Shifty Magic (26 page)

My cheeks grew warm. I pulled off the robe
and shrugged into my tank top as quickly as I could.

"I found a busboy who was ducking out for a
smoke break when the real Marla, posing as Kathy, started some
heavy flirting with Sean. The kid saw them leave out the back
entrance. The one that goes to the alley."

"Marla was the woman you smelled in the
hall? That must have been when she drugged him."

"I realized that she'd also used some of her
'forget' mojo on the other bartender and maybe a few patrons like
she did on the day guard at Morrocroft. She hadn't noticed the
busboy, so he never got zapped. I got suspicious and ran a
background check on her. That's when I discovered the ID
switch."

I put the robe in the duffle bag and pulled
on my boots. It felt great to be back in my own gear again.

"I got worried, so I followed you to
Falcon's," Cooper said. "Are you decent yet? I'm getting
bored."

"Yeah. You can turn around."

He did and ambled toward me, stopping on the
other side of Marla's body. I slipped my knives into the hidden
sheaths in my boots and considered Cooper's story so far. "Did
Falcon tell you what else he'd found?"

"He showed me the information on the
ceremonies and what he thought was about to happen."

I straightened up and strapped the
Browning's holster around my waist and thigh. "But I still don't
know how you found me. The Were killing grounds are almost forty
miles from town."

"I bummed a ride in a helicopter and
followed your signal."

I froze, and then outrage slowly seeped into
my brain. "What?" I ground out.

"Every iC has a tracker on it. Standard
safety measure," he said, completely unconcerned that he'd trampled
all over the boundaries of my privacy.

"You put a bug on me?"

He studied Marla's body. "What do you know
about how to make a vampire?"

I narrowed my eyes at him and tried to
accept that putting a tracker on me without my knowledge was a
subject for another time. "It's something about blood transfusions
that replace the healthy blood with the tainted, but other than
that..." I angrily snapped the last clip on my holster and reached
for my gun. "Why?"

"Something about this corpse doesn't smell
right..."

I turned and stared down at the body. A
chill ran over me. "What time is it?"

"11:07, why?"

"Because I'm not sure that—"

Marla's eyes snapped open.

I jumped back, stumbling over the overturned
goblet in my haste. My stomach somersaulted in on itself and horror
froze my blood as the milky-white of the body's irises faded into
fathomless, ancient black.

CHAPTER TEN

Whatever the hell Marla had become pushed itself
into a sitting position and turned its head slowly in my direction.
The mouth opened, showing narrow snake-like fangs, and Aedodra's
smooth, beautiful voice spoke from it.

"Perfect," he said. He stretched his neck
and then rolled his shoulders, making the body's full breasts rise
and fall as the vertebrae along its back cracked. "In this form, my
brother will never see me coming."

Easing my gun out of its holster, I pushed
down the nausea cramping my stomach and slid back a step. We had
four minutes to save the world. I planned to make the most of
it.

"Bullets won't affect me," Aedodra said, and
Marla's pouty mouth stretched into a self-satisfied smile. "I'm
dead, remember?"

"You mean Marla's dead."

"Which makes her the perfect vessel for my
existence in this realm."

"Cooper, don't!" I shouted, instinctively
moving to intercept him, but I was too late.

Aedodra sprang up, dodged Cooper's lunge and
slammed the body's heel into the side of Cooper's knee. The hideous
pop of the joint was sharp and final and the leg buckled.

Aedodra laughed and circled Cooper as he
writhed on the floor. "The first delicious bite of revenge in my
banquet."

Cooper shot his hand toward Aedodra's ankle,
but the Indonesian god danced out of the way, his expression filled
with delight.

"When I break your other knee, you won't be
so lively," he said. "Then I shall snap your neck or perhaps slowly
crush your head while you scream—one less creature of my sister's
making to pollute my new kingdom." He stalked toward Cooper.

I shot a bullet into the body's stomach, and
it staggered back from the impact. I fired again and ran to
Cooper's side, putting myself between him and Aedodra.

