Blood Heir E-Book

Ilona Andrews

• Herausgeber: NYLA
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 503

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

From award-winning author, Ilona Andrews, an all-new novel set in the New York Times #1 bestselling Kate Daniels World and featuring Julie Lennart-Olsen, Kate and Curran's ward. Atlanta was always a dangerous city. Now, as waves of magic and technology compete for supremacy, it's a place caught in a slow apocalypse, where monsters spawn among the crumbling skyscrapers and supernatural factions struggle for power and survival. Eight years ago, Julie Lennart left Atlanta to find out who she was. Now she's back with a new face, a new magic, and a new name—Aurelia Ryder—drawn by the urgent need to protect the family she left behind. An ancient power is stalking her adopted mother, Kate Daniels, an enemy unlike any other, and a string of horrifying murders is its opening gambit. If Aurelia's true identity is discovered, those closest to her will die. So her plan is simple: get in, solve the murders, prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled, and get out without being recognized. She expected danger, but she never anticipated that the only man she'd ever loved could threaten everything. One small misstep could lead to disaster. But for Aurelia, facing disaster is easy; it's relationships that are hard.

Leseprobe

BLOOD HEIR

ILONA ANDREWS

This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Blood Heir

Copyright © 2020 by Ilona Andrews, Inc.

Ebook ISBN: 9781641971584

Cover and Interior Art by Luisa Preißler

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

NYLA Publishing

121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, NY 10001, New York.

http://www.nyliterary.com

To the fans of Kate Daniels World who refuse to let it go.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Ryder Extras

Acknowledgments

Also by Ilona Andrews

About the Author

1

The moon was full and silver. It peeked at me through tattered clouds as I rode my horse down the old I-20, staying in the center of the highway. Magic had been chewing on the edges of paved roads for decades, and the asphalt near the shoulder often crumbled under the weight of a horse.

Nothing to see here, moon. Just a lone woman in a tattered cloak riding her horse into her home city after being gone for far too long.

Around me dense pines towered on both sides of the once busy highway. Glowing eyes watched Tulip and me from the darkness between the roots and branches, yellow for racoon, white for deer, green for foxes, electric red arranged into a triangle for hell alone knew what. The forest critters gave me the stink eye but kept to themselves.

The trees stopped abruptly, replaced by fields wrapped in razor wire. A sign loomed ahead.

WELCOME TO ATLANTA

We’re Glad Georgia Is on Your Mind

A bit optimistic of them.

Below someone had scribbled in white ink.

“Praise the Lord and get the fireballs ready.”

That was more like it.

A dark shape swooped above my head. The moonlight slipped over it, dancing on its feathers, and then it soared into the endless indigo of the sky. Like most eagles, Turgan didn’t like to fly at night, but something must’ve unsettled my raptor. He’d taken off the moment we left the ley line and refused to land on his perch on my shoulder.

Another sign jutted into the night.

ALL VISITING SHAPESHIFTERS

Present to the Pack in 24 hours

Take I-85, head northeast, follow your nose.

Twenty-four hours? When I left eight years ago, foreign shapeshifters had three days to introduce themselves to the Pack. Times had changed.

A high, eerie howl floated up to the clouds on the night breeze. Not a shapeshifter. Just some garden-variety monstrosity venting to the moon. Too far to worry about. Tulip flicked her ears and kept going.

Shapeshifters were a paranoid, suspicious breed. Lyc-V, the symbiotic virus that gave them the ability to change into animals, came bearing many gifts. Some, like enhanced strength, speed, and senses, were beneficial. Others, not so much.

Those who changed shape lived lives of discipline and self-control. The other way lay loupism, a catastrophic plunge into hormone-addled hell that turned shapeshifters into sadistic spree killers. Loupism had no cure, except for a blade to the neck or a bullet to the brain.

Shapeshifters required the kind of structure that regular society could no longer deliver. They set themselves apart in packs, and the rest of the population, acutely aware that each shapeshifter was a spree killer in waiting, was happy to let them govern themselves.

Of all the shapeshifter packs active in the continental US, Atlanta’s Free People of the Code were the largest and by far the strongest. Most packs rarely reached over a hundred members. Atlanta’s Pack counted nearly three thousand shapeshifters and seven different clans, defined by their animal forms and unified under the rule of a Beast Lord. It was so large, that it was known simply as the Pack. Only the Ice Fury Pack in Alaska was larger.

A long time ago, I was one of the rare humans who were considered members of the Pack. I had lived in the Keep, the massive shapeshifter fortress northeast of the city. All my friends had grown fur and claws. Back then, the Pack had had a different Beast Lord, and he’d treated me like his younger sister.

The fields ended, and ruins began. I adjusted the weight of the spear in the sheath on my back, nudged Tulip, and she picked up speed. I had a morning appointment to keep on short notice.

The highway narrowed. We took an exit to the left onto Basilisk Road and followed it as it looped northeast, climbing through the exposed corpses of once tall apartment high-rises.

Magic hated technology. It came in waves, flooding the world, snuffing out electric lights and gasoline engines, chewing on skyscrapers, and spawning monsters. Then, as unpredictably as it appeared, the wave would wane, and technology once again came out on top. Spells fizzled, and guns once again spat bullets.

The taller the building, the harder magic gnawed on it. Most skyscrapers and office towers had fallen long ago. A lot of the overpasses had crumbled to dust or collapsed. The old skyline was but a distant memory.

In its wake, new buildings sprung up, built by craftsmen mostly by hand to minimize magic erosion. Here and there, the new structures hugged the road, solid homes and offices with thick walls, strong doors, and narrow windows guarded by steel bars. The soft yellow glow of electric lights fought with the gloom. The magic was down now. If it had been up, some of the grates on the windows would shine with silver and the blue radiance of fey lanterns would replace the electric bulbs.

The city looked the same as when I left it. It felt the same too, dangerous, indifferent, watchful, yet somehow still achingly familiar. Home, despite all the years I’d been gone. I’d been almost eighteen when I left. I was twenty-six now. It felt like a lifetime ago.

