Kate Daniels 01 - Magic Bites

where the Crusader and I almost had our little show-down. Nick was gone. I hoped he had enough sense to stay in the compound. Pissing Curran off right now was pure suicide.
    I closed the door and went to the window. It was raining. The gray sky spewed gray water onto the dull grass far below. The grayness from the outside seeped into the room, leeching the color from the sparse furnishing. The rain would end eventually, leaving the grass and the trees brilliant green, vivid with fresh color. Strange how something so colorless and drab could rejuvenate the world.
    There was a pair of gray sweats and nothing else in the small dresser by the bed. I placed Slayer and its sheath onto a Spartan blue blanket, stripped, and put on the sweats. I started slow, stretching, jumping an invisible rope, until warmth spread through my muscles. I cracked my neck and attacked the punching bag.
    I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Sweat drenched my sweatshirt and the T-shirt under it, and the fabric stuck to my back. Sometime after my legs began to hurt, I heard a knock. My brain brushed the sound aside. I launched another kick, connected with a solid thump, launched another before my mind put on the brakes. “Come in.”
    Curran stepped into the room and closed the door. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stretched. He sat down on a chair, hands resting on his knees, looking at the floor, and waited for me to finish.
    “He called back,” he said when I was done.
    “What did he say?”
    “He raved for a while. Promised to kill me. He won’t attack Keep.”
    “You expected him to?”
    “No. I hoped.”
    I sat on the bed. It wouldn’t play out the way we hoped it would. Bono refused to be provoked into something rash, where numbers would be on the Pack’s side. In this new age, combat between individuals decided the fate of many.
    Bono would challenge Curran. It was inevitable. Curran had threatened his masculinity; he had made it personal, and when the challenge came, Curran would have to accept it. He was the Pack leader, the alpha male who didn’t have the luxury of backing down. He would not hide in the safety of Keep, while the upir raged, murdering everyone whose death he thought likely to bring us pain.
    I looked at Curran. “Your . . .” I paused searching for the right word. Girlfriend seemed inadequate, woman too impersonal. “Your lady,” I finally said. “Is she safe?”
    “Yes,” he said. “She’s here.”
    I nodded, screams of another woman echoing in my ears. Curran looked up at me, his eyes haunted. He looked older and tired.
    “It’s not that I don’t care,” he said. The screaming didn’t stop for him either.
    “I know.”
    “I can’t let him intimidate me.”
    “I know,” I repeated quietly.
    “I’m sorry,” he said and I wasn’t sure exactly what for.
    He left.
    I sat on the bed and thought. Everyone had a weakness. It was the law of nature that for each being there was a predator, or a disease, or a vulnerability built into their very core. The upir had to have a weakness. It wouldn’t be in any book. If that was the case, the crusader would have found it by now.
    I thought about everything that had happened since Greg’s death, carefully going over events, trying to recall every detail. I thought about Bono, the places he visited, the people he might have met, the things he did.
    The rain pounded harder. The sweat-drenched clothes grew cold on my back.
    My room had no phone. I got up and went down the hall, trying different rooms, until I found one that did. I closed the door and dialed the number.
    “Hello,” said a male voice with the smoothness of someone for whom courtesy was a part of the job description. “You have reached the People’s inner office. How may I help you?”
    “I need to speak to Ghastek.”
    “Mr. Ghastek is busy at the moment . . .”
    “Put him on. Now.”
    He didn’t like what he heard in my voice. The phone clicked and Ghastek came on the line against the background noises.
    “Hello?”
    I heard quiet voices discussing something. He wasn’t alone.
    “You had to know,” I said. “He was your journeyman for two years.”
    “I fail to understand . . .”
    “Don’t,” I snarled.
    There was so much fury in my voice that he fell silent.
    “Tell me, Ghastek. Tell me what you know.”
    “No,” he said.
    I closed my eyes and tried to think clearly. I could go down there and slaughter everything in my way. I had a lot of frustration to