Banshee Hunt by Greg Curtis Page B

true. Besides, though some of the Illuminati like Yasmin might grumble and groan about his actions, no one had ever forbidden him from doing what he did. If they wanted her dead he figured, they could do it themselves.
     
    “Not that gun you dolt!” She sighed somewhat melodramatically. “Your proper gun.”
     
    “The ray gun?!” It was James' turn to be a little dramatic. “Are you mad? That thing’s useless. It works less than half the time, misses even when it does fire, and doesn't draw well. Some days I'd be better off throwing it at people.”
     
    That was all more or less true. Mostly though what he hated about it was that it looked like some sort of science fiction gun that had come off a movie set. No one could take a man holding a toy gun seriously.
     
    “It's perfectly serviceable. As long as you remember the rhyme. If she's a blood magic witch the paralysis spell would have taken her down every time.”
     
    “I had a second to act. I don't have time to go through that whole damned rhyme to work out which position to push the lever to!”
     
    Yasmin didn't seem impressed by that though. But then for her the world of magic was one she had grown up with. She scarcely had to think about these things. And despite her horrible obsession with fashion she was very bright. He'd only had five years to get used to things. To try and unlearn so much of what he'd always thought was true.
     
    “But now she's going to have to spend time with the healers before she gets to go before the elders to be judged, have her powers bound, and finally be sentenced. No doubt there will be more complaints about rough treatment. It's a lot of work. And really, she's a blood magic junkie. She won't have much of a life left after this anyway. Life with a broken nose will just add to her troubles. And you didn't need to do it.”
     
    “She was trying to kill me at the time,” James defended himself. Sometimes he suspected the others just didn't understand what life in the field was like. Split second decisions. Lives hanging in the balance. And Yasmin in particular was lucky. She always knew what sort of magic her prisoners had before she dealt with them.
     
    “But now she's badly injured. Her health is going to be crap. And the chances are the injury will never heal properly because of it. Honestly, you would have been kinder to her if you had shot her with that antique cannon of yours!”
     
    “And that's your problem to deal with, not mine. Mine was just to bring her in.”
     
    James wasn't completely sure whether Yasmin meant what she said. He was never sure of what anyone meant or said in this messed up world of magic. And Yasmin was one of those women who always struck him as being especially cryptic. If she'd been Chinese she might have been described as inscrutable. But since she was American of mixed race he would simply call her unreadable. But he was sure of his principles. And if he hadn't killed his brother Francis after what he had done to his daughter and his wife, nor the child slavers he’d caught he wasn't going to kill anyone else. That had to be their job if it was anyone's. His was to find those who were using dark magic and get them off the streets however he had to.
     
    Of course if he was honest he had actually beaten his little brother to a pulp and very nearly killed him. In fact when he'd left him he hadn't known whether Francis was alive or dead. He'd actually thought he was dead or dying. But that was a technicality.
     
    In five long years he hadn't had to kill anyone, and the two he'd shot had only been wounded. Both shot in the legs – and with his own gun, not the magical ray gun they'd provided. They'd been brought down quickly and cleanly and with a minimum of fuss. After all, he could hit a target at fifty paces with his Sig, and no one seemed to be immune to bullets. He had to stick to what he knew worked. That was really the only thing he was sure of in this bizarre world of