Magic Bleeds

CHAPTER 18

I OPENED MY EYES, SAW LIGHT, AND JERKED UP-RIGHT.

The magic was still down. Thank the universe.

The bed was back in its rightful place. Oh, good. I’d dreamed the whole thing up.

Curran walked into the room. He wore Pack sweatpants he must’ve gotten out of my closet and nothing else. Toned muscle bulged on his chest and arms, hardened by constant exertion. He had the build of a man who fought for his life—neither too bulky, nor too lean, a perfect combination of strength and supple quickness.

And he grinned like a man who’d had a rather long and exciting night.

Nope. Not a dream.

I did sleep with him. Dear God.

Curran’s gray eyes laughed at me. “Morning.”

“Tell me I’m still sleeping.”

He showed me the edge of his teeth. “No.”

I lay back down and pulled the sheet on top of me. I couldn’t have been that reckless.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “I’ve already seen everything. Actually I’m pretty sure I’ve already touched and tasted everything, too.”

“I just need a moment to cope with this.”

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

That was what I was afraid of.

It occurred to me that I didn’t hear any barking. “Where is my dog?”

“I let him out.”

I jerked up. “On his own?”

“He’ll come back once he’s done. He knows where the food is.”

Curran strode over to the bed, moving silently, his bare toes gripping the floor lightly as he walked, as if he still had claws. He really was an incredibly attractive bastard. He leaned over the bed. His lips brushed mine. He kissed me. And I kissed him back. He tasted of Curran and toothpaste. Clearly, I had lost my mind.

“Did I hurt you last night?”

I could’ve used many words to describe last night, but pain wasn’t one of them. “No.”

“I wasn’t sure since you told me to stop.”

“Yes, at five in the morning.” He just kept going and going, and at about five o’clock, my body gave out. “I had to have sleep. But I’m nice and rested now.” Why did that just come out of my mouth?

He looked like a cat who’d gotten into a pantry and had himself a cream and catnip party. “Is that a hint?”

“Would you like it to be?” I just couldn’t stop myself.

He grinned and slid into the bed next to me. “Yes.”

Half an hour later, I escaped and started looking for my clothes. The air smelled of java—he’d made coffee for me.

I got dressed and went into the kitchen to fry an omelet and call Andrea for updates.

“You’re two hours late,” she told me. “Are you okay? You’re never late. Do you need me to come and get you?”

“No. I’m fine. Just tired.”

Curran loaded bread into the toaster.

“Any news of my Mary?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

We dodged the bullet. “Thanks.”

“Wait, don’t hang up.”

“Yes?”

Andrea lowered her voice. “Raphael found out more gossip about the gym thing.”

Curran glanced at me.

I had to head her off at the pass before she said something Raphael would regret. “Now isn’t the best time . . .”

“Look, you, I’m hiding in the armory with the phone, watching the door, and whispering so nobody will overhear me. I feel like a kid cutting class hiding in the bathroom with a joint. The least you can do is hear me out. Raphael says that Curran lay there on the weight bench for fifteen whole minutes trying to lift the damn bar, even though it was welded on there.”

Curran’s face took on an inscrutable impression.

“Aha,” I said. “Aha” was a good word. Noncommittal.

“He broke it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“He broke the bar off. And then he smashed the bench with the bar. Bashed the thing to pieces.”

Just kill me now. “Aha.”

“He must have a lot of frustration. The man’s unstable. So watch your back, okay?”

“Will do. Thanks.”

I hung up and looked at him. “You broke the bench.”

“You broke it. I just finished the job.”

“It wasn’t one of my brightest moments.”

He shrugged. “No. I just didn’t get it until I saw the catnip. I thought you were taunting me. It was unexpected.” He growled under his breath. “I’m going to muzzle Raphael.”

“He just wants his financial machinations approved.”

“Are you asking me to do this for him?”

“No.”

I turned the gas off and got out two blue metal plates. I’d given up on breakable plates after the last time my front door got broken and demonic mermaids wrecked my kitchen. I split the omelet between the plates and stopped when Curran’s arms closed about me. He pulled me against him, pressing my back against his chest. I heard him inhale my scent. His lips grazed my temple. Here we were, alone, in my kitchen, holding each other while breakfast cooled on the table. This was some sort of alternate universe, with a different Kate, who wasn’t hunted like a wild animal and who could have these sorts of things.

“What’s up?” I asked softly.

“Just making sure you know you’re caught.”

