Magic Slays Spoiler #1

19 min read

Deviation Actions

IlonaAndrews's avatar
Published:
1.3K Views
It was Friday, eight o’clock on a warm spring night, and I was going out with the Beast Lord.   Considering that we’ve been mated for the last few months, this shouldn’t have been a monumental occasion, but it was and I was ridiculously excited about it.  Curran hated Atlanta with all the fire of a supernova.  I didn’t have anything against Atlanta in theory – it was half-eroded by the magic waves that washed over it at random and it burned a lot – but I had a thing about crowds.  Getting both of us out of the Keep and into the city for a dinner out was pretty much impossible.

This particular Friday hadn’t gone well for me.  I owned Cutting Edge Investigations, a private solve-your-magic-issues firm, which I ran with

spoiler, don’t click if you don’t want to know
my best friend, Andrea
.  Our latest job had come courtesy of the Green Acres Home Owners’ Association, who showed up at our door this morning claiming that a giant levitating jellyfish was roaming their suburb and could we please come and get it, because it was eating local cats.  Apparently the translucent jellyfish was floating about with half-digested cat bodies inside it and the neighborhood children were very upset.  The cops refused to make the jellyfish a priority, since it hadn’t eaten any humans yet, and the Mercenary Guild wouldn’t get rid of it for less than a grand.  The HOA offered us $200.  Nobody in their right mind would do the job at that price.

It took us all damned day.  And then we had to properly dispose of the cursed thing, because dealing with the corpses of magical creatures was like playing Russian roulette.   Sometimes nothing happened and sometimes the corpse did fun things like meting into a puddle of sentient carnivorous protoplasm or hatching foot long blood sucking leeches. By the time we packed seventy pounds of the gelatinous body into the magic hazard container and called Biohazard to pick it up, I was ready to fall off my feet.

The Biohazard finally retrieved the container at a quarter to seven and after I came out of the office shower, having successfully scrubbed all of the jellyfish goo out of my hair, Curran was leaning against my desk.  Apparently he got tired of waiting for me to come home and now we were going out to eat.

Funny thing about Curran: even at rest, like he was now, relaxed and driving, he emanated violence.  He was built to kill, his body a blend of hard, powerful muscle and supple quickness and something in the way he carried himself telegraphed a shocking potential for violence and willingness, no, entitlement, to unleash it at the slightest provocation.  He seemed to occupy a much larger space than his body permitted and he was impossible to ignore.

He caught me looking and flexed.  Carved muscles bulged on his arms.  Curran winked.  “Hey baby.”

I cracked up. “So where we’re going?”

“Arirang,” Curran said.  “It’s a nice Korean place, Kate.  They have charcoal grills at the tables.  They bring you meat and you cook it any way you want.”

Figured.  Left to his own devices, Curran consumed only meat, spiced with an occasional desert. “That’s nice for me, but what will your vegetarian Majesty eat?”

Curran gave me a flat look.  “I can always drive to a fast food joint instead.”

“Oh, so you’d throw a burger down my throat and expect making out in the back seat?”

He grinned.  “We can do it in the front seat instead, if you prefer.  Or on the hood of the car.”

“I am not doing it on the hood of the car.”

“Is that a dare?”

Why me?

“Kate?”

“Keep your mind on the road, your Furriness.”

The city rolled by, twisted by magic, battered and bruised but still standing.  The night swallowed the ruins, hiding the sad husks of once mighty, tall buildings.  New houses flanked the street, constructed by hand with wood, stone and brick to withstand magic’s jaws.

I rolled down the window and let the night in.  It floated into the car, spring and a hint of wood smoke from a distant fire.  Somewhere a lone dog barked out of boredom, each woof punctuated by a long pause, probably to see if the owners would let him in.

Ten minutes later we pulled into a long empty parking lot, flanked by old office buildings that now housed Asian shops.  A typical stone building with huge store-front windows sat at the very end, marked by a sign that read Arirang.

“This is the place?”

“Mhm,” Curran said.

“I thought you said it was a Korean restaurant.” For some reason I had expected a hanok house with a curved tiled roof and a wide front porch.

“It is.”

“It looks like Western Sizzlin.”

“Will you just trust me?  It’s a nice place…” Curran braked, and the Pack Jeep screeched to a stop.

Two skeletally thin vampires sat at the front of the restaurant, tethered to the horse rail with chains looped over their heads.  Pale, hairless, dried like leathery jerky, the undead stared at us with mad glowing eyes.  Death had robbed them of their cognizance and will, leaving behind mindless body shells driven only by bloodlust.  On their own, the bloodsuckers would slaughter anything alive and keep killing until nothing breathing remained.  Their empty minds made a perfect vehicle for necromancers, who telepathically navigated them like remote controlled cars.

