I tapped my notes with my fingernails. I had to warn Andrea about it. She was female, true, so she’d have some protection against the Steel Mary’s magic, but she was also beastkin. Lyc-V, the shapeshifting virus, infected people and animals alike. Sometimes, the result was an animal-were, a creature that had started life as a beast and gained the ability to turn into a human. Most animal-weres were violent, mute, sterile idiots, unable to cope with the rules of human society. Murder and rape had no meaning to them, which was why some shapeshifters killed them on sight, no questions asked. Very occasionally the animal-weres developed the ability to reason and learned to communicate. Even more occasionally they could procreate.
Andrea’s mother was a bouda, a werehyena, but her father was a hyenawere, which made her beastkin, the child of an animal. She hid this fact from everyone: from the Order, because they would jettison her from their ranks, and from the Pack, because some shapeshifters would kill her. Only a handful of people knew what she was and we all quietly decided to keep it to ourselves.
There was no telling what this guy’s power would do to her. If she panicked and ran or went berserk, we’d all be in deep shit.
The growing number of the Steel Mary’s flunkies worried me. According to Toby the bouncer, this guy told Joshua that he had an opening for two more gods. What did that mean? Was he gathering himself a posse and calling them gods?
I rubbed my face. His MO said he might move on to another city, but I had a feeling he would stick around. He was obviously building to some sort of goal, and if he got whatever it was he wanted from Joshua, that left the Steel Mary with only one would-be-god spot. Something big would happen when he filled his quota. Atlanta was the center of the South. The largest Pack was here, the largest Guild was here, the Southern MSDU was headquartered here. It made sense that Atlanta has been his goal all along. I didn’t know where he would hit next, but at least I could thrust some sticks into his wheels.
I pulled up the phone and grabbed the phone book. My tenure in the Mercenary Guild was about to pay off.
I dialed the first number. A gruff male voice answered. “Black Dog Tavern.”
“Hey, Keith, it’s Kate Daniels.”
“Hey, Order Kate, how are ya?”
I almost choked. Order Kate? Really? “I’m good. How about yourself?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain. What’re you hunting for today?”
“I’ve got a troublemaker who recently moved to town, a really tall guy in a tattered cloak. He likes to come into bars when the magic’s up and throw around some heavy-duty spells to start fights.”
“Sounds like a fun fella.”
Depends on your definition of fun. “Do you still have that girl working for you, Emily?”
“Yep, she’s here every night.”
“Apparently, this guy’s power bounces from ladies. Would you do me a huge favor and make sure you have Emily working during the magic waves? Give her my number and tell her to call me right away if any crazy fights break out. He’s costing the bar owners an arm and a leg in broken furniture.”
“Just so you know, he comes in here, it won’t be my furniture that will get broken. I’ll snap his legs.”
Sure you will. “You do that. But make sure you give the girl my number anyway? I know your crew can handle him, but humor me. I’d really like to get my hands on this guy.”
“Will do,” Keith said.
“Thanks.” I hung up. That was the best I was going to get. I slipped my fingers to the next number and dialed.
“Devil’s Pit,” a woman answered.
“Hey, Glenda, it’s Kate Daniels. How are you?”
“Good, how about yourself?”
“Still trucking. Listen, I’ve got this moron who just cruised into town. He likes to start fights and I want to head him off at the pass . . .”
In an hour and a half, I’d hit every tough-guy watering hole I could remember. I’d called PAD and apprised them of the situation. I’d called the regular cops and given them the description of the guy. I’d called the local gossips and asked them to spread the word around. I’d called the Guild, where the Clerk picked up the phone. I’d known the Clerk for years. A trim, middle-aged man, he manned the counter and all mercs saw him twice per every gig, first, when they got the job, and second, when they turned in their capture tickets at the end. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his name and the multitude of us knew him simply as “the Clerk.”
I gave him my spiel and he chuckled at me. “If he comes in here, I’ll just tell the fellas there is a gig ticket on his head. They’ll dismantle him to parts.”
