Magic Binds

CHAPTER 11

ERRA WAS RIGHT. The Shar was real. I felt the familiar pull when I crossed into my territory. I hadn’t realized how much it was wearing me down, until I had to slide it back on, like a tired plow horse who was being put back into her horse collar.

All of me hurt. My back was probably bruised from being thrown around. My stomach wound ached. I wanted to get home and sleep.

Sugar unloaded me in front of my house. I hugged her and gave her another sugar cube. “Thank you.”

Sugar neighed, bumped my face with her head, and took off into the night.

I didn’t make it more than two steps into the house, before Curran appeared out of the living room and hugged me to him. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled me over, wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed until my bones groaned.

He smelled of blood. I probably smelled worse. My whole body hurt and being hugged felt like being run over by a car. And there was no place I wanted to be more than right here.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said.

“I . . .” I resurrected my aunt who tried to kill you so hard, you were in a coma for eleven days. “. . . I’m glad to be home.”

“I’m glad you’re home, too.”

“How did it go?”

“The degenerate is at the Guild,” Curran said. “Regenerating.”

“Did any of your people . . .”

“No,” he said. “King’s got broken legs and Samantha was burned, but we got out alive.”

He rescued Saiman and got them out alive. I exhaled.

“How was it?”

“It was okay,” Curran said.

“We did okay,” Derek said from the living room, almost at the same time.

Curran opened his arms, but I held on to his hand. Not yet. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure he’d made it back in one piece. I still needed proof for a little while longer.

In the living room Derek sprawled on the floor on a blanket, his eyes closed, his body human, corded with hard muscle, and covered only with a strategically placed towel. Julie knelt by him, long tweezers in her hand.

“What’s going on?”

“Quills,” she said. “Very thin quills. There was a magic plant and he decided it would be a good idea to give it a hug. Because he is smart that way.”

So they had taken Julie with them. Considering where I’d gone and what I did while there, I didn’t have room to talk.

Derek didn’t bother opening his eyes. “I wasn’t giving it a hug. I was shielding Ella.”

“Mm-hm.” Julie plucked a thin needle from his stomach. “You shielded her really well. Because it’s not like we didn’t have Carlos with us.”

Carlos was a firebug. The plant must’ve gotten torched.

“We’ll need to work on mixed-unit tactics,” Curran said. He looked tired. It must’ve been hell. “So what did you do in Mishmar?”

Umm. Ehh. In my head I had somehow expected Erra to stay in Mishmar.

“I saw my father,” I said. Start small.

“How was that?” Curran asked.

“He’s a little upset with me.”

“Aha.”

“I broke Mishmar a little bit.”

The three of them looked at me.

“But it was mostly my grandmother who did it.”

“How much is a little bit?” Derek asked.

“There might be a crack. About maybe seven feet at the widest point.”

Derek laughed.

“And what else?” Curran asked.

Perceptive bastard.

“And this.” I pulled out the dagger and showed it to him.

“You made a magic knife?” he asked.

“Yes. In a manner of speaking.”

“But you still have to get close enough to stab Roland with it,” Derek said.

“That’s not how it works.” Help me, somebody.

Curran was looking right at me. “Kate?”

“It’s more of an advising kind of knife.”

“You should come clean,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s done and we can handle it.”

My aunt tore into existence in the center of the room. “Hello, half-breed.”

Curran exploded into a leap. Unfortunately, Derek also exploded at exactly the same time but from the opposite direction. They collided in Erra’s translucent body with a loud thud. Derek fell back and Curran stumbled a few steps.

Erra pointed at Curran with her thumb. “You want to marry this? Is there a shortage of men?”

Curran leapt forward and swiped at her head. His hand passed through my aunt’s face. Derek jumped to his feet and circled Erra, his eyes glowing.

“I fear for my grandnephew,” Erra said. “He will be an idiot.”

The phone rang. “I’ll get it.” It was probably for me anyway and I desperately needed to escape.

I ran to the kitchen to pick up the phone.

“The baby,” Sienna’s voice said into the phone. She sounded strained.

“What?”

“The baby is the next anchor. I see you holding a small baby in the Keep. It’s not yours. Hurry!”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Baby B.

“Roland’s going after Baby B!” I yelled, and dialed the Keep’s security number, one step away from Jim.

“Yes?” an unfamiliar male voice said.

“I need Jim.”

“Who is this?”

Curran plucked the phone from me. “Put Jim on now.”

The line clicked and Jim’s voice said, “Yes?”

