Magic Burns

Page 66

 

 

 

heavenly. Suddenly I was ravenous. I sat up and clamped the bowl with both hands. And let go, shaking my fingers. It was the temperature of molten lava.

 

“Idiot.” He set the bowl on the blanket before me and handed me a spoon.

 

There are times in life when there is nothing better than a hot bowl of chicken soup.

 

“Thanks.” For the soup and for saving my butt again.

 

“You’re welcome.”

 

“Did you get the surveys? They were…”

 

“On the dresser. Shut up and eat your soup.”

 

Curran took Doolittle’s chair, brought it over by my bed, and sat. If I reached out with my foot, I could touch him with my toes. Entirely too close for comfort. I moved Slayer closer.

 

Curran watched me eat. Sitting like this, relaxed, he seemed almost ordinary: a man slightly older than me, kind of on the handsome side. Except for the eyes. They always gave him away. They were alpha eyes, the eyes of a killer and protector to whom the life of a Pack mate meant everything and the life of an outsider meant nothing. He wasn’t giving me his hard stare now, merely watching. But I wasn’t fooled.

 

I knew how quickly those eyes could drown in lethal gold. I’ve seen what happens when they do.

 

Curran commanded over five hundred shapechangers. Half a thousand souls stuck on the crossroads between beast and man, each a spree-killer waiting to happen. Wolves, hyenas, rats, cats, bears, they were united only by two things: the desire to stay human, and loyalty to the Pack. And Curran was the Pack. They worshipped the ground he walked on.

 

“So that’s the secret,” the Beast Lord said.

 

I froze with the spoon halfway to my mouth. That was it. He had figured out what I was and now he was playing with me.

 

“You okay?” he asked. “Gone a bit pale there.”

 

In a moment he would drop the charade and rip me to pieces. If I was lucky. “Secret to what?”

 

“Secret to shutting you up,” he said. “I just have to beat you till you’re half-dead, then give you chicken soup and”—he raised his hands—“blessed silence.”

 

I went back to the soup. Ha-ha. Very funny.

 

“What did you think I meant?”

 

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “The ways of the Beast Lord are a mystery to a humble merc like me.”

 

“You don’t do humble.”

 

At least he still treated me as if I were on my feet, ready to defend myself, instead of being trapped in a bed, eating chicken soup. Speaking of soup…I set the bowl aside and looked longingly at the tray. I