Gunmetal Magic (21 page)

“As opposed to legal burglary?”

Argh.

I snuck to the door and edged it open. The hallway was empty. Ahhh. Finally things were looking up. I padded out of the door and down to the end of the hallway, where a massive wooden door loomed. Supposedly the office waited behind it. I left the bedroom and jogged to the door. Raphael followed me.

I tried the handle. Unlocked.

“Too easy,” Raphael murmured.

If we got caught, the Pack would have hell to pay.

“No choice now.” I stepped into the office.

The scent of myrrh spiced the air. Rows of brown shelves looked at me, filled with assorted volumes and objects. A brigantine cast in pewter with startling detail. An ancient vase, a statue of a muscular man kneeling. Next to the shelves, a heavy rectangular desk sat on a spare rug, its corners trimmed with golden accents. Three chairs waited for someone to sit down, one behind the desk and two in the corners of the room. Shimmering golden curtains framed the two windows. Decorations of twisted metal hung on the black walls, the most
prominent being metal scales with a moon above them, on the wall directly opposite the desk. The moon’s stylized eyes were closed to mere slits and her mouth smiled.

The place was empty.

Raphael moved past me and checked the windows. I locked the door and slipped behind the desk. From this vantage point, the room took on a new light. Every object within the office had been placed into a precise position oriented with the person behind the desk in mind. The desk was the center of this little cosmos, and the moment I sat behind it, I became the focal point of the room, as if I had assumed a place in the center of some invisible convergence of power. If inanimate objects could worship, the trappings of Anapa’s office would have knelt before me, because I sat in the place of their god.

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Whatever intelligence was at work here, it couldn’t possibly be human. People did not think like this.

Raphael peeled himself from the window and stood by me. “What?”

I beckoned him with my hand. He approached and I took him by the shoulder and tugged him down to my level. “Look at the room.”

He surveyed the office. His eyes widened.

“It’s not just me, is it?” I whispered.

“No.” He bared his teeth. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

I tried the bottom drawer. It opened easily. I rummaged through it. Papers, monthly business statements from the bank…nothing interesting. I tried the top one. Locked.

Raphael pulled a pick from his pocket and threaded it into the lock. He twisted and the lock clicked. Raphael slid the drawer open. A brown leather folder. I plucked it out, put it on the desk and opened it. A clear plastic sleeve shielded a photograph: an ivory bowl carved with figures of people engaged in combat and long vessels with little cabins sailing over the sea of drowned men.

“What do you think the country of origin for this is?”

Raphael was watching the office. “Hell if I know.”

I wished I had Kate with me. She would’ve told me when and where it was made and for what god.

I turned to the next plastic page. This photograph showed an ancient jug made of brown clay with a long conical spout. The tip of the spout had broken off.

“What do you think this is?”

“A piss-pot.”

“That is not a piss-pot. Will you take this seriously?”

“I’m taking this very seriously,” he said under his breath.

I flipped the plastic. A beat up–looking dagger with an ivory handle…Wait a minute.

“I know this.” I tapped the plastic. “I saw it today in the library. Jamar had bought that knife. It’s from Crete and I didn’t see it in the vault.”

I stared at the knife. It was very plain, with a foot-long, curved blade and a simple ivory handle in surprisingly good condition.

Raphael focused on the blade. “It’s ceremonial.”

“How do you know?”

“The blade has never been sharpened.” He drew his finger along the knife’s curved edge. “See? No marks on the metal. Also the profile is wrong. It’s too curved to stab in a forward motion, but if I slashed with this, I couldn’t draw it through the wound all the way. It almost looks like a tourné knife.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a cooking knife for peeling. You remember, we have the set in our butcher block.”

He would have to stop saying “our” sometime. Pointing it out to him now would stop the flow of knife information, though, and I needed his expertise. I knew guns, but Raphael knew knives.

He kept going. “If it was sharpened and shorter, it might be a variation of a karambit, a curved knife from the Philippines. Shaped like a tiger’s claw. I never really saw much use in it—too small and my own claws are bigger. Where was this found, did you say?”

“Crete.”

Raphael frowned. “Cretan knives and swords were typically narrow and tapered, like the Greek kopis.” He turned the picture. Turned it again. “Hmm.”

