Magic Bleeds kd-4 Page 20

  “No.”

  His face slid into a flat unreadable expression. “Is it because I’m a shapeshifter?”

  “No, it’s because you’re the Beast Lord.”

  He leaned back. “Care to elaborate?”

  “My value is in my impartiality. I can approach the People, the Pack, the druids, or the Witch Oracle, because it’s clear I don’t take sides. I’m able to function effectively only if I’m neutral. Sleeping with you destroys my impartiality. You won’t tolerate someone who isn’t loyal to you, so the moment I acknowledge being with you, everyone who ever had a problem with the Pack will stop talking to me. That’s only part of the issue.”

  “Is there more?”

  If I had any hope for the two of us, I’d have to tell him everything.

  The thought froze me in my seat.

  “Kate?” he asked softly.

  I opened my mouth and tried to make words come out. They didn’t.

  He reached over and covered my hand with his.

  I couldn’t tell him. Not yet.

  I had to find some other reasons and so I stuck to things that had gotten me through the misery of the last few weeks. “How many women have you slept with?”

  He pulled back and crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge. “Don’t do this.”

  “It’s a legitimate question,” I said.

  “How many men have you slept with?”

  “You’re my third. Answer the question.”

  “Well, are we counting long-term partners or one-night stands?”

  I sighed. “Would you like to count partners only?”

  He grimaced. “Less than twenty.”

  “Would you care to elaborate?”

  He mulled it over. “Eighteen.”

  “And how many of them lived in the Keep with you?”

  The answer came a little quicker. “Seven, but none shared my rooms.”

  “What do you mean, they didn’t share your rooms? Where did you . . .”

  “In their quarters.”

  I laughed. “Oh, so you graced them with your nocturnal presence in the bimbo room, Your Majesty? Like Zeus, in a blaze of golden light?”

  He showed me the edge of his teeth. “They liked it.”

  Arrogant ass. “Sure. So why don’t you let women in your rooms?”

  “Because being in my rooms means being in a position of power.”

  If he thought I would stay in a bimbo room when this was over, he was out of luck.

  I would be dead when this was over.

  “In the public eye, there is a huge imbalance of power between you and me. If I went to the Keep with you, Atlanta would stop viewing me as Kate Daniels, agent of the Order, and would perceive me as Beast Lord’s Girlfriend Number Nineteen. Or Number Eight, depending on how they chose to look at it. What little reputation I’ve earned would be wiped away and you can bet that the Order will take me off the current case faster than you can snarl.”

  “We both have to give up some things,” he said.

  I crossed my arms. “I’m so glad you see it my way, Your Majesty. Quit being the Beast Lord, give up the Pack, and come live with me in my apartment.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  I smiled at him.

  “I get it,” he said. “Point made. It’s not fair. But the Pack is who I am. I built it for my people. The Order isn’t who you are. Half of the time you’re trying to figure out how to hide what you find from them. I’ve read your report of the flare. If there was a lying competition, you’d win it hands down.”

  That hit really close to home. “The Order is where I choose to be right now. If I’m taken off this petition, it will go to Andrea. She’s my best friend. If she collides with the Mary’s magic, she might be exposed. It’ll destroy her. In any case, I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

  “Andrea knew the risks when she became a knight. You didn’t put her into this situation, she did it herself. You’re just delaying the inevitable. She’s trying to live in two worlds at once and she can’t.”

  Ouch. That hit really, really close to home.

  He kept going. “You don’t want to justify yourself. I respect that. But you want me to be your dirty secret. To skulk about and pretend that you’re not mine in public. I won’t do it.”

  “I’m asking you to be discreet.”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to borrow a pair of my panties to wave around at the next Council meeting to get the point across?”

  His eyes flashed. “Got any to spare?”

  I could’ve picked somebody rational. But no, I had to fall in love with this arrogant idiot. Come to the Keep with me, be my princess. Mourn me when your crazy dad kills me. Yeah, right.