“Is Andrea still in the medical ward?”

“Yes.”

“Roland is targeting Baby B,” Curran said, his voice even and measured. “We’re coming to you now.”

“Got it.” Jim’s voice sounded almost nonchalant.

I ran out the door. Behind me Curran appeared, keys in hand. Julie followed, Derek behind her in Pack sweatpants, pulling on a white T-shirt.

We piled into the car and Curran took off like the street behind us was on fire.

Crap. I’d left Erra behind. Too late now.

The city slid by outside the window. The speedometer said we were tearing down the half-ruined roads at nearly sixty miles per hour. Any faster and we’d flip the car. It felt like crawling.

“Why?” Julie asked from the backseat. “What could Baby B do to him?”

“Nothing,” I said. “She’s an anchor.”

“What anchor?”

I forced myself to speak in complete sentences. “Sienna says that the future is fluid. She sees flashes of it, pivotal moments during which the future can change. She calls them anchors. Me turning the old lady’s head over to the police was an anchor. So was Chernobog’s dragon. Either Roland or his oracles can also see into the future. They see the anchors and try to change them to enforce their version of the future.”

“What happens if we don’t get there in time?” Julie asked.

“We’ll get there,” Curran said, his gaze focused on the road. “By now Jim has the Keep on lockdown. No outsider is getting close to that baby.”

“It’s not the outsiders I’m worried about,” I told him. Roland’s people had managed to subvert the wolf alpha before, the leader of the most numerous clan within the Pack. There was no telling who else he had in his clutches. If something happened to Baby B . . .

“What happens if we fail to secure an anchor?” Derek asked.

“Atlanta burns, a bunch of people die, Roland kills Curran and our son.”

Crap. Crap. Would it have killed me to think before I opened my mouth? Maybe he wasn’t listening closely.

“Our son?” Curran said, his voice very calm. His face slid into his Beast Lord mask. “Erra’s grandnephew.”

I was so stupid. “Yes.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Not yet. I will be soon.”

“How does our son die?”

“Roland runs him through with a spear.”

“How long have you known?”

“That he dies? Since I went to see the witches.”

“That we will have a son.”

“The djinn showed him to me.”

He was doing almost seventy now. We were going to wreck.

“Kate,” he said. I knew that tone of voice. That was his line-in-the-sand voice. “What happened to Erra? Did you resurrect your aunt?”

“Not exactly. She isn’t technically alive.”

He glanced at me, his eyes drowning in liquid gold. He wasn’t interested in “technically.” His voice came out deep, almost demonic. “Why?”

“Because I desperately need help. Things are happening to me that I can’t explain and don’t understand. I know that my father will attack and very soon. When he does, I have to defend us and I can’t. I have the power but I don’t know how to use it, and in using it, I’m affecting the lives of every creature and plant in my lands. I’m afraid that I’ll make a mistake and kill everyone in Atlanta. I have to get guidance. She’s the only one with the knowledge I need.”

“She tried to kill us,” Curran ground out.

“I know. But she’s a princess of Shinar. The one thing she values above all else is family. Yes, she would’ve killed me if she was alive and I challenged her, but now things are different. I showed Grandmother to her. It made her furious. I showed her all of my memories and our son. She’s going to help us.”

“You can’t trust her,” Curran said.

“Yes, I can. She isn’t doing it for you or for me. She’s doing it for the survival of her bloodline. What my father is doing is an aberration. The members of our family weren’t meant to live forever. We were meant to have families and children. As long as my father lives, no other member of our bloodline will survive. Not even her. She knows about the sahanu.”

“What are the sahanu?” Curran asked.

I was hitting it out of the park today with keeping secrets. “He was afraid of her and so he created a religious sect designed to kill her. Now I am their next target. I fought one of them in Mishmar, a female. She was hard to kill.”

“Is that why you’re bruised and smell like blood?” Derek asked from the backseat.

“Yes. And some of it was Erra. She took some convincing.”

“But is she going to help us?” Julie asked.

“She already has,” I said.

Curran stared straight ahead. His hands gripped the wheel.

“You’re going to bend it,” I told him.

He hit me with an alpha stare and kept driving.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Are we okay, Curran?

“He’s got no room to talk,” Julie said.

“Quiet,” Derek told her.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Curran asked.

“No.” Now wasn’t the best time to bring up Adora. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“One of the rooms in the castle had a creature in it,” Curran said.

“What kind of creature?”

