Ilona Andrews - Magic Bites

Curran waved him in, and Derek took a chair out of the way. I looked at Curran. “Any more rice in there?”

He chose another container and gave it to me. I opened it and pushed it toward Derek. “Eat.”

He waited.

He had to be ravenous. The amount of calories his body burned to repair itself ensured that the mere hint of food filled his mouth with drool.

“Derek, eat,” I said.

He smiled and sat still.

Something was wrong here. I glanced at Curran and put two and two together.

“This is my house.”

They both looked at me with the patient expression Japanese traditionalists adopt when silly gajin ask them why they go through all that trouble just to drink a cup of tea.

“He doesn’t eat until I tell him or until I’m done,” Curran said. “Doesn’t matter whose house it is.”

I set my chicken on the table and crossed my arms. I could argue the point with them until I turned purple in the face and neither would relent. The low-ranking wolves didn’t feed before their Pack King. It was the way of the Code. They lived by its rules or they lost their humanity.

Curran put another spoonful into his mouth. Time stretched as he chewed the food. Derek sat still. The urge to slap Curran was almost too much for me.

The Beast Lord scraped the bottom of his container, licked the spoon, reached over the table and took away Derek’s rice, replacing it with the brown paper sack he had brought. Derek glanced into the sack and retrieved a bundle of waxed paper tied with a cord. He snapped the cord and unwrapped the bundle. A five-pound shoulder roast looked back at him.

Curran jerked his head toward the hallway. “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself.”

Derek rose, gathering the roast, and disappeared into the depths of the apartment. I glared at Curran.

“I like fried rice,” he said with a shrug. He slid the spoon under the paper flaps of the other small paper box, forced them open, and proceeded to pick out the peas.

The low rumble of a predator feeding came from within the apartment.

“Keep it down,” Curran said without raising his voice.

The snarling died.

“So what do you have?”

I sketched it out for him, concluding with the vamp’s head. The undead flesh had liquefied over night, turning into putrid black goo. The stench of rot was so strong that by the time I opened the second trash-bag both the Beast Lord and I were gagging in the most undignified manner. Curran took one look at the distorted skull and tied the bag shut.

“Should’ve done it before we ate,” he observed when we managed to secure the head.

“Yeah.” I opened the window, letting a gust of cold wind into the kitchen.

“So you’re planning on taking this on by yourself? No backup?”

“No.”

“Going to notify the cops?”

I grimaced. It had nagged at me since I awoke. To go to the cops would mean bringing in the Paranormal Activity Division, and as soon as the Division gave the MSDU their mandatory notification, the military would try to step in and eat the whole pie by themselves. The Division would cry jurisdiction and the whole thing could stretch for several days. By then my friendly nemesis could be gone or worse, he could have gained leadership of the People. The fact that I had a lot of assumptions and a strange skull wouldn’t exactly make the authorities abandon the departmental rivalry and hurry on my account.

The Guild would offer no assistance. There was no money involved, and if I as much as squeaked to the Order that some asshole tried to start a war between the Pack and the People and herded two-hundred-year-old vampires to do it, Ted would take me off the case faster than I could exhale. On the other hand, trying to confront a rogue Master of the Dead by myself was suicide. I was homicidal but not stupid.

I became aware that Curran was watching me. “I don’t know,” I said.

“I can solve that problem for you,” he said. He was offering the Pack’s resources. I would be crazy not to take him up on that offer.

I bent an eyebrow at him. “Why?”

“Because I have sixty-three rats who buried their alpha three days ago. They’ve been howling for blood, while I’ve been sitting around with my thumb up my ass.”

“That’s a big risk to take just for the sake of appearances.”

He shrugged. “Power is all about appearances. Besides, who knows? It did snow in May once, so even you could be right.”

I let the barb go. “And if I’m not?”

“Then at least I’ve tried.”

It made sense in an odd way. “Who’ll come?”

“A few people.”

“Jim?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because someone from the Council has to stay behind to hold the Pack together if I die. The alpha-wolf has hurt himself, and Mahon stayed behind the last time. The new alpha-rat doesn’t have enough experience.”

“What happened to the alpha-wolf?”

“LEGOs.”

“Legos?” It sounded Greek but I couldn’t recall anything mythological with that name. Wasn’t it an island?

“He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement and tripped on the old set of LEGOs his kids left on the stairs. Broke two ribs and an ankle. He’ll be out of commission for two weeks.” Curran shook his head. “He picked a hell of a time. If I didn’t need him, I’d kill him.”

I ARRIVED AT THE COCA-COLA BUILDING UNMOLESTED and hid in the shadowy alcove of an abandoned phone booth, half a block from the ruined skyscraper. The logo lay partially buried in the remains of what must have been a magnificent building in its time—even now its skeleton covered the entire block. It had been only ten years old when the flair, a freakishly strong magic fluctuation, took it down.

The shapechangers were nowhere in sight. Across the street a ravaged building careened amidst waist-tall heaps of dusty broken glass. Good place to hide. It took me a minute to find a gap in the crumbling wall. I squeezed through and found fiery eyes glaring at me.

They were battle ready. Pink and black tongues licked mismatched jaws and huge teeth, and long claws made faint scraping noises on the concrete floor. Eight pairs of eyes sought prey, fueled by hunger. The primitive savage of my subconscious howled and yelped in terror.

“Oh, it’s you,” Curran’s voice said quietly. “I thought it was an elephant.”

“Don’t mind him,” murmured a lean shape to the left. “He was born rude.” A lupine female in a midform. That bordered on cheeky. She was either his main squeeze or the female alpha of the wolves.

An enormous shaggy Kodiak bear towered to the left, a dark mountain of fur and muscle, his muzzle light with old scars. Mahon had changed all the way. Next to him rose something huge, almost eight feet tall. Vaguely humanoid in shape, it stood on two columnar furry legs. Hard muscle corded its frame, and a shaggy, grayish mane crowned the head and the back of the massive neck. Long stripes crisscrossed its chest, faint like the smoke marks on the pelt of a panther.

I glanced at its face, and the power in its gold eyes rooted me to the floor. Goose flesh marked my limbs. I couldn’t move. It could have pounced on me and I couldn’t have done anything to stop it. The mammoth muscles of its neck bulged as it rolled its head one way, then another, stretching. The twin pads of its upper lip split, revealing three-inch-long canines. The monster licked his lips, long lines of whiskers twitching, and spoke in a deep growl. “Pretty, aren’t I?”

Curran. In midform. I broke from his gaze. “Adorable.” The nightmare made a barely perceptible nod, and a ratman scuttled forward with superhuman agility and leaped, finding purchase on sheer wall. Up he went to the gap twelve feet above the floor and dove through it. The scout was off.