"You can't kill me, halfling. When the doors
open and release my full being into this body, I will be complete.
This vessel will become an immortal form that is stronger than you
can ever imagine."

"Two minutes," Cooper ground out. "In two
minutes...the blending...will be done."

I studied Marla's body. Almost vamp, but not
quite. Dead, but possessed by a powerful entity who would have full
access to his powers in a matter of minutes. There was only one
possible way I might be able to stop him, and I wasn't sure it
would work.

I pressed my thumb to the hidden button
above the grip of my Browning. I didn't know how full the vial I
needed was, but I prayed it would be enough.

Aedodra braced Marla's legs apart and
settled her fists on her generous hips. "What will my brother offer
for you, I wonder," he said looking at me like I was a prize poodle
in a dog show. "I had thought to devour you, but now I see that
turning you into my servant would be a vastly sweeter revenge. I
will send you to him as the first child from this form. One of my
eternal creatures of night and blood. Then we will destroy
him."

"Don't count on it," I snarled. I pulled the
trigger twice in quick succession and then twice more, spraying
needles into his upper body.

The impact was nothing like a bullet and
Aedodra looked down, Marla's girlish face drawn into a puzzled
frown. He reached up and pulled one of the needles from the base of
his throat. He examined it, cocking his head in curiosity.

"One minute," Cooper said. His voice had
faded to a whisper filled with agony.

"Is this what your race calls a joke?"
Aedodra said, holding up the thin, hollow dart.

He was too strong. It wasn't enough. My hope
faded, but I fired one more shot anyway, emptying the arming
chamber. If we were going to die, at least I'd know that I'd given
it everything I had.

The air around Marla's body started to
shimmer like heat waves on the road in the summer. "You're too
late, niece," Aedodra crowed triumphantly. "Your attempts to stop
me have failed. I am finally free."

"It's started," Cooper said.

I glanced at him and our eyes met. "I'm
sorry," I whispered.

Then the god's eyes went wide, and he peered
at the dart still pinched between his thumb and forefinger. "What
have you done?" he gasped.

I tried not to hope. We could still be too
late. But I wondered if there was a chance now, even if it was a
small one. In five seconds we'd know, one way or the other.

Marla's dead hands clutched at her chest and
then her stomach. "What did you do!" Aedodra shouted. His eyes
blazed with fury and panic.

"Four seconds," I said.

He came at me, hands outstretched like he'd
done in the entrapment circle. "I'll kill you!"

I side-stepped and he stumbled past like a
drunk. "Three seconds. Cue the burning."

Smoke started coming out of the body's nose,
mouth and ears. The skin bubbled and turned black in patches that
spread rapidly across the arms and neck of the corpse.

"You aren't in time!" Aedodra shouted and a
hysterical laugh rolled from the corpse's mouth as the lips burned
away. "In moments I'll transform this vessel. It will be stronger,
faster, smarter than any creature in this pathetic realm."

"Two."

Muscles dissolved in patches and smoke
poured out of the ragged gaps as the poison destroyed the vampire
blood filling Marla's body. The legs gave out and it collapsed to
the stone floor like a puppet that had suddenly had its strings
cut.

"Take cover," I said to Cooper, and I turned
to shield him, wrapping my arms over my head. "One!"

Behind me Aedodra screamed, a near sonic
noise that blasted through the cave. Dust and gravel showered down
around us followed by a wet, hollow explosion. A heartbeat of
silence and then a sharp spike of sound shot at us like giant hands
being clapped together, or as I thought later, like a door being
slammed shut in someone's face.

The dust cleared, and I turned around. All
that was left of Marla's body was a patch of oily, black soot on
the stone. The blood symbols were nothing but smudges of ash both
on the floor and the back of the cave.

Cooper looked up at me with silver-green
eyes full of pain, but also of pride. "Two seconds to spare. That
was exciting."

