Gunmetal Magic (57 page)

I sighed. “I envy navigators sometimes. All they do is sit in the Casino and drink coffee, while the bloodsuckers run into dang—”

I stopped in midword.

Curran’s eyes lit up.

“You think he’ll go for it?”

“Oh yes. Yes, he will go for it.” He jumped off the wall. “Come with me.”

“Shouldn’t we have some sort of a plan? Ghastek isn’t an idiot. We can’t just call down to the Casino and tell him, ‘Hi, we’re going on a suicide mission, wanna bring some vampires to be our bullet meat?’” Bloodsuckers were expensive. The very idea of taking four or five of them into danger with minuscule chances of survival would give Ghastek an aneurysm.

“I have a plan.” Curran grinned at me.

“Please enlighten me, Your Majesty.”

“I’m going to make Jim figure it out,” Curran said.

“That’s it? That’s your plan?”

“Yes. I’m brilliant. Come on.”

I hopped off the wall and we went down the stairs.

If anybody could figure out how to rope Ghastek into this scheme, Jim would be the man. Served him right for all those times he’d pushed me into the line of fire.

Payback is a bitch.

We trapped Jim in one of the conference rooms and explained our brilliant plan.

“This is payback, isn’t it?” Jim glared at me.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “As the Consort of the Pack, I’m far above petty revenge.”

Jim tapped the clipboard with several pieces of paper on it against his forearm. “I’ll do it if you go to the Guild tomorrow.”

“You’ll do it, because I asked you to,” Curran said.

Jim turned to me. “Will you do the Guild thing?”

I had a dying kid on my hands and all he cared about was Guild idiocy. “Maybe. I don’t know yet. I’m kind of busy at the moment.”

Green flashed in Jim’s eyes. He yanked a piece of paper from the clipboard and thrust it at me. It looked like a long list.

“What is this?”

“This is the list of all the phone calls I’ve gotten about this shit in the last week and a half. The mercs have gotten every damn member to call me here.” He shook the list in Curran’s direction. “You want to know why your background checks aren’t done? This is why! I could get it done if your mate would stop dicking around and just deal with it.”

Oh, it’s like this, then.
“Then I have a great idea. Since they’re all calling you, why don’t
you
stop dicking around and deal with the Guild. You have the same time in as I do.”

“I have a job!”

“So do I! Why is your time more important than mine?”

The clipboard snapped in Jim’s fingers. He dropped it on the ground and raised his hands. “You know what, I’m done. I quit.”

“Oh my God, seriously?”

Jim wiped his hands against each other and showed them to me.

“Is that you washing your hands off?”

“Yes.”

“Really? So what, you’re going to retire and open that flower shop you always wanted?”

Jim’s eyes went completely green.

“Enough,” Curran said. An unmistakable command saturated his voice. Jim clicked his mouth shut.

I crossed my arms. “I’m sorry, is this the part where I fall to my knees and shiver in fear, Your Furriness? Silly me, I didn’t get the memo.”

Curran ignored the barb. “What’s your problem with the Guild?”

“The only way to resolve it involves me being entangled in running it and I don’t want to do it.” I waved my arms. “I have the Consort crap and I have the Cutting Edge crap and whatever other bullshit the two of you throw my way. I don’t want
to go to the Guild every month and deal with their crap on top of everything else.”

Curran leaned toward me. “I have to dress up and meet with those corpse fuckers once every three months and be civil while we’re eating at the same table. You can deal with the Guild.”

“You, dress up? Wow, I had no idea that putting on your formal sweatpants was such a huge burden.”

“Kate,” Curran snarled. “They’re not sweatpants, they are slacks and they have a belt. I have to wear shoes with fucking laces in them.”

“I don’t want to do it! I hate the ceremony crap.” I so didn’t need the Guild politics in my life. It was complicated enough, damn it. “I don’t have time for it.”

