Hex Appeal

RETRIBUTION CLAUSE by ILONA ANDREWS

Adam Talford closed his eyes and wished he were somewhere else. Somewhere warm. Where cool waves lapped hot yellow sand, where strange flowers bloomed, and birdsong filled the air.

“Take off the watch! Now!” a male voice barked into his ear. “You think I am fucking with you? You think I am playing? I’ll rip your flesh off your body and make myself a skin suit.”

Adam opened his eyes. The three thugs who pinned him to the brick wall looked half-starved, like mongrel dogs who’d been prowling the alley, feeding on garbage.

He should never have wandered into this side of Philadelphia, not in the evening, and especially not while the magic was up. This was Firefern Road, a place where the refuse of the city hid out among the ruins of the ravaged buildings, gnawed by magic to ugly nubs of brick and concrete. The real predators stalked their prey elsewhere, looking for bigger and meatier scores. Firefern Road sheltered scavengers, desperate and savage, eager to bite, but only when the odds were on their side.

Unfortunately, he had no choice.

“You have the cash,” Adam said, keeping his voice low. “Take it and go. It’s a cheap watch. You won’t get any money for it.”

The larger of the thugs pulled him from the wall and slammed him back into the bricks. The man bent over him, folding his six-foot-two frame down to Adam’s five feet five inches, so their faces were level, forcing Adam to stare straight into his eyes. Adam looked into their blue depths and glimpsed a spark of vicious glee. It wasn’t about the money anymore. It was about domination, humiliation, and inflicting pain. They would beat him just for the fun of it.

“The watch, you little bitch,” the thug ordered.

“No,” Adam said quietly.

A muscular forearm smashed into his neck, cutting off his air. Bodies pressed against him. He felt fingers prying at the metal band on his narrow wrist. His heart hammered. His chest constricted.

Think of elsewhere. Think of blue waves and yellow sand …

Someone yanked at the band. The world was turning darker—his lungs demanded air. Pain shot through his limbs in sharp, burning spikes.

Blue waves … Azure … Calm … Just need to stay calm …

Cold metal broke his skin. They were trying to cut the watch off his wrist. He jerked and heard the crunch of broken glass. Two tiny watch gears flew before his eyes, sparking with residual traces of magic.

Imbeciles. They’d broken it.

The magic chain that held his body in check vanished. The calming visions of the ocean vanished, swept away by an avalanche of fury. His magic roared inside him, ancient, primal, and cold as a glacier. Frost clamped his eyebrows, falling off in tiny snowflakes. The short blond hairs rained down from his head, and pale blue strands grew in their place, falling down to his shoulders. His body surged, up and out, stretching, spilling out into its natural shape. His outer clothes tore under the pressure as his new form stretched the thick spandex suit he wore underneath to its limit. His feet ripped the cheap cloth Converse sneakers. The three small humans in front of him froze like frightened rabbits.

With a guttural roar, Adam grasped the leader by his shoulder and yanked him up. The man’s fragile collarbone broke under the pressure of his pale fingers, and the man screamed, kicking his feet. Adam brought him close, their eyes once again level. The thug trembled and fell silent, his face a terrified rigid mask. Adam knew exactly what he saw: a creature, an eight-foot-tall giant in the shape of a man, with a mane of blue hair and eyes like submerged ice.

Inside him, the rational, human part of Adam Talbot sighed and faded. Only cold and rage drove him now.

“Do you know why I wear the watch?” he snarled into the man’s face.

The thug shook his head.

“I wear it so I can keep my body in my tracking form. Because when I’m small, I don’t draw attention. I can go anywhere. Nobody pays me any notice. I’ve been tracking a man for nine days. His trail led me here. I was so close, I could smell his sweat, and the three of you ruined it for me. I can’t follow him now, can I?” He shook the man like a wet rag. “I told you to walk away. No. You didn’t listen.”

“I’ll listen,” the thug promised. “I’ll listen now.”

“Too late. You wanted to feel big and bad. Now I’ll show you what big and bad is.”

Adam hurled the human across the alley. The thug flew. Before he crashed into a brick ruin with a bone-snapping crunch, his two sidekicks turned and fled, running full speed. Adam vaulted over a garbage Dumpster to his right and gave chase.

Ten minutes later, he returned to the alley, crouched, dug through the refuse with bloody fingers, and fished out his watch. The glass and the top plate were gone, displaying the delicate innards of gears and magic. Hopelessly mangled. Just like the thug who still sagged motionless against the ruin.

The alley reeked with the scavenger stench: fear, sweat, a hint of urine, garbage. Adam rose, stretching to his full height, and raised his face to the wind. The hint of Morowitz’s scent teased him, slightly sweet and distant. The chase was over.

Dean Morowitz was a thief, and, like all thieves, he would do anything for the right price. He’d stolen a priceless necklace in a feat of outrageous luck, but he didn’t do it on his own. No, someone had hired him, and Adam was interested in the buyer much more than in the tool he had used. Breaking Morowitz’s legs would probably shed some light on his employment arrangements, but it would inevitably alarm the buyer, who’d vanish into thin air. Following the thief was a much better course of action.

Adam sighed. He had failed. Tracking the thief now would be like carrying a neon side above his head that read, POM INSURANCE ADJUSTER. He’d have to give Morowitz a day or two to cool off, then arrange for a replacement watch to hide his true form before trying to find the man again.

A mild headache scraped at the inside of Adam’s head, insistent, like a knock on his door.

He concentrated, sending a focused thought in its direction. “Yes?”

“You’re needed at the office, Mr. Talford,” a familiar female voice murmured directly into his mind.

“I’ll be right there,” he promised, rose to his full height, and began to jog, breaking into the long-legged distance-devouring gait that thousands of years ago carried his ancestors across the frozen wastes of the old North.

Night was falling. Anyone with a crumb of sense cleared from the streets or hurried to get home, behind the protection of four walls, barred windows, and a sturdy door. The rare passersby scattered out of his way. Even in post-Shift Philadelphia, the sight of an eight-foot-tall human running full speed in skin-tight black spandex wasn’t a common occurrence. He drew the eye, Adam reflected, leaping over a ten-foot gap in the asphalt. He pounded up the wooden ramp onto the newly built Pine Bridge, spanning the vast sea of crushed concrete and twisted steel that used to be the downtown.

The bridge turned south, carrying him deeper into the city. Far in the distance, the sunset burned out, couched in long orange clouds. The weak light of the dying sun glinted from the heaps of broken glass that used to be hundreds of windows. The cemetery of human ambition.

Human beings had always believed in apocalypse, but they expected the end of the world to come in a furious flash of nuclear cloud, or in environmental disaster, or perhaps even on a stray rock falling from the universe beyond. Nobody expected the magic. It came during one sunny afternoon, in broad daylight, and raged through the world—pulling planes from the sky, stealing electricity, giving birth to monsters. And three days later, when it vanished, and humanity reeled, thousands were dead. Survivors mourned and breathed a sigh of relief, but two weeks later the magic came again.