I never meant to be gone this long, and this wasn’t how I wanted to come back to Atlanta. My biological family was dead, but my found family was alive and well, and they’d wanted me back for a long time. In my mind, I would’ve called ahead, and they would meet me at the ley line, mob me, hug me, and we would all go home. That was the original plan.

But if I went home now, I’d be signing their death warrants. I had to stay off the radar, and I couldn’t afford to be recognized.

Not that I would be recognized. When most people came home after a long absence, their family said things like “You lost weight” and “Is that a new hair cut?” If I went home, my family would ask, “Who the hell are you?” Nothing about me was the same. Not my body, not my face, not my voice, or my scent.

A hint of movement on the left jerked me right out of my memories and into the present.

I was several blocks deep into a deserted street. On the left, a ruined heap of a building crouched, still steeped in night shadows. On the right, a wall rose, new construction, solid, thick, and topped with razor wire. Ahead, the street ended, as if sheared with a giant’s knife. A chasm gaped, dropping a full fifty feet down below, about a third of a mile across.

The chasm was new, but not surprising. Magic waves didn’t just birth monsters; they produced new rivers, raised hills, and split the ground. Atlanta had dealt with the chasm, as was evidenced by a single-lane wooden bridge spanning it.

The bridge wasn’t the issue. The three shapeshifters that moved out of the shadows to block it were.

There was absolutely no reason for a Pack patrol to be here at this hour. Their territory was all the way on the other side of the city. The timing wasn’t right either, just before dawn, when they should’ve been returning to the Keep, to perform their morning meditation and curl up for a nap like well-behaved monsters. Yet here they were, dressed in matching Pack sweats and blocking my way.

Atlanta was a bitch of a city.

All three were male and young and showed no intention of moving out of my way. The itty-bitty welcoming committee.

“Hi there!” I called. “I need to get on this bridge.”

The middle of the shapeshifters, who looked about twenty, tan, with longish dark hair, smiled at me. “Password?”

Aren’t you cute? “Why do I need a password? Is this bridge in the Pack’s territory?”

“That’s not important,” the leader said. “What’s important is that there are three of us and one of you.”

Well, look who learned to count.

“If you want to cross the bridge, you have to give us the password,” the shapeshifter said. “If you don’t know it, you’ll have to pay the fine.”

The smaller shapeshifter on his right grinned and let out an eerie cackle. Boudas. Of course.

Boudas, the werehyenas, belonged to one of the smaller of the Pack’s seven clans. There weren’t many of them, but they were dangerous and utterly nuts. Wolves, jackals, rats, all of them could be reasoned with. Boudas did things like climb into a captive polar bear’s enclosure and tickle it with their claws to see what would happen.

Fine. I’d go around.

I tensed my right leg a fraction. Tulip turned, more anticipating the command rather than obeying it, the sound of her hooves clopping on the pavement too loud in the night. Two more shapeshifters stepped out of the shadows, blocking my exit.

Right. The story of my life.

“Did I say three?” the bouda called out. “I meant five.”

A normal Pack patrol had two shapeshifters, three if it was on the border with the People, because necromancers made a dangerous enemy. Five shapeshifters meant a strike team. They had run some sort of mission in the city, and it was my bad luck to run into them as they were coming back. They saw a lone woman in faded jeans, old boots, and a tattered cloak riding a horse late at night, low threat and an easy target. If they’d been wolves, jackals, or Clan Heavy, I’d be halfway across the bridge by now. But they were boudas and they liked to play.

I guided Tulip into continuing the turn until I faced the bridge again. Five boudas would be a tough fight, and the moment they realized that I wasn’t playing, it would escalate into real violence. I really didn’t want to kill anyone. I didn’t have time to play games either.

“Still waiting for that password,” the leader of the boudas said.

“May 15th,” I said.

“What’s that?” the shapeshifter on the left asked.

“Andrea Medrano’s birthday,” I said. “Good enough?”

The shapeshifters paused. It was a funny thing to watch: one moment, they were oozing arrogance, the next they simultaneously lost their steam as if someone popped them on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. To them Andrea Medrano was Boss, Judge, and Executioner. They called her Alpha. I called her Andrea. Or Aunt Andy when I was sucking up to get her help for some nefarious deed.

The trio by the bridge eyed me, their expressions cautious. If they kept blocking me and I turned out to be someone Andrea knew, there would be hell to pay. The only way to check that would be to call the Bouda Clan House and talk to her, which meant they’d have to answer uncomfortable questions about why they stopped me in the first place. The Pack took pains to maintain a cordial relationship with humans in general, and the city of Atlanta in particular. The punishment would be swift.

A tall shadow stepped out of the ruins, as if congealing from the darkness, and glided forward with easy grace. Broad shoulders, long legs, a large guy, same grey Pack sweats. He took another step and I saw his face. It was a face that wouldn’t just stop traffic, it would cause a pileup.

His eyes caught the moonlight. A blood-red sheen rolled over his brown irises.

“Now, that’s an interesting development,” Ascanio Ferara said. “Please, tell me more.”

Damn it all to hell.

Ascanio glanced at the boudas by the bridge. All three promptly looked down. So, stopping me was an unsanctioned bit of fun.

When I left, Andrea and her husband Raphael, the alphas of Clan Bouda, were grooming Ascanio for the beta spot, which would’ve made him second in the chain of the clan’s command. He’d wanted that spot more than anything. Apparently, he’d gotten what he wished for and all the headaches that went with it.

Ascanio turned back to me and looked me over, slowly.

I made a conscious effort to not hold my breath. Ascanio knew me. We’d met when I was fourteen and he was fifteen, and we’d spent a lot of time together.

We haven’t met.

His nostrils fluttered slightly. He was downwind from me, and the night breeze had brought him my scent.

I’m a stranger. You’ve never seen me before.

Ascanio inhaled deeper. His eyes narrowed.

My heartbeat sounded too loud in my ears, but it was slow and steady. He wouldn’t know me. Sometimes when I looked in the mirror now, I didn’t know me.

Time stretched, slow and viscous like molasses. He stared at me, and I had no choice but to stare back.

Ascanio had been beautiful as a teenager, almost androgynous. The beauty was still there, in the bottomless eyes under the sweep of dark eyebrows and in the perfect lines, but his face had gained strength. His features had broadened slightly. Time had contoured his jaw. No traces of softness remained. It was a man’s face now, with harsh edges and defined angles, and eyes that radiated authority and power. If I didn’t know him, he would’ve knocked my socks off.

“You dropped my alpha’s name,” Ascanio said. “Care to explain?”

“No.”

Red flashed in his irises. “You know confidential information about my alpha. I need to know how, because I’ve been with her for over a decade and I’ve never met you.”

“And what will you do if I don’t tell you?”

“I’ll have to insist.” His voice told me I wouldn’t like it.

The first time we’d met, he’d decided it would be a brilliant idea to kiss me. I’d shoved a handful of wolfsbane in his face, dumped him on the floor, and tied his arms behind his back. And then I’d asked him if the spoiled bouda baby lost his bottle and his teddy.

“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “Five of your shapeshifters detained me without cause outside of the Pack’s boundaries, demanded that I pay a fee to cross a public bridge, and now you’re threatening me with assault.”

His eyebrows furrowed slightly. All of those would’ve been a violation of the Pack’s policies eight years ago.

“I haven’t threatened you yet.”

“I feel threatened. I’m trembling with fear.”

“I see a distinct lack of trembling,” Ascanio said. “This is very easy. Tell me how you know Andrea Medrano’s birthday, and you’re free to go.”

“You’re missing the point. You have no right to detain me in the first place.” To escalate or to back down? That was the question.

“You seem suspicious. I’m not sure you should be wandering around unsupervised.”

Ascanio would require nothing short of complete submission to let me go. Once I took a step back, he would want my name, my reason for entering the city, and, once he saw my face, my address. Backing down would cost more time and require too much lying.

“And you seem like an idiot, yet somehow nobody prevents you from wandering around free.”

One of the boudas by the bridge giggled and clamped his hand over his mouth.

Ascanio raised his eyebrows. “An idiot?”

“One human woman in the middle of a tech wave against six shapeshifters. Only an idiot can’t understand how that math will look to civilian law enforcement or your alpha. Does she generally encourage you to hassle lone women late at night?”

He took a step forward. Menace rolled off him like air from hot asphalt.

“Since I’m an idiot, perhaps I’ll pull you off your horse in my idiotic way, stuff you into one of our houses, somewhere with a deep basement, and wait until you decide to answer my questions. You can file a complaint if you ever get out.”

“Is this you threatening me? I’m checking so we’re both clear.”

“When I threaten you, you won’t have to ask.”

“In that case, do it. Pull me off my horse.”

He didn’t move. I’d called his bluff. Ascanio had many faults, but he wouldn’t hurt a random stranger, much less a human, without reason. If it got out that the Pack was kidnapping young human women off the street, the fallout would be catastrophic, and with five witnesses, it would get out. Shapeshifters gossiped worse than bored old ladies in church.

Frustration sparked in his eyes and died. I’d won.

Time to ease up. I didn’t want to antagonize him too much. “Why don’t we do this: you let me be on my way and I won’t file a formal complaint. It’s a win-win.”

Ascanio held up his hand to stop me and turned away, looking at the wall across the street. A moment later the rest of the shapeshifters turned and looked there, too.

A boy leapt out of the darkness and landed on the corner of the wall, the only spot free of razor wire. He was solid and corded with muscle, only half a foot shorter than me. Dark brown hair cut short, tan face, and grey eyes that were so light, they were practically silver.

Conlan.

When I left, he wasn’t even two years old. We’d seen each other hundreds of times over the years when visiting our grandfather in his otherworldly prison, but it’d been eight years since I’d seen him in person. If we were alone, I would’ve pulled him off that wall and hugged him so hard, he’d need all his shapeshifter strength to wiggle out of it.

Our stares connected.

He gave no indication that he recognized me. My brother, the master of subterfuge.

Ascanio heaved a mocking sigh. “The little prince graces us with his presence. You’re a long way from your parents’ territory, Your Highness.”

His Highness sat cross-legged on the wall. “You’re a long way from your Clan House, Beta Ferara.”

Ascanio smiled slowly, baring his teeth. “Run along now.”

“And if I don’t?” Conlan squinted at Ascanio. “Will you try to put me in your special basement?”

One of the boudas chuckled and choked it off before Ascanio could glare at him.

“This doesn’t concern you,” Ascanio said, his voice harsh.

“I’ll decide what concerns me.” Conlan rested his elbow on his knee and plopped his chin on his fist. “Don’t worry. I won’t get in your way. Please go on with your attempted extortion, robbery, and kidnapping scheme. I just want to see how it all turns out.”

“And then what?” one of the boudas behind me asked. “You gonna run home and tell your daddy?”

My brother turned his head and looked at him. Gold rolled over his eyes and flared into a bright glow. The bouda with the big mouth tried to hold his gaze. A tense second passed. The bouda looked down.

Ascanio couldn’t let that pass. Conlan had just alpha-stared one of his people into submission. I had to diffuse the situation before it broke into violence.

“So it’s not just lone women you hassle in the middle of the night. You also bully children.”

Ascanio glanced back at me.

That’s right. I’m still here.

“I’m going to ride across this bridge,” I told him. “You’re welcome to try and stop me. I’m pretty sure the kid and I can take you.”

“You should try to stop her,” Conlan called out. Flesh flowed over his left hand, snapping into a nightmarish half-hand half-paw, disproportionately large and armed with claws the size of human fingers. “It will be fun.”

“We both remember what happens when you go looking for fun,” Ascanio said. “Do I need to remind you?” He made a show of looking around. “I don’t have loup manacles handy.”

He didn’t have what?

Conlan’s face rippled. He was a hair away from going furry. “That was a long time ago. Why don’t we go find some and see what happens?”

Nothing. That’s what was going to happen.

I nudged Tulip. She lowered her head and stomped to the bridge. The boudas blocking it hesitated.

I fixed them with my stare and barked in the same voice I used when I wanted soldiers in the middle of a slaughter to obey me. “Move.”

