Magic Triumphs

CHAPTER 8

THE PROBLEM WITH having a son who’d discovered he was a shapeshifter was twofold. First, Conlan was a hyperactive toddler. Second, lions are cats, and cats like pouncing. They especially like pouncing on their happily sleeping parents and then bouncing up and down on the bed, flexing their claws.

“It’s six . . .” bounce “in the morning.” Bounce. “I thought . . .” bounce “you hunted . . . in the evening.”

“We’re . . .” bounce “adaptable.” Bounce. “Lions . . . are . . . crepuscular . . . active in . . . twilight.”

“Can we . . . make him . . . less active?”

Curran grabbed Conlan and pinned him down. “Stop annoying your mother.”

“Rawrarawara!”

“Why is he shifting all the time? Shouldn’t he shift once or twice every twenty-four hours and then pass out?”

“He’s special,” Curran said, holding Conlan down with one hand.

I groaned and put a pillow on my face. We’d had a late night and it was so worth it. But I could’ve really used another hour of sleep. Or five.

“I can take him to the backyard,” Curran offered.

“No, I’m up.” I crawled out of bed. “He must’ve been too tired from all the shape-changing to wake up last night. Now we’re paying for it.”

“See? There are some benefits to shifting.”

“Sure . . .” I dragged myself into the bathroom. I would need a big cup of coffee and at least two aspirins to make it through the morning.

When I came downstairs, Derek and Julie were in our kitchen. The box was still on the table, together with several symbol encyclopedias. I gave Derek a bleary-eyed look of doom. “Why are you up?”

“Curran wants me to come to the Guild.”

I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down next to Julie. “Anything?”

“It might be a symbol for intellect in Islamic mysticism. If you break the symbol into blaze symbols, it spells out Very Good—Doubtful—Very Good. It may or may not be a part of Illuminati cipher. I’m reasonably sure it’s not a hobo sign.”

I sighed. We had people being murdered and ancient abominations running through the streets, but yay, at least the hobos weren’t about to invade.

I looked through the stack of Julie’s notes. The symbol looked like something. I just couldn’t recall where I’d seen it.

Curran walked into the kitchen, carrying Conlan in human-baby form. The kid changed shapes faster than I could count.

“Roland is preparing for an invasion,” Curran said. “We found out yesterday.”

Both Julie and Derek paused.

“So, what does that mean?” Julie asked. “War? When?”

“We don’t know,” I said. “It depends on how he goes about it. He hasn’t brought Hugh back from his exile, or we would’ve heard about it, so at least we’re winning there.”

“D’Ambray might still prove a problem,” Curran said.

“I doubt it. It’s been years since he gave any signs of life,” I murmured, flipping through the pages. One of Julie’s drawings showed a wavy line inside the circles with two dots in the center. I’d definitely seen that before, but where?

“Maybe he’s married and living happily in some castle somewhere,” Julie said.

I barked a short laugh. “Hugh?”

She didn’t answer, so I looked up. Julie had a stubborn look on her face, the line of her jaw firm. Right. Me and my big mouth. Hugh had been bound to my father in the same way Julie was bound to me. He was her only example of what the future held for someone who was bound by our blood. I kept forgetting that every time Hugh was brought up, I needed to take care with what I said.

“I know you want him to find redemption, but that’s not who Hugh is. He is a wrecking ball. He destroys. If he hasn’t come back to kill me or any of us by now, he’s probably dead. Marriage and settling down isn’t for him. It doesn’t mean it’s not for you, but it’s not for him.”

“Sometimes you can be really closed-minded,” she said.

“Sometimes you hero-worship the wrong person, and when they fail you, it hurts.”

She gulped the rest of her tea and got up. “I’ve got to go to the Warren. Somebody is drawing these signs on the walls. I put out some feelers yesterday, so I have to go see if they pay off.”

“Wait. What about this?” I showed her the wavy drawing.