Curran glared at the vampires through the windshield.  Ninety percent of the vampires belonged to the People, a weird hybrid of a corporation and a research institute.  We both despised the People and everything they stood for.

I couldn’t resist.  “I thought you said this was a nice place.”

He leaned back, gripped the steering wheel and let out a long growling, “Argh.”

I chuckled.

“Who the hell stops at a restaurant while navigating?”

I shrugged.  “Maybe they were hungry.”

He gave me an odd look. “This far away from the Casino means they’re out on patrol.  What, did they suddenly get the munchies?”

“Curran, ignore the damn bloodsuckers.  Let’s go and have a date anyway.”

He looked like he wanted to kill somebody.

The world blinked.  Magic flooded us like an invisible tsunami.  The neon sign above the restaurant withered and a larger brilliant blue sign ignited above it, made from hand-blown glass and filled with charged air.

I reached over and squeezed Curran’s hand.  “Come on, you, me, a platter of barely seared meat, it will be great.  If we see the navigators, we can make fun of the way they hold their forks.”

We got out of the car and headed inside.  The bloodsuckers glanced at us in unison, their eyes like two smoldering coals buried beneath the ash of a dying fire.  I felt their minds, twin hot pinpoints of pain, clenched securely by the navigators’ wills.  One slip up  and those coals would ignite into an all consuming flame.  Vampires never knew satiation.  They never got full, they never stopped killing, and if let loose, they would drown the world in blood and die of starvation when there was nothing left to kill.

The chains wouldn’t hold them -  the links were an eighth of an inch thick at best.  A chain like that would restrain a large dog.  A vamp would snap it and not even notice, but the general public felt better if the bloodsuckers were chained, and so the navigators obliged.

We passed the vampires and entered the restaurant.

The inside of Arirang was dim.  Feylanterns glowed with soft light on the walls, as the charged air inside their colored glass tubes reacted with magic. Each feylantern had been hand-blown into a beautiful shape: a bright blue dragon, an emerald tortoise, a purple fish, a turquoise stocky dog with a unicorn horn…  Booths lined the walls, their tables plain rectangles of wood.  In the center of the floor four larger round tables sported built-in charcoal grills under metal hoods.

The restaurant was about half full.  There were two couples in booths on the right: the first was occupied by two middle aged men and the second was a dark-haired man and a blond woman in their twenties.  The younger couple chatted quietly.  Good clothes, relaxed, casual, well groomed.   Ten to one these were the navigators who had parked the bloodsuckers out front.  The Casino had seven Masters of the Dead and I knew them by sight.  I didn’t recognize either the man or the woman.  Either visiting or upper level journeymen.

Both of the older guys in the next booth were armed.  The closer one carried a short sword, which he put on the seat next to him.  As his friend reached for the salt shaker, his sweatshirt hugged a gun in the side holster.

Past them in the far right corner, four women in their thirties laughed too loud – probably tipsy.  On the other side a family with two teenage daughters cooked their food on the grill.  The older girl looked a bit like Julie.  Two business women, another family with a toddler, and an older couple rounded off the patrons.  No threats.

The air swirled with delicious aroma of meat cooked over open fire, sautéed garlic, sweet spice.  My mouth watered.  I hadn’t eaten since grabbing some bread this morning from a street vendor.  My stomach actually hurt.

A waiter in a plain black pants and a black T-shirt led us to a table in the middle of the floor.  Curran and I took  chairs opposite one another- I could see the back door and he had a nice view of the front entrance.  We ordered hot tea.  Thirty seconds later it arrived with a plate of pot stickers.

“Hungry?” Curran asked.

“Starving.”

“Combination platter for four,” Curran ordered.

His hungry and my hungry were two different things.

The waiter departed. Curran smiled.  It was a happy genuine smile and it catapulted him from attractive into irresistible territory.  He didn’t smile very often in public.  That intimate smile was usually reserved for private moments when we were alone.

I reached over, pulled the band off my braid, and slid my fingers through it, unraveling the hair.  Curran’s gaze snagged on my hands.  He focused on my fingers like a cat on a piece of foil pulled by a string.  I shook my head and my hair fell over my shoulders in a long dark wave.  There we go.  Now we were both private in public.

Tiny gold sparks danced in Curran’s grey irises.  He was thinking dirty thoughts and the wicked edge in his smile made me want to slide next to him and touch him.

We had to wait.  I was pretty sure that having hot sex on the floor of Arirang would get us banned for life.  Then again, it might be worth it..

I raised my tea in a salute.  “To our date.”

He raised his cup and we clinked them gently against each other.

“So how was your day?” he asked.

