“Like that?”
I pulled out my knife and sliced the hems of my pants. Much better. “Who’s going to stop me?”
“But you’re…not in human shape.”
Yes, and I was sick of being ashamed of who I was. I looked at him for a long moment. “If I change back into a human, I’ll need a nap. I don’t have time for naps. If someone has a problem with the way I look, fuck them.”
“Uhh…”
“And stop looking so scandalized. I covered my boobs, didn’t I?”
“But I still know they’re there. I saw them.”
“Treasure the memory.” I grabbed my bag off the table.
Ascanio jumped in front of the door. “Can I come with you?”
“No.”
He fluttered his eyelashes at me. “I’ll be very quiet.”
“No.”
“Andrea, I’m sick of being stuck here by myself. Please, please, please, can I come with you? I’ll be good.”
He’d been cooped up in the office for the last few weeks, at first because he was injured, then because he wasn’t and we wanted to keep him that way.
“I’m going to look for a murderer. If you come with me, you’ll get hurt when we run into trouble on the way. And then I will have to have a very unpleasant conversation with Aunt B, which will go like this: ‘You won’t join Clan Bouda, you broke up with my son, and you let that sweet precious boy get hurt.’”
Ascanio picked up my desk with one hand and held it four feet off the ground.
“It’s not your muscle I’m concerned about. It’s your brains. Or lack thereof.”
He set the table down. “Please, Andrea.”
He was going stir-crazy and doing broom drills. I could relate. I’d been there.
“Can you drive?” If I put my seat all the way back, I’d fit into the Jeep, but driving with my size-twelve feet and three-inch claws would be a challenge.
“Do the People navigate vampires? Of course I can drive.”
“Alright.”
He jumped three feet in the air.
“Now, while you’re with me, you will be acting as a representative of our firm. That means you will be respectful and polite. If some jerk calls you an asshole, you’ll call him sir. Even if you have to throw him on the ground and break his legs, you will still call him sir while doing it. You follow my lead and you follow my orders. That means not taking the initiative and starting fights without my express command. Do you get me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Excellent. Go get your knife.”
He ran into the supply room and came out with a tactical bowie knife in a sheath on his belt. The bowie, a “Mercenary Guild” model, boasted a sixteen-inch black blade and weighed almost two pounds. You could chop small trees down with it. It would be sufficient.
“Let’s go.”
He hesitated. “Carrie and Deb are in our parking lot. I saw them from the window.”
I went to the back and carefully glanced out of the window. Two boudas waited for us by my Jeep. The one on the left, Carrie, a tall Italian-looking woman in her mid-forties with dark shoulder-length hair, leaned against the vehicle, her hands in the pockets of her jeans. Olive-skinned, Carrie had a kind of raw-boned hardness about her that said you’d have to rip her arms off before she’d stop coming after you. Deb, her buddy, was about ten years younger, looked softer, rounder in the face, and stood two inches shorter. Her red hair, cut in a fluffy carefree bob, flared about her tan face. Her brown eyes brimmed with humor. She cracked up easily and usually went for the gut in a fight.
Aunt B used them for light enforcement jobs. That old bitch was at it again. Aunt B and I never saw eye to eye. She’d helped me once during the flare, when the magic made me lose control over my body, but that was the only moment of kindness I had ever seen from her.
“What are you two doing here?” I murmured to myself.
“Maybe they have some pamphlets that will save our souls and make sure we’re right with the Lord,” Ascanio said.
“Did those nice church ladies come by again?”
He nodded. “I asked them if a man died and then the woman remarried, and the three of them met in heaven, would it be a sin for them to have a threesome, since they were all married in God’s eyes. And then they decided they were late to be somewhere else.”
A little bit of knowledge was a very dangerous thing.
In the parking lot, Deb crossed her arms and kicked a tiny rock. It flew out of our view like it had been shot from a cannon. Deb watched it go, winced, and hid behind the Jeep. Carrie shook her head.
