Magic Shifts

CHAPTER 5

CURRAN AND I backed away. A three-foot-long orange-brown spike shot out of the griffin’s corpse, stabbing to the sky. The second spike pierced the corpse from within. The spikes bent, resting on the pavement, each bristling with six-inch-long rigid hair. The corpse shuddered, as if it were being sucked into something from the inside.

The spikes flexed and a huge insectoid head emerged, covered with bristles. Two pairs of dark brown mandibles jutted from it like two crab pincers the size of scimitars. Dark, nearly black serrated teeth lined the inside of each pincer.

Holy crap.

The creature kept coming out of the griffin’s corpse: two fat chelicerae supporting the mandibles, a big round blob of a head with a bump in its center crowned with two black baseball-sized eyes, legs, more legs emerging segment by segment, thorax, a long segmented abdomen. The wolf griffin corpse shriveled, deflating, and vanished, pulled into the new creature. The giant insect landed in the driveway. Ten legs, the first pair huge and long, the others smaller, thrust from its ten-foot-long body, held about five feet off the ground. The damn thing was the size of the FJ Cruiser parked behind us.

The giant insect ground its mandible pincers. A grinding screech split the quiet. I winced.

“What the hell is that?” Curran growled, moving to the right.

“I don’t know.” I walked to the left. It looked like a scorpion and a really hairy spider had somehow mated and their offspring grew to fifty times its normal size. I’d never seen anything like it. Those mandible-pincers looked like they would slice through bone like it was butter. We couldn’t let it get into the house. It would rip the whole family apart.

The legs were all chitin. Trying to cut through them with Sarrat would just break the blade. Trying to claw at it wouldn’t do any good either. Its fat abdomen was softer, but getting to it would be a bitch.

A deep dry voice rolled through the street, so saturated with magic, it almost reverberated on my skin. “Die.”

Why me? “We don’t do requests. Try Iowa. I hear they’re more accommodating.” Hey, Dad, I found a lovely present for this coming Father’s Day. Enjoy.

The insect pointed a leg at me. “Die.”

Curran’s eyes went gold. His clothes tore, falling in shreds to the street, as the massive meld of human and lion spilled out. “Let’s see you try that shit on me.”

The insect lunged at Curran, shockingly fast. Curran jerked his arms up, catching the insect’s front pair of legs in his grip. His feet slid.

Holy crap. His feet slid.

I dashed to the side, trying to circle the creature from the left. A leg stabbed at me like a spear. I dodged and it scoured the concrete where I had stood a moment ago, gouging a chunk from it. The other leg swung at me. I saw it coming, but I could do nothing about it. It swept me off my feet. I flew across the grass. My back smashed against something solid, wood snapped with a dry crunch, and I crashed through the fence.

Ow. I rolled to my feet.

Curran stood in the middle of the street, his hands still locked on the insect’s front pair of legs. The spider-scorpion was lunging at him again and again, trying to grip him with its pincers. If those mandibles closed on Curran, they’d slice his arms off.

Oh no, you don’t.

I charged the spider. The legs stabbed at me. I dodged back and forth. How the hell could it even see me? A leg landed in front of me; I ducked left and saw one of the black eyeballs swivel, following me. It could look back and front at the same time.

I thrust into the opening between two legs. Sarrat sliced into the insect’s abdomen and I ripped the blade back, opening a cut. A leg cut at me, scraping against my back and side as I spun to avoid it. Pain lanced me. I jumped back. Clear ichor dripped from the cut, revealing clumps of translucent guts, like clusters of fish bladders. An acrid stench, sharp and fetid, like the odor of rotting fish, washed over me. The insect didn’t even notice.

“Kate,” Curran ground out. “Hit it with magic.”

“I can’t.” The legs sliced at me like a windmill of blades. “You’re holding it. You’ll be hit, too. Let go of it.”

“If I let go of it, it will tear me apart.”

He couldn’t throw it either. The insect’s center of mass was suspended too high above the ground. Curran didn’t have the leverage.

The only word that wouldn’t cause him direct harm would freeze the spider-scorpion for four seconds. I wouldn’t be able to do enough damage. The moment they both came to, the insect would cut Curran to pieces.

