Ilona Andrews - Magic Strikes

“It’s not Curran, is it?” I asked.

“No.”

“Great.” I gathered up the four severed arms and nodded at the stub of the body. “Would you mind getting the bigger piece?”

DOOLITTLE HAD TAKEN ONE LOOK AT ME AND prescribed an immediate shower. Half an hour later, showered, patched up, and given a mug of coffee by Brenna, I felt almost human. Doolittle had disappeared into the depths of the house to continue his constant vigil on Derek. It was just me and two corpses. At about half a mug, Jim wandered into the room, looking mean and hungover. He favored me with an ugly scowl and flopped into a chair.

“Now what?”

“We wait.”

“What for?”

“My expert. She’s with Derek now.”

We sat for a while. I was still out of it. Doolittle was the best medmage in the business, hands down. My back almost didn’t hurt and the pain in my side was a distant echo. But I was so tired I could barely see straight.

I had to check with Andrea on the results of the silver analysis. I tried the phone. No dial tone.

A young woman strode into the room. She was barely five feet tall and very slender. Her skin was almond dark, her face wide and round. She looked at the world through thick glasses and her eyes behind the Coke-bottle lenses were very brown, almost black, with a touch of Asian ancestry to their cut. She stepped into the apartment and peered at me as I closed the door.

“Indonesian,” she announced, shifting a tote bag on her shoulder.

“What?”

“You were trying to figure out what kind of ’nese I am. Indonesian.”

“I’m Kate.”

“Dali.”

She looked to where Jim sat. As she swept past me, I caught a glimpse of a book in her tote bag: a long, lean blond man brandishing an improbably enormous sword posing with three girls strategically arranged at his feet. One of the girls had cat ears.

Dali fixed Jim with her disconcerting stare. “You owe me. If he finds out I’m here, I’ll be dead meat.”

He who? He better not be Curran.

“I take responsibility,” Jim said.

“Where are the corpses?” Dali asked.

“Behind you.”

Dali turned and stumbled over the four-armed freak’s legs, and would’ve executed a beautiful nosedive if she were an ordinary human. As it was, she managed to jump away and land with perfect balance if not perfect grace. Shapeshifter reflexes to the rescue.

Dali adjusted her glasses and shot me an irate look. “I’m not that blind,” she said. “I’m absentminded.”

Perhaps she was also telepathic.

“No,” she said. “I’m just not stupid.”

Okay.

Dali surveyed the four-armed corpse. “Oh boy. Polymelic symmetry. Any other supernumerary body parts? And did you have to hack his arms off?”

“Yes, I did. He wouldn’t go through the door.”

“You say it like you’re proud of it.”

I was proud of it. It was an example of quick thinking in a difficult situation.

Dali shrugged her tote to the floor, knelt by the corpse, and stared into the gaping hole where the creature’s heart used to reside. Jim had really done a number on it. “Tell me everything.”

I described the ward, the jungle, the flying palace, the ruins, the stone chariot with multiheaded driver, and the fight, with an occasional comment from Jim. She nodded, raised the corpse’s front left arm to take a look at the back set, frowned . . .

“So who isn’t supposed to know you’re here?” I asked. Please don’t be Curran, please don’t be Curran . . .

“The Beast Lord,” Jim said.

Damn it.

“Technically she’s under house arrest.”

“What for?”

“I went for a drive.” Dali picked up the corpse’s foot and studied the claws. “Nice and pliant. No rigor mortis at all.”

“He put you under house arrest because you went for a drive?”

“She slipped a roofie to her bodyguard, hot-wired a car, and went drag racing on Buzzard’s Highway. In the dark.” Jim’s face held all the warmth of an iceberg.

“You’re just upset that I made Theo look stupid.” Dali dropped the hand. “It’s not my fault that your lethal killing machine was so excited by the prospect of getting his hands on my tiny boy-breasts, he forgot to watch his drink. Quite frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“You’re legally blind, you can’t pass the exam to get a license, and you drive like shit.” Jim’s lip wrinkled in a silent snarl. “You’re a menace.”

“Drivers on Buzzard don’t come there to be safe. They come there for thrills. If they knew I was legally blind, it would just make things more interesting for them. It’s my body. I can do whatever I want with it. If I want to get in a wreck, then I should be able to do so.”

“Yes, but you drove to Buzzard’s Highway,” I said. I really needed more coffee. “What if you wrecked on the way and hurt yourself, or worse, hurt somebody else, another driver or a pedestrian, a kid crossing the street?”

Dali blinked. “You know, that is precisely what Curran said. Almost word for word.” She sighed. “Let’s agree that, in retrospect, it wasn’t one of my brightest moments. Do you have anything else besides the corpses?”

Jim handed her the rolled-up mural. She pulled the paper open and frowned. “Here, you hold this end, and, Jim, you hold this end. Okay, separate.”

She actually wanted me to move. She must’ve been out of her mind. We walked apart until the paper was unrolled. She glanced at it for a second, nodded, and waved her hand. “You may let go. So, do you have any ideas as to what corner of mythology your friend belongs?”

I took a wild stab in the dark. “Hindu. First, we have a jungle, the ruins of what looked like a Dravidian temple to me, then a stone chariot drawn by elephants, and a humanoid with many arms and heads. We also have a tiger monster and he has four arms. Not that many mythologies feature extra sets of arms or that many extra heads in a humanoid. Several heads on dragons or giants, yes. Extra limbs and heads on a humanoid, no. Also, the girl called one of the Reapers ‘Asaan.’ I looked it up and it’s a term for a guru or practitioner of Dravidian martial arts.”

Dali looked at me for a long moment. “You’re not stupid either.”

“Yes, but that’s all I got.”

“I believe this is a rakshasa.” She nudged the four-armed corpse with her toes. “And if I’m right, the two of you are in deep shit.”

“AT FIRST THERE WAS VISHNU, EXCEPT AT THAT point he was Narayana, the embodiment of Supreme Divinity.”

Dali sat on the floor next to the corpse.

“Narayana floated in endless waters, wrapped in a great albino serpent and having a marvelous time, until a lotus grew from his navel. Within the lotus, god Brahma, the creator of worlds, was reborn. Brahma looked around, saw Narayana being content to float, and for no apparent reason became obsessed that his water would get stolen. So he made four guardians, two couples. The first couple promised to worship the water, and they were yakshasas. The second couple promised to protect the water, and they were rakshasas.”

“Talk strengths and weaknesses,” Jim said.

“Rakshasas are born warriors. They were created for this purpose. According to legend, they are conceived and carried to term in a single day, and upon birth, they instantly grow to the age of their mother. They are carnivores and have no qualms about consuming human meat. They come in a vast variety of shapes and sizes. They’re excellent illusionists and magicians.”

I sighed. This just got better and better. “For some reason I thought rakshasas were humanoid tigers, like a shapeshifter in a warrior form but with a tiger’s head.”

Dali nodded. “They are most often depicted as monsters resembling tigers, because a tiger is the scariest thing an Indian sculptor or artist could reasonably picture. Elephants are larger, but they are vegetarians and mostly keep to themselves, while tigers are silent, deadly, and actively hunt people.”