  He got up, took the phone from the counter, and set it before me. “I said we both had to give up something.”

  “So far I’m the one expected to give up things. What’s your sacrifice?”

  He nodded at the phone and rattled off a number. “That’s the phone of the Keep’s steward. His crew makes all the sleeping arrangements. I called him this morning to tell him I would be coming in. Call him. See if I requested a room to be prepared for you.”

  The phone rang.

  We both looked at it.

  It rang again and I picked it up. “Yes?”

  “Kate?” Saiman’s voice sounded mildly anxious. “I see you survived the night.”

  “Barely.”

  Curran picked up his empty plate.

  “Are you injured?”

  “No.” Just tender in some places.

  “That’s good to hear.”

  The sound of tortured metal screeched through the kitchen. Curran was slowly, methodically rolling the metal plate into a tube.

  “What is that noise?” Saiman said.

  “Construction.”

  “Are you planning to visit the Temple today?”

  “If the magic complies.”

  “I would be interested in learning what you find out.”

  “Your interest has been noted.”

  I hung up. Curran dropped a chunk of nearly solid metal that used to be a plate onto the counter.

  I looked into his gray eyes. “Curran, if you attack him, I’ll have to defend him. There is no competition there. If I had wanted to be with him, I could have.” Crap. That didn’t come out right.

  He took a deep breath.

  “What I meant to say was, he offered and I declined.”

  “Come with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  A shadow passed over his face. “Then we’re done.”

  “So it’s all or nothing?”

  “That’s the only way I can do it.” He turned his back to me and walked out.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE MAGIC HIT TEN MINUTES AFTER CURRAN LEFT. I grit my teeth, got dressed, saddled Marigold, and headed to the Temple.

  All or nothing. Hello, Your Fuzzy Majesty. My name is Kate Daniels, daughter of Roland, Builder of Towers, the living legend, and coincidentally, the man who is trying to eradicate you and your people. If you take me in, he will move heaven and earth to kill you and me, when he finds out who I am. Even now, I’m being hunted. And if you keep sleeping with me, you’ll never be the same.

  That was what all or nothing really meant. And I wanted so badly to ignore it and go with him to the Keep. When had I become so attached to that arrogant bastard? It wasn’t last night. Was it all the times he’d saved me from myself? At least, I knew when it started—when he tried to trade the lid wanted by a horde of sea demons for Julie’s life.

  I would kill to stay with him. Now there was a scary thought.

  The temperature continued its suicidal plunge. Despite all the layers of fabric, I could barely feel my arms, and my thighs were frozen solid. Grendel and Marigold seemed no worse for wear, but then they’d run the whole way.

  Bordered on three sides by a low brick building and by a brick fence on the fourth, the Temple looked almost cheerful agains
t the stark landscape of ruined buildings: bright red walls, snow-white colonnade, and equally white stairs perched upon a snowy lawn. Just a few yards to the left, Unicorn Lane lay in wait. An area of deep violent magic, Unicorn Lane cut across the battered Midtown like a scar. Things that shunned the light and fed on monsters hid there, and when desperate fugitives fled there, neither PAD nor the Order bothered to follow them. There was no need.

  Unicorn Lane ran straight as an arrow, except when it reached the Temple grounds, where it carefully veered around the synagogue. Mezuzot, verses from the Torah, written by a qualified scribe and protected by pewter cases, hung along the perimeter of the Temple wall. The wall itself supported so many angelic names, magic squares, and holy names, it looked as if a talismanic encyclopedia had thrown up on it.

  Four golems patrolled the grounds: six feet tall and red like Georgia clay. The shapeless monstrosities of the early days, just after the Shift, were gone; these guys had been made by a master sculptor and animated by a magic adept. Each had the muscled torso of a humanoid male, crowned with a large bearded head. At the waist the torso seamlessly merged into a stocky animal body, reminiscent of a ram and equipped with four powerful legs with hoofed feet. The golems stalked back and forth, carrying long steel spears and peering at the world with eyes glowing a weak watery pink. They paid me no mind. If they had, they wouldn’t be difficult to kill. Each was animated by a single word—emet, truth—cut into their foreheads. Destroy the first letter and emet became met. Death. An end to the golem. Judging by their slow gait, I could waltz in, take the letter off, and skedaddle before they could bring those big-ass spears around.