“He’s a tough guy to deal with. Let Solomon know.”
“Sure.”
I could tell by his voice that he would blow me off. Just as well. I doubted the Guild’s founder would pay me any mind. Solomon Red didn’t even know my name. But I had to try. “I tell you what, put me through to him.”
“Sorry, he’s on DND.”
Do Not Disturb. Fine. “Give me his voice mail, then.” “Suit yourself.”
I left a long and detailed message, explaining all about the Steel Mary and his penchant for picking fights. Fat good it would do me.
Solomon Red was a legend, the king of the mole hill that was the Mercenary Guild. If mercs did have to elect a king, he probably would’ve gotten the job, too: huge, rust-haired, with a bulky jaw and different color eyes, one blue, one brown. He lived in the Guild, but was almost never seen, save at the obligatory Christmas celebration, when he personally gave out bonuses to the best mercs. In my six-year tenure with the Guild, I had seen him exactly twice and not because I stood in the bonus line. I seriously doubted he’d listen to my warnings of a mysterious ass kicker in a torn cloak.
I called a couple of local dojos and the Red Guard and Fist & Shield, the other premier security guard outfit. I called to Biohazard and spoke to Patrice to bring her up to speed. Patrice liked what I had to say so much, she cursed for a full three minutes. She especially enjoyed the part where I explained how her staff had failed to make use of Jacksonville’s warning. I let her vent—it’s not often you got to hear the head of the Biohazard Rapid Response unit promise to rip out someone’s guts.
At two, I left to go home. I needed sleep and a new jaw, but if the guy in the cloak so much as showed his nose in one of Atlanta’s bars, I’d know about it first.
THE DOG AND I STOPPED AT THE OR DER’S STABLES and I checked out Marigold again. I did have a beat-up old truck by the name of Karmelion which ran on enchanted water, but it took a good fifteen minutes of intense chanting to get it started, and if the guy in the cloak attacked somewhere, I didn’t want to waste time begging my engine to start.
My apartment building came equipped with a set of garages, which the residents used for everything, from extra storage to makeshift stables. I used mine mostly to store wood for the winter and to put up an occasional mount I borrowed from the Order’s stables. With Marigold safely installed in the garage, the faithful canine and I went down to the store.
The corner store didn’t have clippers, so I generated a new plan, one that involved leaving the shaving of attack poodles to people who actually knew what they were doing. The dog and I jogged three miles to the groomer.
We stepped through the door, announced by a bell, and a smiling plump woman emerged from the depths of the place, glanced at the dog, and smiled wider. “What a lovely poodle.”
We both growled a little bit, I because of the poodle comment and the dog out of a sense of duty.
The happy woman, whose name was Liz, secured my poodle to a long iron pole and turned on the electric clippers. The moment the clippers touched his skin, the dog whirled about and tried to clamp his teeth on Liz’s arm. Instead I clamped my hand on his muzzle and turned him to face me.
“Pheew, you’re fast,” Liz said.
“I hold, you cut.”
Twenty minutes later Liz had swept away a rank mass of matted poodle fur, while I received a
new dog: an athletic-looking mutt with smooth ears, long legs, and a build similar to an abnormally large German pointer. The dog got a homemade dog biscuit for suffering through the indignity and I was relieved of the awful burden of thirty dollars.
“Have you picked out a name yet?” the woman asked.
“No.”
She nodded at the pile of black matted fur. “How does Samson sound?”
WE JOGGED HOME. THE MAGIC WAVE CAUGHT US on the way and I gave silent thanks to whoever it was upstairs that we’d managed to get the poodle trimmed before the magic rendered the electric clippers completely useless.
I let the chain sag as an experiment, but the dog seemed content to stay by my side. In the parking lot, he proved that not only did he have a stomach of steel, but his bladder was also magically connected to one of the Great Lakes. We made a circle, as he enthusiastically marked his territory. The sleepless night was catching up with me. My head swam and my legs kept trying to fold, pitching me into a horizontal position. I’d put a lot of effort into the wards around Joshua’s corpse and my body demanded a few hours of sleep.
