Magic Shifts

CHAPTER 18

I OPENED MY eyes. I lay in our bed, on my side. Something felt odd. I puzzled over it and realized Curran wasn’t with me.

The blackout curtains had turned our bedroom into a quiet, dark place. I had no idea what time it was. After George had calmed down, Lyc-V finally took its toll and she crashed in one of our spare bedrooms. I tried my best to describe the building I’d seen in the vision to Raphael. He owned a reclamation company that took useful things out of crumbling skyscrapers, and he had files on just about every major ruin in the city. He wrote everything down, but I could tell nothing clicked with him. My description had been too generic. He said he would look through his files and Dali said that she would send a survey team out to the buildings Raphael identified. Curran told me that when he had dropped Derek off at the address the Clerk had given us for the gig Eduardo had turned down, he had recognized the scent permeating the area. It belonged to the man who’d stalked Eduardo. We still didn’t know who he was or why he was obsessing. It was nice that two and two fit together, but so far they still equaled twelve, which didn’t help us.

The djinn spoke English this time and it wasn’t just a single word. He was growing in power. Nobody liked that news.

Finally everyone left. I dragged myself upstairs, took a long shower, and collapsed on the bed. I had woken up when Curran came in and went into the bathroom to wash the blood off. He never came out of the bathroom. I would’ve sensed him moving. Exhausted or not, my instincts still worked.

I slipped out of the bed, walked across the slick wooden floor to the bathroom, and nudged the door with my fingertips. He was sitting in our enormous cast-iron bathtub, leaning back, his eyes closed. The tub was his favorite place aside from our bed. Huge, custom-made to accommodate him even in his lion-form with more than enough room to spare, the tub was heated with electricity during tech and with a magic volcanic rock at other times. Usually his face was relaxed when he soaked, but right now it looked tight. He was almost frowning, his thick eyebrows furrowed, the line of his square jaw hard.

There was something I’d been wanting to do, ever since I woke up in the hospital bed and saw him stalking through my room, worried and angry, all coiled strength and hard will.

I slipped off my T-shirt. My panties followed and I walked naked to the tub. Tubs always got me into trouble. I touched my fingers to the water. It was near scalding.

Worth it.

I stepped into the water. It came midway to my thigh.

His eyes stayed closed.

I bent my knees and sank in on top of him, straddling him. My thighs brushed against his long lean legs.

Curran’s eyes snapped open, a feral, piercing gray. I pressed my lips against his and licked his bottom lip with the tip of my tongue.

Come back to me. Come out of whatever dark place you’re in and feel me instead.

He opened his mouth and kissed me back, his fingers tightening on my back. I felt him harden under me. His tongue slid into my mouth, the kiss deepened, and I moved on top of him, my body hot and pliant. He made a low growling noise in his throat, harsh and male, filled with raw need, and I felt him leave whatever he was thinking behind. He was mine now. There was no worry, no dread, no tomorrow. There was only us and now.

He broke the kiss and nipped my neck, inhaling my scent, and I arched my spine, rubbing against him, wanting to feel him inside me, wanting more. His hands locked on my butt and he pulled me closer, rough and hard, in a single possessive movement. His mouth closed on my breast, his tongue pressing against my nipple, and I nearly melted.

“So fucking beautiful,” he whispered, his voice ragged.

He kissed me again, his body rock hard and rigid under me. I slid my hands up his carved chest. His skin was as scalding as the water. I dragged my hands up his muscular shoulders and ran my fingers through his short damp hair, trying not to lose all control. His hand slid lower, down my back, across my butt, across my leg, brushing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. He touched me. I jerked and broke away from his lips, as his hand covered me. His fingers slipped inside me, his thumb brushing the most sensitive spot, dragging a moan from me. More. More, please.

His skilled fingers dipped in and out, teasing, stroking, and my body gave in to his rhythm. Whatever control I had vanished. I rode his hand. He watched me, his gray eyes filled with intense need, and it made me hotter. My breasts ached. A low steady pressure pooled in the bottom of my stomach, threatening to break.

“Come for me,” he told me, his voice commanding. “Come for me, baby.”

My body clenched around his fingers, waves of pleasure drowning me. I slumped back, limp and boneless, but he caught me. “Not yet.”

His fingers kept going, stroking me. My breath was coming out in ragged gasps. My world shrank to the movement of his fingers.

“Again,” he told me.

No, there couldn’t possibly be an again . . .