“A large cat,” Curran said. “It glowed.”

“What happened to the large glowing cat?” Why did I have a feeling I wouldn’t like the answer?

“I killed it,” Curran said.

“Aha.” First, I broke Mishmar, then Curran stole Saiman back and killed my father’s glowing cat. Maybe Roland’s head would explode.

“It was a saber-toothed tiger,” Julie said. “It glowed silver.”

Silver meant divine magic. There was no telling what that saber-toothed tiger was or where my dad had gotten him.

“Snitch,” Derek said.

She waved him off. “He killed it and then he ate it.”

I looked at Curran. “You killed an animal god and then you ate him?”

“Maybe,” Curran said.

“What do you mean maybe?”

“I doubt it was a god.”

“It glowed silver,” Julie said. “It was definitely worshipped.”

Oh boy.

Curran swerved to avoid a speed bump formed by tree roots raising the asphalt. “I could worship a lamp. That doesn’t make it a god.”

“Why did you eat it?” I asked in a small voice.

“It felt right at the time.”

“He devoured it,” Julie said. “Completely. With bones.”

If it was some sort of divine animal and he ate it, there was no telling what the flesh or the magic would do to him. There would be consequences. There were always consequences.

“Do you feel any side effects?”

“Not any I want to talk about with them in the car.”

Oh boy.

We passed the burned-out shell of the Infinity Building, the last known skyscraper built before the Shift. Halfway there.

Hold on, Baby B. We are coming.

WE TURNED ONTO the narrow side road leading to the Keep. Curran stepped on it. The car accelerated. Wolves appeared from the brush, running parallel to the vehicle. The woods ended and we shot onto a mile-long stretch of open ground between the trees and the tower of the Keep. The heavy metal gates stood shut.

Curran braked hard. The vehicle skidded and stopped two feet from the gray wall. I got the hell out of the car. The wolves sniffed me, a wall of fur and teeth separating me from the gates. The lead wolf raised her head and howled.

The gates opened enough for us to pass through, and the four of us marched inside. Robert, one of the alphas of Clan Rat and the Pack’s chief of security, stepped out of the main entrance, waiting for us.

“Anything?” Curran asked.

Robert shook his head. “Not a whisper. No sign of attack, no unusual movement, nothing.”

We hurried through the Keep’s hallways to the medical ward, passing through pair after pair of sentries.

“The magic is down,” Robert said. “If an attack comes, it will be via an agent. There are exactly six outsiders in the Keep right now: two teamsters who delivered a shipment and the four of you.”

Ouch.

“What was in the shipment?” Curran asked.

“Paper,” Robert said. “My people inspected and cleared it.”

The shapeshifters guarded the medward door. If Sienna hadn’t called me to warn me, I wouldn’t be in the Keep, I wouldn’t be holding Baby B, and no attack would come. The future was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Baby B is being targeted because my father saw the future with me holding her,” I said.

“Why is the baby important?” Robert asked.

“It’s an anchor. It’s something that has to happen for the right version of the future to happen,” I said.

“What’s the right version?”

“The one where we don’t all die,” Curran said.

Robert’s eyes narrowed. “I take it Roland prefers a different version.”

“If I walk into that room and attempt to hold Baby B, I will provoke an attack.”

“If you don’t walk into that room, the city will burn,” Curran said.

“I take full responsibility,” Robert said, and nodded at the guards. The woman on the left swung the door open.

Andrea sat on the bed in the middle of the room, fully dressed, holding Baby B. Raphael stood behind her. Jim and Dali stood to the left, and the two renders, Pearce and Jezebel, to the right. Mahon loomed by the left window, behind Jim and Dali. Desandra stood by the other window, behind Pearce and Jezebel. Doolittle sat in his wheelchair in the corner, out of the way, with Nasrin by him. Everyone looked grim.

The doors shut behind us. Sixteen people, including me. I trusted every single person in this room. I would fight to defend every single person in this room.

There were too many of us here. Jim always erred on the side of caution.

“To end the threat, Kate must hold the baby,” Robert said. “Holding the baby will provoke the attack. But not holding the baby will have catastrophic consequences for the future of the Pack.”

Andrea’s face was hard and her eyes harder.

“If the attack comes,” Robert continued. “If at all possible, we need to take the attacker alive. There are important questions that need to be answered.”

Raphael’s eyes shone with a deranged ruby light. Robert was crazy if he thought he was taking anyone alive.

“Do we have your permission, alphas of the bouda clan?” Robert asked.

