Master of Shadows (18 page)

Something chirped. It took Belle a dazed moment to recognize the sound. Her cell. Probably Morgana.

But when she pulled the iPhone out of her pocket, Justice’s deep voice spoke. “Hi, Belle. Listen, the Council of Clans wants you and Tristan to testify about Jimmy Sheridan’s death tomorrow night.”

“So they can call everything we say lies and declare war anyway? No thanks, Justice.” Besides, she had no desire to see Tristan again for at least another century.

“Look, I’ve found out we’ve got the chairman of the Council of Clans on our side. He says he doesn’t want war, and he wants to find a way out of this mess. If you testify, there’s a chance we’ll be able to talk sense into the council. Otherwise, war is certain. And a lot of people are going to pay with their lives.”

When he put it that way, she didn’t have much choice. “All right. I’ll talk to Arthur and Tristan, see how we want to handle this.”

“Nine P.M. tomorrow night, at Livingston Corporate Center. I’ll message you from there to let you set up a gate.”

“Fine. We’ll be there.” Assuming she could talk Tristan into tolerating her presence that long.

 

Hunger gnawed at
Dice like maddening rat teeth chewing on his guts. He’d woken up that night healed of the countless cuts as if they’d never been. Ever since then, Warlock had been driving him, teaching him how to fight with his huge new body by stalking deer deep in the mountain woods. How to wheel and leap, bringing prey down with his size, his jaws, his quick, ripping claws. But no matter how much he ate of his prey, the tormenting hunger wasn’t sated.

Weakness had set in as they worked, but he’d tried to ignore it. He’d wanted to make sure that the next time they fought, Warlock wouldn’t take him apart.

But there was no ignoring the relentless gnaw now. Dice’s legs shook under him like a weary old man’s. “I’m sick, Warlock,” he said, sinking onto his belly in the leaves. The wizard could fry him or not; he was done. “I gotta lay down.”

Warlock cocked his head, orange eyes studying him. Clawed fingers flicked, sending a spell rolling across his furry flesh. The feel of the magic made his body go on point like a birddog catching sight of a grouse. “You’re starving. Go hunt.”

Dice stared up at his master. “Hunt what? Another deer?” He didn’t have the strength.

“Magic. You need to kill something that has magic. I’d suggest one of Arthur’s witches.”

“Witches? What witches?” Dice stared at Warlock as he managed to reel to his feet. “Where the fuck am I supposed to find a witch?”

Warlock glanced at him appraisingly. “I’ll give you the first one, since you’ve burned through all your magic. After that, you’ll have to do your own hunting.”

His furred fingers sketched a shape, and a glowing point appeared, expanding into a hole in midair. “Through there. Wait. They’ll be home in a couple of hours, and you can feed then.”

Dice licked his dry, cracked lips. His tongue felt swollen. “How do you feed on magic?”

Warlock grinned, the expression chilling even to Dice. “You’ll figure it out.”

 

All in all,
sitting next to a pissed-off Belle while surrounded by three hundred furious werewolves wasn’t an experience Tristan would recommend. Even as she testified in that clear, ringing voice, she radiated cold at him like a dry-ice machine. Meanwhile wolves growled and rumbled all around them as if it was feeding time at the zoo. Tris was starting to feel like frozen Alpo.

“You set us up, Justice,” Tristan muttered to his friend. “Thanks a lot.”

“Not necessarily,” Justice whispered back. “Carl Rosen—he’s the chairman—is from an old family with a hell of a lot of pull. And Rosen doesn’t want war. He can calm this bunch down if anyone can.”

“You’d better be right, or things are going to get ugly.” Having the job he did, it was hardly the first time Tristan had attended a meeting with a bunch of angry people. Generally, if you had a witch along, she could make sure the situation didn’t spin out of control. But since werewolves were immune to magic, Belle couldn’t cast a spell to calm everybody down. To make matters worse, there were one or two fuzzy bastards in the crowd who were actively trying to whip everyone else into a lynching, just for shits and giggles. His vampire hearing kept detecting incendiary comments, not that anyone exactly whispered.