“Everybody hates the political stuff,” Curran growled. “You’ll do it.”

“Give me one reason why.”

“Because you know those people and some of them are your friends. The Guild is sinking and they’re losing their jobs.”

I opened my mouth and clamped it shut.

“Also, because I’m asking you to do it,” Curran said. “Will you please resolve this, baby?”

I would punch him. I would punch him straight in the face, hard. “Fine. I’ll need a lot of backup for the Guild.”

Curran looked at Jim. “Make sure she has everything she needs.”

“Okay,” Jim said. He picked up the pieces of his clipboard, pulled a piece of paper out, and handed it to me with the pen. “Write it down.”

I did and gave it back to him.

Jim read it. “I’ll take care of it, Consort.”

“Thank you, Alpha.”

If it had been raining, our voices would’ve frozen it into hail.

“Is there anything else?” Jim asked Curran.

“No.”

Jim nodded and left.

“I hate you,” I told Curran.

He chuckled. “You’d hate me more if Jim quit. We’d have
to find a replacement. I don’t trust that many people. Just think how much more shit you’d have to put up with.”

“Don’t,” I warned him.

“Mhm, Kate, the chief of security. Sexy. Who better to guard my body than the woman who owns it?”

“Curran, I will punch you.”

“Rough play.” Curran pretended to shiver in excitement.

I raised my fist and tapped his biceps lightly.

“You knew it was inevitable,” he said.

I knew. The moment Jim sent me the file I had known exactly how it would end. But I’d put up a valiant fight. “Yes, but I don’t have to like it. Can we eat now? I’m starving.”

“Oh so am I forgiven?” he asked.

“Sure. The next time you decide to flex your claws and come up with a plan to invade the home of a high-ranking civil servant, I’ll bark, ‘Enough!’ and expect to be obeyed, how about that?”

“You told me no,” he said.

“And?”

“And I didn’t like it.”

“You can’t assault the DA’s house, you crazy bastard!”

“And you can’t check out of the Guild’s mess. We both have to do things we don’t want to do. I consider us even.”

I rolled my eyes and we went upstairs to our cold food.

“I know what that ass is getting from me next Christmas,” I said.

“What?”

“Clipboards. Lots and lots of clipboards.”

Before the Shift and the return of magic, a person’s power could be readily judged by the kind of car they drove, by the clothes they wore, and the company they kept. In post-Shift Atlanta, visual clues still proved true in some cases, but not nearly often enough. A bum in tattered jeans and ragged cloak could walk out into a crowded street, raise his arms, and the sky would tear open and weep a rain of lightning and hail the size of coconuts, leveling everything in a three-mile radius.

That’s why post-Shift Atlanta’s movers and shakers preferred both a show of power and dressing to impress. Still, if you did dress like a badass, you had better be able to back it up.

When I woke up in the morning, a pair of gray jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a gray leather jacket waited for me, folded on top of a gray cloak edged with fur. Just as I requested. Gray was the Pack color. I was going to put on a show for the Guild and this was my costume for it. I put the clothes on, added my boots, my saber in the back leather sheath, my throwing knives, and my wrist guards filled with silver needles. I braided my hair away from my face and examined myself in the mirror. I was broadcasting dangerous loud and clear.

Normally I stayed away from clothes like that. The less attention I drew when I worked, the better. Most mercs knew I was good at my job, but I wasn’t very impressive. I didn’t put on a show. Some of them had problems with me, most didn’t. Today was different. Today I needed to be less Kate Daniels and more Pack Consort. I needed to knock them off balance, so they wouldn’t question why I showed up there and told them what to do.

I marched into the bathroom, where Curran was brushing his teeth. His blond eyebrows crept up. “That’s your Council meeting outfit from now on.”

I laughed. “Cloak or no cloak?”

“Definitely cloak,” he said.

I tried the cloak on in front of the mirror.

Curran came up behind me and nuzzled my neck.

“Is that your gun or are you just happy to see me?”