The two on the left scrambled aside. The bouda on the right stood alone, not sure what to do.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ascanio wave him off. The bouda backed away.

Ascanio had crunched the numbers and didn’t like the result. In a fight with shapeshifters, there were no guarantees. If Conlan got hurt, or worse, if he hurt someone, there would be a lot of questions. I could just imagine how that conversation would go. “How did Curran’s son get hurt?” “Well, there was this woman…” “And what possessed you to detain a human woman in the middle of the night? Also, why is Bob missing an arm?” Ascanio was an ass, but he wasn’t a fool.

Ascanio flicked his fingers toward the city. The boudas shot past me, leaping onto the bridge, and broke into a run.

I glanced to the wall. Conlan was gone. Good job.

Ascanio turned to me. “You and I will meet again, soon.”

“No, we won’t.”

Blood-red eyes fixed me. “Think about the things I asked you.”

He sprinted past me onto the bridge, catching up to his crew with ridiculous ease. They dashed into the night with a speed that would make racehorses green and vanished from view.

For my first night back in Atlanta, it could’ve been worse. I still had all my limbs, and my hair wasn’t on fire.

What was that about loup manacles? I’d seen Conlan every week or two for years, and my brother never mentioned anything involving Ascanio and loup manacles. In fact, he never mentioned Ascanio, period. I’d have to get to the bottom of this next time we talked...

A ghost of a presence tripped my alarms. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose. Something waited in the depths of the ruins on my left. Watching me. I couldn’t see it or hear it, but I knew it was there, hidden in the darkness, the same way primitive people knew when a tiger lay in wait at the mouth of their cave.

I could get off the horse and say hello, but there was no telling what I would find, and every instinct warned me to back away. Tulip tensed under me. She didn’t like whatever was hiding in the darkness either.

There was no point in looking for trouble. I’d lost enough time as it was. I shifted my weight in the saddle, and Tulip trotted onto the bridge.

Nobody followed us.

* * *

I sat on a big chunk of concrete in the middle of the street. Around me the old bones of Midtown spread under the pale grey pre-dawn sky. Jagged corpses of skyscrapers jutted from the sea of rubble. Some had fallen whole; others broke off midway, and their husks stared at the world with black holes of empty windows. Strange lichens sheathed their walls, some coiling in ridges on the brick and stucco like ancient fossil shells, others drooping in long crimson strands that moved and shivered without any wind. Decorative hedges that once bordered sidewalks had grown foot-long thorns. Otherworldly vines, dotted with flowers, spilled from the gutted ruins.

The first magic wave had stabbed Atlanta in the heart, leaving a ragged, gaping wound that cut through Midtown. The wound bled magic even during the strongest tech, and its current had warped this area beyond all recognition. The locals called it Unicorn Lane. Nothing was what it seemed here, and everything tried to kill you. Even the biggest magical heavyweights steered clear of it. To enter Unicorn Lane, you had to be desperate or crazy. Good thing I was both.

In front of me, a small space had been cleared free of rubble. A ten-foot-tall stele thrust from its center, a narrow stone slab with four equal sides. A pack of small russet-furred beasts somewhere on the crossroads of squirrels and mongoose dashed down a narrow path and around it. The thing that chased them had no name. About the size of a large rottweiler, it scrambled over the refuse on six legs. Its fur was a forest of hair-thin black needles. It looked like a sea urchin, except for its head with long jaws and dinosaur teeth. The beast dashed after the pseudo-squirrels, slipped, and slammed into an abandoned car wrapped in orange moss.

The moss turned bright red from the impact. The beast staggered away, swayed, and collapsed, its side awash with scarlet. The needles drooped, liquifying. A thick puddle of brown blood spread from the creature. Dozens of critters no bigger than a rat streamed out of the ruins like a blue-grey tide to drink it.

Tulip neighed at me for the third time.

“Fine.” I got off the rock and untacked her. “Don’t go deep.”

Tulip tossed her head and took off down the street, a splash of white.

“Is that wise?” a familiar female voice asked.

I turned. Sienna stood by the stele. She wore a long dark cloak, and her hood was down, revealing her face and strawberry blond hair shorn in a new short bob. Her skin was pale, her features delicate and gentle, and her eyes distant. Before the Shift, people used to draw fae like her. Nobody would ever draw a delicate fae again.

“Tulip will be fine. What happened to the hair?”

She smiled. “Needed power for a spell.”

Sienna was an oracle who saw into the future. I had focused on her prophecies so much over the last four years, sometimes I forgot that she was a witch.

I walked over, and we hugged. She used to be sickly, almost skeletal, and sometimes she still forgot to eat, because she lived with one foot in another time. She felt solid now. Good.

“Why here?” I asked, nodding at the stele.

“I have my reasons.”

Sienna looked at the monument and the single name chiseled on it. SAIMAN.

“I always wondered why nothing else was written here,” she said.

“That’s the way he wanted it.”

I remembered the day we buried him. It rained so hard, all of us looked like we were crying. I wasn’t sure if anyone actually had. He’d stabbed too many of his pallbearers in the back.

A grandson of a frost giant, Saiman had been an expert on magic. He’d also been a polymorph. He could turn himself into anyone he wanted, any age, any gender, any shape within human limits, and he’d used that gift to live a thoroughly selfish life, using people, manipulating them, trampling over them in a hedonistic pursuit of wealth and pleasure. Then the city had had to come together to face a terrible threat, and Saiman had one brief, shining chance to cast aside his cowardice and step up to the plate. He took it, and it killed him.

I hadn’t mourned him, I’d never trusted him, but I was sorry he had died. A lot of people, better people, had also died in that battle.

Sienna looked at the stele, or rather through it, at something only she could see. I waited.

She’d called me yesterday. This is your last chance to stop it. Meet me by Saiman’s grave before sunrise. Then she’d hung up.

Rushing her and asking questions would accomplish nothing. She weighed and measured each word a hundred times before she said it. And even so, most of what she said made no sense until it was too late. I just had to be patient and hope I figured it out in time.

Last chance. The very last one.