He couldn’t hold it forever.

The leg directly above me rose, aiming to pierce my chest from above. I dove under it, right under the abdomen pulsing with contractions, and stabbed straight up. Ichor drenched me. My eyes watered from the stench. I stabbed again and again, ripping the slippery fish-bladder innards. The guts spilled through the gashes, hanging like some gross fruit. I wasn’t doing enough damage.

Curran snarled. The abdomen moved up half a foot. The thing was gaining on him.

I thrust my left hand under my T-shirt, where the leg had cut me. My fingers came out bloody. I sat straight up and thrust my wet hand into the cut I’d made. The magic in my blood screamed, eager to be unleashed. I gave it a push. The blood streamed from my wound up my shoulder, up my arm, into the spider-insect, and turned solid. A dozen thin spikes pierced the creature from within.

The spider-scorpion screeched. Felt that, did you? Have some more.

The abdomen plunged at me. The insect had reared, trying to crush me. I thrust my arms up, crossing them to block. Suddenly the abdomen disappeared. I rolled right and jumped to my feet.

On the street the spider-scorpion dashed at Curran. The meat chunk of its head that powered the left mandible looked mangled. Curran must’ve punched it when it reared.

I ran at it.

The spider thrust with its front leg. Curran batted it aside. The second leg stabbed, too fast. The narrow blade of the front segment sliced into Curran’s shoulder. He grabbed the leg with his left hand and smashed his right palm against the joint. The front segment broke off.

I lunged between the insect’s back legs, jumped, and landed on the spider-scorpion’s back. The creature flailed. I stabbed Sarrat as deep as it would go and clung to it.

Curran ripped the chunk of the spider-scorpion’s leg out of his body and buried it in the insect’s side, right under the broken limb.

I dragged myself up along the abdomen, trying to get to the head and the two black balls of the eyes.

Curran grabbed the broken leg and kept stabbing, hitting the same spot. Ichor flew. The insect screeched like nails on chalkboard and flailed back and forth.

I wouldn’t get to the eyes. It would throw me off.

I yanked Sarrat out, grabbed onto the edge of the wound I’d made, and sliced into the creature’s thorax, trying to saw its abdomen from its chest.

Curran kept stabbing.

Pierce, pull out, pierce, pull out, pierce . . .

Curran bit into the spider’s leg and ripped it out.

Pierce, pull out, pierce . . .

Moments flew by.

My breath was coming out in ragged gasps. Die, damn you. Die already. Die!

The spider-scorpion shuddered.

Curran leaped onto its head. Claws flashed and the spider-scorpion went blind. I kept carving. Curran began punching the back of the spider-scorpion’s head.

The thorax broke off from the abdomen. The gut swayed and fell, splattering the translucent innards over the pavement in a wet splat. The chitin sheathing the spider-scorpion’s head caved in and broke. The front part of the creature careened and fell, taking us with it. I blinked and then I was sitting on the ground face to face with Curran, the wet ichor under us sliding out from the spider-scorpion’s crushed carapace.

My whole body ached as if I had run a long race. I was out of breath. Rapidly cooling sweat slicked my hairline. I felt light-headed. I might have pulled out too much blood.

Curran was breathing deep. The wound on his shoulder gaped with red. The edges had begun to pull together, but long brown bristles stuck out of it—the stiff “hairs” that had lined the giant insect’s leg.

“Do we have a flamethrower?” Curran asked.

“No.”

“We should get a flamethrower.”

We looked at each other. The stench was almost unbearable now. I was covered head to toe with spider-scorpion slime and my own blood. Curran leaned over and spat to the side. That’s right. He’d bitten the damn thing.

“. . . water of the speed and the spirit . . .” a male voice intoned to the right.

I turned.

Across the street Mac and Leroy were trying to chant the FJ Cruiser’s water engine into life.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The two mercs saw us. My stare and Mac’s connected. I forced myself to stand up.

“Oh, no, no, no.” Mac jerked his arms up. “Don’t get up. We’re leaving.”

Next to me Curran bared his teeth.