It flooded the world in waves now, unpredictable and moody, coming back and disappearing on its own mysterious schedule. Slowly but surely, it tore down the tall buildings, feeding on the carcass of technology and molding humanity in its own image. Adam smiled. He took to it better than most.

The latest magic shift took place about half an hour ago, just before he got jumped. While unpredictable, the magic waves rarely lasted less than twelve hours. He was in for a long, magic-filled night.

The bridge split into four different branches. He took the second to the left. It brought him deep into the heart of the city, past the ruins, to the older streets. He cleared the next couple of intersections and turned into the courtyard of a large Georgian-style mansion, a redbrick box, rectangular in shape and three stories high. Anything taller didn’t survive in the new Philadelphia unless it was really old. The POM Mansion, as the house came to be known, had been built at the end of the eighteenth century. Its age and the simplicity of its construction afforded it some immunity against magic.

Adam jogged to the doors. Pressure clutched him for a brief moment, then released him—the defensive spell on the building recognizing his right to enter. Adam stepped through the doors and walked into the foyer. Luxurious by any standards, after his run through the ruined city, the inside of the building looked almost surreal. A hand-knotted blue Persian rug rested on the floor of polished marble. Cream-colored walls were adorned by graceful glass bells of fey lanterns, glowing pale blue as the charged air inside their tubes reacted with magic. A marble staircase veered left and up, leading to the second floor.

Adam paused for a moment to admire the rug. He’d once survived in a cave in the woods for half a year. Luxury or poverty made little difference to him. Luxury tended to be cleaner and more comfortable, but that was about it. Still, he liked the rug—it was beautiful.

The secretary sitting behind a massive redwood desk looked up at his approach. She was slender, young, and dark-skinned. Large brown eyes glanced at him from behind the wide lenses of her glasses. Her name was May, and in the three years of his employment with POM, he’d never managed to surprise her.

“Good evening, Mr. Talford.”

“Good evening.” He could never figure out if she had been there and done that and was too jaded, or if she was simply too well trained.

“Will you require a change of clothes?”

“Yes, please.”

May held out a leather file. His reason for being called into the office. He took it. Priority Two. It overrode all of his cases. Interesting. Adam nodded at her and headed up the stairs.

The heavy door of the office slid open under the pressure of Adam’s hand. When he joined the ranks of POM Insurance Adjusters three years ago, someone asked him how he wanted his office to look. He told him, “Like the cabin of a pirate captain,” and that was exactly what he got. Cypress paneling lined every inch of the floor, walls, and ceiling, imitating the inside of a wooden ship. The antique-reproduction desk, bolted to the floor for sheer authenticity, supported a sextant, a chronometer, and a bottle of Bombay Blue Sapphire. Behind the desk, an enormous map drawn in ink on yellowed paper took up most of the wall. To the left, bookshelves stretched, next to a large bed sunken into a sturdy wooden frame, so it looked like it was cut into the wall. The bed’s dark blue curtain hung open.

His nostrils caught a hint of faint spice. He inhaled it, savoring the scent. Siroun.

“You smell like blood,” Siroun’s smooth voice said behind him.

Ah. There she is. He turned slightly and watched her circle him, scrutinizing his body. She moved like a lean panther: silent, flexible, graceful. Deadly. Her hair, cropped short into a ragged, messy halo, framed her face like a pale red cloud. She tilted her head. Two dark eyes looked at him.

“You fought with three people, and you let them break your watch?” Her voice was quiet and soothing, and deep for a woman’s. He’d heard her sing once, a strange song of murmured words. It had stayed with him.

“I was tracking Morowitz,” he told her.

“Into Firefern?”

“Yes.”

“We agreed you would wait for me if his trail led into Firefern.”

“I did. I called it in to the office, waited, then followed him.”

“The office is about four miles from Firefern.”

“Yes.”

“How long did you wait?”

He frowned, thinking. “I’d say about two minutes.”

“And that struck you as the appropriate length of time?”

He grinned at her. “Yes.”

A bright orange sheen rolled over her irises, like fire over coals, and vanished. She clearly failed to see the humor in this situation.

Post-Shift Philadelphia housed many people with something extra in their blood, including shapeshifters, a small, sad pack of humans stuck on the crossroads between man and beast. Occasionally, they went insane and had to be put down, but most persevered through strict discipline. Their eyes glowed just like that.

Adjusters worked in pairs, and he and Siroun had been partnered with each other from the beginning. After all this time together, working with her and observing her, he was sure that Siroun wasn’t a shapeshifter. At least not any kind he had ever encountered. When she dropped her mask, he sensed something in her, a faint touch of ancient magic, buried deep, hidden like a fossil under the sediment of civilization. He sensed this same primal magic within himself. Siroun wasn’t of his kind, but she was like him, and she drew him like a magnet.

Siroun pulled the leather file out of Adam’s fingers and sat on the bed, curling around a large pillow.

Adam was possibly the smartest man she had ever known. And also the biggest idiot. In his mind, big and strong equaled invincible. It would only take one bullet to the head in the right spot, one cut of the right blade in the right place, and none of his regeneration would matter.

He went into Firefern by himself. Didn’t wait. Didn’t tell her. And by the time she’d found out, it was too late—he was already on his way to the office, so she paced back and forth, like a caged tiger until she heard his steps in the hallway.

Adam sat behind his desk, sinking into an oversized leather chair. It groaned, accepting his weight. He cocked his head to the side and moved the bottle of Bombay Sapphire a quarter of an inch to the left. The bright blue liquid caught the light of the fey lantern on the wall and sparkled with all the fire of the real gem.

She pretended to read the file while watching him through the curtain of her eyelashes. For sixteen years, her life was full of chaos, dominated by violence and desperation. Then came the prison; and then, then there was POM and Adam. In her crazed, blood-drenched world, Adam was a granite island of calm. When the turbulent storms rocked her inner world, until she was no longer sure where reality ended and the hungry madness inside her began, she clung to that island and weathered the storm. He had no idea how much she needed this shelter. The thought of losing it nearly drove her out of her mind, what little was left of it.

Adam frowned. A stack of neatly folded clothes sat on the corner of the desk, delivered moments before he walked through the door, together with a small package now waiting for his attention. She’d looked through it: T-shirt, pants, camo suit, all large enough to accommodate his giant body. Adam checked the clothes and pulled the package close. She’d glanced at it—the return address label had one word: Saiman.

“Who is he?” Siroun asked.

“My cousin. He lives in the South.” Adam tore the paper and pulled out a leather-bound book. He chuckled and showed her the cover. Robert E. Howard: The Frost-Giant’s Daughter and Other Stories.

“Is he like you?” Apparently they both had a twisted sense of humor.

“He has more magic, but he uses it mostly to hide. My original form is still my favorite.” Adam leaned back, stretching his enormous shoulders. The customized chair creaked. “He has the ability to assume any form, and he wears every type of body except his own.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. I think he wants to fit in. He wants to be loved by everyone he meets. It’s a way of controlling things around him.”

