I MADE MY WAY UPSTAIRS AND WASHED OFF ALL OF my grime. Doolittle said he'd need at least twenty-four hours to review my blood and Erra's. Normally by now Voron would be screaming warnings at me from the depths of my memory, but he kept quiet. Perhaps it was because I trusted Doolittle, or maybe because Voron's ghost no longer had an iron grip on me.
I stood under the hot water, letting it run over my skin. Julie would have to wait, and not just for Doolittle. First, we had to find the Keepers, because if they managed to activate the device within the range of the Keep, nothing would matter. Curran had already warned the guards to notify us the moment any important news came or the magic wave hit. I didn't know how much time we had, but whatever it was I wanted to spend it well. For all we knew, we'd all kick the bucket tomorrow.
When I slid the shower door open, the smell of seared meat curled around me. A garment bag hung on the towel hook. With my luck, it would contain a French maid outfit.
I toweled off my hair and unzipped the bag. A silvery fabric caught the light and shimmered with a gentle light, as if someone had captured a crystal-clear mountain stream and somehow bound it into the creamy white silk. I ran my fingers over it, feeling the slickness. So beautiful. I'd seen this dress in the window shortly after Christmas. The strapless gown actually made me stop. There was something magic about the dress, something ethereal and otherworldly. No matter how much I looked at it in that store window, I couldn't picture myself in it. Curran told me I should get it. I told him that I had no place to wear it and besides, where would I put my sword?
He'd remembered.
A tiny voice nagged me that we should be out there, searching for the threat, but then the entire magic population of Atlanta was already searching for it. Andrea and Jim had joined forces, trying to pin down Shane's hiding place. The Order was under constant surveillance. A domineering werelion and a loud-mouthed merc wouldn't make that much of a difference. I found the blow-dryer. A dress like that deserved dry hair. If I had been by myself, I would've turned in by now to conserve energy before the fight. But then things could go really wrong tomorrow. I had to make the most of tonight.
Twenty minutes later, hair brushed, eye shadow on, and mascara on my eyelashes, I slipped the dress on. It hugged my body, curving over my breasts, clasped between them with a small crystal flower, and slid over the curve of my hips all the way down. A long slit went from the floor to my upper thigh.
I opened the door. A pair of transparent shoes sat on the floor. I slid my feet into them. Perfect fit.
I stepped out into the kitchen. Curran stood at the table. He wore gray tailored pants and a white button-down shirt. The shirt was semitransparent, and it molded to his muscled torso like a glove. He'd shaved, and the light from the candles on the table played on his face, throwing faint highlights over his masculine jaw. He looked almost unbearably handsome.
I stopped.
He was looking at me with a kind of need that somehow managed to be raw and tender at the same time. He took my breath away.
We looked at each other, a little awkward.
Finally I raised my hand. "Hi."
"Hi," he said. "I made dinner. At least I made the steaks. The rest came from the kitchen ... Would you like to sit down?"
"Yes, I would."
He held out my chair and I sat. He sat across from me. There was some kind of food on the table and a bottle of something, probably wine.
"You're wearing a formal shirt," I said. "I had no idea you owned one." The way he looked at me short-circuited the link between my mouth and my brain. Formal shirt? What the hell was I going on about?
"I figured I'd match the dress," he said. He seemed slightly shocked.
"Do you like it?"
"It looks great. You look great. Beautiful."
We looked at each other.
"We should eat," I said.
"Yeah." He was looking at me.
Silence hung between us. I had to know why he was with me. I thought it didn't matter, but it did.
I met his gaze. "My mother had a power that made men do whatever she wanted. She brainwashed Voron. She cooked him like a steak, until he left Roland for her. She needed him to take care of me. Except she overdid it. Voron was so hurt by her death, he never cared for me. He just wanted to watch me and Roland go at it. He said that if he watched my father kill me, it would be enough for him."
"Where is this coming from?"
"The witch," I told him. "Evdokia. She and I are very distantly related. She's telling the truth."
Curran's expression turned guarded. "That's fucked up." "Before you and I mated, did you and Jim have a conversation about what it would mean for the Pack?" It would be something Jim would do. He'd suspected what I was, if he hadn't figured it out already.