Plus, there was plenty of room for a really good mob. The Livingston Corporate Center was a sprawling four-story cream building that occupied five wooded acres on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina. Livingston was one of the few remaining textile firms in the South that still operated manufacturing plants in the U.S., and the company used the center for its research and development. More than a thousand people worked in the building, so its auditorium was spacious, with comfortable theater-style seating facing a large stage. He, Belle and Bill Justice sat up there under the hot lights, at a table facing the longer one where the thirteen council members sat.

Twelve of them looked constipated, worried, or bloodthirsty, depending on their political leanings. Chairman Carl Rosen was simply expressionless.

Meanwhile the audience was SRO with people who wanted Tristan’s head on a stick. Tristan wanted something sharp in his hand and a layer of metal between his hide and all those teeth.

“So you’re saying this Cherise Myers died of one bite?” Robert Tanner curled a handsome lip, black eyes cold.

“Yes. We did everything we could to save her, but none of our healing spells worked,” Belle said, completely ignoring Tanner’s implication she was lying. Tristan wanted to punch in the bastard’s teeth. “It was a very painful death, and it took her more than an hour to die.”

“I’ve never heard our bites are fatal to Magekind.” Linda Corley drummed her fingers on the table and looked nervously out over the crowd. She was a motherly, gray-haired woman dressed in a flowered polyester dress, who looked as if she should be baking cookies somewhere. Judging by her expression, she wished she was wrist deep in Toll House dough right now.

Tanner slanted Corley a look. “Where is the body?” “Cherise died shortly after being bitten. We held her memorial service last night, sending her body back to the Mageverse in accordance with our customs.”

“How convenient.”

Tristan glared, sick of Fido’s attitude. “What do you mean by that?”

“We have no proof this woman died.”

“Why would we lie?”

Tanner settled back in his chair and gave Tristan another lip curl. “To protect Arthur Pendragon. To protect the admitted killer of Jimmy Sheridan.”

The audience growled in savage agreement.

Tristan opened his mouth to snarl a reply, but Belle’s hand landed on his knee in a light, cautioning squeeze as she opened a magical communications link.
“He’s trying to get a rise out of you, Tris.”

Belle spoke up before he could. “Arthur had nothing to do with Jimmy Sheridan’s death, Mr. Tanner.”

Tanner leaned forward like a prosecutor smelling blood. “But isn’t it true that Arthur was furious his son was targeted by a grief-stricken werewolf trying to avenge his own son’s death?”

She didn’t even blink. “As we’ve told you before, Logan killed the assassins who tried to kill him. As far as Arthur’s concerned, that was the end of it.”

“You must think we’re fools,” Andrews spat. “Arthur wants Direkind blood, and he’s having our innocent children killed.”

“Got any proof?” Tristan demanded.

Tanner lifted a brow. “Davon Fredericks and Cherise Myers both said Arthur ordered them to kill the Sheridan boy.”

“They were under magical influence at the time,” Belle explained. “A spell compelled them to believe Arthur had given them that order when he did no such thing. It also convinced them the boy had murdered a little girl, or neither of them would have committed such a horrific crime.”

Tanner gave Belle a chilly, triumphant smile and asked the question Tristan had been dreading. “And who cast this supposed ‘spell’?”

Belle didn’t equivocate. The sound system mic picked up her answer and set it echoing around the room. “Warlock.”

Tanner stared at her, eyes wide. He was a lousy actor.
“Warlock?”

“And Santa Claus cut off Jimmy’s head,” Anderson muttered. The audience hooted.

Belle ignored the laughter. “Warlock exists. I fought him last month after he tried to murder a friend of mine. He is evil and he is insane, and he’s trying to manipulate the Direkind into going to war with the Magekind.” Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the council table. “The question is, are you going to fall for the scam? Are people going to die while you play politics?”

Stunned silence reigned for almost a full minute. Tristan, knowing what was coming, had to fight the impulse to close his eyes in pain.
“Belle, you just maligned their hero. They’re going to lose their collective minds
.
”

Right on cue, the crowd detonated into furious shouts. Wolves who’d been seated bounded to their feet, and those already standing shook their fists and roared.

“Warlock’s a hero—he would have never killed a kid!”

“. . . Crazy bitch . . .”

“Arthur’s the killer!”

