Magic Bites Read online

  I could’ve gone straight to the source and just asked Ghastek about his vampire. Trouble was, confronting Ghastek meant I’d have to physically walk into the Casino, where the People had their HQ. Walking into the Casino meant I’d have to meet Nataraja, the People’s grand poobah in the city and Ghastek’s boss and supervisor. Nataraja was the worst kind of worm, but he had an uncanny sensitivity to magic. My guess was, he wasn’t quite sure what he felt when I was around, but he wanted very much to find out. Every time we met our conversation degenerated into him trying to force me into a show of power. That I couldn’t afford, especially not now with the four new words of power rattling in my head. I’d have to go to the Casino eventually, but for now squeezing Ghastek’s journeyman would suffice.

  It was almost 11:00 p.m. when I made it to Andriano’s. Bono rarely showed up before dark and I had used the time to hop the leyline back to my place and bring back Betsi, my beat-up old Subaru. It looked like I would be stuck in the city for a while. Since the magic would fall, the way it always did, I’d eventually need a car that worked during tech.

  It cost me fifty bucks to have Betsi towed to Greg’s place. I was in the wrong business.

  I entered Andriano’s. The bar stretched the length of the room, guarded by a row of tall stools. A couple of patrons stared into their drinks on the far end. A blonde with her war paint on sipped something fruity from a margarita glass. Through the arched doorway I could see the second room, crowded with red privacy booths, which Andriano must have pilfered from some fast food joint.

  The barkeep, long of limb and dark-haired, nodded at me. Lean and phlegmatic, with a narrow, intelligent face, he looked more like a campus intellectual than a bartender. His name was Sergio and he knew how big of a lime slice to put into a Corona, which made him a worthwhile man to know. I passed him two twenties. Sergio bent an eyebrow at me.

  “What for?”

  “In case anything gets broken. Bono and I are going to chat a bit. Is he here?”

  Sergio nodded toward the room with booths and shrugged, palming the twenties. “Stay away from the windows,” he said. “Too expensive for you.”

  The back room was dimly lit with feylanterns. Bono preferred a corner booth, the farthest from the door. I stood for a moment, surveying the scene, and caught sight of his spiky black hair. I marched toward the booth with flags out and guns ready.

  Bono had company. Judging by the mystical “hey-baby-I’m-a-student-of-magic” smile that stretched his lips, he had female company. No matter.

  He paused his wooing to glance around the room and noticed me. He must have seen something he did not like, because the smile slid off his face. He sat straighter.

  I reached back. My fingers grasped Slayer’s hilt and withdrew it in a smooth fluid motion. Bono’s hand dropped under the table, groping for a gun. He carried a 9mm Colt in his jacket pocket.

  I crashed to a halt before the booth. A thin redhead in a strapless short dress sat opposite Bono. I put my saber on the table. Bono “stank” of vampires and the saber fluoresced weakly, a sliver of moonlight against the dark wood. The redhead’s eyes went wide. Bono’s face relaxed a bit but his gaze never left mine.

  “Hey, Bono,” I said. “Nice to see you. Fuck any corpses lately?”

  The last hope for a relaxing evening bled from his face. “Not any you’d care about.”

  The redhead scrambled out of the booth and fled, trying to salvage some shred of dignity. Bono threw a wistful look after her retreating backside and turned to me.

  “You scared her. Not nice, Kate.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him and slid in the seat vacated by the redhead.

  “Did you read the article I gave you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You should read it, Kate. You should read about the upiri.”

  I traced Slayer’s blade with my finger. It stung a little as the magic discharge touched my skin.

  “I want to know about the diviner’s death. I want to know why one of Ghastek’s bloodsuckers was at the scene. I want to know who was piloting it and what they saw. I want to know what tore his head off. And whatever else you’ll find necessary to add.”

  Bono showed me his teeth. “Feeling a bit on edge today, are you?”

  My hand closed about the hilt. “You have no idea.”

  He leaned back. “Go ahead,” he said. “Make a play. I’ll ass-fuck you with that saber.”