"Yes," Curran said. His face was still flat.
"What did Jim say?"
"He advised against it. He had bullet points of why this was not a good idea."
My heart skipped a bit.
"He also said that since I was going to do it anyway, despite whatever he said, I should get on with it, because it took too much manpower to track me all over the city. He always sent guards to shadow me, and I usually dumped them before getting to your apartment. He said his life would be a lot easier if I just moved you into the Keep."
"Is that why you wanted me here?"
Curran leaned forward. The mask that was his face vanished. "I wanted you here because I wanted to be with you. For better or worse, Kate. You didn't brainwash me the way your mother did. You don't have her powers. You have the complete opposite, if anything."
All or nothing. "Did you know that Roland was my father before I told you?"
"Yes."
Suddenly I was ice cold.
"How?"
"Breaking Roland's sword was a big clue," he said. "Jim obtained some pictures of Roland. You resemble him. And there is a story floating around about a child Roland supposedly killed. I put two and two together."
I had agonized about telling him who I was. It took every shred of will to admit it, and he had it all figured out already. "And you let me sit there and tell you all about it, when you already knew?"
"It was important," Curran said. "You had to do it, so I listened."
"Did you take who I was into consideration before you offered me the mating?"
Curran leaned forward. A faint glow touched his eyes and vanished. "Of course I did."
And here it was. At least he hadn't lied. Deep down I had known it. Curran was too used to calculating the odds. Like Evdokia said, it wasn't his first time at the love rodeo. It's not like he would have fallen head over heels into it, the way I did. "I have a string of safe houses set up all across the country," he said.
I must've misheard. "What?"
"I have a safe house in almost every state. I have more than enough money to keep us comfortable for the rest of our lives, if it comes to it. I've moved most of my funds to places outside the Pack."
"What are you talking about?"
"I know he is coming and you are afraid. If you don't want to fight him, you and I can disappear."
I stared at him.
"The mass transit is gone. No planes, no reliable roads. The world is big again, Kate. He will never find us."
"What about the Pack?"
His upper lip trembled, betraying the edge of his teeth. "Fuck the Pack. I gave them fifteen years of my life. I fought for them, bled for them, and the moment my back was turned, they attacked my wife. I owe them nothing."
Curran reached over and covered my fingers with his hand. "I'm serious. Say the word right now and we're gone. We can take Julie with us, if you want."
"Jim would find us."
"No. I covered my tracks. If Jim does find us, he'll wish he hadn't. Besides, Jim is a friend. He would understand and he wouldn't look for us very hard."
It wasn't a bluff; I heard it in his voice. He would do it. He would walk away. "You would leave all these people, all the bowing, and the ..."
His gray eyes looked into mine. "If I fought for them and was crippled, they would all say nice things, and then they would replace me and forget I was ever there. You would stay with me. You would take care of me, because you love me. I love you too, Kate. If you ever became hurt, I would not leave you. I'll be there. Wherever you want `there' to be."
I felt like crying. Great, he'd turned me into a weeping weakling.
"Would you like to leave?" he asked.
I swallowed. "Not unless you want to."
"Then we will stay. For now."
"Yes." "Okay," he said.
I was lucky. Somehow, maybe because of all the messed-up shit the Universe had thrown my way, I'd gotten him. He was mine, completely mine. He loved me.
I kept making barriers between us and then heroically knocking them down. Whether it was because of fear or mistrust, or for whatever other reason, I had to stop doing it.
I glanced down. The food was cold, our plates sat empty. "Do you think it will keep?"
He stood up. "Hell yes."
THE CANDLES DIDN'T KEEP. BY THE TIME WE MADE IT back to the kitchen, the candles had dripped wax over the candelabra. I poked my steak--lukewarm. The baked potatoes were cold. Corn on the cob was barely warm. I didn't care.
"I'm starving."
"Got to keep your strength up." Curran grinned. "So you can keep up."
I clasped my hand to my throat and made some strangled noises. "Help me, I can't breathe, your ego is pushing all the air out of the room."
He laughed.