The dog snarled.
I looked up. He stood with his feet planted wide, back humped, his body frozen stiff. Hackles rose on his spine. He stared left, where the parking lot narrowed between my apartment building and the crumbling wall of the ruins next door.
I pulled Slayer from the sheath on my back. The ruins had once been an apartment building as well. The magic had crushed it, chewing it down to rubble, and now crumbling brick walls served as purchase for ivy frosted with the cold. The greenery obscured my view.
The attack poodle bared his teeth, wrinkling his muzzle, and let loose a low, quiet growl.
I took a step toward the ruins. A figure dashed from behind the wall with preternatural speed, veered left, and jumped. It sailed through the air, clearing the six-foot-tall wall with a couple of feet to spare, and vanished from view.
Alrighty, then.
I jogged to the spot where the person had been hiding, comparing the memory to the wall. Whoever it was, he or she wasn’t very tall, near five feet. Swaddled in some sort of drab garment. Not much to go on. Chasing the person through the ruins wasn’t an option. I’d never catch up, not with that kind of speed.
Who would want to keep tabs on me? No way to know. I’d pissed off a lot of people. For all I knew, it could be one of the Steel Mary’s flunkies. Assuming he had flunkies.
I headed back to my apartment, dog in tow. “If this person is following me, he or she will continue to do so. Sooner or later, I’ll snag them,” I told him. “If you’re really good, I’ll let you bite them first.”
The attack poodle wagged his tail.
“What we need now is something to eat and a nice shower.”
More adoring wagging. Well, at least one creature in this Universe thought my plans were genius.
I heard the phone ringing when I unlocked the door. Phones were funny things: sometimes magic took them out, and sometimes it didn’t. When I desperately needed it, the damn thing failed, but when I didn’t want to be bothered, it worked like a charm. I got inside and picked it up. “Kate Daniels.”
“Kate!” The frantic note in the Clerk’s voice knocked the sleep right out of me. “We’ve been hit!”
CHAPTER 5
I DROPPED THE PHONE AND DASHED DOWN THE stairs, slapping the door shut in the poodle’s face. I cleared six flights of stairs in seconds, sprinted across the parking lot, unlocked my garage, got Marigold out, mounted, and we thundered out of the parking lot.
We turned up the street, nearly plowing into a cart. Marigold thudded up the wooden ramp onto the highway. The ruined city dashed by me, a long smudge of wrecked buildings and overcast sky.
The Mercenary Guild occupied a converted Sheraton Hotel on the edge of Buckhead. I brought Marigold to a halt before the thick iron gates, jumped down, grabbing a canteen of kerosene I used to obliterate my blood, and took off, praying that whatever disease the magic hit man induced wouldn’t go active.
I dashed through the gates into the lobby and nearly collided with the Clerk. A huge red welt marked his face and his left eye was rapidly swelling shut. “Inner hall!” he yelled.
“Did you call Biohazard?”
“Yes!”
The inner door hung crooked on its hinges. I ran through the doorway and into the inner hall.
The Sheraton was built as a hollow tower. In its other life, the inner hall housed an on-the-premises restaurant, a coffee shop, and a happy hour area, raised on a platform above the main floor, and a gift shop. The old photographs showed a small stream winding through it all, flanked by carefully selected plants, its waters sheltering huge surly koi. At the far wall, an elevator shaft of transparent plastic rose up to the fourth floor.
The happy hour platform now held the job board, the gift shop contained one of the numerous armories, and the restaurant had been converted into a mess hall, where tired mercs filled their stomachs between jobs. The elevator no longer worked, the plants, stream, and koi had vanished years ago, and the main floor lay bare.
The first thing I saw was the body of Solomon Red, pinned to the elevator shaft by a spear through his throat.
Three mercs rapidly drew a chalk warding semicircle around the body. Another dozen hugged the walls. I grabbed the first warm body. “Where is he?”
“Gone,” the merc woman told me. “About five minutes ago.”
Damn. I was too late.
Solomon’s body swelled, expanding.
“Back up!” I barked, in tune with two other voices.
The mercs scattered.
A flood of blood and feces drenched the clear plastic, gushing to the floor to form a wide puddle. The stench hit us. People gagged.
The body shriveled, drying up right before my eyes like some sort of mummy. I didn’t need Patrice to diagnose that for me. I’ve seen that before. It had the same name in English, Spanish, and Russian—cholera. Only this one was on magic steroids.
The foul puddle turned black. A shiver ran along the surface. The liquid slithered, testing the chalk edge of the ward circle, and rolled right over it, heading right. I glanced in that direction and saw an old drain in the floor, a remnant of the koi brook. Cholera spread through water.
“It’s going for the drain!” I sprinted before it, pouring kerosene across the tile. Behind me, Bob Carver struck a match, setting the fuel stream on fire.
The puddle reached the flame, recoiled, and rolled to the left.
Ivera, a tall, large woman, folded her hands together, let out a piercing screech, and jerked her hands apart, palms outward. Magic snapped. Twin jets of flame rolled from Ivera’s hands and licked the puddle. It shrank back, to the half-moon of burning kerosene. I poured more, trying to corral it.
Ivera’s arms shuddered. She gasped. The flame vanished and she stumbled back, her nose bleeding.
The puddle oozed out of the flaming trap.
I took a deep breath, bracing myself for the pain of a power word. I didn’t know if a power word would stop it, but I was out of options.
A chant rose from behind the mercs, a low soft voice murmuring Chinese words in a practiced singsong melody. A long scaled ribbon slipped past the mercs—a snake. The snake tasted the air with her tongue and stopped, swaying slightly in tune with the chant. Ronnie Ma emerged into the open. His real name was Ma Rui Ning, but everyone called him Ronnie. Ancient, wizened, Ronnie was one of those rare and endangered mercs who’d managed to reach retirement. He’d done his twenty years and got his pension. His house was only a minute away and he spent most of his time hanging out in the Guild, sipping tea and nodding at the crowd with a small smile.
He circled the puddle, carrying several small sacks, the chant rolling from his lips.
The puddle made a beeline for the drain. Somehow Ronnie got there first, reached into his sack, and lowered something to the floor. A scorpion. The arachnid danced in place, curling its tail. The puddle shrank away.
Flanked on three sides by animals, the puddle reversed its course and almost ran into the fourth creature, a long twisting millipede, just as Ronnie dropped her on the ground. A few more steps, and the old man emptied the last sack on the floor, revealing a large spider.
The creatures swayed in tandem with his voice. The puddle hovered in the center, caught. Ronnie took a small canister from his waist and walked up to the puddle. His fingers flickered, very fast, and he pulled a small yellow piece of paper from his sleeve. The paper fluttered onto the puddle, a small Chinese symbol written in red lying faceup. Ronnie uncorked the canister and poured its contents onto the paper in a vermillion stream.
A dark miasma surged up from the puddle and vanished, as if burned off. The nasty fluid lay placid.
Ronnie Ma smiled.
“IT’S AN ANCIENT CHINESE RITUAL,” PATRICE SAID as two medtechs fumigated me with mugwort smoke while I stood behind the salt line drawn on the floor. “Five poisonous creatures to hold the disease at bay. We know it because it was part of the Fifth Moon Festival. The Festival fell over summer solstice and coincided with hot, humid weather and a spike in infections.”
“What did he pour on the cholera?”
“If I had to take a guess, wine with cinnabar.” Patrice glanced at Ronnie Ma, still smiling serenely as two techs unsuccessfully tried to get him to exhale at the diagnostic flower. “We’ve been looking forever for someone who knows how to perform it. Do you think he would come to work for me?”
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