Julie grimaced. “When I see magic, sometimes it’s clear or radiant and sometimes it’s hazy, more like fog. The magic on the box was like fog. It shifted and wavered and kind of curled inside the circles into a pattern. I don’t know if it’s intended or just magic interference.” She turned to the door.

“Be careful,” I told her.

“I was planning on blundering straight into danger without any preparation, but now that you told me, I will totally be careful.”

“Blunder all you want,” I told her. “When you get into trouble, I’m not saving you.”

“Ha! You will totally save me.” She stuck her tongue out at me and headed out the kitchen door to the stables for her horse.

“The pervert’s right,” Curran said. “You’re contagious.”

“Mm-hm.” The symbol definitely looked like something now. I stared at the wavy pattern. Where had I seen it before . . . ?

Curran rested his hand on my shoulder. I touched his hand.

“What’s the plan for today?” he asked me.

“I’m going to the office and chaining myself to the phone. I’ve called everyone and their mom about Serenbe, so I’m going to touch base and see if anyone found any similar occurrences. Then I’m going to call about yeddimur and see if anyone got any insights from our creatures. Then I might drop by the PAD and see if they recognize our blond dude.”

“Take the Jeep. I’ll ride with Derek and buy us a second car this afternoon.”

“Thanks.” Score, I got the Jeep. “Adora should be coming back from a gig this morning.”

I’d called the Guild last night, and the Clerk told me Adora was on a harpy stakeout and due to return to the Guild this morning.

“I’ll tell her to come here to watch Yu Fong. George and Martha will be out today,” Curran said. “I can take the boy with me to the Guild.”

“Don’t you have the budget meeting?”

“I don’t mind.”

The Guild budget meetings were like intrigues from the Spanish Court: complex, rife with tension, and frequently dramatic. The last thing we needed was Conlan reacting to all that. My imagination painted my son in half-form dashing about as a bunch of mercs chased him with nets.

“I can take him with me to Cutting Edge, and then I’ll meet up with you at the Guild. It will buy you some time for the meeting.”

“As you wish,” Curran said.

WHEN I GOT to Cutting Edge, the light on my answering machine was blinking. When I pushed play, it hissed with static and told me in Luther’s voice, “Come see me. I’ve got something for you.” Experience told me that calling Luther would be pointless. Since nobody else left me any enlightening messages, I packed Conlan back into his car seat and we set off for Luther’s lair.

Biohazard, or the Center for Magical Containment and Disease Prevention, as it was officially known, occupied a large building constructed of local gray granite. A tall stone wall, topped with razor wire and studded with silver spikes, stretched from the sides to enclose a large area in the back of the center. Several howitzers and sorcerous ballistae topped the roof. The place looked like a fortress. Biohazard took the containment part of their job seriously.

I grabbed Conlan out of his car seat and walked through the big doors into the cavernous lobby. Conlan stuck his hand into his mouth and looked around at the high granite walls, big eyes opened wide. The guard on duty at the desk waved me on without a second glance. I was a frequent visitor.

I carried Conlan up the stone stairs, past people hurrying back and forth, and turned right into a long hallway. Luther’s lab lay through the second doorway on the right. Its tall heavy door stood wide open. Music drifted on the breeze, David Bowie singing about putting out fire with gasoline. Conlan squirmed in my hands.

The magic washed over us. The music died, cut off midnote. The black specks of tourmaline embedded in the granite buzzed with energy and glowed as the magic coursed through them. Conlan swiveled his head like a surprised kitten.

“Baddadada . . .”

“Shiny.”

“Shaaai.”

“That’s right. Shiny.”

I walked to the wall and let him touch it. He tried to scratch the dark shiny specks out of it, then leaned forward to the wall and licked it.

A woman wearing scrubs passed by us and gave me a weird look.

“That’s one good thing,” I murmured to Conlan. “We don’t need to worry about germs anymore.”

