Three squat, wide-chested shapes congealed from the gloom and moved into the light, step by step. About the size of a small calf, they stood on six muscled limbs. Their limbs ended in handlike paws with agile fingers, each tipped by a short curved claw. Pale hide sheathed their bodies, except for their spine and chest, where bony plates formed a protective carapace. Their jaws were massive, their teeth sharp, and they looked at the world with four eyes, nestled in two rows on their heads.
“I fought these before with Andrea,” Ascanio reported. “These are just pups. Their mother was huge.”
Awesome. “Can any of you see the tails? Are they segmented like that of a scorpion?” Six legs was a dead giveaway. Not that many creatures had six limbs, but I wanted to be sure.
“Yes,” Robert confirmed from the side.
“It’s a tarasque. It comes from the south of France, grows to an enormous size, and it’s supposed to breathe fire.”
Also according to the legends, a tarasque was a dragon. These guys looked more like cats who’d somehow sprouted rhino-like armor, but who was I to complain?
“How did the French kill it?” Derek asked.
“They sent a Christian virgin out, and she bound it with her hair and led it back into the city, where the citizens slaughtered it. We don’t have a virgin handy.”
“No shit,” Desandra said.
The central monster bared her teeth. They were thick, sharp, and crooked.
“Quick, Derek, it’s your chance to shine,” Ascanio said.
Derek gave him a withering look.
“Desandra is a mother, Robert is married, Kate’s affianced, and I’m an old soul. You’re the closest thing to a virgin we’ve got. Get on with growing some flowing locks.”
Robert laughed. The sound was so unexpected, I almost jumped. In all the time I’d interacted with him, a careful smile was as far as he got.
“I’m going to hurt you after this,” Derek promised.
Ascanio grinned. “Hey, I just assumed you were saving yourself for marriage, my mistake.”
Robert pulled two sets of steel knuckles from the inside of his suit. A long curved blade ran the length of the knuckles. Nice. On my right, Ascanio tossed his hair back and retrieved a short sword from his leather jacket. The blade was fifteen inches long and at least two and a half inches wide, single-edge, with a profile that looked almost like an overgrown kitchen knife but with a simple, saber-style cross guard. Ascanio reached for the hilt with his left hand and plucked another sword from the first. Baat Jaam Do. Butterfly swords. Handling two swords took a lot of practice. Well. Interesting.
Three tarasques emerged from the left, two from the right.
“We have two behind us,” Desandra reported.
We were surrounded.
The thick front limbs of the tarasques tensed. Nostrils flared, sending clouds of vapor into the cold night. The tails curved upward, flapping back and forth.
I turned my sword, warming up my wrist.
Monstrous lips stretched. Wicked teeth bit the air.
“Let’s go!” I barked. “I’m bored.”
The beasts scuttled forward like giant cockroaches, moving with an odd gait, lifting the front and back leg on one side and the middle one on the other. The largest of the three beasts hooted like an owl. He was almost to me. In my mind I stepped to the side, swung, and sliced across its neck in a classic diagonal blow. The saber glanced off the carapace. No good.
Ten feet. Stand still.
Five . . .
The beast lunged at me. I dodged left. Wicked teeth snapped half an inch from my arm and I stabbed Slayer into the creature’s pale side. My enchanted blade ripped through flesh and sinew. Dark rust-colored blood spilled out from the wound and washed over the beast’s gray side.
To the left, Derek yanked a tarasque out of the air, flipped it on its back, and chopped its throat with his axe. To the right Ascanio spun in place, slicing at the beasts, his swords spinning in a familiar horizontal figure eight pattern . . . He was trying to use my butterfly technique. It was not awful. His feet were off, and he was leaning forward too much, but it wasn’t awful. I had no idea where he’d learned it.
If we lived through this little adventure from hell, I’d have to correct his form before it was too late.
A familiar sickening magic washed over my mind. Just what we needed. “Vampires. Incoming.”
The tarasque lunged at me and I sliced across its nose.
“How many?” Robert asked.
My tarasque screamed and fled.
