Magic Binds (8 page)

“She would've pulled their legs out.” Aunt B hadn't played around.

“Who is this kinder, gentler Aunt B that they remember? I was her beta. I know exactly what kind of punishment that woman doled out. Other than that, I'm the size of a house, I can't even take a decent bite of my food or
it will hurt, this kid is kicking me in the kidneys like a champ, and everyone else treats me like I'm made of glass.” She looked at me for a moment. “And every waking moment I'm terrified that my baby will go loup at birth, and when I'm asleep, I have nightmares about it.”

Both of Raphael's brothers went loup. “You've been taking the panacea.”

“I know,” she said.

“You're also beastkin. Your form is very steady. You aren't usually in danger of going loup even when you are badly hurt.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I know, I know, I know. I just want it all to be okay. I want to give birth to my healthy baby and be happy.”

So did I.

“Your turn.” Andrea pointed her second gyro at me. “How's it going? Not making conversation.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. There was so much.

Andrea stopped eating. “What is it?”

I struggled with it.

“Kate, is it the wedding? If you don't want to marry that jackass, you don't have to marry him. Say the word, and the clan will come and get you and Julie. He might be a lion, but I have the whole hyena clan.”

“It's complicated.”

She put her gyro down. “I'm listening.”

Her tone told me there would be no getting out of it.

So I told her about my dad and the crosses, the slap, the urge to crush him, snapping at Barabas, the witches, and watching Curran and my son die.

Andrea sat still for a long moment. “Well, that fucking sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you kill Roland?”

“I'm not sure I want to.” And that came right out.

“Of course you don't want to. He's your father.”

I stared at her. She rubbed her stomach and grimaced. “The kid won't settle down.”

“How can I not want to kill him? He's evil, Andrea. He won't stop until he grinds everyone under his boot. A city, a state, a country won't be
enough. He'll keep going until his empire spans the whole planet. He tortures people. He's been talking to Julie behind my back, trying to subvert her. Why am I having doubts? What is wrong with me?”

“He's your father. He made you, Kate. He's your link to your family, the only link you have. And he loves you in his own twisted way. I saw the way he looked at you when you claimed the city. He was practically bursting with pride. If you manage to stab him in the heart, he'll be proud of you with his dying breath. Of course, you're having doubts. You wouldn't be human if you weren't.”

“You're not helping.”

“Did you expect me to sugarcoat it? I'm your best friend. I'm in the business of telling it like it is. He's a horrible monster, but he loves you and he's trying to be a decent dad. It's just that normal people's decent and his decent aren't on the same planet. Can you even kill him? I mean, do you know how and are you able to physically do it?”

“No and probably not.” Judging by the storm today, I had a long way to go. “I'm not even sure I can use power words against him. They are the best I've got, and the last time I used one against something with magic similar to Roland, my brain nearly exploded.”

“Crap.” She rubbed her stomach again. “Don't get frustrated. There is always a way. What about the ifrit's box? Can you trap or banish him with something similar?”

“Again, I don't know how. I tried to figure out how the box works, but it's too complicated and it operates on divine power. It took a lifetime of faith. Even Luther struck out with it. We don't understand enough about how it was made and we no longer have it.”

“Okay, who can you ask besides Luther?”

“I've asked everybody.” I threw my napkin onto the table. “There are no answers out there, Andrea. I've looked through all the books, I've done all the research, and I don't have any way to contain him.”

“You're letting him get to you. You're like a walking mythological encyclopedia, Kate. You pull random mystical crap out of your head and figure out that a giant monster nobody has seen on the face of the planet for three thousand years is allergic to hedgehogs and then you find a cute hedgehog and stab the monster in the eye with it.”

“Where do you even get this shit?”

“I'm giving you a theoretical example. There has to be something, some talisman, some spell, some creature, something that he has a weakness to.”

“I'm his weakness. He hid those thirty crosses from me, because he wanted to be a good father and he didn't want me to get upset. He isn't killing me in the visions. He's killing my husband and my child!”

Two women at the far table glared at me. I looked back at them and they decided to glare somewhere else.

“The only person who was close enough and who could have known about his weakness is Erra, and I killed her. I'd ask my grandmother, but she's too far gone—she's an elemental presence, not a person. She doesn't answer questions. She . . . feels.”

“Too bad you didn't ask your aunt more questions before you killed her . . .”

Andrea flinched and tensed.

“What is it?”

“We need to go to the Keep.”

“Why?”

Panic shivered in her eyes. “The baby is coming.”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now!”

Shit. I threw money on the table. “Can you make it down the stairs?”

She growled. “I'm a fucking former knight of the Order. Go get the car.”

I sprinted out of the building to the car. The magic was down and the gasoline engine purred as soon as I turned the key. I roared out of the parking lot and screeched to a stop before the building. Andrea stumbled out. I jumped out, threw the back door open, and stuffed her into the backseat.

“I can get us to Memorial in twenty minutes. Hold on.”

“No! We have to get back to the Keep. This is a high-risk pregnancy. Doolittle thinks I might die in labor.”

Damn it all to hell and back. I ran around the car, landed in the driver's seat, buckled up, and floored it. “How is it that Doolittle let you out?”

“He didn't. I escaped.”

“What? You told me he knew where you were.”

“He did. I left him . . . a note . . . It's more like he knew where I wasn't . . . Argh, hurts like a sonovabitch.”

“After you deliver this baby, I'm going to kill you. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I'd been in the damn infirmary for two weeks and if I didn't get out, I'd bash my head against the wall. You don't understand. Physically I'm fine. It's only the labor that might be the problem. All I did was sit in there and think about my baby going loup. I had to get out.”

“You hold on to that baby.” I rocketed down the street like a bat out of hell, bouncing on every pimple in the pavement. “I don't know anything about delivering babies.”

