Magic Rises kd-6 Page 18

  Seven.

  Five.

  The breath from their mouths spilled over me.

  Now. I dropped to my knees and slashed across their forelegs with both swords in a single cut.

  Before they tumbled forward, the severed muscles and tendons failing under their weight, I pulled the swords to me and stood up. The two beasts passed on both side of me and crashed behind my back, crippled.

  “Damn, that was beautiful!” Hugh shouted, pulling his blade from a shaggy body.

  An ochokochi lunged at him, too fast for the sword strike. Hugh swung his left arm. The back of his fist hammered the creature’s skull. The ochokochi swayed and fell.

  I had to avoid being punched by him at all costs.

  There were no beasts within striking range. The wave of ochokochi had broken against us.

  The remaining ochokochi fanned out, trying to flank me. I backed away until my spine touched Hugh’s. I had no idea how, but I had known with one hundred percent certainty that his back would be there to brace me.

  “Getting tired?” Hugh asked.

  “I can do this all day.”

  The lead ochokochi bellowed. If they came at us all at once, we’d have a hell of a time protecting the horses.

  Another roaring cry. The ochokochi turned as one and streamed in a rust-colored current to the right, through the bushes and trees away from us.

  I exhaled.

  “Looks like we dodged a bullet.” Hugh grinned.

  I surveyed the clearing and the heaps of brown fur dotting it. “Do ochokochi count for the hunt?”

  “No.”

  “Damn it. There goes my chance for glory.”

  “You’re out of luck,” he said.

  I slumped forward, catching my breath, straightened, and pulled a cloth from my pocket. I had to clean my swords.

  * * *

  After the fight Hugh made no effort to talk. The sharing hour had passed, apparently, and we concentrated on getting the clearing back into shape.

  At three o’clock Hugh pulled a horn out of his saddlebag and made a noise that would have made the dead sit up in their graves. Fifteen minutes later teams of shapeshifter hunters began trickling in. Curran and company were second on the scene after the Volkodavi. The brush rustled and the colossal gray lion pushed through it. The leonine lips stretched in a distinctly human grin. If lions could look smug, Curran did.

  I raised my eyebrows. Carcasses of dead deer, tur, and goats were piled on Curran’s back. He shook, tossing them to the ground, the gray mane flying in the wind, and looked at me. And then at the pile of shaggy red bodies behind me. Hugh and I had dragged them all into a big heap on the edge of the clearing to make space and keep the horses from freaking out.

  The lion shrank, and a man straightened in his place. “What the hell is this?”

  “Hi, honey.” I waved at him from my perch on a rock and kept polishing Slayer with a little cloth.

  Curran spun to Hugh. His voice was a snarl. “Did you do this?”

  “I can only claim responsibility for half of the kills. The rest belong to your wife . . . fiancée?” Hugh turned to me. “You’re not married, right? What is the term?”

  Oh, you bastard.

  “Consort.” Barabas rose behind Curran. “The term is ‘Consort.’”

  “How quaint.” Hugh winked at Curran. “No marriage, no division of property, and no strings attached. Well played, Lennart. Well played.”

  Curran’s eyes went gold. “Stay out of my business.”

  Hugh smiled. “Heaven forbid. Although you should know that if the hunt had a prize for the most elegant kill, she would’ve won it.” He turned away.

  Curran looked at me. He’d never asked me to marry him. It didn’t come up. This fact hadn’t bothered me until Hugh rubbed our faces in it. Come to think of it, it still didn’t bother me.

  I slid Slayer into the sheath on my back. “How did the hunt go?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “No.”

  A lean gray wolf padded over and stopped next to Curran. Its body stretched and contorted, and Lorelei stood next to Curran. Nude again. Imagine that.

  “It was a most glorious hunt,” she said. “Curran is amazing. I’ve never seen such power. It was . . .”

