«Spicing it up?» Jim asked from the doorway.
«Water hemlock. Also called cowbane.» I put the pouch away. «Thirty minutes and then
projectile vomiting, violent convulsions, and death or permanent nervous system damage. A little
present from me for their table.»
Jim stepped outside, grasped the four-armed freak, swung it onto his shoulders, and stared
pointedly at the other three bodies sprawled on the grass. They were our evidence. I would have to
carry one. A seven-foot-tall scaled monstrosity, a green creature covered in foot-long needles, or the
guy missing most of his flesh from his ass and legs. Hmmm, let me think . . .
CHAPTER 20
CARRYING CORPSES IN PLAIN DAYLIGHT, ESPECIALLY corpses with four arms, pretty
much takes the whole notion of «not drawing attention» out back and explodes it with fireworks.
Especially since the people doing the carrying are covered in blood and look like they've been
dragged through a hedge backward. Not to mention that one of them is a werejaguar in a warrior
form and the other a woman hauling a human corpse with his ass cut off.
Fortunately, the outskirts of Unicorn were deserted. One would have to be some sort of special
breed of idiot to approach that street in the first place. Apparently, Atlanta was experiencing a
moron shortage, and today Jim and I were the only idiots of this caliber.
Even without his butt and thighs, Saiman's unfortunate victim weighed a ton. We passed out of
the jungle into the city with no problems, but carrying him through Unicorn Lane and out to the
vehicle proved to be near my limits. I had slid into a kind of fog where taking the next step was all
that mattered. I dimly recalled reaching the spot where we had left the vehicle and finding a cart
hitched to a pair of horses instead. The dingo must've come back with the horses once the magic
wave had hit the city. Unfortunately, he didn't stick around.
I also remembered packing the corpses into the cart under some canvas and sliding into the seat
to steer, because Jim, being the top man on Curran's Most-Wanted List, had to stay out of sight.
Then there was the trek across the city, through the morning traffic. The glow of pain along my side
and back nicely kept me awake. A layer of jungle dirt had mixed with Reaper blood on my skin,
and the fall sun baked it into a crust over my face and hair. At least I had no trouble with traffic
jams. The rival drivers took one look at my blood-encrusted persona and scrambled to get out of the
way.
I drove and thought of Roland.
I had no mother. Instead I had Voron, whom I called my father. Tall, his dark blond hair cropped
short, Voron had led me through my childhood with his quiet strength. Voron could kill anything.
He could solve anything. He could fix anything. I would do anything for one of his rare smiles. He
was my father, one of the two constants in my life.
Roland had been the other.
He entered my life as a fairy tale that Voron would tell me before bed. There once was a man
who had lived through the ages. He had been a builder, an artisan, a healer, a priest, a prophet, a
warrior, and a sorcerer. At times he had been a slave. At others he was a tyrant. Magic fell and
technology reigned, and then magic rose again, and still he persevered, ancient like the sand itself,
driven through the years by his obsession for a perfect world.
He had many names, although he called himself Roland now. He had been master to many men
and lover to many women, but he had not loved anyone as much as he loved my mother. She was
kind and smart and generous and she filled Roland with life. My mother wanted a baby. It had been
millennia since Roland had sired a child, because his child would inherit all the power of Roland's
ancient blood and all of his ambition, and Roland had fought too many wars to kill children who
had risen against him.
But he loved my mother too much and he decided to give her a child because it would make her
happy. She was only two months along when he started to have second thoughts. He became
obsessed that the child would oppose him, and he decided to kill the child in the womb.
But my mother loved the baby. The more obsessed Roland became, the farther she pulled away
from him.
Roland had a Warlord. His name was Voron, which meant raven in Russian. They called him
that because death followed him. And Voron loved my mother as well.
When Roland was away, my mother ran and Voron ran with her. He was there when she gave
birth to me. For a few blissful months on the run they were happy. But Roland chased them, and my
mother, knowing that Voron was the stronger of the two, stayed behind to delay Roland so he and I
could escape. She sank her dagger into Roland's eye and then he killed her.
And that was where the fairy tale ended and we would check for a knife under my bed and then I