Every day this week I will be posting favorite scenes from the Kate Daniels series. I’d love it if you’d share your favorite scenes too. Be sure to check back in Friday for a look at Magic Triumphs and a chance to win a book from the series.

In Magic Burns, Book 2, Kate is hired by the Pack to find some secret maps that have been stolen. In her investigation, she stumbles upon a street waif, Julie, whose mother has been murdered. Kate reluctantly pulls this child into her orbit and with her new sidekick in town, Kate discovers that evil is descending up Atlanta and an ancient champion has awoken to fight it. In her struggle to save a city and the people who live there, she learns a hard lesson about life and death.

Ilona Andrews’ best selling Kate Daniels series examines a multiple of themes throughout the series with friendship playing a recurring starring role. Raised to be a killer, Kate’s adopted father pushed Kate to be a sociopathic loner in his ultimate plan for revenge but destiny always struggles to reassert itself and Kate, despite her murderous upbringing, has a deeply embedded moral code and a large heart that demands she helps those in need…no matter the cost. But in a violent world,  opening your heart and letting people in means eventually you will lose someone.

In the following scene, Kate learns the first of many lessons in losing the people she considers hers.

“Kill the child!” The Shepherd’s hiss pierced the clamor of the battle. The Fomorians reversed their course.

Twenty yards separated me from her. I wouldn’t make it in time.

Bran materialized by Julie in a puff of mist. He was back in his human form. He hugged the cross and her with it. Mist puffed and all of it was gone. The Fomorians howled in fury.

Bran popped in front of me, his hands empty, grinned…

A swirl of green tentacles burst through his chest. His blood splashed me. His eyes opened wide. His mouth gaped.

“Bran!”

He stumbled forward and fell on me, blood gushing from his mouth. Behind him the Shepherd hissed in triumph. I leaped over Bran, and slashed at the bastard’s face. Fish eyes glared at me with hate and then the top of his head slid aside and rolled into the dirt. His body stumbled. I cut it again, and again, and the sea-demon fell in pieces to never get up again.

An unearthly cry rang through the field. Curran rose through the carnage, Morfran’s huge crow head in his hand. Covered in blood, he thrust the head to the sky and screamed, “Kill them! Kill them all! They are mortal!”

The shapeshifters fell onto the Fomorians. I spun around and dropped to my knees by Bran.

No. No, no, no.

I flipped him over. He looked at me with his black eyes. “I saved the baby. I saved her. For you.”

“Mist! Mist damn you.”

“Too late,” he whispered with bloody lips. “Can’t heal the heart. Good-bye, dove.”

“Don’t die!”

He just looked at me and smiled. I felt a thin line of pain stretch inside me, strained to the breaking point. It hurt. It hurt so much I couldn’t take another breath.

Bran gasped. His body went rigid in my hands and I felt the last of him fluttering away.

No!

I clasped onto that last shiver of life. With all of my magic, with all of my power, with everything I was I held on to that tiny fragment of Bran and I would not let it go.

Magic churned around me. I sucked the power to me, driving it deeper into his body, holding on. It streamed through me in a flood of pain and melted into Bran’s flesh.

I’m not letting go. He will live. I won’t lose him.

“Foolish girl!” A voice filled my mind. “You can’t fight death.”

Watch me.

The spark of Bran’s life slipped deeper. More magic. More…Wind howled, or maybe it was my own blood filling my ears. I no longer felt anything except pain and Bran.

I pulled harder. The spark stopped. Bran’s eyelids trembled. His mouth opened. His eyes fixed on me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. His heart had stopped and it took all of me to keep him.

He looked at me with ghostly eyes. His whisper floated to my ears, each word weak but distinct. “Let me go.”

“This is how undeath is made,” the voice said.

And I felt deep within me that she was right.

I would not become what I loathed. I would not become the man who sired me.

“Let me go, dove,” Bran whispered.

I severed the magic. The line of pain within me snapped like a broken string. It whipped back into me. I felt the spark of Bran’s life melt into nothing. Magic flailed in me like a living beast, trapped and tearing me apart to break free.

In my arms Bran lay dead.

Tears burst from my eyes, and streamed down my cheeks to fall on the ground, carrying the magic with them. The soil soaked in my tears and something stirred beneath it, something full of life and magic, but it didn’t matter. Bran was gone.