“What?”

He lifted the picture with the knife pointing down. “Pickaxe.
That’s what it reminds me of. The only way to get the maximum effect of this blade is to stab someone with it straight down.” He raised her fist and made a hammering motion. “Like with an ice pick.”

“Like if someone was tied down and you stabbed them in the heart?”

“Possibly. And Anapa killed four people for that?” Raphael’s voice dripped with derision and rage.

“We don’t know that.” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice. “All we know is that Anapa knew about the knife and it’s important. We don’t know why.” And there was no convenient description of it either. A little card listing its name and special powers would’ve been nice. “It’s a place to start looking.”

I flipped to the end of the book. More artifacts. Nothing else I recognized. The knife had to be the key.

“You matter to me,” Raphael said. “You always did, and not because you were a knight or a shapeshifter.”

Suddenly the game wasn’t funny anymore. “I mattered so much that rather than waiting for me to get my shit together, you found another woman. Let’s be honest, Raphael, get a blowup doll, put a blond wig on her, and she and I would matter about the same to you. Hell, the blowup doll might be better. She won’t talk.” Christ, I sounded bitter.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” he said. “I love you.”

It hurt. You’d think I’d be numb by now.

“Too late. You are about to be engaged.”

“Rebecca doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Raphael, she’s a living, breathing woman. Someone you felt strongly about. Of course, she matters.”

“Rebecca isn’t my fiancée.”

I froze. “Come again?”

“I said, Rebecca is not my fiancée,” he repeated.

“What do you mean, she isn’t ‘my fiancée’? I mean, your fiancée.”

Raphael shrugged. “She’s some gold digger I picked up at a business engagement. Someone must’ve pointed me out to her as a good catch, so she attached herself to me. My mother has been getting on my last nerve with her machinations, and since I had to go to the Bouda House for a barbecue, I took
Rebecca there. After she told Mom that it was very exciting that we all turned into wolves, I explained to my mother that if she didn’t lay off me, someone like Rebecca would be my next mate. Rebecca must’ve overheard me.”

This was not happening.

“You left me,” Raphael said. “No explanation. We had a fight, then we all went to battle Erra, and after she set all of us on fire you disappeared. I thought you were dead. I went to every hospital. I sat in waiting rooms. Every time they would bring in a new charred body, I’d stop breathing because I thought it might be you under all that crusted meat. And what do I get after all that? A note in the mail. Five days later. Five fucking days later, Andrea! ‘Don’t look for me, I have to do something for the Order, I will be back soon.’ A fucking note. No explanation, nothing. You dismissed me from your life and went on your crusade. Now, weeks later, you suddenly decide to call me, like I’m just some mutt who will always be waiting for you.”

I opened my mouth.

“I brought her because I wanted you to know what it felt like. You go through life so hung up on helping people you barely know that you hurt people who actually give a damn. You want the truth about Rebecca? Fine. I barely know her. She was a means to an end. I haven’t even slept with her. I thought about it.”

There were too many words I wanted to say at once.

“Out of spite,” Raphael said. “She kissed me and it didn’t do anything.”

The correct response finally accreted in my mind. I made my mouth move.

“I hate you.”

He spread his arms. “What else is new?”

Everything that churned inside me, everything that hurt and twisted, like a whirlwind of shattered glass in my chest, tore out, shredding through my brave front. “You broke my heart, Raphael!” I snapped. “I cried for hours when I got home last night. It felt like my life was over, you egoistical sonovabitch. And you, you put me through this just to teach me a lesson? Who the hell do you think you are? Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know exactly how much.”

“There is a difference! I
was
one of those charred bodies in a hospital bed. I was out for three days and woke up in a military hospital, chained to my bed. There was an Order’s advocate sitting by my side. I had no choice: either I came with him or I would be taken into custody by the Order and brought to headquarters in leg irons. I got to write two notes, stop by my apartment for ten minutes to grab my clothes, and we were gone. I didn’t even have a chance to make arrangements for Grendel. I had to take the dog with me and they agreed to it only because I would rather fight the lot of them than let the dog starve to death inside my place. I didn’t hurt you on purpose, but you hurt me deliberately. Am I a toy to you?”

