Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

his are. A thickening here and there, smudged, broken lines. I saw none.”
    A troubled expression disturbed the handsome symmetry of Saiman’s face.
    Once blood, fluid, or any other tissue was removed from the body, the owner could no longer mask its magic. An m-scanner picked up traces of that magic and registered it in different colors: purple for vampire, green for shapeshifter, blue or gray for human. I didn’t see the problem: take a blood sample, run an m-scan, anything not blue or silver meant nonhuman. An m-scan was foolproof.
    “Have you m-scanned them?”
    “Several times. Both register blue. Pure human.”
    Odd. “The m-scanner is a hell of a thing to rebut,” I said. “But the fact remains: you have two China dolls, one almost albino and the other painted with pretty black swirls. And they really don’t like you. I’d get a bodyguard, Saiman. And I would warn him to expect unusual things from your attackers.”
    Two humans walked out onto the field. Rodriguez was in his forties. Short and wiry, he had chosen a short, curved kukri blade. Front heavy, it was designed to sink into flesh almost on its own. Callisto topped him by a foot and outweighed him by about thirty pounds. Her olive-skinned limbs were disproportionately long. She carried an axe. A silver chain wound about her right arm.
    The gong tolled. Callisto swung her axe. Had she caught Rodriguez, the blow would’ve cleaved the smaller fighter open, but Rodriguez danced away, nimble like a cat. Callisto struck again, a diagonal blow that exposed her left side. Rodriguez refused to commit and dodged instead. The crowd jeered.
    I leaned on the railing, tracking Rodriguez across the field. He had both experience and skill. But a dangerous ferocity tinted the sneer on Callisto’s face.
    “Who will win, Rodriguez or Callisto?” Saiman asked.
    “Callisto.”
    “Why?”
    “A hunch. She wants it more.”
    Rodriguez lunged. His blade hacked Callisto’s thigh. Vermillion drenched her leg. I smelled blood.
    Callisto snapped her arm. The chain swung in a pale metal arch and wound itself about Rodriguez’s neck with unnatural precision. The end of the chain reared above the fighter’s shoulder and at its end I saw a small, triangular head. Metal jaws came unhinged. Small metal fangs bit the air. Callisto pulled. The links of the chain melded into a serpentine body in a shimmer of steel.
    The metal snake clenched its coils. Rodriguez chopped at it in a desperate frenzy, but his kukri slid off the steel body. He was done. The crowd roared in delight.
    Rodriguez’s face turned purple. He went down to his knees. The sword slid from his fingers and plunged into the sand. He clawed at the metal noose constricting his throat.
    She just watched him. She could’ve stopped it at any point. She could’ve killed him with her axe. But instead Callisto simply stood there and watched him suffocate.
    It took fully four minutes for Rodriguez to die. Finally when his legs stopped drumming the ground, Callisto retrieved her chain, its links once again mere metal, and shook it at the crowd. The spectators howled.
    I unclenched my fists. It had taken every ounce of my will not to jump into the Pit and pull that thing off Rodriguez’s neck.
    I hadn’t believed I could think less of Saiman. He proved me wrong.
    Four men in gray scrubs emerged from the Midnight Gate, loaded the corpse onto a stretcher, and took it away.
    Saiman leaned back in his seat. “As I said, mildly interesting.”
    “I find it horrific.”
    “Why? I’ve seen you kill before, Kate. Granted, you do it with considerably greater skill.”
    “I kill because I have to. I kill to protect myself or others. I won’t take a life to titillate a crowd. Nor would I torture a man for the pleasure of it.”
    Saiman shrugged. “You kill to survive and to appease your own misguided conscience. Those in the Pit kill for money and the gratification of knowing they are better than the corpse at their feet. At the core, our motives are always self-serving, Kate. Altruism is a fog created by sly minds seeking to benefit from the energy and skill of others. Nothing more.”
    “You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped