“You expect us to fight?” Constance asked.
“Yes.”
“Against your father?” Ryan Kelly asked. Even his purple Mohawk seemed incredulous.
“Yes.”
Toakase shook her head.
Ghastek raised his hand. “No.”
“Think about it,” Curran said. “It will make sense to you.”
Ghastek’s eyes narrowed. He was running through possible scenarios in his head trying to figure out what he’d missed. Maybe we’d get lucky and he would talk himself into it. Reach deep inside and sacrifice. I wish I knew what the hell she was talking about, because it would sure help right about now.
Pillman checked his watch. “This is ridiculous. After this morning’s phone call, we’re under no obligation to humor her any longer. Just throw her and her has-been shapeshifter out.”
Erra tore into existence in front of Pillman and backhanded him. The Master of the Dead flew back and fell on his ass.
“Bow, worm!” My aunt’s magic raged. “Bow before my niece. You’re not fit to lick her boots.”
The Masters of the Dead froze, horrified. Rowena’s face turned completely white. Next to me Adora unsheathed her katana. Blood-red wings snapped out of Christopher’s back.
A sharp calculation was taking place in Ghastek’s eyes. Above us vampires sprinted as he pulled them to him. Julie was a full twenty feet from me. This was about to turn bloody.
Now. I had to do it now.
Show them that you love them above all others.
I did love this land. I loved the city and the people within it. That’s why I fought so hard to protect it. I couldn’t ask it to give its magic, but I could give up a little of my own. I reached deep inside me and took the magic the same way I had taken it from the land, except now it came from within my soul.
It hurt.
“There is no need to shout.” I stepped toward Pillman, and my aunt moved out of my way. The Master of the Dead stared at me. His pupils widened. I reached for him. My hand almost glowed, as if dusted with gold. “Are you hurt?”
He reached out, hesitant, and touched my hand. I grasped his fingers. “Rise.”
“You . . .” Pillman stood up, his face stunned.
“Behold In-Shinar,” Julie intoned. “Daughter of the Builder of Towers, niece of the City Eater, Guardian of Atlanta.”
Burning my own magic hurt so much. I couldn’t let them see the pain.
“Don’t be afraid,” I told Pillman. “I’m not my father. He doesn’t value you. I do. He is far, unreachable, and distant. But I am here.”
He swallowed, his fingers fastened on my hand. I motioned toward the others. Pillman took one hesitant step back. Then another. That seemed to be as far from me as he was willing to go.
“My father doesn’t recognize your talents.” I looked straight at Ghastek. “I do. I know what you’re capable of.”
Their faces looked torn between hope and fear, caught in some weird emotion I couldn’t pin down. The technology was up and I stood among them, emanating magic. And each second I did cost me more than they would ever know. It was that or the city would fall.
They recognized this magic. Some of them had seen it before, because I saw the excitement and fear in their eyes. They were drawn to it like moths to a flame. It was the magic of my blood, the one that made the vampires possible, except now it was directed at them. They wanted my approval. I sensed it. Beyond them journeymen stood unmoving, shocked.
I finally pinned down their expressions. Awe.
Rowena knelt. Filipa was praying, her voice an urgent whisper.
Ghastek walked toward me and went down on one knee, looking up at me.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Saving all of us from being drowned in our blood and my father’s fire,” I whispered. “He’s going to throw you and your vampires at the Keep. You will be decimated. Your vampires will be gone; your position within Atlanta will be eliminated. If you survive, you will have to start from scratch, Ghastek.”
His face told me he didn’t want to start from scratch.
“You’re outside the inner circle. It will take you years to climb higher. Even if you become his Legatus, your life will be short. He will never care about you, Ghastek. I care. You are my friend. You are the best there is at what you do. This is your chance. Don’t do it because of what’s happening now. Do it because it makes sense.”
“You know my price,” Ghastek whispered.
“I know.” The irony was that he already had what he was asking for. He was my friend. I already cared about him. I would already do whatever I could to keep him breathing.
“Swear it,” Ghastek said.
I smiled at him. My voice rang. “Rise, Legatus of my Legion. Work with me, advise me, be my friend, and you will live forever.”
• • •
THE AIR OUTSIDE the Casino tasted sweet.
“How did you do that?” Curran asked.
“She burned her own magic,” my aunt said. “If she were a normal human, you would’ve seen her aging.”
The look on Curran’s face was indescribable.
“Relax, half-breed,” Erra said. “She has lifetimes to spare. That wasn’t half-bad for your first time. You’ll get better with practice.”
“I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have no plans to conquer. I don’t want any more troops. I don’t want to do any more persuading.”
“You say that now.”
I turned toward her. “Look inside me.”
Erra’s eyes narrowed. “You mean it. You have no ambition.”
“No. I don’t want to conquer or rule. I want to contain my father.”
“This will be interesting,” my aunt said.
Behind us the banner of In-Shinar, a field of pure emerald green with a single blue stripe, streamed from the spire above the Casino’s walls.