“Two. They’re heading this way, fast.”
We had to finish the fight now. If we bled, it would be all over. A vampire was like a shark—a single drop of human blood would pull it from a mile away like a magnet.
The second beast attacked me from the right. I slashed the side of its throat. It crashed down and I stabbed Slayer into its left top eye socket.
Desandra spat some word I didn’t understand. A pale body flew above us through the air, crashed against a glass iceberg with a sickening crunch, slid down, and lay still, its six legs limp. Wow. Behind me a wet hacking noise announced someone cleaving through flesh.
The two revolting sparks of undead minds drew closer.
“A thousand feet,” I whispered. “Coming on the left. They’ll see us.”
A tarasque the size of a horse shot out of the darkness and leaped at us, six legs in the air. I stepped aside. That’s the problem with jumping. Once you went airborne, there wasn’t much you could do about changing where you landed. The beast fell right between us. I lunged on top of it and sank my sword between its ribs. The claws raked my steel-toed boot, ripping through duct tape and gouging the reinforced leather.
Derek cleaved the beast’s skull with his tomahawk, grabbed the twitching body, and hurled it to my right, into the shadows. Desandra grabbed another and threw it into the dark. Bodies flew around me. A moment and all corpses were gone.
“Five hundred feet,” I whispered.
Robert turned. A streak of red slid down his fingers from a small cut on his hand. Shit.
The vamps accelerated.
He stuck his fingers in his mouth. The cut on his hand knitted closed—Lyc-V scrambling to make repairs.
Turquoise eyes ignited on both sides of the road. How many of the damn things were there?
Desandra pointed up. Thirty feet above us a glass iceberg thrust to form an almost horizontal ledge. Derek grabbed me and hurled me up. I caught the ledge and pulled myself on it. He took a running start and jumped at the lowest part of the ledge. Desandra followed, slipped, and Derek caught her hand and muscled her up. Ascanio jumped straight up, like he had springs, and hoisted himself on the glass next to me.
Less than a hundred feet until the vamps reached us.
Robert ran to the nearly sheer glass wall, scrambled up, quick and silent, as if his hands had glue on them, and slid in place next to us. We lay flat on the glass, just close enough to the edge to look down. If the bloodsuckers looked up, they would see the outlines of our bodies through the glass.
Two emaciated, hard creatures loped into view directly below us. A man and a woman in their former life. The male still retained some semblance of humanity in his face and his body didn’t seem as dry, but the female was older. She must’ve been dark-skinned in life, and undeath gave her skin an unnatural bluish tint. She crouched on her haunches and raised her head, looking around. The Immortuus pathogen leached all fat and softness from its victims, atrophying their internal organs. Her breasts hung on her chest like two empty pockets of skin. Cords of muscle stood out on her neck.
“It was here,” a young male voice said from the female vampire’s mouth. I could identify all of the Masters of the Dead in Atlanta by sound. I didn’t recognize him, so he had to be a journeyman or someone new. Perhaps one of Hugh’s imports.
“There’s nothing here,” another male voice answered.
That’s right, there is nothing here. Move along, because we
don’t have time for this. We had to get to Robert’s scout and the clock was ticking.
“I’m telling you, I felt a blood vector,” the first navigator said.
The male bloodsucker raised his arms. “Where is it, Jeff? I don’t feel anything.”
Nope. Definitely journeymen. Not highly ranked either.
The female vamp moved around and slid on the damp patch of dark blood. “Look. What the hell is this?”
“Whatever it is, it has no hemoglobin in it, because my boy isn’t pulling at his leash. Maybe it’s vomit. Maybe one of those twisted things that lives here came over and puked all over the glass and now you’re sliding around in it. Do you want me to call down and get some sawdust for you to deodorize her with when we bring them back?”
Journeymen. Always a pleasure.
The female vamp twisted its face, trying to mimic Jeff’s expression. “Very funny, Leonard. You’re a fucking comedian.”
“We had a route mapped out, but no, you had to go off the reservation because you smelled some phantom blood somewhere.”