Leroy grabbed a bag out of the car. “This is my shit!”

They took off down the street at a run.

I turned to Curran and pointed at them. I had no words left. He shook his head.

I reached out with my magic, searching for small droplets of my blood. It answered my call. I pushed. The blood flowed out of the spider-scorpion corpse, pooling on the pavement into a small puddle. It turned solid and shattered into powder, all of its magic gone. The wind swiped it off the pavement as if it had never been there.

The front door of the house opened slowly and an African American woman in her forties stepped out. She was wearing a business suit. Behind her two teenage boys craned their necks, trying to see.

The woman walked over to us, carefully picking her way between puddles of slime, and held out a check. The edge of the check danced, trembling. I wiped my hand on my jeans the best I could and took it.

She turned around to her boys. “Get the animals into the crates and take what you need. Tony, call your father and tell him we’ll be at Red Roof Inn. He can meet us there.”

“If there is anything else . . .” I started.

“There won’t be anything else,” she said. “We are moving.”

MRS. OSWALD WASN’T a cooperative witness. She was mostly concerned with getting her two children, two cats, and a husky into her car and escaping the scene as fast as she could. The only reason we got anything at all was that Curran and I agreed to stand guard over her while she packed and started her SUV. She had no idea who was after her cats. She hadn’t fought with any neighbors. She had no conflicts at work, at least nothing that would warrant an attack on her cats. Her husband was out of town on a business trip.

On Sunday, February 27, Mrs. Oswald came home and found a very large tick in her backyard. The tick told her in a creepy voice that it was after her cats. She called the Guild. An hour later Eduardo arrived and killed the tick. Some people from the city—likely the Biohazard division of PAD—came and got the remains that night. The wolf griffin appeared on Monday morning. It was the size of a springer spaniel at first, and it ignored her and her two sons completely. It kept trying to claw its way into the house, but the bars held and the small beast didn’t seem like a terrible threat, so she’d called Eduardo again and gone to work. When she came home, the griffin was gone. Considering that the magic wave ended on Monday around nine in the morning, that wasn’t surprising. She thought Eduardo came out while she was at work and took care of it or that the wolf griffin flew away.

This morning when Mrs. Oswald was about to leave for work after a magic wave came, a much larger griffin swooped down on her and tried to maul her. She’d run back inside and called the Guild.

Watching it turn into a giant bug was too much for her.

“Can I use your phone to call Biohazard?!” I yelled over the roar of the enchanted water engine.

“Do what you need to do! I have my kids to take care of!”

Mrs. Oswald stepped on the gas and peeled out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. I went inside and checked the phone. Dial tone. Well, something had gone right for once. I dialed the Biohazard number from memory.

“Biohazard,” a gruff male voice said into the phone.

“My name’s Kate Daniels. I have a giant dead spider-scorpion thing on Chamblee Dunwoody Road. I need you to come and get it.”

“Sure,” the voice said. “Let me get right on that. You’re eighth in line. It will be twenty-four hours.”

“It’s an RM in a residential neighborhood.”

The phone went silent. “How bad?”

“It went from mammal to insect after death. The insect is ten feet long, not counting the legs.”

“Sit tight. We’ll be there in half an hour.”

Experience said it would be more like a couple of hours, but I would take what I could get. I dialed Cutting Edge. Derek answered, his voice raspy. “Cutting Edge.”

“Can you meet us here?” I gave him the address.

“I’m leaving now.”

“Thanks. Is Ascanio there?”

“Ready and willing,” Ascanio said into the phone.

“Call the Dunwoody Police Department for me and please check if there were any complaints against the Oswalds on Chamblee Dunwoody Road.” I gave him the address.

“Yes, Consort.”

Either it was force of habit or he was jerking my chain. Probably the latter. I hung up and went into the garage. A toolbox sitting by the wall yielded a pair of needle-nose pliers. Perfect.

I found Curran outside. He had turned into a human, had pulled his clothes on despite being covered in slime, and was trying to rinse his mouth out with a hose.

“Did it taste that bad?”

“You have no idea. This goo doesn’t wash off with water alone. I tried.”

“Let me see your shoulder.”

He glanced at me. I lifted the pliers and made pinch motions with them.

“Are we done?” he asked.

“No. We have to wait here until Biohazard shows up.”

“Why? It’s dead.”

I sighed and sat on the stairs in front of the door. “Because it exhibited reanimative metamorphosis. It was dead and instead of staying dead, it turned into something else and came back to life. It also went cross-phylum, from mammal to insect. That means there is a good chance it might come back to life again as something really strange, like a terrestrial octopus shooting lightning from its tentacles.”

“Why don’t we just set it on fire and scatter the ashes?”

“Because the ashes could still metamorphose into something nasty like leeches or flesh-eating flowers. We killed it. That means we initiated the RM process, so now we have to watch over the corpse until Biohazard shows up and quarantines it.”

“And if we don’t?” His tone was getting harsher and harsher.

“It’s a mandatory ten-year prison sentence.”

“So we performed a service by killing this thing and now they are punishing us for it?”

“Yep.”

“This is ridiculous. You’re bleeding. Don’t lie to me, I can smell it. You’re hurt. You need a medmage.”

“I’m not hurt that badly.”

His lips wrinkled, showing his teeth. “How badly do you have to be hurt?”

“There is a right-to-life exemption, which permits us to leave the scene if our injuries are life threatening. We’d have to provide paperwork from a hospital, or a qualified medmage, showing that we had to get treatment or we would’ve died. My injuries are not life threatening.”

“Paperwork is not a problem.”

“Yes, but I won’t lie.”

“How do you know your injuries aren’t life threatening? You’re covered in the fluid from its guts. How do you know it’s not poisonous?”

“If it’s poisonous, we’ll deal with it when I feel sick.”

“Fine. I’ll stay here with this thing, and you will drive yourself to the hospital.”

“No.”

He hit me with an alpha stare.

I opened my eyes as wide as I could. “Why, of course, Your Majesty. What was I thinking? I will go and do this right away, just please don’t look at me.”

“Kate, get in the car.”

“Maybe you should growl dramatically. I don’t think I’m intimidated enough.”

“I will put you in the car.”

“No, you won’t. First, it took both of us to kill that thing, and if it reinvents itself again, it will take both of us again. I’m not leaving you alone with it. Second, if you try to physically carry me to the car, I will resist and bleed more. Third, you can possibly stuff me in the car against my will, but you can’t make me drive.”

He snarled. “Argh! Why don’t you ever do anything I ask you to?”

“Because you don’t ask. You tell me.”

We glared at each other.

“I’m not going to the hospital because of a shallow cut.” And possibly a sprained shoulder, a few gashes to my legs, and a bruised right side. “It could be worse. I could’ve hit a brick wall instead of a nice, fragile old fence . . .”

He held up his hand. “I’m going to get a medkit out of the car.”

I didn’t even know any medmages besides Doolittle, who worked for the Pack. The woman who used to patch me up before I met Curran had moved away. I’d have to figure this out before long. In our line of work, access to a good medmage was paramount.

His Grumpiness returned with the medkit. I pulled my turtleneck up, trying not to wince, and turned my back to him.

Silence.

“It’s not that bad.”

His hands brushed my skin, warm and careful. The cold saline solution washed over the cut and I shivered.

“What about this?” Curran’s fingers touched the aching spot on my left side.

“That’s from the ghouls the other night. I’ll chant over it once you’re done cleaning. It will heal itself.”

Cold wind touched my wet back, making my teeth dance. Thanks, weather. Screw you, too.

“The rationale is, since we killed it once, we could probably kill it again. This is a residential neighborhood. We are going to do the right thing and watch over it.”

“This is a dumb law,” Curran said. “It’s easier to just not get involved.”

I grinned. “Aha! Now you are catching on. Welcome to human society, Your Majesty.”

“Kate. Chant.”

Ten minutes later he decided the wound had closed enough to put a bandage over it. I pulled my turtleneck over my back. Unfortunately while it was rolled up, it had time to cool and now it felt like ice on my skin. Being covered in ichor didn’t help. Curran sat next to me.

