Magic Rises (12 page)

I turned to Desandra. “Do you want to see your father?”

“Does it matter?” she asked, defeat plain on her face.

“It does to me.”

“Then no. I don’t want to see him.”

Jarek Kral reached the door. This close the photograph really did him justice: same wavy brown hair, same large, roughly hewn face. His features could’ve been more refined, if they weren’t tinted with cruelty. I knew the type. He was the type of man who could explode over the smallest thing and the explosion would be violent.

The sneer was bigger in person as well.

He reached the door. “Move,” he said in an accented voice.

“Your daughter doesn’t want to visit now,” I said.

He stared at me with dark eyes under heavy lids, as if he just now realized I was blocking his way. “Who are you?

“You may call me Kate. I’m the Consort of the Beast Lord.”

“Step aside.” His eyes flashed green.

“No.”

Behind me someone gasped.

His voice boomed. “Who told you you can do this?”

And here we go, straight into the lake of drama without taking our clothes off first.
“You did.” I pulled the contract from my pocket. “This document says I must serve your daughter’s best interests. She determined it’s in her best interests not to speak with you right now. This is your signature. It gives me all the authority I need.”

He snatched the paper from my hand and ripped it.

“I have another copy,” I said.

“I’ll rip out your throat!” he snarled.

Like father, like daughter. “If you try, you won’t live to see your grandchildren and my job will be done. I’ll get to go home early. So please do try. I miss my house already.”

His eyebrows came together. His upper lip trembled.

“An assault on the Consort will be treated as an act of war,” Derek said.

A guttural snarl ripped from Jarek. Clearly, he hadn’t bothered to look up “personal restraint” in the dictionary.

I reached behind me and put my hand on Slayer’s hilt. “This is your last warning. Do not attempt to enter.”

“What’s going on?” A man ran up the stairs. He was blond, tall, and muscular, with features that would make an angel proud—Desandra’s first husband, Radomil, from the Volkodavi pack. A woman followed him, slightly older than me, slender, with a wealth of golden hair braided back from her face.

“Stay out of this!” Jarek snarled. “You’ve done enough.”

Radomil shot back something in a language I didn’t understand. A torrent of words spilled from Jarek.

“You’re a pig!” Radomil snarled back in English. “A filthy pig. Leave Desandra alone!”

“Get out of my way!” Jarek roared.

“If Kral doesn’t abide by the agreement, why should we?” the blond woman said.

I let them scream at each other. It didn’t affect me unless one of them tried to enter the room.

A tall, dark-haired man closed in on us. Where Radomil’s face had a healthy, sun-tanned glow, this man radiated intelligence and weary awareness. He saw Jarek and Radomil. His dark eyebrows came together. His lips narrowed into a hard line. Yellow light rolled over his irises. Uh-oh.

The man accelerated. It had to be one of the Belve Ravennati brothers, but which one I couldn’t tell.

Without slowing down, the Italian raised his fist and swung at Jarek. The big man moved aside and the Italian hammered a punch into Radomil instead. Radomil snarled like an animal and lunged at the Italian.

More people flooded the hallway from the left, an older dark-haired woman in the lead.

Jarek spat something. Radomil and the Italian grappled, snarling.

“If they change shape, we bar the door,” I murmured.

Derek nodded.

Radomil shoved his opponent forward, tripping the Italian. The dark-haired man dropped to the ground with a lupine growl. Any moment now they’d go furry, and then things would be infinitely worse.

An eerie hyena cackle rolled through the hallway, a high-pitched, insane laugh that made you shiver.

Suddenly everyone stopped. Aunt B stood in the hallway.

“So this is what our European brothers and sisters have been reduced to,” she said, her voice carrying through the castle. “Brawling in the hallways like spoiled schoolchildren. No wonder you had to send for our help.”

Go, Aunt B!

The alpha of Clan Bouda looked at the dark-haired woman. “Hello, Isabella. It’s been a long time.”

“Hello, Beatrice,” the dark-haired woman squeezed through her teeth.

“Is that your son on the floor?”

Isabella snapped a short command. The dark-haired man rolled to his feet and strode over to her. Isabella slapped him. The sound rang through the hallway. The Italians turned and left without another word.

