Magic Bleeds

CHAPTER 8

THE WEATHER DECIDED IT WASN’T UGLY ENOUGH. Usually our winters ran to rainy and dreary. Once in a while it would snow, but mostly it wouldn’t stick. For some reason, for the last few years winter in Atlanta had decided to play Russian roulette: three times out of four we’d get the usual sludge, but about a quarter of the time it hit hard with snow and deep freeze. Some said it was because of magic; some said it was the side effect of global warming. Whatever caused it, I didn’t like it. By the time I arrived at my apartment, every inch of me was frozen.

I dragged myself up the stairs and reached for the door. The ward spell licked my skin and drained down in a wave of blue, letting me in. I opened the door and saw a huge slimy pile of dog puke cooling in the middle of my hallway carpet. The attack poodle sat nearby, an expression of perfect innocence on his narrow mug.

I pointed at the puke. “That was a dick move.”

The attack poodle wagged his tail.

I stepped over the vomit and headed to the kitchen. The magic still held but the wave could end at any moment. If the magic fell, I could as well play soccer with the head for all the good it would do me.

I pulled out a large silver platter from the cabinet, set it in the middle of the table, and collected the herbs. I’d premixed most of them, but some things had to be combined on the spot or their effect would have worn off with time.

Seeing Curran again hurt. The rock in my chest just got heavier and heavier. A bastard and a liar.

I came to you with broken bones . . .

In ten minutes I spread the herb mixture on the platter, retrieved the head, and set it onto the aromatic mix, stump down. Necromantic magic came naturally to me. It repulsed me, but still I gravitated toward it, as if it were an itch I had to scratch. My revulsion might have been nature, but most of it was nurture. Voron did his best to suppress this part of me, since I was a baby. Strange that I found myself needing to shrug off his training more and more often.

I slid a shallow baking pan under the platter and poured an inch of glycerin into it. The attack poodle watched me with a very focused expression. “Watch out,” I told him. “It’s about to get ugly.”

I nicked my thumb with the point of a throwing knife and let a drop of my blood fall onto the herbs. Magic surged through the dried grasses, like fire along a detonation cord, and exploded into the head. The undead flesh shivered, revived by the burst of power. I touched my thumb to the undead forehead, driving a spike of magic into the brain. “Wake.”

The head’s eyes snapped open, focusing on me. Its mouth gaped, contorting. Foul magic flared about it in a swirling storm of malice, furious and hungry.

The poodle bolted like the road runner from an ancient cartoon. I waited for a second to see if the carpet would catch on fire in his wake. Fortunately, no ACME fire extinguishing equipment needed to be used.

I leaned to the head. “Show me your master.”

The words weren’t necessary. The old Arabic woman who taught me the ritual when I was eleven said they helped one concentrate, so I said them all the same.

The magic convulsed. A foul stench rose from the herbs. The head shuddered. Thick burgundy blood slid from the tear ducts, dripping down the cheeks into the herbs, then into the pan, spreading on the glycerin in a thick dark stain.

“Show me your master.”

The stain swirled. Faint glimpses of a face appeared in its depths.

“Show me!”

The magic raged and boiled. The image flared, fuzzy but clear enough to recognize. My own face stared back at me from the stain.

What in the world . . .

I scrutinized the ghostly image. It was distorted, but I saw the matching skin tone, long dark hair, and dark eyes. Me.

I let go. The magic collapsed on itself.

I leaned my elbow on the table, rested my chin on my fist, and looked at the head. I’d done the ritual six times in my life. Always with vampires. It never failed.

Why did it show me?

The head stared at me with unseeing eyes. The surge of magic during the ritual cooked the Vampirus immortuus pathogen, and once it vanished, the vampire heads decomposed in minutes. This one looked no worse for wear. I needed someone with more expertise. I got up and tried the phone. No dial tone. Argh.

Enthusiastic barking echoed from under my bed. A moment later someone knocked.

“Who is it?”

“Kate?” Andrea’s voice called. “You’re home?”

“Nope.” I opened the door.

Andrea grinned at me while tapping a manila envelope against her palm. “I suppose I walked into that. What is that stench?”

“Something I have in the kitchen.” I stepped aside, motioning her in. “Don’t land in the dog vomit.” Which I now had no excuse not to clean up.

She stepped over the attack poodle’s offering to the digestive gods and saw the head and the herbs sitting on the platter in the kitchen. Her face stretched. “That’s just not right. What is that stuff it’s lying on?”

“Herbs. Rosemary, coriander—”

Andrea’s blue eyes went wide as saucers. “If you’re going to cook it, I’ll barf next to the dog.”

