Magic Breaks

  I shook my head. Ow. That only made the pain worse. The doorway wavered in front of me. I had to get into the apartment. Okay, the door had to be at least three feet wide. If I just aimed myself in the right direction, I’d get through. I clenched my teeth. Step. Step. Another step. I was in. Kick-ass. Now I just had to remain conscious and not fall down on my face.

  I squinted: an old couch, a threadbare rug, and a stripper pole. A long trail of blood led from the living room through the narrow hallway. Someone had dragged a bleeding body out.

  “Oh, this is rich.” Robert laughed, his voice dry.

  Derek grimaced.

  “Yeah.” Ascanio rolled his eyes.

  “Clue the human in,” I said.

  “Dorie Davis,” Derek said. “Otherwise known as Double D.”

  “Her scent is all over this apartment.” Robert went down the hallway.

  “Oh!” Desandra snapped her fingers. “So that’s who it is.”

  I followed them down the hallway to the bedroom. The stench of blood clogged my nose, so strong I almost choked on it. A giant bed occupied most of the bedroom, equipped with a padded bench at the foot of the bed and a steel rack above it with several metal rings attached to the wall. The red sheet lay crumpled in a knot, drenched in darker red, the same red that stained the exposed mattress. Mulradin was killed here, no doubt about it. A human body had only so much blood, and most of it had remained in this room.

  Derek turned right. Robert turned left. Desandra inhaled deeply, making a slow circle around the bed. They stalked through the room, pausing by objects at random, sampling the scents. Ascanio paused at the entrance to the room, so he could see the front door. “Ripe.”

  My legs decided to take a vacation and the room crawled sideways. I really needed a wall to prop myself up on, but touching anything here wasn’t a good idea. “Double D, is that supposed to tell me something?”

  “She’s a sofie,” Derek said, the same way one would say She’s a child molester.

  “I can tell by your voice it’s bad, but I have no idea what it is.”

  “Most shapeshifters don’t have sex in animal form,” he said.

  “That’s not strictly true,” Robert said. “Most shapeshifters have sex in animal form, but only once. It’s not that great. It doesn’t last long, it’s awkward, and there’s no communication. Let’s just say, you don’t appreciate having hands until they’re gone.”

  “No shit,” Desandra volunteered.

  “The exception being the boudas,” Derek said.

  Ascanio raised his eyebrows. If looks were knives, Derek would be bleeding.

  “The Repressed One is trying to tell you that some people like to screw shapeshifters in animal form while they themselves stay human,” Ascanio said. “They’re called sofies. Skin on fur.”

  Robert rolled his eyes and dropped down to the floor to smell the carpet.

  “Okay,” I said. “I wish I didn’t know that.”

  “Welcome to the Pack,” Robert said. “This is one of those gray areas. Technically, it’s not forbidden. What two consenting adults do on their own time is their business.”

  “But it’s bestiality,” I said.

  “Yes,” Robert said. “Which is why it’s strongly discouraged.”

  Desandra leaned over the bed and swallowed. “The smells here are giving me a sour stomach.”

  “Not just you,” Derek said.

  “And for the record, I like women,” Ascanio said. “Maybe some wolves out there get turned on by the fur, but I like skin.”

  “Oh, will you two quit it,” Desandra said. “It’s kinky forbidden sex. Some wolves do it, some boudas do it, some humans do it. Everybody’s equally fucked up.”

  “We get enough flack from normal humans as it is,” Robert said. “Three years ago there was a campaign to ban wererats from restaurants because we’re disease-ridden rodents. The petition had three thousand signatures before we killed it. A year before, Clan Wolf was sued by a farming cooperative who claimed they would be hunting their livestock. The chief argument was that wolves can’t fight their natural urge to hunt and run prey to ground. If this stuff got out, there would be no end of public outcry. We don’t want to be accused of running a petting zoo for perverts.”

  “Dorie is a pay-to-play sofie,” Derek said. “She charges for her services.”

