Magic Mourns (11 page)

I pulled the green toy car from my pocket. “The boy . . .”

“Yes,” Alex confirmed. “It's his. Raphael, I know that you're not my son and you owe me nothing. But I beg you, please, don't let her get the apples. Save the boy. And whatever you do, don't eat them.”

“I'll do it,” Raphael said simply.

“The shrine's guarded by a serpent, but it won't last against Spider Lynn's vampires for long. Take the bracelet off my arm. It's keyed to the ward that's guarding the shrine. Lynn has enough magic to force herself past the defensive spell, but it will leave her weakened. She'll need time to recover. You won't.”

A deafening roar shook the house. Cerberus had found us.

“He's come for me.” Alex smiled. “It's time to go. Take the bracelet. It will unlock the ward and let you pick up the apples.”

Raphael slipped the simple metal loop off the corpse's right wrist and placed it over his own. The bracelet barely enclosed two thirds of his wrist. “Are you really going to Hades?”

“I don't know,” Alex said. “But the last of my power is fading. My body is dead, Raphael. I can no longer hold on to it. Earth is the home of the living, not the dead. Don't mourn me. My life was full and well lived. I was fortunate. Some might even say blessed. I only wish that I had lived a few days longer so I could destroy the apples myself instead of forcing this burden on you. That and your mother's tears are my only regrets.”

Aunt B rose, picked up the corpse, and strode outside. We followed her. She walked onto the lawn. They said something to each other, too quiet to hear, and then she lowered him into the grass and stepped away.

The trees rustled. A giant shape muscled through the trunks and trotted into the open, its three heads close to the ground. The center head sniffed Alex's body and picked it up, clamping it in its great fangs.

“Take care of your mother, Raphael,” a ghostly voice called out.

The body burst into flames. The great dog howled and vanished.

Raphael's eyes shone once, catching the moonlight. “Are you with me?”

“Who else will protect your furry butt?”

“I'm coming, too,” Aunt B said.

Raphael shook his head. “We've got this.”

Her eyes flashed with red, a precursor to an alpha stare.

“He didn't want you involved,” Raphael said. “He asked me, not you. The clan needs you.”

“We've got it.” I nodded.

We turned our backs on her and headed to the Jeep. “Did we just defy your mother, who's also your alpha?” I murmured.

“Yes, we did.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Aunt B standing there with a bewildered look on her face. “Let's go faster before she realizes that.”

The magic was up and Boom Baby was useless. I took a crossbow and bolts from the Jeep and followed Raphael into the woods. He broke into a run, inhumanly fast in warrior form, and I struggled to keep up.

 

Half a mile later Raphael stopped. “The magic is up,” he said softly.

“I know.”

“You're slower in this form.”

I had run as fast as I could. When we were both in human form, I was faster. But in warrior form, he beat me.

“You can't keep up.”

I realized what he was saying. “No.”

“Andrea . . .”

“No!”

“We're short on time,” he said. “There's a little boy out there with at least two vampires. We don't even know if he's alive.”

My heart hammered in my chest. “You don't understand. I lose control when I'm her.”

“Andrea, please,” he said. “We're losing time.”

I closed my eyes. He was right. We had to save the boy. We had to get the apples away from Lynn. I had to . . .

I stripped off my clothes and reached to the beast living inside me. She smiled and leapt out, flowing over my arms, my legs, my back, giving me her strength. My bones stretched, my muscles swelled, and there I stood, revealed and naked.

The shapeshifters got a choice: human, warrior form, or animal. I had only two: the human me and the secret me.

Raphael's eyes shone with red. He ran.

I swiped up my crossbow and then dropped it. My claws were too long. I wouldn't be able to work it. I'd have to fight with my claws and teeth. I grabbed the little toy car and hid it in my fist.

Raphael was a mere shadow in the distance. I burst into a run. It felt like flying, light and easy. My muscles welcomed the exertion and I sprinted, catching him with ease. Together we dashed through the woods, two humanoid nightmares, fast and slick, our voices faint whispers on the draft.

