Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

with us. Not just with the Pack but with our whole kind. Something about us being a meld of humans and animals, and those guys hate both. He told me there was a human girl in the Reaper crew and spun this long story about how she wanted to switch sides and would tell us all about the Reapers and Gar’s murder if we got her out.”
    “And you told him no.”
    Jim drained a third of his glass. “I told him it was too risky. The Reapers travel together, fifteen, twenty, sometimes thirty per group, always armed.”
    “As if they know they’re going in and out of enemy territory.”
    Jim nodded.
    “And they can’t be tracked by scent? They have to have a base of some sort.”
    Jim looked like he’d just bitten a lime. “The problem isn’t tracking. The problem is the location of their base.”
    “Where is it?” Why did I have a feeling this wouldn’t be good? With my luck, the next thing to come out of his mouth would be something crazy, like Unicorn Lane . . .
    “In Unicorn—”
    I held my hand out. “Got it.”
    Unicorn Lane gave no quarter. Savage magic roiled there, streaming through the gutted corpses of skyscrapers, too powerful to harness, too dangerous to fight. Ordinary objects became suffused with lethal power. Horrible things that shunned the light hid in Unicorn, feeding on lesser monsters and spinning foul magics of their own. Lunatic cultists with secret power, deranged loups, cast-out Masters of the Dead, when they had nowhere to go, when every friend and every family member turned them away, when the apprehension directive on their profiles became “Shoot on sight” and desperation muddled their minds, only then did they try to enter Unicorn Lane. Most became nourishment for abominations. The rare few who survived went mad, if they weren’t already.
    There was a reason why Andorf the Bear who had rampaged at the last legal Games chose Unicorn Lane as his refuge. There was a reason why Curran had set our first meeting on the outskirts of Unicorn, just deep enough to weed out the scared and kill the stupid.
    To follow thirty monsters in human skin into Unicorn Lane in the middle of the night was a cruel and unusual way to commit suicide.
    “Scouting their base is right out,” Jim said. “But suppose we did somehow spring the girl before they hit Unicorn Lane. We just kidnapped one of their own. Guilty or not, human or not, they would go to war with us after that. We can’t afford another damn war.”
    “Not without cause,” Doolittle put in.
    “All he had were some funny smells and a girl with a big mouth. I told the kid to stop chasing tail and bring me some proof. He went there one more time, but I could tell the girl made an impression.”
    “I’ve seen her,” I told him. “I can’t blame him.”
    Jim started. “How?”
    “You finish first, then I’ll tell you my side.”
    Jim shrugged. “Derek clammed up. I saw reason wasn’t getting through—he would try to rescue her one way or another, and I pulled him out of it. The tickets to the Games are hard to get and go for three grand apiece. I knew he didn’t have three grand lying around, and even if he managed, the type of ticket he could get wouldn’t let him into the lower level. I put a tail on him, told him to chill, and thought that was the end of it.”
    Ahh, but Derek had seen Saiman at the Games and recognized him by scent. He knew Saiman in his Durand persona owned part of the House and had “go anywhere” tickets.
    “While Derek was cooling off, I put Linna into the Games in his place.” Jim placed a second photograph in front of me. A corpse of a woman lay on the surgical table. The outline of her body was distorted, uneven. I studied the photo and realized she was in pieces. The body had been severed into sections and reassembled bit by bit.
    “They carved her into twelve pieces,” Doolittle said. “Each piece exactly six inches long. She was probably alive while they did it. And no, she didn’t change shapes either. Her clothes were still on her.”
    “I was picking her off the pavement when you came by.” Jim clenched his teeth. “Then my tail returned. The kid lost him. And then we found Derek.”
    I didn’t need further explanation. Jim’s crew had chased the scent, retracing the trail of Derek’s assailants, and found me dipping my fingertips into his blood.
    “What do you have?” Jim asked.
    I told him. When I came to the part where I led Curran to Linna’s dump site, Jim closed his