“Shoulder,” I told him. He took his shirt off, displaying the world’s best chest to the wind. I clamped the first insect hair sticking out of him with my pliers. It was about the size of a thin metal skewer. “Ready?”

“Do it.”

I ripped the hair out. It was ten inches long.

He made a short gritty noise. It had to have hurt like hell. I wiped the blood off his shoulder with gauze. “Four more.”

“No time like the present.”

I managed all four in under a minute. The less he hurt, the better. Curran put his shirt back on and pulled me close. His eyes were dark. Whatever he was thinking wasn’t good.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I had a feeling he was thinking that if he were still the Beast Lord, by now he would’ve had a team of shapeshifters standing guard over the corpse while he drove me to the Keep, where Doolittle would put me back on my feet.

“Being a human isn’t that bad, is it?” I asked.

“You remember the Savells? The house across the street from us?”

Heather Savell was a thorn in my side. The area didn’t have a homeowners’ association, but Heather very much wanted to have one. In her head, she pretended the HOA was real and she was its president. She took those imaginary powers and responsibilities very seriously. “Sure.”

“They sprinkled cayenne pepper around the border of their lawn.”

I almost ground my teeth. They sprinkled cayenne pepper to keep Curran off the property, like he was a stray dog come sniffing.

“Apparently they don’t understand I could step over it.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

He shook his head again. “No. They’re scared because they don’t know me. I get them. I don’t get you. Why are you protecting them?”

“Because they can’t always protect themselves.”

Curran looked at me, his face hard. “In the Pack, everyone is of a kind. We all belong together. We are united. Everyone contributes, some more, some less. We work toward a common goal of living a safe life.”

“So do these people.”

Curran grimaced. “If I were beating you in the street, they wouldn’t lift a finger to help you.”

“If you were beating me in the middle of the Keep, would anyone lift a finger? Or would they all simply decide to look away because alphas are fighting and it’s none of their business?”

Curran growled. “Kate . . .”

“You have a prejudice against people who are not shapeshifters.” I leaned against him. He put his arm around me. “It’s not a baseless prejudice, because when people fear someone, they treat them with suspicion. To a lot of people, shapeshifters are monsters, and you were the king of the monsters. I understand. To the Pack, I was a monster and they treated me accordingly.”

“Not all of them.”

“No, not all of them. That’s exactly my point.”

I turned my head and kissed him. His lips were warm and the familiar taste dashed across my tongue.

“You’ve never lived among non-shapeshifters, Curran. I have. I’ve seen a man run into a burning building to save a dog. I’ve seen people sacrifice themselves for strangers. Not all of them are willing to do this, but enough to matter. That’s why I help them. Give them a chance. I think they might surprise you.”

He sighed and squeezed me closer to him.

“Are you seriously considering taking over the Guild?” I asked him. “It’s in shambles.”

He grinned at me. It was the happy smile of an amused predator. “I’ve got this.”

“They will never be another Pack. They’re too independent. And they don’t like authority.”

“I don’t need another Pack. The Pack has too many rules anyway. I have some ideas for these guys. They just don’t know it yet.”

“They’ll fight you every step of the way.”

“I hope so.” Curran laughed quietly. “I’d take them on one at a time or in batches. It would be fun.”

This unchained thing was making him scary. “That’s what I love about you, Your Furriness. Your humility and modesty.”

“Don’t forget my razor-sharp wit and boyish good looks.”

“Boyish?”

“The Guild has something the Pack doesn’t,” Curran said. “Variety. There are shooters, melee fighters, and magic users. It might be what we will need to . . .” He paused.

“What is it?”

“The wind changed.” Curran rose and walked down the sidewalk. I followed him. We passed a lamppost, another . . . Another twenty yards and I would have to turn back. We were getting too far away from the spider-scorpion’s corpse.

Curran stopped and crouched. A large pale scrape crossed the sidewalk. He inhaled deeply, wrinkling his face.

“What is it?”

His expression was grim. “Ghouls. Lots of ghouls.”

A long ululating shriek of magic-powered sirens rolled through the streets. The cavalry was coming.