Ilona Andrews - Magic Binds

ERRA WAS RIGHT. The Shar was real. I felt the familiar pull when I crossed into my territory. I hadn’t realized how much it was wearing me down, until I had to slide it back on, like a tired plow horse who was being put back into her horse collar.

All of me hurt. My back was probably bruised from being thrown around. My stomach wound ached. I wanted to get home and sleep.

Sugar unloaded me in front of my house. I hugged her and gave her another sugar cube. “Thank you.”

Sugar neighed, bumped my face with her head, and took off into the night.

I didn’t make it more than two steps into the house, before Curran appeared out of the living room and hugged me to him. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled me over, wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed until my bones groaned.

He smelled of blood. I probably smelled worse. My whole body hurt and being hugged felt like being run over by a car. And there was no place I wanted to be more than right here.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said.

“I . . .” I resurrected my aunt who tried to kill you so hard, you were in a coma for eleven days. “. . . I’m glad to be home.”

“I’m glad you’re home, too.”

“How did it go?”

“The degenerate is at the Guild,” Curran said. “Regenerating.”

“Did any of your people . . .”

“No,” he said. “King’s got broken legs and Samantha was burned, but we got out alive.”

He rescued Saiman and got them out alive. I exhaled.

“How was it?”

“It was okay,” Curran said.

“We did okay,” Derek said from the living room, almost at the same time.

Curran opened his arms, but I held on to his hand. Not yet. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure he’d made it back in one piece. I still needed proof for a little while longer.

In the living room Derek sprawled on the floor on a blanket, his eyes closed, his body human, corded with hard muscle, and covered only with a strategically placed towel. Julie knelt by him, long tweezers in her hand.

“What’s going on?”

“Quills,” she said. “Very thin quills. There was a magic plant and he decided it would be a good idea to give it a hug. Because he is smart that way.”

So they had taken Julie with them. Considering where I’d gone and what I did while there, I didn’t have room to talk.

Derek didn’t bother opening his eyes. “I wasn’t giving it a hug. I was shielding Ella.”

“Mm-hm.” Julie plucked a thin needle from his stomach. “You shielded her really well. Because it’s not like we didn’t have Carlos with us.”

Carlos was a firebug. The plant must’ve gotten torched.

“We’ll need to work on mixed-unit tactics,” Curran said. He looked tired. It must’ve been hell. “So what did you do in Mishmar?”

Umm. Ehh. In my head I had somehow expected Erra to stay in Mishmar.

“I saw my father,” I said. Start small.

“How was that?” Curran asked.

“He’s a little upset with me.”

“Aha.”

“I broke Mishmar a little bit.”

The three of them looked at me.

“But it was mostly my grandmother who did it.”

“How much is a little bit?” Derek asked.

“There might be a crack. About maybe seven feet at the widest point.”

Derek laughed.

“And what else?” Curran asked.

Perceptive bastard.

“And this.” I pulled out the dagger and showed it to him.

“You made a magic knife?” he asked.

“Yes. In a manner of speaking.”

“But you still have to get close enough to stab Roland with it,” Derek said.

“That’s not how it works.” Help me, somebody.

Curran was looking right at me. “Kate?”

“It’s more of an advising kind of knife.”

“You should come clean,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s done and we can handle it.”

My aunt tore into existence in the center of the room. “Hello, half-breed.”

Curran exploded into a leap. Unfortunately, Derek also exploded at exactly the same time but from the opposite direction. They collided in Erra’s translucent body with a loud thud. Derek fell back and Curran stumbled a few steps.

Erra pointed at Curran with her thumb. “You want to marry this? Is there a shortage of men?”

Curran leapt forward and swiped at her head. His hand passed through my aunt’s face. Derek jumped to his feet and circled Erra, his eyes glowing.

“I fear for my grandnephew,” Erra said. “He will be an idiot.”

The phone rang. “I’ll get it.” It was probably for me anyway and I desperately needed to escape.

I ran to the kitchen to pick up the phone.

“The baby,” Sienna’s voice said into the phone. She sounded strained.

“What?”

“The baby is the next anchor. I see you holding a small baby in the Keep. It’s not yours. Hurry!”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Baby B.

“Roland’s going after Baby B!” I yelled, and dialed the Keep’s security number, one step away from Jim.

“Yes?” an unfamiliar male voice said.

“I need Jim.”

“Who is this?”

Curran plucked the phone from me. “Put Jim on now.”

The line clicked and Jim’s voice said, “Yes?”

“Is Andrea still in the medical ward?”

“Yes.”

“Roland is targeting Baby B,” Curran said, his voice even and measured. “We’re coming to you now.”

“Got it.” Jim’s voice sounded almost nonchalant.

I ran out the door. Behind me Curran appeared, keys in hand. Julie followed, Derek behind her in Pack sweatpants, pulling on a white T-shirt.

We piled into the car and Curran took off like the street behind us was on fire.

Crap. I’d left Erra behind. Too late now.

The city slid by outside the window. The speedometer said we were tearing down the half-ruined roads at nearly sixty miles per hour. Any faster and we’d flip the car. It felt like crawling.

“Why?” Julie asked from the backseat. “What could Baby B do to him?”

“Nothing,” I said. “She’s an anchor.”

“What anchor?”

I forced myself to speak in complete sentences. “Sienna says that the future is fluid. She sees flashes of it, pivotal moments during which the future can change. She calls them anchors. Me turning the old lady’s head over to the police was an anchor. So was Chernobog’s dragon. Either Roland or his oracles can also see into the future. They see the anchors and try to change them to enforce their version of the future.”

“What happens if we don’t get there in time?” Julie asked.

“We’ll get there,” Curran said, his gaze focused on the road. “By now Jim has the Keep on lockdown. No outsider is getting close to that baby.”

“It’s not the outsiders I’m worried about,” I told him. Roland’s people had managed to subvert the wolf alpha before, the leader of the most numerous clan within the Pack. There was no telling who else he had in his clutches. If something happened to Baby B . . .

“What happens if we fail to secure an anchor?” Derek asked.

“Atlanta burns, a bunch of people die, Roland kills Curran and our son.”

Crap. Crap. Would it have killed me to think before I opened my mouth? Maybe he wasn’t listening closely.

“Our son?” Curran said, his voice very calm. His face slid into his Beast Lord mask. “Erra’s grandnephew.”

I was so stupid. “Yes.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Not yet. I will be soon.”

“How does our son die?”

“Roland runs him through with a spear.”

“How long have you known?”

“That he dies? Since I went to see the witches.”

“That we will have a son.”

“The djinn showed him to me.”