“Your cousin sounds unpleasant.”

Siroun leafed through the file. Not like Adam would need it. He had probably read it on the way up. She once witnessed him go through a fifty-page contract in less than a minute, then demand detailed adjustments.

He was looking at her; she could feel his gaze. She raised her head and let a little of the fire raging inside color her irises. Yes, I’m still mad at you.

Most people froze when confronted with that orange glow. It whispered of old things, brutal and hungry, waiting just beyond the limits of human consciousness.

Adam smiled.

Idiot.

She looked back at the file.

He opened the top drawer of his desk, took out a small paper box, and set it on the desk. Now what?

Adam pried the lid open with his oversized fingers and extracted a small brown cupcake with chocolate frosting. It looked thimble-sized in his thick hands. “I have a cupcake.”

He had lost his mind.

Adam tilted the cupcake from side to side, making it dance. “It’s chocolate.”

She clenched her teeth, speechless.

“It could be your cupcake if you stop—”

She dashed across the room in a blur, leaped, and crouched on the desk in front of him. He blinked. She plucked the cupcake from his huge hand with her slender fingers and pretended to ponder it. “I don’t like a lot of people.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said. He was still smiling. Truly, he had a death wish.

Siroun examined the cupcake some more. “If you die, I will have to choose a new partner, Adam.” She turned and looked at him. “I don’t want a new partner.”

He nodded in mock seriousness. “In that case, I’ll strive to stay alive.”

“Thank you.”

Knuckles rapped on the door. It swung open, and the narrow-shouldered, thin figure of Chang, their POM coordinator, stepped inside. Chang looked at them for a long moment. His eyes widened. “Am I interrupting?”

Siroun jumped off the desk and moved back to the bed, palming the cupcake. “No.”

“I am relieved. I’d hate to be rude.” Chang crossed the office, deposited another leather file in front of Adam, and perched in a chair across the room. Lean to the point of delicate, the coordinator had one of those encouraging faces that predisposed people to trust him. He wore a small smile and seemed slightly ill at ease, as if he constantly struggled to overcome his natural shyness. Last year, a man had attacked him outside the POM doors with the intent of robbing him. Chang decapitated him and put his head on a sharpened stick. It sat in front of the office for four days before the stench prevailed, and he took it down. A bit crude, but very persuasive.

“That’s a beautiful bottle,” Chang said, nodding at the Bombay. “I’ve never seen you drink, Adam. Especially dry gin. So why the bottle?”

“He likes the color,” Siroun said.

Adam smiled.

Chang glanced at the flat screen in the wall and sighed. “Things are much easier when technology is up. Unfortunately, we’ll have to do this the hard way. Please turn to page one in your file.”

Siroun opened the file. Page one offered a portrait of a lean man in a business suit, bending forward, looking into the dense torrent of traffic of cars, carts, and riders. A somber man, confident, almost severe. Slick lines, square jaw, elongated shape of the face inviting comparison with a Doberman pinscher, light skin, light blond hair cut very short. Early to mid forties.

“John Sobanto, an attorney with Dorowitz & Sobanto, and your target. Mr. Sobanto made a fortune representing powerful clients, but he’s most famous and most hated for representing New Found Hope.”

Siroun bared her teeth. Now there was a name everyone in Philly loved to despise.

New Found Hope, a new church born after the Shift, had pushed hard for pure human, no-magic-tolerated membership. So hard, that on Christmas day, sixteen of its parishioners walked into the icy water of the Delaware River and drowned nine of their own children, who had been born with magic. The guilty and the church leaders were charged with first-degree murder. The couples took the fall, but the founder of the church escaped without even a slap on the wrist. John Sobanto was the man who made it happen.

“Mr. Sobanto is worth $4.2 million, not counting his investments in Left Arm Securities, which are projected at 2 million plus,” Chang said. “The corporation was unable to obtain a more precise estimate. Please turn to page two.”

Siroun flipped the page. Another photograph, this one of a woman standing on the bank of a lead-colored Delaware River. In the distance, the remains of the Delaware Memorial Bridge jutted sadly from the water. He knew the exact spot this was taken—Penn Treaty Park.

Unlike the man, the woman was aware of being photographed and looked straight into the camera. Pretty in an unremarkable way that came from good breeding and careful attention to one’s appearance. Shoulder-length hair, blond, worn loose, standard for an upper-class spouse. Her eyes stared out of the photograph, surprisingly hard. Determined.

“Linda Sobanto,” Chang said. “The holder of POM policy number 492776-M. She spent the last three years funneling an obscene portion of Mr. Sobanto’s earnings into POM bank accounts to pay for it.”

A severe, confident man on one page, an equally severe, determined woman on the other. An ominous combination, Siroun decided.

Adam stirred. “So what did Mr. Sobanto do to warrant our attention?”

“It appears he murdered his wife,” Chang said.

Of course.

“Mrs. Sobanto’s insurance policy had a retribution clause,” the coordinator continued. “In the event of her homicide, we’re required to terminate the guilty party.”

“How was she killed?” Siroun asked.

“She was strangled.”

Personal. Very, very personal.

“Mr. Sobanto’s thumbprint was lifted from her throat. He had defensive wounds on his face and neck, and his DNA was found under her fingernails. His lawyers have arranged a voluntary surrender. He is scheduled to come in Thursday morning, less than a day from now.”

“Is he expecting us?” Adam asked.

Chang nodded in a slow, measured way. “Most definitely. Please turn to page three.”

On page three, an aerial shot showed a monstrously large ranch-style house hugging the top of the hill like a bear. Three rectangular structures sat a short distance from the house, each marked by a red X.

“Guards stationed in a pyramid formation, four shifts. The gun towers are marked on your photograph. The house is trapped and extensively warded. At least two arcane disciplines were utilized in creation of the wards. For all practical purposes, it’s a fortress. Page four, please.”

Siroun turned the page. A blueprint, showing a large central room with smaller rooms radiating from it in a wheel-and-spokes design.

“We believe Mr. Sobanto has locked himself in this central chamber. He is guarded by spells, traps, and armed men.”

Siroun shifted in her chair. “The guards?”

“Red Guard,” Chang answered.

Sobanto hired the best.

“Expensive to hire,” Adam murmured, plaiting the fingers of his hands together.

“And very expensive to kill,” Chang said. “Red Guard lawyers are truly excellent, particularly when negotiating a wrongful death compensation. We don’t want additional expenses, so please don’t kill more than three. A higher death count would negatively impact the corporation’s profit margin. Please turn to page five.”

Page five presented another image of John Sobanto, surrounded by men and women in business suits, a thin-stemmed glass in his hand. A cowled figure stood in the shadow of the column, watching over him.

Siroun leaned forward. No, the image is too murky.

“His reaction time suggests that he is not human. A shapeshifter operative on our staff had an opportunity to sample his scent. He found it disturbing. We don’t know what he is,” Chang said. “But we do know that John Sobanto made a lot of people unhappy with his latest settlement. There have been two attempts on his life, and this bodyguard kept Sobanto breathing.”