“We’re supposed to patrol. I’m patrolling because it’s our job, Leonard. If you don’t want to patrol, you can go up to that bigwig and tell him that. Just let me know in advance so I can take pictures when he tears off your nuts and makes you eat them.”
“Alright, alright, calm down.” The male vamp peered into the gloom. “Suppose we do find the shapeshifters. Do we go to Ghastek or do we go to d’Ambray with it?”
“To Ghastek,” Jeff said.
“Yeah, but d’Ambray is higher on the food chain. You can tell Ghastek’s pissed, but he keeps his mouth shut. You know. We could get ahead.”
“And what happens when d’Ambray leaves and Ghastek’s back in charge?” Jeff said.
Get out of here. Go on. Shoo.
“No guts, no glory.” Leonard must’ve shrugged, because his vampire raised his shoulders in a jerky movement.
“We cover our asses and follow the chain of command. Nobody ever went wrong by following the chain of command,” Jeff said.
Something clopped in the shadows. Oh no.
The vamps tensed, like two mutated cats getting ready to pounce.
Cuddles emerged into the open. I had completely forgotten she was there.
Robert put his hand over his face. Desandra rolled her eyes.
“What the hell is that?” Jeff said.
Why me? Why?
“It’s a horse,” Leonard said.
“Are you blind? How is that thing a horse? Its ears are two feet tall.”
“Then it’s a mule.”
“It’s not a mule. The neck’s wrong and the tail . . .”
“What about the tail?”
“Mules have horse tails. He’s got a donkey tail. Like a cow. It looks like a donkey, but the damn thing is at least sixteen hands tall. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s a mule. It’s got a saddle on it, so someone was riding it.”
The male vamp moved forward.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to catch it and see who it belongs to.”
Argh.
Cuddles put her ears forward.
“It doesn’t look friendly,” Jeff observed.
“It’s fine. If she had her ears back, you’d have to watch out. It’s all in the voice. Watch and learn. Come ’ere, girl. Come ’ere . . . Who is a good freaky mule? You are.”
The male vamp inched forward. Cuddles stood just a little bit straighter.
“That’s a good girl.”
The vamp reached for the reins. Its fingers fastened about the leather.
Cuddles screamed. It wasn’t a braying noise, it was an ear-slapping shriek of pure donkey outrage, like someone got hold of a foghorn and tried to strangle it.
“Whoa . . .” Leonard started.
Cuddles reared and tossed her head. The vamp slid on the glass and she dragged him left.
“Whoa . . .”
She dragged him right.
“Come on!”
Cuddles kept turning and rearing, her huge body going up and down, jerking the undead to and fro like a cheerleader with a pompom.
“Oh, you idiot,” the female vamp snickered in Jeff’s voice.
I saw the precise moment Cuddles realized that something was behind her and that something was the same unnatural thing that clung to her reins. Her eyes went big, and she planted her front legs down and kicked. The female vampire flew about twenty feet and smashed into a glass iceberg. Ouch.
The male vamp finally let go, fell, and slid down the glass. Cuddles backed up and braced herself. The male vamp rolled to his feet and gathered itself for a leap.
“Stop!” Jeff moved the female vampire between Leonard’s undead and the donkey.
“I’m going to kill that dumb animal.”
If he touched my donkey, I’d take his vamp apart.
“No, you’re not. It belongs to someone and if you harm it, we’ll have to pay restitution. I don’t feel like having my paycheck docked.”
“The bitch kicked us!” Leonard snarled.
“You put your hands on her. She was defending herself. Come on, the damage is minor. We’ll feed them tonight and nobody will be the wiser. But if some hick shows up claiming we injured his donkey, there will be an inquiry. Ghastek’s walking around like he’s ready to explode. I don’t want to be in his blast area.”
Leonard’s vamp twisted his face into a horrifying grimace.
“We need to move on anyway,” Jeff said. “In five minutes Rowena’s going to come down that hallway for check-in. I don’t want to explain to her that we’ve been playing with what may or may not be a giant donkey instead of sweeping the perimeter.”
