Magic Triumphs (Kate Daniels 10)

“I don’t know. It keeps growing.”

“Are we about to have another flare?”

“I don’t know. How bad was the fight?”

“It wasn’t bad.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” he said quietly. “You went to the Casino.”

“I got scared. She said she would kill our son and eat him. I bashed her face in. It was overkill.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand.

“Curran, he can’t cloak. Ever since he turned, he’s been shining like a star. And I was so used to having him with me, it didn’t even occur to me that he can be tracked. That’s how she found us. I put our kid in danger.”

“It’s okay.” He squeezed my hand again. “You protected him. You will always protect him. You’re his mother. They would have to kill both of us to get to him. Think about it.”

They would have to go through the two of us. Many had tried before, and all of them had failed. Even my father.

“We’ve got this,” he said. “We’ll kill them all.”

Our son snored in his car seat without a care in the world. As he should.

Curran was right. We would kill them all.

* * *

• • •

ONCE UPON A time the Guild was housed in an upscale hotel on the edge of Buckhead. Tall buildings didn’t weather magic well, and the hotel proved no exception. Its shiny tower had broken off and toppled, leaving a five-story stub. The Guild put a makeshift roof on it, cleaned it up a bit, and called it a day.

A couple of years ago, as the Guild teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, a giant had made some exciting modifications to the roof with his fists, which forced a remodel. About that time Curran and Barabas joined the Guild and eventually took it over. Barabas ran the admin side, Curran served as the Guild Master, and a year and a half ago, the mercs unanimously voted me in as a Steward, which meant whenever the mercs had problems or grievances with either of them, they ran to me and I fixed it. I’d needed the added responsibility like I needed a hole in the head. In fact, I wasn’t even at the meeting, because I’d gotten held up getting a boggart out of a local middle school. The mercs conveniently voted in my absence and then presented me with the Steward’s scroll when I showed up, dripping slime and picking trash out of my hair.

Bob, of the Four Horsemen, had held the unofficial position of Steward before me and apparently put himself in the running, but after he tried to raid the pension fund, his street cred took a beating. He never did warm up to either my or Curran’s presence. His Furriness, never one to waste resources, sent him down to Jacksonville to run the brand-new satellite Guild. Within three months Bob tried to stage a coup and declare independence, and the Jacksonville Guild expelled him. We had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

One of the first things the three of us did was to fix the Guild itself. Curran fortified every place he frequently occupied. I had to talk him out of walling in our subdivision. But with the Guild, Barabas and I gave him free rein. Some battles weren’t worth fighting.

The walls had been reinforced, the new masonry seamlessly blending in with the skeletal remains of the hotel. The upper floor sported arrow slits. A brand-new roof, equipped with four howitzers and four sorcerous ballistae, crowned the building. A massive metal door blocked the entrance, and behind it was a second door just in case someone breached the front. It was a wonder he didn’t dig a moat around the place.

We parked and went inside. Conlan was still out, so Curran carried him in the car seat. The inside of the Guild matched the outside: clean, functional, professional. I nodded to the Clerk at his counter, and we made a left to the glass walls of Barabas’s office.

The former Pack lawyer and current Guild admin sat behind his desk. Lean, wiry, pale, Barabas brought a single word to mind: sharp. Sharp eyes, sharp teeth, sharp mind. Even his bright red hair, which stood straight up on his head, looking like a forest of needles, gave the impression of sharpness.

Christopher sat in a chair, reading a book. The first time I’d seen him, he’d been locked in a cage. He’d looked fragile and brittle, a ghost of a man, with hair so pale, it seemed colorless. Despite both Barabas and me trying to keep him eating, he had looked like that until about two years ago, when he finally remembered his powers. Christopher was a theophage. My father tried to merge him with Deimos, Greek god of terror. Christopher had resisted, and in a last desperate act of defiance, Christopher had shattered his own mind. As punishment, Roland had delivered what was left of Christopher into the tender care of his warlord, Hugh d’Ambray.

Now he was broad-shouldered and muscular, with a powerful athletic build. Where Barabas was all sharp lines and quick, precise movements, Christopher possessed a kind of quiet calm. Sitting in a chair now with a book, he seemed almost unmovable. Of course, the calm lasted only until Barabas or one of us was threatened, and then Christopher sprouted wings and fangs and went berserk. The human and divine had merged inside Christopher, with the man having the upper hand over the deity. Barabas was forever paranoid that people would start worshipping Christopher and that balance would tip the other way, but so far it hadn’t happened.

They were so different. Christopher was in love with Barabas. Barabas loved him back, but since he’d taken care of Christopher while the other man’s mind had been fractured, he faced an ethical dilemma. The last time we’d spoken about it, he’d been worried that Christopher’s feelings weren’t love but misplaced affection for a caretaker. Barabas didn’t want to take advantage. They continued to live in the same house. They looked like a couple. They acted like a couple. Neither of them volunteered any information about their relationship. We respected their privacy, and nobody asked.

Both men looked up at us.

“Bad news?” Barabas asked.

“Yes.” I shut the door behind us. Curran gently put Conlan on a big pillow on the floor. Shapeshifters had an unholy love of floor pillows, and even though Barabas spent most of his day in his chair, he refused to give his up.

I sat in the other chair.

Barabas sniffed in Conlan’s direction. “What’s different? Something’s different.”

“He shifted,” Curran said quietly.

Barabas sat up straighter. Christopher’s pale eyebrows crept up.

“Is he unusual like you?” Barabas asked Curran.

“He’s worse,” I said.

“Worse how?” Christopher asked.

“He can hold a warrior form,” Curran said.

Barabas choked on empty air. “What do you mean, he can hold a warrior form? For how long?”

“For as long as he wants to,” Curran said.

“Also, he’s unable to cloak,” I said. “So, anyone familiar with my or Roland’s specific magic signature can track him down. We were attacked by a sahanu this morning. I killed her, but according to Robert, Razer is in the city. My father must’ve given a general order to kill my son. So there will be more.”

Christopher leaned forward and rested his hand on mine. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

Christopher got up, poured a cup of hot tea from the kettle, and brought it to me.

“Thank you.” I took the tea and drank.

“The Pack says Roland is mobilizing,” Curran said. “What are the scouts saying?”

Scouts? “You have people watching Roland?”

“We,” Curran told me. “We have people watching Roland.”

“He’s doing the same thing he did a year ago,” Barabas said. “Pulling personnel in from neighboring states. Last time nothing came of it. This time, it’s too early to tell.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“He has to move a large number of troops to Atlanta from the Midwest. Last time he sent people to evaluate the ley line route,” Curran said.

Made sense. The ley line carried you forward at a high speed, but once it ended, it would spit you out at the ley point into the waiting arms of whoever wanted to ambush you there. There was no avoiding it.

“You didn’t tell me?”

“You were in labor,” Curran said.