“We win the old-fashioned way,” he said. “We outthink him and we fight. We’ll do what we always do.”
It wouldn’t be enough, but if I said that, he’d tell me we wouldn’t find out until we tried. That’s what I would’ve said back to him.
“It could be worse,” he said.
“How?”
“We could be fighting him and your aunt.”
My memory served up Erra dying on the snow.
“She talked to me before she died.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Live long, child. Live long enough to see everyone you love die. Suffer the way I did.’”
In that moment on the snow, exhausted and bleeding, all I cared about was killing her and making sure Curran and I survived. Now I finally got it.
“She didn’t want to go through all this again.” I glanced at the woods in front of us. “The land, my father’s mind games, killing people . . . I think she decided she was done and the only way it would be over was if she died or he did. She let me kill her.”
And I was a lot like my aunt. More than I cared to admit. Neither of us was well suited for diplomacy. The only reason I had lasted this long was because both Curran and Barabas pulled me back from the edge whenever I tried to charge it. My father had to have realized that left to my own devices, I’d snap and attack him.
“Your aunt fought plenty,” Curran said. “Besides, Roland was the one who told you that. I don’t trust his bullshit.”
“Well, it bit him in the ass. I told him that even his own sister didn’t want to live in the world he made.”
Curran laughed.
“What?”
“You always know how to get under someone’s skin.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s your superpower. Trust me, I know.”
He looked at me and laughed harder.
“What?”
“I love when you bare your teeth at me. All the shapeshifter living has been rubbing off on you. You’d make such a cute shapeshifter.”
“I will fucking throw you off this tower.”
“You and what army?” He spread his arms. “Give it all you’ve got, baby.”
I thought about it and shook my head.
The smile vanished from his face. “Okay, now I am worried.”
Live long enough to see everyone you love die.
She must’ve loved someone. She must’ve mourned him. She talked about her sons and having to kill them when they turned into homicidal psychopaths . . .
It hit me like a freight train. Wow.
This was a very stupid idea. An idiotic, stupid, suicidal idea.
Find a Rubicon to cross. I’ll show you a Rubicon. This wasn’t just crossing it, this was setting it on fire and blowing it up.
“Do you remember when we went to the Black Sea and you pretended to be infatuated with Lorelei?”
“Not that again.” His face shut down.
“I’m going to do something very dangerous and stupid. I’ve done some idiotic things in my life, but this takes the cake.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
Gold rolled over his eyes. “What do you mean, no?”
“If I tell you, you will stop me from doing it.”
“Now you have to tell me.”
I shook my head. “I’m calling in the Lorelei favor. You have to let me run with this.”
“Kate!”
“No.” He would blow a gasket. If someone had told me my brilliant idea an hour ago, I’d have laughed and then bashed their face in.
“Tell me.”
He was a cat and a control freak. It was killing him not to know.
“No. But I wanted to be up front and tell you that I have a plan and I’m going to have to leave the city for a few days.” If I just disappeared, he would freak out and tear Atlanta apart to find me.
The beginning of a snarl rumbled in his throat. “You will tell me.”
“Curran, please don’t fight with me. Please. I’m at the end of my rope and I just saw the light at the end of the tunnel.”
He snarled, frustration exploding out of him. “Fine. Am I allowed to help with your crazy scheme?”
“Can you rescue Saiman?”
“If I rescue Saiman, will you tell me?”
“If you rescue Saiman and things work out, it will all be in the open by the time I come back.”
He circled me, stalking. “Or you could tell me now.”
“My father thinks he has it all figured out. He’s pushed us into a corner. He thinks we’re trapped. But he doesn’t get to win, Curran. He doesn’t get to win. He won’t destroy Baby B’s world, he won’t get to ruin our marriage, and he won’t . . .”—get his hands on our son—“. . . he won’t win. I won’t let him.”
“That’s better,” he said, and his smile had a vicious edge to it. “That’s my Kate.”
He closed the distance between us fast and kissed me.
“I love you,” I told him.
“I will bring you Saiman,” he said. “I promise you, he’ll be alive. And then you will tell me everything.”
“Yes,” I promised. “I will.”
CHAPTER
5
WE WENT DOWNSTAIRS and split up. Curran went to catch up with old friends, while I went to the guard station and asked to use their phone. They let me into an empty conference room and closed the door.
I dialed Sienna’s number. She picked up on the first ring.
“Yes?”
“Look into my future.”
Silence.
Sienna’s ragged whisper filled the phone, distant. I couldn’t make it out.
She gasped. “He’s coming . . . Fly higher, horse. Higher! The bridge . . . Don’t let go, Kate . . .”
The phone went silent. A flying horse. Was I riding a flying horse? I sure hoped not. Heights weren’t my favorite. There was a bridge in Mishmar . . .
“What did you do?” she whispered.
“It’s not what I did. It’s what I decided to do. Does the city burn?”
“Kate, this is a path of sacrifice . . .”
