“You’re right, we should take a nap,” she told him.
He grinned at her.
A sharp forlorn cry rolled above them. She looked up and saw a small blue speck rapidly growing bigger.
“What’s that?”
William swore. “That would be an Air Force wyvern. A small one.”
The speck grew into a huge scaled creature, a cross between a dinosaur and a dragon, sheathed in blue and white feathers. Enormous wings churned the air and the wyvern touched down in the middle of the lawn. A small cabin perched on the back of the wyvern.
Cerise took a towel off the table and thrust it at William. He looked at her like she was crazy.
“Cover yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because most men don’t stand there with their stuff hanging out for all to see.”
William wrapped the cloth around his hips.
The wyvern lay down. The cabin door opened and a man jumped out.
William growled.
“Who is that?”
“That’s Erwin.”
Erwin came up to the house and waved at them. “Lord Sandine. The Mirror requires your services.”
They wanted him to go spy. He would be off in danger on his own. Her throat constricted. No. They hadn’t had nearly enough time together.
“I’ll go get dressed,” William growled.
“Both of you, m’lord.”
“I get to go?” Cerise jumped to her feet.
“Yes, my lady. That is, unless you refuse. Lord Sandine is bound by our agreement, but you are—”
“Save it,” she told him. “I’ll be right there. Let me just get my sword.”
Read on for an exciting excerpt from
the next Kate Daniels novel
MAGIC SLAYS
by Ilona Andrews
Coming June 2011
from Ace Books!
I sat in my new office, between my enchanted saber and a stack of bills, and contemplated my sanity. Right now it was very much in question.
The amount of money I didn’t have was shocking.
The world’s pulse skipped a beat. The twisted tubes of feylanterns in the walls of my office faded to black. The ward that guarded the building vanished. Something buzzed in the wall, and the electric floor lamp on the left blinked and snapped to life, illuminating my desk with a warm yellow glow. I reached over and turned it off. The electric bill was killing me.
Magic had drained from the world, and technology had once again gained the upper hand. People called it the post-Shift resonance. Magic came and went as it pleased, flooding the world like a tsunami, dragging bizarre monsters into our reality, stalling engines, jamming guns, eating tall buildings, and vanishing again without warning. Nobody knew when it would assault us or how long each wave would last. Eventually magic would win this war, but for now technology was putting up one hell of a fight, and we were stuck in the middle, struggling to rebuild a half-ruined world according to new rules.
Lots of people found ways to make money off the magic chaos. First, there was the Mercenary Guild. Mercs cleared magic hazmat for the right price and asked no questions. I had been a member of the Guild for more years than I cared to admit, and although I was still a merc and carried a Guild card with my name, Kate Daniels, printed on it in pretty letters, I hadn’t worked full-time for the Guild in over a year.
Then, there was the Order of Merciful Aid. The Order offered to help everyone, rich and poor, criminal and law-abiding citizen—as long as they were human. Once you entered into a contract with the knights, you gave them broad, sweeping authority over your life to dig as deeply as they needed to resolve the problem. The Order was feared and respected, and I had worked for it as well. I never made a full-fledged knight. One had to graduate from the Academy to do that, and I had dropped out. The best I managed to become was an agent, a half-assed knight, with all of the responsibility but only a fraction of the authority. Still I had a good run there and got to help some people along the way. But the Order had its own agenda: the survival of the human race at any cost. It turned out that our definitions of human didn’t match. I quit.
Two months after my fall from the Order’s grace, I started my own business, Cutting Edge Investigations, bankrolled by the shapeshifter Pack. The shapeshifters had advanced me a very large loan in return for a slice of my currently nonexistent profits. I took out an ad in a newspaper, I put the word out on the street, the office had been open for a month, and so far nobody had hired me to do anything.
I’d thought I had built a decent reputation in Atlanta. Apparently, not decent enough to drum up any business. If things kept going this way, I would be forced to run up and down the street screaming, “We kill things for money.” Maybe someone would take pity and throw some change at me.
The phone rang. I stared at it. You never know. It could be a trick.
The phone rang again. I picked it up. “Cutting Edge.”
“Kate,” a dry voice vibrated with urgency.
Long time no kill. “Hello, Ghastek.” And what would Atlanta’s premier Master of the Dead want with me?
The Masters of the Dead piloted vampires. When a victim of
Immortuus
pathogen died, his mind and ego died with him, leaving only a shell of the body: super-strong, superfast, lethal, and ruled by bloodlust. The Masters of the Dead grabbed hold of that empty mind and drove the vampire like a remote-controlled car. They dictated the vampire’s every twitch; they saw through its eyes, heard through its ears, and spoke through its mouth. In the hands of an exceptional navigator, a vampire was the stuff of human nightmares.
Riding vampire minds was a well-paying business. Ghastek, like 90 percent of navigators, worked for the People, a cringe-worthy hybrid of a cult, business corporation, and research facility. I hated the People with a passion, and I hated Roland, the man who led them, even more.
Unfortunately, beggars couldn’t be choosers. “What can I do for you?”
“A loose vampire is heading your way.”
Crap. Only the will of the navigator kept a vampire in check. Without that restraint, an insatiable hunger drove the bloodsuckers to slaughter. A loose vampire would massacre anything it came across. It could kill a dozen people in half a minute. The city would be a bloodbath.
“What do you need?”
“I’m less than twelve miles behind her. I need you to delay her, until I come into range.”
“From which direction?”
“Northwest. And Kate, try not to damage her. She’s expensive ...”