“Fucking Magekind murderers . . .”

“If you believe these liars, you’re stupid as hell!”

“Warlock died centuries ago . . .”

“Enough!” Rosen banged his gavel down hard, though it was his growling roar more than the little wooden hammer that finally silenced the crowd. “I said that’s enough!”

It took another five minutes of snarls and curses, but the crowd finally subsided, staring at Belle and Tristan with contemptuous, hate-filled eyes.

Anderson spoke into the simmering silence. “You must take us for fools, witch. Warlock’s been dead for centuries, assuming he ever existed at all. And everyone knows werewolves can’t use magic, so it’s impossible that any of us could have cast such a spell.”

She didn’t even blink. “Actually, werewolves can use magic, and I can prove it.”

Rosen lifted a graying eyebrow. “Produce your proof.”

Belle pulled her enchanted iPhone out of a pocket and punched a couple of buttons. “We’re ready for you.”

A dimensional gate spiraled open beside their table, drawing murmurs of amazement from those werewolves who’d never seen one before. Eva Roman stepped through the shimmering oval, dressed in black slacks and a black silk shirt that matched Smoke’s fur so perfectly he seemed to grow out of her shoulder. The sight of him aroused a little growl from the audience; apparently some of them really didn’t like cats.

He shot them all a blue-eyed glance and pointedly turned his head away with feline disdain. The tip of his tail flicked against Eva’s back.

Smoke did do cat well.

Point made, he leaped down from Eva’s shoulder, changing into his Sidhe form before he hit the floor. Straightening to his full height, he let the werewolves stare, taking in his pointed ears and elegant Sidhe features. Like his lover, Smoke looked as if he’d been painted in India ink, with that black raw silk shirt and black slacks, his hair gleaming like fur as it fell from his broad shoulders to his narrow waist. A few women in the crowd sighed. He gave them a slow, seductive smile.

Yeah, Smoke knew how to work it.

Belle stood, visibly suppressing a smile at his act. “This is Smoke, a Sidhe warrior and elemental.” She nodded to the woman beside him. “And this is Eva Roman, who is a werewolf and Smoke’s partner. She’s also my proof.”

Eva transformed in a bloom of power. Magic sparked blue around her body as she shifted, growing taller, her body broadening, head lengthening into a lupine muzzle, sable fur spreading over her body like a dark silk wave. When her transformation was complete, murmurs of astonishment rose at the ghostly blue antlers that spread to either side of her pointed wolf ears.

Tanner smirked. “What the hell is she—Rudolph the Red-Nosed Werewolf?”

The crowd laughed, the sound nasty with mockery.

Eva lifted her chin like a young queen. “Yes, I’m a werewolf. But I’m also a witch.” She flicked her claws and sent a ball of blue light shooting at Tanner’s head.

He yelped and automatically threw a hand up to ward it off. The little ball promptly burst in front of his nose in a harmless shower of sparks. This time the laughter was at his expense. Tanner flushed.

Go, Eva,
Tristan thought.
Get the bastard
.

“How the hell did you do that?” Elena Rollings leaned forward, her long, curling red hair brushing the table in front of her. “I thought Merlin’s Curse was specifically structured to keep us from being able to work magic. That was the only way we could be resistant to magical attacks.” A power Merlin had known they’d need if the Magekind ever went rogue.

“It is,” Eva told her. “And my new abilities have made me vulnerable to magical attacks again.” She shrugged her furry Direwolf shoulders. “Nothing’s ever free.”

Rosen had produced a netbook from somewhere and had been typing. He looked up. “There’s no Eva Roman in our database of werewolf families. You’re unregistered. That’s a serious violation of Clan law, Ms. Roman.”

“Until a month ago, I never even knew there was a Council of Clans, much less that I’d be required to register by one.”

“And why not?” Tanner demanded, his gaze predatory, obviously hoping she’d say something he could turn against her.

Smoke straightened. The look in the Sidhe’s eyes said he was considering doing something to the werewolf a lot more painful than tossing a few fireworks.

Eva gave Tanner a long stare. “I was Bitten by a serial killer. He neglected to instruct me in proper werewolf etiquette before he abandoned me in the woods to die. Probably because he was more interested in eating me.”