  Everyone had their own method of manipulating the magic. Witches brewed herbal potions, the People piloted vampires, and rabbis wrote. The surest way to disarm a Jewish magician was to take his pen away from him.

  As I approached, a woman stepped out of the Temple and came down to the bottom of the stairs. I tied Marigold’s reins to a rail welded to the fence and jogged up the stairs.

  The woman was short and happily plump. “I’m Rabbi Melissa Snowdoll.”

  “Kate Daniels. This is my poodle.”

  “I understand you have an appointment with Rabbi Kranz. I’ll take you to him, but I’m afraid the poodle will have to wait outside.”

  The attack poodle expressed doubts about waiting, and he liked the chain even less, but after I growled at him, he decided it was in his best interest to play it cool.

  The rabbi raised her hand and stepped forward. A pale glow clamped her fingers and drained down in a waterfall of light, as the protective ward on the Temple opened to let me pass.

  “Follow me, please.”

  She led me inside. We passed by the open doors of the sanctuary. Enormous arched windows spilled daylight onto rows of cream pews, equipped with dark red cushions. Soothing cream walls climbed high to a vaulted ceiling, gilded with gold designs. On the east wall, in front of the pews, a pale feylantern illuminated a raised platform and on it the holy arc, a gold case containing the scrolls from the Torah.

  The contrast to the bleak outside was so startling, I wanted to sit down on the nearest cushion, close my eyes, and just sit for a long moment. Instead I followed Rabbi Melissa down the hall to a small staircase into a narrow room. A square bath occupied the far end of the room. A mikvah, a place where Orthodox Jews came to purify themselves.

  The rabbi approached the right wall, placed her hand on it, and murmured something. A section of the wall slid aside, revealing a passage stretching into the distance. Pale blue tubes of feylanterns lit stone walls. “There we go,” she said. “Just keep on straight, you can’t miss it.” I stepped inside. The wall closed behind me. No way to go but forward.

  THE PASSAGEWAY BROUGHT ME TO AN EMPTY round office. I passed through it and kept walking. Another office waited ahead, this one with a heavy stone desk and two men standing behind it. The first was in his forties, tall, thin, with a long face, made longer by a short beard and a receding hairline, and smart eyes behind wire glasses. The second was older by ten years, heavier by seventy-five pounds or so, and had the square-jawed face and the eyes of a cop, skeptical and world-weary.

  The taller man came out from behind the desk to greet me. “Hello, I’m Rabbi Peter Kranz. This is Rabbi John Weiss.”

  I shook their hands and handed them my Order ID. They looked at it for a while and gave it back to me.

  Peter folded his long frame back behind the desk. “Sorry about the dungeon atmosphere.”

  “No problem. As dungeons go, I’ve seen worse.”

  The two of them chewed on that remark for a bit. I looked past them. Hebrew script decorated the walls of the office, lines and lines of text inked on the wall in thick black lines. It drew the eye. I tried not to stare.

  “I understand you wish to access the circle.” Peter folded his long fingers in front of him.

  “Yes.”

  “We would like to know why.”

  I explained about the Steel Mary and produced the bag with the piece of paper.

  The two rabbis looked at each other. I looked at the wall. There was something about the Hebrew text. My eyes almost itched when I looked at it. If I squinted just right . . .

  “You must understand, of course, we do wish to cooperate with the Order,” Peter said. “However, we don’t advertise the existence of the circle. You might even say we strive to keep it a secret. We’re most curious as to how you learned about it.”

  Mentioning Saiman would get me thrown out. “The Order has its sources.”

  “Of course, of course,” Peter said.

  The rabbis exchanged another look.

