Ilona Andrews - Fate's Edge

“Audrey,” Kaldar said.

She ripped the rifle off the wall, flipped the safety off, chambered a round, took aim at the tattooed asshole standing on the cliff, and fired, all in the space of two breaths. The recoil punched her shoulder.

A screen of white lightning burst from the blond woman. The bullet exploded against it. The tattooed man grinned at her, muscles bulging on his frame like body armor.

“Damn it.”

Audrey chambered another round. If only the repulsive magic would leave her alone for one second, she would make this one count.

Kaldar’s hand clamped on the rifle. “You’re wasting your bullets. That’s a blueblood. She can stop a shell from a bazooka with her flash shield.”

Audrey let go of the rifle. Anger filled her so hot and intense, she had to scream, or she would’ve exploded. The Hand’s magic, still burrowing into her flesh, only made her fury hotter. “What kind of a sick fuck throws a severed head? What the hell are those people?”

“That’s what the Hand does.” Kaldar shrugged.

“And you! You don’t seem surprised by any of this!”

A man shouldered his way into the cabin, his hair a glossy black curtain. The man sat next to Jack and George in the corner, and she saw his face: powerful jaw, strong line, slightly slanted eyes of pale silvery gray. Slabbed with thick muscle, he looked strong enough to wrestle a bear, but the eyes were young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. The man smiled, displaying serrated teeth. “This ought to be good.”

A small separate part of Audrey realized she ought to be shocked, but right now Kaldar was more important.

“I’ve told you, I’ve dealt with the Hand before,” Kaldar said.

“No, there is more to it than that. It’s like you knew that they would be coming. You even sent the kids to keep watch.” She pointed to where George and Jack sat. A new thought occurred to her. “You sent the kids to keep watch!”

“I think we’ve established that,” Kaldar said.

“You knew that the Hand was coming, the Hand who murders people, then throws their heads at their friends, and you sent children as lookouts right into their jaws?”

“Um.” Kaldar took a small step back.

“Are you insane? Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby? What were you thinking?”

“I think it’s a very reasonable question,” the black-haired man said. “What were you thinking, Uncle?”

Kaldar pointed at him. “You stay out of this.”

“And what if the kids didn’t get a chance to escape? That blond bitch would’ve cut them into tiny bite-sized pieces, and we would be picking up their heads now instead of Gnome’s.” Audrey shuddered. “I can still feel their magic. It’s crawling all over me. It feels like someone doused me in lighter fluid and set me on fire.”

Kaldar stepped toward her. “The Hand’s magic causes an allergic reaction. If you hold still—”

“I don’t want to hold still!” she barked. “Don’t touch me!”

Kaldar stepped back with his hands raised. “It will go away, Audrey. Everybody gets it the first time. You have to wait it out.”

“How did you know the Hand would be coming?”

“I didn’t know,” Kaldar said. “I suspected.”

Oh, please. “I don’t believe you. You lie all the time.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You kind of do,” George murmured.

She pointed at the boy. “See!”

Kaldar growled under his breath. “Now you listen to me. The Hand is following the same trail of crumbs I did. We can’t find your father, which leaves you or your brother as a target. The only way to make sure that the Hand didn’t get to you would have been to kill your brother. I could’ve done it, but I didn’t. I just gave him some drugs.”

“You gave an addict in rehab drugs, and you want credit for it?”

“Of course it sounds bad when you put it that way.”

“It sounds bad whichever way you put it. I know Alex. Drugs fried his brain, and he thinks the whole world owes him. He would’ve tried to bargain with the Hand.” She stopped. “My brother is dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Kaldar said.

Two people had been murdered because she had been too weak to say no to her dad. Alex had it coming. But Gnome was just a neighbor. He could be mean sometimes, and he was an ornery old bastard, but he had always helped her. Now his head, with glazed-over eyes, was sitting in a wicker trunk in the corner of the cabin. She shouldn’t have taken that job. She should’ve convinced Gnome to run with them when the Hand showed up. Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve . . .

The kids were looking at her, as quiet as two birds.

“Audrey?” Kaldar asked.

Alex was dead. She had prepared herself for that possibility years ago, but now it finally hit home. She would never see him again. Deep down in the hidden recesses of her being lived a tiny hope that Alex would get better, that one day he would walk across her threshold, clean and sober, grin that handsome grin, and say, “I’m sorry, sis. I was an ass. Let me make it up to you.”

The Hand’s magic had burrowed so deep into her, it finally reached that hope, and Audrey felt it die. Something vital shattered at her very core. Her own magic, so familiar and easy, rebelled and bucked inside her like a runaway horse, fighting back in self-defense. The pain almost took her off her feet.

Audrey cried out. Her magic burst out of her body in a sweeping wave. Every bag and box in the cabin flew open. Jack jumped a foot in the air. George gasped.

“Leave!” Kaldar barked, and the three boys scurried out to the front.

“I killed Gnome, and I killed Alex.” Her voice came out dull and creaky. “And more people will die because I was selfish, hurt, and stupid. I was always so smart. How the hell could I be so stupid?”

“Happens to the best of us,” Kaldar said. “How the hell did I get stuck with the Marshal of the Southern Provinces’ teenage brothers-in-law and a woman who thinks I’m ugly?”

“You have to send them back,” she said. “They will be killed, Kaldar.”

“It’s too late now,” he said. “It was already too late by the time I found them because the Hand has their scent. To go home, they’d have had to fly over Louisiana territory, and Gaston doesn’t have a lot of experience with piloting wyverns and doesn’t know how to avoid detection. The Louisianans would track them down at the border, and without me, they would kill them or worse.”

“What could be worse?”

A grimace twisted his lips. “Like I said, their brother-in-law has unprecedented access to matters of Adrianglian security. The Hand would torture the boys to gain influence over him.”

This was just getting better and better. “Then put them on a plane in the Broken and have them cross into Adrianglia through the Edge at the eastern coast.”

Kaldar sighed. “Being in the Broken didn’t protect your brother. Besides, even if I bought tickets and made them go through security, they’d escape the moment our backs were turned. They’re here because they want to be here, and they are clever enough and well trained enough to be trouble. Trust me, I’ve spent two days thinking it over, trying to find some way to get out of this blasted screwup. The kids have to remain with me. That’s the safest option.”

Audrey couldn’t handle being responsible for the deaths of two kids. In her head, it wasn’t even George and Jack specifically; it was all the Jacks and all the Georges who lived in the Edge. All the lives her stupid caper had put at risk.

Some things even a Callahan couldn’t live with. “Then there is only one solution.”

Kaldar crossed his muscular arms. “Please. I’m all ears.”