  “I’m sure it was.” I waited for him to tell her to move. He didn’t. She was standing so close, their hands practically brushed. Neither of them wore clothes, and he didn’t tell her to move. He didn’t step away. A cold steady anger rose inside me and refused to dissipate. Nudity wasn’t a big deal to shapeshifters, but if a naked man stood that close to me, Curran would bite his head off.

  I waited for him to react. Nope. Nothing.

  “I wish you could’ve joined us,” Lorelei said.

  I smiled at her.

  Lorelei blinked and took a careful step back.

  “I had my own fun right here.” I got up and stepped between them. Lorelei shied to the side, letting me pass. Curran made no move toward me. I checked his face. Blank. He was closed off. It felt like a door slammed shut in my face.

  Say something. Say you love me. Do something, Curran.

  Nothing. Argh.

  Behind Curran, now-human Desandra put her hand in the small of her back, pushing her stomach out, and winced. Radomil was standing by her, saying something in a language I couldn’t understand. It must’ve been something funny, because she laughed. And then she subtly glanced to her left, where the Italians were sorting out their clothes. I glanced, too. Gerardo wasn’t looking her way. Her face fell.

  My voice came out cold. “Your clothes are on that rock, Your Majesty. I folded them for you.”

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice casual.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked quietly.

  “No.” A spark of frustration shone in his eyes and melted. There was my pissy lion. He was up to something. Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

  * * *

  The djigits sorted the game and tagged the hooves with different types of dye. We waited for the stragglers while the shapeshifters put on their clothes. The amount of game they had killed was staggering. Dozens of animals had lost their lives. I hoped they had ability to freeze the meat because thinking of all that game going to waste made me ill.

  The team winner would have to be declared after the castle staff had a chance to weigh and sort the animals, but the prize catch was painfully obvious: a beautiful mature tur, at least two hundred thirty pounds, its horns like two curved moons. Hugh picked it out of our pile and the djigits made a big show of carrying it around.

  “Will the hunter stand up and claim their prize?” Hugh boomed.

  Aunt B stepped forward. Hugh bowed and presented her with the glass pitcher containing a plastic bag of panacea. Everyone applauded.

  Aunt B smiled and passed the panacea to Andrea. “My gift to my grandchildren.”

  Relief flashed on Andrea’s face. It was there for a mere blink, but I saw it. She hugged the pitcher for the tiniest second before handing it over to Raphael.

  Clothes were put back on, horses were freed, and we began our descent to the castle. People around me seemed happier, calmer, satiated.

  Curran walked in front of my horse. Lorelei must’ve sensed it wasn’t a good time to test my patience, and she had moved to talk to George behind us. Curran kept walking and I kept riding. Either something had happened on that hunt or he had hatched some sort of demented plan and was now following it.

  We didn’t speak.

  On my right Desandra chatted with Andrea about the hunt.

  For the first time in months I felt completely alone. It was a familiar but half-forgotten feeling. I hadn’t felt this isolated since Greg died. He’d taken care of me for almost ten years after Voron’s death. I had taken him for granted, and when he was murdered, it felt like someone had cracked my life apart with the blow of a hammer. The shapeshifters never treated me like an outsider, but at this moment
I knew exactly how a third wheel felt. They were all still high on the thrill of the chase. It bonded them together, and here I was, the lone human on a horse, and Curran wasn’t talking to me.

  It was an unpleasant feeling and I didn’t like it. I would deal with it. I didn’t know what Curran’s problem was, but I would find out. Curran never did anything without a reason and he was so controlled, even his one-night stands were premeditated.

  Curran wouldn’t lose his head over Lorelei, no matter how pretty and fresh she looked. He had cooked up some sort of plot, and now he was implementing it in his methodical Curran fashion, and the fact that he didn’t tell me about his plan meant I really wouldn’t like it. And that was exactly what worried me.

  The road curved. I felt the weight of someone’s gaze on me and looked up. Hugh. Looking at me as we rounded the bend. In front of him the castle loomed on top of the mountain. It was time to put my badass face on.

