Magic Shifts

CHAPTER 4

THE GUILD OCCUPIED an abandoned hotel on the edge of Buckhead. Once a futuristic-looking tower, it had succumbed to the magic waves like the rest of the business district. High-rises fell in two ways: either they slowly deteriorated until they collapsed in a heap of dust and debris, or they toppled. The Guild’s base was a toppler: the tower had broken off about seven stories up as if cut by a blade. The renovations and repairs shaved off another two floors, and now the Guild had five floors, only four of which were functional, the price of living through a slow-motion apocalypse.

We parked in a big open-air parking lot to the right and got out. About two dozen vehicles waited for us. According to George, Eduardo drove a huge black Tahoe that looked like a tank. Not something you’d easily miss. George drove an FJ Cruiser. Neither was in the parking lot.

Curran and I walked down the parking lane. Curran took short quick breaths, sampling the scents. We would need Derek to really follow a trail. Curran’s sense of smell was many times better than mine, but he was a predatory cat. He hunted mostly by sight, while Derek, my onetime boy wonder, was a wolf. He could track a moth through pitch darkness by scent alone.

I had called over to Cutting Edge and left a message on the answering machine for Derek asking him to stay put in case we needed him. Curran had saved him when Derek’s family went loup, and the young werewolf was completely devoted to him.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said.

“Should I be worried?” Curran asked.

“I would’ve thought Derek would separate with us. I understand why Barabas didn’t—he loves practicing law—but Derek has been working for Cutting Edge since the start.”

“It’s not really a topic I can bring up,” Curran said. “It’s a personal decision for each individual involved. There can’t be any pressure one way or the other. Jim can’t offer them incentives to stay and I can’t use their emotional loyalty to pressure them into leaving.”

It made sense, I suppose.

We combed the parking lot, predictably didn’t find the Tahoe, and headed for the Guild building.

The heavy iron gates stood wide open. Nobody met us in the lobby. I checked the sign-in ledger resting on the metal table. Eduardo had signed in on Monday, February 28. There was no sign-in for Tuesday, March 1.

“He didn’t make it to the Guild yesterday,” I said.

Curran inhaled the air and grimaced.

“What?”

“It smells like a garbage dump. I get hints of his scent, but they’re old. I’d say at least fifty hours or so.”

Fifty hours was consistent with our time line. If Eduardo called George at seven thirty on Monday, he probably got down to the Guild an hour or two later.

Curran and I passed through a large wooden door and entered the inner hall. The hotel was built as a hollow tower with an open atrium at its center. Terraced balconies, one for each floor, lined the inner walls, allowing access to individual rooms.

In its other life, the hotel had been beautiful, all light stone, expensive wood, and elevators with transparent walls. It was way before my time, but I’d seen some old pictures that showed the lobby as an oasis of greenery, complete with a koi stream where fat orange-and-white fish drifted gently beneath the lily pads. A trendy coffee shop had occupied one corner, next to it a raised area had been set out for happy-hour patrons, and an upscale restaurant had offered lobster and steak. All of that was gone now. The coffee shop, koi, and greenery had vanished without a trace. The restaurant had evolved into a mess hall, offering cheap but decent food to hungry mercs coming off long jobs, and the raised area that was once the happy-hour hangout housed the Clerk’s desk and a big job board behind him.

Usually the board was organized to within an inch of its life. The Clerk would write the open jobs on index cards, mark them with different colors according to priority, and pin them neatly to the corkboard. Today the board was a mess. Random pieces of paper covered it, stuck this way and that, some on top of the others. A couple had coffee stains. One looked a hell of a lot like a used dinner napkin whose owner must’ve indulged in gravy. What the hell . . . ?

About twenty mercs lounged here and there, some at the tables. I scanned the crowd. Not many veterans. The Guild attracted all sorts of people. Some worked hard and some hung out at the Guild bullshitting or waiting for just the right job to fall into their lap. Most of these guys were of the second variety. A few looked drunk. Most weren’t too clean. As we walked through, a woman on the right hocked a loogie and spat on the floor. Charming.

These people hung out at the Guild every day. Some probably slept here. One of them had either stolen a car from a worried woman looking for her boyfriend or knew who had. They would tell me who did it.

The sour stench of rotten food floated in the air. Mud streaks stained the floor. The trash can in the corner was overflowing. The staircase that led up to the three remaining floors had a lovely patina of grime.

“Daniels!”

I turned. A tan dark-haired man in his forties waved at me from a nearby table. Lago Vista. I walked over and took a seat. Curran sat next to me. Lago had been a mercenary all his life one way or another, but he’d joined the Guild about three years ago, when he moved to Atlanta from Lago Vista, Texas. He liked it when people called him Lago. It wasn’t really his name, but he never talked about the things he’d left behind, so I didn’t ask. He and I had worked together on a couple of jobs. He wasn’t as fast as he used to be, but he had a lot of experience and he knew what to do with it. He did his job, he did it well, and he didn’t get me or anybody else killed. That made him a decent merc in my book. If you needed a second for a gig, you could do a lot worse than Lago. If you could put up with his come-ons, that is. Lago was an aging jock. He liked one-night stands, and he viewed himself as a smooth operator.

“Haven’t seen you around.” Lago lifted a coffeepot. “Need some fuel?”

The coffee in the glass carafe was solid black and looked viscous. “Is that last night’s batch?”