“I can't see you.”

“I don't want you to see me.” I purposely picked my way so he caught only the mere flashes of me.

“Don't hide from me,” he asked.

I ignored him.

Suddenly he burst through the brush. I had no chance to hide. He saw all of me: my limbs, my face that was neither animal nor beast, my breasts . . .

“You're lovely,” he whispered as he passed me in a burst of speed.

“You're sick,” I told him.

“You've a perfect union of human and animal: proportionate and elegant and strong. Your form is what we aspire to. How's that sick?”

“I'm a human!”

“So am I. You don't have to hide from me, Andrea. I think you are beautiful.”

Nobody, not human, not shapeshifter, not even my mother had ever told me that the beast form was beautiful. Inside me, the human me put her hands on her face and cried.

Miles flashed by. We passed a house in a blur of speed. Trees parted, underbrush snapped, and we burst into a clearing. A ward ignited with gold, barring our way in a translucent wall.

Inside the ward, a dark-haired boy crouched on the ground, hugging his knees. Past him a dead vampire lay broken on the grass, its skull shattered. To the left, an unnaturally large snake was dying on the grass, a second vampire caught in its coils. The vamp's neck was broken, its vertebrae crushed. Blood drenched the snake's coils. With each new squeeze, more blood washed the scales.

Past them, a ring of colonnades carved of pure white stone guarded a narrow apple sapling. Four yellow apples hung from the branches. The fifth apple, with a small piece bitten off, lay on the grass, by the hand of a dark-haired woman. She slumped on the grass. Her horribly distended stomach had ripped through her tailored slacks.

Oh no. She ate it. We were too late.

“Now look what you did.” A man walked up to us, his eyes fixed on Spider Lynn. “I done told you to leave the apples alone.”

Raphael snarled. The fur on his back rose.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered, built with strength in mind. Dark stubble peppered his face. He wore a white T-shirt, a pair of old jeans, and yellow work boots. A flannel shirt hung from his blocky shoulders. He looked like a good old boy in search of a porch with a rocking chair and a glass of iced tea. He turned to us and said, “Hi.”

This was surreal. “Who are you?” I asked.

“I' m Teddy Jo.”

“You're the man who called me about Raphael running from Cerberus?”

“I called Kate,” he said. “You answered the phone. Do you have the bracelet?”

“What?”

“Doulos's bracelet. You have it?” He saw the bracelet on Raphael's arm. “Oh good then. We're in business.”

Lynn squirmed on the grass and began to cry. “What is happening to me?”

Teddy Jo glanced at her. “You've brought this on yourself.”

Raphael lunged at him. His clawed fingers closed about Teddy Jo's throat, the bracelet glinting with steel on his forearm. “What are you doing here?”

“Well now, you might want to rethink that,” Teddy Jo said, raising his arm. His sleeve fell back, revealing an identical bracelet, but made of gold. “Given as we're on the same side.”

Magic slammed my senses. Teddy Jo's eyes turned solid black. The flannel shirt ripped on his back and two colossal black wings thrust into the night. Fire ran from his bracelet down into his hand and snapped into a flaming blade.

“Thanatos,” Lynn squeaked.

The angel of death clamped Raphael's wrist and squeezed. Raphael bared his teeth and crushed Thanatos's throat.

Lynn's stomach twisted. She howled as if cut. Alex's nephew jerked.

“Stop!” I barked at the two men. “There's a kid in shock sitting behind that ward, locked with whatever is about to crawl out of Lynn's gut! Raphael, break the damn ward. Teddy Jo, I swear, you don't let go of him this instant, I'll rip your wings off!”

The two of them stared at me.

“Do it!”

Teddy Jo let go. Raphael thrust his arm into the ward and the wall of gold drained down, revealing the shrine.

I leapt inside and swept the boy up into my arms. “Listen to me.”

He stared at me with empty eyes. To him I was a monster.

I opened my hand and showed him the car. He touched it gently and I handed it to him. “I won't hurt you. Uncle Alex's house, do you know where it is?”