• • •
THE PACK ARRIVED in time for dinner. One moment our kitchen was empty and Curran and I were quietly cooking dinner, while Julie tried to make it through some ancient text Erra decided she should read. The next it was filled with shapeshifters. Jim and Dali, Robert, and Andrea and Raphael. Jim’s face was flat. His eyes told me that he hadn’t come because he wanted to patch things up with me. He’d come because his back was against the wall. Our friendship was truly over.
“Where is the baby?” I asked.
“With about a dozen babysitters in the bouda clan house,” Andrea said. “You just want me for my baby.”
“Yep, you nailed it.”
“Peace offering,” Robert said, holding an envelope out to Julie.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Jezebel’s confession,” Robert said. “We found it in her quarters. Some of it is addressed to you.”
She grabbed the envelope and bolted to the living room couch with it. I could still see her. That was the fun of an open floor plan. We were never too far from each other.
“Give me a CliffsNotes version?” I asked.
“Jezebel, Salome, and the woman who was supposedly their mother joined the Pack when Salome was seventeen and Jezebel was fifteen,” Robert said. “Clan Bouda failed to verify their background.”
“Oh please,” Andrea said. “Please make it sound like it is all our fault.”
“The clan had very low numbers at the time,” Raphael said. “This woman showed up, told my mother a sob story about running away from abuse, and offered herself and two able fighters who were almost adults. My mother took them in.”
“He approved it.” Andrea pointed to Curran.
Curran shrugged.
“Veronica, Jezebel and Salome’s supposed mother, left the Pack about four years after joining,” Andrea said. “According to Aunt B’s records, she met
a man from Montana and went with him. Salome and Jezebel stayed behind.”
“Jezebel had written a summary of her life before joining the Pack. Does the word ‘sahanu’ mean anything to you?” Robert asked.
“Julie, can you get Adora for me?” I asked. Julie got up and left the living room.
I went into the hallway, took a framed photograph off the wall, and brought it into the kitchen. It showed Julie and her friend Maddie, smiling and making cute faces at the camera. Jezebel loomed to the side, watching over them.
Julie returned with Adora. I showed her the photograph. “Do you recognize this woman?”
“Isabel,” Adora said. “She and her sister, Leanna, were in the fort with me. They transform into hyenas.”
“What happened to them?”
“One day they disappeared. We were told they were needed elsewhere.”
“Thank you.” I turned to Robert. “Sahanu is an order of assassins created by my father.”
“He must’ve pulled them out of training and inserted them into the Pack,” Curran said.
“That appears to be the case,” Robert said.
“It says here she did it for me,” Julie said, her voice quiet. She took the papers and went upstairs.
“Jezebel’s assignment was to get as close as possible to the Beast Lord,” Robert said. “When Kate entered the picture, Jezebel saw an opportunity. She and Salome put on a show for Aunt B and afterward Salome suggested that Jezebel should be reassigned. Then her assignment changed. Julie became her priority. She loved Julie very much. She wanted to separate with you but was ordered to remain with the Pack. Eventually, she was ordered to kill Andrea’s child. She refused and was told that Julie would suffer if Jezebel failed.”
“Where is Salome now?” Curran asked.
“Dead,” Jim said. “Anybody who touches Dali is dead. Anybody who helps them is dead.”
Dali sighed. “I’m okay. I’m here, I’m alive, and I would appreciate it if everyone butted out and stopped making a giant deal out of this.”
It hit me. Jim was an excellent Beast Lord: smart, efficient, and painfully fair. He would be admired and respected, but he would never be loved the way Curran was. Curran had wanted to be loved, needed it because he’d come to the Pack as an orphaned kid. Jim didn’t want to be loved by anyone except Dali. He didn’t need friends. He didn’t want anything else. Only Dali.
“Why are you here?” Curran asked.
“You know why,” Jim said. “You’ve taken the People. Are we at war?”
Oh my God, you moron.
Dali elbowed Jim in the ribs. “What he meant to say was he is sorry that duties of his office and his own paranoid nature caused him to overreact.”
Jim looked like someone had hit him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. “Yes.”
“And he knows that both of you have been his friends, of which he doesn’t have many, for years. He is aware that you would never do anything to harm us or the Pack and that you have protected us on several occasions and have been injured as a result several times.”
“Yes,” Jim said.
Dali looked at him. Clearly, there was more.
Jim turned to me. “I apologize.”
“Not a problem,” I told him.
Jim faced Curran. “And I would be honored to still be best man at your wedding.”
Jim was who he was. This was the best we were going to get, and we wouldn’t even have gotten that without Dali.
Curran smiled. It was a bright, infectious smile, the kind that could change the mood of an entire hall of shapeshifters. I had seen it in action before. It signaled that all was forgiven. The tension in Jim’s body eased. But I knew Curran better than Jim did. Curran would never forget this.
“Who else would be my best man?” Curran said.
The mood in the room lightened.
Curran leaned back. “You burned Roland’s castle. He will retaliate the morning after the next magic wave hits.”
“We’ll be there to defend you because you are within our borders,” I said.