  I grinned at him. “You can’t take me, Bono. Go ahead and try. You telegraph your punches, you drop your left shoulder, and your gun isn’t worth piss with magic up. So come on. Show me what you’ve got.”

  I saw his eyes and knew my grin had turned into a hungry grimace. “I really need to hurt something. It’ll make me feel good.” I was almost laughing, having a hard time containing myself. “Give me a reason. Come on, Bono. Just give me a fucking reason.”

  Magic built around me, drawn from the environment by the emanations from my blood. If magic had color, I would be sitting in a whirlpool of red. Slayer flared bright silver, feeding off my anger. It wanted to slice into warm flesh and I was about to let it.

  Bono blinked. He sensed the magic influx and sucked the air into his lungs in a sharp breath. “You’re crazy.”

  “Very.”

  His face went slack, and I knew we had stepped away from a cliff. The fight would not happen today.

  Bono leaned forward. “What if I told you that we have no involvement with the diviner’s death? And even if we did, we don’t have to speak to you.”

  That proverbial “we.” I chewed on it for a little while and said, “In that case, I’ll get up and walk over to the bar, where I’ll make two phone calls. First, I’ll call the knight-protector, for whom I now work, and tell him that a vampire belonging to Ghastek was involved in his diviner’s murder. I’ll tell him that an effort was made to conceal its brand—which is illegal—and that Ghastek’s journeyman declined to discuss the matter with me and threatened my life. Then I’ll call Ghastek and inform him that I know the reason why the world just started crashing down around his ears. And I’ll explain to him that the reason is you.”

  He stared at me. “I thought we were on good terms. We nod to each other across the room. We don’t bother each other. I shared my research with you.”

  I shrugged.

  “You won’t do this to me,” he said with great surety. “You know what Ghastek would do to me. You’re a nice person.”

  “Just what exactly in my track record gives you the idea that I’m a nice person?”

  He had no answer and shook his head. “Why me?”

  “Why not? Give me what I want and I’ll go away. Or I’ll hurt you one way or another.”

  Bono was in the corner. No way to go but outside the ring. “They’re called shadows,” he said, his handsome face marked with resignation. “Vampires with concealed brands. Ghastek isn’t the only one using them but he uses his a lot, if you catch my drift.”

  “What was that particular one doing?”

  “Tailing the diviner. I don’t know why.”

  “Who was piloting it?”

  Bono hesitated. “Merkowitz.”

  “What did he see?”

  Bono spread his hands. “Your guess’s as good as mine. Do you know what happens to a navigator when the vamp he’s piloting dies?”

  I had a general idea but more info never hurt. “Enlighten me.”

  “Unless you guard yourself, you’ll suffer death-shock. Meaning you think it’s your head being torn off, which leaves your brain very confused. Add to it the explosion of shit the diviner threw around and whatever magic the attacker emitted, and you’ll get Merkowitz. I never liked the asshole. I have to admit, he makes a fine vegetable.”

  My heart sank. “Nonresponsive?”

  “About as responsive as a brick wall.”

  “How long will he be like this?”

  “They’re working on him now, but when he’ll come out, nobody knows. It’s hard work
convincing someone that he isn’t dead when his own mind has decided otherwise.”

  “Do the People have any idea who might have enough juice to beat a diviner and a vampire to a pulp?”

  Bono looked past me at the wall.

  “I need a name,” I said.

  “Corwin. You didn’t hear it from me.” He rose in a fluid motion and left.

  I waited a few minutes, went to the bar, and drank a cold Corona with a wedge of lime in it. I had frightened Bono.

  A small part of me felt bad about it. The larger part reminded me that he piloted vampires for a living and kicked his opponents when they decided to stay down.

  Greg’s face came to my mind. I took a big swig of Corona. I felt defeated and tired. What a long day . . . I had hoped for more than Bono had given me. Still, I had a name. And I had Greg’s database, against which I could reference it. The day was not a total waste.