Siroun smiled quietly.

“You have eleven hours to kill Mr. Sobanto.” Chang closed the file. “After that, he has arranged to surrender into the custody of Philadelphia’s Finest. Sniping people in police custody is bad for business. Will you require a priest for your final rites?”

Adam glanced at Siroun. She gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Good luck. Break a leg, preferably not your own.” Chang smiled and headed for the door. “Remember, no more than three Red Guardsmen.”

The door closed behind him with a click.

Siroun slipped off the bed. “Disable the guards, break into a fortress, shatter the wards, disarm the traps, bust into the central chamber, kill a preternaturally fast bodyguard, and eliminate the target. Shall I drive?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Adam headed for the door.

Adam sat on the floor of the black POM van and watched Siroun drive. She guided the car along the ruined, crumbling highway with almost surgical precision. She had only two modes of operation: complete control or complete insanity. Considering how tightly she clenched herself now, he was in for a hell of a night.

The magic smothered gas engines; the converted POM van ran on enchanted water. The water vehicles were slow, barely topping fifty miles an hour at the best, and they made an outrageous amount of noise. They’d have to park the car some distance from the house and approach on foot.

Adam stretched. They had had to take all of the seats, except for the driver’s, out of the van to accommodate him. From where he sat, Adam could see a wispy lock of red hair and Siroun’s profile. Her face, etched against the darkness of the night, almost seemed to glow.

Some things can come to pass, he reminded himself. Some things are improbable, and some are impossible.

He had to stop imagining impossible things.

Siroun stirred. “What would drive a man to kill his own wife? Two people live together, love each other, make a safe haven for themselves.”

“I saw a play once,” Adam said. “It was about a man and a woman: They were in love a long time ago, but as years passed, they ended up spending their time torturing each other. The man had told the woman, ‘Here is the key to my soul. Take it, beloved. Take the poisoned dagger.’ Those we love know us the best. They know all the right places to strike.”

She shook her head.

“If we were lovers, and I betrayed you, you would kill me.” Why did he have to go there? Like playing with fire.

She didn’t look at him. “What makes you say that?”

“Love and hate are both means of emotional control to which we subject ourselves. Once you were done with me, you’d want to be free of the pain of betrayal. Absolutely free.”

No comment, Siroun? No, not even a glance.

He looked out the window. They had exited the highway onto a narrow country road that wound its way between huge trees. The same magic that devoured skyscrapers fed the forests. Moonlight spilled from the sky like a gauzy silvery curtain, catching on massive branches of enormous hemlocks and white pines. The woods encroached onto asphalt weakened by the magic’s assault, the trees leaning toward the van like grim sentries intent on barring their passage.

Fifty years ago, this might have been a cultivated field or a small town. But then, fifty years ago, he wouldn’t have existed, Adam reflected. Magic fed the ancient power in his blood. Without it, he would be just a man.

Fifty years ago, nobody would’ve purchased an insurance policy with a retribution clause, which assured that one’s murderer would be punished. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It had been a gentler, more civilized time.

“Strangulation contains death,” Siroun said. “There’s no release. It’s deeply personal. He wanted to see her eyes as he squeezed the life out of her second by second. To drink it in. He must’ve hated her.”

“The question is why,” Adam said. “He was a skilled lawyer. I’ve looked through the file some more. He seems to have a remarkable talent when it comes to jury selection. In every case, he manages to pick a precise mix of people to favor his case, which suggests he’s an excellent judge of human nature, but all of his arguments are very precise and emotionless. People have passions. He is dispassionate. He would have to be at the brink of his mind to strangle someone. Especially his wife. It doesn’t add up.”

“Still waters run deep,” she murmured, and made a right turn. The vehicle rolled off the road, careening over roots. “We’re here.”

They stepped from the car onto a forest floor thick with five centuries of autumn. Adam stretched, testing his pixilated camo suit. It was loose enough to let him move quickly. The huge trees watched him in silence. He wished it were colder. He would be faster in the cold.

Siroun raised her head and drew the air into her nostrils, tasting it on her tongue. “Woodsmoke.”

Adam slid the short needle-rifle into its holster on his belt. It was made specifically for him, a modern version of a blowgun made to operate during magic. Siroun stretched her arms next to him, like a lean cat. Her camo suit hugged her, clenched at the waist by a belt carrying two curved, brutal blades. She pulled a dark mask over the lower half of her face and raised her hood. She looked tiny.

Anxiety nipped at him.

“Stay safe,” he said.

She turned to him. “Adam?”

Shit. He had to recover. “We’re only allowed three kills. You look on edge. Stay in the safe zone.”

“This isn’t my first time.”

She looked up, high above, where the rough column of a tree trunk erupted into thick branches, blocking the moonlight. For a moment, she tensed, the smooth muscles coiling like springs beneath the fabric, and burst forward, across the soft carpet of pine needles and fallen twigs. Siroun leaped, scrambled up the trunk in a brown-and-green blur, and vanished into the branches as if dissolved into the greenery.

Adam locked the van and dropped the keys behind the right-front wheel. The forest waited for him.

He headed uphill at a brisk trot, guided by traces of woodsmoke and some imperceptible instinct he couldn’t explain. Stay safe. He was beginning to lose it. Remember what you are. Remember who she is. She would never see him as anything more than a partner. To step closer, she would have to risk something. To open herself to possible injury, to give up a drop of her freedom. She would never do it, and if he slipped again and showed her that he had stepped over the line, she would sever what few fragile ties bound them.

The old trees spread their branches wide, greedily hoarding the moonlight, and the undergrowth was scarce. A few times a magic-addled vine cascading from an occasional trunk made a grab for his limbs. When it did manage to snag him, he simply ripped through it and kept jogging.

Forty-five minutes later, Adam stepped over an electrified trip wire strung across the greenery at what for most people would’ve been a mid-thigh level and for him was just below the knee. With the magic up, the current was dead, but he took care not to touch it all the same. Beyond the wire, the trees ended abruptly, as if sliced by the blade of a giant’s knife. The gaps between the tree trunks offered glimpses of the electric fence, sitting out in the open, and the Sobanto house, a dark shape beyond the metal mesh. He saw no guards, but the Red Guards didn’t stroll along the perimeter. They hid.

Adam went to ground. The fragrant cushion of pine needles accepted his weight without protest. He slid forward a few feet and saw the house, sprawling in the middle of the clearing. A gun tower punctuated the roof. Two guards manned it, armed with precision crossbows.

Adam craned his neck. Judging by the moss on the trunks, he was facing west. The west guard tower would be behind the house—he didn’t have to worry about it. He was at the southern edge of the house, so the north guard tower wouldn’t present too much of an issue either. Adam crawled another three feet and craned his neck to look left. A blocky structure wrapped in a cage of metal bars rose a few dozen yards away—the south guard tower and his biggest problem. The bars glowed with a faint yellow sheen. Warded.