  Twenty minutes later we dismounted in the courtyard. A djigit took my horse. Curran, Mahon, and Eduardo were speaking. I made a beeline for their group. I had some air I wanted to clear.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hibla hurrying across the courtyard. I didn’t want to talk to her. My shift with Desandra was about to start and I wanted to talk to Curran before it did. Don’t come over to me, don’t come over to me . . .

  “Consort!”

  Crap on a stick. “Yes?”

  “Can I speak with you?”

  No. “Sure.”

  We walked toward the wall, out of the way.

  “The creature you killed. Did it have wings?”

  “Did you have an attack?”

  “It appears so.” Hibla lowered her voice. “I do not wish to start a panic or a hunt inside the walls. Will you view it with me?”

  Not alone, I won’t. I searched the crowd, looking for Andrea, and saw her and Raphael at the doors ushering Desandra inside. Just as well.

  “Derek!” I called.

  A moment later he stepped out of the crowd like a ghost.

  “Come with me, please.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The castle seemed to last forever. We crossed one hallway, turned, crossed another, climbed the stairs . . .

  “It’s a maze,” Derek said.

  “It’s meant to be,” I told him. “Like the one under the Casino at home. Except that one was designed to keep vampires from escaping, and this one was made to keep attackers from reaching vulnerable points.”

  We went up eight flights of stairs, until finally Hibla opened a heavy door. We stepped out onto the battlement and made our way along the top of the wall toward a flanking tower.

  “Curran never does anything without a reason,” Derek told me quietly.

  Well, well, the Beast Lord’s sudden breach of manners when it came to Lorelei hadn’t gone unnoticed. Derek was trained by Jim to be observant, and now the kid was concerned for me. I was touched he was concerned, but irritation spiked inside me. Navigating my love life was hard enough right now without unwarranted assistance from teenage werewolves.

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  He shook his head.

  We came to a doorway. A heavy door lay on its side next to it. We followed Hibla through the doorway and climbed another set of stairs and emerged on top of the flanking tower. Perfectly round, the tower had been designed to permit bombardment of the northern slope. Not that anything could come up that way—the ground dropped off so abruptly, it had to be only a couple of degrees short of a completely vertical cliff.

  An antipersonnel machine gun sat on a swivel mount, facing to the south. A high-speed, medium-sized scorpio sat behind the machine gun on a rotating mount. Shaped like a very large crossbow, the scorpio was the Roman equivalent of a machine gun. It fired arrows with enough speed to pierce armor, and judging by the cranks, this one was a serial-fire, self-loading siege engine. It would take two people to operate, but once they cranked it up, the scorpio would spit enough arrows to cut down a small army. Both the gun and the scorpio rested on a rotating platform, and switching between them in case of a magic wave would take mere seconds. Smart, Hugh. Very smart. We’d have to steal this setup for the Keep. Assuming we made it back to the Keep.

  Two djigits stood by the siege engines. Both seemed pale.

  Hibla nodded and they moved aside, revealing a long bloody smear on the stone. A severed arm lay against the wall. Long, thin fingers. Could be female. I crouched. Scratches marked the stone. To the right, bits of jackal fur stuck to the blocks, glued with dried blood. Next to them lay an orange scale. Hibla’s jackal had gone down fighting.

  I pulled a small plastic bag out and picked up the scale to take back to Doolittle. There was more than one of these things out there.

  Derek inhaled, crouched low, and smelled the stones.

  “There are four tower lookouts,” Hibla said. “The shift changes every twelve hours, at six in the morning and six in the evening. This morning Tamara relieved the night lookout. This is all we have left of her.”

  “Who has access to the tower?” I asked.

  “Nobody. Once the lookouts enter the tower, they bar the door behind them. The door was still barred when Karim came to relieve her. We had to take it off its hinges.”

  “Did the other lookouts hear anything?”

  “No.”

  I looked at Derek. “Anything?”

  “Similar scent as in the hallway,” he said.

  Locked door, heavy weaponry. The only access was from the air. So the wings had been functional after all. Still, the one I’d killed didn’t have a wingspan wide enough for it to fly. It was a heavy bastard, too. I turned. The main building of the castle rose in front of me. Tall, blocky, with a blue roof.