“Why would I cook it?”

“Well, it’s lying like a turkey on a roaster and you have herbs under it.”

I marched into the kitchen, grabbed the head, and stuffed it back into the plastic bag. The bag went into the fridge, the rest went into the garbage. “Better?”

“Yes.”

I went to clean up puke, while she set the water for tea on the kerosene stove. Magic robbed us of electricity, but kerosene still burned and I kept a camper burner in my apartment for small jobs. It once saved my life and Julie’s.

As soon as the offending evidence of his disgrace had been removed, the attack poodle deemed the area safe. He emerged from under the bed and licked Andrea’s hand.

“He looks good with his hair off,” she said.

“He thinks so.”

The poodle licked her hand again. Andrea smiled. “You don’t mind my scent, do you, dogface? Maybe he was raised around shapeshifters.”

“You’re not a regular shapeshifter.”

She shrugged. “I still smell like my father.”

Given that Andrea’s father was a hyena, the poodle was showing remarkable restraint.

We went into the kitchen, where I poured us some tea. “Before we do anything else, let me tell you about my guy in a cloak.”

Fifteen minutes later she frowned at me. “So male shapeshifters go berserk.”

I nodded.

“What about the female shapeshifters?”

“I don’t know.”

She tapped the edge of the table with the envelope. “So there is a good chance that the other me will make an appearance. Clearly my life hasn’t been complicated enough.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

Don’t let Ted put you on this, if I fail. Her eyes told me that if I said that, she’d suggest I stick my opinion where the sun didn’t shine.

Andrea suppressed the part of her that was beastkin. She’d made it through the Academy, earned knighthood, served with distinction for five years. She carried a handful of medals and the Iron Gauntlet, the fourth highest decoration the Order could award to its knights. A year ago she was well on her way to take the step up from knight-defender to master-at-arms, firearm. To earn the designation of a master in a weapon or magic use was a great achievement.

All of it came crashing down one night when Andrea and another knight had gone out to check the report of a loup sighting. The trip left several loups dead, including Andrea’s partner, who caught Lyc-V and tried to turn Andrea’s stomach into an “all you can eat” buffet. Standard procedure after an encounter with loups mandated comprehensive tests to confirm your humanity. Andrea passed the m-scan and tests. She did it by means of an amulet embedded in her skull and a silver ring under the skin of her shoulder, which had almost cost her her arm. She was pronounced free of the shapeshifter virus and fit for active duty, and then her Chapter shipped her off to Atlanta to ease the trauma.

In Atlanta, she ran into a brick wall called Ted Moynohan. Ted knew there was something wrong with her. He felt it in his gut but he lacked proof, so he assigned her to “support.” She had no office, no active cases, and the only time she saw action was when nobody else could get there in time.

Despite it all, she was determined to serve. Pointing out that if the Steel Mary showed up, she should abandon her knighthood and run the other way would only get my head bitten off. So I clamped my mouth shut and said nothing.

I kept her secret and she kept mine. Only two people besides me knew my ancestry and Andrea was one of them. If I had a choice, I would’ve kept it from her, but she had figured it out on her own.

“Thank you for the warning.” Andrea handed me the manila envelope. “My turn.”

Unsealing the tape took a moment, and then a stack of papers slid into my hand. A photograph occupied half of the first sheet. It showed a tall, powerfully built man, standing next to a roan horse, one hand on the mane.

He had handsome, very masculine features, roughly cut, with a heavy jaw and slightly dimpled chin. His nose was broad and straight; his mouth wide; his long hair almost blue black. His was an attractive face, honest and strong, the kind that would inspire confidence and convince you to follow him into the breach. The few times I’d seen him, he wore a pleasant, affable expression that made him appear approachable.

He must’ve sensed the photographer and turned toward him just as the shot was taken, because the camera caught him with his mask down. He stared directly into the lens. His eyes, shockingly blue under the straight slashes of black eyebrows, radiated arrogant power. It was a look that snarled a warning. The glare of a predator whose rest had been disturbed. Indignant, he demanded to know who dared and he looked as if he was committing your face to memory, so if you met again by chance, he would remember to kill you.

I sat into my chair. The blue eyes stared at me.

Hugh d’Ambray. Preceptor of the Order of the Iron Dogs, head of Roland’s personal guard. Warlord of Roland’s armies. My stepfather’s greatest pupil.

The paper bore a copy of the Order’s classified stamp—a mace crossed with the polearm on a shield. These papers were well above Andrea’s clearance, let alone mine. I leafed through the rest of the sheets. They were filled with facts of Hugh’s life. A condensed summary of everything the Order knew about Roland’s Warlord. “How did you get this?”