Adam reached into his camo suit and pulled a small spyglass free. He raised it to his eye and focused on the house. The fence slid closer. A standard twelve-foot-high affair, horizontal wires, coils of razor wire guarding the top edge. The space between the wires was uneven. Something was pulling the fence inward, and that something was probably a ward.

The defensive spells came in many varieties. Some were rooted into the soil, some depended on external markers, rocks, sand, bones, trees … The most powerful ones required blood or a living power source. Judging by the distortion in the fence, this was one hell of a ward, very strong and very potent. Definitely fed by a power source.

Adam craned his neck, looking for the pipeline. He found it twenty-five feet above the ground. A long, green shoot passed through the south guard tower and terminated in a network of thin roots. The roots hung suspended in thin air, dripping magic into the invisible spell. The makers of the ward had found some sort of way to tap into the magic of the forest and channeled it to protect the house.

Adam frowned. The closest route to the house was straight on, through the fence, the ward, and finally through the solid-looking side door on the left end of the mansion. The fence didn’t present a problem, but the ward would prevent him from getting inside. His magic was too potent. To take down the ward, he had to sever the roots, but to get to the roots, he would have to take down the ward. A catch-22.

A faint scent floated on the breeze. Siroun. She was on the edge of the woods, to his left, probably right beside the south guard tower. If she took out those guards, she could reach the roots feeding the ward, but to do that she’d have to clear a stretch of open ground in plain view of the crossbows from both the house and the tower. He had to give her a distraction, the kind that would focus both the house and the tower on him.

No guts, no glory.

He put away the spyglass, backed away, and rose to his feet. The woods grew fast, which meant they would have to cut down trees at a steady rate to keep the forest from encroaching onto the property. Adam jogged through the woods, searching. There. A two-foot-wide pine trunk lay on its side, its wide end showing fresh chain-saw marks. Just the right size.

Adam strode to the tip of the tree and pulled out his tactical blade. Two feet long, to him it was conveniently sized, more a knife than a sword. He hacked at the thin section of the trunk. Two cuts, and the narrow crown broke off the tree. That gave him a few branches near the tip. Good enough. Adam returned the blade to the sheath, grasped the trunk about four feet from the bottom, and heaved. Small branches snapped, and the pine left the ground. He shifted it onto his shoulder and strode through the nearest gap between the trees, toward the fence.

A moment, and he was out in the open. The guards on top of the house stared at him, openmouthed. Adam waved at them with his free hand, grasped the tree, and spun. The thirty-foot pine smashed into the fence. Boom!

The effort nearly took him off his feet. The wires snapped under the pressure.

Crossbow bolts whistled through the air. One sprouted from the ground two inches from his foot. The fence was in their way.

Adam pulled the tree upright and brought it down again like a club. Boom!

The second bolt sliced his shoulder, grazing it in a streak of heat.

Boom!

The third bolt singed Adam’s neck.

The nearest pole careened with a tortured creak and crashed down, taking the fence with it.

Adam spun, like a hammer thrower, and hurled the tree at the house. It cleared the ward in a flash of blue and smashed into the roof guard post. Boards exploded.

A bolt bit into his thigh, a gift from the south tower.

He was completely exposed now. The next bolt would hit him where it counted. Adam braced himself. He couldn’t dodge a bolt, but he could turn into it. Better take one in the shoulder than one in the gut.

The guard tower stood silent and still. No bolts sliced his flesh. He grasped the shaft of the bolt protruding from his thigh and wrenched it out. It hurt like hell, but it would heal. It always did.

The tower’s door slid open, and Siroun emerged. Behind her, a camouflaged figure fell to the floor, its arms slack. Siroun leaped onto the green shoot feeding the ward and dashed along its length as if it were a wide path on solid ground.

So graceful.

Siroun reached the end of the shoot, crouched, and struck in the same smooth movement, slashing the roots. Pale liquid oozed from the cuts. She cut again, lightning fast. The ward trembled and vanished, and she dropped to the ground softly.

Adam sprinted to the house. When he got going, he was impossible to stop. His shoulder smashed into the reinforced door. It flew open with a pitiful screech of snapped bolts and shattered boards. Adam stumbled in, glimpsed the sharp end of the crossbow bolt staring at him from six feet away, and dodged to the left. The bow twanged, and the bolt fell at his feet sliced in half. Siroun leaped forward, swung her curved knives, and the guard’s head rolled to the floor. Blood spurted in a thin spray from the stump of the neck, painting the wall crimson. The body took a step forward and tumbled down.

Adam exhaled.

“Death number one,” Siroun whispered.

The house stank of unclean magic. Siroun ran down the hallway, light on her feet. Adam’s hulking form moved next to her. It always amazed her how fast he could move. You’d expect a man of his size to shamble, but he was surprisingly agile, the way giant bears were sometimes surprisingly agile just before their claws caught you.

They had been making their way toward the center of the house, where Chang’s blueprint indicated a stairway. They’d run into the guards. Both times, she avoided casualties. Now the bloodlust sang through her, slithering its way through her veins like a starving, enraged serpent. She needed a release.

Somewhere deep within the house, a knot of foul magic smoldered. It brushed against her when she stepped through the door and recoiled, but not fast enough, not before she caught the taint of its magic. It felt old, primitive, and starved, gnawed by the same hunger inside her that longed for blood and severed lives.

A faint red sheen blocked the hallway ahead. Another ward, weaker and simpler than the first. Still, it would take time.

Adam moved toward the ward, casually bumping the fey lantern on the ceiling with his hand. The hallway drowned in darkness.

She ran up to the ward on her toes and swept her palm over its surface, close but never touching. Thin streaks of yellow lightning snaked through the red, trailing the heat of her hand. Past it, down the hall, she saw another translucent red wall.

Three men burst from the side room on their left. Adam barreled into them like a battering ram. The two front guards flew several feet and crashed to the ground in a heap of cracked bones. Siroun snapped a kick, connecting with the third guard’s jaw. He went down with a low moan.

Adam bent over the fallen female guard. The woman jerked back when she saw his face. He probed her side. “You have a broken rib,” he informed the woman. “Don’t move.”

She glared at him with remarkably blue eyes. “Go fuck yourself.”

Siroun pulled the duct tape from her pack. Six seconds, and the guards lay trussed up on the floor. Adam spun toward the ward. Siroun touched his arm and pointed to the side room. He understood and charged into it. His shoulder hit the wall. The wooden boards exploded, and she followed him into the next room, bypassing the ward.

Another wall, another crash, another ragged hole in the wood. The sheer power he could unleash was shocking.

They broke through the next wall. A foul stench hit her, the lingering, heavy odor of a greasy roast burned by an open flame. Bile rose in a stinging flood in Siroun’s throat.

Adam halted.

A barrier rose before them. Flesh-colored and transparent, almost gel-like, it cleaved the room in half, stretching from the left wall to the right. Long, thick veins, pulsing with deep purple, pierced the gel, branching into smaller vessels and finally into hair-thin capillaries. Between the veins, clusters of pale yellow globules formed long membranes, folded and pleated into pockets. A loose network of dark red filaments bound it all into one revolting whole. Adam stared at it in horrified fascination.