“Sienna, does the city burn?”
“It may. But it may not. You’ve made the future murky.”
I would take murky. Murky was great. “Good.”
“Kate, wait. As I’m looking into your future, so is Roland. It makes no sense that he wouldn’t. I don’t know if he does it himself or if he has someone do it for him, but either way, your father will know very shortly that things have shifted and are uncertain.”
And he will likely do his best to knock me back on the course most convenient to him. “So keep going and watch out for my father. Got it.”
“In one of the flashes I caught, I saw you die tomorrow. The head may cause a problem. Be very careful.”
The head? What head? I almost asked her and stopped myself. I’d gone down this twisted path a few times. Knowing too much about the future made things more complicated, not less.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Good luck, In-Shinar.”
She hung up. I hung up too and stared at the phone. Shinar was the name of my father’s old kingdom, the one that started it all. And I had zero clue what Sienna meant by that. Asking her would only lead to more trouble. Oracles never explained things. You asked them a question and they gave you an oddly shaped piece of a puzzle that didn’t fit anywhere and explained nothing until it was too late.
I didn’t have time to sit here and puzzle things out. I had to talk to Jim and convince him to go along with my plan. He would just love that talk.
• • •
DURING HIS TIME as Beast Lord, Curran never kept a formal office. He had a space nominally assigne
d to be his office, but he was never in it and avoided any attempt to enter it like the plague. When he had a backlog of paperwork to go through, he’d spread out at some table, preferably in close proximity to food. Jim kept an actual office at the end of the eighth floor. As I approached, I saw him through the wide open doors sitting at the desk, reading something from a manila folder.
A pair of guards were posted by the doors. I stopped and nodded at both of them. They used to be Curran’s and my guards.
“Let her in,” Jim called without looking up from his reading.
I walked past the guards into the office and sat in the chair in front of him. It was a nice office, spacious, with a plain wooden floor and its own private balcony. The sunlight streaming through the large windows made the severe stone feel airy. Shelves lined the walls, the books and files neatly arranged. Jim’s massive desk was organized with military precision. Unlike most people, Jim clearly didn’t have the compulsion to fill every horizontal surface with things he might one day need and papers he should throw away.
“Yes?” Jim asked.
“I need to have a private conversation.”
He glanced up. “John, Ramona, go grab something to eat.”
The two guards left without saying a word.
“Roland has Saiman.”
Jim smiled, showing me sharp white teeth. Saiman was on Jim’s kill when not needed anymore list. Saiman might have managed to secure Friend of the Pack status for himself, but the moment he did something to piss off the Pack, he’d feel Jim’s claws around his spine and Jim’s fangs on his throat.
“He’s a resident of Atlanta, so Curran and I will retrieve him.”
“You and Curran can do whatever you like. The Pack won’t get involved. There is no benefit for us. If this is what you came to talk about, this will be a short conversation.”
Ass. “No, I’m laying the groundwork. I went to see my father, as you know.”
“You pissed him off.” Jim studied me.
Yep, the scout had reported to him already.
“Yes. He refuses to return Saiman, which forces me to act. He can’t handle the fact that I’m here and I have autonomy. He’s unable to deal with another authority, especially because I’m his daughter.”
“I’m still waiting to hear how any of this concerns me.”
“The Witch Oracle has been looking into the future repeatedly, over the past month. They predict a war. It will go one of two ways. One, my father kills Curran, the Pack is slaughtered, the city burns, the witches die.”
His face betrayed no emotion.
“Two, my father kills my son. Impales him on a spear. The Pack is slaughtered, the city burns, the witches die. I saw the visions. Hell on Earth is coming.” I leaned back. “We have four weeks before the first possibility might come to pass.”
Silence lay between us, heavy like a brick.
“Do you have a plan?” he asked.
“Yes. I need my aunt’s blood and bones.”
“Why?”
“So I can take them to Mishmar.”
He stared at me. A muscle jerked in his temple. Oh no. I’ve given the Beast Lord apoplexy. That seemed to be my calling in life.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m trying to decide if I really heard what you said or if somehow my brain quit on me and I hallucinated.”
“Take your time.”
“Mishmar. Your father’s hellish prison he cobbled together from the remains of office buildings from Omaha, which he destroyed. The Mishmar that’s stuffed to the brink with mutated vampires. That Mishmar.”
“Yes.”
“You barely got out alive from Mishmar the last time, and you had Curran, me, two alphas, one of the best fighters in the Pack, the best Master of the Dead in Atlanta, and Nasrin, the miracle-working medmage. You even had a guide. We still barely escaped.”
“I’m not going in deep. Only to my grandmother’s body.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
“I’m going to bring my aunt’s remains to my grandmother and beg for her help.” Every convincing lie had some truth to it.
“You told us your grandmother is an entity beyond this world. She is filled with grief and rage and you want to take your aunt’s bones there. Did you forget that you killed your aunt? You stabbed her in the eye. What is your grandmother going to say about that? Are you expecting a warm family reunion?”
