Magic Bites (17 page)

Nataraja rested on the throne, half-sitting, half-reclining on his elbow on a plush white cushion. His age was hard to determine. Judging by his features alone, he could not have been much older than forty but visual impressions didn't mean anything anymore. He
felt
old, much older than me. Two hundred years, maybe three, maybe more. A few years ago I would have said such longevity wasn't possible, since even a hundred years ago technology flowed full force, but my years as a merc had taught me to be very careful with words like "never" and "impossible."

Nataraja looked at me, slightly amused by my presence on his home turf. Olive-skinned and slight in build, he radiated power the way some men radiate strength. His hair, coal black and straight, framed an angular face, with a wide, high forehead, prominent cheekbones, and a weak chin, hidden by a carefully cut, ultra-short beard. His eyes, very dark and piercing, had a magnetic effect. When he stared, he appeared to look deep inside you, discovering the hidden thoughts and secreted ideas and taking them for his own. His gaze made it nearly impossible to lie to him. I still managed.

Wiggles hissed as I crossed the floor toward the throne. She fixed me with her empty hateful eyes and smelled the air, her long tongue shivering through the slit of the lipless mouth. Nice to see you too, sweetheart. Remember my cattle prod?

Rowena strode to the snake, her hand settling on the huge triangular head. Weighing nearly two hundred pounds, Wiggles could not be picked up and carried away, and snakes cannot be trained, since most of the time they assume that humans are warm walking trees. Wiggles, however, was a freak born of magic and genetic manipulation. She was still dumb by mammalian standards, but she knew that a hand on her head meant pain if she moved, so she settled into long languid coils at Rowena's feet.

Nataraja's voice came like a whisper of scales on rough stone. "Kate."

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"Nate."

He grimaced. "I'm not in the mood to be disrespected."

"No wonder. It's quite late for a man of your age. Ever thought about retirement?"
You know you will do
it and I know you will do it. Let's get it over with. Test me, you sonovabitch, so I can fight you off
once again and then we'll talk
.

His power slammed into me, pressing, pushing me to the floor. His eyes grew into bottomless pits, commanding, all-powerful, sucking me into their awful depth, promising slavery and pain.

I clenched my teeth and held him, trying to shield Derek.

Nataraja pushed harder, his power welling like an avalanche, distorting the world, overwhelming it until nothing was left but his will and mine, locked against each other. A painful shudder pulsed through me.

His face twisted and he bit his lip.

"Temper, temper," I said through my teeth.

"Aren't mood swings a sign of early senility?" Derek's strained voice said from beyond.

The awesome pressure ebbed for an instant and I gathered my magic, summoning every reserve I had.

Strike against the kid, Nate. Strike so I can kill you.

The pressure fell abruptly and I was hurled back from a long black tunnel into the real world. Nataraja backed off, sensing the danger. Damn it.

I glanced at Derek. His face looked bloodless. His hands clenched into fists.

Nataraja was once again playing an amused host. "I see you brought a pet," he said. "He talks like you."

One day
, his face promised.
One day we'll settle this
.

"My bad habits rubbing off."
Any time
.

A whisper announced a new arrival. Ghastek came through the arched doors, carrying a briefcase and wearing khaki pants and a black T-neck sweater. He looked so absurd against the backdrop of Nataraja's vulgar throne room that I almost laughed.

Ghastek nodded to me and came to stand by his master's throne. Both men were of slight build, but where Nate was slender, Ghastek was thin. A diet of steaks and lots of hours in the weight room could make him lean and sinewy, but I doubted he ever looked at a dumbbell, let alone handled one. He was beginning to bald and the receding hairline added height to his forehead. His face was plain, saved from unremarkable only by dark eyes betraying his intellect and that slight touch of distance particular to people who spend their time immersed in thought.

"Ahh, Ghastek," Nataraja said as if greeting a favorite pet. "I was just pondering Kate's new amusement.

He would be her…"

I indulged him. "Apprentice."

