Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

into its eyes, rendering it half-blind. It raised its snout, inhaled, and charged after Raphael.
    I just had to get up. I had to pull myself upright.
    Raphael sprinted along the wall, leaping over the piles of refuse. The creature raced after him, devouring the distance between them in huge leaps. The floor shook with each thud of its paws.
    I rolled up to my knees, clumsy like a drunk, and forced myself upright.
    The creature’s mane turned bright orange.
    “Magic!” I yelled.
    Raphael glanced over his shoulder.
    The orange glow around the beast’s mane coalesced and whipped from the creature in twin bolts of bright lightning. Raphael zigzagged, but it was too late. The left bolt caught hisankle, splintering into a dozen small forks that bit into Raphael’s flesh. It jerked him off the ground.
    The world stopped. All I could see was Raphael’s face, twisted by pain. Fear clamped onto me and spurred me into a desperate sprint.
    For a second he seemed to float weightlessly, suspended a foot above the ground, and then he crashed down, rolling in the dirt.
    Please don’t die. Please, please, don’t die.
    There were fifty yards between me and the beast. It felt like I was running for an eternity, stuck in some sort of hell, watching the man I loved die in slow motion.
    The beast snorted in vicious glee.
    I’ll get there, honey. Hang on another half a second.
    The giant jaws opened wide, teeth ready to rend.
    I smashed into the beast from the side, thrust my claws under it, and sank them into the creature’s gut. Blood drenched me. Slippery innards slid against my fingers. I grabbed them and yanked.
    The beast spun, trying to bite me. I sank my claws into the wound and hung on. The orange lightning bit into me, fire and ice wrapped in pain. The moonlight dimmed.
    Raphael loomed on the other side of the beast and clawed it. He was alive. I almost cried from the relief.
    The magic stung us again.
    Oh my God. It hurt.
    The magic wouldn’t kill us. It just hurt.
    Hurt.
    Raphael and I stared at each other over the beast’s spine through the haze of pain and laughed. Our eerie hyena cackles echoed through the ruin.
    It wanted to play the hurting game against two boudas. It had no chance.
    We mauled the beast.
    It raked us with its hind legs and shocked us with its magic, and we clawed it and clawed it, hanging on and laughing through the pain. I tasted blood in my mouth and clawed even harder, digging into the beast’s stomach, wrenching innards and bone out. We carved and gouged, blacking out and coming to, throwing blood and wet entrails.
    The beast shuddered.
    We ripped into it. It was the creature or us, do or die.
    The beast stumbled, careened to the side, and crashed down.
    I looked up, breathing hard. Across from me Raphael stood, covered in gore. His muscular furry chest heaved. Between us the beast lay, the bones of its rib cage bare. We had nearly stripped its carcass. It should’ve died ages ago, but the magic must’ve kept it alive.
    I sank to the floor. My body was red with blood, some of it the beast’s, some my own. Long scratches marked my side and right leg from the hip down—gouges from the beast’s claws. The cuts burned. If I were human, I’d have needed hundreds of stitches.
    We won. Somehow we had won and both of us had survived. It was some sort of miracle. I was bone tired. The floor looked so nice. Maybe if I just lay down here for a minute and closed my eyes…
    “Andrea.”
    Raphael’s eyes glowed with ruby fire. His face, a meld of human and hyena, didn’t mirror emotions well but his eyes stared at me with a chilling determination.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “I’m taking you home.”
    My mind chewed on his words, trying to break them into chunks. Take me home? Take me home…Home. With him.
    My fatigue evaporated in an instant. “No.”
    “Yes. You’re coming home with me. We’ll take a bath and eat and make love, and everything will be fine.”
    I got my ass off the floor. “I don’t think so.”
    “I’m done doing things your way. Your way means we don’t talk for months. You’re coming home with me.”
    “You hurt me, on purpose, but everything is cool now, because you didn’t sleep with Rebecca and we can go home.”
    “Yes!”
    “It doesn’t work this way. I’m not going home with you. You and I are done.”
    “You’re mine,” he snarled.
    What the hell. Maybe the fight had knocked some screw loose in his brain.
    “You’ll always be mine.” He