“Yep. Any progress?”
Luther shook his head. “No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing beyond what I sent you. The GBI is interviewing the surviving relatives. Nobody was courting the dark gods. Nobody was summoning anything. Most of them had little magic. There were a few plant mages and firebugs. The usual. One of them was an ex-merc. You might have known him. He went by Shock.”
“Shock Collins?”
“Yes.”
“He left the Guild when it almost went bankrupt. I had no idea he moved out there. You know for sure he disappeared?”
“Yes. We found his wallet in his house, with driver’s license and Guild ID in it.”
This was bad news. Shock Collins had been a careful, skilled merc, who turned nasty when cornered. He’d survived several bad gigs that should’ve killed him, and he could electrocute an attacker in a pinch. He wouldn’t let himself be jumped.
“Signs of struggle in the house?”
“No.”
“What the he . . . heck?”
Luther lowered his glasses and looked at me. I pointed to Conlan over my shoulder. Motherhood made you watch your mouth.
“I do have something on your furry monster friend,” Luther said. “At first glance, it appeared to be a new species of post-Shift ugly, until we cut this hideous specimen open and played with his innards a little bit.”
He pushed a metal table over to the body shelf and flipped the metal door up, revealing a handle. He grabbed the handle, pulled it, and the body neatly slid onto the examination table. Luther rolled the table forward, to a stand with a fey lantern. I followed.
He pulled back the sheet, revealing the neat autopsy scars. With it dead, the impact wasn’t quite as strong, but the revulsion squirmed through me all the same.
“What do you feel when you look at it?”
“Hungry,” Luther said.
“You need help,” I told him.
“I haven’t eaten breakfast today, or lunch.”
“Seriously, Luther, do you get a sense of wrongness?”
“No.”
I sighed.
“Unless you’re referring to the corruption miasma so thick you can cut it with a knife and serve it with ketchup. Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course I feel the miasma. You would have to be blind, deaf, and anosmic to not react to it, and even then, you would still feel it.”
“Why does it do this?”
“Because she might have started as human.”
“I figured as much. Julie said they were blue, so they likely had a human ancestor.”
“No, not ancestor.” Luther grimaced. “She was born human.”
I pointed to the furry twisted creature. “That was born human?”
Luther coughed. “Yes. Probably.”
“So, what is it, some strange form of loupism?”
“That was the working theory for a bit, but we found no Lyc-V in her system.”
“Are you sure? Because they were really hard to kill.”
“I’m sure. The body did undergo profound changes. All of the human organs are still there, but everything has been altered. The fascia, which is . . .” Luther coughed again. He sounded choked. “. . . fibrous connective tissue enclosing organs and musculature, has been . . . reinforced . . .” He doubled over, coughing.
Behind him, a cloud of emerald-green dust poured into the room through the doorway. The powder licked the boundary of the circle and recoiled.
Luther straightened. A puff of green powder escaped his mouth. His eyes stared at me, glassy and cold.
There were four feet between me and the circle. I cleared them in a single jump, caught Conlan in midleap, and backed away toward the center of the ward.
The dust filled the room now, shifting like diaphanous emerald veils all around us. Only the surface of the circle remained clear. And Sarrat and all my weapons were conveniently stowed in Luther’s stupid box, deep in green dust. Great.
Luther stepped to the circle, rigid, like a marionette pulled by its strings. “Traitor,” he hissed in a sibilant voice.
Conlan growled in my arms.
Oh good, it wanted to talk. “Who did I betray?”
“Stupid traitorous bitch. Unworthy.”
Was this a box thing? “Of all the insults out there, this is what you come up with? Pathetic.”
“He’s done everything for you. You’re not fit to lick shit off the soles of his boots.”
“Shit eating is your job.” The more I pissed it off, the more it would talk and the faster I would figure out what the hell was going on. “Try harder.”
Luther moved in short jerks. He was fighting whatever it was. He was also a distraction. If you wanted to launch a surprise attack, it helped if your target focused her attention on someone else. Luther was meant to keep me preoccupied. When the attack came, it would be at my back. I was still holding Conlan. I would have to drop him to defend us and trust that he’d stay in the circle. He was only a year old. He had no sense. He licked walls and ate soap, for crying out loud.
“He gave you life.”
Not a box thing. A Roland thing.
“He is God. He is life. He is holy. You’re an abomination.”
Only one group of people thought Roland was holy and their path to heaven. The dust belonged to a sahanu.
I rifled through my mental roster of sahanu Adora had told me about. This didn’t match anyone in particular, but she’d said that sahanu kept their powers hidden.
“My father is a liar.” The spot between my shoulder blades itched. The sahanu had to be right behind me.
“Blasphemy!”
Religious fanatics. Reasonable and understanding people, easily persuaded by facts and logical arguments.
“There is no heaven waiting for you. He fed you lies and you gobbled it up. My father is too smart to ever become a god. When you accept godhood, your thoughts and your actions are no longer your own. You would know this if you weren’t blind and deaf. Thinking for yourself, try it. It will help.”
Using power words against my father’s assassins was risky. Some of them had the benefit of my father’s blood, which made a blowback likely. A lot of them used power words themselves. With Luther infected, there was a good chance that any power word I used would hit him as well.
Luther leaned forward, baring his teeth. “I’ll kill you. I’ll eat your flesh and then I’ll eat your baby. I’ll swallow his soft flesh and then I too will be a god.”
Cold rage burst through me. The world turned crystal clear. “And what will my father do when he finds out you tried to devour his grandson?”
“He will praise me. He ordered your death. He wants your son brought to him, but I’ll eat him instead.”
When I finally got through to my father, we would have words.
“I’ll suck the marrow out of your baby’s bones and consume his magic. Then I will be even more powerful.”
No, you won’t. I sneered at Luther. I’d had a great role model when it came to sneering. Nobody did put-downs like Eahrratim, the Rose of Tigris.
“You and what army, sirrah? I’m the Princess of Shinar, the Blood Blade of Atlanta. My line stretches thousands of years into the past. My family was building palaces while your ancestors cringed inside their mud huts. You’re weak, stupid, and less. What threat could you possibly be? You dream of power I already have. A tiger doesn’t notice a worm she crushes under her paw. Slither, little worm. Slither away as fast as you can.”
I felt the precise moment she charged out of the fog into the circle. I dropped Conlan and stepped back, twisting out of the way. My brain registered the attack in a fraction-of-a-second burst: lean blond woman, my size, my height, young, a dagger in each hand.
The right dagger stabbed the air an eighth of an inch from my chest. I grabbed her wrist with my right hand, aiming to smash her elbow with my left palm. She dropped into a crouch and slashed across my right bicep with her other dagger. A hot line of pain tore my arm, like a heated rubber band slapping against my skin. I swung into a kick. She raised her arms, covering up at the last moment, and rolled back. My foot barely tapped her. She rolled to her feet and leaped back into the green mist.