Ilona Andrews - Magic Binds

He was doing almost seventy now. We were going to wreck.

“Kate,” he said. I knew that tone of voice. That was his line-in-the-sand voice. “What happened to Erra? Did you resurrect your aunt?”

“Not exactly. She isn’t technically alive.”

He glanced at me, his eyes drowning in liquid gold. He wasn’t interested in “technically.” His voice came out deep, almost demonic. “Why?”

“Because I desperately need help. Things are happening to me that I can’t explain and don’t understand. I know that my father will attack and very soon. When he does, I have to defend us and I can’t. I have the power but I don’t know how to use it, and in using it, I’m affecting the lives of every creature and plant in my lands. I’m afraid that I’ll make a mistake and kill everyone in Atlanta. I have to get guidance. She’s the only one with the knowledge I need.”

“She tried to kill us,” Curran ground out.

“I know. But she’s a princess of Shinar. The one thing she values above all else is family. Yes, she would’ve killed me if she was alive and I challenged her, but now things are different. I showed Grandmother to her. It made her furious. I showed her all of my memories and our son. She’s going to help us.”

“You can’t trust her,” Curran said.

“Yes, I can. She isn’t doing it for you or for me. She’s doing it for the survival of her bloodline. What my father is doing is an aberration. The members of our family weren’t meant to live forever. We were meant to have families and children. As long as my father lives, no other member of our bloodline will survive. Not even her. She knows about the sahanu.”

“What are the sahanu?” Curran asked.

I was hitting it out of the park today with keeping secrets. “He was afraid of her and so he created a religious sect designed to kill her. Now I am their next target. I fought one of them in Mishmar, a female. She was hard to kill.”

“Is that why you’re bruised and smell like blood?” Derek asked from the backseat.

“Yes. And some of it was Erra. She took some convincing.”

“But is she going to help us?” Julie asked.

“She already has,” I said.

Curran stared straight ahead. His hands gripped the wheel.

“You’re going to bend it,” I told him.

He hit me with an alpha stare and kept driving.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Are we okay, Curran?

“He’s got no room to talk,” Julie said.

“Quiet,” Derek told her.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Curran asked.

“No.” Now wasn’t the best time to bring up Adora. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“One of the rooms in the castle had a creature in it,” Curran said.

“What kind of creature?”

“A large cat,” Curran said. “It glowed.”

“What happened to the large glowing cat?” Why did I have a feeling I wouldn’t like the answer?

“I killed it,” Curran said.

“Aha.” First, I broke Mishmar, then Curran stole Saiman back and killed my father’s glowing cat. Maybe Roland’s head would explode.

“It was a saber-toothed tiger,” Julie said. “It glowed silver.”

Silver meant divine magic. There was no telling what that saber-toothed tiger was or where my dad had gotten him.

“Snitch,” Derek said.

She waved him off. “He killed it and then he ate it.”

I looked at Curran. “You killed an animal god and then you ate him?”

“Maybe,” Curran said.

“What do you mean maybe?”

“I doubt it was a god.”

“It glowed silver,” Julie said. “It was definitely worshipped.”

Oh boy.

Curran swerved to avoid a speed bump formed by tree roots raising the asphalt. “I could worship a lamp. That doesn’t make it a god.”

“Why did you eat it?” I asked in a small voice.

“It felt right at the time.”

“He devoured it,” Julie said. “Completely. With bones.”

If it was some sort of divine animal and he ate it, there was no telling what the flesh or the magic would do to him. There would be consequences. There were always consequences.

“Do you feel any side effects?”

“Not any I want to talk about with them in the car.”

Oh boy.

We passed the burned-out shell of the Infinity Building, the last known skyscraper built before the Shift. Halfway there.

Hold on, Baby B. We are coming.

WE TURNED ONTO the narrow side road leading to the Keep. Curran stepped on it. The car accelerated. Wolves appeared from the brush, running parallel to the vehicle. The woods ended and we shot onto a mile-long stretch of open ground between the trees and the tower of the Keep. The heavy metal gates stood shut.

Curran braked hard. The vehicle skidded and stopped two feet from the gray wall. I got the hell out of the car. The wolves sniffed me, a wall of fur and teeth separating me from the gates. The lead wolf raised her head and howled.

The gates opened enough for us to pass through, and the four of us marched inside. Robert, one of the alphas of Clan Rat and the Pack’s chief of security, stepped out of the main entrance, waiting for us.

“Anything?” Curran asked.

Robert shook his head. “Not a whisper. No sign of attack, no unusual movement, nothing.”

We hurried through the Keep’s hallways to the medical ward, passing through pair after pair of sentries.

“The magic is down,” Robert said. “If an attack comes, it will be via an agent. There are exactly six outsiders in the Keep right now: two teamsters who delivered a shipment and the four of you.”

Ouch.

“What was in the shipment?” Curran asked.

“Paper,” Robert said. “My people inspected and cleared it.”

The shapeshifters guarded the medward door. If Sienna hadn’t called me to warn me, I wouldn’t be in the Keep, I wouldn’t be holding Baby B, and no attack would come. The future was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Baby B is being targeted because my father saw the future with me holding her,” I said.

“Why is the baby important?” Robert asked.

“It’s an anchor. It’s something that has to happen for the right version of the future to happen,” I said.

“What’s the right version?”

“The one where we don’t all die,” Curran said.

Robert’s eyes narrowed. “I take it Roland prefers a different version.”

“If I walk into that room and attempt to hold Baby B, I will provoke an attack.”

“If you don’t walk into that room, the city will burn,” Curran said.

“I take full responsibility,” Robert said, and nodded at the guards. The woman on the left swung the door open.

Andrea sat on the bed in the middle of the room, fully dressed, holding Baby B. Raphael stood behind her. Jim and Dali stood to the left, and the two renders, Pearce and Jezebel, to the right. Mahon loomed by the left window, behind Jim and Dali. Desandra stood by the other window, behind Pearce and Jezebel. Doolittle sat in his wheelchair in the corner, out of the way, with Nasrin by him. Everyone looked grim.

The doors shut behind us. Sixteen people, including me. I trusted every single person in this room. I would fight to defend every single person in this room.

There were too many of us here. Jim always erred on the side of caution.

“To end the threat, Kate must hold the baby,” Robert said. “Holding the baby will provoke the attack. But not holding the baby will have catastrophic consequences for the future of the Pack.”

Andrea’s face was hard and her eyes harder.

“If the attack comes,” Robert continued. “If at all possible, we need to take the attacker alive. There are important questions that need to be answered.”