Magic Binds (26 page)

The pegasi turned and fled north, as fast as her wings would carry her.

“And for your information,” Erra said. “I wasn't always the City Eater. That's the name our enemies gave me and you won't use it.”

Oy. “What were you called before you were the City Eater?”

“The Rose of Tigris. Now shut up and make this horse go faster.”

CHAPTER

E
RRA WAS RIGHT.
The Shar was real. I felt the familiar pull when I crossed into my territory. I hadn't realized how much it was wearing me down, until I had to slide it back on, like a tired plow horse who was being put back into her horse collar.

All of me hurt. My back was probably bruised from being thrown around. My stomach wound ached. I wanted to get home and sleep.

Sugar unloaded me in front of my house. I hugged her and gave her another sugar cube. “Thank you.”

Sugar neighed, bumped my face with her head, and took off into the night.

I didn't make it more than two steps into the house, before Curran appeared out of the living room and hugged me to him. He didn't say anything. He just pulled me over, wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed until my bones groaned.

He smelled of blood. I probably smelled worse. My whole body hurt and being hugged felt like being run over by a car. And there was no place I wanted to be more than right here.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said.

“I . . .”
I resurrected my aunt who tried to kill you so hard, you were in a coma for eleven days.
“. . . I'm glad to be home.”

“I'm glad you're home, too.”

“How did it go?”

“The degenerate is at the Guild,” Curran said. “Regenerating.”

“Did any of your people . . .”

“No,” he said. “King's got broken legs and Samantha was burned, but we got out alive.”

He rescued Saiman and got them out alive. I exhaled.

“How was it?”

“It was okay,” Curran said.

“We did okay,” Derek said from the living room, almost at the same time.

Curran opened his arms, but I held on to his hand. Not yet. I still wasn't one hundred percent sure he'd made it back in one piece. I still needed proof for a little while longer.

In the living room Derek sprawled on the floor on a blanket, his eyes closed, his body human, corded with hard muscle, and covered only with a strategically placed towel. Julie knelt by him, long tweezers in her hand.

“What's going on?”

“Quills,” she said. “Very thin quills. There was a magic plant and he decided it would be a good idea to give it a hug. Because he is smart that way.”

So they had taken Julie with them. Considering where I'd gone and what I did while there, I didn't have room to talk.

Derek didn't bother opening his eyes. “I wasn't giving it a hug. I was shielding Ella.”

“Mm-hm.” Julie plucked a thin needle from his stomach. “You shielded her really well. Because it's not like we didn't have Carlos with us.”

Carlos was a firebug. The plant must've gotten torched.

“We'll need to work on mixed-unit tactics,” Curran said. He looked tired. It must've been hell. “So what did you do in Mishmar?”

Umm. Ehh. In my head I had somehow expected Erra to stay in Mishmar.

“I saw my father,” I said. Start small.

“How was that?” Curran asked.

“He's a little upset with me.”

“Aha.”

“I broke Mishmar a little bit.”

The three of them looked at me.

“But it was mostly my grandmother who did it.”

“How much is a little bit?” Derek asked.

“There might be a crack. About maybe seven feet at the widest point.”

Derek laughed.

“And what else?” Curran asked.

Perceptive bastard.

“And this.” I pulled out the dagger and showed it to him.

“You made a magic knife?” he asked.

“Yes. In a manner of speaking.”

“But you still have to get close enough to stab Roland with it,” Derek said.

“That's not how it works.”
Help me, somebody.

Curran was looking right at me. “Kate?”

“It's more of an advising kind of knife.”

“You should come clean,” he said. “Whatever it is, it's done and we can handle it.”

My aunt tore into existence in the center of the room. “Hello, half-breed.”

Curran exploded into a leap. Unfortunately, Derek also exploded at exactly the same time but from the opposite direction. They collided in Erra's translucent body with a loud thud. Derek fell back and Curran stumbled a few steps.

Erra pointed at Curran with her thumb. “You want to marry this? Is there a shortage of men?”

Curran leapt forward and swiped at her head. His hand passed through my aunt's face. Derek jumped to his feet and circled Erra, his eyes glowing.

“I fear for my grandnephew,” Erra said. “He will be an idiot.”

The phone rang. “I'll get it.” It was probably for me anyway and I desperately needed to escape.

I ran to the kitchen to pick up the phone.

“The baby,” Sienna's voice said into the phone. She sounded strained.

“What?”

“The baby is the next anchor. I see you holding a small baby in the Keep. It's not yours. Hurry!”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Baby B.

“Roland's going after Baby B!” I yelled, and dialed the Keep's security number, one step away from Jim.

“Yes?” an unfamiliar male voice said.

“I need Jim.”

“Who is this?”

Curran plucked the phone from me. “Put Jim on now.”

The line clicked and Jim's voice said, “Yes?”

“Is Andrea still in the medical ward?”

“Yes.”

“Roland is targeting Baby B,” Curran said, his voice even and measured. “We're coming to you now.”

“Got it.” Jim's voice sounded almost nonchalant.

I ran out the door. Behind me Curran appeared, keys in hand. Julie followed, Derek behind her in Pack sweatpants, pulling on a white T-shirt.

