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.
• • •
THE KEEP 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.
• • •
WAITING 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?”
No. “Yes.”
He kept his fingers wrapped around mine. Yeah, he wasn’t buying it. That’s the trouble with sharing your life with someone. They know when you bullshit.
The two renders relaxed.
“Called in the cavalry?” I asked them.
“Just being proactive,” Pearce said.
Jezebel gave me an apologetic look.
“Andrea and Raphael are members of the Pack,” Curran said. “The law is clear, and they know exactly what to do. You aren’t a member of the Pack and you’re the former Consort. It’s confusing, and renders don’t like confusing.”
“No, my lord,” Jezebel said. “We don’t.”
“Not your lord anymore.” Curran smiled at her.
“How did it go at the Guild?” I asked.
“It went fine. Had some minor annoying things to take care of. Anyway, Ascanio said you went to see the witches.”
My whole body tried to squeeze itself into a fist. “Later.”
Curran studied me. “Okay. Later.”
“Andrea’s been taking panacea,” I said.
“Yes.”
“She will be fine.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Her baby won’t go loup.” I was talking to myself now.
“It will be okay, baby.”
The double doors clanged open. The renders and I jumped to our feet. Curran wrapped his arms around me, pinning my back to his chest. Nasrin appeared in the doorway, her face tired.
I forgot how to breathe.
“Come on.” Nasrin stepped aside, letting us through.
We followed her through the doors. My heart was beating too fast. Andrea half lay, half sat on the bed, propped up on pillows, her blond hair damp, looking like she’d sprinted all the way to Florida and back. Raphael stood next to her with his back to us. Doolittle slumped in his wheelchair, exhausted. The rest of the people must’ve left through the side door.
Where was the baby?
Raphael turned. A small bundle of blankets rested in his arms. He moved one of the folds aside, revealing a tiny red squished face and a shock of dark hair.
“Beatrice Kate Medrano,” he said. “Named after her grandmother and you.”
“Me?”
“You. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have met,” he said.
Andrea opened her eyes and smiled. “We’re going to call her Baby B.”
“No trace of loupism,” Nasrin said behind us.
“Here.” Raphael handed me the baby.
Aaa!
“It’s okay.” Andrea chuckled. “She isn’t made of glass.”
I very carefully took the baby. She was so tiny. So light. Her little hands were curled into fists. There was nothing and now there was a life. A little tiny helpless life.
I stood perfectly still and watched her breathe. She was full of light. It seemed to stream from her little plump cheeks and her dark eyelashes, suffusing her whole body. Her fingers were so tiny.
“Someone take my baby before Kate faints,” Andrea said.
I realized I’d been holding my breath.
Curran gently took her out of my hands, held her for a long moment, and passed her to Raphael. Raphael sat on the bed next to Andrea and murmured something I couldn’t quite catch. Andrea’s eyes shone. Such a happy, content light. She looked completely at peace.
In four weeks Atlanta would burn.
Curran’s hand rested on my shoulder. br />
Atlanta would burn, and Baby B’s world would change. She wouldn’t know it, because she was a tiny baby. But my father would reach out and strangle her future.
I didn’t want her to die before she had a chance to grow up. I didn’t want her to be enslaved. I didn’t want her to go to sleep in our world and wake up in my father’s and then grow up thinking that was the way things were supposed to be.
“Kate?” Curran said. “Baby?”
The magic seethed under my skin. “I need some air.”
I turned and walked away, down the hallway. My legs carried me outside, onto the top of a short stone tower. Sunshine hit me. I inhaled, breathing deeply, feeling my lungs expand.
I had to stop this from coming. I had to.
“Hey.” Curran blocked the daylight.
“Hey.”
“Looking grim, ass kicker. Rough day?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Are you going to tell me what the witches said or do I have to ask our minister?”
He’d put two and two together.
“In about a month there will be a battle,” I said. “Atlanta will burn. If we marry, you die. Roland kills you. I watched it happen.”
I didn’t want to tell him about our son. Not yet. When we talked about the future, he always talked about children. His father died protecting him, and Curran would do the same for our son. I had to shield him from knowing our baby might not have a chance. It was enough I knew. Telling him about it changed nothing at this point, except to pile more weight on him.
He shrugged. “I don’t care. I’m not going to live my life according to someone else’s vision. Your father can’t dictate it. The witches can’t dictate it. The only question that matters is do you want to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Then we get married. Fuck them.” He put his arm around me and squeezed me to him. “If I’m going to die, I’d rather die married to you. But more important, what makes you think I’ll roll over?”
“I didn’t say you would. I have no plans to roll over. I want to win, but I don’t know how.”
I looked past the Keep’s courtyard and the clear stretch of cut grass between the walls, to where the woods met the horizon. Somewhere out there my father was adding the tower to his castle. I had no doubt of it. The vision showed it complete. I would pull it down.