Andrea gave me a smug smile.

If Ted found out she’d accessed the Order’s database to get this information, he would boil her alive. “You shouldn’t have done this on my account.”

She crossed her arms. “Oh, thank you, Andrea! You’re the best! What would I do without you? I know how much you worked to obtain these papers, vital to my survival.”

“You’re already on Ted’s shit list. If he gets a whiff of this—”

“He won’t,” she said. “I was very careful. The administrators at the Midnight Games kept very detailed records. The name of every patron was recorded. I was doing my write-up and came across Hugh. Hugh’s name was mentioned very frequently during my advanced security briefing. Things made total sense: the rakshasas had to have gotten Roland’s sword from somewhere, and who better to give it to them than Roland’s Warlord, Hugh? I put two and two together and started digging and I took the long way around, which is why it took me so long to get this stuff. Did you know who Hugh was before we went into that pit?”

The sandy arena of the Midnight Games flashed before me. Hugh had been in the audience during the final fight.

“Yes. I knew.”

“You shattered an unbreakable sword made of Roland’s blood. Hugh is Roland’s Warlord. He isn’t just going to let it go, Kate.”

“I realize that.” I drank my tea. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course you did. You could’ve taken off before the fight started. You didn’t have to try to kill yourself to break the sword.”

“I wasn’t planning on killing myself,” I growled.

Andrea waved at me. “Details. The point is, you sacrificed yourself to save us. For me, that’s twice.”

“You were in the pit, because of me. I asked you to come.” And dragged around a load of guilt because of it.

Andrea shook her head. “I came, because for the Pack to survive, the rakshasas had to be killed and I’m good at killing. I may not be just like the rest of the shapeshifters, and some of them may despise me, but I still grow big teeth and go furry. I came for our common good. But you don’t sprout fur, Kate. You came because you wanted to help your friends. You’re my friend and now I’m going to help you. And I will keep helping you. You have no choice about it.”

I hit her with the best version of a hard stare I could manage. “Stay out of this. I don’t need your help.”

She snorted. “Well, too bad. You don’t always get to pick what your friends do for you.”

I put my tea down and rubbed my face. In Savannah, Voron was rolling in his grave. What was I supposed to do with her?

Kill her, Voron’s voice said from the depths of my memory. Kill her now before she exposes you.

I crushed the thought and threw away the pieces.

“If I were Hugh, I would be waiting for an opportunity to subdue you and take you someplace where you can be quietly questioned,” Andrea said.

“No. He won’t do that. He’ll gather as much information as he can about me and then, when he’s confident he knows what he has, he’ll approach me. Kidnapping isn’t his style.”

“How can you be sure?”

I got up, shutting down Voron’s ghostly voice barking warnings at me, went into the spare bedroom Greg had turned into a library and storage room, and brought out an old photo album and a leather-bound notebook. If I could convince her to keep her distance, it would be worth it. “I can be sure, because I know how Hugh thinks.”

I put the album on the table, opened to the right page, got a knife, and carefully split the invisible seam holding the two pages together. Two thin pages slid into the light. I handed Andrea the first one with a picture on it.

She stared at it. Her eyebrows crept together. “Is that Hugh d’Ambray as a teenager?”

I nodded.

She studied the photo. “Well, he grew up into a handsome bastard. Who’s that next to him?”

“Voron.”

“Voron the Raven? Roland’s ex-Warlord?” Andrea’s eyes widened. “I thought he died.”

“He did, eventually.” I looked at her. “He raised me. He was my stepfather.”

“Holy shit!” She blinked at me. “Well, that explains all the . . .” She waved her teaspoon around in a wild fashion, as if trying to shake stuff off it.

I raised my eyebrow. “All the what?”

“Swordplay.”

I slid the second picture to her. On it, Voron stood with his arm around a petite blond woman next to Greg and Anna, my guardian’s ex-wife.

“Your mother?” Andrea pointed at the blond woman.

“This is the only picture I have of her. I found it among Greg’s things after his death. Roland loved my mother very much. You’d think after six millennia he’d lose all capacity for human emotion, but from what Voron said, Roland’s just as volatile as the rest of us. He fell in love with my mother. He wanted to make her happy, and she wanted a child, so despite swearing off siring any more monstrosities, he decided to try one more time.”

“What does he have against kids?” Andrea gently turned the photograph of my mother to the light.

“We all turn out like him.” My laugh dripped with bitterness. “Stubborn and violent. Picture a brood of people just like me, loaded with unimaginable power and a willingness to use it.”

