage. If you had known about his trips to the hit-’n’-split, you could’ve gathered evidence. You could’ve publicly embarrassed him, you could’ve sent the evidence to his wife and destroyed his marriage, you could’ve packaged it and sent it to HQ informing them that you had a potential security breach, you could’ve blackmailed him, you could’ve sat him down in private and told him that you have this evidence, but you know how important his family is to him and you’ll destroy it out of solidarity, so he would be eating out of your hand. That’s how you control the situation, Ghastek. You didn’t control it, because you didn’t know.”

And there it was, the Beast Lord in all his glory.

“Are you done?” Ghastek asked.

“You deserve it,” I told him. “You come here demanding to know why you weren’t told. People don’t tell you their secrets, Ghastek. You have to find them out.”

The vampire spun to me. “Do you even realize the enormity of what you’ve done?”

“Yes, I do. That’s why the man I love and I came here to have quiet time before the storm hits. And you’re interrupting it.”

“You challenged him. He can’t let it go unanswered.”

“I know.”

“He’ll come here and scorch this place.”

“I know, Ghastek. I’m his daughter. I know him better than you do.”

The vampire opened his mouth.

“Stop,” I told him.

The vampire stopped, silhouetted against a window. “Do you have it?”

“Have what?” Curran said.

He was asking if I had the Gift. The promise of immortality that kept people like him anchored to my father. I looked at the vampire. “You’re alive, are you not?”

The vampire froze, his mouth slack.

The door fell off its hinges and four shapeshifters tore into the room, Myles the wolf render in the lead.

Curran spun on his foot and roared, “Stop!”

They froze.

Curran in sweatpants, me in a sheet, obviously naked under it, a vampire in the middle of the floor and four combat-rated shapeshifters. I put my hand over my face.

Curran’s face was terrible. “Explain.”

“We were instructed to provide necessary assistance,” Myles said.

“By whom?”

“Jim.”

Great. Jim had us followed.

“We saw an undead enter the room,” Myles said.

Curran’s eyes blazed with gold. His expression turned flat. His anger had imploded. He’d taken his towering rage and distilled it to cold precision. The shapeshifters didn’t move a muscle.

“Did the vampire break down the door?” I asked. “Or did it knock and was let in?”

The shapeshifters stayed perfectly still.

Curran spoke slowly, pronouncing each word exactly. “What made you think that the two of us together couldn’t handle a single vampire?”

Myles swallowed. “It was my call. I take full responsibility.”

“Go back to the Keep,” Curran said, his voice eerily calm.

The shapeshifters turned around and fled.

Ghastek’s vampire slipped out the window. Curran and I looked at each other.

They’d broken the door to the apartment he’d made for me. For some reason that hit me harder than knowing the Pack Council didn’t want him to come and rescue me.

“I’ll have it repaired,” he said.

They would break it down again the next time. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just a door. We might as well go back to the Keep.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I smiled at him. “I knew what I signed up for.”

He was worth it.

• • •

WE TOOK OUR time. By the time we rolled into the Keep’s courtyard, the night was in full swing. We trudged up the stairs, while Derek trailed after us and spit out facts: triple patrols, Keep on high alert, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah . . . I stopped listening. The last drops of my patience had evaporated long ago.

We went straight to our rooms. Curran shut the door. I landed on our couch. Outside the large living room window the night reigned, Atlanta a distant smudge of deeper darkness studded with pale blue feylantern lights.

Home . . .

The door swung open. Barabas stepped inside, his face serious, his eyes slightly distant, as if he were looking at something far away. Something was wrong. He always knocked.

“The visitor you were waiting for is here,” Barabas said.

He stepped aside and held the door open. A person wrapped in a plain brown cloak with a deep hood walked in. Barabas bowed a little, walked out, and shut the door behind him. The figure pulled back the hood, revealing my father’s face.

Why me?

Curran started toward Roland. His eyes were on fire.

I shot between them and blocked him with my body. “Stop.”

“Move, Kate,” Curran said, his voice calm.

Roland smiled. “I mean no harm. I just came to see my daughter. No audience, no need for any grand gestures. I simply wish to talk.”