“First, I chased a giant jellyfish around through some suburbs.  Then I argued with Biohazard about coming and picking it up, because they claimed it was a Fish and Game issue.  Then I called Fish and Game and conferenced them into the Biohazard, and then I got to listen to the two of them argue and call each other names.  They got really creative. Also the Mercenary Guild is having some sort of arbitration to decide who’s in charge and apparently I’m supposed to break that tie. Because I am a veteran and the Consort, and the Pack apparently owns some percentage of the Mercenary Guild.”

“Not looking forward to it?”

“I’d rather eat dirt.  It’s between Mark and the Four Horsemen and they despise each other.  They aren’t interested in reaching a consensus.  They just want to throw mud at each other over a conference table.”

An evil light sparked in his eyes.  “You could always go for Plan B.”

“Pound everyone to a bloody pulp until they shut up and cooperate?”

“Exactly.”

It would make me feel better.  “I could always do it your way instead.”

Curran raised his blond eyebrows.

“Roar until everyone pees themselves.”

A shadow of self-satisfaction flickered on his face and vanished, replaced by innocence. “That’s bullshit.  I’m perfectly reasonable and I almost never roar.  I don’t even remember what it feels like to knock some heads together.”

The Beast Lord of Atlanta, a gentle and enlightened monarch.  “How progressive of you, Your Majesty.”

He cracked another grin.

The male necromancer in the booth next to us reached under the table and produced a rectangular rosewood box.  Ten to one, there was some sort of jewelry inside.

“Your turn.  How did your day go?”

“It was busy and full of stupid shit I didn’t want to deal with.” Curran drank his tea.

The blond woman opened the box.  Her eyes lit up.

“The rats are having some sort of internal dispute over some apartments they bought.  Took all day to untangle it. ”

The woman plucked a golden necklace from the box.  Shaped  like an inch and a half segmented collar of gold, it gleamed in the feylanthern light.

I poured us more tea.  “But you prevailed.”

“Of course.”  He drank his tea.  “You know, we could stay over in the city tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because that way we wouldn’t have to drive for an hour back to the Keep before we could fool around.”

Heh.

A scream jerked me off my feet. In the booth, the blond necromancer clawed at the necklace, gasping for breath.  The man stared at her, his face a terrified mask. The woman raked her neck, gouging flesh.  With a dried pop, her neck snapped, and she crashed to the floor.  The man dove down, pulling at the necklace.  “Amanda! Oh my god!”

Past him two pairs of red vampire eyes stared at us through the window.

Oh crap.  I pulled Slayer from the sheath on my back.  Sensing undead, the pale blade of the enchanted saber perspired, sending wisps of white vapor into the air.

The dull carmine glow of vampire irises flared into vivid scarlet.   Shit.  The restaurant just updated its menu with fresh human.

Flesh boiled on Curran’s arms.  Bone grew, muscle twisted like slick ropes, skin clenched the new flesh and sprouted fur, and enormous claws slid from Curran’s newly thickened fingers.        The vampires rose off their haunches.

Curran stood next to me.  “I’ll take the right.”

“I’ll take the left then.”

I gripped the hilt, feeling the familiar comforting texture.  Bloodsuckers reacted to sudden movement, bright lights, loud noises, anything that telegraphed prey.  Whatever I did had to be fast and flashy.  The blood alone wouldn’t do it, not when every table was filled with raw meat.

The window exploded in a cascade of gleaming shards.  The vampires sailed through, like they had wings.  The left bloodsucker landed on the table, the remnant of the chain hanging from its neck. The right skidded on the slick parquet floor and bumped into another table, scattering the chairs.

I dashed to the left, pulling Slayer as I sprinted. Curran snarled and leaped, covering half the distance to the right bloodsucker in a single powerful jump.

The vamp glared at me.  I looked into its eyes.

Hunger.

Like staring into an ancient abyss.  Behind the eyes, its mind burned, free of the chain.  I wanted to reach out and crush it, like a bug between my fingernails.  But doing that would give me away.  I might as well give the People a sample of my blood with a pretty bow on it.

I flicked my wrist, making the reflection of feylanterns dance along Slayer’s surface.  Look.  Shiny.

The bloodsucker’s gaze locked on the blade.  The vamp ducked down, like a dog before the strike, front limbs wide, yellow claws digging into the table.  The wood groaned.  The chain slipped along the table’s edge, clinking.

No way for a neck cut.  The chain loop would block the blade.

A high pitched, female scream slashed my eardrums.  The vamp hissed, jerking in the direction of the sound.

I jumped on the chair next to the table and thrust sideways and up.  Slayer’s blade slid between the vamp ribs.  The tip met a tight resistance and sliced through it.  Hit the heart.  Banzai.

The bloodsucker screeched.  I let go of the saber.  The vamp reared, the Slayer up to the hilt in its rib cage. The undead staggered, pitched over, and crashed to the floor, flopping like a fish on dry land.