I climaxed again, shuddering, held in place by his hands as the orgasm rocked me. I felt heavy and exhausted, floating in my private hot bliss, the vapor rising from the water swirling around me. This was what happiness felt like.

He thrust inside me, the thick length of him stretching me. My body clenched around him, still rippling with the echoes of a climax, and he groaned.

“Your turn,” I breathed.

“Not yet.”

I leaned on the wall with one hand to steady myself and rode him, matching his movement, squeezing him. He gritted his teeth. I could feel him pulling back, trying to disconnect and slow himself down. Oh no, he wasn’t going to last, because I wanted him to come. I wanted him to float in the bliss with me and I had no plans to play fair. I slid my right hand down into the water and my fingers closed around the base of his shaft with him still inside me. He gasped. I pumped him, sliding up and down.

“Kate . . .” he growled.

“I love it,” I whispered, pumping him again. “I love when you do this to me. I love when you’re inside me.”

He snarled and flipped me over. I landed on my knees, catching the edge of the tub with my hands. He buried one hand in my hair and thrust into me from behind, plunging deep, building to a fast hard rhythm. Whatever little semblance of control was gone now and he pounded into me. I lost myself to it, each powerful thrust pushing me closer and closer to the edge, until I finally hurtled over it. He shuddered inside me and we sank into the water together.

THE WATER WAS too hot, but I had no strength to get out. I felt exhausted and drunk, so I just lay there, my head on his chest. He was sliding his fingertips up and down my arm. His eyes were closed, his face relaxed. A slight beginning of a smile curved his lips.

“Let’s not go anywhere,” I told him.

“The magic is up,” he said quietly.

“And?”

“If we don’t show up for dinner, your father will manifest in this bathroom.”

“Maybe you can scare him away with full frontal,” I said.

He laughed.

“What were you thinking about before I came in here?” I asked.

“I was thinking that I never got to know my father,” he said. “All I recall of him are childhood memories. I have no idea what kind of man he was or what he stood for. Mahon became my father, but his approval always felt conditional. Still, he’s all I got. You had Voron.”

“Who was royally fucked up,” I said. “Now I have Roland. That kind of says it all right there. My only living blood relative is a megalomaniac with cosmic power and an unshakable belief that he knows best.” And saying it out loud just hammered it home. Ugh. “We just don’t have the best luck with fathers. But you knew all that.”

“It occurred to me that one day I will be a father,” he said. “And I have no idea how the hell I’m going to do that.”

“You’re already a father. Sort of.”

“Julie was already a good kid when you found her. Most of the hard work was done. I am talking about raising a little human from the first breath. I don’t even know what the hell I would do with a baby.”

“I think you will make an excellent father. I’d worry more about what kind of mother I would make.”

We would screw up our children. It was inevitable. Julie had taught me that you never get the child you want or expect. You get the child you get and you try your best to make sure they turn out to be a decent human being. That was all that mattered.

An image of pregnant Andrea sitting on our lawn and eating the remnants of a bull flashed across my mind. “If I get pregnant and we kill something magic, don’t let me eat it.”

He grinned.

“If Aunt B were alive, there’s no way Andrea could get away with it.”

But Aunt B was dead. She would never see Raphael and Andrea’s baby. Hugh d’Ambray’s Iron Dogs had killed her, but Hugh was a tool and my father used him like a battering ram when he wanted to break down a door. Roland bore the ultimate responsibility for it.

“I found out what it means to claim the land,” I said.

“Tell me.”

I did. “It wasn’t a hallucination, Curran. I improved when I shouldn’t have.”

He made a noise, half a growl, half a frustrated grunt. “That means he wields magic even during tech. He won’t hesitate to shield himself.”

“Yes. Attacking him during technology while he is in his territory means risking the lives of everyone in it. He will drain them dry to keep himself alive. He will deeply regret it and be conflicted about it later, but he will do it. His will to live trumps everything else.”

“We’ll get him,” Curran said.

“I know.” I just had no idea how. How do you kill someone with that much power?

“We’re going to be smart about this. We’re going to watch him, test him, and when we know we can win, we’ll crush him.”

And that was why he was a scary bastard. “Curran . . .”

He kissed my hair. “Yes?”

“I can’t get Sienna’s vision out of my head. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but it keeps popping up.”

“It’s a possible future,” he said. “Not the definite future.”

“I know. I just wish I knew what it meant. I usually see him on a grassy hill in my dreams, too. Only when I see it, there is always a tower being built.” My father was an active participant in those dreams. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw what he wanted me to see.

“Before Jim and Robert left, I asked them when the construction on the tower had started,” Curran said.

