Magic Breaks

“Who else knew?”

“I’ve known for a while.” Curran picked up his sweatpants and put them on. “Jim knew before me. Mahon. Aunt B. Doolittle. Andrea. Barabas. The Witch Oracle knows. Saiman at least suspects. Obviously Hugh d’Ambray figured it out.”

The vampire ran to one side of the room, turned, and ran to the other. Ghastek must’ve been pacing back and forth and so caught up in his own thoughts, that he subconsciously pushed the vampire to do the same.

“It’s basic intelligence work,” Curran said. “You should’ve put it together. The pieces were there. You need to invest in information gathering. I get that you concentrate on research and development, but you can’t run the People without a solid intelligence network in place. If you can’t do it, get someone who can. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, because really, your ignorance is my bliss.”

The vampire stopped and stared at Curran.

“You didn’t even know your rival had a bestiality fetish,” Curran said. “You were fighting him for the top spot. You needed leverage. If you had known about his trips to the hit-’n’-split, you could’ve gathered evidence. You could’ve publicly embarrassed him, you could’ve sent the evidence to his wife and destroyed his marriage, you could’ve packaged it and sent it to HQ informing them that you had a potential security breach, you could’ve blackmailed him, you could’ve sat him down in private and told him that you have this evidence, but you know how important his family is to him and you’ll destroy it out of solidarity, so he would be eating out of your hand. That’s how you control the situation, Ghastek. You didn’t control it, because you didn’t know.”

And there it was, the Beast Lord in all his glory.

“Are you done?” Ghastek asked.

“You deserve it,” I told him. “You come here demanding to know why you weren’t told. People don’t tell you their secrets, Ghastek. You have to find them out.”

The vampire spun to me. “Do you even realize the enormity of what you’ve done?”

“Yes, I do. That’s why the man I love and I came here to have quiet time before the storm hits. And you’re interrupting it.”

“You challenged him. He can’t let it go unanswered.”

“I know.”

“He’ll come here and scorch this place.”

“I know, Ghastek. I’m his daughter. I know him better than you do.”

The vampire opened his mouth.

“Stop,” I told him.

The vampire stopped, silhouetted against a window. “Do you have it?”

“Have what?” Curran said.

He was asking if I had the Gift. The promise of immortality that kept people like him anchored to my father. I looked at the vampire. “You’re alive, are you not?”

The vampire froze, his mouth slack.

The door fell off its hinges and four shapeshifters tore into the room, Myles the wolf render in the lead.

Curran spun on his foot and roared, “Stop!”

They froze.

Curran in sweatpants, me in a sheet, obviously na**d under it, a vampire in the middle of the floor and four combat-rated shapeshifters. I put my hand over my face.

Curran’s face was terrible. “Explain.”

“We were instructed to provide necessary assistance,” Myles said.

“By whom?”

“Jim.”

Great. Jim had us followed.

“We saw an undead enter the room,” Myles said.

Curran’s eyes blazed with gold. His expression turned flat. His anger had imploded. He’d taken his towering rage and distilled it to cold precision. The shapeshifters didn’t move a muscle.

“Did the vampire break down the door?” I asked. “Or did it knock and was let in?”

The shapeshifters stayed perfectly still.

Curran spoke slowly, pronouncing each word exactly. “What made you think that the two of us together couldn’t handle a single vampire?”

Myles swallowed. “It was my call. I take full responsibility.”

“Go back to the Keep,” Curran said, his voice eerily calm.

The shapeshifters turned around and fled.

Ghastek’s vampire slipped out the window. Curran and I looked at each other.

They’d broken the door to the apartment he’d made for me. For some reason that hit me harder than knowing the Pack Council didn’t want him to come and rescue me.

“I’ll have it repaired,” he said.

They would break it down again the next time. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just a door. We might as well go back to the Keep.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I smiled at him. “I knew what I signed up for.”

He was worth it.

• • •

WE TOOK OUR time. By the time we rolled into the Keep’s courtyard, the night was in full swing. We trudged up the stairs, while Derek trailed after us and spit out facts: triple patrols, Keep on high alert, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah . . . I stopped listening. The last drops of my patience had evaporated long ago.

We went straight to our rooms. Curran shut the door. I landed on our couch. Outside the large living room window the night reigned, Atlanta a distant smudge of deeper darkness studded with pale blue feylantern lights.

Home . . .

The door swung open. Barabas stepped inside, his face serious, his eyes slightly distant, as if he were looking at something far away. Something was wrong. He always knocked.

“The visitor you were waiting for is here,” Barabas said.

He stepped aside and held the door open. A person wrapped in a plain brown cloak with a deep hood walked in. Barabas bowed a little, walked out, and shut the door behind him. The figure pulled back the hood, revealing my father’s face.

Why me?

Curran started toward Roland. His eyes were on fire.

I shot between them and blocked him with my body. “Stop.”

“Move, Kate,” Curran said, his voice calm.

Roland smiled. “I mean no harm. I just came to see my daughter. No audience, no need for any grand gestures. I simply wish to talk.”

I turned my back to him so I could see Curran’s face. “Please, stop.”

He finally looked at me.

“Stop,” I asked him.

He took a step back, leaned against the couch’s side, and crossed his arms. “Touch her, and I’ll end you.”

“May I sit down?” Roland asked me.

His magic wrapped around him like a mantle, muted. I still felt it, but he seemed much more human now. This must’ve been his version of traveling incognito. Nobody would ever know. Yeah, right.

I sat on the couch. “Sure.”

