“How can I not want to kill him? He’s evil, Andrea. He won’t stop until he grinds everyone under his boot. A city, a state, a country won’t be enough. He’ll keep going until his empire spans the whole planet. He tortures people. He’s been talking to Julie behind my back, trying to subvert her. Why am I having doubts? What is wrong with me?”
“He’s your father. He made you, Kate. He’s your link to your family, the only link you have. And he loves you in his own twisted way. I saw the way he looked at you when you claimed the city. He was practically bursting with pride. If you manage to stab him in the heart, he’ll be proud of you with his dying breath. Of course, you’re having doubts. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Did you expect me to sugarcoat it? I’m your best friend. I’m in the business of telling it like it is. He’s a horrible monster, but he loves you and he’s trying to be a decent dad. It’s just that normal people’s decent and his decent aren’t on the same planet. Can you even kill him? I mean, do you know how and are you able to physically do it?”
“No and probably not.” Judging by the storm today, I had a long way to go. “I’m not even sure I can use power words against him. They are the best I’ve got, and the last time I used one against something with magic similar to Roland, my brain nearly exploded.”
“Crap.” She rubbed her stomach again. “Don’t get frustrated. There is always a way. What about the ifrit’s box? Can you trap or banish him with something similar?”
“Again, I don’t know how. I tried to figure out how the box works, but it’s too complicated and it operates on divine power. It took a lifetime of faith. Even Luther struck out with it. We don’t understand enough about how it was made and we no longer have it.”
“Okay, who can you ask besides Luther?”
“I’ve asked everybody.” I threw my napkin onto the table. “There are no answers out there, Andrea. I’ve looked through all the books, I’ve done all the research, and I don’t have any way to contain him.”
“You’re letting him get to you. You’re like a walking mythological encyclopedia, Kate. You pull random mystical crap out of your head and figure out that a giant monster nobody has seen on the face of the planet for three thousand years is allergic to hedgehogs and then you find a cute hedgehog and stab the monster in the eye with it.”
“Where do you even get this shit?”
“I’m giving you a theoretical example. There has to be something, some talisman, some spell, some creature, something that he has a weakness to.”
“I’m his weakness. He hid those thirty crosses from me, because he wanted to be a good father and he didn’t want me to get upset. He isn’t killing me in the visions. He’s killing my husband and my child!”
Two women at the far table glared at me. I looked back at them and they decided to glare somewhere else.
“The only person who was close enough and who could have known about his weakness is Erra, and I killed her. I’d ask my grandmother, but she’s too far gone—she’s an elemental presence, not a person. She doesn’t answer questions. She . . . feels.”
“Too bad you didn’t ask your aunt more questions before you killed her . . .”
Andrea flinched and tensed.
“What is it?”
“We need to go to the Keep.”
“Why?”
Panic shivered in her eyes. “The baby is coming.”
“Now?”
“Yes, right now!”
Shit. I threw money on the table. “Can you make it down the stairs?”
She growled. “I’m a fucking former knight of the Order. Go get the car.”
I sprinted out of the building to the car. The magic was down and the gasoline engine purred as soon as I turned the key. I roared out of the parking lot and screeched to a stop before the building. Andrea stumbled out. I jumped out, threw the back door open, and stuffed her into the backseat.
“I can get us to Memorial in twenty minutes. Hold on.”
“No! We have to get back to the Keep. This is a high-risk pregnancy. Doolittle thinks I might die in labor.”
Damn it all to hell and back. I ran around the car, landed in the driver’s seat, buckled up, and floored it. “How is it that Doolittle let you out?”
“He didn’t. I escaped.”
“What? You told me he knew where you were.”
“He did. I left him . . . a note . . . It’s more like he knew where I wasn’t . . . Argh, hurts like a sonovabitch.”
“After you deliver this baby, I’m going to kill you. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I’d been in the damn infirmary for two weeks and if I didn’t get out, I’d bash my head against the wall. You don’t understand. Physically I’m fine. It’s only the labor that might be the problem. All I did was sit in there and think about my baby going loup. I had to get out.”
“You hold on to that baby.” I rocketed down the street like a bat out of hell, bouncing on every pimple in the pavement. “I don’t know anything about delivering babies.”
“I don’t want you to deliver my baby. I want you to drive! Please drive.”
She was breathing like a marathon runner. I glanced into the rearview mirror. Sweat drenched her face.
I drove like all the hounds of hell were chasing me.
? ? ?
THE KEEP WAS an hour away on a good day. I made it in forty minutes.
“Almost there.”
“I can’t hold on any longer.” She was soaked in sweat. Her skin had gone sallow.
I barreled on down the narrow road, right past a Pack sentry. The gates to the courtyard stood wide open, showing the yard filled with shapeshifters, and I drove right into it. People dashed away from the speeding car, parting like waves . . . except one. Jim blocked my way. His eyes told me he wasn’t moving.
I slammed on the brakes.
Do not kill the Beast Lord, do not kill the Beast Lord . . .
The car slid forward and stopped a mere foot from Jim.
He yanked the driver’s door open. “What the hell . . .”
“She’s going into labor!”
He saw Andrea and roared, “Clear the way to the medward!”
Raphael shot out of the tower gates, scooped his wife out of the backseat, and ran into the tower.
“We’ve been looking for her for the last hour. Doolittle got so pissed off, he couldn’t even talk. He just made animal noises. What were you thinking, taking a pregnant woman on bed rest out for a stroll?” Jim’s eyes blazed.
Typical. It’s all my fault. “She picked me up.”
“Then you should’ve driven her right back to the Keep.”
“Me and what army? I’d like to see you try to take the keys from her.”
Ahead Andrea screamed.
I jumped out of the car and chased after Raphael.
? ? ?
WAITING WAS THE hardest part. They took Andrea into the medward, behind two sets of soundproof doors that muffled her screams. Raphael went in with her and when he’d carried her through the doors, I glimpsed Doolittle in his wheelchair and Nasrin, his second-in-command, attended by three nurses and a burly shapeshifter who looked like he could crush cement blocks into powder with his bare hands. I had to stay in the waiting area, a spacious room with an abundance of big pillows and soft couches.