To the left, Curran thrust his claws through the flesh under his vamp’s chin.  The bloody tips of the claws emerged from the back of the bloodsucker’s neck.  The vamp clawed at him.  Curran thrust his monstrous hand deeper, clenched the vamp’s neck and tore its head off the body.

Showoff.

He tossed the head aside and glanced at me, checking.  The whole thing took about five seconds.  Felt like an eternity.  We were both in one piece.  I exhaled.

The restaurant fell silent, except for the hoarse hissing from the convulsing vampire as my saber liquefied its innards, absorbing the nutrients into the blade and the male necromancer sobbing on the floor.

In the far corner a man swiped his toddler from his high chair, grabbed his wife’s hand, and ran out.  As one the patrons jumped.  Chairs fell, feet pounded, someone gasped.  They rushed out of both doors.  In a blink the place was empty, save for us and the two necromancers.

I gripped Slayer and pulled.  It slid from the body with ease.  The edges of the wound sagged and dark brown blood spilled from the cut.  I swung and beheaded the vamp with a single sharp stroke.

Curran’s arms shrank, streamlining, grey fur melting into his skin.  He walked over to the male necromancer, pulled him upright, and shook him once, an expression of deep contempt on his face.  I could almost hear the guy’s teeth rattle in his skull.

“Look at me.  Look at me.”

The necromancer stared at him, shocked eyes wide, his mouth slack.

I knelt by the female navigator and touched her neck.  No pulse.  The necklace clamped her neck like a golden noose.  The skin around it was bright red and quickly turning purple.

I picked up her purse, pulled out a wallet and snapped it open.  People ID.  Amanda Sunny, journeyman, Second Tier. Twenty years old and now dead.

Curran peered into the journeyman’s face. “What happened?  What did you do?”

The man sucked in a deep breath and dissolved into tears.

Curran dropped him in disgust. His eyes were pure gold.  He was pissed off out of his mind.

I went to the hostess desk and found the phone.  Please work… Dial tone. Yes!

I punched in the office number.  Chances were,

spoiler
Andrea’s
was still there.

“Cutting Edge,”

spoiler
Andrea’s
voice said.

“I’m in Arirang.  Two navigators were having dinner.  The man gave them woman an gold necklace and it strangled her to death.  I have two dead vampires and one human corpse.”

“Sit tight.  I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

I hung up and dialed the Casino.

“Kate Daniels, for Ghastek. Urgent.”

“Please wait,” female voice said.  The phone clicked and went silent.  I hummed to myself and looked at the ID.  I didn’t know which of the Masters of the Dead Amanda answered to, but I knew Ghastek was the best of the seven.  He was also power-hungry and he was making his bid for taking over Atlanta’s office of the People.  He was very much in the limelight at the moment and I could count on a rapid response.

A moment passed.  Another.

“What is it, Kate?” Ghastek’s voice said into the phone.  He must’ve been doing something, because he failed to keep exasperation from his voice.  “Please keep this quick, I’m in the middle of something.”

“I have one dead journeywoman, one hysterical journeyman, two dead vampires, one pissed off Beast Lord with bloody hands, and a half a dozen terrified restaurant staff.”  Quick enough for you?

Ghastek’s voice snapped into brisk tone.  “Where are you?”

“Arirang on Greenpine.  Bring a decontamination unit and body bags.”

I hung up. Our waiter edged out of the doors and approached our table, looking green.  The rest of the staff were probably huddled together in the back room, terrified, not knowing if it was over.

“Is it over?”

Curran turned to him.  “Yes, it’s over.  The People are on their way to clean up the mess.  You can bring your people out, if it will make them feel better. We guarantee your safety.”

The waiter took off.  Someone shouted.  A moment later the doors opened and people ran out: an older Korean man, the older woman who had greeted us, a woman who looked like she could be their daughter and several men and women in waiter garb.  The younger woman carried a boy.  He couldn’t be more than five.

The owners piled up into the booths around us.  The boy stared at the two vampires with dark eyes, big like two cherries.

I dropped into the chair next to Curran.  He reached over and pulled me close.  “I’m sorry about the dinner.”

“That’s okay.”  I stared at the dead woman.  Twenty years old.  She barely had a chance to live.  I’d seen a lot of death, but for some reason the site of Amanda laying there on the floor, her boyfriend weeping uncontrollably by her body, chilled me to the bone.  I leaned against Curran, feeling the heat of his body seep through my T-shirt.  I was so cold and I really needed his warmth.



I don't own any if this, and some stuff is still unshown.  Enjoy!  Get those eyes salivating for MOAR.
© 2011 - 2024 IlonaAndrews
Comments4
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
caliborn's avatar
This isn't actually part of Magic Slays, according to her blog. It's a snippet of a soon to be released, internet-only Novella.