Four years ago, she’d called me in the middle of the night. Sienna had foreseen disasters before, wars, plagues, dragons. Nothing rattled her, but that night her voice shook. She told me that an elder god had been reborn as an avatar in Arizona. Moloch, the Child Eater, the deity of the Canaanites condemned in the Old Testament, who took his sustenance from infants burned alive in the fires of his forges and metal bulls. For nearly three decades he had been building up his domain, preparing to expand, and that night Sienna had seen his first target.

Moloch would kill Kate. The woman who raised me as her daughter.

Kate was so much more than my mother. She was the nexus, a point of connection for many people who would otherwise slit each other’s throats. The Pack, who suspected all outsiders; the Masters of the Dead, who piloted vampires with their minds as if they were drones; the Witch Covens that guarded their precious knowledge with beasts and curses; the Neo-Pagans with a persecution chip on their shoulder; the Order of Merciful Aid, who maintained that their way was the only right way—all of them owed favors to Kate. She was respected by all, loved by some, feared by others, but none of them would treat her lightly. Kate was the only person capable of forging the factions of Atlanta into a unified force.

Eight years ago, she had done just that, and Atlanta stood as one against a danger that should have ended it. The city survived against all odds. Now Kate had moved on, to the coast near Wilmington, coming to Atlanta only for the summer, and without her the city had fractured again. But these fractures could still be repaired.

If Moloch killed Kate, Atlanta would collapse upon itself and fall to his power. Everyone I cared about on the East Coast would die trying to avenge her. The conflicts between the factions of the city would flare into war. On the West Coast, Erra, Kate’s aunt and the woman I called my grandmother, was trying to resurrect the ancient kingdom she left behind thousands of years ago. My grandmother once lost herself to vengeance and became an abomination to protect her people. Kate’s death would catapult her down the path of retribution once again, and this time she would not survive.

Sienna told me that I was the wild card. It was up to me to stop the prophecy from coming true.

That night four years ago I’d gotten off the phone with Sienna, and in the morning Erra and I were off to Moloch’s fortress. He thought he was secure in his citadel. I’d gotten myself captured, killed his guards, cut my way to his workshop, and severed his spine. He tore out my eye. My grandfather had told me that Moloch’s power was in his eyes, so I carved one of his out of his skull as he lay by my feet and put it into my head. Then I cut his body into pieces and threw him into his own forge. And then I set his hell fortress on fire.

Within two years Moloch regenerated, as my grandfather had warned me he would. I had bought us some time, but the future remained unchanged. Kate still died. From the moment I felt Moloch’s eye root into my head, everything I had done was to prevent the prophecy from happening. I clashed with Moloch again and again, but no matter how hard I struggled, I couldn’t alter Sienna’s visions. If Kate met Moloch, she died. If I went home, she died. If I warned her, she died.

“Moloch spoke to me again,” Sienna said.

Hearing the name said out loud was like being shocked with a live wire. I pushed the rage down. “What did he say?”

She glanced at me. “He taunted me. He can’t see what I see. He worries.”

Anything that worried Moloch was great for us.

“A holy man was murdered. His name was Nathan Haywood. Moloch sent his priests into the city. He wants something connected to this murder.”

“Something or someone?”

Sienna shook her head. I wouldn’t get an answer. “Find it before he does. If he obtains it, everything is lost. The future becomes a certainty.”

Kate would not die. Not while I was still breathing.

“Julie,” Sienna called.

I startled. I had left that name behind me years ago. Julie Olsen was gone, melted down in the crucible of magic. Now I went by Aurelia Ryder.

“Do not go home. If Kate sees you, she will recognize you. She will die. Curran will die. Conlan will die. Everyone you love will be gone.”

A cold spike of fear hammered through my spine. “Conlan saw me.”

“Conlan doesn’t matter. Only Kate does.” She reached out and gripped my hands. “You must stop him this time. No matter the cost. There are no more chances. This is it.”

“I promise,” I told her.

“Carry some lemon juice with you. Just in case.”

She pulled her cloak around her and walked away.

Lemon juice. Right.

I stood by the grave and watched the sun rise, splashing pink and red across the sky. The night was still in full swing in Arizona. Three hours from now Moloch would awaken and look at the sky just as I was. He was drawn to the sun. It was a ball of fire, and fire gave Moloch his power.

You sent your priests into Atlanta, huh? Don’t you worry, Child Eater. I will take good care of them, and when I’m done, you’ll wish you had never been reborn.

I let out a shrill whistle. Turgan took off from the ruin to the right and landed on my arm, all twelve pounds of him. Yellow feet gripped the padded bracer on my forearm with black talons. The golden eagle shifted his weight, wings fanning my head, and stared at me with his amber eyes.

Tulip came running around a heap of rubble. It was time for us to go to our new house and get the keys. I had a murder to solve.

2

Tamyra Miller chewed on her bottom lip. She was about ten years older than me, in her mid-thirties, with dark brown skin, a wealth of black hair she kept braided, and big round glasses, and she stared at the house in front of us with what could only be described as trepidation. I couldn’t really blame her.

Built at the turn of the 20th century, the house used to be a sprawling antebellum mansion. When I bought it two years ago, it stood three stories tall, with white walls, a wide wraparound porch, and towering ionic columns holding up its gabled roof. Its twenty thousand square feet of living space had been divided into eight apartments, each with a separate entrance and balcony.

Eight months ago, I had hired Tamyra, a structural engineer, to wreck it. She went in with a team of masons and carpenters, reinforced the structure, reconfigured the floor plan according to my instructions, carving out a rectangular living space of about six thousand square feet inside the house, and then carefully collapsed the outer walls, piling additional chunks of concrete and wood from the fallen high-rises nearby.

From the outside, the house looked like a ruin, a heap of rubble topped with a roof, some columns scattered, some still standing, buried in debris. The reinforced stable with the armored door was securely hidden in the back. A narrow path led to the entrance, guarded by a thick steel door with a wooden veneer smeared with dirt. No windows, except for the small one located to the right of the door and guarded by a metal grate that gave me a view of the front yard from my kitchen. No weak points. No sign that it was even habitable, except for the balcony. Invisible from the street unless you climbed another building, the balcony sat recessed under the roof, shielded by thick steel and silver bars that ran all the way down to the cement foundation. I had already seen the inside of the house, and it was everything I wanted it to be.

