Magic Bleeds kd-4 Read online

  Curran had gone mad.

  I wouldn’t lose him. I would not lose him on this dark, cold street. It wouldn’t happen.

  The beast that used to be Curran leapt at the undead. Huge hands grasped Darkness, pulling him up. Muscles bulged and Curran tore him to pieces, dismembering his body as if it were a rag doll. Blood gushed from the savaged body, drenching the snow.

  Erra’s hands shook on her axe, but her weight kept me down.

  Curran smashed into the blood ward. Magic boomed. He hit again, the impact of his body shaking the red wall and the street beneath. His eyes blazed white. The fur on his arms smoked from the contact with Erra’s blood ward.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Cracks formed in the blood ward.

  Erra stared, her face slapped with shock.

  Curran rammed the ward.

  The red wall cracked and fell apart. He burst through it, roaring, his fur on fire, and crashed into the snow. Magic tore at me, like a typhoon wild in it fury. I screamed and Erra echoed me, doubling over in pain over me, her hair falling like a dark curtain.

  I grabbed her hair and jerked her down with all my strength straight onto my sword.

  Slayer slid into her eye. I felt it pierce the bone and drove it in all the way.

  Erra vomited blood. It drenched me like fire, my magic mixing with my aunt’s lifeblood leaking from her body. I felt the magic in it, the way I’d felt it in the rakshasas’ golden cage.

  I smeared our mixed blood onto her face, pushed, and saw a forest of needles burst through her skin.

  She screamed and laid on the axe, and I screamed as the spike ripped my innards. The needles crumbled and melted into her skin.

  “You will not take me down,” Erra ground out. “You will not . . .”

  Her legs failed and she crashed to her knees.

  “It’s over,” I whispered to her with bloody lips.

  Desperation claimed her broken face. She clawed at the spear, trying to pull herself upright. Our blood painted the snow a bright rich scarlet.

  “Die,” I told her.

  She fell on all fours next to me. Her one good eye stared into mine. “Live . . . long, child,” she whispered. “Live long enough to see everyone you love die. Suffer . . . like me.”

  Her words clamped on to me like a curse. She collapsed in the snow. Her chest rose for the last time. A single breath escaped with a soft whisper and the life faded from her eye.

  I looked at her and saw myself, dead in the snow.

  The smoking ruin that was Curran raised his bloody head.

  “Curran,” I whispered. “Look at me.”

  The burns blotching his monstrous face melted. Fur sprouted, running along his frame, hiding the wounds. His eyes were still pure white.

  He strode to me, swiped at the axe, and plucked it out of me like a toothpick. Clawed hands picked me up.

  “Talk to me.” I peered into his eyes and saw nothing. “Talk to me, Curran.”

  A low growl reverberated in his throat.

  No. No, no, no.

  Emaciated twisted shapes dashed by the ward—the first vampiric scouts. They’d watched the battle until they figured out the winner. Curran saw the vampires. A horrible sound broke from his mouth, halfway between a roar and a scream. He lunged at the ward. In the split second before we hit the scarlet flames, I thrust my bloody hand into Erra’s defensive spell. Magic shot from me. The red collapsed, and everything went black.

  CHAPTER 27

  EVERYTHING HURT.

  “Don’t move.” Urgency filled Jim’s quiet voice.

  I lay absolutely still, my eyes closed. The magic was down. The air smelled of blood.

  Something fanned my face. I opened my eyes just enough to glimpse a clawed foot passing out of my field of vision.

  “You’re on the floor,” Jim said. “I’m at the door directly in front of you. When I say, run to me.”

  My eyes snapped open.

  Jim crouched in the doorway, Doolittle next to him. Derek stood to the left, his face white. Beyond them I saw Mahon looming like a mountain.

  Jim’s eyes shone with green.

  “She doesn’t understand,” Doolittle murmured.