  DARKNESS CLOAKED THE STAIRWAY OF GREG’S apartment building. Not a single lamp illuminated the concrete steps. When I came to the first landing, I saw why—the electric bulbs had exploded. It happened once in a while during a hard fluctuation in places where the magic hit the strongest. The fluorescent feylamps usually did the job just fine—they ran by converting environmental magic to weak, bluish light—but tonight they were dark, too. The fluctuation must have been too strong, and the lamp converters had overheated and burned out.

  I felt odd going back to Greg’s place. Not exactly ill at ease, but not happy to be there either. Unfortunately I had no choice. I would have to spend some time in this rotten city and I needed a base. Greg’s apartment was perfect: its wards were keyed to me and Greg had maintained a fair collection of basic herbs, reference books, and other useful things. His arsenal was decent, but he leaned toward bludgeoning arms, while I preferred swords. Maces and hammers required too much strength. I was strong for a woman but I harbored no illusions. In a contest of strength a man of my size and my training would pummel me into the ground. Lucky for me very few men had my training.

  I climbed the dark stairs, fantasizing about food and a shower. The ward guarding the apartment’s door clutched at my hand and opened in a pulse of blue. I entered, kicked off my shoes, and went into the kitchen. The upside of having a magic sword was that its secretions liquefied the undead flesh. On the downside, the blade had to be fed at least once a month, or it would become too brittle and break.

  I slid a four-foot-long fish tank from the bottom cabinet and found the bag of feed I’ve kept at Greg’s apartment for emergency purposes. Grayish-brown, the feed resembled coarse wheat flour. Most of it actually was wheat flour, that and metal shavings, copper, iron, and silver, and seashells ground to fine dust, together with bonemeal and chalk.

  I filled the tank with water, added a cup of feed, and stirred the mixture with a long wooden spoon until the solution became cloudy and none of the feed remained stuck to the bottom. That done, I dropped the saber into it and washed my hands.

  The little ruby light on the answering machine was blinking. It shouldn’t have, since the magic was in full swing. Magic was a funny thing. Sometimes phones worked and sometimes they failed.

  I settled into my chair and pushed the button on the answering machine. Anna’s anxiety-laced voice filled the room. “Kate, it’s me.” I sat up straighter. Anna didn’t get anxious. Perhaps it was Greg’s death. Their divorce was ten years old, but still she must’ve felt something for him.

  “Listen very carefully, while I remember.” Exhaustion crept into her voice and I realized she was fresh from a vision. The fact that she knew I would be in Greg’s apartment was so mundane to her she didn’t bother to comment on it. Sometimes being a clairvoyant had its uses.

  “Woods,” Anna’s voice said. “Very green, very healthy, late spring or early summer. The air smells of moisture. There are tall wooden idols set under some of the trees. They are old. Time has smoothed the edges of the carvings. The idols shift and change shapes. One looks like an old man, but also a bear with horns, holding something . . . a saucer of water maybe. Another old man stands on a fish; I think he holds a wheel in his hand. A man with three faces, his eyes covered, sitting deep in the shadow. I can barely see him.”

  The first was Veles, the third was Triglav. Slavic pantheon. I’d have to look up the second one.

  “A man stands before them, surrounded by a brood of his children. They are very wrong. They do not fit, neither human nor animal, neither living nor dead. Behind him stand his servants. They smell of undeath.” Anna took a deep breath. “The man is masturbating. To the right something is shimmering in and out of existence, a child maybe? To the left you’re sitting cross-legged on the grass and eating a corpse.”

  Lovely.

  “I know Greg’s dead,” she said. “And I know you’re looking for the murderer. You must drop it, Kate. I know you’ll ignore me, but I have to warn you. This isn’t good, Kate. It’s not good at all.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I AWOKE EIGHT HOURS LATER, TIRED AND PLAGUED by a migraine. I had meant to call Anna, but instead I somehow had fallen into bed and my body turned off my brain for the entire night.

  The phone no longer worked. I sat on the bed and stared at it. So far I had some data for a hair but not the actual specimen; I had some lines that may or may not be the result of an m-reader malfunction; and I had a name of some nocturnal character given to me under duress by a People journeyman who’d pretty much do anything to get me off his back. On top of it I had what was probably a feline hair on a dead vampire, which set the Pack and People on a collision course. I pictured two colossi running at each other across the city, like monstrosities from an antique horror movie, and myself, a gnat in the middle.

