Ilona Andrews - Magic Bleeds

I folded my arms on my chest. “A personal visit. Don’t I feel special.”

“You don’t return your phone calls.” The vampire leaned forward, tapping my doodle with a scimitar claw. “Is that a lion with horns and a pitchfork?”

“Yep.”

“Is he carrying the moon on his pitchfork?”

“No, it’s a pie. What can I do for Atlanta’s premier Master of the Dead?”

The vampire’s features twisted, trying to mirror the emotion on Ghastek’s face. Judging by the result, Ghastek was struggling not to vomit. “Someone attacked the Casino this morning. The People wish to petition the Order to look into it.”

The vampire and I stared at each other. “Can you run that by me again?” I asked.

“Some mentally challenged individual attacked the Casino this morning, causing roughly two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of harm. The bulk of the cost came from four vampires he managed to fry. The damage to the building is mostly cosmetic.”

“I meant the part where the People petition the Order.”

“It was my understanding that the Order extends its protection to all citizens.”

I leaned forward. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the same guys who run the other way the moment a badge gets involved?”

The vampire looked insulted. “That’s not true. We always cooperate with law enforcement.”

And pigs gracefully glide through clear sky. “Two weeks ago, a woman robbed a vendor at gun point and fled into the Casino. It took the cops fourteen hours to get her out, because you claimed some sort of sanctuary privilege that was last invoked by the Catholic Church. As far as I know, the Casino doesn’t stand on hallowed ground.”

The vampire looked down on me with an air of haughty disdain. Whatever faults Ghastek had, his control over the undead was superb. “That is a matter of opinion.”

“You don’t cooperate with authorities unless forced, you lawyer up at the first hint of trouble, and you have a stable of undead capable of mass murder. You’re the last group I expected to petition the Order for assistance.”

“Life is full of surprises.”

I chewed on that for a minute. “Does Nataraja know you’re here?”

“I’m here on his direct orders.”

Warning bells went off in my head.

Ghastek’s superior, the People’s head honcho in Atlanta, called himself Nataraja after one of Shiva’s reincarnations. There was something odd about Nataraja. His power felt too old for a human and he packed a lot of magic, but I had never actually witnessed him pilot a vampire. About three months ago, I ended up getting involved in an underground martial arts tournament, which resulted in me fighting shapeshifting demons called rakshasas. It also resulted in my owing Curran a naked dinner.

If that furry bastard could stop intruding on my thoughts for five seconds, I might have to dance a jig in celebration.

The rakshasas had made a pact with Roland, the People’s leader and my biological father. He provided them with weapons and in return they tried to destroy the shapeshifters. The Pack had grown too large and too powerful and Roland wanted it out of the way before it grew any larger. The rakshasas failed. If Nataraja turned out to be a rakshasa, I wouldn’t be surprised. Roland still wanted the Pack out of the way and Nataraja answered to Roland.

Maybe Nataraja had hatched some sort of a plan in retaliation, and he sent Ghastek here to me to create an appearance of propriety.

Maybe I was just getting paranoid . . .

I looked into the vampire’s eyes. “What’s the catch?”

The bloodsucker shrugged, a revolting gesture that jerked his whole body. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Should I take that as a refusal to accept the petition?”

Ghastek one, Kate zero.

“On the contrary, the Order would be delighted to accept your plea.” I pulled the petition sheet from the stack of forms. The People accumulated money to fund their research. Their extreme wealth went hand in hand with severe frugality. They were notoriously tightfisted. “The Order charges on a sliding scale, according to one’s means of income. For the impoverished, our services are free. For you, they will be shockingly expensive.”

“Money is no object.” The vampire waved his claws. “I’ve been authorized to meet your prices.”

They really wanted the Order involved. “Tell me what happened.”

“At six oh-eight a.m. two men wearing ragged trench coats approached the Casino. The shorter of the men burst into flames.”

I paused with the pen in my hand. “He burst into flames?”

“He became engulfed in fire.”

“Was his buddy made out of orange rocks and did he at any point yell, ‘It’s clobbering time’?”

The vampire heaved a sigh. It was an eerie process: it opened its mouth, bit the air, and released it in a single hissing whoosh. “I find your attempted levity inappropriate, Kate.”

“Consider me properly chastised. So what happened next?”

“The pyromancer directed a jet of flame at our building. His companion aided it by creating a strong wind, which carried the fire toward the Casino’s entrance.”

Most likely a fire mage and a wind mage. A firebug and a whistler, working together.

“The fire swept the front of the Casino, scorching the outer wall and the parapet. A team of four vampires was dispatched to deal with the issue. Their appearance caused the two intruders to shift the flames from the Casino onto the approaching vampires. The intensity of the fire proved to be higher than anticipated.”

“They took down four vampires?” That was unexpected.

The vampire nodded.

“And you let them walk away?” I couldn’t believe this.

“We did give chase. Unfortunately, the two intruders disappeared.”

I sat back. “So they appeared, sprayed some fire, and vanished. Did you receive any demands? Money, jewels, Rowena in lingerie?” Personally, I was betting on Rowena—she was the Master of the Dead who handled the Casino’s PR, and half of the city’s male population would kill to see her naked.

The vampire shook its head.

Was this a prank of some sort? If it was, it ranked right up there with dropping a toaster in your bath tub or trying to put a fire out with gasoline. “How badly did they burn the vampires?”

The vampire gagged. The muscles of its neck constricted, widened, constricted again, and it disgorged a six-inch-long metal cylinder onto my desk. The bloodsucker grasped it, twisted the cylinder’s halves apart, and retrieved a roll of papers. “Photographs,” Ghastek said, handing me a couple of sheets from the roll.

“That’s disgusting.”

“He is thirty years old,” Ghastek said. “All his internal organs, with the exception of the heart, atrophied long ago. The throat makes for a very good storage cavity. People seem to prefer it to the anus.”

Translation: be happy I didn’t pull it out of my ass. Thank the gods for small favors.

The two photographs showed two charred blistered ruins that might have been bodies at some point and now were just burned meat. In random places the undead flesh had peeled away, revealing bone.

A mage who could deliver a blast of heat intense enough to cook a vampire was worth his weight in gold. This wasn’t some two-bit firebug. This was a high-caliber pyromancer. You could count those guys on the fingers of one hand.

I held out my hand. “The m-scan, please.”

The vampire became utterly still. Many miles away, Ghastek was deep in thought.

“You have enough diagnostic equipment in the Casino to make the entirety of the Mage College giddy with joy,” I said. “If you tell me the scene wasn’t m-scanned, I’ll be very tempted to make a new storage cavity in your vampire with my saber.”