“We’re coming either way, Jim,” Curran said. “Without Kate’s protection, he will shatter the Keep with magic.”
Jim looked at me. “Can you stop him?”
“I can stop his actions against the land itself. I can’t stop him from physically riding onto the battlefield and sniping people with his magic.”
“Roland will bring an overwhelming force,” Curran said. “It’s a show of strength. And he’s angry. He wants to crush you.”
“He will breach the walls at the very least,” Jim said.
“You should let him,” Curran said.
Jim thought about it. “Yes. I should.”
Curran got up and got a piece of paper. I reached for the phone.
“Who are you calling?” Jim asked.
“Ghastek and then Roman. If we’re going to plan, they should be in on it.”
• • •
FIVE DAYS LATER I stood on top of the Keep’s main tower. The sun rose above the horizon, its first rays banishing the twilight. Clear, crystalline blue sky spread above me. The woods around the Keep stood still. Birds sang. It was so peaceful.
Almost a week had passed since Jim’s attack on my father’s tower. The first magic wave came and went without any action from my father, but last night magic hit hard and Jim’s scouts reported a large force heading our way. This was it.
Somewhere within those woods, Curran and the bulk of our forces hid.
Christopher waited next to me. Behind me the seven Masters of the Dead stood, each with a single vampire parked by their feet like a mutated hairless cat. Jim put renders all around us with Desandra in the lead. We wouldn’t be able to enter the main Keep, but he understood what was about to happen. If my father attacked with his magic and if I blocked that attack—which was a pretty big “if” at this point—people had to see it. The Masters of the Dead had to see it.
The Keep below us swarmed with shapeshifters. Jim was front and center, Dali next to him.
Jim had shared intelligence from his scouts. My father couldn’t pull the entire Golden Legion together on short notice, but he had put together a force of over two hundred undead, enough to decimate an army five times that size. He’d kept human reserves in Virginia, something none of us knew about, and they had arrived last night. Together with his mages, the Pack scouts estimated that he was fielding almost three thousand combatants.
Jim had called for a complete mobilization. Everyone older than eighteen would fight. Anyone above sixteen could volunteer. He ended up with around six hundred troops. We brought one hundred twenty vampires to the fight. Ghastek had gotten every journeyman with half a hint of talent and put them on the field. He stood next to me now, the skin on his face too tight.
We were outnumbered and outgunned, several times to one.
“Wondering if you shouldn’t have rolled the dice?” I asked.
“No. It’s too late.”
A red light claimed the horizon, glowing like a second sunrise. Wolves fled from the woods and sprinted to the safety of the Keep.
“It begins,” my aunt said in my ear.
If I failed, everything was over.
In the distance trees collapsed as if torn aside by an invisible tornado half a mile wide. Smoke billowed, white and thick, and lightning crackled within it. My father was coming.
“Take and hold,” Erra’s voice whispered.
“Hey, Kate? You’re nobody’s bitch,” Desandra said.
Behind me, one of the navigators drew a tense breath.
The smoke was almost to the boundary. My father’s fury loomed, a magic storm devouring all before it.
I felt every drop of life within the land I claimed. It was enough to make you go mad.
The storm rolled across the land,
swallowing the distance in hungry gulps. A hundred yards.
Eighty.
Sixty.
A sound like the roar of a distant waterfall rolled through the land.
Forty.
Take . . .
Twenty.
Below me in the Keep, the shapeshifters stood frozen.
The trees before the boundary collapsed, snapped like toothpicks, and were sucked into the storm.
And hold!
Magic shifted like a mountain that somehow moved. It wasn’t an isolated stream or a burst. The entirety of the magic around us changed somehow, and everyone felt it.
My father’s storm splashed against an invisible boundary and stopped. Smoke billowed. Lightning struck, licking at the boundary with glowing snake tongues. The storm didn’t move.
It pushed.
I held.
The storm melted into nothing.
Ghastek laughed.
I released the magic.
The ground trembled.
Hold.
The budding earthquake died.
A ball of fire appeared in the sky. It hurtled toward us, an enraged inferno of red and yellow, threatening to demolish everything in its path.
Hold.
The impact shook me. The fireball evaporated in midair.
Ghastek grinned at me. “My queen, you have inspired me greatly. I shall now go and do what the Legatus does.”
“Don’t strain anything,” I told him.
“I won’t.”
The vampire picked him up, grasped a metal pole on the side of the tower, and slid down. The other Masters of the Dead followed suit. Pillman lingered.
“Yes?” I asked him.
“I . . .” he faltered.
I let the magic suffuse me. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” he said.
“I’m always afraid,” I told him. “Before every battle. Use the fear. It will make you sharp.”
He nodded, and his vampire took him off the tower.
“You’re starting to scare me,” Desandra said.
“That’s one off the bucket list.” I took a deep breath and yelled at the top of my lungs. “Chernobog! Living darkness, father of monsters, I ask for your aid in battle. I invoke your name. Lend us your power. Those who are afraid, let them pray to you and hear their prayers.”