I turned my back to him so I could see Curran’s face. “Please, stop.”

He finally looked at me.

“Stop,” I asked him.

He took a step back, leaned against the couch’s side, and crossed his arms. “Touch her, and I’ll end you.”

“May I sit down?” Roland asked me.

His magic wrapped around him like a mantle, muted. I still felt it, but he seemed much more human now. This must’ve been his version of traveling incognito. Nobody would ever know. Yeah, right.

I sat on the couch. “Sure.”

“Thank you.” He sat in the soft chair across from me.

Roland had walked past our tripled patrols like they were nothing and then compelled Barabas to let him in. All of the defenses we’d built, all the walls and gates and safeguards, meant diddly-squat. He could just walk into the Keep at any time. He could walk in and sit by Julie’s bed and I would never know it.

Curran’s face turned expressionless. He pulled his Beast Lord’s face on like a mask. He must’ve come to the same conclusion. Whatever little illusions of safety we’d had just turned to ashes.

Roland sat. “It’s a well-made fortress. Considerably more comfortable on the inside than it appears from the outside.”

Lovely paintings you have here on the walls. Don’t mind me, I’m just making small talk. “Did you hurt anybody on the way up?” I asked.

“No. I came to talk, and if I had hurt one of your people, you wouldn’t speak to me.” Roland glanced at the sword hilt protruding over my shoulder. “You visited your grandmother.”

I pulled Sarrat out and showed it to him. He passed his hand over the blade, his face mournful.

“I wish you hadn’t gone to see her. She’s dangerous.”

Yes, she is. Legend said she’d murdered my grandfather. All things considered, he probably deserved it. “It wasn’t by choice.”

“That was an unfortunate turn of events,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have taken her bones out of Persia. She misses it.”

Roland sighed. “Persia is a challenging place right now. Old powers are awakening. Those who had slept, those who were dead or perhaps not quite dead. Mishmar is the safest place for her right now.”

“Close enough so you can crush her if she tries to rise?”

“Exactly.”

This was a surreal conversation.

“How’s the child?” Roland asked.

What?

“The young girl whose blood you purified. How is she?”

I leaned forward. “Leave her out of this. Don’t talk to her, don’t haunt her dreams, or I swear, I’ll finish what my mother started. Was it the left eye or the right? Tell me, so I’ll know which to target.”

“The left.” Roland tapped his cheek below the left eye. “You’re so very like your mother. She was fierce, too.”

“You killed her.”

“Yes,” he said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t mourn her death.”

“And you tried to murder me before I was born.”

“Yes.”

“And you sent your warlord to hunt down and kill the man who raised me.”

“Yes.”

“And now you wish to have a conversation.”

Roland’s eyes turned warm. “I loved your mother. I loved your mother so much that when she wanted a child, I promised her I would give her the kind of child this world hasn’t seen for thousands of years.” He reached over and held out his hand.

Curran stepped forward.

I put my hand into Roland’s palm. His touch was warm. Magic slid against my skin.

“I poured my magic into you from the day you were conceived.”

Words appeared on my hand, turning dark and then melting back into nothing.

“I inscribed the language of power on your body while you were still in the womb. You were to be my crowning achievement, my gift to Kalina. I was in love and I was blind. Then I foresaw what I had made. Your aunt was the City Eater, your grandmother was the Scourge of Babylon, and you . . . You would destroy nations. If I let you live, if I raised you with your mother, like Kali’s fury, your rage would devour all. I tried to tell your mother. I tried to explain, but she didn’t want to listen. You were her baby, her precious one. You weren’t even born and she loved you so much. So yes. I planned to kill you in the womb. I planned to do it gently.”

“Oh well, then it’s perfectly fine,” Curran said. “As long as you choked the life out of her gently, I guess there’s no hard feelings.”

I leaned forward. “How did I turn out? Are you proud of the monster you made?”

Roland smiled. Hugh and Landon were right. It was like the sun had risen. Like digging a hole in your backyard and finding a glittering jewel in the dirt.

“Child, my dangerous one, my beautiful one. You’ve claimed your city. You shouldn’t have been able to do that for another hundred years. I’m so proud that my pride could topple mountains. If you let me, I would show you to the world. I would show the world to you.”