He kissed my neck and I leaned against him. I could stay for days wrapped in him like this. I’d sunk in way too fast and way too deep. Yes, this was all well and good, but what happened when he saw the next conquest on the horizon? The thought cut at me. Apparently, I was still fragile. “I didn’t break any bones last night, did I?”

“No. But that was a hell of a kick. I saw pretty lights for a moment or two.”

“Served you right.”

We broke apart, slightly awkward. He checked the fridge. “Is there any pie?”

“In the bread box.”

He extracted the pie from the box and sniffed the crust. “Apple.”

“Made it yesterday.” Magic apples thawed well.

“For me?”

“Maybe.”

“Before or after the chair?”

“After. Although I was really pissed off at you. What the hell did you use?”

“Industrial glue. It’s inert until you add a catalyst to it. I took off the fabric and filled the chair with a bag of glue in thin plastic, covered the plastic with catalyst, put sponges on top, and reupholstered the thing.”

That was why it didn’t feel weird sitting on it. The moment I sat down, the bag broke, glue and catalyst mixed, and the sponges stuck to my butt. “That must’ve taken a long time.”

“I was very motivated.”

“Did you know the glue produces heat when mixed with acetone?”

His lips curved. “Yes.”

“Would it have killed you to mention it?”

He chuckled.

“Oh, get over yourself,” I growled.

Curran dug into his omelet. I drank my coffee and watched him try my cooking. Most shapeshifters avoided spicy food. It dulled their senses. I’d used half of the salt I normally stuck in there, and none of the jalapeños made it in.

For some reason it was terribly important that he liked it.

He hooked a piece of omelet with his fork and chewed it with obvious pleasure. “Did Doolittle talk to you about the body?”

“No. Any news on the missing shapeshifters?”

Curran nodded. His face turned grim.

“Bad news?” I guessed.

“They went wild.”

I stopped with the coffee cup halfway to my mouth. It was often said that the shapeshifter had only two options: going Code or going loup. The first demanded sacrifice and iron discipline, the second catapulted them down the path of wild abandon, turning them into murderous cannibalistic maniacs. There was the third option, which almost never happened. A shapeshifter could forget their humanity completely. It wasn’t loupism in the strict sense, because loups shifted into human shape frequently, if only to taunt their victims while they ripped them apart. Wild shapeshifters regressed so deeply into their animal forms that they lost the ability to transform, to speak, and probably to form coherent human thoughts. Going wild was so rare, I could count the known cases on the fingers of one hand. It usually happened when a shapeshifter was forced to maintain animal form for extended periods of time—months, sometimes years.

Unfortunately wild shapeshifters still carried Lyc-V. If they bit a human and the human became a loup, the Pack would bear responsibility for it. That was the greatest burden of the alphas. Sometimes they had to kill their own people.

“Did you . . . ?”

“It wasn’t me, but it was done. The bodies are being brought to the Keep today.”

“What would cause them to go wild?” I stirred my coffee.

Curran reached over and brushed my hand with his fingers. “Sometimes fear does it. When little kids get startled, they often go furry to run away.”

“So she terrified them to the point they forgot they were human?”

Curran stopped. “She?”

Thin ice. Proceed with extreme caution. If I mentioned Saiman, it might set him off. “I think it might be a woman. She pilots the undead mages the way navigators pilot vampires.”

He chewed on that. “One of Roland’s?”

“I don’t know yet. You’ll know the second I do.”

Curran cut two pieces of pie and put one in front of me. “How long will you need to pack?”

And the happy morning screeched to a halt. “Why would I need to pack?” I asked casually.

“Because you’re coming to the Keep with me.” He delivered it as a fact. His face wore the familiar blank expression I’d come to define as the Beast Lord’s “my way or the highway” look. He was actually serious about this.

“Why?”

“She saw you at the Guild. She could track you down here. It’s not safe here.”

“Nice try. She’s targeting you, not me.” If I gave him any hint Roland was after me, he would carry me to the damn Keep and hide me in an armored room.

“I want you with me,” he said. “It’s not a request.”

“Too bad. You must’ve forgotten, Your Fuzziness, that I don’t do well with orders.”

We locked stares over the table.

“You have no sense of self-preservation.”

“And you expect me to commute two hours each way from the Keep to the Order.” I kept my voice mild. “I suppose I won’t be needing my job, my house, or my clothes anymore.”

“I didn’t say that. Although let me get back to you on the clothes. It’s still under consideration.”

“Look, you don’t get to run my life. We slept together once—”

He held up seven fingers.

“Fine,” I squeezed through my teeth. “We had sex seven times in a twenty-four-hour period. Just because I’m your lover—”

“Mate.”

