Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

down into the loup cage sunken deep into the floor.
    I slammed the top frame shut. The complex lock clicked closed and I slid the thick bars in place, locking it down.
    Curran ripped apart the blanket. His face was pure rage. He grasped the bars and recoiled.
    I sat on the edge of the floor and rubbed my leg. It had gone numb from kicking him. I’d have to thank Julie for this idea. She’d almost fallen into the cage twice.
    He snarled and clasped the bars. I had to give it to Curran—he lasted a full five seconds. The bars bent under the pressure but held. Made to withstand the fury of an insane shapeshifter, the cage had enough silver to burn the skin off a shapeshifter’s hands. When Curran let go, gray stripes of flesh marked his palms.
    Curran cursed. “It won’t hold me.”
    No doubt. Good that it wasn’t meant to hold him, only to delay him. The feeling still hadn’t returned into my leg.
    Gold flared in Curran’s eyes. His voice became a bestial growl. “Unlock it.”
    The force in his eyes was so intense, I thought my heart would stop. “No.”
    “Kate! Release me.”
    “Not a chance.”
    “When I get out, I’ll make you regret this.”
    I frowned. “When you get out, I’ll be in the Arena of the Midnight Games, probably on my way to becoming a fresh corpse. I’ll be regretting a whole lot of things, but you in this cage won’t be one of them.”
    Curran stepped back. The rage vanished from his face. He simply quashed it, pulling calm composure on like a helmet. It had never failed to terrify me before, and it did so now.
    “Very well.” He sat cross-legged on the floor of the cage. “You haven’t run off so you want to talk. I will hear your explanation now.”
    “Really, Your Majesty? So good of you to condescend. I’ll try to use small words and go slow.”
    “You’re wasting my time. I know Jim betrayed me and you’re covering for him. This is your chance to dazzle me with your brilliance or baffle me with your bullshit. You won’t get another. When I get out, I won’t be in the mood to listen.”
    “Jim didn’t betray you. He worships the ground you walk on. They all do and I don’t understand why. It’s the great mystery of the universe. But nobody betrayed you. They did it to spare you.”
    I unloaded. I told him the whole story. He said nothing. He just sat and listened to me, emotionless and arctic.
    “Are you finished?” he asked at the end.
    “Yes.”
    “So let me make sure I understood you. My chief of security deliberately and knowingly disobeyed my first law, because he thought he knew better than me, dragged one of my best people into it, and got him permanently disfigured, beaten, and nearly killed. And he didn’t tell me?”
    The lion roar vibrated in his voice.
    “Then he convinced you to cover up for his insubordination, and together you attacked a group of mythological killers, aggravating the conflict between them and my Pack instead of repairing the damage. And now he and three others are going to willfully and knowingly break my law again, flaunting it before thousands of people, so there is absolutely no possible way I can sweep it under the rug, even if I had the slightest inclination to do so, which I don’t. Have I gotten it right?”
    “Well, yes, it sounds bad when you say it like that.”
    He leaned back and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. If the cage fell apart at this point, overwhelmed by his fury, I wouldn’t be surprised.
    “Curran, the gem is dangerous. I think that Roland is the Sultan of Death, and if I’m right, that means you’ve grown too powerful to be ignored. He will keep trying to eliminate you. The Wolf Diamond is trouble in the hands of the rakshasas, but it would be even more trouble in the hands of the People or the Order. Rakshasas aren’t too bright. Roland is a genius. And it’s not just him. If the Order got their hands on it, they would try to duplicate its magic and then inoculate your people with it. It’s a key to genocide against your kind.”
    “And you care why?”
    “Because I don’t want to see you hurt. Any of you. My best friend is beastkin. They will plug a shard into her in a minute. Andrea might not like her animal side, she might reject it, but the choice to do so should be hers.”
    Pushing the words out was like trying to carry a rock the size of a house up a mountain. “I should’ve come to you. I would have if we hadn’t found a cure. Anyway, I’m sorry. I tried to help my