Tiny gas bubbles broke free of the capillaries and slid to the surface of the barrier to pop open. Here and there, small spherical vesicles of the yellow substance floated through the lattice of the filaments and veins, pushed by the invisible currents, bending and swiveling when they came to an obstacle.

It lived. It was a very primitive kind of life, but a life.

Her gaze traveled to the far left, drawn to the source of the vesicles, and found a gross, misshapen thickening of the yellow membranes, a bulging sack, tinged with carmine filaments. Globules of yellow matter detached from the surface of the sack and fluttered away one by one. She focused on it and found an outline of a human hand within the sack, complete with outstretched fingers. Another vesicle slid from the sack’s top, allowing for a glimpse of a swollen blue-black thumb. As Adam watched, the nail broke free from the bloated digit and spun away, caught by a current.

Adam gagged and retched, spilling sour vomit onto the expensive rug.

Siroun took a step forward. She knew this intimately well. This was witch magic: not the balanced, measured magic of the regular covens, but a darker, twisted kind, born of complete subjugation to the primal things. Most witches withdrew at the first hint of their presence. This witch had embraced it, and it had gifted her with this ward.

The foul magic hissed and boiled around her, sparking off her skin. That’s right. Look but do not touch.

Siroun thrust her hand into the barrier.

The filaments trembled.

The yellow membranes shivered as if in anticipation. Folds slid and unfolded, streaming toward Siroun’s hand.

Adam moved, probably determined to pull her from the thing before it stripped the flesh from her bones.

She let the thing inside her off the chain. Blue fire burst from her skin. The pink gel around her hand shriveled and melted in a plume of acrid smoke. Adam coughed. The fire grew brighter, biting chunks from the barrier in a greedy fury. The membranes tried to sliver away, the filaments collapsed and curled, but the fire chased them, farther and farther, until nothing was left. A swollen, blue corpse crashed to the floor, one arm stretched upward. Its stomach ruptured and a thick brown liquid drenched the rug. The stench of decomposition flooded the room.

The last glowing droplets of the gel dissipated. The blue fire calmed to mere lambency, clothing her hand like a glove. She turned her hand back and forth, watching the glow. Funny how the mind tends to trick you. She never forgot that she was cursed. The constant bloodlust that burned inside her would never let her delude herself. But most of the time she managed to put that knowledge aside, skirt it somehow in the deep recesses of her mind, until she stood there with her hand on fire. Adam was looking at her, and she didn’t want to look back, not sure what she would find on his face.

Siroun blew on the flames. The fire vanished.

She stepped through the ward. Pale glyphs ignited on the floor, wheels of strange arcane signs. Siroun glanced back at Adam over her shoulder. She knew bloodred fire filled her eyes, but Adam didn’t flinch. For that she was grateful.

“Witch magic?” he asked.

“Yes and no. Sometimes, when a witch is very troubled, she breaks away from the coven and begins to worship on her own. She becomes a priestess of the old gods. This thing was very old, Adam. Older than your blood.”

“Why is it here?”

“Because this house has been hexed. But I can tell you that it wasn’t meant for us.” She pointed at the door at the end of the room. The door stood ajar, betraying a hint of the stairs going down. “It was meant to keep in whoever came up these stairs.”

“It sealed Sobanto underground?”

She nodded and padded to the stairs. “Don’t step on the glyphs.”

The stairs brought them to another door. Siroun paused, listening. Heartbeats, one, two, three, four. She raised four fingers. Adam pulled a small cloth bag from one of his pockets. The spicy scent of herbs filled the air. A sleep bomb, very small, with a tiny radius of impact. Once released, the magic inside it would explode the herbs, and anything that breathed within the room would instantly fall asleep.

Adam passed her the bag. Siroun held her breath.

Three, two …

He smashed his fist into the door, knocking a melon-sized hole in the wood. She tossed the sleep bomb into the opening, and both of them sprinted upstairs.

A muffled cough, followed by a weak scream, echoed from the room. The sound of running feet, a dull thud, a throat-scraping hack, and everything fell silent. They sat together on the stairs, waiting for the power to dissipate. One minute. Two.

“Do you think our client was a witch?” Adam asked.

“That seems the only likely explanation.” Siroun leaned forward, looking down the stairs. The less he saw of her face, the better.

“I thought witches didn’t work on their own.”

“They don’t. Being in a coven is like being … in a place where you belong. It’s like being with your family. The other witches might judge you, they might fight with you, and you might even dislike some of them, but they will be there when you need them most.”

Unless they betray you. Allie’s face swung into her mind’s view. “I’m your sister,” the phantom voice murmured from her memories. “Don’t be afraid. I would never do anything to hurt you.” But she did. They all did.

“If you’re a witch with power, you become aware of things,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Do you know the history of the shifts?”

Adam nodded. “Thousands of years ago, magic and technology existed in a balance. Then humans used magic to lift themselves from barbarism. Extensive use of magic created an imbalance, causing the first shift, when technology began flooding the world in waves. This began the technological age that lasted roughly for six thousand years. Now we have overdeveloped technology, and the world seesawed again—the magic has returned and wiped out our civilization once again.”

Siroun nodded. “Before the shifts, before the imbalance, humans worshipped things. If it frightened them, and they couldn’t kill it, they called it a god. Faith has a lot of power, Adam. Their faith influenced these entities, nurturing them, granting them powers. They are very simple creatures because the people who worshipped them were simple. Now the magic has awakened, and these things are waking up with it. Witches stand closer to nature than most magic users. They seek balance, and sometimes they come across an old presence. These old ones, they are hungry. We molded them into gods, and they want their meal of magic and lives. For whatever reason, Linda Sobanto broke away from her coven and became a priestess to one of those things.”

“What drove her, do you think?”

“Anger.” That was what drove her. Anger at being violated, anger at the ultimate betrayal. “The glyphs on the floor upstairs. They are a prayer.”

“To whom?”

Siroun shook her head. “I don’t know. But I know that what she asked of it cost her. Dealing with gods, even simple gods, never comes without a price tag. Never. They don’t gift. They barter.”

“How do you know all this?” he asked.

Because my sister did the same, and I paid the price. “I’ve seen a hex like this before,” she said, choosing the words very carefully. “I once handled the case of a child. A girl. She was ten years old.”

She wished she hadn’t started this, but now it was too late.

“What happened to the little girl?” Adam asked.

“Her sister was a witch. Their coven was inexperienced but powerful. They came across an old god, and they tried to barter for more power. The god needed a flesh form to exist, so during a really strong magic wave, they gave the little girl to the god. The symbols used were nearly identical.” She kept talking, holding the memories at bay, keeping her voice flat. “The child proved to be more gifted than anticipated. She fought the god off until technology came and ripped it out of her body for good.”

“But she was never the same,” Adam murmured.

“No.”

Siroun read concern in his eyes. Not for Sobanto, for herself. That was the last thing she wanted.

Siroun pushed to her feet. “Time is up.”

