Gunmetal Magic (47 page)

Raphael shook his head. Blood gushed from his broken nose.

“I think he’s mad at you,” I told him.

“He’ll get over it.” Raphael grinned at me.

“How did you know I wouldn’t die?”

“I didn’t.”

“Took a chance, huh?”

He nodded. “We had nothing to lose.”

Behind him the Jackals had dismantled one of the huts and dragged Anapa’s dismembered corpse onto a pile of wood. Two shapeshifters in warrior form dumped fuel onto the boards and set it on fire.

“How did you know Anapa would panic?” I asked.

“When you told me he had started as a shapeshifter, I went to the Jackals looking for their research on Anubis’s weaknesses. They took it very seriously. Half of the Clan was digging up information. They said that in ancient Egypt, when Anubis was still human, silver was virtually unknown. The Egyptians started getting it later, through imports, and even then it was highly prized. There was no reason he would know how silver affected shapeshifters from personal experience. Roman said that he would likely retreat to the old Anapa body if he was threatened. Clan Jackal trailed us. His ego was so colossal, he didn’t view them as a threat.”

“He didn’t even notice them,” I told him.

“The hardest part was talking Doolittle into that emergency open-heart surgery. He really didn’t want to do it. We argued for hours. He thought you wouldn’t survive.” Raphael swallowed. He looked sick.

“What’s the matter with you? Is it the poison?”

“I just realized you died on me twice.” Raphael rolled to his feet and staggered off.

“Where are you going?”

“I need a minute.”

He stumbled into the bushes and I heard him vomit.

A shadow came over me. Roman sat on a log next to me. He was carrying something long and wrapped in plastic.

“Nice guy,” Roman said. “An asshole, but he loves you.”

“I love him, too.” I petted his hand. “Thank you for everything. I had fun.”

“I had fun, too.” He grinned. “Look what I got.” He pulled the plastic back. The Bone Staff.

“You got it?”

He nodded. “Spent an hour digging through that clay. Worth every minute.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you around. You call if you need anything, yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “You call me, too. I owe you some help. As long as I don’t have to sacrifice any babies, I’ll be there.”

“I’ll count on it.”

He walked off and Raphael took his place, rinsing his mouth with water from a canteen. Around us, the shapeshifters were herding the snake people into a group. I was covered in mud, blood, and swampy muck. Raphael looked even worse,
his hair smeared with gore. I really wanted to go back home, take a shower, and sleep for a year.

“Help me off the log?” I asked him.

“No. We’re going to get you a nice stretcher and carry you down to the boats.”

“I’m okay to walk. My chest hurts a little, but I can make it.”

“You are certifiable,” he told me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag.

“What’s this?”

“I swore that if we made it through today, I would do this.” Raphael pulled a small plastic box out of the bag and got down on his knees in the mud.

This was crazy.

He opened the box. A white engagement ring with a band shaped like a beast’s paw lay on a small velvet pillow, with a beautiful sapphire clasped in its tiny white claws.

“I’m fucked up,” he said. “I have many faults. But I promise if you marry me, I will love you and take care of you for the rest of our lives.”

I stared at him.

“If you put up with me, I will put up with whatever you can throw my way,” he said. “Bad days, good days, ‘I’ll cut you if you look at me the wrong way’ days. I’ll take them all.”

I knew I had to say something.

“If you kill her with this after everything I’ve done,” Doolittle said behind me. “You will never leave this swamp.”

Raphael searched my face, anxious. “Andi?”

“Yes,” I told him. “In sickness and in health, poor, rich, I don’t care.”

He was still looking at me, as if he hadn’t heard.

“Yes, Raphael.” I laughed or cried, I wasn’t sure. “Yes.”

“Put the ring on her, you fool,” Doolittle said.

Raphael slipped the ring on my finger and I hugged him.

“I’d kiss you,” Raphael said. “But I need to brush my teeth and I’m covered in blood.”

“I don’t care,” I told him. “Kiss me anyway.”

My Pack admittance ceremony was held on Tuesday in the Pack’s main gathering place, a large room deep below the Keep, where the terraced ground sloped in “steps” toward the stage with the metal fire pit. I’d heard Kate describe it before, but I had never seen it. I thought about dressing up, but it seemed kind of pointless. Whichever outfit I wore, I would still be me and that’s what really counted.

A few minutes before ten p.m., Martina knocked on the door to the small room where I was asked to wait. “It’s time.”

I followed her down the stairs, lower and lower. I had no idea the Keep went that deep underground.

Finally she stopped before a solid door. “Nervous?”

“Not really.” I had spent the morning sitting in a small room with Raphael and the families of the four murdered shapeshifters, telling them the whole long story. The Pack had rounded up the snake people. It didn’t take long for the truth to come out: Raphael’s crew was murdered by Saii, the priests. They were the only ones with poison glands. The rest of the snake people had fangs, but their bites were hardly fatal. All six of the Saii were dead. I took out Gloria, Roman and I had killed Sanchez on the bridge, and the four remaining perished before our battle with Apep. The Pack loaded the remaining cultists and what little baggage they had onto the boats and shipped them under armed escort out of the Pack’s territory. They were forbidden to return. Derek oversaw the convoy and said that most of them seemed relieved. The Saii had worked them like slaves.

I got to hold Baby Rory again. We made a pact, he and I. He would grow up to be kind and strong, and I would make sure that his clansmen would never mistreat him or break his bones.

