Blood Heir (Aurelia Ryder, #1)(86)

I stabbed Dakkan into his chest. Bones broke with a dry crunch like twigs. The ma’avir shrieked and flailed, fire raging around him. I thrust the spear deeper, carving through him.

“Die, worm.”

He howled, trying to form a prayer. I heaved the spear and drove him in an arc over my head into the ground. His robes tore, flames spiraling out, revealing the burned, desiccated husk that was his body. I yanked Dakkan free, reversed it, and drove the butt of the spear into the priest’s skull. Bone crunched. I hammered his ugly face again and again, pounding his skull with the butt of the spear into dust.

“Die and tell your god I sent you to the afterlife!”

The flames wailed like a living creature. The ma’avir jerked and exploded.

Soot drifted through the air. I took a deep breath and looked up.

Derek rose from the ground. Next to him, Zahar, still prone, stared at me with eyes as big as saucers. In the distance, all the way across the road, Tulip pinched some grass off the ground and chewed, unconcerned, while the bouda girl lay limp across her saddle.

Derek’s eyes went gold. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

“We need to go to the pirogi stand. Right now.”

He stared at me.

“We need to get there before they do!”

“Zahar,” Derek said. “Take the girl to the Pack safe house. There is one on Durham Street. Leave her there. If they try to detain you, use my old name. Pull everyone in. Where is this pirogi stand?”

“On the corner of 15th and Peachtree, by my house.”

“Bring everyone there.”

“Yes, Alpha.” Zahar took off at a run, swept the girl into his arms, and dashed up the street.

Derek turned to me. “Get on your horse. You will explain this to me on the way. All of it.”





16





The pirogi stall was on fire.

I swung off Tulip’s back and sprinted to it. Pieces of the stall smoldered, sending greasy smoke into the air. I tried to peer inside the gutted structure. Behind me Derek inhaled.

I had told him the bare minimum about Moloch. Mentioning Kate would give me away, so I explained that a person close to me was Moloch’s target, and that he and I “had a score to settle.” I also told him that Moloch wanted the divine beast’s heart so he could glimpse the future.

I wasn’t sure if he bought it, but for now it would have to do.

“I don’t smell any burned corpses,” Derek said. “Did they take the owner hostage?”

“It’s not their style. They must’ve missed him and burned the stall to make sure I miss him, too.”

Come to think of it, it was a weird location for the stall. Too close to Unicorn Lane. The area was poor, the foot traffic light. I had never seen any other customers there. I was keeping them afloat all by my lonesome.

Derek stopped and inhaled. He was staring at the raggedy blanket where my friend the beggar spent his days.

Derek shook his head and inhaled again.

“What is it?”

“There is no fucking way.”

“What does that mean?”

For a second his flat expression slipped. “I smell a dead man.”

“I don’t see a corpse…”

“I saw the corpse. I saw it eight years ago. I carried his coffin at his funeral.”

The fractured pieces in front of me snapped together. A female broker who disappears into thin air and whom nobody can find. A pirogi stall on the edge of Unicorn Lane that isn’t doing any business except collecting the phone numbers for the broker. The beggar who watches it.

I blinked. The magic trails blossomed in front of me. The filthy blanket where the beggar had sat turned into a dazzling mix of clear human blue and silver shot through with gold.

Son of a bitch.

“Can you track him?”

Derek started forward. “Oh yes. And when I get my hands on him, he’ll wish he fucking stayed dead.”

We jogged down Peachtree Circle, Tulip gleefully keeping pace with us.

“Did other shapeshifters know him?”

“Everyone knew him,” Derek growled.

“Ascanio Ferara had to have walked by his blanket when he came to see me.”

“His blanket is soaked in piss. When you get close, all you can smell is ammonia and mothballs. Most people will take a whiff and give him all the space he needs.”

We rounded a collapsed building and emerged onto my street. My house was a hundred yards ahead.

“He went into Unicorn Lane,” Derek growled.

I slipped back into the sensate vision. The beggar’s trail was a mere wisp, dissipating with every second. Beyond it, Unicorn Lane was a psychedelic rainbow soup of magic, clashing, mixing, boiling.

Derek stopped. I stopped too.

Ahead of us Ascanio walked out from behind my house and gave us a friendly wave.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“Wait here,” Derek said. “I’ll handle this.”

“Will you?” Ascanio asked. “Is that a fact?”

He strolled toward us, leisurely, one foot in front of the other. You could almost see the hyena in his movement. Behind him, shapeshifters stepped into the open, from behind my house, from the abandoned building across the street on our right, from the fallen ruin on our left. Nine boudas total, with Ascanio. Crap.