They trotted down the stairs. Adam kicked the door, splintering it. Four Red Guards lay on the carpet. She only heard three hearts beating. “Damn it.”

Adam turned the closest man over, picked him up, and gently lowered him on the couch. “Dead.”

“How?”

“Probably an allergic reaction. It happens occasionally.”

She gritted her teeth.

“There is nothing to be done about it now.”

Pointless fury boiled inside her. He wasn’t supposed to die. Why the hell did he die? So stupid …

“We move on,” Adam said.

She snarled. He took a step toward her.

“We move on,” Adam repeated.

She spun on her foot, walked out of the room, and stopped. The floor of the hallway was filled with glowing glyphs.

Adam watched Siroun as she crouched, hugging the floor. Her face had this odd look, a disturbing mix of sadness, almost sympathy, as if she were at a funeral, comforting a friend. Around her, arcane patterns on the floor emitted glowing tendrils of vapor. The colored fog stretched upward a couple of feet before gently fading.

“It took her months to do this,” she whispered.

The entire length of the hallway floor shimmered with magic. It was oddly beautiful.

Siroun reached out and touched a congealed dark drop on the floor. “Blood,” she whispered. Her nostrils fluttered. The orange fire in her irises darkened once again to near red. “Her blood.”

She rose and pointed to the middle of the hallway, where red glyphs bloomed, like poppies. “That’s where he killed her.”

“What’s the purpose of all this?” he asked.

“An illusion.” The fire in Siroun’s eyes died to almost nothing. Her voice held profound sadness. “Give me your hand, Adam.”

He offered her his palm and watched as her slender fingers were swallowed by his huge hand. Siroun reached out with her other hand. Her thumbnail flicked across her index finger. A single drop of blood dropped from her hand into the glyphs. The glow vanished like a snuffed-out candle. The hallways went completely dark. A single tiny spark flared at the far end and expanded into a figure of a small boy. He stood on a stool, barefoot, large eyes opened wide. A chain hung from his throat. His mouth opened, and the high voice of a young child echoed through the hallway. “Please let me go, Mommy. Please let me go. I’ll be good…”

The stool shot out from under the boy’s feet, as if knocked aside by someone’s brutal kick. The child hung, on the chain, choking, his eyes bulging.

Adam lunged forward and stopped, pulled back by Siroun’s hand.

“It’s not real,” she told him. “It’s only an illusion.”

The child struggled. They watched him kick and die. Slowly, one by one, the glyphs ignited. The body, the chain, and the stool faded.

Adam remembered to breathe. His chest refused to expand, as if someone had dropped an anvil on it.

“She made her husband think she had killed their son,” Siroun said. “And then he killed her. She sacrificed herself. Whatever dark thing she prayed to now inhabits her body. She made a bargain, you see? Her body for revenge on her husband.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. We have to keep going. We’ll find answers when we find Sobanto.” She pulled him gently, and he followed.

The last door loomed in front of Adam. Wood reinforced with steel. No matter. He crashed into it, and it burst open, unlocked. Adam stumbled forward, into the huge chamber. He had barely enough time to take in the domed ceiling, half-lost in the gloom, the bare walls, and the lonely figure sitting motionless under a column of blue light; and then heat seared his left hip. He saw nothing, felt nothing save for that brief fiery slice, but his leg gave, and he crashed to the floor, catching himself on his bent arms and rolling onto his side to diminish the impact.

A dark stain spread across the leg of his pants. He still felt no pain. Adam pulled back the sliced fabric, revealing a slash across his muscle. The edges of the wound fit so tightly together, it might have been made by a razor blade.

Numbness claimed his hip. He took a deep breath, and, suddenly, he couldn’t feel his legs.

Poison. He was cut by a poisoned blade, coated with some sort of paralyzing agent, probably containing anticoagulant. Adam froze. His body regenerated at an accelerated rate. It would overcome most poisons, given time. But time was in short supply. The less he moved, the faster he’d heal, but prone like this, he presented too good a target.

Come on. Take a shot. I’ll snap your neck like a toothpick.

Adam scanned the chamber.

Nothing. Only the gloom and a man seated in a metal chair. John Sobanto, wearing the slack expression of a man caught in some sort of spell. A ring of small pale stones surrounded his chair. He knew this spell. If he could remove the stones, the ward would disappear.

A hint of movement made him glance right. Siroun stood next to him. Her eyes glowed like two rubies.

Her lips parted. “I see you, sirrah,” she whispered, her hiss carrying to the farthest heights of the chamber.

A blur struck at her from the gloom. The cloaked bodyguard attacked. She parried, blades clanging together, and the bodyguard withdrew. A shred of dark fabric fluttered to the floor.

Siroun laughed, an eerie sound that shot ice down Adam’s spine. “I’m coming, sirrah. Face me!”

The blur landed on the floor at the far wall, solidifying into a cloaked man. Soundless like a phantom, he pulled off his cloak and dropped it onto the floor. Chiseled, each muscle cut to perfection, he stood nude, save for muay thai shorts. His bare feet gripped the floor, his toes bore curved yellow claws. Colored tattoos blossomed across his legs, stomach, and chest, muted against the faint green tint of his skin. A striking cobra on one arm, a crouching monkey king on the other, tortoise on the abdomen, elephant on the chest, iguana under the right collarbone, tiger under the left. Faint outlines of scales, tattooed or real, shielded his shaved skull. His eyes were yellow like amber, luminescent with cold intensity, reptilian in their lack of feeling.

The bodyguard raised a knife with a yellow blade that looked as if it were carved from an old bone.

Siroun looked at him. “You need to turn now.”

He leaped across the room. They clashed and danced across the chamber, preternaturally fast, slashing, parrying, kicking, and finding purchase on the sheer walls.

Pain clenched Adam’s thigh, ripping a deep, guttural moan from him. His body had finally overcome the poison. The cut was deep—the blade had grazed the bone.

Adam began dragging himself toward the spell shielding Sobanto. Fifty feet. He pulled, gripping the slick floor with his fingers, ignoring the jolts of acute pain rocking his thigh.

For the space of a breath, Siroun landed on the floor next to him, barely long enough for him to register a bloody gash across her forearm, and leaped away again, sailing across the chamber. He crawled by the drops of her blood, fixated on the blue beam of light.

Only fifteen feet.

Fourteen.

He saw the tattooed bodyguard loom before him. The man’s skin burst, and a monstrosity exploded out, huge, scaled, armed with enormous crocodilian jaws and a massive reptilian tail.

A werereptile. That was impossible. Reptiles were cold-blooded. No shapeshifter could overcome that.

The werecrocodile laughed at him, the feral grin of a predator displaying nightmarish fangs. And then Siroun crashed into the bodyguard. The yellow knife struck twice, biting deep into her side. They broke free and halted six feet apart.

The shapeshifter’s yellow eyes focused on crimson drenching Siroun’s side. “You’re finished,” he said, his voice a deep roar disfigured by his jaws.