“Thank you.” He sat in the soft chair across from me.

Roland had walked past our tripled patrols like they were nothing and then compelled Barabas to let him in. All of the defenses we’d built, all the walls and gates and safeguards, meant diddly-squat. He could just walk into the Keep at any time. He could walk in and sit by Julie’s bed and I would never know it.

Curran’s face turned expressionless. He pulled his Beast Lord’s face on like a mask. He must’ve come to the same conclusion. Whatever little illusions of safety we’d had just turned to ashes.

Roland sat. “It’s a well-made fortress. Considerably more comfortable on the inside than it appears from the outside.”

Lovely paintings you have here on the walls. Don’t mind me, I’m just making small talk. “Did you hurt anybody on the way up?” I asked.

“No. I came to talk, and if I had hurt one of your people, you wouldn’t speak to me.” Roland glanced at the sword hilt protruding over my shoulder. “You visited your grandmother.”

I pulled Sarrat out and showed it to him. He passed his hand over the blade, his face mournful.

“I wish you hadn’t gone to see her. She’s dangerous.”

Yes, she is. Legend said she’d murdered my grandfather. All things considered, he probably deserved it. “It wasn’t by choice.”

“That was an unfortunate turn of events,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have taken her bones out of Persia. She misses it.”

Roland sighed. “Persia is a challenging place right now. Old powers are awakening. Those who had slept, those who were dead or perhaps not quite dead. Mishmar is the safest place for her right now.”

“Close enough so you can crush her if she tries to rise?”

“Exactly.”

This was a surreal conversation.

“How’s the child?” Roland asked.

What?

“The young girl whose blood you purified. How is she?”

I leaned forward. “Leave her out of this. Don’t talk to her, don’t haunt her dreams, or I swear, I’ll finish what my mother started. Was it the left eye or the right? Tell me, so I’ll know which to target.”

“The left.” Roland tapped his cheek below the left eye. “You’re so very like your mother. She was fierce, too.”

“You killed her.”

“Yes,” he said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t mourn her death.”

“And you tried to murder me before I was born.”

“Yes.”

“And you sent your warlord to hunt down and kill the man who raised me.”

“Yes.”

“And now you wish to have a conversation.”

Roland’s eyes turned warm. “I loved your mother. I loved your mother so much that when she wanted a child, I promised her I would give her the kind of child this world hasn’t seen for thousands of years.” He reached over and held out his hand.

Curran stepped forward.

I put my hand into Roland’s palm. His touch was warm. Magic slid against my skin.

“I poured my magic into you from the day you were conceived.”

Words appeared on my hand, turning dark and then melting back into nothing.

“I inscribed the language of power on your body while you were still in the womb. You were to be my crowning achievement, my gift to Kalina. I was in love and I was blind. Then I foresaw what I had made. Your aunt was the City Eater, your grandmother was the Scourge of Babylon, and you . . . You would destroy nations. If I let you live, if I raised you with your mother, like Kali’s fury, your rage would devour all. I tried to tell your mother. I tried to explain, but she didn’t want to listen. You were her baby, her precious one. You weren’t even born and she loved you so much. So yes. I planned to kill you in the womb. I planned to do it gently.”

“Oh well, then it’s perfectly fine,” Curran said. “As long as you choked the life out of her gently, I guess there’s no hard feelings.”

I leaned forward. “How did I turn out? Are you proud of the monster you made?”

Roland smiled. Hugh and Landon were right. It was like the sun had risen. Like digging a hole in your backyard and finding a glittering jewel in the dirt.

“Child, my dangerous one, my beautiful one. You’ve claimed your city. You shouldn’t have been able to do that for another hundred years. I’m so proud that my pride could topple mountains. If you let me, I would show you to the world. I would show the world to you.”

“So I could see it through your eyes?”

“So you could see it through your own.”

I leaned forward. “From the time I could walk till I was fifteen years old, every memory I have is about you. If I wasn’t studying about you, your children, and your kingdom, I was training to kill you or hiding from you. I was never afraid of monsters in my closet or under my bed. I was afraid you would find me. The entire purpose of my existence was so I could one day murder you.”

“Here I am. You have a sword. Why don’t you use it?”

I met his gaze. There was no point in lying. “Because I’m done living my life according to Voron’s expectations. I don’t know you. I know only what I was told. If you threaten Curran or anyone else I love, if you try to destroy this city, I’ll do everything in my power to kill you, no matter how futile it is. But I won’t do it because a dead man told me so.”

He leaned back and laughed softly. “You truly are my daughter.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

He smiled at me the way one would smile at a talented but naive child. I pictured kicking him in the head. I’d die a second later, but it would be so satisfying.

“Shall we bargain for the future of the city you love?” he asked.

“That is why you came here, isn’t it?”

He rubbed his hands, his eyes bright. He looked . . . happy. “Very well. Do you know what you did?”

“I’ve blocked your claim on Atlanta and claimed it instead.”

“Anyone crossing into Atlanta now will feel the borders of your territory. They won’t necessarily know the territory is yours, which will give you the element of surprise. A territory claimed is a challenge. It will be answered, if not by me, then by others.”

“I realize that.”

“For my part, I can’t allow you to remain in a position of visible power. You and I are invaders in this land. Our magic wasn’t born here.” Roland nodded to Curran. “Your magic was. Somewhere back in the mists of time your ancestors made a pact with a creature of this land. The blood might have been diluted through generations and mixed with that of the newcomers, but not enough to matter. You pose a threat.”

“Which is why you’ve been trying to destroy the Pack,” Curran said.