Ilona Andrews - Magic Rises

Mahon appeared at the doorway. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he told me.

A moment later Barabas walked through the door. A man followed him into the room. A cloud of silky hair, completely white, framed his narrow face. His skin must’ve been naturally olive, but now it had a slightly ashen tint. He looked to be in his midthirties, not just lean, but so slight that clothes hung on him the way they would on a coatrack. The man saw me and smiled. His entire face lit up, suddenly young and blissful, his blue eyes luminescent, at once beautiful and impossibly distant.

“Mistress,” he said.

Whoa. “Hi, Christopher.”

He came over and sat on the floor by my feet and sighed happily. “Beautiful mistress.”

“How are you, Christopher?”

He looked at me with a blank smile and stared at my shoes.

“How is he?” I asked Barabas.

“What you see is what you get. He’s here one minute, and then he isn’t. I think we finally settled on the fact that he isn’t dead. He insists that he used to know how to fly, but he forgot. He occasionally tries, so I have to watch him closely in high places.”

Oh boy. “Christopher?”

He looked up at me.

“You’re free.”

“I am.” He nodded. “I’ll serve you forever. To the end of time.”

“No, you’re free. You don’t have to serve me. You’re welcome to stay, but you can go if you want.”

He leaned over and touched my hand with long fingers. “Nobody is free in this world. Neither princes, nor wizards, nor beggars. I will serve you forever, my mistress.”

Aha. “Let’s come back to that later, when you feel more like yourself.”

“Great,” Curran said. “Another fine addition to your collection of uncanny misfits.”

“I take offense to that,” Barabas said.

“Don’t worry, I count myself in, too,” Curran told him.

“What did you do for Hugh?” I asked.

“I took care of his books.” Christopher’s fingers twitched as if stroking invisible pages. “He has the most interesting books. Do you have books, lady?”

Great. I rescued Hugh’s librarian. “Some. Probably not as nice as Hugh’s.”

“That’s alright.” Christopher offered me a smile. “I will help you get more and then I will take care of them for you.”

“Christopher, about the orange beast,” I said. “The one who killed a guard, you remember?”

“The lamassu,” Christopher said helpfully.

“You know what they are?”

“Yes.” He nodded with that same faraway smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me when I talked to you?”

“You didn’t ask.”

I turned and bumped my forehead against the wooden post of the bed.

“Okay, mistress needs a moment,” Barabas said. “Come on.”

“Does that help?” Christopher asked with interest.

Barabas took him by the arm and gently lifted him to his feet. “We should go eat.”

“Real food?”

“Real food. Come with me.”

They left the room.

“You know he’s crazy, right?” Curran asked.

“Yep. He won’t survive on his own.”

“As you wish,” Curran said.

I spent the day in bed, sleeping, eating, and then sleeping again. Curran stood guard over me, and any suggestion that I should go and guard Desandra was met with a stone Beast Lord face. He had a point. I was tired and my whole body hurt, as if I’d been through a meat grinder.

Ten minutes before six I woke up because someone knocked on our door. Curran blocked it. Beast Lord in hover mode.

“. . . information,” Hibla said.

I rolled out of bed.

Curran stepped aside. She walked into the room, holding herself very straight, her chin raised, her spine rigid. She couldn’t have looked more fragile if she were on the verge of crying. I’d warned her. Be careful who you serve.

“What do you have for me?”

“A large group of strangers came to the mountains. They didn’t use the pass or the sea. They came on the railroad tracks on foot. They passed a small village not too far from here.” Hibla passed me a photograph. The body of a young man lying on his back stared at me with empty eyes. A bright red hole gaped where his stomach used to be, his flesh gouged out by claws and teeth. They’d fed on him. The second picture showed a close-up of his face. Purple blisters marked his features. I’d seen them before on Ivanna’s face.

I held up the photograph and showed it to Hibla.

“The villagers said the bigger ones spit acid.”

“What do you mean?”

Hibla shrugged. “We don’t know. There were only six survivors. They had killed forty people and eaten most of them. I saw these marks on Ivanna.”

“I saw them, too,” I said.

“If she was attacked, why didn’t she say anything?”

“Unless she was attacked by her own kind,” Curran said.

I pulled a piece of paper out and began writing. “The first time I saw Ivanna was before dinner, when Radomil and Gerardo had a fight in the hallway. She saw Doolittle examining Desandra and she was upset.”

I wrote it down and drew an arrow down. “Desandra was attacked.” I drew another arrow.

“Meeting between the packs,” Curran said.

I added it and drew another arrow. “Doolittle is attacked. Next morning Ivanna has purple blisters.”

“If I were a lamassu, and assuming that one of Desandra’s babies is a lamassu,” Curran said, “knowing that a medic is examining her would make me nervous.”

“One of Desandra’s children is one of those things?” Hibla’s eyes narrowed.

“Probably,” Curran told her.

“Suppose Ivanna is a lamassu,” I said. “She sees Doolittle take the blood. She knows that there is a chance he will discover that a child is a lamassu, and that will blow their pack’s cover. She panics and tries to have her killed. Except someone in her pack, either Radomil or more likely Vitaliy, takes exception to that. The attack failed, they’re down a shapeshifter, and they still want the child to be born, because they want the mountain pass.”

“Of course they want the pass,” Curran said. “They glide. Mountains give them a huge advantage. Vitaliy spits on her as a punishment and then decides to destroy the evidence Doolittle had collected instead.”

“Doolittle said they smashed his equipment.” It wasn’t bad reasoning: no need to kill Desandra when you can just destroy the blood. “They also were the only pack that reacted when I asked for the blood test. The Italians and Kral wouldn’t give me the time of day either, but the Volkodavi looked worried.”

“But why do they eat people?” Hibla asked.

“It lets them grow bigger and sprout wings,” Curran told her. I had brought him up to speed on the whole lamassu story. “There are likely a large number of them hiding out nearby. If the birth doesn’t work out in their favor, everyone can storm the castle. That’s how I would do it.”

“I can arrest them,” Hibla said.

“We don’t have any evidence,” I told her. “Besides, Desandra is still pregnant. Once a baby is born, it will be undeniable. We don’t know it’s them; we suspect. We have to watch them. Tonight at dinner, for example.”

Hibla’s face turned solemn. “This is why I came. Lord Megobari asked me to find out about the medmage’s health and to ask if you would join him for dinner tonight outside the castle. Alone.”

“No.” Curran said.

Hibla took a step back.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Tell Lord Megobari I’ll be there.”

Curran crossed his arms.

“I will pass on your message.” Hibla turned and fled out of the room.

“No,” Curran said. “You’re not going.”

“Are you ordering me not to go?”