"Apprentice." Nataraja rolled the word in his mouth, tasting it. "How modest. Considering his age, it's
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actually appropriate, although out of character."

"I hate to disappoint you, but our relationship is strictly professional."

Nataraja's laugh polluted the air. "Of course," he said, as if humoring a small child. "How insensitive of me."

I smiled at him. "Indeed. Now that we've established that you have appallingly poor taste, would you like a chance to chat with me as a representative of the Order or shall I make my exit?"

"Suddenly you're all business. Very well." Nataraja leaned back. "I'm dissatisfied with the direction your investigation has taken you."

I bared my teeth at him. "I find that amusing. I don't answer to you."

He didn't say anything, so I elaborated. "I work for the Order and the last time I checked the Order didn't report to Roland."

It was amusing to see the effect of the name. Both men jerked, as if shocked with a live wire.

"As you can see, gentlemen, I have access to the Order's database." Which was a blatant lie but they had no way of knowing it. Roland's name short-circuited their logic. If they realized how I knew the name of their leader, they both would suffer an instant apoplexy.

"Here is what I know, and please, correct me if I'm wrong. Ghastek's shadow vampire was tailing Greg Feldman. It was killed suddenly and you haven't been able to extract an image of the killer from the mind of the journeyman who had been piloting it. You've made no effort to disclose this information to the Order, which is understandable since you'd have to explain why your vampire was following the knight-diviner. What I don't understand is why you have been making so much noise over a single vamp."

A long pause stretched and then Nataraja jerked his wrist in a kind of "tell her" gesture and looked aside, seemingly losing all interest in our conversation. Rowena remained tranquil, her hand on the snake's head. I wondered what went through her mind.

"We've lost more than one vampire," Ghastek said.

"You have proof?"

Ghastek opened the briefcase and extracted a stack of photographs. Déjà vu. He walked forward to give the stack to me. Derek stepped between us, wordlessly took the pictures from his hand, and delivered them to mine.

I looked at a black-and-white image of a deceased vampire. The bloodsucker lay in a crumpled heap, its wiry body pitifully broken. Thick dark blood stained its pallid hide. The vamp was coated in it, as if someone had dipped his hand into the blood and smeared it all over its taut skin the way one would rub oil over the skin of a chicken to prepare it for roasting. The bloodsucker's bald cranium had been neatly cracked and wet emptiness glared at me where the brain had been.

The second photograph. The same vampire, this time placed on its back to better display a long gash that split its torso from the genitals to midchest. Yellowish ribs protruded from the blackness of bloody tissue. Someone had used a very sharp knife to cleave the cartilage of several ribs on the left side,
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separating them from the sternum, not sawing but slicing in a single motion with awful force. The vamp must have been turned on its side to allow the stringy clot of its nearly atrophied intestines to fall out.

There was no fat attached to the intestines, so the killer didn't have to bother with cutting it. Same with the bladder and colon; both organs had atrophied within weeks of undeath, so he didn't have to deal with the mess.

The diaphragm was neatly slit, both to remove the remaining intestines and to gain access to the esophagus. He must have peeled back the diaphragm and worked his hand up the chest cavity until he could grab the esophagus and cut it. Then he simply had to pull the esophagus out through the hole, and the blood-soaked, useless lungs and bulging heart would come out with it. I've seen this before. That's how you gutted a deer.

"He took the brain, the heart, the lungs, what was left of the liver and kidneys, but discarded the intestines," Ghastek said.

I raised an eyebrow, since I didn't see the intestines, and he murmured, "The next photograph."

I looked and saw the ugly wet clump of innards in a puddle of blood. Unused, they had shrunk until they resembled tough twine.

"Admirable skill," Ghastek said dryly. "The cuts were made with almost surgical precision. He has an excellent knowledge of the vampiric physiology."

"Any chance of it being an inside job?"

Ghastek looked at me as if I had accused him of devouring small children.

"We are not stupid," he said, meaning
I'm not stupid
. "All of our people with that degree of skill are accounted for."

"Besides this one and the shadow, how many did you lose?" I asked.

