A clearing stretched in front of us, about half a football field long. To the right the ground climbed up slightly, the slope studded with pale green glass boulders. A large construction shelter perched on top of the raised ground, its durable fabric stretched over an aluminum frame. To the left a mess of glass bristling with shards curved away, deeper into the glass labyrinth. The tail end of an overturned railroad car stuck out of shards.
An enchanted water engine sat nearby, powering up a massive jackhammer that two construction workers with hardhats and full facial shields pointed at the glass encrusting the train car. Eight other workers, wrapped in similar protective gear, pounded away at the glass with hammers and mining picks.
Three guards milled about the perimeter, each armed with a machete. The nearest to us, a tall, broad-shouldered man in his mid-thirties, looked like he wouldn’t hesitate to use his. With the magic up, guns wouldn’t fire, but the security seemed too light for a reclamation in the Glass Menagerie. They must’ve had something else up their sleeves.
“You see what they’re doing?” I murmured to Ascanio.
“They’re trying to salvage that railcar,” he said.
“Why is it illegal?”
He thought about it. “It doesn’t belong to them?”
“Technically the railroad has gone out of business, so this is abandoned property. Try again.”
“I don’t know.”
“What are we sitting on?”
He looked down at the turquoise surface under our feet. “Magic glass.”
“What do we know about it?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Exactly. We don’t know what makes it grow and we don’t know what would make it stop.”
“So anything they take out of that rail car could sprout glass,” Ascanio said.
“Precisely. They’re going to sell whatever they reclaim and they won’t tell the buyer where they got it. And when another Glass Menagerie sprouts someplace, it will be too late.”
“Shouldn’t we do something about it?”
I held up my empty hand. “No badge. We can report it when we get out of here and see if PAD wants to do something about it.” Besides, it wasn’t our job to report it and I was pretty much done with acts of civic responsibility. It wasn’t my problem.
“They have to know that what they’re doing is illegal,” I said. “And this area is dangerous, so they should have more than three bruisers walking about with oversized knives. They have some security we’re not seeing. Be ready for a surprise.”
Ascanio’s eyes lit up with an eerie ruby glow. “Can I shift now?”
“Not yet.” Shifting took a lot of energy. Change your shape twice in rapid succession, and you would have to have some downtime. I needed Ascanio fresh and full of energy, which meant once he shifted, he’d have to stay that way.
We jumped off the ledge and walked down the road straight into the guard. He saw my face and drew back.
“What in the bloody hell are you?”
“Andrea Nash,” I said. “This is my associate, Robin of Loxley.”
Ascanio saluted with the bow. Thankfully no Latin spilled out.
“I’m investigating a murder on behalf of the Pack. I need to talk to Kyle.”
The man stared at me. This was clearly outside of his normal duties.
“You got some sort of ID on you?”
I handed him my ID—a miniature copy of my PI license endorsed by the Georgia Secretary of State with my picture on it.
“How do I know it’s you?” he asked.
“Why would I lie?”
He mulled it over. “Okay, you’ve got something that says you’re from the Pack?”
Ascanio coughed a bit.
I swept the hand from my forehead to my chin, indicating my face. “Do I look like I need to prove I’m from the Pack?”
The guard pondered me. “Okay, fine. Come with me.”
We followed him to the tent. It looked bigger close up, almost forty feet tall. Inside, a middle-aged man pored over some charts next to a taller, thinner man with acne scars on his narrow face. Both wore hardhats.
The middle-aged man looked up. Stocky, well muscled, he might have been quick at some point in his youth, but probably not. He looked like one of those linemen that plant themselves in front of the quarterback, except in his case he’d let himself go a bit and most of his muscle now hid behind a layer of fat. His hair was gray and cropped short, but his dark eyes were sharp. He didn’t look friendly. He looked like the kind of guy who could order a shapeshifter murder.
Kyle gave me a once-over and focused on the guard. “What the hell is this?”
“Some people from the Pack want to talk to you,” the guard said. “About some murder.”
Kyle leaned back, his face sour. “Tony, do you remember that time I told you to just let any asshole in here?”
The guard winced. “No.”
“Yeah, I don’t remember that either. Felipe, you remember that?”
“No,” the taller man said.
“That’s what I thought.”
Tony paused, obviously confused. “So what do I do?”
