Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

fastened on the Wolf Diamond, still sitting on its pedestal. He lunged for it. His bloodied fingers grasped the topaz. He backed away and bumped into my cage.
    I thrust through the bars and stabbed Livie’s knife into the base of his throat, between his left shoulder and the column of his neck. The puddle of my blood shivered, obedient to my will, and bit into his back with a hundred spikes.
    The gem slipped out of his fingers.
    I locked my arms on his neck, trying to choke him out, but I didn’t have the strength.
    Curran swept the Wolf Diamond off the floor, clamped his huge left hand onto Mart’s shoulder, and smashed the topaz into Mart’s face.
    The rakshasa screamed.
    Curran pounded him, hammering the gemstone into Mart again and again. Blood flew. The blows crushed Mart’s perfection into bloody pulp. The sword fell from his fingers. Curran struck for the last time and ripped him from the cage, snapping my blood spikes, which dissipated into black dust. He twisted Mart’s neck, snapping the spinal column, and shook the lifeless body at the crowd of rakshasas with a deafening roar.
    They fled. They streamed out of the chamber through the arched doors, trampling one another in their hurry to get away.
    Curran wrenched the cage bars apart.
    “You suicidal moron,” I rasped. “What are you doing here?”
    “Repaying the favor,” he snarled.
    He pulled me out of the cage and saw the wound in my stomach. His half-form face jerked. He pressed me against his chest. “Stay with me.”
    “Where would I . . . go, Your Majesty?” My head was spinning.
    Behind us the taller of the nightmarish beasts swept the petrified Livie from behind the cage. “It’s all right,” the monster told her, clamping her with one hand and holding the Wolf Diamond with the other. “Aunt B’s got you.”
    At the opposite end of the chamber someone was fighting the current of fleeing rakshasas. A sword flashed and I recognized Hugh d’Ambray, with Nick at his heels. He saw us and shouted something.
    “What is he doing here?” Curran growled.
    “He’s Roland’s Warlord. He’s here for me.” He was here for the woman who had broken his master’s blade.
    “Tough luck. You’re mine.” Curran turned and ran, carrying me off. Hugh screamed, but the current of fleeing rakshasas pushed him out of the chamber.
    I lay cradled in Curran’s arms as he ran through the vimana. Others joined us, tall, furry shapes. I could no longer distinguish the different faces. I just rested in his arms, nearly blind, every jolt sending more pain stinging up my spine. Soft darkness tried to engulf me.
    “Stay with me, baby.”
    “I will.”
    It was a dream or a nightmare, I could no longer decide. But somehow I stayed with him all the way, even as the vimana careened, even as we leapt out of it and saw it crash behind us into the green hills. I stayed with him all during the mad run through the jungle. The last things I remembered were stone ruins and Doolittle’s face.

EPILOGUE

    I DREAMT OF CURRAN SNARLING, “FIX HER!” AND Doolittle saying that he wasn’t a god and there was only so much he could do. I dreamt of Julie crying by my bed, of Jim sitting near, of Andrea telling me some frustratingly complicated story . . . The noises blended in my head until finally I could stand it no longer. “Would all of you just be quiet? Please.”
    I blinked and saw Curran’s face.
    “Hey,” he said.
    “Hey.” I smiled. There he was, alive. I was alive. “I was telling the people in my head to shut up.”
    “They have medication for that.”
    “I probably can’t afford it.”
    He caressed my cheek.
    “You came for me,” I whispered.
    “Always,” he told me.
    “You’re a damn idiot. Trying to throw your life away?”
    “Just staying sharp. Keeping you safe keeps me in shape.”
    He leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips. I reached for him and he hugged me to him and held on for a long moment. I closed my eyes, smiling at the simple pleasure of his skin on mine. And then my arms grew too heavy. Gently he put me back on my pillow and walked away. I curled under my blanket, warm and safe and so perfectly happy, and fell asleep again.
     
     
    THE TORTURE BEGAN IN THE MORNING WITH Doolittle holding up three fingers to my face. “How many fingers?”
    “Eleven.”
    “Thank God,” he said. “I was beginning to worry.”
    “Where is His Fussiness?”
    “He left last night.”
    I struggled with a ball of emotions: regret at