Any shapeshifter in the Pack’s territory had three days to present themselves to the Pack, at which point they would either obtain a visitor’s permit, allowing them to carry out their business; they would petition to join the Pack; or they would be asked to leave. While I was in the Order, Aunt B made no move to bring me into the fold. I thought she didn’t want to cause a problem with the knights. I discovered I was wrong—she left me alone because Raphael had a thing for me and then we became an item. The moment we had a falling out, she came after me like a shark.
Aunt B wanted me to play ball, join Clan Bouda, and be one of her girls. I’d been in a bouda clan once. No thanks.
“We could go out the front door,” Ascanio said.
They thought they could intimidate me. Well, they should have brought a lot more people, because I was done doing things by the book. “Hell, no. We’re going out the back. Whatever happens, you stay out of it or I will never take you with me anywhere.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I marched out through the back door.
The boudas took me in, fur and all. Their eyes widened.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going like that?” Carrie asked.
Wrong thing to say. Wrong, wrong thing to say. “Wherever the hell I please.”
“I don’t get it.” Carrie shook her head. “Are you trying to provoke Aunt B? What, your life’s too nice and you need some misery?”
I grinned at them. See the teeth? Take note, you’ll see them up close if you’re not careful. “Can I help you, ladies?”
“Sure,” Carrie said. “You can tell us what the meeting between you and Raphael was about.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because Aunt B wants to know,” Deb said.
They must’ve tried to listen in, but before Kate got this office, the same Jim who put me on this case had remodeled it. I didn’t know what he put into the walls, but the place was shapeshifter soundproof.
“Aunt B’s tailing her own son now?” I asked.
“That’s none of your business,” Carrie said. “Look, we can go with Plan A, where we all have a nice chat and go our separate ways, or we can do Plan B, where we have a more vigorous chat and tune you up a bit until you feel like sharing. Either way, Aunt B will get what she wants.”
“How about Plan C?” I asked.
“What plan would that be?” Deb asked.
“The one where you go fuck yourselves.” A snarl crept into my voice. “You come here to my territory and you think you can push me around? Well, come on. Push. See what it will get you.”
Deb blinked.
“Fuck you, you stupid bitch,” Carrie growled. “You want a lesson, I’ll give you one.”
Carrie’s body flowed, snapping into a new shape: half-person, half-animal, wrapped in sparse, sandy fur. Thick ropes of muscle corded her massive neck, supporting her round head with giant jaws and a forest of sharp fangs soaked in drool. The muscle continued to knot between her shoulder blades, forming a hump. Colossal biceps powered her arms, the network of veins bulging through her hide. Her feet and hands bore three-inch claws that would shred flesh like a knife cut through a ripe fruit. She looked like the stuff nightmares were made of. If you didn’t know any better.
I took a couple of steps forward, so I’d have plenty of room to maneuver. My furry me was proportionate: my limbs were properly for
med, my jaws fit together into a neat muzzle, and although my hands and feet were oversized and armed with claws, my fingers weren’t misshapen. Maintaining this form came effortlessly to me. But Carrie was a regular shapeshifter and her warrior form was on the shaky side. Her jumbo biceps bulged from her too-long arms, limiting her movement, while her short legs barely had enough meat to support her top-heavy frame. She hunched over, because her spine fit into her pelvis at an angle, and no effective kicks would be coming my way. She didn’t specialize in combat, which meant she’d fight just like any other civilian shapeshifter: claws, teeth, nothing fancy. Good enough to tear most normal humans into pieces.
Next to her Deb raised her arms. No warrior form, but she was good at boxing.
Carrie’s eyes stared at me, shining with ruby light. She outweighed me by a hundred pounds. She thought the fight was in the bag.
Inside my head, Michelle’s squeaky voice mocked from the depth of my memories, “Hit her again, Candy. Hit that beastkin bitch. She deserves it.”
Never again.
Carrie charged me. She thundered across the pavement and lunged at me, swiping with her right arm diagonally and down, trying to gash my chest open. I leaned back. Her claws sliced through the air, an inch from my chest. I caught her wrist, yanked her massive arm straight and smashed the heel of my hand into the back of her elbow. The cartilage crunched, the joint popped, dislocated, and her arm bent the wrong way, its elbow inside out. Carrie howled and dropped to one knee, her right leg bent, her left almost flat on the ground. I stomped on that weak calf. I sank all the power of my hip and butt muscle into it. Like getting hit with a jackhammer. The leg didn’t stand a chance. Carrie screamed as the bone broke.
Deb bladed her body, standing sideways, trying to present less of a target. Her hands were up, curled into fists.
I took a step, spun, and hammered a roundhouse to the back of her thigh. My shin smashed into her leg. Her knee bent, her thigh suddenly powerless. She gasped, dropping her guard, and I turned, swinging into the punch, and landed a haymaker to the side of her head.
The blow took her off her feet. She flew, rolling, and smashed into the stone wall bordering the parking lot.
That’s right. No shapeshifter would ever beat on me again while I curled into a ball on the ground. Especially not a bouda.
Carrie sprawled facedown on the pavement, out cold. The pain must’ve been too much and Lyc-V had shut her down while it made repairs. Deb moaned weakly by the wall. Ascanio still stood by the door, his eyes opened wide, his face glazed over with shock and something suspiciously resembling admiration.
I walked over to Deb, grabbed her hair, and pulled her face up. She stared at me, her eyes terrified.
“Now you listen to me,” I said. “You tell the clan that I’ll come to see Aunt B when I’m damn good and ready. And if I catch any of you at my place of business or near my apartment, you will regret it.”
I let go of her and straightened. “Ascanio! I need that motor running.”
He ran to the Jeep and began to chant. Fifteen minutes later we drove out of the parking lot. As we turned, I saw Deb pick herself up and stagger over to Carrie. For better or worse, she would deliver my message. I was sure of it.
CHAPTER 4
Bell Recovery was headquartered in a sturdy brick building on the edge of a large industrial yard on the southwest side of Atlanta, all ugly ruins surrounded by bright green growth. Nature waged a relentless assault on the city. People burned it and cut it, and still it came back, fed by magic and growing faster than ever.
Ascanio parked and didn’t bother shutting off the engine. It would take too much chanting to start it back up and considering the Pack’s paw stenciled on its door and the fact that I exited it flashing my claws and teeth, there wouldn’t be anyone dumb enough to try to steal it.
Ascanio and I marched through the front doors.
A harried receptionist raised her head from the papers on her desk and jumped a little in her seat. She was middle-aged and her hair had been dyed an unnaturally red color.
“Good morning,” I said, smiling.
She pushed her chair as far back as it would go.
“We’re here on behalf of the Pack to chat with Kyle Bell.”
“He’s on site,” the receptionist said. Her eyes told me she would answer any question just to get us out of her office.
“Where would that be?”
She swallowed. “The east end of Inman Yard.”
You don’t say. “At the Glass Menagerie?”
The receptionist nodded. “Yes.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, ma’am.”
We headed back out to our Jeep.
“Kyle Bell is either really ballsy or really stupid. Probably both.”
“Why?” Ascanio asked.
“Because doing any sort of reclamation at the Glass Menagerie is suicidal. Especially with the magic up. It’s also illegal. And now we have to drive through the Burnout to get there. I hate the Burnout. It’s depressing.”
We got back into our Jeep.
“Take the right, then another right. We need to get on Hollowell Parkway and make a left there.”
“What’s the Glass Menagerie?” Ascanio asked, steering the Jeep out of the parking lot.
As far as I knew the Glass Menagerie was off-limits to adventurous Pack persons below eighteen. For a good reason, too. “You’ll see.”
As the road climbed north, the landscape changed. The ruins of warehouses and the greenery remained behind. Around us old husks of burned-out houses crouched, accented by an occasional spot of green.