His eyes sparked with red. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“You…you asshole! You spoiled baby!”

“Self-centered idiot.”

“Momma’s boy!”

“Stuck-up, self-righteous harpy.”

“I’m so done with you,” I told him through clenched teeth.

“I think I’m tired of doing things your way,” Raphael said lazily. “Don’t expect me to go meekly into the night just because you said so.”

My voice could’ve cut through steel. “If you don’t, I’ll shoot you.”

He snapped his teeth. “You better make it count. One shot will be all you get.”

That challenge burned right through the last of my defenses. My other self spilled out of my human body in a mess of fur and claws, exhaling fury. I snapped my monster teeth at him, my beastkin voice a ragged snarl. “I’ll carve your heart out. You’ll regret the day you were ever born. Of all the selfish, egoistical bastards—”

“And you want me.” He grinned. “You can’t wait to climb back in my bed.”

“Grow up!”

“Look who’s talking.”

The magic slammed into us, like a massive deluge. Wards spilled from the top of the door frame and windows in shimmering curtains of translucent orange. Blue symbols ignited in the corners of the room.

The moon on the wall opened its eyes with a metallic screech.

I dived under the desk and Raphael flattened himself against the wall, under the scales.

“Boudas,” the moon said in Anapa’s amusement-saturated voice. “So predictable. Couldn’t resist snooping around, could you?”

Crap! Crap, crap, crap.

Raphael jerked a curtain off the window and tossed it over the moon.

“That won’t help you,” Anapa said. “Don’t leave. I’ll be right there.”

I lunged out from under the desk and hit the ward on the closest window. Pain burned through me, I blinked, and Raphael pulled me off the floor. My teeth rattled in my skull.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Anapa-Moon said. “I told you not to leave.”

Raphael hurled himself at the window ward. His resistance to magical wards was higher than mine. The defensive spell clutched at him, sharp whips of orange lightning stinging his skin. His body jerked, rigid. His eyes rolled back in his skull.

I grabbed him and pulled him back. The orange lightning kissed me, and I almost blacked out again. We crashed to the floor.

“Fi-fi-fo-fum,” the moon sang. “I smell the blood of hyena man and I’m coming up the staaaairs.”

Raphael’s eyes snapped open. He surged off the floor and looked up.

If we busted through the floor, we’d fall right into the welcoming embrace of his security. Going through the ceiling was our best bet.

“Pick me up!” I called.

He grabbed me and thrust me upward. I punched the ceiling, putting all of my strength into it. The panel broke from the impact of my fist, and I hit the wood beam underneath it.

“What are the two of you up to?” the moon wondered.

I hammered the ceiling with my fist again and again, widening the hole. The wood cracked, then broke under the barrage of my punches. I tore the broken section of the beam out, hurling it aside, and punched the darkness. It tore and the night sky winked at me through the narrow gap. No attic. We
would break out straight onto the roof above. Raphael set me down on my feet, took a running start, and jumped, flipping in midair, kicking at the opening I had made. He landed in a roll as a shower of wooden boards hit the floor. “Go.”

I crossed my arms over my head and jumped. Wood and shingles hit my forearms, and I grabbed onto the roof and pulled myself up. The edge of the roof glowed with magic. On the ground below, huge orange symbols stretched across the luminescent lawn, a pale yellow glow coating every single blade of grass in a sheath of magic. The entire yard around the house was warded and it was a hell of a ward. Great.

Raphael forced his way through the hole behind me.

Landing on the lawn wasn’t an option. The magic could fry us or do something worse. I spun around looking for a tree, a tower, a wall, anything close enough to jump to from the roof.

At the far end of the roof a long cable dived down to the wall that surrounded Anapa’s home.

“Power line,” we barked at each other at the same time.

We dashed along the roof. I danced onto the power line and ran along it, balancing on my oversized feet. One, two, three, tilt, tilt…I leaped on the low stone wall that separated Anapa’s house and yard from the street. Raphael pulled off his shoes, hurled them into the night, took a running start and jumped, catching the power line with his arms. He swung himself back up on it and walked slowly, arms out, suspended between the glowing orange lawn and the black sky.