Siroun smiled. A pale red flush crept on her cheeks and spread, flooding her neck, diving under her clothes, reaching all the way to her fingertips. Heat bathed Adam. “Not yet,” she whispered, and charged, sweeping the bodyguard from the floor like a gale.

Adam focused on the blue beam. His entire side was on fire, and he clenched his teeth, clutching on to consciousness. He could feel the soft welcoming darkness hovering on the edge of his senses, ready to swallow him whole.

His fingers touched the stone. A burning pain laced his skin, as if he’d stuck his hand into boiling water. Adam clenched the stone.

The room swayed. He was losing it.

He snarled and fed his magic into his hand. Ice sleeked his skin, welcoming, soothing. Adam strained, using every bit of his strength, and yanked the stone free.

The ward blinked and vanished.

A hoarse scream ripped through the chamber. Across the floor, a body fell from the ceiling, but Siroun was faster still, and she landed a fraction of a heartbeat before it hit the ground, in time to catch the falling man. The body in her arms boiled and collapsed back into its human form.

Gingerly, she carried the prone form, as if he were a child, and lowered the bodyguard by Adam’s feet. The shapeshifter’s face lost its feral edge. His tattoos bled colored ink in dark rivulets, the images draining slowly from his skin.

Siroun kissed her fingertips and touched the man’s forehead. Her eyes were luminescent and warm. Not a trace of bloodlust remained.

“You fought well,” she whispered.

In the chair, John Sobanto drew a long, shuddering breath. His eyelashes trembled. Sobanto’s eyes snapped open. “You turned off the field and broke the wards,” he said. “She is coming.”

The lawyer was looking at Adam. She looked, too. He was bleeding. His big hands trembled. Breaking the ward had taken too much magic. His body didn’t have enough strength to regenerate. She had to get him out of there.

“Who’s coming?” Adam said. “Your wife?”

“She isn’t my wife anymore,” Sobanto whispered.

A sharp shriek rolled through the silence. Siroun felt the knot of foul magic at the far end of the house rip apart. A presence spilled out, the force of its fury lashing her like a splash of boiling lead. Siroun recoiled, snarling.

The entity moved toward them, slicing through the walls and doors, churning with magic and malevolence so dark she had to fight to keep clear. There was nothing they could do to stop it.

She spun to Adam. “We don’t have much time. Kill him now.”

“We can’t. We don’t know if he is guilty.”

They had to follow the protocol. The case was no longer cut-and-dried. She had to buy them time. Siroun swallowed. “Hurry, Adam.”

He turned to Sobanto.

She thrust her mind into the path of the entity and struck. Her blow did little damage, but it was too enraged to ignore her. Siroun fled, zigzagging back and forth, and the presence followed, chasing the shadow of her mind.

“What did you see in the hallway?” Adam asked.

Sobanto swallowed. “Our son. I saw her hang our son.”

“Did you attack her?”

“Yes. I grabbed her by her throat. I tried … I meant to pull her off him. I didn’t know. She died. I killed her. I found a note. It said she sacrificed herself and her body would now belong to a god. It said I would pay for everything.”

The entity lashed at Siroun. She barely avoided it. “Why?” she snarled. “Why does she hate you?”

“I don’t know. We had a good marriage, considering the circumstances.”

“The circumstances?”

“Hurry, Adam.” She forced the words out. “I cannot elude her much longer.”

Sobanto hesitated.

“We have little time,” Adam told him.

The lawyer closed his eyes. “I bought her. From the Blessings of the Night coven.”

The wraith bit into Siroun’s defenses. Sharp needles of pain stabbed her lungs; for a moment, she could not breathe. She ripped herself free.

“You bought her?” Adam asked.

“They needed a lawyer. They were facing criminal charges, and they had no money. I needed somebody to analyze the behavioral patterns of the jury and my opponents. We made a deal.”

“Why did you marry her?”

“I wanted my children to have what she had. I’m deficient. I don’t relate to people, not the way she could. And she was beautiful.”

He had bought her, like a purebred dog.

“She chose the juries for you,” Adam said. “She monitored them through the trial, and you claimed the credit.”

“I didn’t abuse her!” Desperation rang in Sobanto’s voice. “I denied her nothing. Best clothes, best jewelry, the best of everything.”

“Why didn’t she just leave?” Adam asked.

“She was bound to me by the coven.”

The entity clamped her. Pain ripped through Siroun. Emotions twisted her into a knot, echoes of a woman lost. At once she was lonely, longing, caught between the need to please and revulsion, bitter, empty, watching life passing by, unable to escape, growing tired, growing old, growing stupid, knowing she was not loved, would never be loved, would never be free …

She cried out and tore herself free again. She could barely stand. “He’s telling the truth,” she said.

“Why does she hate him?”

“Because he did not love her. He is a sociopath, Adam. He’s incapable of giving her what she wanted. She thought when their son was born, he would feel something, but he doesn’t. End it. We must kill him, or the thing that has her body will rip him to pieces. It’s almost here.”

“Kill me,” Sobanto said suddenly. “I want to die. I just don’t want her to have me.”

Adam raised his chin, his face, blanched of all blood, strangely proud, almost regal. “We have no claim on this man. He served as an instrument in his wife’s suicide. On behalf of the POM Insurance, I, Adjuster Adam Talbot, resign all rights to retribution, as specified by Part 23, paragraph 7 of the POM policy manual.”

Sobanto’s face finally showed emotion: stark, all-consuming fear.

The creature that used to be Linda Sobanto burst through the doorway, a boiling cloud of black, streaked with violent scarlet. The cloud churned, and a woman’s face congealed from its depth. She opened her mouth. Sobanto took a step back, his hands raised before him. The cloud lunged …

And howled in fury.

Siroun twisted her knife, turning it all the way around Sobanto’s neck. The resistance against her blade was so slight, she barely felt it.

A thick stream of blood slid across the blade to drip on the floor. Sobanto opened his mouth. Blood gushed. Siroun withdrew the blade. He stayed upright for another moment and crumpled to the floor.

The entity screamed. The crimson within her flared and streaked apart, ripping the darkness into pieces. The darkness folded on itself, sucked into a tiny point, and vanished. Quiet reigned.

Adam crashed to the floor.

She crouched by him and brushed the blue hair from his face.

“We had no claim,” he murmured.

“I know,” she said, and wiped a smudge of blood from his lips. “Rest now. Let your body heal. Once the wound closes, I will get you out of here.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“Linda made a bargain: her body for the life of her husband. The transfer would not be complete until the creature that took her form killed Sobanto. If it took his life, it would no longer be a cloud, Adam. It would be an old god made flesh. It wouldn’t harm me because of what I am. But it would kill you.”

She leaned over him and kissed him gently on the forehead. “I couldn’t let it kill you.” After all, you’re all I have.

Author’s Bio:

Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team of Andrew and Ilona Gordon. They reside in Oregon with their two children, three dogs, and a cat. They’ve coauthored two series, the bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and the romantic urban fantasy of The Edge. Enjoy reading more about them at www.ilona-andrews.com.