Tamyra had come to a decision. “Ms. Ryder…”

“Yes?”

“I realize that you’ve sunk a lot of money into this home, but you can’t really put a price on human life.”

“Are you trying to tell me the house isn’t safe?”

“The house is perfectly safe. It will withstand an earthquake. It’s a fortress and I’m proud of it. I’m talking about that.”

She turned left and looked west, where 17th NE Street rolled down hill, right into Unicorn Lane seething with magic five hundred yards away. Before the Shift, this was a neighborhood of stately homes and large yards, cushioned in greenery, with views of Midtown’s office towers and price tags to match. Now the entire area lay abandoned. Unicorn Lane kept growing with every magic wave, creeping ever so slowly outward inch by inch.

“You wouldn’t believe the crap we’ve seen crawl out of there over the six months we spent here,” Tamyra said.

I would. That’s why I’d paid them twice the going rate.

“There are other houses,” the structural engineer said.

But none like mine. Ten years ago, when I was still Julie, I was coming home after killing a manticore. It had clawed my leg before it died, deep, almost to the bone. I was tired, dirty, and bleeding, so I took a shortcut, strayed too close to Unicorn Lane, and a pack of feral ghouls chased me to this house. Back then a pack of six ghouls presented a problem.

I’d climbed up on the roof to escape and watched the sun slowly set behind Unicorn Lane until Derek found me. He ran the ghouls off, tracked down my horse, and then lectured me on the benefits of not taking stupid shortcuts all the way home. The memory of it was vivid in my head. Me, on my horse, and him, walking next to me through the deserted night, chewing me out in his raspy voice.

That was long ago, in another life. Derek left Atlanta two years after I had. Nobody had seen him since.

An orange creature shot off the roof from across the street. I pulled my knife out, stepped forward, and sliced. A bat-like body the size of a medium dog crashed to the ground at my feet, jerking its limbs. Blood gushed from the stump of its neck onto the asphalt. Its head with long pointed jaws rolled and came to rest by my boot.

Tamyra grabbed at the gun on her hip.

“A shrieker,” I told her and kicked the head back toward Unicorn Lane. “Nothing to worry about. Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Miller. I appreciate it, but I’m exactly where I need to be.”

She sighed and held out a key ring and a bundle of rolled-up newspapers. “This is the only set, as requested. Here are all of the newspapers for the last week.”

I took the keys and the newspapers. “Thank you. Would you like me to walk you out?”

She shook her head. “My husband is parked a few blocks down on 15th.”

“Scream if you need help.”

“Sure.” She walked away.

I went to the front door and stuck the key into the lock. The well-oiled pins slid smoothly, and I opened the door and went inside.

The front door led straight into the living room, with a grimy wood-burning fireplace on the left. The inside of the house, about eight hundred square feet, looked like nothing special: old wooden floor, swept clean; battered walls that had seen better days; a shabby threadbare sofa facing the fireplace. On the right, a tiny square kitchen waited, with a derelict breakfast table and two chairs, clean but roughly used and worn out. A small dented fridge hummed in the corner. Straight ahead, at the other end of the living room, a short hallway led to a bedroom on the left and a bathroom on the right.

It seemed so familiar.

I hadn’t realized it until now, but I had subconsciously recreated my first house, the one where I’d lived with my biological parents. It wasn’t an exact copy, but it had that same vibe of working too hard for too little money and a stubborn refusal to admit to poverty. All that was missing were empty bottles of Tito’s and Wild Irish Rose in the sink.

I walked into the kitchen and looked at the sink. Empty.

My birth father had been a carpenter. He died while building a bridge when I was eight or nine. A chunk of a crumbling overpass fell on him, crushing him instantly. It was too heavy to move, and they never recovered his body. We had to bury an empty coffin with some of his favorite things in it. I could no longer recall what he looked like.

I remembered my birth mother a little better. She was thin, bird-boned, with big brown eyes and blond hair. I used to look just like her. Her name was Jessica Olsen, and in my memories, she was always tired.

When my birth father was alive, we did okay. I had clothes, food, toys, even a skateboard. His death destroyed us. Shortly after the funeral, a man had come to the house trying to convince my mother to sell father’s tools. She kept them and apprenticed to a carpenter instead.

Money became scarce. During the week, my mother worked long shifts. She wasn’t really cut out for dragging heavy beams around, but she did it anyway. The weekends were the worst. There was nothing to do except remember that my father wasn’t there. One weekend she started drinking and didn’t stop until Monday. Next weekend she did it again. Then she started drinking after work.

All people struggle with the loss of someone they love. My mother wasn’t a bad person. She just struggled more than most. She never meant to abandon me. She only tried to escape her misery, and somehow, she forgot I existed. I went hungry a lot. I wore torn clothes. Occasionally she would have a moment of clarity, see me, and then there would be food on the table and clean, mended T-shirts. But then she slipped away again.

I became a street kid. I starved, I stole, I took my beatings, and I learned that human predators were much worse than anything the magic waves could throw at me. I was so desperate for someone to love me, I’d thought the street kids were my friends even when they hit me and stole from me. At night I would go home. I still remembered the fragile hope I’d feel coming up to the front door. Maybe this time I would open it and Mom would be okay.

Then one day my birth mother went missing, and that’s when Kate found me. Back then she worked for the Order of Merciful Aid, and she ran across me during a job. She didn’t have to care about me, but she did, and she promised me she would find my mother. Things didn’t go as planned, and my mother and I ended up in the middle of a sea demon invasion. The memory slapped me, clammy and revolting: me hanging off a cross, tied to it by ropes that stank of rotten fish, and a mass of sea demons below, scraping the flesh off my mother’s body with their tongues. Her brown eyes had stared at the overcast sky, milky and empty…

I’d hung on that cross, watching the demons devour my mother’s corpse, and hoped against all odds that Kate would rescue me. And she had.