“And?”

“The day we killed the wind scorpion.”

“What are you getting at?”

“There was nothing there until the scorpion died. That evening he put the first block down and he wasn’t at all subtle about it. Why build a tower now, in plain view? He has no power base here. He isn’t ready to defend the tower, unless he camps out in it.”

Curran had a valid point. Roland spent most of his time in his little budding empire in the Midwest. His version of the new world order was rather fragile; he had to be there to keep an eye on it. Why would he drop everything and come over to build a tower here? He had to know I would lose it when I found out.

Ah. That explained it.

“It’s a diversion.”

Curran nodded. “For some reason, he’s worried about the djinn. Every time we made progress, he escalated the construction until you could no longer ignore it. He is fucking with your head.”

“But why? I thought the djinn might have been some sort of screwed-up test he shoved our way, but if it’s a test, why not just let us deal with it?”

“Your magic doesn’t work on the djinn directly. Does his?”

“I don’t know. The natural resistance would still be there, because my magic is Roland’s magic and I bounced hard off the ifrit’s host. But Roland has a lot more juice than I do and he’s been at it for thousands of years longer. He might be able to overpower the ifrit, but it’s possible it would cost him a lot of magic. We’re not talking about just any djinn. He’s an ifrit, which is supposedly second only to the marids in the raw magical power department. According to the myths, the ifrits have a society much like we do. They exist in clans, and they have their own aristocracy based on power. I think our guy was high up in the food chain, because he was wearing gold and emeralds. I also got a glimpse into his mind. It’s a mess. He’s completely bonkers, but the amount of power he has is staggering. You should’ve felt it—it was like a damn volcano.”

Curran leaned back. “So if it’s not a test and the ifrit can present a challenge to Roland’s power, why not help us deal with it? He wins if we take the ifrit down.”

“I have no idea.”

“The intel from Robert shows that the timeline matches up perfectly—every time we took a step closer to the djinn, Roland made his construction even more obvious. It’s like he doesn’t want us to interact with the djinn at all. He doesn’t want us to kill it.”

“I’m not even sure we can, Curran. The ifrit’s power is growing. The first two times he summoned something, he seemed to be only fulfilling wishes, so he could then take over the host. This time he summoned a giant bull and then dropped a meteor and a snake on us. We don’t even know if he’s taken control of a new host yet. This is just him venting his hurt feelings because of the giant. I can’t let him keep doing this. He is a threat to more than Eduardo or us. He is a threat to anything in his vicinity.”

Curran grimaced. “Did you hear what he said?”

“About betrayer spawn? Yeah, what the hell was that all about?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Curran said. “But Dali did some checking. Eduardo’s Pack admission paperwork is on file. In the Place of Birth section, he listed Atlanta, Georgia. She had people make some calls to Oklahoma. The werebison herd isn’t talking to the Pack officially. They’re circling their wagons around Eduardo’s parents.”

“Why?”

“Nobody knows. But unofficially Dali’s people were able to find out that Eduardo’s mother became a member of the herd six years after Eduardo was born. His father is a werebison and is high up in the herd’s chain of command, and he doesn’t want any of this.”

“If Eduardo’s parents somehow betrayed the ifrit, it’s possible he’s punishing Eduardo. Wouldn’t they want to help?”

“Dali got a feeling that Eduardo’s mother hadn’t even been told. Whoever her people spoke to said they saw her at a birthday party yesterday and she was laughing and having fun. By all accounts she really loves her son. If she knew he was missing, she would likely be here.”

“Did they pull the marriage license?”

“Eduardo was seven when they married.”

That could mean absolutely nothing. Plenty of people waited to get married. Or it could mean that the man married to Eduardo’s mother was his stepfather.

“You think her husband is protecting her?”

Curran nodded. “We’re not going to get any help from them.”

“Then we’ll have to work with what we’ve got.”

Maybe I could ask Roland about it. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Hey, I know we’re mortal enemies, but can you help me with this thing? I sank deeper into the water. I didn’t want to go.

“Did you ever want to kill Mahon?” And why did I just ask him that? Argh.

“No. There was a time I would’ve done anything for his approval.”

It didn’t surprise me. After he watched his family being slaughtered, Curran lived on his own in the woods, hunted by the same loups who had eaten the bodies of his parents and his sister. Then Mahon led a party of shapeshifters into the woods. Mahon was older now, and I was strong, but I would hesitate to fight him. To a starved twelve-year-old, he would’ve seemed larger than life.