"This menu looks really familiar," I said, loading my plate. I'd switched to a sweatshirt and sweatpants. My dress had been discarded anyway and besides, we had agreed to take our plates back to the couch, and I didn't want to get food on it.
"Mm-hm," Curran said, spearing a chunk of meat. "Apple pie is in the fridge."
He'd recreated the menu he requested for the naked dinner. Ha!
"How did you even know my shoe size?"
"I've seen your foot up close." Curran pointed to his chest. "I've seen it here." He moved his hand to his jaw. "Here." He touched the place over his cheek where my kick had cut him. "And here."
Aha. "Would you like to watch a movie while we eat?"
"Sure. What sort of movie?"
"It has everything: action, drama, comedy, beautiful soundtrack. Hot male lead."
His thick eyebrows crept up half an inch. "That last one isn't exactly a plus."
"Jealous of the actors now, are we?" "What, of some fancy boy on the screen? Inconceivable."
Oh, this was going to be good.
We took our plates to the coffee table by the couch, and I slid Saiman's disk into the player. The warehouse full of cars solidified on the screen. Curran's face went blank.
When the first notes of the song sounded through the living room, he looked at me. "He set it to music?"
"His exact words were, `It begged for a soundtrack.' "
A Ferrari flew across the screen and crashed into the wall. Curran looked impassive.
I chewed a piece of my steak. It had to be the best steak I'd ever had. "I seem to recall a certain man boasting about his `superhuman' restraint."
"I did show remarkable self-control."
"You destroyed five million dollars' worth of luxury cars."
"Yes, but none of them are wearing human heads as hood ornaments."
I dropped back onto the pillow. "So you want credit for not repainting the place with blood?"
"The guards walked away. Saiman walked away. Tell me that's not superhuman." Curran pulled me close to him and kissed my neck where it joined my shoulder. Mmm.
"Where did you get this?" His voice was entirely too casual for comfort.
"That source Jim keeps referring to is Saiman. He is knee-deep in this whole thing. He left some evidence at Kamen's place, and I tracked him down."
"Did you go to see him?" Curran asked.
Warning: danger ahead. Rocks fall, everyone dies.
"Yes."
"At his apartment?"
"Yes."
"Where is Saiman now?"
"I'm not sure. Under the bed? Maybe you should try the closet."
"Kate!" I laughed. "You should see your face. Don't you trust me?"
"I trust you," he said. "I just need to talk to him."
Aha. Talk. His Majesty, Master of Negotiation. "I took Derek with me when I went to see him. Saiman is so scared of you, he didn't even want to let us in. And the Keepers sent a team into the place to finish all of us off. How can you be jealous of him? It's like me being jealous of Myong." Not that his latest ex-girlfriend didn't inspire jealousy. She was a stunning woman, elegant, beautiful in an exotic way. She was also fragile like a delicate glass ornament.
"Nothing ever happened between me and Myong," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "Right."
"I'm serious. Not that I didn't want to at the time, but I tried to kiss her once, and she got a deer-in-the-headlights look. I got a feeling that if I went any further, she'd shut her eyes and pray for it to be over, so I backed off."
"Maybe I should check the closet to see if the beautiful Myong is hiding in there, since you are so hot for her ..."
He blinked. How does that foot taste?
"Blah-blah-blah."
"You're so eloquent, Your Majesty. So kind and generous to your subjects. So full of snappy comebacks."
"Don't forget brutally honest. To my own detriment even."
"Oh, yes. Honest to a fault."
"You never told me where Saiman's hiding."
I took my plate into the kitchen.
He followed me. "You like to screw with me, is that it? Saiman, that Russian mage, that merc ..."
"What merc?"
"Bob."
I racked my brain. I'd barely said two words to Bob. "He stopped by our table to ask me which way I'd vote in the Guild elections. They still haven't figured out who is in charge, and I'm technically on the roster."
"Yeah. Did he have to lean over you while he was talking?" "He was trying to let Mark think that he and I were buddies."
"And you are not."
I threw a bread roll at him. Curran snapped it out of the air.
"Would you like me to carry a foot-long stick? I can just poke people with it when they get too close."
