Magic Bleeds (Kate Daniels 4)

“You dare to wrestle with my mind? I’m the Plaguebringer. Gods flee when they hear me coming.”

“If my hands weren’t busy, I’d clap for you.”

Slayer gave under my hand, slightly loose in the rapidly liquefying undead tissue, and I jabbed it deeper into the wound. Erra grunted, a harsh sound of pain.

“Did that hurt? How about this?” I twisted the blade.

A fiery hammer hit my mind, tearing a groan from me. Heat shot from Torch. The air around me boiled. Fire spiraled up his legs.

“Did that hurt, whelp? I’ll cook you alive. You’ll beg me to kill you when your eyes pop from the heat.”

Torch threw himself back, smashing me against the wall. I hung on to him like a pit bull. A few more moments. It didn’t hurt that much. I just had to hold on for a few moments.

Erra slammed into the other wall. Something crunched in my back.

A dark shape sprang from Ted’s office and sprinted to us. Erra saw it. Flames filled the hallway. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe.

An enormous black dog shot through the fire. I saw eyes glowing with blue fire and ivory fangs. The creature smashed into Torch.

My mental defenses shuddered. I was done.

The giant dog clamped his teeth on Torch’s arm and hung on. Torch shook him like a terrier shakes a rat, but the dog clung to him, dragging him down.

A second shape burst through the fire, this one pale and spotted. Deranged blue eyes glared at me from a face that was neither hyena nor human, but a seamless fluid blend of the two. Andrea buried her claws in Torch’s gut. We crashed on the floor, Torch on the bottom, me on top.

The world drowned in pain, melting into hoarse snarls.

The flesh under Slayer’s blade gave. I strained, forcing the saber through the soggy undead heart. The blade ground against ribs and burst out in a spray of dark fluid. The undead blood splashed on my lips and its sting tasted like heaven.

“I’ll kill you,” Erra gurgled. “I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth—”

I smashed my foot into Torch’s neck, crushing the windpipe.

The awful pressure on my mind vanished.

I closed my eyes and floated in a long moment. Absence of pain was bliss.

And then an ache gnawed at my arms. My eyes snapped open.

A sleek creature rose from the Torch’s stomach. Petite, proportionate, with elegant long limbs and well-shaped head, she was a perfect meld of human and hyena. Dark blood drenched her hands armed with long claws, staining her spotted forearms all the way to the elbow. Furious red eyes gazed at me from a human face seamlessly flowing into a dark muzzle.

She’d changed to save me.

Andrea’s dark lips trembled, showing the sharp cones of her teeth. “God damn it.”

She kicked Torch’s corpse, knocking it off me, and kicked it again, sending it flying into the wall. “You bitch!

Mother-fucking whore.”

I sat up and watched her punt and throw his body, spouting profanities. Being part bouda, she fought driven by rage. The quicker she let it out, the quicker she would be able to calm down enough to change back.

The enormous black creature lay down next to me and licked my foot.

“Grendel?” I asked softly.

The hell-dog whined softly in a distinctly Grendel-like fashion.

My attack poodle turned into a huge black hound with glowing eyes and shaggy fur. Figures.

The light dawned. The Black Dog. Of course. It was an old legend from so many cultures nobody knew exactly where it came from. Stories of giant Black Dogs with shiny eyes haunting the night have been passed around for years, especially in the United Kingdom and northern Europe. Nobody quite knew what they were, but when captured, they scanned as “fera,” animal magic. Animal magic registered as a very pale yellow. When the medtechs scanned, their scanner must’ve failed to pick it up.

Andrea growled a few feet away. Grendel whined again and tried to stick his baseball-sized nose into my hand. Around us the office smoldered.

We’d beaten her again. Three undead down. Four to go.

CHAPTER 24

TO CALL HURRICANE SAVANNAH, WHICH FLATTENED half of the East Coast some years back, “a gentle breeze” would be an understatement. To say that Ted Moynohan was pissed off would be an understatement of criminal proportions.

He stood in the middle of the hallway, surveying the smoking soggy ruin that was the Order’s office and radiating anger with dangerous intensity. After Andrea’s rage died down, she changed back. Shifting back and forth pretty much wiped her out. We dumped snow and water on the fire, and the result wasn’t pretty. Every window had been busted when the ward collapsed and icy wind howled through the building, juggling loose papers.

I’d laid out Erra’s identity in broad strokes and made my report—lucky for me I had a lot of practice lying through my teeth. Mauro had been knocked out solid for most of the fight. He now sat in the middle of the hallway, pressing a rag filled with snow to a bump on his head. He didn’t seem in a hurry to volunteer any information.

Ted said nothing. A dead silence claimed the office, the kind of silence that usually only struck at 2 a.m., when the city sank into deep sleep and even the monsters rested.

Flame-retardant carpet and metal furniture had done its job. The building had survived and the damage to the office was mostly cosmetic. The damage to the Order, however, was enormous. The knights were untouchable. You injure one and the rest would show up on your doorstep, throwing enough magic and steel to make you think the world had ended. Erra had come into the Chapter, into the Order’s house, and wrecked it. Ted had to hit back, fast and hard.

“The problem is, we don’t know where Erra will attack next,” I said. “We need to take the choice away from her. We killed three of her undead. She views it as an insult and she’s arrogant as hell. She will respond to a direct challenge. We pick a spot outside the city, nice and private.”

It was a simple plan, but simple plans sometimes worked best.

Behind us something thumped. A section of the wall crashed to the ground. Ted glared at it.

The phone rang in my office. I picked it up.

“Kate—”

“Help,” Brenna’s hoarse voice gasped. “Help us . . .”

A distant scream echoed through the phone, followed by a grunt. The disconnect signal wailed in my ear.

Oh no.

I dropped the phone and started to the door.

“Daniels!” Ted’s voice cracked like a whip.

“One of the Pack’s offices is under attack. I have to go.”