I was able to look Nick in the eye when I told him that the
people who had murdered his wife would never again hurt anyone else. He thanked me. This ceremony paled in comparison.

“Last chance to turn back,” Martina said.

I knew what waited behind the door. Raphael and his mother. A few members of Clan Bouda. Kate and Curran. My friends, my alpha, my mate, and the new future. For once, I wouldn’t have to hide who I was.

I opened the door.

The vast chamber stretched in front of me, dipping down to the stage, on which a metal fire pit stood. Flames danced inside it.

Behind the pit stood Aunt B. To the left, Curran and Kate sat, together with the other alphas and betas. Shapeshifters occupied the terraced steps surrounding them. Hundreds of shapeshifters. Suddenly I was nervous.

There was no turning back. I raised my head and marched down the stairs toward the fire, looking straight at Raphael for support. The stairs lasted for an eternity. Finally I stopped next to Aunt B.

“We gather here to invite Andrea Nash to the Pack,” Aunt B said, her voice carrying through the room. “You know her. She has fought for us. She has given her blood and used her skills for the good of the Pack. Today we honor her sacrifice and accept her as one of our own. If any of you have a problem with that, rise and challenge me.”

“No, thank you!” someone quipped from the right.

Light laughter ran through the room. I tried to keep still, but the giggles bubbled up out of me.

Aunt B grinned. “It’s your turn, dear. Your moment.”

I stepped to the fire and pulled my sleeve back. The flames crackled and burned in the fire pit. I thrust my forearm into the fire. The flames licked, searing my flesh. The smell of burned hair from my arm whiffed up. I held it for another second to prove that I was in control. No loup could touch the flames. It inspired strong instinctual terror in them.

I lowered my arm, trying not to wince at the pain, and said the first words of my oath. “I, Andrea Nash, a human and a shapeshifter, swear to abide by the laws of the Pack and my clan. I swear to obey my alphas and honor my clan’s traditions. I swear to be loyal to my Pack brothers and sisters, to guard them from harm, and should the need arise, to fight to my death at their side…”

MAGIC
GIFTS

A Kate Daniels Novella

I was ten feet from the office door of Cutting Edge Investigations when I heard the phone ring inside. Unfortunately, the key to the office was in my sweatshirt pocket, which at the moment was also full of pale pink slime dripping from the tentacles resting on my shoulders. The tentacles weighed about seventy pounds and my shoulders really didn’t like it.

Behind me, Andrea, my best friend and partner in crime solving, shifted the bulbous mass of flesh that was the rest of the creature, rearranging it. “Phone.”

“I hear it.” I dug in my pocket, all but glued shut by slime. Cold wetness slipped through my fingers. Ew.

“Kate, it could be a client.”

“I’m trying to find the key.”

Clients meant money, and money was in short supply. Cutting Edge had opened its doors three months ago, and while we were getting a trickle of paying jobs, most of them were lousy. Despite a good recommendation from the Red Guard, the premier bodyguard outfit in Atlanta, clients weren’t knocking down our door to hire us.

Our world was beset by magic waves. They flooded us at random, smothering technology and leaving monsters in their wake. One moment you had rogue mages spitting fireballs and lightning, the next the magic would vanish, and the cops would gun down said mages with their now-operational firearms.

Sadly, the consequences of the magic waves didn’t always vanish with them, and Atlanta by necessity had spawned many agencies to deal with magic hazmat. All of them had been in business a lot longer than us: the cops, the Mercenary Guild,
a slew of private companies, and the big gorilla, the Order of Merciful Aid. The Order and its knights made it their mission to guard humanity against all threats and they did just that—but on their terms. Both Andrea and I had worked for the Order at some point and both of us had left under less than amicable circumstances.

Our reputations weren’t stellar, so when we got a job, it was because everyone else in town had already shot it down. We were quickly turning into Atlanta’s business of last resort. Still, every successful job was a check mark by our name.

The phone rang, insistent.

Our latest job had come courtesy of the Green Acres Home Owners Association, who had shown up at our door this morning claiming that a giant levitating jellyfish was roaming their suburb and could we please come and get it, because it was eating local cats. Apparently the translucent jellyfish was floating about with half-digested cat bodies inside it, and the neighborhood children were very upset. The cops told them that it wasn’t a priority, since the jellyfish hadn’t eaten any humans yet, and the Mercenary Guild wouldn’t get rid of it for less than a grand. The HOA offered us $200. Nobody in their right mind would do the job for that price.

It took us all damned day. And now we had to properly dispose of the cursed thing, because dealing with the corpses of magical creatures was like playing Russian roulette. Sometimes nothing happened…and sometimes the corpse melted into a puddle of sentient carnivorous protoplasm. Or hatched foot-long blood-sucking leeches.

The weight of the jellyfish suddenly vanished from my shoulders. I rummaged in my pocket and my fingertips slid against the cold metal. I yanked the key out, slipped it into the lock, and swung the heavy reinforced door open. Aha! Victory.

I lunged through the door and made a break for the phone. I reached it a second too late and the answering machine came on. “Kate,” Jim’s voice said. “Pick up the phone.”

I backed away from the phone like it was on fire. I knew exactly what this call was about and I didn’t want any of it.

“Kate, I know you’re there.”

“No, I’m not,” I said.

“You
will
have to deal with this, sooner or later.”