Gunmetal Magic (42 page)

Flies blanketed the undead, turning into maggots, eating his flesh. I sliced and diced, the maggots ate, but the more damage we did, the faster its flesh grew back.

Kate groaned. I had to get her out now.

I went furry. Shreds of my clothes fluttered to the ground. I took a short running start up the draugr’s bony shoulder and kicked the temporomandibular joint. The bone popped with a dry crunch, announcing a dislocated jaw. The draugr’s mouth fell open and Kate dropped out.

A huge hand swept me off the shoulder and clenched me, squeezing. I snarled and bit. Pressure ground me. My bones whined. He was crushing me as if I were a rag and he were trying to squeeze all the squishy red stuff out.

The scent of gasoline slapped me.

The pain was unbearable now. My eyes watered from pain and fury.

The draugr gripped me harder.

My shoulder gave and I screamed when my arm snapped like a toothpick.

Something sparked. Through my tears I saw the flare of fire and Raphael, his beast face furious, climbing up the
draugr a hair above the flames. Raphael leaped up, clawed his way onto the creature’s face, and tore an undead eye out of the left socket.

The draugr screamed and dropped me, slapping himself, trying to grab Raphael.

I fell. I tumbled down and suddenly something caught me. I saw Ascanio’s face. He dropped me to my feet. Next to me Roman stood, his hands clawing the air, his staff screeching.

Above us the draugr was a pillar of flame.

A furry form jumped off the draugr, hit the tree, and dropped down.
Yes! Go, Raphael!

The draugr roared and turned toward us.

Roman strained.

The undead took a slow step toward us. Then another.

“He’s not burning up,” Roman screamed. “I can’t hold him.”

The flame coated the undead’s body, but none of the flesh actually charred. Damn it. Couldn’t he just die?

Roman’s feet slid backward. Raphael landed next to him.

Kate pulled herself upright. “What do we do?”

“We must break him apart and bury him. He is of the Earth, he belongs to it. The Earth will hold him.”

“I can break him if you anchor him for a second,” Kate ground out. “But that’s all I’ve got. No more magic left after.”

The draugr took another step.

Roman bent backward. His eyes rolled back in his head. Chains coated in dark smoke burst from the ground and bound the draugr’s feet and wrists.

Kate opened her mouth and said a word. The magic burst from her in a torrent and smashed into the draugr, barely touching me. Panic splashed me. My fur stood on end and a hysterical hyena cackle tore out of me, echoing Raphael’s lunatic laugh and Ascanio’s high-pitched giggle.

The draugr jerked back, trying to run, the chains snapped taut, and his body fell apart like a toy coming to pieces at the seams.

Behind me Kate fell to the ground. Roman sobbed once and crashed next to her. It was up to the three of us now.

We ran. I grabbed an enormous arm and pulled it with all my might, into the forest, away from the road, and dug into the soil, yanking the roots out and slicing my furry fingers on
jagged rocks. My arms spiked with pain. I ignored it. I dug and dug, throwing fountains of earth, until finally I pushed the piece of the arm into the hole and covered it with dirt. Then I dashed to the road, grabbed the next chunk, and did it again.

The five of us were lying on cots in the Keep’s medical wing. When we had limped our way into the Keep with the scale, filthy, covered in blood and dirt, and wearing the delightful perfume of carrion mixed with gasoline and smoke, Doolittle had nearly had an aneurysm.

We had been strong-armed into the hospital wing and made to lie down in our beds. Even Ascanio, who had gotten off scot-free. Doolittle and his assistants examined us and quickly determined that Raphael had second-degree burns, I had a fractured humerus, Roman was dehydrated and had suffered a concussion, and Kate had two cracked ribs, a bruised hip, and her knee had gone out again. And then Curran walked through the doorway.