  “She doesn’t have to prostitute herself,” Robert said. “She’s an accountant with a decent salary. She does it because she’s decided that it’s an easy way to earn money on the side and because she’s got some sort of itch and this scratches it for her. When Jennifer’s husband was alive, he made a couple of attempts to get her into counseling, but she never went. She is a consenting adult and how she has sex is her own business.”

  “She’s one of the only two shapeshifters to date who managed to catch an STD,” Ascanio said. “The other one was a male panther she was with. They caught it together at a, ahem, group event.”

  Okay, that would take some doing. Lyc-V exterminated all invaders into its territory with extreme prejudice.

  Derek winced. “An STD?”

  “Oh, you didn’t hear about that?” Ascanio asked. “They got some kind of magical rabies.”

  Derek opened his mouth and closed it. “How did they . . . ? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  “I don’t either.” It was best to put that out there before they decided to enlighten me.

  “We’re broadening your horizons, Consort.” Desandra grinned.

  “My horizons are broad enough, thanks.” Now if only they would stop wobbling, I’d be all set. “I get how Robert and Desandra know about Double D. I want to know how the two of you know.”

  Derek and Ascanio made valiant attempts to look casual.

  “Everybody knows,” Ascanio said.

  “Then why didn’t Desandra identify the scent?”

  “When Double D showed up in Doolittle’s medward with the STD, he read her the riot act about safe sexual practices,” Robert said. “She didn’t like it, so she avoids him like the plague. Which is ironic, really, because the plague is exactly what she didn’t avoid.”

  “I didn’t quite get that,” Desandra said. “Was it supposed to be funny?”

  Robert frowned. “Never mind. I was going somewhere clever with that, but I managed to bungle it up. The point is, Double D doesn’t feel exactly welcome at the Keep.”

  “She isn’t often at Wolf House either,” Desandra said. “I’ve seen her once, I think. Jennifer hates her guts. The last time her name came up, our illustrious alpha called her a ‘filthy immoral creature.’”

  “In front of witnesses?” Robert asked.

  “A room full of people,” Desandra said.

  Great. There was a hierarchy of insults you could level at a shapeshifter. Telling them they smelled bad was probably one of the worst. But calling one of them “a creature” took it to another level. It implied a shapeshifter wasn’t human. A loup was a creature. Jennifer should never have said that, not about one of her own people.

  Robert’s lips rose, wrinkling his muzzle and baring sharp teeth. He made a short angry noise, halfway between a deep growl and a grunt.

  “I know, I know . . .” Desandra said.

  “We may not approve,” Robert said, his voice precise and cold. “We may find it revolting and we may roar and snarl at our people in private, but we may not single out our people and make them an object of public shaming. It just isn’t done. Jennifer made her a target. Now anyone within the Clan Wolf who shows a drop of kindness to Dorie does so against their alpha’s wishes.”

  “I agree,” I told him. “We can deal with it later. We’re short on time. We have to move on.”

  “There are no other shapeshifter smells in the room,” Robert said. “Only Double D and humans.”

  “I got Mulradin, Double D, Hugh, and a few others who are probably Hugh’s people,” Derek confirmed.

  I tried to concentrate. It was proving tricky. My magic
-stunned brain still wanted to float off into the shocked haze. “Can you tell what happened?”

  “Dorie came in first,” Robert said. “Mulradin arrived about half an hour later. They had sex, once on the bench, once in the corner over there.” He pointed to the left of the bed, where a chain fell to the floor. One end of it was attached to the ring in the wall, the other to a spiked collar.

  “Then Dorie killed Mulradin on the bed,” Desandra said.

  Shit. “Are you sure?”

  Derek nodded. “Once you get accustomed to the smell of blood, it’s very clear. Her scent is on the bed and the linens, and her fur is stuck to Mulradin’s blood. No other scents on the bed.”

  “D’Ambray came in at some point, with five other people. They entered as a group,” Derek said. “Also someone fired a shotgun slug into that wall.” He nodded at the opposite wall.

  “Before or after the murder?”

  He shook his head. “No way to tell. It’s fresh.”

  Ascanio nodded at the hallway. “Dorie left after the murder. Her scent trail is separate from the others, tainted with blood, and older. You can see her bloody tracks.” He pointed to the side. “She ran out of here.”

