I started sniffing. “What the hell is that stink? Oh, wait a minute, it’s you. You reek. Did you dine on skunk or is that your natural odor?”
“That’s enough,” Mahon roared, startling both of us into silence. “You’re acting like children. Curran, you’ve missed your meditation, and you need one. Kate, there is a punching bag in your room. Make use of it.”
“Why do I have to punch the bag while he meditates?” I mumbled on the way out.
“Because he breaks the bags when he punches them,” Mahon said.
I was almost to the room when it occurred to me that I had obeyed Mahon without question or even doubt. He had that eternal father-thing about him that managed to throw me off track every time. There was no defense against it or at least I didn’t know of one. He didn’t use it when he fought with Curran. I tried to figure out why while I dutifully punched the bag. My punches were rather pathetic. Then exhaustion settled in. A mere twenty minutes later I gave up, took a shower, and fell onto my bed without finding an answer.
CHAPTER 10
SOMEONE STOOD OVER ME. MY EYES SNAPPED OPEN and Curran’s face slammed into focus. He leaned against the wall next to the bed looking at me.
“What?”
“He called,” Curran said.
I sat up in bed. “He decided he wants a fight?”
“Yeah. He put Derek on the line. He broke the kid’s legs and is keeping him in the leg irons so the bones can’t heal.”
Better and better. “Bono give you any terms?”
“Me, the Crusader, and you. Tonight.”
How nice. A party for the top three on the upir’s most wanted list. “Where?”
“South-eastern ley point. He says he’ll let us know from there.”
“Are you bringing backup?”
“No,” he said. He didn’t mention any reasons but I knew them all: his word, his pride, his duty, the fact that the upir would kill Derek. Any one of those would do.
I rubbed the sleep from my face. “What time is it?”
“Noon.”
The patrols caught me at seven in the morning and I had gone to bed around eight, which gave me a grand total of four hours of sleep. “When do we have to leave?”
“Seven thirty.”
I lay back down, pulled the blanket up, and yawned. “Fine, wake me up at seven then.”
“So you’re coming?”
“Did you expect me to hide here?”
“He referred to you as his little snack.”
“He’s a sweetie.”
“He’s also all about screwing you.”
I raised my head enough to look at him. “Look, Curran, what do you want from me?”
“Why does he want to mate with you?”
“I’m a good lay. Go away, please.”
Curran brushed my quip aside. “I want to know why he’s got a hard-on for getting you knocked up.”
There was a pun in that sentence somewhere but he didn’t look like he was in the mood to notice. “How should I know?” I said. “Maybe the idea of torturing my child gets him hot. I’ve had four hours of sleep. I need at least four more, Curran. Go away.”
“I will find out.” He made it sound like a threat.
“You read too much into it.”
He peeled himself from the wall. “How will I find the Crusader?”
“He’ll be here in a couple of hours. He thought he’d get an invitation. Please don’t take his weapons away this time. He comes of his own will.”
Curran walked out. I took a deep breath and forced my mind to go blank.
NICK WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR AT TWENTY minutes till four. I was awake and putting on my boots.
He closed the door and leaned against it. His face had gained stubble and his hair looked greasy again.
“What do you do to your hair?”
“Dust, hair gel, and a little gun oil.”
“Ever thought of patenting the recipe?”
“No.”
I stood up. He locked the door and took a leather roll from the inside of his trenchcoat. He put it on the table, untied the string securing it, and unrolled it with a snap. Inside lay two yellowish blades, one almost a foot long and the other about the size of my hand. I picked up the larger one. It was filed from a human femur split in half, and a long groove ran along the center of the blade where the bone marrow had been.
“Too heavy,” I murmured.
“And brittle,” he said softly. “I broke four.”
“Why didn’t you have one when you and Bono fought over Derek?”
His eyes flashed. “I did,” he said. “It shattered in my coat when he kicked me.”
I ran my finger along the blades. Considering how little time he had, they were amazingly well made.
“I won’t get anywhere near him with this one.” I put the large blade down and picked up the smaller one. With this one I’d have to get close to the upir. Very close.
“You get one shot,” Nick said.
I nodded and tucked it into my knife sheath.
“You still have the sphere?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Still planning to use it?”
My hand twitched to check the comforting weight of the metal in my pocket. Somewhere deep down I knew I wouldn’t use it. I would fight to the end, fight until he would be forced to cut me to pieces. I would make him kill me if I had to. After all I was only human. It wouldn’t take much.
I glanced at Nick and realized he knew exactly what I was thinking. “Only if I have no choice,” I said.
I RODE ONE OF THE PACK’S HORSES, A SOLID, THICK-MUSCLED creature of undeterminable shade somewhere halfway between mud and soot. He pounded the ground with his hooves as if suspecting that the thin layer of soil masked a nest of wriggling snakes and he could get at them if he just stomped hard enough.
“Wind,” the surly werewolf had told me after presenting me with the reins. Given that I had smothered his face with wolfsbane less than twenty-four hours ago, I wasn’t high on his list of favorite people. “His name’s Wind.”
I had thought of asking him what possessed someone to give this illegitimate offspring of a knight’s war stallion and an oversized plow horse a star-of-the-racetrack name but had decided against it. Now Wind was merrily pounding his way through the darkened city at the velocity of a tired speed walker. Curran’s howling jeep wasn’t even getting a workout and Nick I couldn’t see. His red gelding had taken off at the first snarl of the magic-powered engine and insisted on maintaining the distance.
I patted the charger’s neck. “At least you’re not skittish.”
Might just as well have screamed into a tornado. The bloody jeep drowned any sound in its tortured battle for sonic supremacy.
The magic was thick and growing thicker, flooding the sleepy city with untapped power. It mixed with the light of the old moon, swirling in the alleys, churning among the ruined carcasses of gutted buildings, feeding on