"That's a good idea." He held his arm out. "If you can extend your arm and touch them with the stick, they are too close."
"You're insane."
"If I'm insane, what does it make you?"
"A terrible judge of character."
I went back to the couch. I could've fallen for someone steady. Dependable. Well-grounded. But nooo, I had to lose my head over this idiot.
Curran pounced. It was an excellent pounce, executed with preternatural speed. He pinned me to the couch. "Tell me where Saiman is."
"Or what?"
"Or I will be displeased."
I rolled my eyes. "He's worried himself into paranoia, Curran. When Jim and I were dealing with the rakshasas during the Midnight Games, Saiman went into the Pit to plant a tracker into a rakshasa opponent. He was so terrified, he could barely move. The rakshasa cut him, and Saiman snapped. He bashed the rakshasa to death and kept beating his body for about five minutes. When he finally calmed down, there was only mush left. I know you can take him. I can take him, too. The question is why. Why make an enemy of him? You have to either kill him now or stop screwing with him, and if you're going to kill him, I really am a terrible judge of character."
Curran growled and moved to sit next to me.
"He wants the pressure to go away. He's prepared to soothe your ego. He gave us everything he knew about Kamen and the device for this precise reason, and he fully expects you to ask for more."
"My ego doesn't need soothing," Curran said. "I don't want him soothing anything of mine, including you."
"Jim has him stashed away at one of the safe houses. Do as you will."
I stared at him.
"What?" he growled. "Waiting to see if you're going to run out on me on the night before the Apocalypse to go beat his ass."
Curran reached for me. "He'll keep. There is no rush."
"Keep your hands to yourself. You said you didn't need any more soothing."
"I changed my mind. Besides, I'm the hot male lead. Actors get all the chicks." He kissed me. "You're still going through with this?"
"Yes," I told him honestly.
"Don't," he said.
I slumped forward. "I have to at least try. Are you going to try to stop me?"
"No. You made a decision, and you're following through with it. I don't like it, but I'll help you with it, because you're my mate and I would expect the same from you." Curran grimaced. "It would be worse if you sat on your hands and moaned about not knowing what to do. I couldn't deal with that."
The Beast Lord way: often wrong but never in doubt.
"As long as we're on the subject," Curran said. " `The man thrust it back into the wound and spoke the words that bound the wolf to obey him forever.' If you do this, Julie will never be able to disobey a direct order from you. You will be making a slave."
I glanced at him. "I thought about that. I don't know if it's even necessary for the ritual, but I can't take that chance. I'll have to do it exactly the way Roland did."
"She can never know," Curran said. "Look, I've been in charge of people for a long time. Trust me on this, you can't take Julie's free will away from her. If you do this, that's your secret and you have to live with that. You have to be strong enough to keep that from her, and that means you'll have to think twice before any instructions to her come out of your mouth."
I rubbed my face. He was right. If Julie got as much as a hint that she had no choice about obeying me, I'd lose her. The most natural things like, "No, you can't go out to the woods with Maddie in the middle of the night" now would have to become, "I would strongly prefer that you stayed home." I had a hard enough time steering her as it was.
"I'll deal with it," I said. "As long as she's alive. Everything else we'll figure out along the way."
The magic rolled over us like a suffocating blanket.
The countdown had begun. We had ten hours and fifty-nine minutes.
Someone knocked. Curran went to the door. From where I lay, I could see his face in profile. His mouth curved. He came back, chuckling to himself. "Yes?"
"The witches have sent you a gift."
MY PRESENT SAT BEHIND THE TABLE IN THE SMALLER conference room. It hid in the folds of a dark cloak. Only the hand was visible, a small feminine hand with manicured nails that gripped a spoon, stirring the tea in a blue cup. Jezebel leaned against the opposite wall, glaring at the cloaked woman as if she were a fire-spitting dragon. Barabas waited by the door. He saw me and smiled. It was a sharp, nasty smile, like a cat that had finally caught the mouse and was about to torture it to death.
What now?
I pulled my hair up into a bun and headed for the door. Barabas handed me a note in Evdokia's curvy Russian script. It read: A gift for you, Katenka. Thank me later.
