She had a point. With as much as he’d hyped his demonstration of power, I had expected bigger fireworks.
“Nobody will harm my grandchild,” Martha said. “Clan Heavy won’t stand for it.”
I didn’t say anything. Clan Heavy was powerful, but it was only one clan.
“They say a lot of silly things about us wolves.”
Desandra studied the polish on her nails. They were long, sharpened to a point, and bright yellow like the mane of blond hair falling on her back.
“They say we mate for life, that we have lupine dignity, that we are all stoic and sour. Rubbish. But one thing is true. We forget nothing. We remember our friends and our enemies. If the Beast Lord were to betray his friends, well, he wouldn’t be fit to be a leader. If Martha goes for his balls, someone will have to go for his throat.”
Orange light rolled over Desandra’s eyes. She smiled. “Poor Beast Lord,” she purred. “Why, he wouldn’t know where to turn.”
A vampire dashed across the parking lot. Grape purple. What now . . .
“Aiming for the Beast Lady seat?” I asked.
“If they begged me to take it on bended knee, I wouldn’t.” Desandra grinned, baring sharp teeth. “Too much hassle. I’m a single mother. All I want to do is raise my children in peace.”
“And rule the largest clan with iron claws,” I told her.
“These are plastic.” Desandra waved her nails at me.
“Jim knows what he would face,” Martha said. “He isn’t a fool.”
“All the same, I don’t want Conlan near the Keep. And I don’t want him at your clan house. Too much risk for everyone.”
“We will take care of Conlan,” Martha said. “We’ll do it on your street. Don’t worry about it.”
“And Mahon?” I asked.
“What the old bear doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Martha said.
“You do what you need to do,” Desandra said. “We’ll do our part.”
An undead vaulted over the balcony. “In-Shinar!” A desperate note vibrated in Javier’s voice.
“What happened?”
“Rowena failed to check in. We can’t find her or her vampire.”
Damn it.
I got up and closed my eyes. Magic spread before me. I couldn’t find someone I didn’t know. I could detect when a significant power breached my borders, but the sahanu were invisible to me. They didn’t have enough power. I didn’t know them well, but Rowena was related to me by blood, a bond strengthened by friendship and a vow of loyalty. It was a tenuous connection, but it would have to be enough.
The sea of magic waited for me. I had to stir it up. I pulled my power in and released it. The pulse of magic rolled through the city like the toll of a giant silent bell. The floor underneath me shuddered.
Pulse.
Another pulse.
Pulse.
There, a faint trail, something weak, something small and insignificant but carrying traces of Rowena’s magic. Her vampire.
It was on the very edge of my territory, just inside the border, left for me to find. And there was something else. Ancient and scorching, like someone had raked the fabric of the magic with white-hot claws. Neig.
I opened my eyes. “Get Ghastek,” I snarled at Javier. “Get your strike teams. Get the bus. Get everyone.”
* * *
? ? ?
WHEN TEDDY JO carried me into the air, he did it in a contraption he called “the sling” and I called an old playground swing. When Christopher carried me, he picked me up like I was a child. It wasn’t my favorite way to travel, but I needed speed, and he hurtled through the air like a hawk diving for his prey.
We were going southeast, toward Panthersville. The city slid under us, so tiny it seemed unreal. How the hell did people get into planes on a regular basis before the Shift? I did a lot of things well. Heights and flying weren’t among them.
“Would you like me to fly lower?” Christopher asked.
“No.”
What I would have liked was Rowena, safe and sound. I felt as if I were trying to outrun a giant rolling boulder while more boulders fell on me from every side. Whatever was holding me together was wearing thin, and when it broke, there would be hell to pay.
I just had to find Rowena. I had to find her alive, not in a vat of boiling people . . .
The spark of magic was almost directly under us.
“We’re here,” I told Christopher.
His great red wings folded. He went into a dive. Wind tore at me. I shut my eyes.
We swooped and miraculously stopped falling. I opened one eye. Christopher stood in a pasture, holding me. A copse of magnolia trees, their thick branches twisting up, waited in front of us, the boundary of my territory just yards away, beyond the tree line.
Christopher set me down, carefully.
The pasture lay quiet. Insects chirped. Birds sang in the branches, some trilling melody. The heat of summer streamed from a sky so beautifully blue, it almost hurt to look at. The weak “glow” of Rowena’s magic was right in front of me. I pulled Sarrat out of its sheath and walked forward, under the dense canopy.
The sound of someone’s hoarse breathing echoed through the woods, creepy enough to give me nightmares.
A massive tree spread its branches before me. A bloody chain was wrapped around the trunk.
I moved forward, carefully, one foot over the other, circling the tree.
Step. Another step.
The back of the trunk came into view. A dead vampire sagged against the loop of the chain, a massive pike thrust through his heart. Next to it, held in place by the loops of the same chain, a yeddimur sagged against the trunk. Blood stained the fur on its sides where it must’ve tried to gnaw itself free of the chain. Above them, a single word was clawed into the bark. Kings.
“Kings?” Christopher frowned.
I turned in the direction the bloodsucker would’ve looked if it were still alive. It made sense.
Two vampires tore out of the woods and galloped across the pasture, both so old, no sign of upright locomotion remained. They ran on all fours, grotesque ugly creatures, so warped nobody would’ve guessed they’d started out as human. Their sunblock, a deep crimson, looked like fresh blood.
“She isn’t here,” the undead said in unison in Ghastek’s voice, his words sharp enough to cut.
“What’s Rowena’s effective range?”
“Four point six seven miles.”
I pushed through the vegetation to the other side.
“Kate!” he snapped.
The underbrush ended. We stood on the apex of a low hill, fields and woods rolling to the horizon. A column of black smoke stabbed at the sky due southeast.
“Kings Row,” I told Ghastek.
The distant roar of water engines came from the northwest—Curran and the mercs were catching up.
Ghastek’s bloodsuckers streaked down the hill. Christopher took a running start, swept me up, and flew into the sky.
* * *
? ? ?
KING’S ROW, POPULATION around a thousand, was born from the remnants of a fracturing Decatur. Most of the people gave up trying to fight nature fueled by magic steroids and pulled into the city proper, but a few neighborhoods remained, turning into small towns: Chapel Hill, Sterling Forest, and Kings Row. They set up their own post offices and water and guard towers and held on to their land.
Christopher circled the settlement. Kings Row was no more. Nothing remained except for a charred ruin. Black ash hid the ground. Smoke billowed from half a dozen places, greasy and acrid, joining together into a single massive cloud above. Here and there remnants of the fire smoldered, red veins in the black crust. With a fire, some structures would’ve been left standing: fireplaces, brick walls, ruined appliances, burned-out cars . . . There was nothing. Not even the outline of the streets. Only black ash.
He’d taken a thousand people. I didn’t know if they’d died in the fire or if he’d kidnapped them, but they were gone and Neig was to blame.
No more. I needed to get my hands on him now.
And what would I do when I did? I didn’t even know if a blood ward would hold against that.
Christopher took another turn. Something shone through the smoke, a smudged orange glow.