I left the kitchen, crossing the living room to the short hallway that led to the lone bedroom and bathroom. The hallway wall was in bad shape, all plaster and old wallpaper, marked with holes where pictures must’ve once hung. I followed the hallway to where it made an L-turn just before the bathroom and stopped before the grimiest spot. They’d done a good job hiding the door.

I chose a big metal key from the key ring Tamyra had given me, inserted it into a nondescript-looking hole in the plaster about three feet off the ground, and turned it. A section of the wall gave way, as the heavy door swung inward. I stepped through it.

A large space spread before me, glowing in the flood of sunlight streaming through an enormous skylight above. Four gypsum columns soared toward the skylight, a pale, soothing cream, their finish slightly rough. The floor was limestone tile, the same sandy color as the columns and the walls. A two-foot-wide channel filled with clear water ran from the front door to the back wall, dividing the house in two. We had tapped a natural spring for it. The stream ended in a shallow basin, where lilies and lotus buds rested on the water.

On the left of the stream, three steps led to a raised platform, supporting a wooden desk. Past it a metal cauldron sat sunken into the floor, four feet in diameter, large enough for a small bonfire. Rows of shelves built into the walls offered endless storage space, and some of my supplies had already been delivered: bundles of different split wood, bags of dried herbs and minerals, and crates of glass and plastic jars and bottles waiting to be sorted. Behind them, by the blank wall, rested five long crates. My weapons.

On the right a kitchen was built against the wall, with a large island, a gas stove, a dining table large enough to seat eight, and a grouping of plush divans upholstered in green and blue. The shelves on this side of the room would hold books and pantry ingredients.

Here and there, small tables and plush cushions offered spots to sit under green diaphanous canopies embroidered with gold and scarlet. Plants thrived in big ceramic pots and vines dripped from the walls. Metal statues rested between the flowers, some delicate, some fierce. Beautiful glass fey lanterns and electric lamps dotted the walls.

Walking through the arched doorway at the back of the room would lead me to the bedroom and the bath with a luxurious shower and a square dipping pool, six feet by six, sunken into the floor.

Home… Well, almost.

I walked to the desk on the platform and pulled the lid off a small crate next to it. Inside lay a simple gladius in a plain sheath and a bundle of soft cotton. I took the gladius out, pulled the blade from the sheath, and placed it on the desk. The first sword Kate ever gave me.

The bundle was next. I unrolled it and took out a slender vase of seafoam color, with a second narrow bundle inside. I set the vase on the desk, pulled the smaller bundle free, and pried the cotton layers apart gently, holding my breath. A metal rose waited on the cloth.

Phew. It survived the trip. Derek had made it for me years ago when I first met him. Back then he’d been helping Kate with a job.

I slid it into the vase. There. Now it was home.

I spread the newspaper on the desk. It didn’t take me long to find it. Pastor Nathan Haywood, fifty-two years old, Methodist, murdered in his own church, torn apart by something during the night. Three days ago. Why had Sienna waited three days to tell me?

I scanned the articles and the obituary. Pastor Haywood must have been beloved. The article spoke about him as if he were a saint. A photograph showed a line of mourners stretching around the city block. People weeping. People hugging each other. The death had stunned Atlanta. The city was grieving.

The most recent article mentioned the investigation being passed to the Order of Merciful Aid. Perfect. I had a way in. It was risky, but far better than trying to sort this out while dealing with Atlanta’s Paranormal Activity Division.

It was barely eight in the morning. If I got a move on, I could get to the Order by nine.

I looked up. The blade of the gladius lay on my desk, reflecting the glow from the skylight.

Kate hadn’t just rescued me. She’d taken me in. If something tried to hurt me, she’d kill it. If I had a problem, she would give me room to fix it, and if I needed help, she would help me. She enrolled me in school and nagged me to do my homework. She taught me to use weapons and gave me my first spear lesson. She loved me honestly and without reservation.

Her family became my family. Andrea Medrano, her best friend, became Aunt Andy. Kate’s aunt, Erra, the City Eater, the ancient princess awakened into our age, became my grandmother. Kate’s father, the immortal megalomaniac, decided to be my grandfather. Curran, Kate’s husband and the former Beast Lord, took care of me like I was his own child, and when Conlan was born, I never once thought of him as anything but my brother.

We never used words like “mother” and “daughter” even after the adoption went through. She called me Julie and I called her Kate. She married Curran, and I called him Curran.

I slipped up only once. Eight years ago, I left Atlanta with Erra. I wanted to find my own way, and I had my reasons. Within two weeks homesickness had set in and gnawed on me, until I could stand it no longer. Three months from setting out, I’d called the house. Kate picked up. I’d meant to say hi, but what came out was “Mom?” She had said, “Yes, kiddo?” And then we talked like nothing had happened. Neither of us ever mentioned it again. She never blamed me for leaving. She had done the same thing when she was my age. She didn’t have to tell me I was welcome back anytime. It was a given.

Kate, Curran, and Conlan, they were my home. My safe place, my shelter, secure, stable, and warm, where I was loved. It was my turn to guard them from danger, and my first step was to take custody of the Haywood case and keep Moloch’s priests away from it.

3

The Order of Merciful Aid occupied a compound at the intersection of Centennial Park Drive and Andorf’s Avenue. The five-story building, half fort, half bunker, had all the bells and whistles that came with post-Shift construction: narrow windows protected by metal grates with silver in the bars, foot-thick stone walls, and a flat roof, guarded by ballistae and M240 medium machine guns. A nine-foot-tall wall topped with razor wire and sporting guard towers wrapped around it all. Magic or tech, the knights would pulverize it.

I rode straight to the front gate and stopped before a squat guardhouse with reinforced walls and tinted windows secured by metal grates. The gate in the stone wall past the guardhouse stood wide open, and through them I could see stables and an exercise yard. The Order had upgraded. You could fit four of their old headquarters into this new place.

A dark-skinned knight about my age with a scar on his neck and black hair cut short came out. He carried a tactical sword on his hip.

“Name?”

“Aurelia Ryder.”

