“Take your rabbit,” Diana said over her shoulder.
The two wolves ripped a small bloody carcass in half and trotted toward them.
“They were too excited after the hunt,” she told him.
He shook his head, trying to fling away the last vestiges of whatever spell she’d cast on him. “I thought …”
“It’s not good for them to feed on humans. It sets a bad precedent. Follow me. It’s almost dark, and we need to get back to the car.”
He trailed her down the slope, trying desperately to reassert some kind of self-control. All of his fail-safes, all of the self-imposed conditioning that had carried him through the kind of missions that would have broken him otherwise, she had smashed through all of them. For a moment, there were no restraints. The failure of his willpower shook him to his core. It was profound.
He had to get a grip. She was a client, this was a case, she was a friend of his House… If he didn’t start thinking with the head that mattered, both of them would be dead, because Adrian Woodward was a Prime.
Woodward.
Unfinished business that came back to haunt him.
The problem with allowing a group of people with unrivaled individual power to police themselves was obvious. Sooner or later, some of them would stop playing by the rules and attempt to consolidate all power into their own hands. The magic elite were no different.
A few years ago, some Houses formed an alliance seeking to upend the social order and usurp the authority of the Texas State Assembly, a body that governed the conduct of magic users in the state. That alliance became known as the Conspiracy, and its goal had been to restructure the republic into an empire, with a Caesar-like figure at the top and Primes enjoying unlimited privileges.
Rogan, the Baylors, and the Harrisons opposed it, forming their own alliance. Augustine had been drawn into it. No, he’d thrown himself into it despite valid and logical reservations, because he would not tolerate tyranny. No matter how lofty the pretend goals or high-sounding the rhetoric, the true face of the Conspiracy was ugly and brutal. It sought to be a totalitarian regime with Primes at the top, and he fought them with all the savagery he possessed. He’d been idealistic once, and he thought that part of him had died, until something inside him stood up and refused to be an accessory to the murder of democracy.
Woodward had been a part of the Conspiracy. The evidence of his involvement was circumstantial but compelling. Woodward was an animator. He crafted elaborate constructs made of metal, plastic, and wire and infused them with magic, bringing them to life. Every animator had a signature, and Woodward’s was obvious. His constructs looked like monstrous animals.
A construct attacked Rogan after he had delivered a vital piece of evidence to the Harris County DA. It had been guided by a powerful animator who wore a Zeta Sigma Mu ring, exclusive to members of an elite, magic-users-only fraternity. Woodward ticked all the boxes—he was a Prime animator, he lived in the area, his history had suggested that he wouldn’t hesitate to attack the DA office or another Prime, and he wore the ring. He had been the Treasurer of the Dartmouth Chapter during his college days.
Augustine had zeroed in on Woodward quickly, but despite MII’s best efforts, he failed to obtain conclusive proof. It ate at him, but at the time he could do nothing about it.
Then, Woodward popped up again, a year later, when Rogan, the Baylors, and the Harrisons united to take down Alexander Sturm, one of the most dangerous members of the Conspiracy,at his fortress-like compound. A compound that had been guarded by constructs.
Augustine hadn’t been there. His role had been different. While they stormed Sturm’s house, he was dismantling Sturm’s allies. But he had watched a recording of that assault.
Augustine’s memory served up the video of a monstrous mechanical horse with crocodile jaws charging at the camera, full speed, like a runaway train lit from within by a magical blue glow. Its mouth hung open, displaying two-foot-long steel teeth. A grenade hurtled toward it and exploded against the construct’s chest, ripping a hole in the metal. Debris went flying. The construct stumbled, and then the jettisoned parts streamed back into it, reforming its body.
Sturm was a weather mage. Augustine had sunk hours and a lot of his resources into trying to tie Woodward to Sturm, and again, he’d failed. He knew Woodward was involved, he felt it with an intuition honed by years of experience. But he couldn't prove it.
Woodward had escaped all consequences of that investigation. He had always been a recluse, but since the Sturm affair, he practically vanished from the public eye. Yet here he was now, attacking the Harrisons.
“Why?” The word came out almost on its own, an extension of his thoughts.
Somehow, she understood him. “Kitty is an arcane creature born on Earth, one of a kind. He wants to take her apart. He wants to dissect her and use her body as a model for his next mechanical atrocity. He tried to buy Zeus years ago. We turned him down. He kept upping the price.”
“How much did he offer?”
“Two-hundred and fifty million if Cornelius would keep Zeus calm and alive as long as possible during the vivisection.”
Augustine recoiled.
Her eyes were terrible, frantic and brimming with pain. He hated it. He wanted to take that pain away from her, to reassure her, but he couldn’t. Platitudes would only make things worse.
“Why Zeus? Woodward worked with the Conspiracy. He had access to Harcourt, who had summoned Zeus. Why not just hire a summoner to get another specimen?”
“Because no summoner could keep a living animal calm while it was cut apart. And because Zeus was a bonded animal. No animal mage had been able to bond with a summon. Woodward thought that Zeus was unique. He wanted to study the bond and his body.”
Revulsion cut through him, angry and cold.
“I should have known,” she said, her voice defeated.