  A member of the Pack had murdered a Master of the Dead. A small part of me had been hoping that Hugh’s accusation wasn’t true, and now that hope died a sad death.

  I tried to make sense of it. “So she killed Mulradin for some reason. Either it was some sort of accident or she did it on purpose. If it was an accident, how did Hugh get involved? If it was a premeditated murder, Hugh either hired her to do it, forced her to do it, or happened to somehow be watching the apartment when she did it.” That last one didn’t seem likely. “Would she kill for money?”

  “I doubt it,” Derek said. “She isn’t violent. I wouldn’t call her a nice person, but she wouldn’t kill someone on her own.”

  Why did Hugh let Dorie go? I rubbed my face. It didn’t make me any smarter. If I were Hugh, what would I do with Dorie? How could I use her? If Dorie was dead, the Pack couldn’t turn her over in time for the deadline, which would guarantee a war. We could still produce her corpse or acknowledge that she was the killer and offer to pay restitution. But if Dorie was alive, things would get really complicated. If we did turn her over, we would look weak. If we didn’t, we would look like we thought we were above the law. There was no good way to resolve this situation, and the responsibility for it would land on my shoulders. Whichever decision I made, the Pack would detest me for it.

  No, Hugh wouldn’t kill her. Why, when he could kill a whole flock of birds with one stone? “Dorie is still alive.”

  Ascanio raised his eyebrows at me.

  “The question isn’t why Dorie killed Mulradin, it’s what we do about Dorie. We have to get out of here.”

  “We have company,” Robert announced, looking out the window.

  I willed my legs to move and crossed the room. My head was still swimming. Riders flooded the street, one, two . . . twelve. The leader rode a familiar dark horse. Hugh.

  We’d been in the apartment about six minutes, and here he was.

  Desandra leaned out to glance past Robert. Her clawed fingers grazed the wall.

  Magic pulsed through the window in a flash of dark green. Desandra jerked her hand-paw away and cursed. “I know, I know. I touched something. My fault.”

  Tiny runes ignited in the paint of the windowsill, pulsed, and vanished, as a ward snapped closed.

  I spun around. “Door?”

  Ascanio was already checking. “Warded,” he called out a second later.

  We were trapped. Great. I moved to the window and pushed against the ward with my palm. It nipped at me with magic teeth. Not a blood ward. This was incantation-based and someone had sunk a wallop of power into it. Shit.

  Ascanio returned.

  “Is it breakable?” Robert asked me.

  “Sure. Give me an hour to figure out how it was made.”

  Derek swore.

  I dropped on my knees by the window and slid my hand against the ward, trying to trace its boundaries. Magic scraped at my skin with pale green lightning. Ouch. If Hugh had warded the whole building, we’d be in trouble.

  At the street, the riders dismounted.

  I found an edge of the ward. Another edge. “He didn’t ward the entire building. He just warded the openings, the windows and the door.”

  Derek bared his teeth. “Ceiling or floor?”

  “Ceiling,” Robert said.

  It would take them at least a few minutes to break through the ceiling onto the roof. A few minutes, and nothing between us and Hugh except for a busted door. I ran to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Ascanio called.

  “To buy us some time. Stay in the bedroom out of sight.”

  “Ask him about the cops!” Robert called.

  Good point. If Hugh had bought the Atlanta PAD, we needed to know.

  The front door stood ajar, just as we had left it. The sound of people running up the stairs floated up.

  I couldn’t break this ward, but I had enough magic left to make one of my own. I dipped my fingers in my blood and touched the bottom corner of the door frame on my side.

  The pounding steps drew closer.

  I concentrated. The magic rushed out from me, twisted into an invisible current, kissed the empty air of the doorway, and snapped like a broken rubber band. The pain lanced my mind and for a second the world teetered in a red haze. Ow. I forced myself upright. Breach that, you sonovabitch.

  The steps reached the landing just below us.

  I leaned against the wall and tried to look casual. All this practicing must be paying off, because a couple of years ago I couldn’t have broken the ward and put up one of my own in the space of fifteen minutes. It still hurt, but at least I wouldn’t give Hugh the satisfaction of passing out in front of him.

