Ilona Andrews: Magic Bites

“She is here,” Curran said. “ With me. Tonight, while you’re waiting for your corpse to get soft, think of me and her. Think of her begging me for it.”

“I’ll get her in the end.” Bono voice was taut with strain.

Curran made a loud sigh. “What is it about you and my sloppy seconds?”

Bono slammed the phone. I turned and left the room.

I WANDERED THE HALLWAYS UNTIL I FOUND THE room where the Crusader and I almost had our little show-down. Nick was gone. I hoped he had enough sense to stay in the compound. Pissing Curran off right now was pure suicide.

I closed the door and went to the window. It was raining. The gray sky spewed gray water onto the dull grass far below. The grayness from the outside seeped into the room, leeching the color from the sparse furnishing. The rain would end eventually, leaving the grass and the trees brilliant green, vivid with fresh color. Strange how something so colorless and drab could rejuvenate the world.

There was a pair of gray sweats and nothing else in the small dresser by the bed. I placed Slayer and its sheath onto a Spartan blue blanket, stripped, and put on the sweats. I started slow, stretching, jumping an invisible rope, until warmth spread through my muscles. I cracked my neck and attacked the punching bag.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Sweat drenched my sweatshirt and the T-shirt under it, and the fabric stuck to my back. Sometime after my legs began to hurt, I heard a knock. My brain brushed the sound aside. I launched another kick, connected with a solid thump, launched another before my mind put on the brakes. “Come in.”

Curran stepped into the room and closed the door. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stretched. He sat down on a chair, hands resting on his knees, looking at the floor, and waited for me to finish.

“He called back,” he said when I was done.

“What did he say?”

“He raved for a while. Promised to kill me. He won’t attack Keep.”

“You expected him to?”

“No. I hoped.”

I sat on the bed. It wouldn’t play out the way we hoped it would. Bono refused to be provoked into something rash, where numbers would be on the Pack’s side. In this new age, combat between individuals decided the fate of many.

Bono would challenge Curran. It was inevitable. Curran had threatened his masculinity; he had made it personal, and when the challenge came, Curran would have to accept it. He was the Pack leader, the alpha male who didn’t have the luxury of backing down. He would not hide in the safety of Keep, while the upir raged, murdering everyone whose death he thought likely to bring us pain.

I looked at Curran. “Your . . .” I paused searching for the right word. Girlfriend seemed inadequate, woman too impersonal. “Your lady,” I finally said. “Is she safe?”

“Yes,” he said. “She’s here.”

I nodded, screams of another woman echoing in my ears. Curran looked up at me, his eyes haunted. He looked older and tired.

“It’s not that I don’t care,” he said. The screaming didn’t stop for him either.

“I know.”

“I can’t let him intimidate me.”

“I know,” I repeated quietly.

“I’m sorry,” he said and I wasn’t sure exactly what for.

He left.

I sat on the bed and thought. Everyone had a weakness. It was the law of nature that for each being there was a predator, or a disease, or a vulnerability built into their very core. The upir had to have a weakness. It wouldn’t be in any book. If that was the case, the crusader would have found it by now.

I thought about everything that had happened since Greg’s death, carefully going over events, trying to recall every detail. I thought about Bono, the places he visited, the people he might have met, the things he did.

The rain pounded harder. The sweat-drenched clothes grew cold on my back.

My room had no phone. I got up and went down the hall, trying different rooms, until I found one that did. I closed the door and dialed the number.

“Hello,” said a male voice with the smoothness of someone for whom courtesy was a part of the job description. “You have reached the People’s inner office. How may I help you?”

“I need to speak to Ghastek.”

“Mr. Ghastek is busy at the moment . . .”

“Put him on. Now.”

He didn’t like what he heard in my voice. The phone clicked and Ghastek came on the line against the background noises.

“Hello?”

I heard quiet voices discussing something. He wasn’t alone.

“You had to know,” I said. “He was your journeyman for two years.”

“I fail to understand . . .”

“Don’t,” I snarled.

There was so much fury in my voice that he fell silent.

“Tell me, Ghastek. Tell me what you know.”

“No,” he said.

I closed my eyes and tried to think clearly. I could go down there and slaughter everything in my way. I had a lot of frustration to vent. By the time they pulled me down, the People’s stable would be awash in blood. I could do that. I wanted to do it very much, but then it wouldn’t solve my bigger problem.

“He will come back for you,” I told him. “He loathes you. He’s committed now and after he kills everyone he hates, he’ll find you and you’ll be raising vampires for him and his brood. You’ll be his short-order cook.”

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” Ghastek whispered fiercely.

“Then tell me what you know. Tell me!”

Silence answered me. A moment passed, then another.

“I have nothing to tell you,” Ghastek said and the line went dead. I fought the urge to hurl the phone against the wall.

“Asking the People for information is both futile and stupid,” said Nick behind me. “They wouldn’t sell you a spare umbrella in a shit storm.”

I turned. Nick’s hair, pulled back from his face into a ponytail, looked two shades lighter. The stubble had vanished, leaving a hard but pleasant, open face. He crossed the room, moving like a mature martial artist, fully confident in his skill and no longer competing to prove himself, but still too young and too fit to grow a sensei paunch. I could tell he was both quick and trained, armed with a muscle memory that would allow him to counter a kick or a punch without pause or thought.

He stopped a respectable distance away, and I realized he smelled like Irish Spring soap. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I was looking at the same man and then our gazes met. The familiar urge to step back flooded me.

“Why, you’re adorable,” I said, trying not to break into a nervous laugh. “All that you need is one of those little earrings in one ear.”

He gave me his hard stare.

“I’m just curious,” I said. “When you do that to people, do they usually start to shake and fall to the ground quivering with fear?”

“They usually just die surprised,” he said.

“Must not have worked on the upir then.”

He swung a large knapsack over his shoulder.

“Going somewhere?” I wondered, sitting down on the bed. My reaction time was probably close to his, and there was enough distance between us. If he tried anything, I had time to evade.

“Yes.”

“And how are you planning on getting past the Pack sentries?”

“I’m planning on you getting me out,” he said. “They took away my wolfsbane, but I know you have some.”

I rubbed my face with my hands. I did have wolfsbane—I would have been an idiot to venture within the Pack’s territory and not bring any. And I was probably better at using it, too. “Why would I help you escape? Do you have any idea how pissed Curran will be? I might as well slit my wrists now.”

“Considering how the upir plans to use you, it might not be a bad idea.”