Luther packed a lot of magic power, thought for himself, and wasn’t afraid to take risks. His work space reflected that. Several fire-retardant lab tables bordered the walls, filled with microscopes, centrifuges, and other bizarre equipment, spawned by the need to perform research through the constant seesaw of magic and tech. A decontamination shower occupied the far corner. The wall on the left supported a shotgun, a fire extinguisher, a flamethrower, and a Viking-style axe. The sign above the odd collection said, PLAN B.

Usually a metal examination table occupied the center of the room. Today it was pushed to the side. A large chalk-and-salt circle marked the sealed concrete floor. Luther stood in the circle, eyes closed, hands raised in front of him. He wore scrubs that had been washed and bleached so many times, nobody could determine their original color without some serious divination.

“This is Luther,” I told Conlan. “He’s an important wizard. He’s also weird. Really weird.”

“I can hear you, infidel,” Luther said. “It puts its sword into the box or it doesn’t enter.”

I sighed, pulled Sarrat out of the sheath on my back, and placed it in the wooden box on the metal table by the entrance. This had been a constant ritual ever since I was pregnant. Luther claimed that Sarrat’s emissions interfered with his diagnostic equipment.

“And the knife.”

“Why the knife? It’s not magic.”

“You think it’s not magic. Everything you handle on a daily basis is stained with your magic. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

I arched my eyebrow at him.

“Box,” Luther intoned, as if it were a Buddhist prayer.

I pulled my knife out and dropped it in the box. My shark-teeth throwing blades followed, together with my belt.

“Satisfied?”

“Yes.”

“Should I put the baby in the box, too?”

“He wouldn’t fit.”

I sighed.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning my work space. I wish people would stop taking weird crap out of Unicorn Lane and then calling us panicking when it tries to eat the children.”

“You’re right, they should just let it devour their young.”

“Har-har. So funny. As it happens, I had to drop everything and do an emergency analysis of a child-threatening item yesterday, and the tech interrupted me, so I had all sorts of residual mess in this containment field.”

He clenched his hands into fists. A pulse of magic burst from him, drenching the circle. “There. Good to go.”

He stepped over the magic boundary and froze, his gaze fixed on Conlan. A moment passed. Luther sputtered and pointed.

“Yes, it’s a human infant,” I told him.

“Give!”

“I’ll let you hold him if you swear by Merlin’s beard.” Because it would be funny.

“By Merlin’s beard, whatever, give.”

I handed Conlan to him. Luther took him, carefully, as if my son were made of glass. Conlan stared at him with his big gray eyes.

“Hello there,” Luther said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Aren’t you a wonder?”

The wonder farted.

I laughed.

“When did he awake?” Luther asked.

“Around six this morning.”

“That’s not what I am asking! When did his magic manifest?”

“A couple of days ago. Something scared him, and he reacted.”

Luther gazed at my child in awe. They looked kind of adorable, my baby with his kitten eyes and head of soft dark hair and Luther, a slightly unkempt, eccentric wizard.

“It’s like holding a nuclear bomb,” Luther said.

“You ruined it.”

“He’s bursting with magic. Glowing with it. I had no idea this was inside him.”

“He doesn’t know how to cloak yet.”

Luther squinted at me. “Is that what you look like? Show me.”

Yes, and for my next trick I’ll dance and sing a song. “No.”

“I’ve analyzed your dead varmint for you. Free of charge.”

“It was your duty as a public servant. You would’ve done it anyway.”

“Kate! Don’t be difficult.”

“Fine.”

I dropped my magic cloak. Luther blinked. He stepped forward very carefully, deposited Conlan into my hands, and stepped back.

A blond woman wearing scrubs appeared in the doorway. “What is it with all the magic splashing? Damn it, Luther, can’t you control your . . .” She saw us and stopped. Her eyes widened.

“Wow,” she said softly.

“I know, right?” Luther said quietly.

For a while they just looked at us. Conlan squirmed in my arms.

“Is this what we will be one day?” the woman murmured. “Future us?”

“This is what the past us were.” Luther sighed. “Better put it away before Allen runs over here. We’ll spend the whole day trying to get him to leave.”