  The black lines blended, like the old stereograms that hid a 3-D image in an ordinary picture. The impact punched my brain and I saw a word, written in a language of power. Amehe. Obey.

  The word sizzled in my brain. I already owned this one, but seeing it written still set my mind buzzing.

  It made sense that it would be written on a wall full of names of God. Rabbis specialized in written magic and Yahweh was all about obedience, if the Torah was anything to go by.

  “People study for years and years to access the circle,” Weiss said. “Some Johnny-come-lately can’t just waltz in and demand to see it.”

  “I’m not some Johnny. I’m the Johnny with an Order’s ID and a sharp sword, who’s trying to save the city from an epidemic.” If they thought their mezuzot would protect them from the Steel Mary, they would be deeply disappointed.

  The corners of Peter’s mouth sagged. “What Rabbi Weiss means is that we’re dreadfully sorry, but your lack of qualifications prevents us from granting you access. It’s unfortunate.”

  On that we were in agreement. “Would you like me to read what’s written on the wall behind you to prove that I’m qualified?”

  Peter gave me a sad smile.

  Weiss sighed. “These are the many names of God. Knowing how to read Hebrew won’t get you in, but go ahead if it makes you feel better.”

  “It says: ‘Obey.’ ”

  A long moment passed and then Peter closed his mouth with a click.

  Weiss’s eyes turned cold. “Who told you about that?”

  “Would you like me to pronounce the word in the original language?” There was no telling what the word would do to them. I mostly used it to control magic, but it could be used to control people. I’d done it once—to Derek—and I would never do it again. But they didn’t know that.

  The rabbis paled. I’d managed to terrify holy men. Maybe I could beat up a nun for an encore.

  “No!” Peter raised his hands. “No, that’s not necessary. We’ll take you to the circle.”

  THE GOLEM WAS SEVEN FEET TALL AND SIX FEET wide. Unlike the golems outside, who had been shaped with finesse like Greek statues, this brute was pure power. Broad, crude, and hewn together with thick slabs of clay muscle, it stood at the end of a narrow hallway before a door shaped like an open scroll. It wore a steel helmet, an armet with viso
r removed. The metal guard covered its mouth and a layer of steel shielded its forehead. No scratching off letters here. I wondered what they would do if they ever had to deactivate it. Shoot it with a tank maybe.

  Next to me, Peter pointed to the floor, where a small stone fire pit with the fire already laid out waited before the golem. To the side sat a box of matches. “There is a price for using the circle.”

  “What is it?”

  His voice was soft. “Knowledge. That is the keeper of the circle. You must light the fire and tell it a secret. If your knowledge is worthy, the golem will open the door for you.”

  “And if the golem doesn’t like the knowledge?” Was it too much to hope it would chide me and send me to bed without my supper?

  “It may kill you,” Weiss said.

  “If you lie, it will know,” Peter said. “The flame will turn blue.”

  Lovely. The golem’s fists were bigger than my head. All it had to do was grab me and squeeze and my skull would crack like an egg. The hallway was too narrow to maneuver. My speed wouldn’t do me any good.

  “We will wait here.” Weiss pointed to a small stone bench a few yards away. It faced the golem so they would have front row seats if it decided to use me as a punching bag.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind,” Peter murmured.

  And stare into Ori’s dead eyes every time I closed mine? No, thank you.

  I crossed the floor, picked up the matches, and struck one. A tiny flame flared. Carefully I brought it to the fire and let it chew on the piece of paper in the center of wooden kindling.

  A low rumble started in the center of the golem, a rough grating sound of rock grinding against rock. Two pinpoints of sharp light flared in its cavernous sockets.

  I sat on the floor.

  The golem shuddered. One huge columnar leg lifted and stepped forward, shaking the floor.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  The golem stopped before the fire and bent down. Tiny flecks of stone or dry clay broke from its shoulders and fell into the fire, igniting into brilliant white sparks. Slowly, ponderously, it crouched, its steel mouth guard only three feet from me.