Magic Bites (18 page)

"So you admit to being a walking stereotype?"

"It's safer that way," I said honestly.

For a moment I thought that he somehow understood the deeper meaning of my words. Then he said,

"We were talking rats?"

"Yes. And I did ask nicely."

"In theory, if I take a female rat and feed it undead flesh, while allowing her to mate and carry offspring to term, then repeat the process with the offspring, somewhere down the line the descendants of the
Page 88

original rat may display permanent influence of necromantic magic, which will produce a blended power print. Something along light orange on the m-scan."

"Thank you."

"Thank
you
." He smiled.

THE WATER OF SHIVA'S FOUNTAIN WAS REFRESHING. I splashed it on my face, fighting an urge to lay down on the lovely cold concrete. Nataraja's little test had sapped my reserves, but I had once again prevented the show of power he was trying to provoke. I sat on the rim of the fountain. "I'm tired. I feel soiled and in need of a shower. How are you?"

Derek gripped the rim with his hands and dipped his head into the water. He shook, flinging droplets from his wet hair and washed his nostrils the way shapechangers did when they wanted to clear a strong smell from their noses.

"That place reeks of death," he said.

"Yeah. You know, it's not wise to mouth off to Nataraja."

"Look who's talking."

"He expects me to mouth off. Still, it was pretty funny. What did you think of Rowena?"

"You don't want to know," he said.

"You're right. I probably don't. She bothers me," I admitted.

"Why? Because she's prettier?"

I winced. "Derek, never ever tell a woman that someone is prettier than her. You'll make an enemy for life."

"You're funnier than she is. And you hit harder."

"Oh, thank you. Please, continue to reinforce the fact that she's more attractive. If you say that I have a better personality, you'll find out how hard I can hit."

He grinned. We walked to our horses.

"Be careful on the way back," I said.

He gave me a puzzled look. "I'm the one protecting you. You be careful."

I shook my head. I finally got my knight in shining armor. Too bad he was a teenage werewolf.

"You think the People are gonna try something?"

"Not the People." I slowed down. "The Pack and the People lost roughly equal numbers and the murders took place right on the border between them. This string of killings feels carefully managed."

Page 89

"By Nataraja?"

"By someone who would benefit from a war between the Pack and the People."

"Like Nataraja?"

"Would you let go of Nataraja already?" I frowned at him. "Nate above all is a businessman. Yes, he would like to diminish the Pack. In an outright conflict the People might even win, but it would leave them so weakened, a baby burp would knock them down. The war isn't cost-effective for the People right now, that's why we got invited into the Casino. For all of their posturing, the People are worried. Not only are they out six vampires, which are expensive to replace, but they also sense a deeper threat. Why do you think Ghastek is walking us home?"

"What threat?" Derek shrugged.

I had forgotten how good it felt to talk a theory out. "Have you ever heard people say 'pulled a Gilbert'?

You know where the saying comes from?"

"No."

"About nine years ago a rogue Master of the Dead named Gilbert Caillard tried to take over the People by framing Nataraja in a sex-slave ring. Which is richly ironic—I doubt that snake ever had sex, let alone brokered it. Anyhow Gilbert's reasoning was that if the People were shamed and Nataraja got arrested, he could waltz in and take over the operation. He had power in abundance and almost pulled it off."

"You think he's back?"

"No, Gilbert's dead. Nataraja killed him and had his heart burned. He still carries the ashes in a little satchel on his neck. But this feels very much like a Gilbert. The plan has a certain brilliance to it: get the Pack and the People to battle it out and then come in and wrestle control from Nate's weak and hopefully dying fingers."

"Dying is good," Derek said.

"One, we have Pack people being torn apart by animals with necro taint, probably fed on undead flesh.

Two, we have vampires being taken out by someone with advanced knowledge of vampiric anatomy.

And three, Nate is scared. Look at the battlements. He doubled their patrols. See, the People prize power most of all. They don't exactly encourage violent coups like this, but if the victor offers his obeisance to Roland and makes the appropriate noises, he'll most likely get away with it. I think we have a rogue Master of the Dead on our hands." That had to be it. It made perfect sense.