  Jim leaned an inch forward. “You’re in the Keep. Curran brought you here three hours ago. He’s pacing back and forth around you. He attacks anyone who tries to enter. He isn’t talking. He doesn’t recognize me or anyone else.” He paused, waiting for it sink in. “Kate, he may have gone loup. You must get out of here, before he kills you. If you run, we’ll shut the door as soon as you make it out. We’ve got enough people to hold it.”

  Three hours. He hasn’t spoken in three hours.

  I sat up. A dark bloody stain slicked the floor under me. I must’ve bled. I turned and saw a furry gray back at the far wall and above it a tangled, bloodstained mane. Curran.

  “Kate!” Jim hissed.

  The beast that used to be Curran whipped around. White eyes glared at me.

  I stood up.

  He leaped across the room, covering the distance between us in a single bound. His hands clamped my ribs. He jerked me up to a mouth full of teeth.

  “Hey, baby,” I said into his maw, breathing out to let him inhale my scent.

  White eyes peered into mine. A deep growl rolled from him.

  “Very scary,” I told him softly. “I’m terribly impressed.”

  He snarled. Teeth clicked a hair from my throat.

  “Curran,” I whispered. “Remember me.”

  He inhaled my scent. His ears twitched. He was listening to the shapeshifters at the door.

  “Close the door, Jim.”

  Jim hesitated.

  “I’m his mate. Close the door.”

  A moment later the door clicked shut.

  I put my arms around his neck. “You’re mine. You can’t let her win. She can’t have you.”

  He was listening but not hearing.

  “I love you,” I told him. “You said you would always come for me. I need you now. Come back to me. Please, come back to me.”

  I put my head against Curran’s mane.

  “Come back to me. I know you’re in there. You brought me here. You didn’t kill me. You must know who I am.”

  Fur slid under my fingers. He stood rigid.

  “If you come back to me, I’ll never leave you,” I whispered into the furry ear. “I’ll make you all the pies you could ever eat.”

  All of the magic I had, all of the power of my blood, all of it was useless with the magic down. He was slipping away, farther and farther, with each passing second. “Come back to me. Please. Remember you wanted me to say please. I’m saying it now. Please come back to me.”

  Nothing.

  “Who’ll protect me from myself if you’re gone? Who’ll fight with me? I will be all by myself. You can’t abandon me, Curran. You can’t orphan the Pack. You just can’t.”

  He clenched me to him. Pain exploded and I cried out.

  Curran snarled and gripped me tighter.

  He didn’t remember me. Curran was lost. She took him from me. She ripped him right out of my life with her dying breath. The world broke to pieces and caved in on me. I couldn’t even breathe.

  My eyes grew hot. Something inside me broke and I cried. I hugged his thick neck and cried and cried, because he was dying second by second and I could do nothing.

  “Come back to me. Don’t leave me all alone. Don’t die on me, you stupid sonovabitch. You goddamn fucking idiot. I told you to stay out of the damn fight! Why the hell don’t you ever listen? I fucking hate you. I hate you, you hear me? Don’t you dare die on me, because I need to kill you with my bare hands.”

  The fur boiled under my hands and my fingers grazed human skin. Curran’s gray eyes looked at me from a human face.

  “Talk to me, baby,” I whispered. “Please talk to me.”

  His lips moved. He struggled for a long moment and forced it out.

  “Not d
ead yet.”

  His eyes rolled back in his head. He swayed and we crashed to the floor.

  DOOLITTLE WIPED HIS HANDS WITH A TOWEL. “HE’S comatose. His body is human, but whether his mind returns is the question. However, he spoke. We heard him through the door and it was clear and coherent. That gives us hope.”

  “When will he wake up?”

  Doolittle looked at me, his eyes troubled. “I don’t know.”

  “Can you do anything? Can’t you fix him?”

  He shook his head again and pulled back from me. “I’m out of cures. It’s up to his body and time now.”

  Jim thrust himself into my view. “You need to let him fix you.”

  I stared at him.

  “Let the doctor fix you,” Jim said, as if to a small child. “You’re hurt. It’s not good for you to be hurt.”

