Magic Bleeds (14 page)

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I crushed the thought and threw away the pieces.

“If I were Hugh, I would be waiting for an opportunity to subdue you and take you someplace where you can be quietly questioned,” Andrea said.

“No. He won’t do that. He’ll gather as much information as he can about me and then, when he’s confident he knows what he has, he’ll approach me. Kidnapping isn’t his style.”

“How can you be sure?”

I got up, shutting down Voron’s ghostly voice barking warnings at me, went into the spare bedroom Greg had turned into a library and storage room, and brought out an old photo album and a leather-bound notebook. If I could convince her to keep her distance, it would be worth it. “I can be sure, because I know how Hugh thinks.”

I put the album on the table, opened to the right page, got a knife, and carefully split the invisible seam holding the two pages together. Two thin pages slid into the light. I handed Andrea the first one with a picture on it.

She stared at it. Her eyebrows crept together. “Is that Hugh d’Ambray as a teenager?”

I nodded.

She studied the photo. “Well, he grew up into a handsome bastard. Who’s that next to him?”

“Voron.”

“Voron the Raven? Roland’s ex-Warlord?” Andrea’s eyes widened. “I thought he died.”

“He did, eventually.” I looked at her. “He raised me. He was my stepfather.”

“Holy shit!” She blinked at me. “Well, that explains all the . . .” She waved her teaspoon around in a wild fashion, as if trying to shake stuff off it.

I raised my eyebrow. “All the what?”

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“Swordplay.”

I slid the second picture to her. On it, Voron stood with his arm around a petite blond woman next to Greg and Anna, my guardian’s ex-wife.

“Your mother?” Andrea pointed at the blond woman.

“This is the only picture I have of her. I found it among Greg’s things after his death. Roland loved my mother very much. You’d think after six millennia he’d lose all capacity for human emotion, but from what Voron said, Roland’s just as volatile as the rest of us. He fell in love with my mother. He wanted to make her happy, and she wanted a child, so despite swearing off siring any more monstrosities, he decided to try one more time.”

“What does he have against kids?” Andrea gently turned the photograph of my mother to the light.

“We all turn out like him.” My laugh dripped with bitterness. “Stubborn and violent. Picture a brood of people just like me, loaded with unimaginable power and a willingness to use it.”

Andrea’s face turned a shade paler.

“Sooner or later we all go to war with him,” I said. “And he has to kill us or we’ll tear the world apart.

Some of the worst wars this planet has seen were started by my family. Roland gave up on his progeny.

We’re too much trouble. That’s why, even though he made an exception in my mother’s case, he changed his mind before I was even born. She realized which way the wind was blowing and ran away with Voron. Very few people know about this and none of them are dumb enough to risk Roland’s attention by opening their mouths.”

Andrea looked at my mother. “She was beautiful.” “Thank you.”

“Do you think she loved Voron?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember her. I used to hope I’d recall some details—a scent, a sound, anything—but no. I have nothing. No memories of her, no recollections of them being together. I think she must’ve cared for him, because the two of them had some time on the run, before Roland caught up with them, and it must’ve been bliss because when Voron spoke of it, everything about him changed. His voice, his face, the look in his eyes. It’s like he became a different person when he remembered her. He didn’t talk about her often.”

Maybe I was getting through to her.

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“You have no idea how cool this is,” Andrea said. “It’s like having tea with Wyatt Earp and listening to him tell you about Dodge City and Doc. This stuff is legend.”

Nope, not even a little bit. “My mother let Roland find her to buy Voron time to escape with me. I don’t know what happened between my parents, but my mother stuck a dagger into Roland’s eye and he killed her. He murdered the only person he loved just so he could wring my neck. Killing me was more important. Eventually Roland will find me. This won’t be one of those ‘cry tears of joy’ moments. He will kill me, Andrea. He’ll rip the entire city down just so he can lock his hands on my throat and watch the light fade in my eyes. He’ll destroy all my friends, he’ll obliterate my allies, and he’ll kill anyone who dares to show a shred of kindness to me. Hell, he’ll probably salt the ground, so nothing would ever grow here. I’m not joking. This isn’t an exaggeration. It may be the stuff of legends, but these legends come to life in a really painful way.”

She gave me her own version of a hard stare. The funny blonde vanished and in her place sat a knight of the Order: hard, dangerous, and controlled. “That’s why you need me. You can’t do it alone.”

“Did you hear a word of what I said?”

“I heard you loud and clear. You don’t get to make my choices for me, Kate. Last time I checked, I was still in charge of my life.”

Fuck me. I raised my hands. “I give up.”

“Good,” she said. “Does this mean we can go back to Hugh?”

I sighed. “Fine. Tie your own noose.”

“What do you know about him?” Andrea pulled Hugh’s file toward her.

I passed her the notebook. “Everything there is to know up until the last twenty years. He was found by Voron when he was six. Roland saw potential in him. Voron was a genius swordsman, one in a million, and he was a decent commander, but Roland wanted a true Warlord.”

I tapped a piece of paper. “My father put me through a variety of trials. I fought in gladiator rings, I survived in the wilderness, I received training in a dozen martial arts. He did the same thing with Hugh. In a way, Hugh was a practice run for me.”

I refilled my cup.

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“Voron trained me to be a lone wolf. I’m a self-reliant killer. I’m designed to cut through the ranks and kill my target. Hugh was groomed to lead armies. He fought in dozens of regiments in hundreds of conflicts, all across the world. Roland’s magic keeps him young. It makes him stronger than an ordinary human and harder to kill. Hugh is the ultimate warrior-general. He’s patient, cunning, and ruthless.”

