Kate Daniels 01 - Magic Bites

“mysteries of life and death,” as their brochures put it. They had proficiency in a variety of both technological and magical fields; most showed a slant toward necromancy and necronavigation—the raising, studying, and caring for the dead.
    The People had power in abundance. Dangerous as hell, they had raised necromancy to the level of art, demonstrating a high degree of professionalism in everything they did, which I admired. It didn’t keep me from despising them.
    The entrance to the Casino was open to the public. We tied our horses to the rails outside and walked in past the twin sentries wearing black cloaks over chainmail and brandishing scimitars. The scimitars had a worn look about them, the kind that originates from repeated sharpening after being dulled on something hard.
    We entered the main floor. I hated casinos. The lure of easy money brought out the worst in people. The air smelled of greed, disappointment, and desperation.
    Derek and I marched past the slot machines reconditioned to be run manually. Lost to the world in their concentration to feed more money into the machines, the slot players looked undead, going through the motions with the monotony of automatons. A woman won, jumping frantically as a waterfall of coins spilled, filling the receptacle of her machine. Her face, illuminated by delight, looked berserk, almost mad.
    We passed the card tables, turned to a small service entrance, strode through it and found ourselves in a small room opening into a staircase. A pair of lean guards, dressed in the same garb as the sentries outside, flanked the stairs. Almost immediately, as if on cue, a woman stepped into our view.
    She stood a couple of inches above five feet, about half a foot shorter than me. Her emerald green dress left no aspect of her figure to the imagination. She was neither slender nor willowy. When writers of sappy romances ranted about “glorious curves tapering to a small waist” and “soft flesh that begged to be explored,” they had her in mind. All in all, her body was a far cry from my own. I wasn’t jealous. My body served me fine; it was strong, resilient, and equipped with quick reflexes, which let me kill things before they killed me.
    I did envy her hair. Fiery red, it fell in curls and ringlets shining with red gold all the way to her hips. Derek’s face split into a first-class leer. Rowena smiled as if he had just read her a poem.
    “Kate! How pleasant to see you again.” Her smile could launch a spaceship into orbit. Coupled with a contralto, tinted with a soft Polish accent, that smile made men lose the last remnants of their self-respect.
    I glanced at Derek. The boy wonder didn’t melt into a pile of goo, although his gaze was glued to Rowena’s chest. Avoiding eye contact. Good strategy.
    “Sorry we’re late.”
    “Not a problem. Please follow me.”
    We did, climbing the staircase up the long hallway.
    “You’ve been here before?” Derek asked, his gaze firmly fixed on Rowena’s ass shifting under the shimmering green silk a few steps above us.
    “Wiggles,” I told him.
    He blinked, then realized I wasn’t referring to Rowena’s backside. “Wiggles?”
    “She’s about fourteen feet long, triangular head, gray and blue scales . . .”
    He was clearly drawing a blank. “Nataraja’s pet snake,” I explained. “It bolted a few weeks ago. I found it for him at the request of the Guild.” Mentioning that I spent four solid days camped out in a swamp, covered in peat and muck, without a change of clothes, would have completely cramped my style.
    An icy feeling came over me. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose. We rounded the bend and saw a vampire. It scuttled along the ceiling, heading in the opposite direction, ropy muscles working under the tightly stretched skin, probably dark during life, but now bluish purple. Rowena glanced at it and waved the way people in more technological times must’ve waved at the security cameras. I felt a particular magic flow from her in a sluggish wave. My stomach lurched and I swallowed, trying not to retch.
    The undead sat unnaturally still. The urge to kill it almost overwhelmed me. My hand itched to touch Slayer, resting in its leather sheath on my back. I looked into the empty dead eyes and wondered what it would be like to slide my blade into one, scrambling the brain behind it. I would have liked to kill the man that piloted it even more.
    The vampire shifted, springing into motion