Pearce and Jezebel took a step forward at the same time.

“Yes,” Andrea said, looking at me like I was a striking cobra. “You have our permission.”

Twenty feet separated me from Baby B. I took a step toward Andrea.

The room tensed. Everyone was looking at someone else. Muscles bunched on Pearce’s frame. Mahon had somehow grown larger.

Another step.

Someone do something, damn it. If you’re going to attack, do it now.

Another.

“Cough-cough!” Desandra said.

Everyone spun toward her. Pearce launched himself into a leap, midway in the air recognized that he’d been had, and twisted, landing clumsily on the floor by Desandra. Jezebel exhaled and spun away from the wolf alpha, her face slack with suddenly released pressure. Behind me Derek swore.

“It was getting too tense.” The alpha of the wolves shrugged.

I’d strangle her after this. I didn’t care if Jim objected.

“Would it kill you to not be an asshole for thirty seconds?” Andrea growled.

Desandra winked at her. “I don’t know, I’ve never tried.”

Jezebel ripped a knife out of a sheath and lunged at Baby B in Andrea’s arms. I shot forward, but it was too far. I saw the knife slice through the air. The distance it had to travel was so short and the space between me and her was so long . . .

Dali jumped in front of the knife, just as Andrea rolled back, pulling Baby B out of reach.

The knife slid into Dali’s chest.

Raphael sliced Jezebel’s throat. The impact of the strike spun her.

Dali made a small gurgling noise. Blood poured from her mouth. The blade had hit her heart. The angle of the knife was textbook perfect.

Jim’s face snapped into a jaguar’s muzzle, the transformation so fast it was instant. Before Jezebel finished turning, he grabbed her throat, thrust his clawed hand under her rib cage, and disemboweled her.

I was still running.

Curran jumped past me, a seven-foot-tall nightmare, and thrust himself between Jim and Raphael. His left hand locked on Jim’s shoulder, his right on Raphael’s throat. The muscles on his back bulged.

Jezebel crashed on the floor by Curran’s feet. The two shapeshifters struggled in his grasp. He held them. He shouldn’t have been able to hold both of them. Curran was shockingly strong, but this was off the charts even for him.

Robert jumped onto Jezebel, straddling her, trying to shield her with his own body. “Alive. We need her alive!”

Raphael sliced at Curran’s arm.

Jim brought his legs up and kicked Curran in the ribs, ripping himself free. Curran’s body shuddered from the impact, but he remained on his feet. He didn’t go down.

Jim bounced off the wall, eyes glowing. I jumped between him and Curran, Sarrat in my hand.

Dali made a quiet gasping noise and fell. Jim caught Dali’s small body. She was breathing fast in shallow gasps. Black blood poured from her mouth—the Lyc-V saturating her body dying off by the millions. The blade must have been coated with silver shavings.

“Doolittle!” Jim spun toward the medmage.

The magic was down. No medmage healing.

“Hold her,” the medmage barked. “Nasrin, scalpel.”

Raphael finally broke free of Curran. His eyes had gone completely mad. He shot forward and Mahon clamped him into a bear hug from behind.

Baby B wailed.

How the hell could it be Jezebel? Was it a polymorph in Jezebel’s shape?

Robert got off Jezebel, kneeling by her. Julie dropped by the bouda’s body into the puddle of her blood.

“Who else?” Robert demanded. “Who else belongs to Roland?”

“Why?” Tears streamed down Julie’s face. “Why?”

Jezebel opened her mouth, each breath a loud wet struggle. She was looking straight at me. She struggled to say something.

The room was full of noise—Raphael snarling, Baby B wailing, Jim growling.

“Quiet!” Curran roared.

In the silence, Jezebel’s voice sounded too loud. “Sharrim . . .”

She stretched an arm toward me, sliding in her own blood, trying to crawl toward me.

Oh God.

“Bless me . . . so serve you . . . in the afterlife . . . Bless me . . .”

“No,” I told her.

“Bless me . . .” Her body shuddered.

“I bless you.” Julie pulled Jezebel to her, cradling her head. “Her blood is my blood. You can serve me.”

Jezebel reached out with her bloody hand and patted Julie’s cheek. Her fingers slid, leaving red smudges on Julie’s pale skin. Her chest rattled. Jezebel gasped and died.

Julie screamed, her voice raw with grief.

In the corner Dali went into convulsions.

Andrea marched over and thrust Baby B at me. “Hold her!”