I dropped the phone and dashed outside, bursting into almost painfully cold air. People filled the street—laborers, shoppers, random passersby hurrying home. Food to be slaughtered. I sucked in a lungful of cold and screamed. “Vampire! Loose vampire! Run!”
For a fraction of a second nothing happened, and then people scattered like fish before a shark. In a breath I was alone.
A thick chain lay coiled on the side of the building. I used it to block my parking lot at night so weirdos wouldn’t park there. Perfect.
I ran inside and swiped the keys off the hook on the wall.
Two seconds to the parking lot.
A second to unlock the padlock securing the chain.
Too slow. I ran, dragging the chain behind me, and dropped it before an old tree.
Three seconds to loop the chain around the trunk and work the other end into a slip knot.
I needed blood to bait the vamp. Lots and lots of blood.
A team of oxen turned the corner. I ran at them, pulling a throwing knife . The driver, an older Latino man, stared at me. His hand reached for a rifle lying on the seat next to him.
“Get off! Loose vampire!”
He scrambled out of the cart. I sliced a long shallow gash down the ox’s flank. It bellowed. Blood dripped on the ground. I ran my hand along the cut. It came off wet with hot crimson, and I waved it, flinging red drops into the wind.
The ox moaned. I grabbed the chain loop.
An emaciated shape leapt off the rooftop. Ropes of muscle knotted its frame under skin so tight that every ligament and vein stood out beneath it. The vampire landed on the pavement on all fours, skidded, its long sickle claws scraping the asphalt with a screech, and whirled. Ruby eyes glared at me from a horrible face. Massive jaws gaped open, showing sharp fangs, bone white against the black mouth.
The vampire charged.
It all but flew above the ground with preternatural speed, straight at the ox, pulled by the intoxicating scent of blood.
I thrust myself into its path, my heartbeat impossibly slow in my ears.
The vamp’s eyes fixed on my bloody hand. I’d have only one shot at this.
The vampire leaped, covering the few feet between us. It flew, limbs out, claws raised for the kill.
I thrust the chain loop up and over its head.
Its body hit me. The impact knocked me off my feet. I crashed to the ground and rolled upright. The vamp lunged at me. The chain snapped taut on its throat, jerking it off the pavement. The bloodsucker fell and sprang up again, twisting and jerking on the end of the chain like a feral cat caught in a dog catcher’s leash.
The ox bellowed in pain. I breathed, short and shallow.
The vampire flipped and lunged in the ox’s direction. The tree shook and groaned. Blood spurted from under the chain on its neck. Either it would snap the tree or the chain would slice its throat.
The bloodsucker threw itself at the ox again and fell to the ground, its leap aborted by the chain. It picked itself up and sat. Intelligence flooded into its burning red eyes. The huge jaws unhinged and Ghastek’s voice came forth.
“A chain?”
“You’re welcome,” I growled, fighting the urge to bend over in relief. Ghastek must’ve gotten close enough to grab the bloodsucker’s mind. “I had to cut an ox to get the vamp fixed on me. The bill is all yours.”
“Of course.”
You bet your ass, of course. An ox cost about a grand. A vampire, especially one as old as this one, went for about thirty times that. And Ghastek didn’t even have to buy a new ox, he just had to pick up the vet bill.
The vampire squatted in the snow. “How did you manage to get a chain on her?”
I sagged against the ox cart. “I have mad skills.” My face was hot, my hands were cold. My mouth tasted bitter. The adrenaline rush was wearing off.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“One of Rowena’s journeymen fainted,” Ghastek said. “It happens. Needless to say, she’s now barred from navigation.”
The journeymen, Masters of the Dead in training, were perfectly aware that if their control over the undead slipped, the vampire would turn the city into a slaughterhouse. They had nerves like fighter pilots pre-Shift. They didn’t faint. There was more to it, but Ghastek’s tone made it clear that getting any more information out of him would take a team of lawyers and a medieval torture device.
Just as well. The less I interacted with the People, the better. “Did it kill anybody?”
“There were no casualties.”
My pulse finally slowed down.
To my right, a humvee swung into the parking lot at a breakneck speed. Armored like a tank, it carried an M240B, a medium machine gun, mounted on the roof. The gunner was pale as a sheet.
“Cavalry,” I said.
The vampire grimaced, mimicking Ghastek’s expression. “Of course. The jocks got all dressed up to kill a vampire, and now they won’t get to shoot the big gun. Kate, would you mind stepping closer? Otherwise they might shoot her anyway.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. I moved to body shield the vampire. “You owe me.”
“Indeed.” The bloodsucker rose next to me, waving its front limbs. “There is no need for concern. The matter is under control.”
A black SUV turned the corner into the parking lot from the left. The two vehicles came to a screeching stop in front of me and the vampire. The humvee disgorged four cops in blue Paranormal Activity Division armor. The taller of the four leveled a shotgun at the vamp and snarled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’ve could’ve killed half of the city!”
The SUV’s door opened and Ghastek stepped out. Thin and somber, he wore a perfectly pressed gray suit with a barely visible pinstripe. Three members of the People emerged from the SUV behind him, a man and two women, a thin brunette and a red-haired woman that looked barely old enough to wear a suit. All three were meticulously groomed and would’ve looked at home in a high-pressure boardroom.
“There is no need to exaggerate.” Ghastek strode to the vampire. “No lives were lost.”
“No thanks to you.” The taller cop showed no signs of lowering the shotgun.
“She is completely safe now,” Ghastek said. “Allow me to demonstrate.” The vampire rose from its haunches and curtsied.