I hid my magic.

The woman lingered for a few moments, shook her head, and left. I sat Conlan down on the floor. He ran to the chalk circle, puzzled over the line, and reached out, waving his hand in front of his face.

“He feels the boundary,” I told Luther.

“That’s sickeningly cute.” Luther grabbed a handle on one of the square metal doors on the wall and pulled a body shelf out. On it lay the remnants of my monster.

Conlan hopped in place by the chalk line, achieving about an inch of lift.

“Do you want to jump?” Luther said.

“Don’t encourage him.”

“It’s good for him to try. It’s a major developmental milestone. Toddlers learn to take tiny jumps around two years old. It’s very exciting for them.”

“How do you even know this?”

Luther spared me a look. “I have nieces. There is no harm. All he can do is a hop.” He waved to Conlan. “Don’t listen to your mom. You can do it. Jump!”

Conlan gathered himself into a tight ball. I’d seen Curran do this a hundred times.

“You can do it!” Luther prompted.

Conlan leaped three feet into the air, cleared a full twelve feet, and landed in the circle. Luther’s jaw hung open.

Conlan giggled and jumped out of the circle. Then back in. Then out.

“So,” Luther said. “He is a shapeshifter.”

“Oh yes. You’re slipping, Luther.”

“I’m not slipping. He is emitting all sorts of magic, and I don’t sniff or lick other people’s children, even to diagnose their magic. That would be creepy.”

In and out. In and out. When we got home, I would draw a circle for Conlan. It would keep him busy for a couple of minutes.

“He is a shapeshifter,” Luther said again.

“We’ve established this fact.”

He faced me. “Kate. He is a shapeshifter with magic.”

“Dali is also a shapeshifter with magic.”

“Dali is a sacred animal. Completely different. All her magic is divine-based. She curses and purifies. He is a shapeshifter and he has magic. Mountains of magic. Oceans of magic. There has never been anything like it.”

Tell me about it. “Any progress with Serenbe?”

“So you’re just going to blatantly change the subject.”

“Yep. Any progress?”

Luther shook his head. “No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing beyond what I sent you. The GBI is interviewing the surviving relatives. Nobody was courting the dark gods. Nobody was summoning anything. Most of them had little magic. There were a few plant mages and firebugs. The usual. One of them was an ex-merc. You might have known him. He went by Shock.”

“Shock Collins?”

“Yes.”

“He left the Guild when it almost went bankrupt. I had no idea he moved out there. You know for sure he disappeared?”

“Yes. We found his wallet in his house, with driver’s license and Guild ID in it.”

This was bad news. Shock Collins had been a careful, skilled merc, who turned nasty when cornered. He’d survived several bad gigs that should’ve killed him, and he could electrocute an attacker in a pinch. He wouldn’t let himself be jumped.

“Signs of struggle in the house?”

“No.”

“What the he . . . heck?”

Luther lowered his glasses and looked at me. I pointed to Conlan over my shoulder. Motherhood made you watch your mouth.

“I do have something on your furry monster friend,” Luther said. “At first glance, it appeared to be a new species of post-Shift ugly, until we cut this hideous specimen open and played with his innards a little bit.”

He pushed a metal table over to the body shelf and flipped the metal door up, revealing a handle. He grabbed the handle, pulled it, and the body neatly slid onto the examination table. Luther rolled the table forward, to a stand with a fey lantern. I followed.

He pulled back the sheet, revealing the neat autopsy scars. With it dead, the impact wasn’t quite as strong, but the revulsion squirmed through me all the same.

“What do you feel when you look at it?”

“Hungry,” Luther said.

“You need help,” I told him.

“I haven’t eaten breakfast today, or lunch.”

“Seriously, Luther, do you get a sense of wrongness?”

“No.”

I sighed.

“Unless you’re referring to the corruption miasma so thick you can cut it with a knife and serve it with ketchup. Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course I feel the miasma. You would have to be blind, deaf, and anosmic to not react to it, and even then, you would still feel it.”