  Hugh conquered the last few steps and halted by the door. He still wore jeans tucked into tall riding boots, a black wool sweater, and a plain cloak, splattered with mud and melting snow. Gloves shielded his hands. His height and broad shoulders guaranteed that people would maintain their distance, but if he pulled the hood over his face, he wouldn’t stand out too much. Hugh in his inconspicuous mode.

  The hood was down now. I scrutinized Hugh’s face, looking for any sign of the wounds Curran and I had left on him. I knew they weren’t there, but my brain refused to acknowledge it. I just couldn’t help myself. No old scars on the square chin or the cut jaw. No hint of crushed cartilage in the nose. I looked higher and ran straight into his eyes. They brimmed with arrogance, power, and humor. Hugh was having fun.

  I took a rag out of my pocket and began cleaning Slayer, drawing the cloth along the pale blade.

  Nick followed Hugh to the door. He was wearing clothes and seemed no worse for wear. A woman walked with him, at least fifty, but strong and fit, built like she could punch a tank out. Bright red paint crossed her left cheek, an upside-down T, smudged, probably drawn with a finger. It stood for Uath, the sixth letter of the Ogham alphabet used by the ancient Celts. It meant horror or fear, and according to Voron, Uath had earned her name. My adopted father had found her years ago. She was one of his elite soldiers who later formed the backbone of the Order of Iron Dogs. Hugh must’ve inherited her. I had no idea she was still alive. Voron knew how to pick them.

  Hugh flicked his fingers. Nick and Uath backed off, took a couple of steps down the stairs, and waited.

  Hugh pulled a glove off his hand and reached for the doorway. His defensive spell flashed green and drained down. His fingers touched the invisible wall of my blood ward. He pushed.

  I kept cleaning my sword.

  “Clever girl,” Hugh said.

  “Learning as I go.”

  He reached into his cloak and pulled out a small white bottle.

  “What is it?”

  “Ibuprofen,” he said. “For your headache. I know you have one.”

  Hugh, a benign and
considerate mass murderer. Always thinking ahead.

  Hugh shook the bottle at me.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had my daily dose of poison already.”

  Hugh smiled.

  “Something funny?”

  “The more you struggle, Kate, the more I learn about you.”

  “Learn anything interesting?”

  He moved, stalking around the landing. He seemed to have gotten bigger somehow since our encounter in the Black Sea. Taller, broader, stronger. Maybe it was my memory playing tricks, or maybe it was the cloak.

  “You can break my ward. This morning I knew of eleven people in the world who could. Now there are twelve.”

  “Whoop-de-doo.”

  Hugh shrugged his shoulders. “You know what I hate about the winter in this city?”

  The longer we kept talking, the more time I would buy for Derek, Ascanio, and Robert to take the ceiling apart. I raised one eyebrow. “Mmm?”

  “It’s so damn cold, I wouldn’t let a dog out, but there’s no snow. There’s just this crud. It’s not rain, it’s not snow, it’s like freezing mud falling from the sky.” He rested one hand on the wall next to the side of the door. “I say we call it quits. The new Four Seasons has VIP suites. I stayed there on my last trip here. We’ll have them build us a nice fire and hide in the room, hot, dry, and cozy. We’ll order some food, some decent wine, and talk.”

  “What would we talk about?”

  “About the future.”

  I pretended to think about it. “Pass.”

  Hugh flashed his teeth in a narrow smile. Before a hungry tiger pounced on its prey, he would smile just like that.

  “Where is Hibla?”

  “Hibla has been reassigned.”

  “Where?”

  “Let it go,” he said, in that good-natured way as if we were sitting somewhere in a bar, sharing a drink, and I were venting to him about a co-worker who annoyed me. “She’s hard to kill and not worth the time.”

  “When you see her, let her know I have a grave picked out for her. With a headstone and everything.”

  “How about this: if you come with me, I’ll deliver her to you. You can play with her as long as you want. I’ll even heal you if she rips you up.”

  “Still a pass.”