“So I could see it through your eyes?”

“So you could see it through your own.”

I leaned forward. “From the time I could walk till I was fifteen years old, every memory I have is about you. If I wasn’t studying about you, your children, and your kingdom, I was training to kill you or hiding from you. I was never afraid of monsters in my closet or under my bed. I was afraid you would find me. The entire purpose of my existence was so I could one day murder you.”

“Here I am. You have a sword. Why don’t you use it?”

I met his gaze. There was no point in lying. “Because I’m done living my life according to Voron’s expectations. I don’t know you. I know only what I was told. If you threaten Curran or anyone else I love, if you try to destroy this city, I’ll do everything in my power to kill you, no matter how futile it is. But I won’t do it because a dead man told me so.”

He leaned back and laughed softly. “You truly are my daughter.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

He smiled at me the way one would smile at a talented but naive child. I pictured kicking him in the head. I’d die a second later, but it would be so satisfying.

“Shall we bargain for the future of the city you love?” he asked.

“That is why you came here, isn’t it?”

He rubbed his hands, his eyes bright. He looked . . . happy. “Very well. Do you know what you did?”

“I’ve blocked your claim on Atlanta and claimed it instead.”

“Anyone crossing into Atlanta now will feel the borders of your territory. They won’t necessarily know the territory is yours, which will give you the element of surprise. A territory claimed is a challenge. It will be answered, if not by me, then by others.”

“I realize that.”

“For my part, I can’t allow you to remain in a position of visible power. You and I are invaders in this land. Our magic wasn’t born here.” Roland nodded to Curran. “Your magic was. Somewhere back in the mists of time your ancestors made a pact with a creature of this land. The blood might have been diluted through generations and mixed with that of the newcomers, but not enough to matter. You pose a threat.”

“Which is why you’ve been trying to destroy the Pack,” Curran said.

“To be fair, I haven’t really tried,” Roland said.

“The rakshasas,” I said.

“They were more of a nuisance than a real threat. They sought an alliance with me. I found them annoying, so I gave them a target as a condition of the alliance. They failed as brilliantly as I had expected.”

“And my aunt?”

My father leaned forward. “Eahrratim.” He said her name with grief as if something of great beauty had been lost forever. “Your aunt didn’t want to wake up. She did in spite of herself and when she rose, she was a mere shadow of herself. She didn’t like this new world. She was going through the motions of living, but she couldn’t permit herself to give up on life. We were taught from the earliest age that life is precious. Death must truly mean something. I wish you could’ve seen her at the height of her power. She was a force. Erra wanted something to do. I told her of the Pack. She thought it over for a few weeks and one day she told me she would go and see if she could find anything of amusement in Atlanta. She must’ve been so thrilled to have found you, her niece, in this distant age. You look like her.”

“I know,” I said. I had looked so much like her, it was eerie. Except she was more. Larger, stronger, faster, with magic that made whatever I could do pathetic. Killing her was the hardest thing I had ever done and it took both Curran and me to do it. I nearly lost Curran because of her. He’d spent eleven days in a coma.

“She could pass the torch and finally let go. There is no shame in being killed by one of your own bloodline. The night before you fought, she called me.” His eyes clouded. “She wanted to talk about the Water Gardens. In the palace where we grew up, there had been water gardens, acres and acres of shallow water, crossed by narrow pathways. It was a beautiful place, of sand and warm water, where flowers bloomed and small fishes darted back and forth. We used to splash through it for hours. My fondest memories had been born there. I knew when she spoke of it, I wouldn’t see her again. I felt the moment she surrendered her life and then I understood that you were still alive. She was the City Eater. You must’ve realized her death came too easily.”

I nearly choked.

Roland sighed. “I suppose we should return to the business at hand. You can’t fight me. I can sear the walls of this Keep until they melt with everyone inside it. In a day, everything you’ve built and everyone you serve will be gone. The city will do nothing about it, for such is the nature of human prejudice.”

“He won’t do it,” I told Curran. “When he decides to do away with us, he’ll do something elaborate, like send us magic seeds, which will sprout beautiful flowers with poisonous pollen. The pollen will root through our veins, we’ll die in agony, but our corpses will be covered in gorgeous blooms. If he’s feeling like making a statement, the flowers will drip blood just for fun.”