The rage of the Beast Lord was a terrible thing to behold. Some people stormed, some punched things, but Curran slipped into this icy, bone-chilling calm. His face hardened into a flat mask, and his eyes turned into a molten inferno of pure gold. If you looked at it for longer than two seconds, your muscles locked, your knees shook, and you had to fight to keep from cringing. It was easier to look at the floor, but I didn’t. Besides, he wasn’t angry with me. He wasn’t even angry with Kate. He was angry with Anapa. I had no doubt that if he could’ve gotten a hold of the god at that moment, he would’ve broken him in half.

“It’s only ribs,” Kate told him. “And they’re not even broken. They are fractured.”

“And the hip,” Doolittle said. “And the knee.”

There you go. Don’t expect mercy from a honeybadger.

“How long do you need to keep her?” Curran looked to Doolittle.

“She can go to her quarters, provided she doesn’t leave them,” Doolittle said. “I can’t do anything else with the magic down. She must stay down until I can patch her up.”

“She will.” Curran reached for Kate. “Hey, baby. Ready?”

She nodded. Curran slid his hands under her and picked her up, gently, as if she weighed nothing.

“Good?” he asked.

She put her arm around him. “Never better.”

And he took her away.

“So young lady, how did you break your arm?” Doolittle asked me.

“She was trying to keep Kate from being crushed,” Raphael said.

“A worthy cause.” Dolittle peered at me. I waited for the other shoe to drop.

“Did you know your arm was broken?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And did you, by any chance, put said arm into a sling or make an effort to keep it still?”

Oh Christ. “No. I was busy.”

“What did you do with said arm?” Doolittle asked.

“I dug.” And it hurt like hell, but at that point killing the draugr was more important.

“Were you under stress?” Doolittle asked.

“I was trying to bury pieces of an undead giant to prevent it from rampaging through the countryside and eating any random humans he encountered. This would go a lot easier if you would just tell me where you are heading with this instead of taking the long way around.”

Doolittle nodded to one of his assistants. The short, slight woman approached Roman’s cot. “We’re going to put you in your own private room.”

“Is this a code for killing me?” Roman asked. “Because I won’t be easy to take down.”

She giggled and wheeled his bed out with him on it.

The medmage looked at Ascanio. “You may go, too.”

The boy jumped off the bed and took off like he was on fire.

Doolittle pulled up the chair and sat next to me. His face was so gentle. “I once treated a boy,” he said. “He was a wererat, abused by his family. His father beat him repeatedly. He was a hateful waste of a human being and the boy’s shapeshifting gave him an excuse to rage.”

A lump formed in my throat. “Mhm.”

“Lyc-V is a very adaptive virus,” Doolittle said. “If the
body is injured the same way repeatedly, it responds. Shapeshifters in colder climates grow denser fur. Shapeshifters in climates with frequent sun exposure develop melanin at accelerated rate.”

“Yes.” I knew all this.

Doolittle leaned a little toward me. “The boy I mentioned developed his own coping mechanism: his bones healed extremely quickly. His body kept trying to give him tools to run away from the next beating.”

“What happened to the boy?” I asked.

“We’re not going to worry about it right now,” Doolittle said. “I’m going to ask some private questions. Would you like Raphael to stay or to go? Say the word and I will throw him out.”

Raphael bared his teeth.

“He can stay,” I said.

“Was there physical abuse in your childhood, Andrea?” Doolittle asked gently.

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Over some period of some time?”

“Eleven years.”

Doolittle took my hand and squeezed a little. “Your bones heal very rapidly under stress. The body joins them as fast as it can without any regard for whether or not they are aligned. It’s simply trying to make you operational again.”

I looked at my shoulder. It didn’t feel quite right. “You have to rebreak my arm.”

“I’m so sorry,” Doolittle said. “The arm is crooked. Try raising it all the way.”

I lifted my arm. Sharp pain shot through my shoulder right in the center of the bone.

“The longer we delay, the harder it will be to set it right,” Doolittle said.

A female shapeshifter wheeled in a cart filled with instruments.

“You’re going to use a mallet?” I asked. In my head Doolittle put a crowbar over my shoulder and hit it with a hammer.