Beware of gifts from Baba Yaga--they came with strings attached, and sometimes if you took them, you ended up in the oven as dinner.
"Did she come alone?"
"No, Evdokia's daughters brought her." Barabas's grin got wider. "I checked into it and she and Grigorii have five children. They're their own private Russian mafia."
I stepped through the door and took a seat at the table. The woman pulled her hood back, exposing a wealth of glossy red hair. Rowena.
If she had pulled off her hood and turned out to be Medusa with her head full of vipers, I would've been less surprised.
We looked at each other. A red feverish flush colored her cheeks. Bloodshot eyes, puffy nose. Slightly smeared eyeliner. Rowena had been crying. That was a first. Rowena kept her composure no matter what. The roof could cave in and she'd smile against the backdrop of falling rocks and ask you to do her the favor of moving toward the exit.
"Okay," I said. "I want an explanation. Now. What are you doing here?"
Rowena swallowed. "Bozydar, the journeyman who killed himself today, was my nephew. I'm banned from navigation pending an investigation. I will be cleared of all charges and they will reinstate me."
"You seem very sure of that."
Rowena sniffed. "Ghastek is ambitious. Nataraja won't last much longer; something happened, and he mostly hides in his quarters now. Ghastek and Mulradin are running things, and each one of them wants to be at the top. They are scrambling to form alliances. I'm ranked third in finesse and fourth in power, and I support Ghastek. He can't afford to lose me." "So why are you here?"
"Bozydar had a girl," Rowena said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Her name is Christine. She would do anything for him. She loved him so much. I spoke to her. She said that my nephew had been recruited by the Keepers years ago, when my brother and his wife died. They were on Route 90 crossing over the Mississippi, when the bridges collapsed due to magic erosion. They drowned. Bozydar was pulled out of the river comatose. By the time I found him, they'd shipped him to an orphanage." Rowena clenched her hands. "He suffered a lot of abuse. They'd done things to him. I've given him a chance at revenge, but I didn't realize it wasn't enough."
She fell silent. I waited for the rest.
"He was doing things for the Keepers, and Christine helped him," Rowena said. "She was in it knee-deep. She covered for him, she fed him classified information he needed; whatever he asked for, she did it."
"Is she a member of the Keepers?"
"No." Rowena shook her head. "She is just a foolish girl who was in love with a broken boy. When Palmetto was hit, she was horrified."
I bet.
She gripped her slender fingers so hard, her manicured nails left red indents in her skin. "We have been publicly embarrassed, and Ghastek is looking for a scapegoat. If he finds out what Christine has done, he will purge her. Purged journeymen don't go home, Kate. They disappear. One day she won't be there for her shift and then the new schedule will be posted and everyone will know what happened to her. He'll kill her, Kate, to demonstrate that he's capable of making problems vanish."
I was still waiting for the punch line.
"Christine is five months pregnant," Rowena said.
Ah. Here we go.
"People in my family have a difficult time with fertility. I've been trying to have a child for years. So far, I've failed. Bozydar was the only relative I had. Now he's dead and his baby is my only family. Do you have any family, Kate?"
Now there was a loaded question. "No."
She leaned forward, her eyes wide and desperate. "This unborn baby is everything to me. I can't protect Christine. Even if I give her money and send her away, Ghastek will find her. He can be so single-minded, it's terrifying."
I finally put two and two together. "So you went to the witches." "Yes," Rowena murmured. "Yes, I did. My family has roots in that world. So I went and offered the covens anything they wanted to hide Christine."
She must've been truly desperate. "What's the price?"
Rowena looked up at me. "Three years of service. To you."
"Excuse me?"
"They bound me to you for three years. I swore a blood oath. I will do whatever you require, and I am sworn to never speak of it." She raised her hand. A fresh scar cleaved her palm. "I don't understand any of it, and if Ghastek finds out that I helped Christine or that I came here, I am dead. So." Rowena leaned on the table. "What service can I perform for you?"
I rested my elbow on the table, leaned against my hand, and exhaled. To have access to a qualified necromancer was akin to finding a case of ammo in the middle of a gunfight. Here was my chance to learn and train. I needed her desperately. Unfortunately, I trusted her about as far as I could throw her. I was strong and she was small, but it still wasn't very far.