Words died in my mouth. In shapeshifter terms, mate meant monogamy, family, children—a union, civil, physical, and spiritual. It meant marriage. Apparently he hadn’t given up on that idea.

“Mate,” I said finally, tasting the word.

He winked at me. Dear God.

I gave him my hard stare. “You’re a control freak and I fight all authority. And you want us to mate?”

A wicked spark lit his eyes. “Many, many times.”

“What’s wrong with you? Did I hit you too hard on the head?”

“My mate lives with me,” he said. “In the Keep.”

“Have you had many mates before?”

He gave me a look reserved for the mentally challenged. “I had lovers.”

“So this is a new rule you made up on the spot?”

“That’s a perk of being the Beast Lord. You get to make up rules.”

Going to the Keep was out of the question. They were already in danger, but it would be nothing compared to what would happen if I moved in. Curran protected his people, and I endangered them. I forced my voice to sound normal. “Any other Curran rules I need to know about? Might as well get them out now, so I can veto all of them.”

“You don’t get to veto my rules,” he said.

I laughed. “This will never work.”

We looked at each other.

“Let’s trade,” he said. “You tell me what you have to have and I’ll tell you what I want.”

He was trying to negotiate. I must’ve won a victory somewhere. Either that or last night was as good for him as it was for me. “Okay.”

He invited me with a wave of his fork. “You start.”

“The Order is off the table,” I said. “I’m not quitting.”

“I didn’t say you had to.” He leveled a heavy stare on me.

“But since you insist, I agree. The Order is off the table. My turn.”

Danger, danger . . . “Okay.”

“Monogamy,” he stated flatly. “While you’re with me, I’m the only one. Anybody else touches you and I’ll kill them.”

“What if I accidentally bump into someone?”

Gold flashed in his eyes. “Don’t.”

Apparently he refused to feel humorous about this situation. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You said yourself, I’m a control freak. I’m a jealous, possessive bastard and I’m not as human as some. You have no idea what last night cost me. Betray me and I’ll kill him. If you don’t want to be with me, tell me. Don’t go behind my back. I’m trying to be as honest as I can. So there are no surprises.”

“You do realize that killing the other male makes no sense. If I cheat on you, I’m at fault, not him. He didn’t promise you anything.”

“It’s not about logic. That’s the way Pack works. I would be within my rights to kill anyone trying to take my mate. I would be expected to do it, I’d want to do it, and I would do it.”

I pointed the fork at him. “Fine. But the parade stops now.”

“What parade?”

“Your girlfriend parade.”

His eyebrows crept up. “Girlfriend parade?”

“Curran, you cheat on me and we’re done. That’s fair.”

“Kate, it goes both ways. If anyone tries to make a pass at me, you’re welcome to their throat.”

“I don’t care about people making passes at you. I only care if you act on it.”

“Agreed. The girlfriend parade stops.” He bared his teeth in a happy feral grin. My own personal psycho. “I kind of figured that out when you melted the lock on my guestroom in a fit of jealousy.”

“You don’t say.” I picked at my omelet.

“My turn. The not-talking thing—we’ll never do that again.”

“Boy, that really bugged you, did it?”

He growled. “Yes, it did.”

“Okay. I promise never to stop talking to you. You may come to regret this.”

He grimaced. “I’m sure. We can discuss it in more detail, at the Keep.”

“And what will the rest of your subjects think about that?”

He shrugged. “The Pack functions best when hierarchy is clear. Right now most people don’t know why I was irritable, and those who do know are unsure where we stand, so everyone is walking on eggshells. It will be better once the Pack sees us together.”

No matter what rocks I threw at him, he refused to deviate from his course. I chose my words very carefully. “I’d rather they didn’t.”

He sat completely still. His voice gained a low dangerous edge. “Are you ashamed of being with me?”

“No.”

His face slid into a flat unreadable expression. “Is it because I’m a shapeshifter?”

“No, it’s because you’re the Beast Lord.”

He leaned back. “Care to elaborate?”

“My value is in my impartiality. I can approach the People, the Pack, the druids, or the Witch Oracle, because it’s clear I don’t take sides. I’m able to function effectively only if I’m neutral. Sleeping with you destroys my impartiality. You won’t tolerate someone who isn’t loyal to you, so the moment I acknowledge being with you, everyone who ever had a problem with the Pack will stop talking to me. That’s only part of the issue.”

“Is there more?”

If I had any hope for the two of us, I’d have to tell him everything.

The thought froze me in my seat.

“Kate?” he asked softly.