I took the baby. Andrea let me hold her for exactly three seconds and grabbed her back.

Jim turned to us, his face still jaguar. “Get out.”

EVERYTHING WAS FUCKED up.

We walked down the hallway toward the stairs. Derek had taken Julie’s hand, pulled her up to her feet, and was now walking next to her, holding her hand in his. She stared straight ahead, her teeth clenched. Tears streamed down her face, but she walked without a single sob. Derek walked, his face stoic, his eyes scanning the hallway in front of us for potential threats. Curran strode next to me, still in warrior form.

Pearce followed us. As we passed the sentries, they followed us, too. Shapeshifters had enhanced hearing. Everyone on the floor had heard the Beast Lord snarl.

It had been the real Jezebel. Had to be. The shapeshifters would’ve smelled a polymorph. When did my father get to Jezebel? Was it after he got to Julie? Was it before I took the city? We would never know. All I had was a fistful of questions, a dead woman I thought was a friend, and another friend dying from silver poisoning.

Why the hell did Dali jump in front of that knife? Scratch that, I knew why. Andrea would’ve never allowed her baby to be harmed. I knew that, Jim knew that, but Dali, kind, smart Dali who rarely fought, didn’t. She saw the knife and the baby and reacted. And now she was struggling for her life.

My father was ripping my life apart friend by friend. The temptation to march down to his half-finished castle and attack was overwhelming. And that was what he expected me to do. I had to use whatever will I had left to not do it, not until I knew for sure that I had a way to neutralize him.

The anger buoyed me. I could barely contain it and if I thought too much about my father, I’d see red and go blind. I had to think of something else. Anything else.

The stairs ended. We walked into the courtyard. The morning sunshine seemed too bright. It hurt my eyes.

“Out of my way,” a deep voice ordered. I glanced over my shoulder. Mahon headed straight for us.

Curran handed the keys over to Derek. “Take her to the car.”

“We’ll kill him,” Mahon said.

“We will,” Curran said.

“You’re vulnerable and exposed out there in the city. You’re welcome to move your people, all your people, shapeshifter and not, into the Clan Heavy house. If not, let me send people down there to reinforce you. I’m not talking guards on every corner, but some muscle. In case.”

Curran considered it. “Thank you. We could use the help.”

“Take care of the little one,” Mahon told me. “Jim will come around.”

The Bear clamped his hand on Curran’s shoulder, squeezed, turned, and went back inside.

We reached the car. I went to the driver’s side—in warrior form, Curran was too big to fit behind the wheel.

“All this is because of me.”

“No, all of this is because of Roland,” Curran said. “You didn’t kidnap Saiman. You didn’t attack a baby. All you did and all any of us wanted to do is live our fucking lives in peace.”

I loved him so much. “Thank you, but that’s not what I meant. I meant that every anchor so far was connected to me. If I hadn’t known about the prophecy, I wouldn’t have come to the Keep.”

“Yes. That’s why you and I are joined at the hip from now on.”

I arched an eyebrow at him.

“I mean it.” He flashed his teeth at me. “I did what you asked. I got Saiman out for you. You did . . . what you had to do. From now on we go together.”

“Okay.”

I got into the car and drove down the road. The moment we rolled out of the Pack courtyard, Julie broke. Derek wrapped his arm around her. She cried and cried, heartbroken. Julie almost never cried anymore.

If Dali died . . . I didn’t even want to think about it. If I had a choice, I would hit my father now, hard and fast, with all of our strength. Instead I had to sit on my hands, because right now we couldn’t win. Not until my aunt helped me figure out how to defeat him.

“I didn’t know,” Julie sobbed. “She took care of me for two years and I didn’t know.”

“Nobody knew,” Curran told her.

“He threw her away. Just like that. For nothing.”

I almost said I tried to tell you before and bit it back before it came out. Not the right time.

“Why her? Why? She was so nice.”

“Because she was close to you,” Derek said.

Julie buried her face in her hands and cried.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’ll make him pay. I promise you.”

“It won’t bring her back,” she whimpered.

My heart was cracking and it hurt. You bastard. You fucking bastard. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

Trees rolled by. For several minutes we didn’t talk. I drove and looked straight ahead.

“Where are we going?” Derek asked.

“We’re going to the Guild,” I said. We were going to work.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I need Saiman to read what my father wrote on my skin while I was in the womb. The sooner Erra can tell me what it is, the sooner we can kill him.”

The car fell silent.

“Well,” Curran said. “At least the pervert has a purpose.”