Roland smiled. “Death should have a terrible beauty to it, don’t you think?”

“What is it you want from us?” I asked.

“I want to know you. You are precious to me, as your mother was before you. But I can’t let you lead the Pack.” He looked at Curran. “You alone are enough of a threat. The two of you together at the helm of that many shapeshifters is too clear a statement for me to ignore. You’ll be seen as actively opposing me.”

“And?” Curran asked.

Roland looked at me. “I want you to leave the Pack.”

My heartbeat sped up. Curran would never walk away from the Pack. He was the Beast Lord. He’d hammered it together; he gave it laws and structure, he lived and breathed it. The shapeshifters were his people. If I stayed with him, I would be Consort, even if I refused to have anything to do with the Pack. It would never work and my father knew it. The only way I could step down would be to leave Curran.

“In return, I’ll let you keep your claimed territory,” Roland said. “And your city.”

“Not good enough,” Curran said.

He was actually thinking about it. It made sense. We would avoid a bloody war. We could keep so many lives safe . . .

“Very well, let’s put a number on it. I promise to take no direct action personally, nor instruct my people to take any action against anyone within the territory my daughter has claimed, for the next hundred years. Should any of my people challenge you, they would do so without my permission and incur my wrath. I will, however, keep the installation of the People in Atlanta and their business will proceed as usual.”

My mind started working. “I want more. I want you to promise that neither you nor your people acting on your orders will ever harm Curran or Julie, in my territory or outside of it.”

“I’m being rather generous. It’s already a good trade,” Roland said to me. “You wish to protect your people. I’m the biggest threat you face. Eliminate me as a danger. If you refuse, blossom of my heart, I will come to Atlanta and I will bring fire and ruin to it. I will purge the Keep the way I purged Omaha.”

The earthquakes of Omaha had killed thousands. But they had always been viewed as a freak cataclysm brought on by a flare, a massive magic wave.

“You . . . ?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“There was a Native power that chose to oppose me,” Roland said. “I didn’t strike the first blow. I merely retaliated. Is that disturbing to you?”

“Yes.”

“You will understand eventually. No challenge, no matter how insignificant, can be left unanswered. Even a cry in the wilderness must be acknowledged, because someone might have heard it.” Roland smiled. “I’m fortunate you survived. It will be so interesting to watch you grow. We have nothing but time on our hands.”

“You’re telling me to give up the man I love,” I said.

“I can’t say I approve of your choice. He’s powerful, but also paranoid and xenophobic. He will be difficult to bend.”

“Oh that’s rich,” Curran said.

I unclenched my teeth. “I can go years without worrying if you approve of me. And I have no interest in bending him. I like him the way he is. You have no right to comment on my relationships.”

“I’m your father. That’s the great privilege of parenthood; we can comment on whatever we want.”

“I don’t want you to be my father.”

“Of course you do,” Roland said. “You want to be loved, just like all of us want to be loved by our parents. Don’t you want to know about your mother? What she was like? About our family?”

“Our family consists of monsters.”

“Yes. But we are great and powerful monsters. Love demands sacrifices. When you love something, the way you love your people, Blossom, you must pay for it. Besides, I’m not forcing you to leave him, only the position of power that comes with him.”

“How exactly does this get around me challenging you?”

“You claimed a territory. I made you step down in retaliation. This demonstrates to those who are watching that I have power over you and our relationship is much more complex than the simple rebellion of you against me.”

“You are incredibly powerful,” I told him. “But I’m your daughter. If you hurt Curran or Julie, I will hunt you. I will dedicate every waking moment of my life to killing you, and I will succeed. Maybe not now. Maybe in another century or two. But I will never give up. Your powers work half of the time, when the magic is up. My sword works always. Promise me, Father. Promise it.”

Roland looked at Curran. “So be it. But this is the last concession I’m willing to make.”

“We have a deal,” Curran said. My heart broke into small jagged pieces.

Roland smiled again. “I always gave my children what I thought they wanted. Usually they wanted power. I am giving you what you need instead. Consider it an early wedding gift.”

