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It was Friday, eight o'clock on a warm spring night, my hair was brushed, my clothes were clean and slime-free, and I was going out with the Beast Lord. Curran drove. He did it very carefully, concentrating on the road. I had a feeling he learned to drive when he was older. I drove carefully too, mostly because I expected the car to fail on me at any second.
I glanced at Curran in the driver seat. Even at rest, like he was now, relaxed and driving, he emanated a kind of coiled power. He was built to kill, his body a blend of hard, powerful muscle and supple quickness and something in the way he carried himself telegraphed a shocking potential for violence and an entitlement to use it. He seemed to occupy a much larger space than his body permitted and he was impossible to ignore. This promise of violence used to scare me, so I'd bait him until some of it came out. Now I just accepted him, the way he accepted my need to sleep with a sword under my bed.
Curran caught me looking. He flexed, letting the carved muscles bulge on his arms, and winked. "Hey baby."
I cracked up. "So where we're going?"
"Arirang," Curran said. "It's a nice Korean place, Kate. They have charcoal grills at the tables. They bring you meat and you cook it any way you want."
Figured. Left to his own devices, Curran consumed only meat, punctuated with an occasional desert. "That's nice for me, but what will your vegetarian Majesty eat?"
Curran gave me a flat look. "I can always drive to a burger joint instead."
"Oh, so you'd throw a burger down my throat and expect making out in the back seat?"
He grinned. "We can do it in the front seat instead, if you prefer. Or on the hood of the car."
"I'm not doing it on the hood of the car."
"Is that a dare?"
Why me?
"Kate?"
"Keep your mind on the road, your Furriness."
The city rolled by, twisted by magic, battered and bruised but still standing. The night swallowed the ruins, hiding the sad husks of once mighty, tall buildings. New houses flanked the street, constructed by hand with wood, stone and brick to withstand magic's jaws.
I rolled down the window and let the night in. It floated into the car, bringing with spring and a hint of wood smoke from a distant fire. Somewhere a lone dog barked out of boredom, each woof punctuated by a long pause, probably to see if the owners would let him in.
Ten minutes later we pulled into a long empty parking lot, guarded by old office buildings that now housed Asian shops. A typical stone building with huge store-front windows sat at the very end, marked by a sign that read Arirang.
"This is the place?"
"Mhm," Curran said.
"I thought you said it was a Korean restaurant." For some reason I had expected a hanok house with a curved tiled roof and a wide front porch.
"It is."
"It looks like Western Sizzlin." In fact, it probably used to be Western Sizzlin.
"Will you just trust me? It's a nice place..." Curran braked, and the Pack Jeep screeched to a stop.
Two skeletally thin vampires sat at the front of the restaurant, tethered to the horse rail with chains looped over their heads. Pale, hairless, dried like leathery jerky, the undead stared at us with mad glowing eyes. Death had robbed them of their cognizance and will, leaving behind mindless body shells driven only by bloodlust. On their own, the bloodsuckers would slaughter anything alive and keep killing until nothing breathing remained. Their empty minds made a perfect vehicle for necromancers, who telepathically navigated them like remote controlled cars.
Curran glared at the undead through the windshield. Ninety percent of the vampires belonged to the People, a weird hybrid of a corporation and a research institute. We both despised the People and everything they stood for.
I couldn't resist. "I thought you said this was a nice place."
He leaned back, gripped the steering wheel and let out a long growling, "Argh."
I chuckled.
"Who the hell stops at a restaurant while navigating?" Curran squeezed the wheel a little. It made a groaning noise.
I shrugged. "Maybe the navigators were hungry."
He gave me an odd look. "This far away from the Casino means they're out on patrol. What, did they suddenly get the munchies?"
"Curran, ignore the damn bloodsuckers. Let's go and have a date anyway."
He looked like he wanted to kill somebody.
The world blinked. Magic flooded us like an invisible tsunami. The neon sign above the restaurant withered and a larger brilliant blue sign ignited above it, made from hand-blown glass and filled with charged air.
I reached over and squeezed Curran's hand. "Come on, you, me, a platter of barely seared meat, it will be great. If we see the navigators, we can make fun of the way they hold their forks."
We got out of the car and headed inside. The bloodsuckers glanced at us in unison, their eyes like two smoldering coals buried beneath the ash of a dying fire. I felt their minds, twin hot pinpoints of pain, restrained securely by the navigators' wills. One slip up and those coals would ignite into an all consuming flame. Vampires never knew satiation. They never got full, they never stopped killing, and if let loose, they would drown the world in blood and die of starvation when there was nothing left to kill.
The chains wouldn't hold them - the links were an eighth of an inch thick at best. A chain like that would restrain a large dog. A vamp would snap it and not even notice, but general public felt better if the bloodsuckers were chained, and so the navigators obliged.
We passed the vampires and entered the restaurant.
The inside of Arirang was dim. Feylanterns glowed with soft light on the walls, as the charged air inside their colored glass tubes reacted with magic. Each feylantern had been hand-blown into a beautiful shape: a bright blue dragon, an emerald tortoise, a purple fish, a turquoise stocky dog with a unicorn horn... Booths lined the walls, their tables plain rectangles of wood. In the center of the floor four larger round tables sported built-in charcoal grills under metal hoods.
The restaurant was about half full. The two booths to our right were occupied, the first by a young couple, a dark-haired man and a blond woman in their twenties, and the second by two middle-aged men. The younger couple chatted quietly. Good clothes, relaxed, casual, well groomed. Ten to one these were the navigators who had parked the bloodsuckers out front. The Casino had seven Masters of the Dead and I knew them by sight. I didn't recognize either the man or the woman. Either these two were visiting from out of town or they were upper level journeymen.
Both of the older guys in the next booth were armed. The closer one carried a short sword, which he put on the seat next to him. As his friend reached for the salt shaker, his sweatshirt hugged the gun in his side holster.
Past the men in the far right corner, four women in their thirties laughed too loud - probably tipsy. On the other side a family with two teenage daughters cooked their food on the grill. The older girl looked a bit like Julie, my ward. Two business women, another family with a toddler, and an older couple rounded off the patrons. No threats.