The male vamp shook its head and circled around Cuddles, and the two undead took off into the glass labyrinth. We lay still for another five minutes, until they were a mile and a half away.
“I take back what I said about the donkey,” Ascanio said. “She’s awesome.”
I wished Curran could’ve seen this. He’d die laughing.
My heart stuttered for a beat. I slid down the glass, caught myself with my feet, and went to give Cuddles a carrot.
6
BEFORE THE SHIFT, Centennial Park occupied twenty-one acres inside Atlanta, a cheery space filled with engraved bricks, lawns, and beautiful fountains. After the magic hit and the buildings around the park took a dive, it stood abandoned for a few years. Eventually, Atlanta’s witch covens banded together and purchased it from the city along with the nearby ruins. Shortly after they took over, the vegetation within the park rioted. Trees grew, sending thick roots through the neighborhood and spreading massive canopies, as if they had been growing here for hundreds of years. The park tripled in size. Now a dense wall of greenery bordered it, an impenetrable barrier of oaks, evergreen shrubs, blackberry that somehow resisted the frost, and thorns. In the defense department, the witches would make Sleeping Beauty’s evil witch weep with jealousy.
I rode Cuddles next to that green barrier now, heading down Centennial Drive toward the Casino. The shapeshifters flanked me. I kept an eye on the greenery. The witches professed to be friendly to me. Evdokia, one of the three witches of the Oracle, even claimed we were distantly related. But their help was always conditional and right now I didn’t trust anyone.
The bushes ahead of us rustled.
I halted Cuddles and reached for Slayer.
A brown bunny hopped out onto the sidewalk and looked at me.
“Snack,” Desandra said.
The bunny pondered me with tiny eyes and turned toward the shrubs. Right.
“It’s a bunny only part of the time,” I said. “Sometimes it’s a duck. Also, it can be a kitten.”
Robert raised his eyebrows at me.
“We’re being invited to visit the Witch Oracle.” I dismounted and followed the bunny.
“Not again,” Derek growled.
“Why, what’s so bad about the witches?” As
canio asked.
Derek’s eyebrows crept together. “You’ll see.”
The bunny hopped into the shrubs. The greenery split and pulled to the side, revealing a narrow path.
“Do we have a choice?” Robert said.
“Not really.”
I stepped onto the path. We were short on time, but pissing off witches ranked right between sticking your hand into a hornet’s nest and telling Curran I’d made broccoli for dinner. By now, they had to know that Hugh was in town. If they wanted to see me, it had to be something important.
We passed through the thick barrier of green and emerged into a pine forest. Snow sheathed the ground in a dense blanket. Tall pine trunks towered on both sides of us, as if a Spanish armada were sailing under the snow and only its masts were visible. Past the pines a glade stretched, silver with moonlight. Behind it the translucent walls of a greenhouse rose into the night, sheltering rows of herbs. Centennial Park served as the hub for most of the Atlanta covens and they liked to have herbs in ready supply.
The bunny hopped between the trees. We followed it. Snow crunched under my feet. We really didn’t have time for this. Unfortunately, I needed the Oracle. If Hugh and Roland intended to assault Atlanta, I would need their help and their magic. And I couldn’t afford to ignore their advice. If I refused to see them and they had a magic self-guided missile that could take Hugh out, I would be kicking myself for years.
Derek wrinkled his nose. “Here it is.”
I pulled a strip of gauze out of my pocket and passed it to him.
“What is that smell?” Desandra wrinkled her nose.
Derek ripped the gauze in half and handed her a piece.
The trees fell back and we came to a hill sitting in the middle of a large clearing. Perfectly spherical and smooth, it protruded from the snow, like the cupola of a submerged cathedral. I remembered it as being dark gray with flecks of gold and swirls of green, but the moonlight turned it glossy indigo.
The bunny stopped.
The ground under our feet rumbled. Derek sneezed. Desandra clamped the gauze to her nose. The hill shuddered and slid upward, the snow sliding off its top.
Robert jumped back ten feet. Ascanio just stared, wide-eyed.