I opened my mouth and tried to make words come out. They didn’t.

He reached over and covered my hand with his.

I couldn’t tell him. Not yet.

I had to find some other reasons and so I stuck to things that had gotten me through the misery of the last few weeks. “How many women have you slept with?”

He pulled back and crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge. “Don’t do this.”

“It’s a legitimate question,” I said.

“How many men have you slept with?”

“You’re my third. Answer the question.”

“Well, are we counting long-term partners or one-night stands?”

I sighed. “Would you like to count partners only?”

He grimaced. “Less than twenty.”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

He mulled it over. “Eighteen.”

“And how many of them lived in the Keep with you?”

The answer came a little quicker. “Seven, but none shared my rooms.”

“What do you mean, they didn’t share your rooms? Where did you . . .”

“In their quarters.”

I laughed. “Oh, so you graced them with your nocturnal presence in the bimbo room, Your Majesty? Like Zeus, in a blaze of golden light?”

He showed me the edge of his teeth. “They liked it.”

Arrogant ass. “Sure. So why don’t you let women in your rooms?”

“Because being in my rooms means being in a position of power.”

If he thought I would stay in a bimbo room when this was over, he was out of luck.

I would be dead when this was over.

“In the public eye, there is a huge imbalance of power between you and me. If I went to the Keep with you, Atlanta would stop viewing me as Kate Daniels, agent of the Order, and would perceive me as Beast Lord’s Girlfriend Number Nineteen. Or Number Eight, depending on how they chose to look at it. What little reputation I’ve earned would be wiped away and you can bet that the Order will take me off the current case faster than you can snarl.”

“We both have to give up some things,” he said.

I crossed my arms. “I’m so glad you see it my way, Your Majesty. Quit being the Beast Lord, give up the Pack, and come live with me in my apartment.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

I smiled at him.

“I get it,” he said. “Point made. It’s not fair. But the Pack is who I am. I built it for my people. The Order isn’t who you are. Half of the time you’re trying to figure out how to hide what you find from them. I’ve read your report of the flare. If there was a lying competition, you’d win it hands down.”

That hit really close to home. “The Order is where I choose to be right now. If I’m taken off this petition, it will go to Andrea. She’s my best friend. If she collides with the Mary’s magic, she might be exposed. It’ll destroy her. In any case, I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

“Andrea knew the risks when she became a knight. You didn’t put her into this situation, she did it herself. You’re just delaying the inevitable. She’s trying to live in two worlds at once and she can’t.”

Ouch. That hit really, really close to home.

He kept going. “You don’t want to justify yourself. I respect that. But you want me to be your dirty secret. To skulk about and pretend that you’re not mine in public. I won’t do it.”

“I’m asking you to be discreet.”

“No.”

“Would you like to borrow a pair of my panties to wave around at the next Council meeting to get the point across?”

His eyes flashed. “Got any to spare?”

I could’ve picked somebody rational. But no, I had to fall in love with this arrogant idiot. Come to the Keep with me, be my princess. Mourn me when your crazy dad kills me. Yeah, right.

He got up, took the phone from the counter, and set it before me. “I said we both had to give up something.”

“So far I’m the one expected to give up things. What’s your sacrifice?”

He nodded at the phone and rattled off a number. “That’s the phone of the Keep’s steward. His crew makes all the sleeping arrangements. I called him this morning to tell him I would be coming in. Call him. See if I requested a room to be prepared for you.”

The phone rang.

We both looked at it.

It rang again and I picked it up. “Yes?”

“Kate?” Saiman’s voice sounded mildly anxious. “I see you survived the night.”

“Barely.”

Curran picked up his empty plate.

“Are you injured?”

“No.” Just tender in some places.

“That’s good to hear.”

The sound of tortured metal screeched through the kitchen. Curran was slowly, methodically rolling the metal plate into a tube.

“What is that noise?” Saiman said.

“Construction.”

“Are you planning to visit the Temple today?”

“If the magic complies.”

“I would be interested in learning what you find out.”

“Your interest has been noted.”

I hung up. Curran dropped a chunk of nearly solid metal that used to be a plate onto the counter.

I looked into his gray eyes. “Curran, if you attack him, I’ll have to defend him. There is no competition there. If I had wanted to be with him, I could have.” Crap. That didn’t come out right.

He took a deep breath.

“What I meant to say was, he offered and I declined.”

“Come with me.”

“I can’t.”

A shadow passed over his face. “Then we’re done.”

“So it’s all or nothing?”

“That’s the only way I can do it.” He turned his back to me and walked out.