  “It glides,” I said. “It probably took off from the main keep, swooped down, and rammed Tamara.” The fight must’ve been brutal and quick, because the werejackal didn’t have a chance to call for help.

  “Why did it take the body?” Hibla asked.

  “I don’t know.” Something had taken the other guard too, the one who’d stood over the mechanism guarding the hallway gate. “Have you ever heard about anything like that?”

  Hibla shook her head. “It is not local. I know all of the local creatures.”

  “There must be miles of mountains out there.” And some of them spawned mutant kangaroo goats with bone axes in their chests. “Are you sure these shapeshifters haven’t crawled out of some dark ravine?”

  She crossed her arms. “I told you I know all the local creatures.”

  I fought to keep from grinding my teeth. She’d invited me in and now she’d decided to get all defensive. “Any rumors of anything similar? Anything at all?”

  “No. I need useful information. You are not being useful.”

  I thought of telling her to bend over so I could remove the iron stick she had jammed up her ass, but getting into a fight with the head of Hugh’s security wasn’t in our best interests. I needed to maintain a working relationship, because I might have to rely on Hibla later.

  Derek was leaning over the wall. “Kate?”

  I came over. The southern wall rose above a large square inner yard. Practice dummies sat along the walls. Past them a big metal cage hung from chains, about five or six feet off the ground. A pile of rags lay inside it.

  The pile stirred. A rag was thrown back and then a grimy face stared up at me.

  “Who is that?”

  “A prisoner,” Hibla said.

  “Why is he in a cage?”

  “He belongs to Lord Megobari. He’s a criminal. This is his punishment.”

  Hugh put people in cages. Lovely. “What’s his crime?”

  “He stole.”

  “Take me to talk to him.”

  Hibla grimaced. “It’s forbidden.”

  “The contract the clans signed gives me the authority to pursue and eliminate any danger threatening Desandra. A similar creature attacked her and we can now conclude there are more o
f them out there. That tells me Desandra is in danger. If Lord Megobari makes an issue of it, tell him I insisted. He will believe you.”

  Hibla’s face told me she had no doubt about that part. “Follow me.”

  We entered the tower and descended a spiral staircase.

  “Their scent is odd,” Derek said. “Like someone shoved sandpaper up your nose. Must be something they give off only when transformed, because I haven’t smelled it before.”

  “How tight is your security?” I asked.

  If looks could conduct electricity, Hibla would’ve electrocuted me on the spot.

  “I’m not questioning your competence,” I told her. “I’m trying to do my job. If a stranger scales the wall, how fast would you know about it?”

  “If he entered the keep, immediately,” Hibla said. “We have patrols at the doors and in the hallways. They are trained to remember scents and faces.”

  “What if he entered one of the minor buildings?”

  “We do rolling sweeps of every structure twice a day. We may not see him, but we would smell him. I would know within twelve hours.”

  I had to give it to Hugh, his security was good. “Any strangers since we arrived?”

  “Aside from you and the three packs, no.”

  “How many people, besides us and you, are in the castle?”

  “The Volkodavi have eighteen, the Italians have twenty, and Jarek Kral has twenty also.”

  That was fifty-eight, and including us would make it an even seventy. “And you are confident your people can recall seventy different scent signatures?”

  Hibla looked at Derek.

  “Yes,” he told me. “Five hundred people come to the Keep during any week. I recognize every single scent.”

  I knew that shapeshifter scent memory was good, but I had no idea it was that good. Thinking about remembering five hundred scent signatures made my head hurt.

  “How can you be the Consort and not know this?” Hibla said, in the way someone would say, Of course the Earth is round; what are you, a moron?

  Derek bared his teeth. Great. If he went for Hibla’s throat, I’d have a mess on my hands.

  “In the U.S., shapeshifters don’t volunteer information about themselves to others,” I told her. “I learn as I go, and the subject of just how many scents you can recall never came up.”