Magic Steals (Kate Daniels #6.5)(29)

I made a move forward.

“No!” Jim barked.

What? What was he thinking? He didn’t want me to help?

Jim roared again. The loup leaped across the room. They ripped and clawed at each other.

Jim wanted my help. Some men tried to do it all on their own, but Jim didn’t have that kind of ego. Jim cared only about results and objectives. It had to be a diversion. What would he need a diversion for? For me to sneak up close.

I padded forward on soft paws, circling, carefully staying out of the loup’s field of vision. I was getting light-headed and I couldn’t even figure out if it was my body going into overdrive trying to repair me or if I was finally going to pass out from all the blood fumes that were making me sick. The memory of pain flashed through me. I was so scared to get hurt again.

None of it mattered. I couldn’t allow this thing to emerge into the world. It would kill and rape and devour and it would cut a path of destruction through the city before it could be stopped.

I couldn’t let Jim die. I loved him. He was my everything.

I was directly behind the loup. Jim saw me. The loup had him in a death grip, his arms around Jim, his claws digging into his back.

I braced myself.

With a roar knitted of fury and pain, Jim tore out of the loup’s grip, leaving shreds of his flesh on the abomination’s claws. Jim jumped and kicked the loup in the chest with both legs. The loup’s body hit me, and he fell over me, landing on the floor.

I jumped on top of him and dug my claws into the wooden floorboards.

The loup strained, trying to push me off, and carved my back with its claws. It burned like fire.

I just had to hold on for a few seconds.

The loup clawed me again. It hurt. It hurt so badly. I didn’t know I could hurt any worse. I was wrong.

The loup howled and bit my shoulder. My bone crunched under the pressure of his teeth.

I just had to hold on.

Jim landed next to me. His enormous jaguar jaws gaped open, wide, wider, wider . . . His bite was twice as powerful as that of a lion. He could crack a turtle shell with his teeth.

The loup reared his head.

Jim bit down, his massive fangs piercing the temporal bones of the loup’s skull, just in front of his ears. The bones crackled like eggshells. Jim’s teeth sank into the loup’s brain. The abomination screamed. His claws raked my back one last time and went limp. Jim squeezed harder. The head broke apart in his mouth and he spat the pieces onto the floor and crushed the sickening remains with his foot.

I crawled off the body. Every cell in me ached. Wounds gaped across Jim’s frame. He was torn up all over.

Jim landed next to me, leaned over, and gently licked my bloody face with his jaguar tongue. I whined and rolled my big head against him. He kissed me again, cleaning my cuts, his touch gentle and tender. I love you, too, Jim. I love you so much. Guess what? We won. It was worth it.

“You can’t get me,” Steven said. His voice shook a little. “I’m in the ward.”

We turned and looked at him with our glowing eyes. Silly man. We have faced our worst fear. There was nothing he could do to us now.

“We’re cats,” Jim said, his voice a rough growl. “We can wait hours for the mouse to leave the mouse hole. And when the magic wave ends, your mouse hole will collapse.”

Steven’s face turned white as a sheet.

“Squeak, little mouse,” Jim said, his voice raising my hackles. “Squeak while we wait.”

? ? ?

“DO I look okay?”

“Yes,” Jim said. “You look gorgeous.”

“Is my lipstick too bright?”

“No.”

“I should’ve braided my hair.”

“I like your hair.”

I turned to him. We were sitting in a Pack Jeep in front of a large house. The air smelled of wood smoke, cooked meat, and people.

“Don’t be a chicken,” Jim said.

“What if they don’t like me?”

“They will like you, but if they don’t, I won’t care.” Jim got out of the car, walked over to the passenger door, and opened it for me. I stepped out. I was wearing a cute little dress and a sun hat. My back was a little scarred and Jim was limping and careful with his right side, but that couldn’t be helped. In a month or two, even the scars would dissolve. Steven wouldn’t be so lucky. The world was better without him in it.

Jim was ringing the doorbell.

Help. Help me.

“Don’t say anything up front,” I murmured. “We can just let them sort of come to terms with it . . .”

The door swung open. An older African-American woman stood in the doorway. She wore an apron, and she had big dark eyes, just like Jim.

“Dali, this is my mother,” Jim said. “Mom, this is Dali. She’s my mate.”





Read on for an exciting excerpt from the next Kate Daniels novel

MAGIC BINDS

Coming September 2016 from Ace





The skull glared at me out of empty eye sockets. Odd runes marked its forehead, carved into the yellowed bone and filled with black ink. Its thick bottom jaw supported a row of conical fangs, long and sharp like the teeth of a crocodile. The skull sat on top of an old STOP sign. Someone had painted the surface of the octagon white and written KEEP OUT across it in large jagged letters. A reddish-brown splatter stained the bottom edge, looking suspiciously like dried blood. I leaned closer. Yep, blood. Some hair, too. Human hair.