Andrea’s face turned a shade paler.

“Sooner or later we all go to war with him,” I said. “And he has to kill us or we’ll tear the world apart. Some of the worst wars this planet has seen were started by my family. Roland gave up on his progeny. We’re too much trouble. That’s why, even though he made an exception in my mother’s case, he changed his mind before I was even born. She realized which way the wind was blowing and ran away with Voron. Very few people know about this and none of them are dumb enough to risk Roland’s attention by opening their mouths.”

Andrea looked at my mother. “She was beautiful.” “Thank you.”

“Do you think she loved Voron?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember her. I used to hope I’d recall some details—a scent, a sound, anything—but no. I have nothing. No memories of her, no recollections of them being together. I think she must’ve cared for him, because the two of them had some time on the run, before Roland caught up with them, and it must’ve been bliss because when Voron spoke of it, everything about him changed. His voice, his face, the look in his eyes. It’s like he became a different person when he remembered her. He didn’t talk about her often.”

Maybe I was getting through to her.

“You have no idea how cool this is,” Andrea said. “It’s like having tea with Wyatt Earp and listening to him tell you about Dodge City and Doc. This stuff is legend.”

Nope, not even a little bit. “My mother let Roland find her to buy Voron time to escape with me. I don’t know what happened between my parents, but my mother stuck a dagger into Roland’s eye and he killed her. He murdered the only person he loved just so he could wring my neck. Killing me was more important. Eventually Roland will find me. This won’t be one of those ‘cry tears of joy’ moments. He will kill me, Andrea. He’ll rip the entire city down just so he can lock his hands on my throat and watch the light fade in my eyes. He’ll destroy all my friends, he’ll obliterate my allies, and he’ll kill anyone who dares to show a shred of kindness to me. Hell, he’ll probably salt the ground, so nothing would ever grow here. I’m not joking. This isn’t an exaggeration. It may be the stuff of legends, but these legends come to life in a really painful way.”

She gave me her own version of a hard stare. The funny blonde vanished and in her place sat a knight of the Order: hard, dangerous, and controlled. “That’s why you need me. You can’t do it alone.”

“Did you hear a word of what I said?”

“I heard you loud and clear. You don’t get to make my choices for me, Kate. Last time I checked, I was still in charge of my life.”

Fuck me. I raised my hands. “I give up.”

“Good,” she said. “Does this mean we can go back to Hugh?”

I sighed. “Fine. Tie your own noose.”

“What do you know about him?” Andrea pulled Hugh’s file toward her.

I passed her the notebook. “Everything there is to know up until the last twenty years. He was found by Voron when he was six. Roland saw potential in him. Voron was a genius swordsman, one in a million, and he was a decent commander, but Roland wanted a true Warlord.”

I tapped a piece of paper. “My father put me through a variety of trials. I fought in gladiator rings, I survived in the wilderness, I received training in a dozen martial arts. He did the same thing with Hugh. In a way, Hugh was a practice run for me.”

I refilled my cup.

“Voron trained me to be a lone wolf. I’m a self-reliant killer. I’m designed to cut through the ranks and kill my target. Hugh was groomed to lead armies. He fought in dozens of regiments in hundreds of conflicts, all across the world. Roland’s magic keeps him young. It makes him stronger than an ordinary human and harder to kill. Hugh is the ultimate warrior-general. He’s patient, cunning, and ruthless.”

“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working,” Andrea said.

“I’m trying to explain to you the kind of enemy Hugh is. Hugh won’t permit himself to be embarrassed. He’ll gather as much information as he can, so when he presents my existence to Roland, he’ll have a wall of facts to back it up. He won’t move until he has absolute proof of my ancestry. I’m guessing that right now he’s making circles around me, piecing my life together. He has patience and time. He can’t be bought off, intimidated, or convinced to let me alone. And I’m not sure I’m strong enough to kill him.”

Andrea’s face turned sour. “You don’t want to kill him. If you do that, Roland will flood the area with his people trying to figure out who nuked his Warlord.”

“Exactly.” I drank my now lukewarm tea. “My only option is to lay low and try not to draw any attention to myself. Voron has been dead for over a decade. Not that many people remember him. My track record is mediocre—I worked very hard to keep it that way. I shouldn’t be viewed as anything out of the ordinary.”

“That’s nice, but there is the matter of the sword,” Andrea said.

“Yeah.” There was the shattered sword. No matter what I told myself, I couldn’t dodge that bullet. There was a price for everything. The price for keeping my friends alive was being found and I paid it. At the time, I was sure I would die and risking discovery didn’t seem like a big deal.