“Why does it do this?”

“Because she might have started as human.”

“I figured as much. Julie said they were blue, so they likely had a human ancestor.”

“No, not ancestor.” Luther grimaced. “She was born human.”

I pointed to the furry twisted creature. “That was born human?”

Luther coughed. “Yes. Probably.”

“So, what is it, some strange form of loupism?”

“That was the working theory for a bit, but we found no Lyc-V in her system.”

“Are you sure? Because they were really hard to kill.”

“I’m sure. The body did undergo profound changes. All of the human organs are still there, but everything has been altered. The fascia, which is . . .” Luther coughed again. He sounded choked. “. . . fibrous connective tissue enclosing organs and musculature, has been . . . reinforced . . .” He doubled over, coughing.

Behind him, a cloud of emerald-green dust poured into the room through the doorway. The powder licked the boundary of the circle and recoiled.

Luther straightened. A puff of green powder escaped his mouth. His eyes stared at me, glassy and cold.

There were four feet between me and the circle. I cleared them in a single jump, caught Conlan in midleap, and backed away toward the center of the ward.

The dust filled the room now, shifting like diaphanous emerald veils all around us. Only the surface of the circle remained clear. And Sarrat and all my weapons were conveniently stowed in Luther’s stupid box, deep in green dust. Great.

Luther stepped to the circle, rigid, like a marionette pulled by its strings. “Traitor,” he hissed in a sibilant voice.

Conlan growled in my arms.

Oh good, it wanted to talk. “Who did I betray?”

“Stupid traitorous bitch. Unworthy.”

Was this a box thing? “Of all the insults out there, this is what you come up with? Pathetic.”

“He’s done everything for you. You’re not fit to lick shit off the soles of his boots.”

“Shit eating is your job.” The more I pissed it off, the more it would talk and the faster I would figure out what the hell was going on. “Try harder.”

Luther moved in short jerks. He was fighting whatever it was. He was also a distraction. If you wanted to launch a surprise attack, it helped if your target focused her attention on someone else. Luther was meant to keep me preoccupied. When the attack came, it would be at my back. I was still holding Conlan. I would have to drop him to defend us and trust that he’d stay in the circle. He was only a year old. He had no sense. He licked walls and ate soap, for crying out loud.

“He gave you life.”

Not a box thing. A Roland thing.

“He is God. He is life. He is holy. You’re an abomination.”

Only one group of people thought Roland was holy and their path to heaven. The dust belonged to a sahanu.

I rifled through my mental roster of sahanu Adora had told me about. This didn’t match anyone in particular, but she’d said that sahanu kept their powers hidden.

“My father is a liar.” The spot between my shoulder blades itched. The sahanu had to be right behind me.

“Blasphemy!”

Religious fanatics. Reasonable and understanding people, easily persuaded by facts and logical arguments.

“There is no heaven waiting for you. He fed you lies and you gobbled it up. My father is too smart to ever become a god. When you accept godhood, your thoughts and your actions are no longer your own. You would know this if you weren’t blind and deaf. Thinking for yourself, try it. It will help.”

Using power words against my father’s assassins was risky. Some of them had the benefit of my father’s blood, which made a blowback likely. A lot of them used power words themselves. With Luther infected, there was a good chance that any power word I used would hit him as well.

Luther leaned forward, baring his teeth. “I’ll kill you. I’ll eat your flesh and then I’ll eat your baby. I’ll swallow his soft flesh and then I too will be a god.”

Cold rage burst through me. The world turned crystal clear. “And what will my father do when he finds out you tried to devour his grandson?”

“He will praise me. He ordered your death. He wants your son brought to him, but I’ll eat him instead.”

When I finally got through to my father, we would have words.

“I’ll suck the marrow out of your baby’s bones and consume his magic. Then I will be even more powerful.”