I looked at Jarek Kral. He pointed his finger at me, opened his mouth, clamped it shut, turned, and walked away.

The blond woman said something to Radomil. He pulled away from her and stalked off.

“You must forgive my brother,” the blond woman said. “He is a very kind man. He just doesn’t understand politics.” Her eyebrows came together. She pointed over my shoulder. “Who is that man?”

“He is a medic,” Andrea answered.

“A medic? Is something wrong?”

“No,” I said. “He is just performing a routine physical exam.”

She actually looked concerned. “Is he going to draw blood? Desandra, I can hold your hand if you need me.”

“It’s fine,” Desandra called.

I pulled my official Order voice out of the mental trunk where I’d kept it stashed for months, ever since I quit my tenure with the Knights of Merciful Aid. “I’m sorry, I have to ask you to leave.”

“Fine, fine. Just . . . Don’t torture her. She’s been through enough.” The woman turned and hurried down the stairs after Radomil. I glanced over my shoulder. Doolittle was holding a large syringe filled with pinkish liquid. Desandra petted her stomach.

“What is this for?” I asked.

“Amniocentesis,” Doolittle said. “It’s a routine screen of amniotic fluid. We want to make sure everything is proceeding as it’s supposed to.”

Aunt B approached us. “Well, that went nicely.”

“You told my father no,” Desandra said to me.

“Sure.”

“He’ll kill you for it,” Desandra said.

“He may find it much harder than it appears, dear,” Aunt B told her. “Dinner is coming up. Kate, you may want to change. You smell like the sea. You two go. Derek and I will watch after Desandra while you’re changing.”

I turned to Derek. “I will send Eduardo. When Desandra is ready to go, the two of you will follow her. Nobody comes in the room if she doesn’t want to see them.”

“Got it,” Derek said.

“The rooms are just down the hall,” Aunt B said. “Here, I’ll walk partway with you then head back.”

We strode down the hallway.

“I told you so,” Aunt B said quietly.

“Told me what?”

“Please, Kate. The fresh young thing on the pier? She even wore white.”

“And?”

“Nothing at all, dear. Just reflecting on the color. How virginal and bridal.”

Yes. I’d noticed. If they were trying to influence Curran by shoving Lorelei under his nose, they weren’t very subtle about it.

“Yours is the first door on the right. Andrea, you and Raphael are across from them. The rest of us are just down the hall,” Aunt B said. “The sound really carries through here. You can hear practically everything, so if you call we’ll come running.”

Got it. Nothing said in the rooms would be private, and our hosts were likely listening really hard. “Good to know.”

“I’ve checked and the dinner is a formal affair. Do wear a dress, Kate.”

I killed a growl, and Andrea and I went down the hallway.

“We’ve worked worse jobs,” Andrea said.

“Mm-hm. This whole place doesn’t feel right to me.”

“I’m with you,” she said.

We reached my door. I waited until Andrea opened hers across the hall and went inside, and then I stepped into our room and shut the door behind me.

A sizable room, as far as bedrooms went, with tapestries and rugs on the stone walls. An open door offered access to the bathroom on the left. A large wooden poster canopy bed waited in the center, complete with silk pillows and gauzy purple curtains. It looked like something out of the historical romances Andrea liked to read.

Curran came out of the bathroom.

I nodded at the bed. “Someone robbed an ancient music video.”

“I know. It creaks like a sonovabitch, too.”

“Great. If we decide to make love, we might as well just get down to it in the hallway. Half of the castle will know about it anyway.”

Curran closed the distance between us. His voice was a quiet whisper in my ear. “There are no peepholes that I can see, but someone is listening to us. I heard him breathing through the wall.”

So we were trapped in this stone cage, with a pack of unstable shapeshifters, trying to protect a woman in need of urgent psychological help, and spies were listening to our every breath.

I put my arms around Curran and leaned my head against his shoulder. “Have I ever told you how much I like the Keep?”

“No.”

“I love it.”

He grinned. “Even the stairs?”

“Especially the stairs.” The stairs separated our top floor from everybody else, and the walls were soundproof.

He kissed me. His lips sealed my mouth and the world stopped for a long moment. When we came up for air, I didn’t care if anybody was listening to us. Little golden sparks danced in Curran’s eyes. He didn’t care either.