  I wanted them to leave me the hell alone. “Since when did you turn into my nursemaid?”

  Jim crouched by me. “By now the whole Keep knows the Beast Lord is in a coma. They’re scared and pissed off and they want blood. What they need right now is the Beast Lord’s mate standing on her own two feet. You need to be up and running, so I can walk you through the Keep to keep people from panicking.”

  “I’m not going anywhere while he’s like this.”

  Jim shook his head. “You’re going to pick yourself up and take up right where he left off. That’s your job now.”

  “Leave me the hell alone, or I’ll hurt you,” I growled at him.

  “That’s real nice,” Jim said. “But first we’ll need to fix you.”

  Doolittle put his finger on my jeans a couple of inches above the knee. “Cut from here to the ankle.”

  Jim flashed a knife, slicing my jeans along my right leg. Doolittle pointed down. “Look here.”

  My knee had developed a large bump on the left side. The muscle around it had swelled, disfiguring the leg.

  “You know what this is,” Doolittle said.

  “Dislocated kneecap.”

  “Good girl. You have two broken ribs, severe bruising, a wound in the stomach, and at least four deep cuts that I can see, and all of them are filthy. Your wound did seal itself, but if we don’t take care of it now, you won’t be here if he wakes up.”

  He said “if,” not “when.” If he wakes up.

  Doolittle grasped my ankle. “Hold under her knee.”

  Jim caught the underside of my knee in his hand.

  Doolittle’s eyes found mine. “You know how this goes.”

  I clenched the armrests of the chair. “Do it.”

  He twisted my leg. A red-hot shaft of pain shot through me, tearing a scream.

  Doolittle peered into my eyes. “That ought to bring you back to earth. Are you with us now?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain.

  “Good,” Doolittle said. “Now let’s see to those ribs.”

  DEREK KNOCKED ON THE DOOR. I KNEW IT WAS him, because he always knocked twice.

  I closed the book I was reading out loud. “Yes?”

  Derek stepped in. The boy wonder looked me over with a worried look on his face. “How are you feeling?”

  “Same.”

  It had been three days since Curran collapsed. He showed no signs of waking up. I had him moved to the couch, because the bed was too high, and I’d made a bed for myself on the floor next to him. I hadn’t left his side longer than the few minutes I needed to go to the bathroom. The boy wonder had the devil of a time getting me to eat.

  “Julie called me,” he said. “She says the school won’t let her contact you.”

  “It was a precaution against Erra. I didn’t want her to find out Julie was alive. Is she angry with me?”

  “She’s hurt,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.”

  I could tell there was more. “Give, Derek. What else?”

  “The Pack Council is going to convene in four hours. They are going to debate what to do if Curran doesn’t come around.”

  “And?”

  “There is some talk of expelling you from Curran’s quarters, since you’re not officially an alpha.”

  My laughter rang through the room, sounding cold and brittle.

  Derek took a step back. His face softened, his voice gaining an almost pleading quality. “Kate? Bring the creepy down a notch. Please.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. The magic had hit for a few hours yesterday and Doolittle spent most of the wave putting me back together, since he could do nothing for Curran. I wouldn’t be able to fight Erra again right this second, but I had enough left in me for one good show.

  “Any calls from Andrea?”

  “No.”

  The shapeshifters had reported that Andrea had survived the fire at the Mole Hole, but she’d made no attempts to contact me. My best friend had abandoned me and I missed her. But then I probably wasn’t good company right this second. Maybe it was for the best.

  “Still no word on Naeemah?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “But there are two people from Clan Bouda here. They say you have some sort of arrangement with Aunt B.”

  I pushed myself off the chair and handed him the book. “Page 238. Read to him while I talk to them. Please.”

  Derek licked his lips. “I’m not sure he can hear us.”

  “When I was out after the rakshasas nearly killed me, I heard voices. I heard Curran, Julie, you, Andrea. I didn’t know what was being said, but I recognized the voices. That’s how I knew I was safe. I want you to read to him, so he knows he’s not dead and he isn’t alone.”