“Throw them the fuck out. If I want to talk to any ugly bitches or punk kids, I’ll tell you.” Kyle looked back to his papers.
Tony put his hand on my forearm. “Come on.”
“Take your hand off of me, sir.”
The guard pulled me. “Don’t make this hard.”
“Last chance. Take your hand off of me.”
Kyle looked up.
Tony tried to yank me back. I raised my arm up sharply and elbowed him in the face. The blow knocked him back. Tony dropped his machete. It bit into the dirt, handle sticking upright. Blood gushed from his nose, its scent piercing me like a shot of adrenaline.
“Sit on him,” I said.
Ascanio tripped Tony, pulled him to the ground, facedown, and leaned one knee on his back. “Don’t move, sir.”
He remembered. I felt so proud.
Tony tried to push up. “Get off of me!”
“Do not struggle, or I’ll be forced to break your arm.”
Tony shut up.
Kyle looked at me. Behind him, Felipe carefully took a couple of steps back.
“We can talk about the murders now.” I smiled.
“And if I don’t feel like talking?”
“I’ll make you,” I said. “I’ve had an unpleasant day and four of our people are dead. I feel like having some fun.”
“You shapeshifters are getting ballsy,” Kyle said. “You think you can just come in anywhere and screw with regular decent people.”
“As a matter of fact, I can.” I looked at him.
“The boys down at PAD will just love that,” Felipe, the taller man behind Kyle, said.
Ha! He was threatening me with cops. “The boys down at PAD won’t give a shit. This area is designated as IM-1. You are here in violation of two city ordinances, one state and two federal statutes. Anything you reclaim is contaminated with magic of unknown origin. Taking it out of here is punishable by a fine of not more than two hundred thousand dollars or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both. Selling it will get you another dime in a state penitentiary.”
Kyle crossed his arms. “Is that so?”
“Greed is a terrible thing,” I said. “When you extract your metal and sell it to a builder, and then the new school or hospital in the city starts sprouting glass, they will come looking for you. At the moment, it’s not my problem. I’m here to ask questions. Answer them and I’ll thank you and go away. Do keep in mind that if you piss me off, I can slaughter the lot of you and nobody will give a crap.”
And I could. I could just twist his head off and nobody would be the wiser. This was the Glass Menagerie and if he died, the cops would just think he got what was coming to him. Now there was an interesting thought.
A creature walked into the tent, moving on all fours. It used to be human, but all fat had been leeched off it, replaced by hard, knotted muscle and skin stretched so tight, it looked painted on. Its head was bald, like the rest of its repulsive frame and the two eyes, red and feverish with thirst, bore into me like two burning coals. Its oversized jaws protruded, and as it opened its mouth, I glimpsed two curved fangs.
A vampire. The revolting stink of undeath swirled around me, raising my hackles in instinctive disgust. Ew. Well, that explained the light security. They had an undead guarding them. And where there was a vampire, there was a navigator.
Infection by the Immortuus pathogen destroyed a human’s mind. No cognizance remained. Vampires were ruled only by instinct and that instinct screamed, “Feed!” They did not reproduce. They did not think. They hunted flesh. Anything with a pulse was fair game. Their blank minds made perfect vehicles for necromancers. Called navigators, or Masters of the Dead, if they had talent and education, necromancers piloted vampires, driving them around telepathically like remote-controlled cars. They saw through the vampire’s eyes, they heard through its ears, and when an undead opened its mouth, it was the navigator’s words that came out.
Most of the navigators worked for the People. The People and the Pack existed in a state of uneasy truce, hovering on the verge of full-out war. If the People were running security for this site, my life would get a lot more complicated.
A man followed the vampire. He wore ripped jeans, a black T-shirt that said MAKE MY DAY in bloody red letters, and sported a dozen rings in various parts of his facial features. He could’ve been one of the People’s journeymen, but it was highly unlikely. Strike one, he followed his vampire instead of sitting somewhere outside being inconspicuous, pulling the undead’s strings with his mind. Strike two, the People’s journeymen looked like they just emerged from arguing a case before the Supreme Court. They wore suits, had good shoes, and were impeccably groomed.
No, this knucklehead had to be a freelancer, which meant I could kill him without diplomatic consequences, if he didn’t kill me first.