“Jim, my aunt was the City Eater. She was larger than me, stronger than me, and a magical powerhouse. She wanted to die with honor and she let me take her life. It was her choice. I was a conveniently honed tool in the right place at the right time.”
“And you think the insane thing that’s your grandmother will understand all that?”
“Yes.” No, but it didn’t matter. If I told him my actual plan, he would think I was insane.
“Did you run any of this by Curran?”
“I told him I was about to do something idiotic and dangerous, and he told me to go ahead and let him know if he could help in any way.”
“I don’t understand your relationship.”
“You don’t have to. Jim, I’m desperate. I can’t protect the city. I can’t even protect the man I love or our child, if the visions are true. Today, right now, this is our chance to make sure Atlanta doesn’t become another Omaha. Or we can move. Every time Roland gets near, we’ll scoot a little farther west, until we end up in San Francisco.”
Jim grimaced. When you’re hitting home, keep going. I plowed on ahead.
“We both know that empires are built on trade routes and good logistics. Right now he’s landlocked in the Midwest. He wants access to a port. He can’t go west, because he’d have to clear mountains and a desert. He can’t go down to Mississippi. Nobody wants to mess with Louisiana, because the native magic is too strong there and because his ships would have to clear the gulf, which is full of ship-eating things. That leaves him with the Eastern Seaboard. If he swings north, he will have to fight the federal government and he isn’t ready for it. His only logical choice is Atlanta. It’s the key to the entire South. He can’t have this city. He will drain it dry and I don’t mean financially. I mean magically. If he claims it, he’ll feed on it like a leech to boost his own power. You remember the Lighthouse Keepers. You know what happens when someone’s magic is completely drained. Help me to keep this from happening.”
He sighed. “What do you need?”
“The Pack has my aunt’s body and blood. I’ll need to pick it up so I can transport it to Mishmar.”
“I couldn’t keep you from taking it anyway,” Jim said. “You’re next of kin.”
“I know.” Georgia’s legal code specifically stated that the bodies of all shapeshifters had to be returned to their families. The Pack had lobbied for this law to be passed. Curran had wanted it in place to make sure that no shapeshifter organs were sold on the black market. Because the law had originated from him, the Pack also codified and honored it, extending it to all Pack members rather than only shapeshifters. At the time I stabbed my aunt in the eye, I was a member of the Pack.
“I wanted you to know why.”
Jim’s face was grim. “And the Oracle thinks the battle is inevitable?”
“Yes.”
His expression turned darker. I knew what he was thinking. To evacuate or not to evacuate. He’d have to make a decision regarding sending the children out of the Keep. He’d have to decide if he should pull in his forces to fight or scatter them to keep the casualties low. I’ve been in that precise spot before. The weight of every decision was enough to crush your spine.
“If I go to the Witch Oracle, will they show me the vision?” he asked.
“You can ask. There is no harm in it. All they can do is say no. Will you have the remains in some sort of portable form?”
“I’ll loo
k into it. Kate, don’t think that it’s you against him. That’s how you talk about it, but it’s not true. He’s by himself, but you have all of us. We’re in it together and we’ll stand against him together. You have a lot of goodwill in this city.”
“Thanks, Jim.” That was unexpected.
“And if you ever turn into your father and feed on this city like a leech, I will kill you.”
Really? Not even in your wildest dreams. “If I ever turn into my father, you will kneel and pledge yourself to me, Jim. And you will be happy doing it.”
His expression turned flat.
I winked at him, got up, and left. That wasn’t the smartest thing to say, but I was getting sick of people threatening me and he had no room to talk. Let him chew on that reality check.
• • •
OUR HOUSE WAS dark. No lights on except for a feylantern. I gave it the evil eye.
“Julie’s avoiding me.”
“Can you blame her?” Curran asked. “She knows she’s in trouble. She’s hoping you’ll cool off.”
“Avoiding me makes me more pissed off. Eventually, I’ll go and find her, and she won’t like it.”
“No, you won’t,” he said. “You’re too busy with—what was it again you were going to do?”
“Ha. Ha. Nice try.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
The door in the house across from us opened. The place used to belong to my human nemesis, but she and her husband decided that we had poisoned their entire neighborhood and moved out. George and Eduardo snapped up their house. Curran had offered them one of the spare homes he had purchased, and initially they moved into the place next to Barabas. But once our neighbors put their house on the market, George and Eduardo walked through it and had to have it. I never asked where the money to buy it came from, but Mahon and Martha visited them often and Eduardo let it slip that they had no mortgage.
George stepped out onto the porch and waved at us. “Hey you, we have dinner!”
Curran’s eyes lit up. “They have dinner.”
I laughed and followed him out of the car to the house. The magic was so strong tonight. I could’ve stayed here on the street so I could feel it spread through my land and sense all the things within my borders soak it in.