He nodded.

“I want you to run to it and not look back. Okay?”

He clutched the car in his fist. I set him down and he ran.

Raphael snarled at Teddy Jo. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Teddy Jo shrugged his massive wings. “I'm here to set things right. I serve Hades just like Doulos, except that he was a priest and I'm something other.”

“Where were you until now?”

“Look, fella, I follow the rules. I would have liked to come down earlier and start chopping people's heads off, but I have to sit on my hands and wait until someone bites the damn apple. I'm the emergency brake here. That's what makes me the good guy.”

Lynn screamed.

“And there she goes,” Teddy Jo said.

Lynn's stomach tore. A slithering green mass spilled forth, and as it boiled out, Lynn was sucked in, almost as if her body had turned inside out. The mass grew larger and larger, bigger than a house, bigger than Cerberus. Scales formed on its surface. Magic roiled inside it, whipping my senses into overdrive.

The mass flexed and uncoiled. An enormous reptilian body thrust across the clearing. Three dragon heads snapped at the air with wicked teeth, jerking on long necks.

The dragon tasted the night and roared.

Teddy Jo shot straight up and hovered, his sword a beacon of light. “I'll take the center head. You two do as you please.”

Lynn the dragon whipped about and I saw her eyes: cold and green, devoid of any humanity or feeling. Something inside me snapped. Fury drowned the world, flushing the rational thought. I was very angry. She had stolen the body of a man, denying his mate her mourning. She had tortured that man. She had kidnapped and terrorized a child. She deserved to die.

Teddy Jo swept at the dragon. The flaming sword carved through her neck like it was butter. The head tumbled down in a whiff of scorched meat. Then the stump quivered and split in half, and two new heads sprouted in its place and lunged for Teddy Jo.

“A hydra! Gods damn it!” Teddy Jo veered out of the way.

I smelled her flesh, waiting for me just beneath her scales. My fingers flexed. My tongue licked my fangs. Rage warmed me from the inside, hot and sharp and so very welcome. Andrea, the knight of the Order, would have to sleep through tonight. Tonight I was beastkin, the daughter of a hyena.

The dragon's flesh beckoned, elastic and smooth, coiling before me, begging for a taste.

The world went red. I charged.

 

A huge, pulsating sac swelled before me. I sliced into it, laughed when blood drenched me, and kept ripping. All around me, wet, hot redness shuddered.

“Enough!” A force clamped me and tossed me aside. I flew through the air, landed on all fours, and charged my assailant. He tripped me and I fell. The air burst from my lungs in a rush. My head swam.

The reality came back with ponderous slowness. I lay on my back in the grass, my body slick with reptilian blood. Slowly the rage faded and I saw Raphael.

“Are you hurt?” I asked him.

“Nothing dire.”

The dragon's corpse lay on its side, a dozen half-formed heads sprawling like the stalks of some disgusting flower. A big hole gaped in her gut. It looked like someone had tunneled through her. Teddy Jo stood bent over near her, breathing hard.

“Did I do that?”

Raphael nodded. “You ripped apart her heart. That's what finally killed her.”

“The apples.” I tried to get up, but my legs refused to obey.

Raphael scooped me up. “Are you okay?”

“Overdid it.” Drowsiness swept over me. My muscles turned to cotton. I stuck my ugly head against his neck. I felt dirty and awful. My stomach clenched.

If he hadn't pulled me out, I would've cut and sliced until I passed out.

Slowly it sank in: we won.

“I'll take care of the apples,” Teddy Jo said. “You take your lady home.”

Raphael looked at him. “Good fight,” he said.

“Yeah,” Teddy Jo answered. “We didn't do too bad. I live down in the Warren. Look me up if you wanna have a beer sometime.”

Raphael carried me off.

“Don't forget the boy,” I whispered.

“I won't. We're going to get the boy and drop him off with my mother. Then I'll take you to my house. I have a garden tub. We'll get nice and clean and then crawl into our bed and sleep until noon. Would you like that?”