“No. I’ll use a narrow power saw. You will have to be sedated. I promise you’ll feel nothing.”

“Okay.” What else was there to say?

The waters of the Nile lapped at my ankles. I strode out of the tepid water onto the shore. The wind brought the razor-sharp stench of blood. A fresh kill waited somewhere nearby.

The dark green bushes rustled. The Jackal walked out, dragging a dead bull by its neck. The Jackal had grown larger since we had last met. It was taller than a horse now, with a massive head and amber eyes the size of dessert plates.

The Jackal dropped the bull in front of me. “Eat.”

“No.” Food held significance to shapeshifters. Lovers gave it to each other and alphas gave it to their clans. An offer of food was sometimes a declaration of love, but more often an offer of protection in exchange for loyalty, and I wouldn’t be accepting any handouts from him.

“Suit yourself.” The Jackal bit the bull’s soft belly.

“We’re helping you. Why not let the child go?”

The Jackal raised its bloody snout from the kill. “Why would I surrender my hostage? She has served me so well.”

I sat in the grass. The sun was setting again and the still waters shimmered with faint vapor. The wet sloppy sounds of the large predator eating behind me ruined the beauty of the landscape.

“Why do you do this?” I asked finally.

“Mmm?”

“Why do you play little games? You could’ve helped us with the draugr, but you didn’t. You could’ve let the Pack join us. It’s in your best interests to win.”

“No. It’s in my best interests to regain my godhood.” The Jackal padded over and lay down next to me, a hill of fur and darkness. “Do you know how godhood begins?”

“No.”

“With a myth.” The Jackal sighed. “It begins with a legend told by the fire. A story of magical deeds and glorious victory over evil. I was there when it began for me, over six thousand years ago. I remember.”

“Who were you?” I asked.

“A tribal chief,” he said. “I had a wife and many children. Once I saved a litter of jackal pups from a flood and they followed me everywhere I went. They brought others of their
kind to the settlement. I was never bitten. I cut my leg while hunting and the pack licked it. It was a true gift.”

Pieces clicked in my head. “You were a shapeshifter?”

“I was a First,” he said. “The first recipient of the gift, its power undiluted within me. We, the humans, were different then. We were magic. It flowed through us, through our blood, through our bones. We were born soaked in it.”

“How did you become a god?”

The Jackal shrugged. “Those memories are murky. My deeds were told in front of the evening fires, my victories, my adventures. They kept me alive. My descendants made me a shrine of bone and stone and prayed for my guidance. My tribe prospered and the more they prayed, the more power I gained, until finally I came to be again.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. People plead for help to things that are more powerful. They beg the sky for rain year after year, they make a shrine to a mage who once brought about rain or to an engineer who irrigated their fields decades ago, and if they pray hard enough, their new deity comes to life and grows in power.”

The Jackal gazed at the river. “This new age, it has a saying, ‘History is written by the victors.’ It is true. Look at the story of Apep. Set, who was there with us fighting as valiantly as any one of us, became the visage of darkness. Bastet was diminished to a vermin killer. And I? I became the tender of corpses, revered, worshipped, but hardly as powerful. Even my brother Sobek, the lord of crocodiles, was more feared than I was. I hate him for that and Sobek reviles me for my knowledge and the reverence it brought. When the time of my people came to its sunset, the Greeks came. They jeered at us. They called me the Barker. The joke was on them—I endured through their time and then through the Romans, but I’ve never forgotten the insult.”

He fell silent.

“The Pack,” I prompted.

“Let me tell you how my new myth will go,” the Jackal said. “In the new age of magic, when it was young, a vile serpent emerged, threatening the sanity of all people. Mighty God Inepu and his faceless retainers battled him, and slew
him, and triumphed. All those who do not wish to be devoured by the serpent of madness give thanks to the mighty Inepu. Ask for his blessing. Ask for his wisdom. Offer your prayers to him so he may shield you with his might. He is the mighty warrior, the awe-inspiring slayer.”