Magic Stars (Grey Wolf Book 1) by Ilona Andrews Page B

as the wild inside glared through his eyes. “There is gunpowder stench on your hand and blood spatter on your shirt. It smells like Michael Ives.”
    The man froze.
    Derek smiled wider. “I don’t make deals with child murderers.”
     
    THE NIGHT WAS BLUE.
    The deep sky breathed, as if alive, the small glowing dots of distant stars winking at him as he ran along the night streets. The moon had rolled out and soared, huge and round, spilling a cascade of liquid silver onto the half-ruined city. It called to him the way it called to all wolves. If he didn’t have a job to do, he would’ve run right out of Atlanta into the magic-fed forest beyond, abandoned his human skin for fur and four paws, and sang to it. His human vocal cords had sustained too much damage in the same fight that had altered his face, but his wolf voice was as good as always. He would soak in that silver glow until it shone from his eyes and sing a long song about hunting and running through the dark wood in the middle of the night. On nights like these he remembered that he was only twenty. But he had someplace to be.
    Caleb’s five killers hadn’t gone too far from the house they destroyed, barely five miles, so he dropped into an easy run, a four-minute mile at best, and let the night air expand his lungs. The Casino flashed by, a white castle turned green by moonlight. He could just make out the gaunt, inhuman shapes of vampires crawling along its parapets, each undead telepathically driven by a human navigator. He made it a point to kill them when the opportunity presented itself. It didn’t come up too often—vampires belonged to the People, and the People and Kate had an uneasy truce. He didn’t agree with it, but it was necessary. Sometimes you had to put your personal feelings aside and do what was necessary.
    A magic wave flooded the world, snuffing out the rare electric lights, and ignited the charged air within the twisted glass tubes of fey lanterns. The magic-fed light was blue and eerie. Power filled him. His muscles turned stronger; his heart pumped more blood with each beat; the scents and sounds sharpened. It was like walking through the world with a translucent plastic hood covering your head and having it suddenly ripped off. The air tasted fresh. Pure joy filled him, and for a brief moment he forgot the slaughtered family, grinned, and just ran.
    The right street loomed too soon. He leapt, bounced off an oak to make a sharp turn, and dropped into the deep indigo shadows by a house. His ears caught noises of furniture being knocked around. Someone was rummaging through the Iveses’ home. The neighborhood was too nice for looters.
    The crashing stopped.
    He waited for a long moment.
    Nothing.
    He was upwind from them. It was possible that they had stopped for their own reasons. It was also possible that they smelled him. Only one way to find out.
    Derek straightened and walked toward the house.
    Three people walked out of the building and spread out on the street, moving with telltale balance. Shapeshifters. Definitely not one of the Beast Lord’s city crews. He knew all of the shapeshifters who worked in the city, and they knew him. These three didn’t look familiar. A Pack city crew would have no business being here anyway. The Iveses were human, and the house sat way past the invisible boundary that carved Atlanta into Pack territory and the rest of the city.
    The three guys stretched their shoulders. He stayed in the shadows. They probably couldn’t see his face clearly, not with the hood up, but they had caught his scent and showed no reaction. They had no idea who he was. That left two possibilities: Either they were intruders into Pack territory, in which case they were suicidally stupid, or they were new to the Pack, probably part of the seven-family pack Jim, the Beast Lord, had formally accepted into the Atlanta Pack last month. And here they were, looting a dead family’s house.
    Jim would just love that.
    All