Being stuck holding the fort at the Order left me with a lot of free time, so I had read guidebooks and familiarized myself with the city maps. In my spare time I’d jogged through random Atlanta neighborhoods on the off chance I might have to visit them in my professional capacity. My guidebooks mentioned that years ago a devastating fire had swept through the western section of Atlanta, taking out the older residential neighborhoods north of 402. The fire had burned with an intense, unnatural orange and raged for almost a week despite heavy rains and many attempts to put it out. When it was finally over, the land had lost its ability to support plant life. In other parts of Atlanta, any spot of clear ground was immediately claimed by vegetation that grew like it was on steroids. The Burnout remained weed-free for a decade. The plants were finally coming back—kudzu draped a crumbling wall here and there and bright yellow dandelions and crimson bloody dandies, the dandelion’s magic-altered cousins, poked out between the fallen bricks.
A few months ago, during Indian summer, Raphael and I had a picnic under a giant oak in a field outside the city. I had always wanted to have one of those movie picnics with a red-and-white checkered cloth and a wicker basket. We ate take-out fried chicken, washed it down with root beer and cream soda, and lay about on our tablecloth. I had picked a bunch of dandelions and bloody dandies and made two flower crowns.
It seemed so stupid now. What the hell did I do that for? Like some besotted silly ten-year-old.
“Why didn’t you just fight Rebecca?” Ascanio asked. “You’d win.”
“Of course I would win. Even if she spat frag grenades and sweated bullets, I’d win. She’s a human. I’m a shapeshifter with ten years of combat experience and some of the best martial education you can get.”
“In nature you have to fight off your competition.”
In nature, huh? I’d heard that one before. “In nature, hyena cubs are born with open eyes and a full set of teeth. They start fighting from the moment they come out of their mother. They dig tunnels in the den, too small for adults to get through, and they fight there. About a quarter of them don’t grow up. So if this was nature and you were a twin, you’d have to murder your newborn sister or brother. Should we dump all of the bouda babies into a playpen and let them starve until they start killing each other?”
Ascanio frowned. “Well, no…”
“Why not? It’s natural sele
ction. Just like nature.” I wrinkled my nose. “Boudas love this argument, because it gives them an excuse to do all the wrong things. ‘I’m sorry I screwed your sister and got my penis stuck in your German shepherd. It’s in my nature. I just couldn’t help myself.’”
Ascanio snorted.
“Don’t be that guy,” I told him. “It’s bullshit reasoning. We are not animals. We are people. And a good thing too, because it wasn’t hyenas who conquered the world. And yes, I know it’s ironic as hell, given that I’m all fur and claws right this second, but the human part of me is still in the driver’s seat. We all know what happens when the animal side starts running the show.”
“We go loup,” Ascanio said.
“Exactly.”
Loupism was a constant threat. It claimed fifteen percent of shapeshifter children, some at birth, some in adolescence, forcing the Pack to humanely terminate them. For boudas, the number was even higher—almost a quarter. Both of Raphael’s brothers had gone loup and Aunt B had had to kill them. That’s why any surviving adolescent in the bouda clan was treated like a treasure.
If I ever had babies with Ra…The thought twisted in me like a knife in the wound. There would be no little bouda babies. No Raphael. That door slammed shut and I needed to put him out of my mind. In this life you’re lucky if you get one shot at happiness, and I had missed mine. The fact that it was a joint screwup just hurt more.
Water under the bridge.
“But she is stupid,” Ascanio said. “She insulted Aunt B!”
“And for that we should rip her throat out?” I glanced at him.
“Well, no.”
“Suppose I did beat the snot out of her. What would it accomplish? In nature animals fight to demonstrate superiority. The more powerful you are, the better your genetic material is. Stronger animal, stronger babies, a better chance of survival for the species. Raphael already knows I’m a better fighter and he chose her over me anyway. That’s a lesson for you—when you get a chance to be happy, you take it and you treat the other person the way they deserve to be treated. Don’t take things for granted.”
Gunmetal Magic (kate daniels) Page 6