“I don't want you to deliver my baby. I want you to drive! Please drive.”

She was breathing like a marathon runner. I glanced into the rearview mirror. Sweat drenched her face.

I drove like all the hounds of hell were chasing me.

•   •   •

T
HE
K
EEP WAS
an hour away on a good day. I made it in forty minutes.

“Almost there.”

“I can't hold on any longer.” She was soaked in sweat. Her skin had gone sallow.

I barreled on down the narrow road, right past a Pack sentry. The gates to the courtyard stood wide open, showing the yard filled with shapeshifters, and I drove right into it. People dashed away from the speeding car, parting like waves . . . except one. Jim blocked my way. His eyes told me he wasn't moving.

I slammed on the brakes.

Do not kill the Beast Lord, do not kill the Beast Lord . . .

The car slid forward and stopped a mere foot from Jim.

He yanked the driver's door open. “What the hell . . .”

“She's going into labor!”

He saw Andrea and roared, “Clear the way to the medward!”

Raphael shot out of the tower gates, scooped his wife out of the backseat, and ran into the tower.

“We've been looking for her for the last hour. Doolittle got so pissed off, he couldn't even talk. He just made animal noises. What were you thinking, taking a pregnant woman on bed rest out for a stroll?” Jim's eyes blazed.

Typical. It's all my fault.
“She picked
me
up.”

“Then you should've driven her right back to the Keep.”

“Me and what army? I'd like to see you try to take the keys from her.”

Ahead Andrea screamed.

I jumped out of the car and chased after Raphael.

•   •   •

W
AITING WAS THE
hardest part. They took Andrea into the medward, behind two sets of soundproof doors that muffled her screams. Raphael went in with her and when he'd carried her through the doors, I glimpsed Doolittle in his wheelchair and Nasrin, his second-in-command, attended by three nurses and a burly shapeshifter who looked like he could crush cement blocks into powder with his bare hands. I had to stay in the waiting area, a spacious room with an abundance of big pillows and soft couches.

A few minutes after I settled down, a man and a woman came in and took the spot by the door, opposite me. Pearce Bailey and Jezebel. The two renders, both from the bouda clan.

Pearce was compact, dark-skinned, with calculating eyes and a serious expression on his face. I didn't know much about him except for the fact that Aunt B had trusted him completely.

Jezebel, on other hand, I knew very well. A few weeks before I became Curran's Consort, Jezebel had challenged her sister Salome for her position in the bouda clan. According to Pack law, challenges were always to the death. Jezebel lost. She was clinically dead for several minutes, but somehow her body bounced back to life, and Salome couldn't bear to kill her again. This left Jezebel outside Clan Bouda's structure, so when I ended up in the Keep, alone, with Curran in a coma and facing challenger after challenger, Aunt B assigned Jezebel and Barabas to me to watch my back and help me navigate the murky waters of Pack politics. For almost two years Jezebel was my constant backup. As long as she was there, nobody would stab me in the back.

She was also about the only person Julie would listen to. Jezebel had watched over Julie for the duration of my time as Consort. I didn't know about every scrape Julie got into, but occasionally things would happen and Jezebel would handle it. My kid always came home alive and Jezebel always kept Julie's secrets.

After Curran and I separated from the Pack, I thought Jezebel would come with us, but she chose to remain with the Pack instead. She had been trained as a render before becoming my backup and Julie's guard, and she went back to it. Last I heard she had found a nice guy and adopted his little daughter.

“Hi, Jezebel.”

“Hello, Alpha.”

“Not an alpha anymore.”

“You will always be my alpha. How's Julie?”

“She's doing well in school. She made friends. She had a sleepover the other night while the tech was up with two of her girlfriends. They watched a funny movie.”

“Is she still struggling with math?”

“She got an A in geometry and a C in algebra. Apparently, algebra is boring.”

“I'm glad she hasn't changed.” Jezebel flashed her teeth in a quick smile.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I'm good. Can't complain. I'm glad to see you.”

“I'm glad to see you too, Jezebel.”

Jezebel's face settled back into a neutral expression. It was all business today and I was no longer in her direct chain of command.

The renders were the Pack's elite soldiers, as close to a biological weapon of mass destruction as you could get. They were strong, fast, and precise, and if Andrea or Raphael went nuts because their baby was born loup, the two renders would do whatever they had to do to neutralize them.

Both Pearce and Jezebel were watching me carefully. They assessed me as a potential threat. They weren't entirely wrong. If Andrea busted out of that door, carrying her child and trying to escape, I wasn't sure what I would do. I would probably help her. It would be wrong and would make
things harder on everyone, but in that moment she would be my friend running for her life and I would do what I had to do to keep her safe. The renders would present a formidable obstacle: Pearce was bad news from what little I could remember of him, and Jezebel would prove a problem. I had seen her take people down, and once she got her hands on them, they didn't get back up.

I could see Jim's hand all over this. Julie owed Jezebel her life for at least one incident. Jim handpicked Jezebel for this guard duty because he knew both Andrea and I would be reluctant to hurt her.

I would still fight them.

That was why I made a piss-poor Consort. Following the laws, even fair ones, was never my strongest suit.

Pearce rose and walked away. Jezebel and I kept eye contact, smiling at each other. The male render returned and sat back on the couch. Nobody said anything. I got up, took a paperback from a basket Doolittle kept by the door, and began reading.

We sat quietly for another half hour. Andrea would be fine. She would be completely fine. Her baby would be fine, too. I had gotten to the part where the diabolical serial killer had killed the heroine's dog and burned down her apartment when the two renders sat a little straighter in their seats. I glanced at the door. Curran came in, making no sound as he moved. He sat next to me, picked up my hand, and squeezed it.

“Are you okay?”