“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.