"Who's Roland?" Derek asked suddenly, intruding on my thoughts.

"Roland? He's the legendary leader of the People. It's rumored that he's been alive since magic last left the world, which was about four thousand years ago. He's supposed to have incredible power, almost godlike. Some say he's Merlin, some say he's Gilgamesh. He has some sort of agenda and uses the People to achieve it, although the majority of them have never seen him. There's no proof of his existence and lay people like you and I aren't suppose to know about him."

"Does he exist?"

Page 90

"Oh yeah. He's real."

"How do you know about him?"

"It's my job to know."
And trust me, boy wonder, I know entirely too much. I know his habits. I
know what food he likes to eat, what women he likes to take to his bed, what books he prefers to
read. I know everything my father had known about Roland. I even know his real name
.

The flow of people to the white arch of the gates had ebbed. It was late or early, depending on the way you looked at it.

Skeletal claws of fear iced my spine. The small hairs on the back of my neck and arms stood on their ends. A vampire. Close.

Derek's gelding neighed, but Frau remained stoic. I loved this horse.

I turned slowly and watched the bloodsucker descend down the snow-white wall of the Casino. It crawled headfirst like a mutated gecko, long yellow talons digging into the mortar. The pallid body, taut with dry, stringy muscle, dripped necro magic.

The vamp crept down until its head was level with mine and raised its face. It used to be female during life. Undeath had sharpened already delicate features, making it look like a concentration camp victim.

The bloodsucker stared at me with haunted eyes. It raised a thin hand clutching a small object. Slowly it opened its maw. Its face twitched, trying to twist into a different set of features.

"I believe this is yours." Ghastek's voice said from the vamp's throat. The vamp's fingers opened and the object fell. I caught it: my throwing dagger. How considerate. He had even cleaned the bloodsucker blood off of it.

"Tell me, Kate," Ghastek said. "Why do you paint your daggers black?"

"So they don't shine when I throw them."

"Ahh. Obvious, come to think of it." The vamp's throat stank of death.

"Shall we depart?"

"Please."

"What's our destination?"

He knew perfectly well where Greg's apartment was. They probably kept the bloody place under surveillance.

"Just take me to the edge of your territory. Corner of White and Maple will do." Too late I remembered that Greg had died at that intersection. "This isn't necessary, you know."

"It is. If you died after a visit to the Casino, we would have to answer many unpleasant questions."

I petted Frau's neck, untied the reins, and mounted.

Page 91

"A horse," Ghastek said with disgust. "I might have known."

"You have something against horses?"

"I'm allergic. Not that it matters under the circumstances."

He stabled the undead but good old horses made him sneeze.

"Go on ahead," I said. The vamp took off, running up-right in a clumsy, labored manner. Bloodsuckers aren't built for running on the ground. It requires coordination and breathing and the process no longer came naturally to one who does not have to breathe.

I gave Frau's sides a gentle squeeze and she took off, breaking into an easy trot, Derek on his gelding close behind. I had a feeling that if the bloodsucker got within striking distance, Frau would try to find out if it was good to walk on.

Ghastek pushed the vamp for about a block and took it to higher ground. It scrambled up the side of the building and leaped across to its neighbor, defying gravity. Its gaunt form sailed along the third row of windows, talons clutching the wall long enough to push away, soundless, undetectable, a new horror.

We took the backstreets, staying away from the main road. A horseman passed us, riding a snow-white gelding, graceful and mean-eyed, a one-in-a-hundred kind of a horse. The rider wore an expensive leather jacket, edged with wolf fur. He gave me and Derek an appraising look and hurried on his way, adjusting the crossbow that rested on his back. I looked after White's retreating backside, searching for a sign that proclaimed
I'm wealthy, please rob me
. I didn't see one. I guess he figured his horse made enough of a statement.

Ahead, several kids crowded around a fire burning bright in a metal drum. The orange flames licked the drum's edges, throwing yellow highlights on their grimy determined young faces. A scrawny boy in a dirty sweatshirt and with a tangle of feathers in his lanky hair chanted something dramatically and threw what looked like a dead rat into the fire. Everyone was a sorcerer these days.

The kids watched me as I passed them. One of them cursed with gusto, trying to get a reaction. I laughed softly and rode on.

