Read Online Magic Steals by Ilona Andrews - Free Book Online Page B

fireworks.
    The car’s hood buckled, as if an invisible giant punched it with a fist. Its left front wheel fell off. Its hood bubbled up, as if another punch had landed. The windshield cracked. Something inside the car crunched with a sickening metallic snap. Water shot out through the hole in the hood. The roof of the car caved in. Both passenger and driver doors fell off. The headlights exploded. With another crunch, the entire vehicle shuddered and collapsed into a heap, looking like something with colossal teeth had chewed it for a while and spat it out.
    Jim stopped next to me. He was carrying the hag’s head by her hair. We looked at each other, both bloody and cut up, and looked back at the car. Jim raised his eyebrows.
    â€œThe curse of transference,” I said. “This is everything I’ve ever done to Pooki. Except all at the same time.”
    Jim looked at the ruined car. His eyes widened. He struggled to say something.
    â€œJim?”
    He unhinged his jaw. “No more racing.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    BEING a shapeshifter had its disadvantages. For one, smells ordinary to normal people drove you nuts. If you burned something in the kitchen, you didn’t just open the windows, you had to open the entire house and go outside. It meant the dynamics within the shapeshifter packs and clans were unlike those of a human society. And by the way, most of those dynamics were bullshit. Yes, we did take some of the traits of our animal counterparts: cats had a strong independent streak, bouda—the werehyena—females tended to be dominant, and wolves exhibited a strong OCD tendency, which helped them survive in the wild by tracking and then running game over long distances. But the entire pack hierarchy was actually much closer to the dominance hierarchy of wild primate groups, which made sense considering that the human part of us was in control. And of course, the most important disadvantage was loupism. In moments of extreme stress, Lyc-V, the virus responsible for our powers, “bloomed” within our bodies in great numbers. Sometimes the bloom triggered a catastrophic response and drove a shapeshifter into insanity. An insane shapeshifter was called loup and there was no coming back from that road. Loupism was a constant specter hanging over us.
    But right now, as I poured water over my arms to wash away the blood, I was grateful for every single cell of Lyc-V in my body. My gashes were knitting themselves closed. If you watched close enough, you would see muscle fibers slide in the wounds. It was incredibly gross.
    Amanda was sitting on the floor, holding her son and rocking back and forth. The boy looked like he wanted to escape, but he must’ve sensed that his mother was deeply upset and so he sat quietly and let her clench him to her. Cole hovered over them, holding a baseball bat and wearing that tense, keyed-up expression on his face men sometimes get when they are terrified for their families and not sure where the danger was coming from. Right now if a butterfly happened to float past Cole on fuzzy wings, he would probably pound it into dust with his bat.
    Mr. Dobrev was staring at the hag’s head Jim left sitting on the counter. He’d walked around the store for a minute or two, surveying the damage, and then come back to the head and stared.
    â€œMr. Dobrev,” I called. “She’s dead.”
    â€œI know.” He turned to me. “I can’t believe it.”
    â€œYou said you saw her in a painting before?”
    â€œWhen I was a boy. She looked exactly like that.”
    I was right. I was completely right. Good. Good, good, good, I hated not knowing what I was dealing with.
    Jim stepped through the door, pale-faced Brune behind him.
    â€œWhere is Steven?” I asked.
    â€œHe grabbed a bicycle and went to his daughter’s school to check on her,” Brune said.
    Well, I could certainly understand