"The problem is, I don't trust you," I said.
"I don't trust you either," she said. "But if I don't do as they say, Christine's life is forfeit."
"They actually made you swear to it."
She nodded. "She was right there. She stood right there when I swore. She heard every word. If they kill her, she will know it's because I failed."
Note to self: avoid being in debt to the witches like the plague.
"Whatever it is you want, Kate, I will do it. No matter how foul. Even if it means debasing and humiliating myself ..."
Fantastic. Who did she think I was, exactly? "I guess we will start with humiliation, move onto debasing, and perhaps do some torture for a spiffy finish." I glanced at Jezebel. "Is our Torturer in residence?"
Rowena opened her mouth, looking as if she were about to say something sharp, and must've thought better of it, because she clamped it shut.
"How accomplished are you in necromancy?"
She gathered herself. "I'm rated as Master of the Dead of the Third Caliber, Level Two, which means I can simultaneously hold three vampires and effectively pilot two at the time. I've passed all the prerequisite examinations. I rank third in finesse and fourth in power in Atlanta and seventy-first overall among the People. That rank is misleading, as when you're that high up, the differences between the ranks are minute. For example, the range of the person above me is only twenty inches longer than mine. I hold the shield of the Silver Legion. The Gold Legion is--"
"Roland's top fifty," I finished. "You had to climb the Ladder, correct?" The Ladder was Roland's way of promoting education among the People. Each step of the ladder consisted of a work on magic, necromancy, or philosophy. Some steps were books, some scrolls. Once you mastered a step, you took a test to prove your knowledge. The more steps, the higher the pay.
Rowena's eyes narrowed. "Yes, the Ladder of Knowledge. You have to complete ten to be rated as a Second Caliber Journeyman, and twenty-five to obtain the title of Master. How do you know this?"
"How many steps did you complete?"
"Eighty-nine," she said.
"And Ghastek?"
"One hundred and sixty-five." She grimaced. "The man is a machine. As I've said, Ghastek can be extremely single-minded. If you are considering using me against him, I will obey, of course, but you should understand that though I can injure him, he'll win this fight."
"When Roland made Arez, he used a ritual to purge him of loupism. The technique involves withdrawing a person's blood and purifying it. Are you familiar with it? Rowena?"
Rowena decided it would be a good time to close her mouth. "Yes."
"Tell me about it?"
"It's the same process he uses to create his Chosen," she said. "You receive a gift of his blood and power, but in return you're bound to him forever. He doesn't use it often."
"Is Hugh d'Ambray bound to him?"
"Yes."
I'd thought as much. Since both Arez and Hugh had been preceptors of the Order of Iron Dogs and were bound to Roland, Voron must've been bound, too. That was why my mother had stayed behind to fight Roland. Voron couldn't disobey a direct order from Roland. If my father had ordered him to hand me over, Voron would've done it; he'd have had no choice.
"Have you ever seen it done?"
She shook her head. "Only what I have read."
"Is the use of the obedience power word necessary?"
"Yes. That's what gives him control over the blood once it's removed from the body." I leaned back. There was no way around it. If she survived, Julie would be bound to me forever.
"Kate, it's a very difficult ritual. Other people, high-ranking members of the Gold Legion, have tried and failed. You can't just do something like that. Roland's blood and power are unique."
Yes, yes.
Rowena kept going. "I've met him, when I was initiated into the Silver Legion. The magic radiating through his blood is unlike anything I've ever felt."
To the right, Jezebel rolled her eyes.
"It's like meeting a god in person. It's ... I can't even describe it."
I wondered what she would do if I cut my forearm, dipped my fingers into the red, and touched her hand with it. Was it something like this?
I bet she would jump.
I folded my arms on my chest instead. "Just tell me about the ritual, Rowena. That's all I need for now."
She was looking past me. I glanced behind me and saw Curran looking through the glass doors, radiating menace. He opened the door. "The Keepers were sighted at Nameless Square. I need you."
I looked at Jezebel. "Get our guest some paper. Once she writes everything down, make sure she leaves safely."