“Purpose of visit?”

“I’m here to see Knight-Protector Nikolas Feldman.”

The knight eyed me. “Is he expecting you?”

“No. But he will see me.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I hold the Tower.”

The knight’s expression didn’t change. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

No, I’m a crazy person who came to spout random nonsense at your citadel of armed fanatics. “Why don’t you call it in and find out?”

“Wait here.”

He went back to the guardhouse.

I waited.

The Order originated in the chaos immediately following the Shift, right after that first wave of magic that dropped planes out of the sky and sapped all the energy out of the power grid. That wave raged for three days, birthing monsters and awakening powers at random. The apocalypse had come and shattered our technological civilization with one blow, like a cosmic hammer. During that wave, Jared Stone, a former Army Ranger, banded with a few of his neighbors to protect their houses from the magic nightmares ravaging their neighborhood, and the Order was born.

Stone patterned his creation after the medieval knight orders, emphasizing strict discipline, education, and, above all, competency, and gave it a simple mission—protect mankind from all things magic. The knights helped anyone who asked. Rich, poor, it didn’t matter. If you ran into a magic problem you couldn’t handle, the Order would accept your petition and solve your dilemma. On their terms.

Over the years, the Order grew. As the reach of the federal government weakened and the States gained power, law enforcement came to rely on the knights more and more. They had chapters in all the major cities; they were experts in disposing of magic hazmat, and they were deadly.

Unfortunately, the Order took its mission literally, and the knights’ definition of human was rather narrow. Occasionally they would show their true colors, and society recoiled. The knights would adjust their policies, weather the storm of public opinion, and sooner or later the authorities would come knocking on their door, and all would be as it was. At least until the next massacre.

A skinny kid with tan and sandy hair, about sixteen or so, trotted out of the stables inside the walled perimeter. We nodded to each other.

The knight stepped back out of the guardhouse. “You may go in. Peyton will take your horse.”

I dismounted and handed the reins to Peyton. He smiled at me and looked at Tulip. The mare sighed.

“Behave,” I told her.

“Beautiful color,” Peyton told me.

“Thank you.” I headed to the building.

“Ma’am,” Peyton called out.

“Yes?”

“Your horse has blood on her chin.”

I turned around, pulled a rag out of my pocket, and wiped the bloody smear off Tulip’s face. “There you go. All good.”

Peyton gave me a suspicious look, and he and Tulip walked off.

I loved my horse, but she always was a messy eater.

* * *

A young female knight met me at the gates of the Order. She was taller than me by six inches, brown-skinned, with a lean athletic build, light hazel eyes, and an intense, unblinking stare. Her dark brown hair, braided in cornrows, fell on her shoulders in four thick plaits. She walked me through the front hall and a long hallway to Nick’s office and pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “Sit. Stay. Wait.”

I sat and held my fists in front of me like paws. “Woof!”

“Perfect.” She turned, walked out of the office, and parked herself in the hallway by the open door.

The Order of Merciful Aid, the very soul of courtesy in this savage age.

I sat in the chair and studied the office. Plain desk, plain chairs; a row of bookshelves against one wall filled with an assortment of volumes, everything from forensic science volumes to bestiaries; a weapons rack against the opposite wall, holding three blades, a spear, a mace, a rifle, and a shotgun. A spartan, functional office for a spartan, functional man.

Nick Feldman and my family had a complicated history. He had a code of morals, to which he fanatically adhered. He was also deeply paranoid, resolute, and, once he decided that you were a threat, prone to sudden violence. This conversation would have to be done very carefully.

Steps echoed down the hallway. Nick Feldman entered and walked to his desk, and I almost fell out of my chair.

Nick had gone grey.

The last time I saw him he’d had brown hair he kept cropped. It was longer now, long enough to be brushed, but it was steel-grey. He had aged.

Oh wow.

Nick Feldman gave me a cold stare. His eyes were very pale, stark against the backdrop of his tan skin, and being on the receiving end of that look was like gazing into the barrel of a gun. I was probably expected to collapse to my knees and beg for mercy, but I was still grappling with the hair and the lines around his eyes, so I just stared back, my face blank.

How old was he now? Kate was…thirty-eight, so he was forty-one. Is that what people looked like at forty-one?

He didn’t look weakened by age. If anything, it made him harder. Tall and broad-shouldered, his body conveyed harsh, sinewy strength. His cheekbones had grown more defined. He’d picked up a scar that crossed his left cheek, and his face radiated authority and stoic pessimism. If you catapulted him through time to the convoy of Crusaders with hollow eyes and worn-out armor cutting their way across the Holy Land after years of fighting, he would fit right in.

He motioned to me with his hand. “Let’s see it.”

I pulled the Tower out of my pocket and placed it on his desk. It was a metal badge about the size of a playing card with an image of the tower engraved on one side. Nick turned it over. The other side was embossed with number four. A signature ran underneath it, silvery and embedded in metal, as if someone had signed the badge with silver wire while the metal still cooled from the forge. Damian Angevin.

Nick picked up the badge and held it out. The female knight who’d escorted me in entered, took the Tower, and left.

Nick studied me with his pale eyes.

I had spent too much time with my grandmother. Technically, she was my adoptive grand-aunt, but we both agreed that “grandmother” was easier and shorter and better fit our relationship. Erra didn’t age. She was millennia old, but she looked perpetually about forty, and it was an awe-inspiring, regal forty. Nick was forty-one and he looked like he’d seen hell.

“Have you been well, Knight-Protector?” I shouldn’t have said that. It just slipped out.

Nick furrowed his eyebrows. “Do we know each other?”

“No.”

Magic surged through the world, saturating it in a single breathtaking instant. Suddenly I was lighter, stronger, sharper. My sensate ability kicked in, and vivid color bloomed in my field of vision. Faint swirls of blue in every shade slid over the furniture and floor—recent traces of human magic from the visitors to Nick’s office. A smudge of green from a shapeshifter, a hint of purple, old and fading—the foul track of a vampire—and Nick himself, an amalgam of azure and sapphire streaked with bright, electric yellow. I blinked to turn it off.