No, you won’t. I sneered at Luther. I’d had a great role model when it came to sneering. Nobody did put-downs like Eahrratim, the Rose of Tigris.

“You and what army, sirrah? I’m the Princess of Shinar, the Blood Blade of Atlanta. My line stretches thousands of years into the past. My family was building palaces while your ancestors cringed inside their mud huts. You’re weak, stupid, and less. What threat could you possibly be? You dream of power I already have. A tiger doesn’t notice a worm she crushes under her paw. Slither, little worm. Slither away as fast as you can.”

I felt the precise moment she charged out of the fog into the circle. I dropped Conlan and stepped back, twisting out of the way. My brain registered the attack in a fraction-of-a-second burst: lean blond woman, my size, my height, young, a dagger in each hand.

The right dagger stabbed the air an eighth of an inch from my chest. I grabbed her wrist with my right hand, aiming to smash her elbow with my left palm. She dropped into a crouch and slashed across my right bicep with her other dagger. A hot line of pain tore my arm, like a heated rubber band slapping against my skin. I swung into a kick. She raised her arms, covering up at the last moment, and rolled back. My foot barely tapped her. She rolled to her feet and leaped back into the green mist.

I stepped back to Conlan. He’d stayed exactly where I’d dropped him, hugging the floor. Thank you, whoever you are upstairs, for the miracle. Thank you.

Conlan sat at my feet. I stood still. My right arm burned with pain. She was damn fast, and her daggers were razor-sharp. The bleeding wasn’t heavy. I could seal it, but it wouldn’t last. The moment I used the arm, I would bleed. That was fine. I could use the blood.

The fog flowed back and forth, shifting in shimmering patterns. I waited, every sense straining for a hint of movement, a whisper of sound. Something.

Moments crawled by.

Conlan turned his head slightly to the left. I kept my gaze on the mist, watching him with my peripheral vision. He turned more. A little more.

My son was a shapeshifter and a predator. With supernatural hearing.

I kept looking to the right, toward Luther.

A moment.

Another.

Another . . .

She charged out of the mist to my left, leaping. I took a quick step with my right foot to pick up momentum and hammered a sidekick into her. My foot connected with her ribs. Bone crunched. The impact knocked her back into the haze.

I waited. Conlan was turning to the right now. That had to hurt. She’d try to cover up that side now.

A low, animalistic grunt came from Luther. It sounded half-bestial, half-obscene. The grunts kept coming. Noise screen. She was trying to muffle her footsteps.

“I can still hear you, worm.” I raised my hand and beckoned, loading every drop of arrogance I had into my voice. “Come to me. Accept your death with grace.”

Luther fell silent, but the sahanu stayed hidden. Damn. For some reason the jeering worked for my aunt much better than it did for me. I needed more practice.

Conlan turned right. I had no idea how I knew the strike would come low. I didn’t see it or hear it, but something told me he was the target. I dropped into a crouch, clutching him to me, shielding him with my body. The dagger shot out of the dust and sank into my left shoulder, barely an inch in.

Moron. Throwing only worked in movies.

I jerked the blade out and spun to my feet barely in time to block her slash as she came charging into the circle. She stabbed, and I sliced across her arm. Blood wet my dagger. Thank you for the knife, asshole.

The sahanu erupted into a flurry of slashes and stabs. I closed the distance, working her, fast and fluid.

The colors, the noises, her movements, her blue eyes; everything became so clear and sharp, it almost hurt.

When I was eight, Voron took me to a man called Nimuel. His name meant “peace” in his native Tagalog, and that was exactly what his opponents found when they came at him with a knife. As I worked her, blocking her arms with my own, wrapping my fingers around her wrists, using my wrists to channel her strikes, cutting her forearms, I heard his calm voice in my head. Under the bridge, on top of the bridge, over the bridge, inside, outside . . .

She would not touch a hair on my son’s head.

The sahanu snarled, stabbing and stabbing, and finding only air. I nicked her a dozen times, but she was so fucking fast.

Over the bridge . . . Open the window.