"Four."

"Four? Four vampires?"

Ghastek shifted uncomfortably, looking as if he had tasted something slimy and sour. "We aren't happy about the situation."

"Where are the other photos?"

"We have none. The others were taken. We were not able to recover the bodies."

"What do you mean, taken?"

"Something killed them instantly, severing the link between their minds and the navigators who piloted them. Then their bodies were removed before our field team was able to recover them." He produced a piece of paper covered with neat typescript. "Here's the list of the locations, dates, and times."

Derek took the list from him and gave it to me. I glanced at it and put it in my pocket. Six vampires and seven shapechangers. Someone was trying to start a war between the Pack and the People and was
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doing a damn good job of it. Who would benefit from it?

"You're out six vampires and you can account for only two of the bodies. Are you positive that the other four aren't active?" The idea of four unpiloted vamps running around the city made me hurt with dread.

"They are
deceased
, Kate!" Nataraja snapped out of his reverie. "Why don't you ask Curran and his pet lympago what was done to our property?"

A lympago was an inaccurate term to use for Corwin but Nate seemed so happy to have found it that I let him wallow in his own ignorance.

"I spoke to the Pack," I said. "I've been able to clear Corwin to my satisfaction."

"That's not good enough for me," Nataraja said.

"It'll have to do." All of this verbal fencing strained my patience. "His m-scan didn't match."

"I saw the m-scan of the crime scene," Ghastek said, coming to life like a shark sensing blood in the water. "There was no power print except for our vampire and the diviner."

Shit. Me and my big mouth. I should carry a banner with a big sign, "Confidential Information Given Away Free!" At least it would let people know upfront who they were dealing with.

"You must not have been looking at the right m-scan. The one I saw had a clear power record of the murderer."

I could almost feel that formidable brain working behind Ghastek's eyes. "Would you be willing to provide us with a copy of this other m-scan?"

"Would you be willing to tell me why the hell your shadow vampire was tailing Feldman?"

"Perhaps we merely wanted to keep an eye on the diviner," Nataraja said.

I pretended to consider it. "No. I don't buy it. Keeping a vamp in the field is too expensive for casual surveillance."

"We have nothing further to discuss," Nataraja said.

"A pleasure seeing you, too," I said.

"Ghastek, escort the Order representative out of our territory." Nataraja grimaced. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to her. I simply couldn't bear it."

Ghastek gave me an odd look and walked out with us, leaving Rowena and Nataraja behind.

As soon as we were out of Nate's earshot, I stopped. "You don't really have to escort me."

"But I do."

"In that case I have a question."

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Ghastek looked at me.

"If I were to taint a living animal with necromantic magic, how would I do it?"

"By taint you mean… ?"

There was no way out of this question without giving myself away. I was too stupid for this job.

"A sufficient amount of necromantic magic to produce a blended power print."

"What color?"

I strained to keep from gritting my teeth. "Pale orange."

He thought about it. "Well, the most obvious answer would be to feed an animal on necro-infused flesh.

If a rat gorged itself on the flesh of a vampire, the necromantic magic would show up in its stomach contents. Some of it would make its way into the blood stream. But, since it's obvious, it's also wrong.

I've scanned animals that fed on undead flesh before and the power print showed a pure necromantic arch."

"The magic of the undead flesh overwhelmed the magic of the animal?"

Ghastek nodded. "Yes. To produce a blended power print, the influence of the necromantic magic would have to be very subtle. In theory—and this is only in theory—it would have to involve reproduction."

"I don't understand."

"If you ask me nicely, I might explain," Ghastek said.

"Could you please explain this to me? It's important and I would very much appreciate it."

Ghastek allowed himself a smile. It touched his lips and vanished in a flicker, as if it was no more than a muscle twitch. I showed him my teeth.

"You're much more pleasant when you talk like a human being," Ghastek said. My smile failed to disturb him. "The bravado is amusing, but it becomes tiresome."

I sighed. "I'm a merc. I walk like a merc, I talk like a merc, I act like a merc."