Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

shipment anytime.”
    Raphael bowed. The ladies looked close to fainting.
    I marched over and stood next to him before the teamsters threw caution to the wind and jumped him right there on the platform. The redhead eyed me. “Killjoy.”
    I turned and gave her my hard stare. The teamsters moved to the other end of the platform. I didn’t blame them. I was decked out. Unlike Raphael, who was shiny, I had gone for the solid, light-gulping black of treated leather, from the tips of my soft boots to the shoulders hidden by the dramatic cloak I had to borrow from Jim. I looked like a piece of darkness in the shape of a woman. Jim wasn’t happy about letting me have the cloak either, but I had no clothes that would adequately serve my plan and no time or place to get them. All of us were living on a timer we’d borrowed from Derek, and his time was running out.
    The cloak coupled with a black leather vest made me suitably menacing. All that was missing was a giant neon sign with rotating sparklers proclaiming HARD CASE. LINE TO GET YOUR ASS KICKED FORMS TO THE RIGHT.
    A wide smile stretched Raphael’s lips.
    “If you laugh, I’ll kill you,” I told him.
    “Why the rifle? Everybody knows you can’t shoot.”
    Who were these everybodies and would they like to stand in front of me, preferably within ten feet, so I could discuss this issue in greater detail? “I can shoot just fine.” I just missed eighty percent of the time. With the gun anyway. I did better with a crossbow and even better with the knife. “Do you know the runes on your sword are nonsense?”
    “Yes, but they look mysterious.”
    Before us the ley line shimmered. Some poetic descriptions likened it to the rise of warm air above the heated asphalt. In reality the effect was more pronounced: a short, controlled spasm, as if an invisible vent slid open, belching a distorting blast, and abruptly closed. The ley current was no joke. The magic itself flowed about a foot and a half off the ground. It grabbed you and pulled you with it at speeds ranging from sixty to roughly a hundred miles per hour. Anything living dumb enough to step into the current had to wave bye-bye to the bloody stumps of its legs severed just below the knee. Most people used ley taxis, rough, wooden platforms cobbled together, but anything sturdy enough to support a body would do in a pinch. A vehicle. A surfboard. A piece of an old roof. I’d seen a guy ride on a ladder once. Not something I would try.
    Raphael put the car in neutral. We rolled the vehicle across the platform to the ley line. The current jerked before us. I hopped into the cab and Raphael joined me a second later. The car slid into the ley line.
    The magic jaws of the current snapped at us. My heart skipped a beat. The Jeep became utterly still, as if it were held immobile and the planet merrily rotated under it, speeding on its way.
    Raphael pulled out a paperback and handed it to me. The cover, done back in the time when computer-aided image manipulation had risen to the level of art, featured an impossibly handsome man, leaning forward, one foot in a huge black boot resting on the carcass of some monstrous sea creature. His hair flowed down to his shoulders in a mane of white gold, in stark contrast to his tanned skin and the rakish black patch hiding his left eye. His white, translucent shirt hung open, revealing abs of steel and a massive, perfectly carved chest, graced by erect nipples. His muscled thighs strained the fabric of his pants, which were unbuttoned and sat loosely on his narrow hips, a touch of a strategically positioned shadow hinting at the world’s biggest boner.
    The cover proclaimed in loud golden letters: The Privateer’s Virgin Mistress , by Lorna Sterling.
    “Novel number four for Andrea’s collection?” I guessed.
    Raphael nodded and took the book from my hands. “I’ve got the other one Andrea wanted, too. Can you explain something to me?”
    Oh boy. “I can try.”
    He tapped the book on his leather-covered knee. “The pirate actually holds this chick’s brother for ransom, so she’ll sleep with him. These men, they aren’t real men. They’re pseudo-bad guys just waiting for the love of a ‘good’ woman.”
    “You actually read the books?”
    He gave me a chiding glance. “Of course I read the books. It’s all pirates and the women they steal, apparently so they can enjoy lots of sex and have somebody to run their lives.”
    Wow. He must’ve had to hide under his