I countered a moment too slow. Her dagger painted a bright red line on my left arm. While she was busy cutting, I drove my dagger into her side.

She tore away from me, taking the dagger with her.

I clamped my arm on my wound and hurled my blood at her, the drops turning into needles midflight. They sank into her face.

She dashed to the mist. I charged after her, but she dove into the green. Shit.

Behind me, magic shifted.

“Not in my house!” Luther roared.

Magic exploded out of him and tore through the room, freezing the green smoke screen. The dust exploded, each emerald dot blooming into a tiny white flower. They floated down in a shockingly beautiful rain, stirred by the slightest draft, and I saw the sahanu ten feet from me, her face stunned, her mouth with sharp inhuman teeth gaping open.

Teeth.

I charged, swiping a heavy microscope off the lab counter.

It’s very hard to stop someone charging at you full force, especially when your back is against the wall.

She slashed at me, and I smashed the microscope against her dagger. The blade clattered to the floor. I reversed my swing and drove the microscope at her jaw. Blood flew. The blow knocked her back. She reeled, clawing at me. I hammered the microscope into her face. That one dropped her. I landed on her before she had a chance to roll to her feet and brought the microscope down like a hammer. Blood flew, thick and red.

Eat this, you bitch.

I hit her again and again, with methodical precision, driving the weight in my hand into the strike zone between her eyes. Her face was a mush of bone and blood, but I had to make sure she was really dead.

“Kate!”

Another blow. The red spray of her blood stained the tiny white flowers swirling around us.

“Kate!” Luther barked next to me, his voice sharp. “She’s dead.”

He was right. She was dead. I hit her again, just to be sure, straightened, and handed him the bloody microscope.

Conlan cried.

Oh no.

I sprinted to him and scooped him up off the floor. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Mama’s got you.”

He wailed. I realized my hands were bloody. I got sahanu blood on his clothes.

Conlan cried, his voice spiking, tears wetting his cheeks.

“Shhh.” I rocked him. “It’s okay. It will be okay. I’ve got you. Mommy’s got you. I won’t let anyone eat you. I’ll kill every last one of them.”

He couldn’t possibly understand that she had been about to eat him. What the hell was coming out of my mouth?

I rocked back and forth. Conlan wailed and wailed, tears falling from his gray eyes. Oh dear gods, I’d traumatized my child. I’d beaten a person to death in front of him. He would be scarred for life.

“Do you have any food?”

Luther ran over to the fridge and flung it open. Salad, a pitcher of tea, a jar of honey.

“Honey,” I told him.

He brought the jar over. I held Conlan’s hand out. “Pour some on him.”

Luther got a spoon and scooped a big dollop of honey onto Conlan’s hand.

Conlan sniffled and licked his hand. For a moment he wasn’t sure it wasn’t a dirty trick, and then he stuck his hand into his mouth.

“Babies shouldn’t have honey,” Luther said, his voice slightly wooden. “It can contain Clostridium botulinum. It’s a bacterium that causes—”

“Botulism. I know. He’s a year old. It’s safe. Also he’s a shapeshifter and his werebear grandparents have been feeding him honey since he could hold a honey muffin in his hand, no matter what I said, and then lied to my face about it.”

“How do you even know about botulism?” Luther asked.

“When I was pregnant, I couldn’t do much, so I read all the books. I know all of the bad things that can happen.” I hugged Conlan to me. “I know about roseola and RSV and gastroenteritis. His biggest problem isn’t catching whooping cough. It’s that his delusional megalomaniac grandfather is trying to kill him.”

I kissed Conlan’s hair. Nobody would touch my son. Not a hair on his head.

Conlan leaned against me and pointed at the body. “Bad.”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Bad. Very bad.”

He was okay. I’d beaten her to a pulp and he was okay. It would be okay now. I just needed to breathe. The fury was choking me.

He’d ordered a hit on me. He’d put his grandson’s life in danger. The prophecy and all the visions of the future I’d received told me my father would try to kill him, but to feed him to his pet assassins, that was beyond even Roland.

Luther pushed a stool to me.

I sat.

He looked at the dead sahanu. “The temerity to attack me with plant magic in my own house.”

“Only you would use a word like ‘temerity’ at a time like this.”

He stared at her ruined head. “I’ve never seen you scared before.”

“Well, I’ve never seen you turn a room full of mind-controlling spores into a flower snowstorm before.”

Luther blinked.

“Miasma?” I told him. “You were telling me about the changes in the creature’s body.”

He stared at me as if I were speaking Chinese, then shook himself. “The creature. Right. Why do you vomit when you see and smell somebody else vomit?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a biological survival mechanism. Primitive humans existed in family groups. They slept in the same place and they ate the same things.”

Pieces clicked together in my head. “So, if one person vomited, they likely got poisoned, so everyone needed to vomit to not die.”

“Yes. It’s the same with the miasma. Your body is telling you that whatever made that woman into that furry creature is a critical danger to you. It must be destroyed.”

A horrible thought occurred to me. “Do you think it might be contagious?”

“I can’t confirm it’s not.”

Curran and Derek would be immune. Lyc-V would kill the invading pathogen. Julie had my blood. She should be immune as well. But what about other people?

“Did Tucker’s corpse turn?”

“No. I checked on him last night in the morgue and again this morning. Whatever this bug is, it must need a living host.”

“You’re telling me that if these things are contagious, they could infect the whole city?”

“Pretty much. We might have a version of our own zombie apocalypse on our hands.”

We looked at each other.

“I need something to drink.” Luther jumped off his stool, pulled a flask from the fridge, and held it out to me. I shook my head. He brought it to his lips and took a swig. The lines of his face eased.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Artisanal Dutch cocoa. Fifty percent sugar by volume. Made it this morning just in case of an emergency. You don’t know what you’re missing.” He raised the flask. “To the shiny baby and not getting killed.”

The shiny baby. Conlan couldn’t cloak. He was emitting magic, like a lighthouse in the middle of a dark night. I hadn’t even realized it. It just came on when he had shifted for the first time, and I’d just accepted it without any thought. It felt so natural and normal somehow. If any sahanu could sense magic, they would see him. They could track him. He was enough like me and my father that they would instantly recognize the signature. We were sitting ducks here.

I jumped off the stool and ran to the box.

“What is it?”

“I have to go.” I jerked the lid open, set Conlan on the floor, and grabbed my belt. Conlan grabbed at my pants, hugging my leg.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I have to go, Luther.”

“Kate? Kate!”

I thrust my knife into its sheath and slid Sarrat into its sheath on my back. I didn’t bother with the shark teeth. They would take too long. I picked up Conlan and took off running down the hallway. People were rushing our way as the rest of Biohazard woke up to the fact that something had gone wrong. I tore past them, took the stairs two at a time, busted out the door, and dashed to the car, scanning the square for danger.

I started chanting twenty feet from the vehicle, thrust Conlan into the car seat, took a precious second to buckle him, and got into the driver’s seat, locking my seat belt. Minutes stretched by as the enchanted water engine warmed up. I’d give my left arm to be able to turn the key and get the hell out of here.

Finally, the magic motor turned over. I sped out of the parking lot and almost collided with another vehicle, an armored SUV that had more in common with a tank than a car. I veered right but still caught a glimpse of the driver. Knight-abettor Norwood. I took the corner at a dangerous speed. The last thing I needed now was the knights of the Order asking idiotic questions.

I had to get to a safe place, somewhere where Conlan and I would be protected, somewhere close. I couldn’t afford to get stuck in traffic. The Guild was too far. My office was, too. That left only one location. It was safe, secure, and only three miles from me. Three years ago, if someone had told me I would be running there for a safe haven, I would’ve laughed in their face. They had been the enemy for as long as I could remember. Life was an ironic bitch.

I stepped on the gas.