“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.