“If the shit hits the fan, I can always disappear,” I said.

“What about Curran?” Andrea asked.

“What about him?”

“Fifteen hundred shapeshifters in a freaking castle will make anyone think twice about breaking in. Could you go to Curran? You guys are—”

“There is no me and Curran.” Saying it hurt. No bag to punch to relieve it. I smiled instead and poured us another cup of tea.

Andrea stirred hers with a spoon. “Did something happen?”

I told her everything, including what happened in the Guild. The more I talked, the more pained her face became.

“That was very asshole of him,” she said when I was done.

“No argument there.”

“But it doesn’t make sense. When he brought you back from the rakshasas, he almost killed Doolittle because he couldn’t fix you fast enough. I think he might actually be in love with you. Maybe he did come to your house looking for you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You guys should talk.”

“I’m done talking.”

“Kate, don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t been yourself since you came back from leave. You’re . . .”

I gave her my look of doom. It bounced right off her.

“. . . grim. Really grim. It’s almost painful. You don’t joke, you don’t laugh, and you keep taking chances.” Andrea rubbed the rim of her teacup. “Did you have friends when you were growing up?”

“Ouch.” I rubbed my neck. “That’s a sharp change in the direction of this conversation. I think I got whiplash.”

Andrea leaned forward. “Friends, Kate. Did you have any?”

“Friends make you weak,” I told her.

“So I’m your first real friendship?”

“You could say that.” Jim was a friend too, but it wasn’t the same.

“And Curran’s your first real love?”

I rolled my eyes.

“You don’t know how to cope,” Andrea said softly.

“I’ve been doing well so far. It’s bound to go away eventually.”

Andrea chewed on her lip. “You know that I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, and I don’t need a man to fight my wars for me. And if I wasn’t with Raphael, I would still be totally fine, and good at my job, and happy at times.” She took a deep breath. “With that in mind . . . A real broken heart never goes away. You can pull yourself together and you can function, but it’s not the same.”

I couldn’t drag this hurt around me for the rest of my life. I’d implode. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“I’m not finished. The thing is, people have a remarkable potential to injure you, but they also have a great power to help you heal. I didn’t understand this for the longest time.”

She leaned forward. “Raphael is hot and loaded and the sex is great, but that’s not why I’m with him. I mean, those things don’t hurt, but that’s not what keeps me there.”

If I had to guess, it would be respect for Raphael’s perseverance. Raphael, a werehyena, or bouda as they preferred to be called, loved Andrea beyond all reason. He courted her for months—unheard of for a bouda—and refused to give up until she finally let him into her life. The fact that he was the son of Aunt B, the bouda alpha, made things complicated but neither Raphael nor Andrea seemed to care.

Andrea smiled. “When I’m with him, I can feel myself getting better. It’s like he’s picking up broken pieces of me and putting me back together, and I don’t even know how he’s doing it. We never talk about it. We don’t go to therapy. He just loves me and that’s enough.”

“I’m happy for you,” I told her and meant it.

“Thank you. I know you’ll tell me to fuck off, but I think Curran loves you. Truly loves you. And I think you love him, Kate. That’s rare. Think about it—if he really stood you up, why would he be pissed off about the whole thing? You both can be assholes of the first order, so don’t let the two of you throw it away. If you’re going to walk away from it, at least walk away knowing the whole picture.”

“You’re right. Fuck off. I don’t need him,” I told her.

Andrea sighed quietly. “Of course you don’t.”

“More tea?”

She nodded. I poured her another cup and we drank in my quiet kitchen.

Later she left.

I took a small dish from the counter, pricked my arm with the point of my throwing knife, and let a few red drops fall into the dish. My blood brimmed with magic. It coursed just beyond the surface.

I pushed it.

The blood streamed, obeying my call, growing into inch-long needles, then crumbling into dust. The needles had lasted half a second? Maybe less.

At the end of the Midnight Games, when I lay dying in a golden cage, my blood felt like an extension of me. I could twist and shape it, bending it to my will, solidifying it again and again. I’d been struggling to replicate it for weeks and had been getting nowhere. I’d lost the power.

Blood was Roland’s greatest weapon. I didn’t cherish the prospect of facing Hugh d’Ambray without it.

The attack poodle stared expectantly at me. I washed the blood down the drain, sat on the floor so he could lay next to me, and petted his shaved back. If I closed my eyes, I could recall Curran’s scent. In my head, he grabbed me and spun around, shielding me as his body shook under the impact of the glass shards.

I felt terribly alone. The poodle must’ve sensed it because he put his head on my leg and licked me once. It didn’t help but I was grateful all the same.