Magic Triumphs (Kate Daniels 10)

For a while we stood next to each other without saying anything.

“You must call your father,” she said.

“No.”

She turned to me. “War is coming. Our enemy is coming.”

“Roland wants to kill me. He wants to murder my child or kidnap him, I don’t think he’s decided which yet. I just found out this morning he’s mobilizing his forces.”

“This is bigger than that.”

“Nothing is bigger than that. I saw a photo of Razer today. He was just a few miles north, in the city limits. He’s here, because my father wishes him to be. That fae wears a coat made of the skins of creatures and people he’s murdered. He isn’t going to add a piece of Conlan’s skin to his wardrobe—”

She reached out and touched my face. Her translucent fingers brushed my cheek, the magic prickling along my skin. She’d punched me with her power almost every week, but her caresses were so rare, I could count them on my fingers. I shut up.

“Stubborn child,” the Queen of Shinar said. “Your world will burn until everything turns to ash. You’ll live through unspeakable horrors. You’ll see everyone you love fall, and you’ll wish you were dead, but you won’t die, because you are the Princess of Shinar, the beacon of your people’s hope, and if you succumb, that hope will perish with you. Your memories will become your torture. You’ll carry that burden with you as you wade through a sea of blood, and when you emerge, you’ll become me, your victory a hollow trinket. I cannot watch you suffer through it. You and that boy are everything I have. You are the family I lost and found. Call your father. Show him the creature. Tell him the yeddimur are here. Together we have a chance. Do that for me, In-Shinar. Do that because I’m your aunt and you love me.”

* * *

• • •

I WALKED OUT of the house carrying my backpack. Curran was still holding Conlan. Derek hosed off the Jeep, while Julie watched with a skeptical look on her face. The four of them looked at me.

“Did you talk to Erra?” Curran asked.

“Yep. Come with me,” I told Derek. “I need your help.”

“With what?”

“With carrying a metric ton of firewood. I’m going to call my father and I need to be out of my territory to do that.”

“Gave her a piece of your mind, did you?” Curran asked. “How did that work out for you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Julie snickered.

“Your mom got her butt kicked,” Curran told Conlan.

“Keep talking, see how that turns out for you.”

Curran grinned. “There you go, Conlan. If your mommy is ever mean to you, snitch on her to your great-aunt and she’ll fix it.”

Conlan giggled.

I growled and got into my Jeep.

* * *

• • •

I STOOD ON top of a low hill and surveyed the pile of brushwood and dead branches Derek and I had arranged into a ten-foot-tall cone. At my back, the sunset died slowly as the sun rolled to the west, behind the city. The rays of the setting sun set the world aglow, and against the curtain of light the ruins of Atlanta stood out, dark and shadowy, a mirage of a safer time.

Hi, Dad, it’s me. I know you’re trying to kill me, my husband, and our son, but guess what, all is forgiven, I need your help. Ugh. I’d rather walk on broken glass.

I was stalling. I came here, I built this damn pyre, I had to get it over with.

“Do we need more wood?” Derek asked.

Ten feet high and about six feet across. Good enough. “No.”

I reached into my pocket, withdrew a packet of dried herbs, pushed a couple of branches aside, and sprinkled it into the middle of the pyre. I replaced the branches, struck a match, and lit the newspaper. The fire gobbled up the paper, jumped to the smaller twigs, and began eating its way through the branches.

The sky was cooling off, darkening from near turquoise to a deeper indigo. Hints of the first stars appeared above us.

I concentrated on the fire, funneling my magic into it. The flames caught the herbs and crackled. Blue sparks shot up from the pyre, and thick aromatic smoke drifted through the air.

I pulled a small vial of my blood from the pouch on my belt and poured a few drops into the fire, murmuring the incantation. Bright crimson burst within the blaze, spreading to envelop the whole pyre in unnatural red flame. Magic pulsed. There. It was done.

The ancient words rolled off my tongue. “Nimrod. Father. I need your help. Please answer.” Well, look at that. I didn’t even choke.

Nothing.

Derek drew back. The hair on his arms was standing up.

“Father, speak to me.”

Nothing.

I switched to English. “Father, we are facing a terrible threat. The yeddimur are here. I need to speak to you. It’s important. Please.”

The flames remained silent.

I sat on the grass.

“Maybe he can’t feel it,” Derek said.

“My family has used this method to communicate for thousands of years. He can sense the fire. It’s like a ringing phone, difficult to ignore. He just decided not to pick up.”

Derek sprawled on the grass next to me, looking into the flames. Most of the time when I looked at him, I saw a man, but right now, with the fire dancing in his eyes, he was a wolf.

“Do you miss him?” he asked.

“Yes. No matter how monstrous he is, he’s still my father. I miss talking to him. When he lived close, I was angry with him, but there were moments when we just talked.”

In those moments, he forgot to be a conqueror and a tyrant. He was just a father, one I never knew during my childhood. And he was proud of me, especially when I managed to stick it to him. I was the child of a monster from a family of monsters. My aunt had burned her way through ancient Mesopotamia. She had committed atrocities and I had learned to love her, too. There was light in Erra. There was also darkness, and when I looked deep into both, I recognized myself.

“Roland loves me as much as he can ever love a child. He just loves himself more.”

“I miss my father,” Derek said. “Before he turned loup.”

After Derek’s father turned loup, he’d raped, killed, and eaten his wife and daughters, until teenage Derek finally snapped and killed him. He was the sole survivor of that massacre, and once he was done, he set fire to the house. That was how the Pack found him, mute and unresponsive by the smoldering wreck of his family home. It took Curran months to coax him back to the living.

“What was he like?” I asked.

“Strict. People said he was a good man. He was scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything.” Derek looked into the flames. “The way I grew up, there were Christians and then there was the world. The world was evil and wicked, and only the Christians were good and safe. They talked about it almost as if it were a foreign power out to get them. One time we went to a mountain fair, and a visiting preacher delivered a sermon. He said it was easy to be a Christian when you hold yourself separate from the world, but if you do, there is no temptation, no struggle, and nobody to witness to. That our duty was to go into the world, holding the light of our faith like a torch, and to help others.”

“Didn’t go over well with your father, did it?” I guessed.

“No. He pulled us out of the crowd and told us the man was a false prophet. Everything of the world was bad: books, toys, school. Anything that conflicted with a clean life.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Christians aren’t the only people who do that. There are shapeshifters in the Keep who never go into the city. They don’t want to interact with anyone who isn’t a shapeshifter. Some people cling to their tribe, Derek. He took good care of you. He must’ve loved you.”

Derek shrugged. “I got the feeling it was less about love and more like a second job. A man works and takes care of his family, so my dad did that, because he was supposed to do it. We were his responsibility, and it was his job to provide and to make sure we turned out good and Christian. The plan was that I would grow up and turn into my dad. Work at a paper mill or, if I got ambitious, learn to weld or be a plumber. Marry some girl, put a trailer on my parents’ land. Have kids. Stay in the mountains with other good Christian folk. Stay safe. I didn’t want to be safe. I wanted to be a sailor.”