“Mhm, a challenge.” He nipped the skin on the back of my neck, sending electric aftershocks down through me. Some men got excited by white lace and a translucent negligee. My love muffin got excited by a woman dressed to murder. There was probably something deeply twisted about that. Lucky for me, negligees were never my thing.

He kissed me again. “You’re finally getting the hang of this whole badass thing.”

“I was always badass.”

“No, you thought you were badass and talked a lot of crap.” He wrapped his arms around me.

Aha. “Let me go.”

“You have time.” He kissed my neck again. Every nerve in my body came to attention.

“No, I don’t. I have people waiting.” I pulled free from him and kissed him back. He pulled me close, locking me within his arms.
Mhm, Curran.
I really didn’t want to leave.

“Come on.”

“No. Have to go.”

“It won’t take long.”

“Who would that be fun for, exactly? Your seducing techniques need work.” I untangled myself and escaped, before he thought of something else to say to change my mind.

It took me ten minutes to stop by the medical ward.

Roderick’s collar has faded to lemon yellow. The skin around it had turned bright red, inflamed. It hurt just to look at it. I crouched by him. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay, thank you.”

“Does it hurt to eat?”

“A little,” he said.

“I’m going to see someone today to figure out how to take that thing off.”

He just looked at me with his big eyes. Deep down, he must’ve been scared. His sister had died. His parents were gone. But he held it all inside and he wasn’t about to let me in.

Before I left, Doolittle drew me aside. His face was bleak. “You must hurry.”

“I’ll do my best,” I told him.

When I walked into the morning light, ten Pack vehicles waited for me. The crews of the vehicles stood in front of them wearing identical gray. Jim stood to the side, surveying the troops. I approached him.

“Satisfied, Consort?”

“How long are you going to be pissed off?” I asked him. We both kept our voices low.

He stared straight ahead.

“Jim, we had a verbal disagreement. I was an ass, but you withheld information. The way you’re acting, you’d think I got some guys to jump you and work you over until you woke up with bites on your legs and bruises all over your body.”

“It’s different now, because we’re both Pack. I’ve told you I was sorry about that. Are you going to keep dragging it out every time?”

“It was a shitty thing to do.”

He locked his teeth, making his jaw muscles bulge.

I sighed and started toward the cars. “Suit yourself.”

“I always do,” he called out.

I turned around and flipped him off.

He glared at me.

I kept walking.

“Kate!” he called out.

I turned.

“Eduardo is your second. You need to talk to him. He wants you to practice something.”

I nodded.

“Kate!”

I turned around.

Jim approached me. “Do you need me to watch your back for this Guild thing?”

“I got it. Thanks,” I said.

“Anytime.”

I went in search of Eduardo. Jim was an ornery bastard, but
he did have my back. At least he wasn’t mad anymore. I would probably have to make a peace offering all the same. The werejaguars were difficult creatures.

I’d have to get Dali to help me pick a gift. That way there would be no misunderstandings.

The Mercenary Guild made its headquarters in a converted Sheraton Hotel on the edge of Buckhead. In another life the hotel, built as a hollow tower, had a solid glass front, complete with a rotating glass door. Now massive steel gates marked the entrance. As our procession rolled up to the hotel, I could see a few mercs milling about and smoking. Most of the Guild personnel were probably inside already. Perfect.

Next to me, Eduardo leaned forward in the Jeep’s driver seat. A werebuffalo from Clan Heavy, he was over six feet tall and layered with thick muscle. His hair fell down his back in a black mane. His square chin and deep-set eyes said that he would rather die than back down. That impression was one hundred percent correct. I had a problem with a part of his plan and argued with him about it until I turned blue in the face, but he wouldn’t budge, which was probably why Jim had assigned him to be my second for this venture.

“Wait until we line up before you go in, Consort,” he murmured.

“Kate.” We’d been on a first-name basis for a while now.