“Do we have time?” he asked.

I looked at the clock. Twenty before ten. “No. We’ll be late.”

“Tonight, then.”

I grinned at him. “It’s a date.”

Guard Desandra, get the panacea, go home. A simple plan. All we had to do was get through it.

* * *

The dinner took place in a colossal great hall, and I walked into it with my hand on Curran’s arm. The Beast Lord wore a black suit and a gray shirt. Curran always stopped me in my tracks, whether he wore jeans and a T-shirt, sweatpants, or nothing at all, but this was new. Custom-cut, the suit flattered him while allowing for freedom of movement, and if he had to change shape, the weak seams ensured that the suit would come apart with minimal effort.

In all of our time together I had seen him in a formal suit exactly twice, including today. Curran could be described in many ways: dangerous, powerful . . . insufferable. “Elegant” usually wasn’t one of the adjectives used, and as he walked next to me, I wished I had a camera so I could commemorate the moment. And then blackmail him with it.

He shrugged again.

“You keep doing it, the suit will fall apart.”

“I should’ve worn jeans.”

“Then I’d look ridiculous next to you.” I should’ve worn jeans, too.

“Baby, you never look ridiculous.”

“Smart man,” Aunt B volunteered behind us.

I wore a black dress. Like Curran’s suit, it was custom-made for me by the Pack’s tailors specifically for the trip. The elastic fabric hugged me like a glove, giving a deceiving impression that it was constraining. The artfully draped skirt fell in straight lines, hiding the fact that it opened enough to let me kick an attacker taller than me in the head, and the diagonal strap over my right shoulder ensured that the dress wouldn’t fall off if I had to move fast. The dress also had to be doing wonders for my butt, because Curran had managed to run his hand down my back twice since we left our rooms.

But even the best dress offered no way to hide Slayer, so I didn’t bother. The dress came with a built-in fabric sheath, lined with leather, and my sword rested securely against my back. I’d left my hair braided. Plain black shoes with a low heel fit my feet like slippers. I would’ve felt better in my boots, but boots didn’t go with the dress. Even I had standards.

I did have to surrender my knives, but I wore a bracelet on each wrist and a long necklace, all made of braided silver. They looked like strips of chain mail and weighed as much. Curran insisted on my new fancy jewelry. Given that we were trapped in a castle filled with hostile shapeshifters I didn’t fight him on it.

Behind us Desandra walked in, sandwiched between Barabas and Derek. Aunt B, Mahon, and George followed, then Andrea and Raphael. Raphael was a picture of urbane elegance in black, while Andrea wore a deep rust-red. It looked like blood and she was a knockout.

Doolittle declined to go to dinner and remained behind in his quarters, and I asked Eduardo and Keira to stay with him as well. This place was making me paranoid. They locked themselves in and barred the door before we left. Hopefully Keira wouldn’t decide to explore her buffalo steak fantasies.

Vast, with towering walls, the great hall seemed cavernous. Four big tables, each large enough to seat at least twenty people, stood in two long lines, leaving a large space between them. Toward the opposite end of the chamber, a head table, shaped like a rectangular horseshoe, waited on a raised platform.

I scanned the room, looking for problems. Three exits: the one we just came through, one on the left, and one on the right, each manned by a pair of djigits. No matter where I sat, unless it was at the head table, my back would be to one of the doors. Ugh.

On the left a discreet stairway led to a minstrel’s gallery, a high indoor balcony that spanned the length of the entire left wall. Shadows shrouded the gallery. I saw no movement, but if I wanted to kill someone, I’d put a sniper up there.

None of this was making me feel warm and fuzzy.

About fifty people milled about the hall, some talking in small groups, others by themselves. Men wore suits and tuxedos. Women wore gowns. Most eyes flashed with a shapeshifter glow. People turned and looked at us, looked at Curran, looked at the handle of my sword protruding over my shoulder. A few men looked lower at my chest. They were shapeshifters and notoriously difficult to kill, while I was a human. The fact that I carried a sharpened strip of metal on my back didn’t worry them any. I was an oddity, the human mate. They appraised me like a horse at a livestock market, and my breasts were clearly making a bigger impression than my sword.

Curran locked his teeth.