  It would be a bloodbath, which most of the city wouldn’t survive. So the trick wasn’t to survive it, but to keep it from happening.

  In my daydream the gnat kicked one colossus in the groin and hit the other with a vicious uppercut.

  I tried the phone again. It still didn’t work. I cursed and went to dress.

  An hour later I slipped into Greg’s office. Nobody challenged me. Nobody glared and asked me why the hell the case was not solved or why I was so late arriving. The lack of drama was very disappointing.

  I sifted through Greg’s data. The cabinets contained no files marked “Corwin,” but in the last cabinet I found a stack of folders marked with a question mark, so I went through them on the faint hope that I’d find something. Anything. Otherwise I’d be reduced to grabbing people on the street and screaming, “Do you know Corwin? Where is he?”

  The files secured Greg’s notes, written in his particular code. I frowned as I scanned one indecipherable entry after another. “Glop. Ag. Bll.-7.” “Bll” had to be bullets. “Ag” could be Argentium, silver. What the hell did “Glop” mean?

  My hopes dimmed as I flipped through page after page, and when I came across it, my brain almost did not register it. On a single page there was a scratchy “Corwin” and next to it were two drawings. One was a very clumsy rendition of a glove with sharp blades protruding from its knuckles. The other was some sort of bizarre doodle against a dark semicircle. I stared at the doodle. It meant nothing to me.

  The phone rang.

  I looked at it. It rang again. I wondered if I should answer.

  The intercom came to life and Maxine’s voice said, “You should, dear. It’s for you.”

  How did she know? I picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  “Hello, sunshine,” said Jim’s voice.

  “I’m kind of busy.”

  I turned the file on its side and examined the doodle. Still nothing.

  “No shit,” he said.

  “Yeah. No gigs for me.”

  “That’s not why I’m calling.”

  I frowned at the phone and turned the file upside down. “I’m all ears.”

  “Someone wants to meet you,” he said.

  “Tell him to get in line,” I mumbled. The doodle almost looked like somethi
ng.

  “I’m not joking.”

  “You never joke because you’re too damn busy proving that you’re a badass. Come on, black leather cloak? In mid-spring Atlanta? Besides I don’t have time to meet anybody.”

  Jim’s voice dropped low and he spoke each word very distinctly. “Think very carefully. Do you really want me to tell the man no?”

  Something about the way he said “the man” stopped me. I sat still and thought very hard about what kind of “man” would inspire Jim to use that voice.

  “What did I do to warrant the Beast Lord’s attention?” I asked dryly.

  “You’re sitting in the diviner’s office, aren’t you?”

  Touché.

  The Beast Lord was the Pack King, the lord of the shapechangers, and he ruled his brethren with an iron fist. Few ever saw him and the mention of his title was enough to make the loudest shapechanger shut up. In other words, he was precisely the kind of fellow my father and Greg had warned me to avoid. I ground my teeth, thinking of a way to weasel out of it. I would have to go and see the People sooner or later to find out about the vampire. But so far nothing necessitated my walking into the Pack’s lair.

  “Your safety’s guaranteed,” Jim said. “I’ll be there.”

  “That’s not the reason,” I murmured. There had to be a way to dodge this invitation. I glared at the stubborn doodle . . .

  “Look,” Jim said, making an obvious attempt to sound reasonable, “consider the . . .”

  “Tell him I’ll meet him tonight someplace private,” I said. “I’ll answer his questions if he answers mine.”

  “Agreed. Eleven o’clock, corner of Unicorn and Thirteenth.”

  He hung up. I tapped the desk with my fingers. I finally made sense of the doodle. The head of a howling wolf silhouetted against the semicircle of the moon. The sign of the Pack. Corwin belonged to the Pack.

  There was a small matter of Maxine to attend to. I concentrated and whispered so quietly I couldn’t hear myself. True communicators could focus enough to broadcast their thoughts without vocalization, but I still had to move my lips like a dufus.