We piled into the car and Curran took off like the street behind us was on fire.

Crap. I'd left Erra behind. Too late now.

The city slid by outside the window. The speedometer said we were tearing down the half-ruined roads at nearly sixty miles per hour. Any faster and we'd flip the car. It felt like crawling.

“Why?” Julie asked from the backseat. “What could Baby B do to him?”

“Nothing,” I said. “She's an anchor.”

“What anchor?”

I forced myself to speak in complete sentences. “Sienna says that the future is fluid. She sees flashes of it, pivotal moments during which the future can change. She calls them anchors. Me turning the old lady's head over to the police was an anchor. So was Chernobog's dragon. Either Roland
or his oracles can also see into the future. They see the anchors and try to change them to enforce their version of the future.”

“What happens if we don't get there in time?” Julie asked.

“We'll get there,” Curran said, his gaze focused on the road. “By now Jim has the Keep on lockdown. No outsider is getting close to that baby.”

“It's not the outsiders I'm worried about,” I told him. Roland's people had managed to subvert the wolf alpha before, the leader of the most numerous clan within the Pack. There was no telling who else he had in his clutches. If something happened to Baby B . . .

“What happens if we fail to secure an anchor?” Derek asked.

“Atlanta burns, a bunch of people die, Roland kills Curran and our son.”

Crap. Crap. Would it have killed me to think before I opened my mouth? Maybe he wasn't listening closely.

“Our son?” Curran said, his voice very calm. His face slid into his Beast Lord mask. “Erra's grandnephew.”

I was so stupid. “Yes.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Not yet. I will be soon.”

“How does our son die?”

“Roland runs him through with a spear.”

“How long have you known?”

“That he dies? Since I went to see the witches.”

“That we will have a son.”

“The djinn showed him to me.”

He was doing almost seventy now. We were going to wreck.

“Kate,” he said. I knew that tone of voice. That was his line-in-the-sand voice. “What happened to Erra? Did you resurrect your aunt?”

“Not exactly. She isn't technically alive.”

He glanced at me, his eyes drowning in liquid gold. He wasn't interested in “technically.” His voice came out deep, almost demonic. “Why?”

“Because I desperately need help. Things are happening to me that I can't explain and don't understand. I know that my father will attack and very soon. When he does, I have to defend us and I can't. I have the power
but I don't know how to use it, and in using it, I'm affecting the lives of every creature and plant in my lands. I'm afraid that I'll make a mistake and kill everyone in Atlanta. I have to get guidance. She's the only one with the knowledge I need.”

“She tried to kill us,” Curran ground out.

“I know. But she's a princess of Shinar. The one thing she values above all else is family. Yes, she would've killed me if she was alive and I challenged her, but now things are different. I showed Grandmother to her. It made her furious. I showed her all of my memories and our son. She's going to help us.”

“You can't trust her,” Curran said.

“Yes, I can. She isn't doing it for you or for me. She's doing it for the survival of her bloodline. What my father is doing is an aberration. The members of our family weren't meant to live forever. We were meant to have families and children. As long as my father lives, no other member of our bloodline will survive. Not even her. She knows about the sahanu.”

“What are the sahanu?” Curran asked.

I was hitting it out of the park today with keeping secrets. “He was afraid of her and so he created a religious sect designed to kill her. Now I am their next target. I fought one of them in Mishmar, a female. She was hard to kill.”

“Is that why you're bruised and smell like blood?” Derek asked from the backseat.

“Yes. And some of it was Erra. She took some convincing.”

“But is she going to help us?” Julie asked.

“She already has,” I said.

Curran stared straight ahead. His hands gripped the wheel.

“You're going to bend it,” I told him.

He hit me with an alpha stare and kept driving.

“Are you okay?” I asked.
Are we okay, Curran?

“He's got no room to talk,” Julie said.

“Quiet,” Derek told her.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Curran asked.

“No.” Now wasn't the best time to bring up Adora. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“One of the rooms in the castle had a creature in it,” Curran said.

“What kind of creature?”

“A large cat,” Curran said. “It glowed.”

“What happened to the large glowing cat?” Why did I have a feeling I wouldn't like the answer?

“I killed it,” Curran said.

“Aha.” First, I broke Mishmar, then Curran stole Saiman back and killed my father's glowing cat. Maybe Roland's head would explode.

“It was a saber-toothed tiger,” Julie said. “It glowed silver.”

Silver meant divine magic. There was no telling what that saber-toothed tiger was or where my dad had gotten him.

“Snitch,” Derek said.

She waved him off. “He killed it and then he ate it.”

I looked at Curran. “You killed an animal god and then you ate him?”

“Maybe,” Curran said.

“What do you mean maybe?”

“I doubt it was a god.”

“It glowed silver,” Julie said. “It was definitely worshipped.”

Oh boy.

Curran swerved to avoid a speed bump formed by tree roots raising the asphalt. “I could worship a lamp. That doesn't make it a god.”

“Why did you eat it?” I asked in a small voice.

“It felt right at the time.”

“He devoured it,” Julie said. “Completely. With bones.”

If it was some sort of divine animal and he ate it, there was no telling what the flesh or the magic would do to him. There would be consequences. There were always consequences.