Magic Shifts (Kate Daniels 8)

Knock. Knock.

Nothing.

Mitchell required patience. I knocked again, hitting the rock against the stone in a steady measured rhythm. My back was to the brush. I presented an awesome target, crouched and nearly naked.

Knock . . . knock . . . knock . . . Come on, Mitchell. Come talk to me.

Knock . . . knock . . .

Something stirred within the darkness of the ghoul burrow.

I put the rock down and waited.

A long spadelike hand armed with straight, narrow claws emerged, followed by a thin arm, a grotesque head, and then shoulders. A moment and Mitchell squeezed himself out of the burrow and crouched in the open. Moonlight slid over his dirt-colored skin mottled with patches of gray and deeper brown, and set his eyes aglow with eerie silver. His horns, the curved spikelike protrusions on his back and shoulders, were almost six inches long, a full three inches longer than the last time I saw him. Something had terrified Mitchell and his body had responded. A long chain wrapped around his left ankle and a rough band of thick scar tissue encircled his leg right above it. He had clawed at his own flesh trying to get the chain off. If Luther had put him on a chain, he and I would have words once I was done.

Mitchell didn’t move. Neither did I. We crouched, barely three feet between us. Some picture we must’ve made, a naked ghoul and a nearly naked human shivering in the cold, sitting nose to nose.

Mitchell turned his head and looked at the moon, his eyes glowing.

“Tell me about the chain,” I said.

“I found it.” His voice was rough, as if he were grinding gravel with his teeth. “The thing chained to it was dead, so I took the chain.”

So he had put himself on the chain? “Why?”

“Do you not hear it? The call?” Mitchell looked at the moon again. “He’s calling. It’s like a weight. It grinds on you, it pushes and pushes, and it hurts.” He looked back at me, his face contorted. “It hurts.” He touched his forehead. “In here.” His clawed hands slid lower to his neck. “And here.” Lower still to his chest. “Here. And here. In the stomach. It squeezes me. It hurts.”

Sudden rage flooded me. Mitchell had suffered enough. He had lost his humanity and his family. He was a scared, quiet creature who had never hurt anyone. All he wanted to do was to live in his burrow and be safe. And now some supernatural asshole was torturing him.

“Who is calling you?”

“I don’t know. But I feel it. I can see him in my mind. I don’t want to go.” Mitchell looked at the chain. “I don’t want to go. I will die if I go, but the pain is getting stronger. One day I will gnaw through my leg and go.”

“Can you tell me where the call is coming from?”

“Why?” Mitchell’s voice dripped with despair.

“So I can go there and make him stop.”

“You can’t. You’re not strong enough. Not strong enough for his magic.”

“I can and I will. I’ve never failed you before. I won’t now.”

Mitchell didn’t answer.

“Let me help you,” I whispered. “Let me make it stop hurting.”

Mitchell’s face trembled. His whole body shuddered. As I watched, the patina of spots on his skin shifted, turning darker. His horns grew another quarter inch. Holy crap. That was crazy even for a ghoul. He was scared out of his mind.

“He will know,” Mitchell whispered. “He will know if I tell.”

“How?”

“He’s sent others to get me, but I burrowed deep and they got scared before they could dig to me. They watch me.”

Damn it. “When was this?”

“The day I fed.”

So on Tuesday. “How did they get through the fence?”

Mitchell leaned even closer and whispered. “They dug a hole. They are waiting in there even now, watching us.”

They dug a tunnel. Of course. Once we finished here, Luther and I would have to find it. “If you tell me, I promise I will kill them and then I’ll find him and kill him, too.”

Mitchell’s skin turned almost black. “No. He has others. Some like me and some like I was meant to be. He has others. He has a man in a cage.”

Eduardo. This was my only chance.

“You will die and then he will send others for me.”

“I have never lied to you.” I scratched the back of my left arm with my nails. A tiny drop of blood swelled. “I will stop him.”

I stretched my arm to him. His nostrils flared. He focused on the blood, his eyes glowing.

“Taste it,” I whispered.