“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working,” Andrea said.

“I’m trying to explain to you the kind of enemy Hugh is. Hugh won’t permit himself to be embarrassed.

He’ll gather as much information as he can, so when he presents my existence to Roland, he’ll have a wall of facts to back it up. He won’t move until he has absolute proof of my ancestry. I’m guessing that right now he’s making circles around me, piecing my life together. He has patience and time. He can’t be bought off, intimidated, or convinced to let me alone. And I’m not sure I’m strong enough to kill him.”

Andrea’s face turned sour. “You don’t want to kill him. If you do that, Roland will flood the area with his people trying to figure out who nuked his Warlord.”

“Exactly.” I drank my now lukewarm tea. “My only option is to lay low and try not to draw any attention to myself. Voron has been dead for over a decade. Not that many people remember him. My track record is mediocre—I worked very hard to keep it that way. I shouldn’t be viewed as anything out of the ordinary.”

“That’s nice, but there is the matter of the sword,” Andrea said.

“Yeah.” There was the shattered sword. No matter what I told myself, I couldn’t dodge that bullet.

There was a price for everything. The price for keeping my friends alive was being found and I paid it. At the time, I was sure I would die and risking discovery didn’t seem like a big deal.

“If the shit hits the fan, I can always disappear,” I said.

“What about Curran?” Andrea asked.

“What about him?”

“Fifteen hundred shapeshifters in a freaking castle will make anyone think twice about breaking in. Could you go to Curran? You guys are—”

“There is no me and Curran.” Saying it hurt. No bag to punch to relieve it. I smiled instead and poured us another cup of tea.

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Andrea stirred hers with a spoon. “Did something happen?”

I told her everything, including what happened in the Guild. The more I talked, the more pained her face became.

“That was very asshole of him,” she said when I was done.

“No argument there.”

“But it doesn’t make sense. When he brought you back from the rakshasas, he almost killed Doolittle because he couldn’t fix you fast enough. I think he might actually be in love with you. Maybe he did come to your house looking for you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You guys should talk.”

“I’m done talking.”

“Kate, don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t been yourself since you came back from leave.

You’re . .

.”

I gave her my look of doom. It bounced right off her.

“. . . grim. Really grim. It’s almost painful. You don’t joke, you don’t laugh, and you keep taking chances.”

Andrea rubbed the rim of her teacup. “Did you have friends when you were growing up?”

“Ouch.” I rubbed my neck. “That’s a sharp change in the direction of this conversation. I think I got whiplash.”

Andrea leaned forward. “Friends, Kate. Did you have any?”

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“Friends make you weak,” I told her.

“So I’m your first real friendship?”

“You could say that.” Jim was a friend too, but it wasn’t the same.

“And Curran’s your first real love?”

I rolled my eyes.

“You don’t know how to cope,” Andrea said softly.

“I’ve been doing well so far. It’s bound to go away eventually.”

Andrea chewed on her lip. “You know that I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, and I don’t need a man to fight my wars for me. And if I wasn’t with Raphael, I would still be totally fine, and good at my job, and happy at times.” She took a deep breath. “With that in mind . . . A real broken heart never goes away. You can pull yourself together and you can function, but it’s not the same.”

I couldn’t drag this hurt around me for the rest of my life. I’d implode. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“I’m not finished. The thing is, people have a remarkable potential to injure you, but they also have a great power to help you heal. I didn’t understand this for the longest time.”

She leaned forward. “Raphael is hot and loaded and the sex is great, but that’s not why I’m with him. I mean, those things don’t hurt, but that’s not what keeps me there.”

If I had to guess, it would be respect for Raphael’s perseverance. Raphael, a werehyena, or bouda as they preferred to be called, loved Andrea beyond all reason. He courted her for months—unheard of for a bouda—

and refused to give up until she finally let him into her life. The fact that he was the son of Aunt B, the bouda alpha, made things complicated but neither Raphael nor Andrea seemed to care.

Andrea smiled. “When I’m with him, I can feel myself getting better. It’s like he’s picking up broken pieces of me and putting me back together, and I don’t even know how he’s doing it. We never talk about it. We don’t go to therapy. He just loves me and that’s enough.”

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“I’m happy for you,” I told her and meant it.

“Thank you. I know you’ll tell me to fuck off, but I think Curran loves you. Truly loves you. And I think you love him, Kate. That’s rare. Think about it—if he really stood you up, why would he be pissed off about the whole thing? You both can be assholes of the first order, so don’t let the two of you throw it away. If you’re going to walk away from it, at least walk away knowing the whole picture.”

“You’re right. Fuck off. I don’t need him,” I told her.

Andrea sighed quietly. “Of course you don’t.”

“More tea?”

She nodded. I poured her another cup and we drank in my quiet kitchen.

Later she left.

I took a small dish from the counter, pricked my arm with the point of my throwing knife, and let a few red drops fall into the dish. My blood brimmed with magic. It coursed just beyond the surface.

I pushed it.

The blood streamed, obeying my call, growing into inch-long needles, then crumbling into dust. The needles had lasted half a second? Maybe less.

At the end of the Midnight Games, when I lay dying in a golden cage, my blood felt like an extension of me. I could twist and shape it, bending it to my will, solidifying it again and again. I’d been struggling to replicate it for weeks and had been getting nowhere. I’d lost the power.