Ilona Andrews - Magic Slays

I leaned back. “Why would you look for trouble, when there is none?”

“She was with us for a third of her life. We treated her well.” Curran leaned on the table. “I want to know why.”

Jim squared his shoulders. “Teresa, one of my people, tracked down Leslie Wren’s brother. She came back this morning. We’d just missed her. She says that Leslie’s father, Colin Wren, had a serious case of paranoia. The mother, Liz, was a go-with-the-flow kind of woman. The brother says she was passive, didn’t like confrontations. They weren’t the most stable couple.”

A paranoid shapeshifter with a passive mate who’d do pretty much anything he wanted to avoid a fight. That was a recipe for disaster.

Jim kept going. “When Leslie was twelve and her brother was seventeen, their mother had an affair with Michael Waterson.”

“Local cat alpha of Columbia,” Curran said for my benefit. “Not a bad guy. Capable.”

“The affair didn’t last long,” Jim said. “When Colin found out, he snapped. From the way the brother tells it, he took Leslie with him out of Columbia and went to his parents’ house. He gave Liz a choice: if she didn’t come with him, she’d never see Leslie again.”

“Used his daughter as collateral,” Curran said.

Jim nodded. “The brother says she was afraid he’d do something to Leslie, so she went with him. Waterson never followed her. He says she told him not to look for her and that she was going to save her marriage. They holed up in the house. Liz wasn’t allowed to leave the property. The brother was in high school at the time; he stayed behind to finish the year out. He came to visit them on his break. The dad tried to kill him. Said he was competition.”

Living in that house must’ve been pure hell. It didn’t make me regret killing Leslie. “She must’ve blamed Lyc-V for driving her father crazy.”

Jim nodded. “Yeah.”

“Bullshit,” Barabas spat. “Dozens of shapeshifters deal with affairs. Marriages break. People die. We carry on. We don’t abuse our mates and children.”

“When did the Keepers recruit her?” Curran asked.

“We don’t know,” Jim said. “Had to be early on.”

Something awful had happened to Leslie Wren in that house. Something that convinced her that the shapeshifters were evil, that the very magic that made their existence possible had to be destroyed. She believed it so deeply that she joined the people who hated her kind, signing her own death warrant. She had a life with the Pack, respect, friendships, a future. But whatever happened had scarred her so deeply, she threw it all away when the Keepers called.

How? How do you go from taking Julie on a hunting trip to trying to murder her? I had killed dozens, but I could never bring myself to take a life of a child. It was beyond me.

The door down the hall opened. Sander, one of Doolittle’s junior medics, a tall, thin man who looked like he would snap in half any second, came out and approached us. “The boy is awake.”

ASCANIO LAY ON THE BED UNDER THE COVERS. HIS face was a bloodless mask. He looked weak and small, his eyes enormous, like two dark pools on the pale face. If he were human, he would’ve been dead. Sander said he had hairline fractures in both legs, serious blood loss, a punctured lung, and two broken ribs. Leslie had thrown him around like a dog shaking a rat. The Lyc-V would knit him back together. A few days and he would be up and walking. But meanwhile he hurt.

I sat on his bed. Curran remained standing.

Ascanio’s gaze fixed on him.

“What happened?” Curran asked.

“Aunt B’s boudas came,” Ascanio said, his voice flat. “Three of them. They told Andrea Aunt B wanted to talk. Andrea said no. They said, ‘You’re coming with us one way or another.’ I figured there would be trouble. Andrea looked at me and said, ‘Someone has to stay with the kids.’ So they left Joey. He was the weakest. Grendel really didn’t like him. He kept trying to bite Joey, so Andrea took him with her. Then you called and Joey told us to stay away from the damn door. Then he went upstairs, he said to sleep.”

Damn boudas. I tell him he’s under siege and he goes to take a nap.

“About half an hour later someone knocked on the door. A woman was screaming.”

Ascanio swallowed.

“Keep going,” Curran told him.

“Julie said, ‘Come on, doorboy, aren’t you going to see who it is?’ And I said, ‘I’m not a doorboy, and if you want to know so bad, go see for yourself.’ She went.” Ascanio closed his eyes for a long moment. “The woman on the other end yelled, ‘Help me, they hurt my baby.’ Julie looked out and screamed that it was Leslie. She knew her from the Pack, and Leslie was carrying a bloody kid. We knew the Pack was being attacked. We opened the door.”

They saw a shapeshifter woman with a blood-smeared child and they let her in. Of course they let her in. I would’ve run out the door to protect her. I should’ve told them about Leslie. No evidence existed that the two were connected, and I didn’t know. If I had, Julie wouldn’t be losing her humanity right now.

Ascanio took a deep breath. “She was in warrior form when she came through the door. She knocked Julie aside. I shifted and hit her. She was too strong. I got some strikes in, but then she clawed me up. I thought she’d slice me to ribbons and then Julie jumped on her back. The cat pulled her off and bit her, hard. It happened so fast. And then Joey came running. The cat said, ‘Step aside, weakling. You know you can’t take me.’ And Joey pulled his knife and told me to protect Julie.”

Ascanio squeezed his eyes shut. “Julie was already messed up. I picked her up and I ran.”

His legs were broken and he’d carried Julie anyway. Whatever he did from now on, I would never forget this.

“I knew if we went out the back, she’d chase us down, so I got into the loup cage and locked the door.”

He gulped the air.

I wanted to kill Leslie again. I wanted to kill her slowly and take my time.

“The cat did something to Joey to keep him from moving, because we heard Joey cussing her out. The cat came to get us, but she couldn’t get through the bars. It really pissed her off. Joey was screaming and cursing, telling her she should come and pick on someone her own size. The cat went back out. And then we heard Joey scream. I wanted to go and help him, but I couldn’t get up. The cat was beating him to death and I couldn’t get up.”

“You did everything right,” I told him. “You did great. You couldn’t have done more.”

Ascanio’s hand shook. “He died to keep us alive. Why? Why would he do that?”

“Because that’s what you do,” Curran said. “That’s what being in the Pack means. The strong defend the weak. Joey protected you, and you protected Julie.”

“He didn’t even know us!” He stared at us, his eyes wet. “I’m not like you. I don’t want this. I don’t want people dying for me. I don’t want to walk around with it.”

Curran leaned toward him. “Then get strong. Learn to be bad enough so others don’t have to die to keep you safe.”

A commotion broke out by the door.

A female voice barked, “You will let me in or I’ll kill you where you stand!”

The door flew open. A muscular woman strode through, a harried expression on her face. Martina, Ascanio’s mother. She saw us and halted.

“You have a brave son,” Curran said. “A credit to your clan.”

Down the hall the door of the emergency room opened. Doolittle walked out, wiping his hands on a towel. I slipped out of the room and marched to him. He saw me. His face wore a tight expression, like he was straining to keep things inside.

Whoever you are upstairs, please don’t let him tell me that Julie’s dead. Please.