I pulled in a long breath, savoring the
deep, satisfying calm that settled over me. I don't know how I
knew, but I did with a certainty that resonated through my
soul.

We'd won. Aedodra was gone.

* * *

The
call Cooper had placed had been to his pack. Just as I was trying
to figure out how to get a crippled man who was three times my
weight up and through several acres of woods teeming with hostile
Weres, we had company. An imposing guy with hair like Cooper's, his
same dazzling good looks but mellowed by maturity, and eyes the
color of polished gold appeared at the entrance with a muscled,
grim-faced retinue.

He took one look at Cooper and motioned to
the other men. The three biggest of them carefully picked up the
wounded Were and took him out of the cave. The remaining four
surrounded me. We trailed behind the others in silence, tromping
along about a half mile of passages before emerging into an
apparently deserted forest. A mile later we reached a string of
black SUVs lined up at the edge of the park.

Cooper, his group and three from my escort
went into two of the cars and pulled away. A driver and I went into
another, and I was taken back to town.

I messaged Cooper several times the next
day, but he either ignored me or had been put under some kind of
you-must-rest Were lockdown. Our unfinished business would have to
wait, and it was probably for the best. He needed to heal, and in
painful unseen ways, so did I.

I spent the morning cleaning my apartment
and then lay on the couch to think while Wizard sprawled across my
stomach purring. I knew Aedodra probably wasn't gone for good. From
what little I knew about ancient gods, they never seemed to really
die, they just faded into mythology.

But I was certain we'd managed to lock him
back into his own world and at least temporarily ruin his chances
of getting into ours. What bothered me was all the strange things
he'd said. The more I mulled over the experience and tried to piece
things together, the less complacent I felt.

Aedodra had used the term "children" and
"creations" too many times to discount. What did it mean? Was the
vampire race his descendants?

He'd seemed to despise Cooper and for no
other reason than what he was. Had Aedodra's brother, the one he
claimed still lived in our world, created the Were race? And what
of the sister mentioned? Were practitioners hers? No, that didn't
quite fit. The Weres' deity was a goddess. Diana to be precise. The
lineage must be the other way around. The sister had made the Were
clans and the brother the practitioners.

My head started aching, and I stroked my
hand down Wizard's silky back to ease the tension tightening in my
stomach. Either way, I had a bad feeling that I had more than one
insane god to worry about, which begged an answer as to why Aedodra
had called me his niece.

Was he manipulating me like he had Marla,
planting a seed to make me feel special so he could leverage it
later for his own purposes? Or had he meant it?

And what could explain the strange power
that had come from me. I'd tried a half dozen times to call it up
again and failed. Had it been an illusion? Just another
manipulation?

Worst of all, what was I going to do about
the real Kathy? She was living on borrowed time now. With Marla
dead, my chances of proving to Bellmonte that she was innocent were
zero. Yet, I couldn't stand by and watch him destroy her.

I eased Wizard off of my stomach and sat up.
I needed a strong bargaining chip...something that would mean more
to Bellmonte than revenge against the real Kathy. Information that
could give the vampire an advantage over his superiors—always a big
deal for their kind. But what? What could I offer? Staring down at
my hands, I went over everything Aedodra had said again. A flicker
of hope flared in my chest.

Maybe I did have something.

* * *

That night, I paid Bellmonte another visit.

I was disarmed, endured a pat down, a scan
and another pat down in the lobby. It took twenty minutes to
convince them I needed my iC with me, and I almost failed, but
finally they cleared it—after a thorough going over with the
scanner.

When I reached the reception area his new
secretary, a tall, short-haired brunette woman in her thirties who
looked like she might eat young children for breakfast, thrust a
bundle of folded clothes at me and pointed to the executive
bathroom off to the side.

The only thing she said was "Everything
off." I didn't like stripping down to skin, but I couldn't blame
Bellmonte for his caution. After all, I'd established a reputation
for pulling dangerous weapons out of unexpected places. If I wanted
to negotiate, I'd have to play it his way for now.