If we did have a rogue Master of the Dead on our hands, then I had absolutely no idea how to ferret him out. Maybe if I had a big box leaning on a stake, and tied one of Ghastek's vampires under it…

We arrived at Rufus and turned north, heading toward the White Street. It was named for the snowfall of '14, when three inches of fine powder covered the street's ugly asphalt. Three inches of snow was not terribly unusual for Atlanta except that it had come in May and refused to melt in the following months despite the hundred-degree heat. Three and a half years later it finally gave in and thawed during an Indian summer.

I reached the corner and halted. The twisted form of Ghastek's vampire perched on top of a lamppost, wound about it like a snake around a tree limb. It looked at me, its eyes glowing with dim red, betraying an influx of magic. Ghastek was concentrating hard to hold it in place.

"Problems?" I asked softly.

Page 92

"Interference." Ghastek's voice sounded like it came through clenched teeth. Someone was trying to wrestle away his control over the vamp.

I freed Slayer and laid it across Frau's back. The metal smoked. A thin sheen of moisture glistened on its surface. It could be reacting to Ghastek's vamp or to something else.

Behind me Derek's gelding neighed gently.

"Don't get off your horse," I said.

As long as Derek stayed in the saddle, he would remember to act human.

I dismounted and tied the horse to an iron fence. Ghastek's vamp uncoiled from the lamppost and slid soundlessly to the ground. It took a few unsure staggering steps into the intersection.

"Ghastek, where are you going?"

A cart drawn by a couple of horses thundered down the street at breakneck speed. The horses spied the vamp and shied, jerking the cart to the side, but not far enough. The cart's right wheel smashed into the vampire with a loud meaty thump, flinging it aside. The driver spat a curse and snapped the reins, forcing the horses into a frenzied gallop, rumbling down the street and vanishing in the space of a breath.

The vamp lay still in a pitiful crumpled heap.

How convenient.

Slayer in hand, I stepped into the street. "Ghastek?" I called softly.

I circled it, sword in hand. An ugly grimace froze the vampire's face. Its left foot twitched.

"Ghastek?"

A faint hiss tugged on my attention. I turned. Nothing. A small drop of liquid luminescence slid off my blade and fell onto the asphalt.

A blast of icy terror hit me like a sledgehammer. I whirled, lashing out on instinct, and felt the saber graze flesh as a grotesque shape plummeted at me from above. The creature twisted away from the sword in midair and landed softly to the side.

Derek's horse screamed and galloped into the night, carrying him off.

I backed away toward Ghastek's fallen vamp. The thing followed me on all fours. It was a vampire, but one so ancient that no trace of it having walked upright remained. The bones of its spine and hips had permanently shifted to adapt to quadruped locomotion.

The creature advanced, lean and wiry like a greyhound. An inch-high bone crest shielded its spine, formed by outgrowth of the vertebrae through the leather-thick skin. It paused, hugged the ground for a moment, and rose again, ruby-red eyes fixed on me.

Its face no longer bore any resemblance to a human. The skull jutted back in a bony hornlike curve to balance the horribly massive protruding jaws. The creature had no nose, not even a hint of the nose
Page 93

bridge. It opened its mouth, splitting its head in a half. Rows of fangs gleamed against the blackness. It wouldn't just puncture and rip, it would shred me.

The creature's eyes focused on me. The owl-like pupils gleamed with red.

It leaped with inhuman speed. I aimed for the throat and missed, my blade sinking to the hilt into its shoulder. The thing swept me off my feet. I hit the ground hard. My head bounced off the pavement, and the world swam. Pressure ground into my chest, forcing the air from my lungs. I strained and sent a jolt of my power through Slayer's blade.

The saber's hilt was jerked from my hand and the pressure vanished. I sucked in a lungful of air and scrambled to my feet, the throwing knife in my hand.

The creature shivered a dozen feet away, dazed and uncertain. The thin blade of my saber protruded from its back. Two inches lower and to the left, and I would've hit its heart. The shoulder jerked, twisted by a powerful spasm as Slayer ground deep into the muscle seeking the heart. The flesh around the blade softened like melted wax.