Magic Breaks (Kate Daniels 7)

He calls himself Roland now. I asked the Consort why and she showed me the Song of Roland. It’s a twelfth-century ballad about a knight who is ambushed because of treachery and refuses to blow his horn out of pride until all of his soldiers are dead and he finally blows so hard, his temples burst and he dies a martyr. Make of it what you will.

Thousands of years ago, Roland created vampires and now he runs the People from his territory in the Midwest. There are stories and myths of him scattered throughout folklore, the Torah, the Bible, and other holy books under different names. Apparently, Roland has two compulsions. First, he is a social engineer. He builds empires. He can’t help himself. He knows that the only way we can achieve enlightenment is under his rule. Democracy isn’t a concept he considers relevant, which is really bad news for us. Second, he falls in love. He falls in love a lot and makes children, and sooner or later, these über-powerful children turn on him and he has to kill them. For example, Abraham was one of his; they had some sort of a spat, and Roland exiled him until Abraham finally died later in poverty. Not exactly the way the Bible tells it, but there you go.

Before Roland went into hibernation, he apparently swore off procreation. But after he woke up during the Shift, he must’ve been overcome by the euphoria of being alive. Same reason why people have sex after funerals. Roland fell in love with a woman called Kalina. She wanted to have children and he apparently was cool with it, until a child was conceived, a daughter, and then Roland decided to pull the plug and to kill her in the womb. Kalina had her own magic, the magic of compulsion, and she was desperate to save her baby. She bewitched Roland’s warlord, Voron, and magicked him into thinking he was in love with her. Together they ran away. Kalina gave birth, but Roland eventually caught up with them. Kalina realized that of the two of them, Voron had the better chance of surviving and raising the baby, so she told him to run and stayed behind to confront Roland. She stabbed him through the eye and he killed her.

Not a happy story.

So here is Voron, a cold ruthless bastard, a really talented fighter who was supposed to lead Roland’s armies when he got around to taking over our continent, a guy who probably killed hundreds of people to get that good, and now he is alone with this baby. His brain is permanently cooked by Kalina’s magic. So he looks at this tiny cooing magical baby, the daughter of probably the only woman he ever loved, and he doesn’t say to himself, “At least I have something remaining of her. I’ll raise this child and I’ll do everything in my power to guard her, and protect, and love her, and make sure she has a happy life.” No, he looks at her and he thinks, “I’m going to get even.” Because he is that kind of a cold ruthless bastard.

He takes this baby and he hones her and shapes her, until she turns into a living weapon. She can kill you with her sword. She can kill you with a toothpick. She can kill you with her bare hands. I’m a weremongoose. I’m fucking fast. When I get bored, I play with my pet cobra, and I don’t mean that figuratively. I never get bitten, because I’m fast enough to easily dodge a striking snake. Sometimes when Kate swings her sword, I can’t see it. She’s that fast.

So while this little girl is growing up, she and Voron roam all over the Americas. They never stay in one place for long; one month she’s training with someone in Oklahoma, the next she’s in a gladiator pit in Brazil. The entire time he’s telling her how her father killed her mother and how he would kill her if she was ever discovered. All that is true. But Voron also tells her that the only way for her to survive is to kill Roland. She learns how to end human life before she reaches puberty. The damage that was done to her as a child is staggering. But that’s not the worst thing.

Voron set out to make her into a perfect assassin, but he didn’t teach her any magic. He wasn’t a magic user himself, so she learned general magic skills, a little from the witches, a little from the mages, but she didn’t practice the blood magic, the Roland brand of magic—first, because nobody could teach her and second, because Voron thought it would give her away. But there is a third reason. There was no need for it, because Voron knew what Roland was capable of. He knew that Kate’s skill was sufficient for her to cut her way to Roland, but she would have no chance against her father. That was the crux of his revenge. He raised this child from the time she was a baby solely so one day he could watch Roland kill or be killed by his own flesh and blood. I’ll let that sink in a little bit.

He didn’t get a chance to see it for himself. Roland decided he needed a new warlord, so he took Voron’s best pupil, the boy he raised like a son, and made him his warlord. His name is Hugh d’Ambray, or Sick Fuck, which is more fitting. Hugh d’Ambray had been hunting Voron since his betrayal. One day, when Kate was away from the house, Hugh found him and killed him. He claims to be somewhat broken up over it, but you can’t trust a single word that comes out of that lying bastard’s mouth.

With Voron dead, Kate was on her own. A knight of the Order of Merciful Aid temporarily assumed guardianship of her and tried to send her to the Order Academy, but she dropped out. The Order is a semiofficial law enforcement agency. Their legal status is murky, as I’ve pointed out a number of times to anyone who will listen. They are fanatics, they have a rigid mind-set, and they believe that any deviation from your average vanilla Homo sapiens makes you nonhuman.

You’ve read what I wrote. Do you think I’m human?

To these guys, Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper are more human than I am. If it weren’t for the fact that our police force is overwhelmed, their presence wouldn’t be tolerated. It shouldn’t be tolerated anyway. But, as is typical, when someone comes to you and offers to remove that pesky griffin that’s killing people in your neighborhood and to do it free of charge if you can’t afford to pay, most people refuse to look a gift knight in the mouth.

So Kate decided the Order’s brainwashing wasn’t for her. She bummed around Georgia, dropping in and out of Atlanta. Worked for the Mercenary Guild for a while. They’re the guys you call if you have money and a monster in your backyard, and the cops are too busy with a poisonous flying jellyfish downtown. She tried to hide in plain sight. She might have succeeded except she ran into the Beast Lord. As I mentioned, he is a scary, bossy bastard. She hates all authority. He said, “Jump.” She said, “Screw you.” Of course, they would fall madly in love after that. And when I say madly, I mean it.