  Derek sat in my chair and opened the book.

  I went through the door into the meeting room.

  A man and a woman rose at my approach. The man was of average height and built like a young lightweight boxer: ridiculously toned but without any bulk. Those guys were wicked fast. You’d think you could take one out, and then you’d be waking up on the nice cold floor. His face was sharp-featured and his hair blazed bright red. It was a wonder he didn’t set the room on fire.

  The woman was black, six inches taller, twenty pounds heavier—all of it muscle—and she was trying very hard not to scowl. She failed miserably.

  They bowed their heads. Both looked to be in their mid-twenties.

  “Aunt B sends her regards,” the man said. “I’m Barabas. This is Jezebel.”

  I arched my eyebrow at him. “Ambitious names.”

  “Bouda mothers have high hopes for their children,” Barabas explained. “Our alpha tells us we’re yours. If you find us suitable, we’ll serve you from this point on. If not, she will send replacements.”

  I sat into the chair. “What made you a candidate for shit duty, Barabas?”

  He blinked.

  “I don’t see Aunt B passing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. So what did you do to make her want to eject you from everyday bouda dealings?”

  “My mother is a bouda,” he said. “My father is from Clan Nimble. I drew Nimble from the genetic lottery.”

  When two shapeshifters from different clans mated, which happened more frequently with boudas, since there were only thirty or so of them, the children had an equal chance for either parent’s brand of Lyc-V. “What do you turn into?”

  “Mongoose. There are dominance issues in the clan,” he said.

  “He won’t play by the rules,” Jezebel said.

  Barabas sighed. “I’m gay. They view me as competition and treat me as they would treat a bouda female, which means a strict pecking order. I don’t fit in well and I have no wish to slaughter a load of my cousins so I can be a proper bouda female.”

  I looked at Jezebel. “And you?”

  Jezebel thrust her chin at me. “I challenged my sister for her place in the clan.”

  “How did it go?”

  “I lost.”

  I sat up straighter. Duels for dominance between the shapeshifters were to the death. Always. “Why are you still breathing?”

  “She
stabbed me in the heart with her claws. I went into cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for eight minutes. When I came to, my sister couldn’t bring herself to kill me the second time. It reflects badly on her and on me. I’m a walking dead, and as long as I’m around, I’m the proof that she was weak.”

  Great. You really had to admire Aunt B. If either of them left the clan on their own, it could have been taken as a sign of cowardice on their part. As it was, their honor was intact.

  “Are you any good at Pack politics?”

  “He’s very good,” Jezebel said. “I’m better with force, but I know the rules. I know what people can and can’t do. I’m not stupid and I can be useful to you.”

  I sighed. “You’re both hired. I have a Council meeting in four hours. They’re going to try to remove me. Find out what I should expect.”

  I got up and went back to Curran. I was two thirds of the way through The Princess Bride and he would want to know what happened next.

  When I walked in, Derek rose from the chair. “About Julie . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He straightened, his new face looking too tight on his bones. “I lied. She didn’t call me.”

  I fought an urge to slump over. Now he was lying to me. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m okay,” a thin voice said from the middle of the room.

  I turned. Julie sat on the floor with her feet under her. She wore a black sweater and her face seemed very pale against the dark wool, almost transparent. Huge dark eyes looked at me.

  She got up. “I ran away.”

  I crossed the floor and hugged her. Derek backed out of the room.

  “I went home,” Julie said softly. “I was worried. There is no home left. All of our stuff is gone. What happened?”

  “It’s a long story.” At least I kept her safe.

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “No, kiddo.” I squeezed her to me and kissed her blond hair. “You’re alive. Everything else we can fix.”

  FOUR HOURS LATER I SAT IN CURRAN’S PRIVATE meeting room. Barabas sat across from me. Jezebel perched on the table and Derek leaned against the door. Julie had volunteered to read to Curran.

  “You are not universally loved,” Barabas said.

  Tell me something I don’t know.