“As I got older, I realized he was manipulating me to get what he wanted.” Curran said. “I remember the first time it clicked. I was eighteen. He wanted me to pass a law and I wanted to go play with my new girl.”

“What girl?”

“You don’t know her. She was blond and had huge boobs.” He frowned. “Something with a K. Kayla . . . Kelly . . . Something.” He grinned. “Jealous, baby?”

I stretched against him, my voice slow and lazy. “Is Kelly in this tub? No? Then I have nothing to be jealous about.”

“Mahon nagged me, so I told her to wait and sat there for two hours reviewing this long-ass law about the percentages the Pack received from the profits of their businesses.”

“Sounds riveting.”

“Oh, it was. When I was done, Mahon told me my dad would be proud of me. It occurred to me that my dad was an isolationist. He wouldn’t have given a shit about the Pack or if the masons should pay twelve percent while the teachers paid seven. It was this empty encouragement Mahon offered to me when I did something he liked, because he knew I missed my father and I wanted to make him proud. I sat there after he left and tried to think of all the occasions he’d used it. He’d used it quite a bit.”

His face hardened. Hello, Beast Lord.

“I knew I had to cut the leash then, because I wouldn’t be anyone’s pet ruler.”

No, being someone’s pet didn’t suit him. No more than being Sharrim suited me.

My life had always been a vector pointed to the same goal: kill Roland or die trying. That vector didn’t survive collision with reality. Roland’s power was too great and I didn’t have the spine to die trying to murder him while watching everyone I loved burn in the same funeral pyre. The exact thing Voron had warned me about had come to pass. I had fallen in love. I had accepted responsibility for a child. I had friends, and I wasn’t capable of condemning them to death for a cause that wasn’t truly my own. I survived.

Looking back at it, it was the right choice. The only choice, really. But Voron’s conditioning didn’t just wear off. He raised me so I could kill Roland or die. Either way Roland would be hurt, and it was good enough for Voron. The nagging sense of failure was still there, and I felt enough guilt and shame to fill a small lake. The guilt fed my anger, and every time I thought of Roland, my sword hand itched. I knew I wasn’t ready for the confrontation, but somehow I deluded myself into thinking I could win the same way I usually won—by brute force and my skill with the sword.

It was time to grow up. I had a responsibility to the land I claimed and everyone alive within its borders. I had a responsibility to Curran and Julie, to my friends, and to myself. I deserved to have a life at some point. Running at my enemies with sword drawn and pounding them with power words with all of the delicate subtlety of a hammer no longer worked. We were playing in the big leagues now. The stroke was a painful lesson, but it helped bring home the point: I had to fight smarter.

“We can’t let on that we figured out the tower is a diversion,” I said. “I’m going to focus on that and maybe we can learn something about the ifrit. He thinks both of us just pummel things with our fists anyway. He won’t suspect any sophisticated subterfuge.”

Curran smiled. “Would you like me to snarl at the appropriate moments and promise to bash heads to pieces?”

“Would you mind?”

“Well, it might be a stretch for me, since I never do anything like that.”

I chuckled.

“But if I am properly motivated, I can give it my best shot.”

Oh boy. “Do you have any specific motivation in mind?”

He leaned toward me, tiny gold sparks playing in his eyes. “Yes, I do.”

A muffled knock sounded through the door of the bedroom. Curran rose, wrapped a towel around his hips (which shouldn’t have been hot but was), and opened the bathroom door. “Yes?”

“We need to leave in twenty minutes,” Julie called through the bedroom door.

“You’re not coming,” I told her.

“I’m all dressed and I’ve put my makeup on.”

“No,” I growled.

“What if this is a clever ploy and while you’re at dinner Hugh d’Ambray comes and kidnaps me?”

Oh, for the love of . . .

“You won’t be able to get it out of your head now,” Julie called. “You’ll worry about it all night.”

Curran laughed.

I sank deeper into the water.

Why me? Why?

“Also, Ascanio is downstairs,” Julie said. “He says that he was charming and the cranky neighbor’s name is Justin Thomas Rogers. Ascanio has the address. Mr. Rogers’s daughter reported him missing yesterday. He got this picture. I’m sliding it under the door now.”

Curran walked into the bathroom and held a photograph to me. A middle-aged man looked back at me, balding, thin but somewhat flabby. The giant that had rampaged through the Guild had worn his face. There it was, the confirmation we’d been looking for.

“Can I tell him that you remember him now?” Julie asked. “He invited me to his pity party, and I really want to leave.”