Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels 3)

Doolittle sat opposite me. He had a genteel manner about him that instantly put one at ease.

Usually I found myself relaxing slowly in his company. Merely being in the presence of the Pack's physician proved soothing. Not today. I searched his eyes for reassurance of Derek's survival, but they offered me no comfort: dark and mournful, they contained none of the humor I was accustomed to seeing. Today he just seemed tired, an old black man bent over his glass of iced tea.

"Lyc-V can do many miraculous things," Doolittle said. "But it has its limits. The gray color on his body shows the places where the virus died in great numbers. There isn't enough Lyc-V left in his tissues to heal him. What little remains is keeping him alive, but for how long nobody can say." He looked into his cup. "They beat him very badly. The bones are shattered and crushed in so many places, I can't remember them all. And when they were done breaking him, they poured molten silver onto his body. Into his chest."

I clenched my hands.

"And on his face. And then they dumped him to die in the middle of the street from a moving cart, four blocks from our southern office."

Doolittle reached behind him and handed me a cotton kitchen towel.

I took it and looked at him.

He gave me a small, kind smile. "It helps to wipe them off," he said.

I touched my cheek and realized it was wet. I pressed the towel against my face.

"It's good to cry. No shame in it."

"Can he be helped?" My voice sounded normal. I just couldn't stop crying. The pain kept leaking out of my eyes.

Doolittle shook his head.

My brain started slowly, like an old clock after years of disrepair. The Reapers had discovered Derek at the Red Roof Inn, beaten him, and dumped him by the Pack's office. Jim's crew found him and tracked the scent back to the location where the beating had taken place.

"He hasn't turned," I said.

Doolittle's face voiced a silent question.

"There were no signs of a wolf at the scene. Pints of blood, too many for one person, so he had to have fought and injured them, but no fur. No claw scratches. He killed a vamp in a warrior form. He should've shifted forms the moment they jumped him, but he didn't. How is that possible?"

"We don't know," Jim said.

He leaned against the doorframe like a bleak shadow knitted from anger. I hadn't heard him approach.

"Regeneration and change of shape are irrevocably linked." Doolittle drank his tea. "There are things that can be done to induce a change in one of us. We've tried them all, trying to break him from the coma. Something is blocking him."

They were so calm about it. "Why aren't you surprised?"

Doolittle sighed.

"He isn't the first," Jim said.

THE FIRST PICTURE SHOWED A CORPSE OF A MAN. His face was crushed, the skull indented with such tremendous force, his head resembled a shovel. His chest bone had been cut out of his body. His ribs jutted from the wet mush, the pale cage of bone slick with dark blood.

The black-and-white photograph looked absurdly out of place on a red-and-white-plaid tablecloth. Like a hole into some horrific gray world.

Jim drank a bit of his tea. "Doc, this stuff is pure honey."

"A little sweet never hurt nobody." Doolittle looked offended and poured more syrup into my glass.

Jim shook his head. "The Midnight Games. Sixteen years ago a championship fight went all to shit. A big dumb sonovabitch of a bear lost his way and went wild. Killed a crowd of civilians."

I didn't interrupt. He was talking and I didn't want to do anything to make him stop.

"A lot of people should've stepped up to bring the bear down and didn't. Curran took ownership of it and got it done. That's what an alpha does. It was damn clear after that who was in charge."

Jim leaned forward, his arms on the table. "An alpha's first law must be solid. It shows what the alpha stands for. No matter what other shit happens, the alpha has got to uphold that law, because once he lets somebody question it, his whole rule comes into doubt. Curran's first law is 'Don't touch the Games.' "

"It's a good law," Jim continued. "We don't need to be messing around with a place that's interested in making us dead in a pretty way. Even the People stay the hell away from it since it's gone underground."

He fell silent. Like Curran, Jim mostly hid his emotions, but his eyes betrayed him this time.

Dark and troubled, they brimmed with anxiety. He was keeping it in check, but I could sense it. Jim was uneasy. Haunted.

"So what made you mess with the Games, Jim?" I prompted.

"They're importing shapeshifters. Some are on the level. They brought a mountain cat out from Missouri a few months ago. A decent female. But some are scum. They come in to scope our territory. They're a threat. That's a security issue, and that makes it mine."

Pieces clicked together in my head. "You put a mole into the Games. And you didn't tell Curran because you didn't think he would be reasonable about it." Jim took it upon himself to make a decision only the Beast Lord could've made. It wasn't just a Bad Idea. It was a Sure to Get You Killed in a Hurry Idea.

Jim pushed the photograph toward me. "Garabed. Good, strong cat. Armenian. Found him like this a block from the Northern Office."

Now I saw it. Jim had a dead shapeshifter and he couldn't tell Curran about it. Knowing Curran, he would shut down the whole operation at the root. The Beast Lord had to uphold his laws. But now that one of his people was lost, Jim couldn't let it go. He had to find and punish the guilty. First, to avenge the death, and second, because his crew would abandon him if he didn't. The first duty of an alpha was to protect his clan, and Jim's crew was his clan for the time being.

"Garabed showed no signs of shifting shape?" I asked.

"None."

If I were Jim, I'd put somebody back into the Games. Somebody vicious, smart, and skilled.

Somebody hard to take down . . .

"You brought Derek in."

Jim nodded. "He's the best covert agent I have. He looks" - words caught in his throat - "

looked like a brainless pretty boy. Nobody pays him any mind. But he misses nothing."

"What happened?"

Jim grimaced. "He went there for a month and came back with this weird-ass story about the Reapers. It's the name of a team. They came out of nowhere a few weeks ago and landed with a lot of noise. Half of them m-scanned as human, but Derek said they weren't. Didn't smell right. He thought they had some sort of beef with us. Not just with the Pack but with our whole kind. Something about us being a meld of humans and animals, and those guys hate both. He told me there was a human girl in the Reaper crew and spun this long story about how she wanted to switch sides and would tell us all about the Reapers and Gar's murder if we got her out."