There wouldn’t be a wedding. The Beast Lord and the Pack were one and the same. Even if we tried to make it work, we’d fail. The Pack would pull and pressure him to spend time at the Keep, where I couldn’t be, while I would pull and pressure him to stay with me.

Roland rose. “The two of you have some choices to make. I shall leave you to it. Oh, and I would like to be invited to the wedding.”

“No,” Curran and I said at the same time.

Roland paused by the door, his face wise, his eyes timeless. “I’ve often asked myself why I could never raise my children to be the people I envisioned them being. I believe it was because they were with me. Power corrupts, it is true, but none succumb to its rot as readily as the young. You don’t see it this way, but what I am giving you now is a blessing. You will understand in time.”

He put his hand on the door handle. “Almost forgot. Teleportation by water requires an incantation and the ignorance or agreement of the one being teleported. Aar natale.”

The words clicked in my mind, their meaning clear. “Interrupt?”

My father nodded. “That’s all you have to say to stop a teleportation incantation.”

He walked out.

If I stayed with Curran, Atlanta would burn and the Pack would die. I could do nothing to stop it.

“Fighting him will be difficult,” Curran said.

“Yes.” Understatement of the year.

“Do you like being the Consort?” he asked.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

He came over, crouched by me, and took my hands into his. “Kate, do you like being the Consort?”

I couldn’t ask him to give up the Pack for me. But I couldn’t lie to him either. “No. I never wanted to be the Consort. I just wanted you.”

“Then problem solved. Barabas!” Curran called.

The door opened and Barabas stepped inside, his face puzzled. “I just saw a man leave. I’ve been at the guard station since we got here. I’m positive he didn’t come in. Unless I’m insane, none of us let him in.”

“I want you to release a general announcement to the Pack,” Curran said.

“Should I get a pen and paper?”

“No, it will be short.”

“I’m ready,” Barabas said.

Curran looked at me. “Effective tomorrow, we are retired. Jim has our blessing.”

What?

Barabas opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“Take your time,” Curran said.

“You what?”

“We are stepping down,” Curran said.

“You can’t!”

“We just did.”

“But—”

“We’ll talk about the details in the morning.”

“But what do I tell them?”

Curran sighed. “Which them?”

“Them!” Barabas waved his arms. “Everybody.”

“Tell them we quit. Thank you, Barabas. That will be all.”

Barabas blinked several times, turned around, and left the room. The door behind him closed.

“You’re leaving the Pack?” I couldn’t believe it.

“No, we are leaving. Together. It’s freedom, Kate. Freedom from paperwork, freedom from sorting through petitions. We can have a day off whenever we want. We can have sex whenever we want. You can run Cutting Edge, I’ll help you apprehend bunnycats, we can go to Julie’s plays or whatever the hell she does, without having to make excuses . . .”

I put my hand on his lips. “But you’re the Beast Lord.”

He kissed my fingers and took my hand off his mouth. “I haven’t liked being the Beast Lord for a while now. I built all this so my family—so you—would be protected. Then I almost had to kill my own Council so that I could leave to save my mate. In the end, Roland just walked past all of my defenses. Screw this. I’m done with it. This is the best way to protect you and Julie for now.”

“You created all of this. I can’t ask you to give up your life for me.”

He smiled. “I know. You did it for me. You moved into the Keep with me. My turn.”

Words came running out of me, one over the other. “You realize that my father won’t leave us alone? He can’t help himself. He meddles. He won’t attack us directly. Instead, he’ll find some ancient god with an axe to grind and suggest to him that Atlanta might be a nice place to put down roots, just so he can watch us take him down. Didn’t you see him? He was so happy I passed his little test. He’s already thinking of ways he can manipulate and use me and you.”

“That’s fine,” Curran said. “He’ll meddle with us instead of the Pack and we’ll deal with it. The real question is, will you still love me if I’m not Beast Lord?”

I put my arms around him. “Of course I’ll still love you, you stupid idiot. The Beast Lord is an arrogant jerk. I never wanted him. I only wanted Curran.”

“Stay with me,” he said.

“Always,” I told him.