Lago shrugged.

Last night’s batch that had probably baked for about twelve hours. No thanks. “Where is the Clerk?”

“You didn’t hear? The Clerk’s gone. The cleaning staff, too. All of the admins are gone. You’re looking good, Daniels. Looking really good.” Lago gave me a long once-over.

“Stop looking at her and you might live longer,” Curran said, his voice nice and friendly.

Lago glanced at Curran and held his arms up in the air. “Hey, no offense. Just a compliment.”

Curran didn’t answer. Lago shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, and turned to me. “Who’s the guy?”

“He’s my . . .” Fiancé, honey-bunny? “He’s mine.”

Lago nodded knowingly. “The thing with the Beast Lord didn’t turn out, huh? That’s okay, I heard that guy is a dick. You don’t need that shit.”

Curran’s face showed no emotion. Lago stuck his hand out. “Lago Vista. Call me Lago.”

“Lennart.” Curran reached over and shook Lago’s hand. I held my breath to see if Lago’s fingers would survive. He didn’t writhe in pain and no bones crunched. And that was exactly why Curran was such a scary bastard. When he lost control, it was because he made a deliberate choice to do so.

“So what happened to the admins?” Curran asked.

“The Guild Assembly failed to pass the budget. No budget, no paycheck. The cleaning crew was the first to walk off, then the cooking staff. The Clerk hung on for about six weeks, but he left, too.”

Holy crap. “Who’s taking the calls?”

Lago shrugged. “Whoever feels like answering the phone? It doesn’t ring much anymore.”

Great.

“Why didn’t they pass the budget?” Curran asked.

“Because Bob Carver wanted to raid his pension fund.” Lago gulped his coffee and grimaced at the taste.

Bob Carver had been in for about fifteen years, and he was one of the rare breed of mercenary who played well with others. He was part of a four-person crew known as the Four Horsemen and they took the larger, more difficult jobs. Half of the Assembly consisted of admins and the other half of mercs, and Bob Carver was chief personnel officer and the mercs’ leader. Before my father decided to take an active interest in my existence, I functioned as the third part of that triangle, representing the Pack’s interests. I didn’t think I made that much difference, but it must’ve been just enough to keep the tide of crazy at bay, because in my absence the Guild had clearly gone off the rails.

Curran kept looking at Lago, listening and waiting. Lago gulped more coffee. “It works like this: if you last twenty years in the Guild, you get a pension. You start paying into it from your first job. Not much money, like five percent, but at the end of twenty years it adds up. If you die before your twenty years are up, you’re screwed. Whatever you paid into the pension fund stays there. Your family gets the death benefit, but that’s it. I don’t know what the hell Bob needed the money for, but he wanted to borrow against his contribution.”

“That’s illegal,” Curran said. “And stupid. If everyone raids the pension fund, there will be no pension fund.”

Lago winked at me. “I like him. But yeah, you’re right. That’s basically what Mark said. Mark’s our operations manager. Bob really needs the money, I guess, because he got a bunch of mercs on his side and hammered enough votes to stop the budget. He says he won’t back down until they give him his money.”

Awesome. Just awesome.

I leaned closer. “Lago, do you know Eduardo Ortego? Big guy, dark hair, looks like he can run through walls?”

“I’ve seen him around.”

“Did he have a beef with anyone?”

“Sure. You remember Christian Heyward?”

“Big guy? African American with the bulldog?”

“That’s the one.”

The Christian Heyward I remembered was a genuinely nice family man, who had a very low tolerance for bullshit. He came in with his American Bulldog, did his gigs, and went home to his wife and kids. “He had a problem with Eduardo?”

“No. He quit the day Eduardo registered, so they gave him Heyward’s zone. It’s a good zone. Some people got pissed off because of it, but nothing too major. You know how it is: your guy looked like he could handle himself and nobody wanted to get hurt. They bitched behind his back, but that’s as far as it got. Nobody wanted their bones broken.”

“His girlfriend was here yesterday,” Curran said. “Looking for him. Someone took her car.”

“That’s a shame. Can’t help you, man. I wasn’t here yesterday. But one of them might.” Lago glanced at the gathering. “Most of these assholes are here every day. Good luck getting their attention, though. Half of them are drunk, half of them are hungover, and the other half don’t give a shit.”

“Thanks.” I had no problem with attention getting.

I got up. I needed to do something flashy and loud but not too scary, or the mercs would just take off. I headed for the table closest to the door. If they ran, they’d have to get past us. Curran walked next to me. “So I am a dick?”

“I can’t help that you have a reputation.”

He grinned. “You want help?”

“No, I got it.” His kind of help would likely involve a roar, and the mercs would scatter.

If I started with Eduardo missing, I’d get nowhere. They all probably saw George asking questions about him yesterday. Nobody helped her then and nobody would help me with it now. A missing person was serious business and mercs didn’t like attention. They’d clam up. None of them would want to be a witness or to volunteer any information. I had to make it about the missing SUV. That was theft—serious theft, but still only theft—and everyone would understand that we’d handle it without the cops involved.

A dried-up French fry crunched under my foot.

“I can’t believe Jim tried to sell us this leaky boat.” The next time I saw him, I’d let him know exactly how I felt about it.

“Jim is a Beast Lord,” Curran said. “Pack comes first. Friendships come second.”

Three feet from the table I jumped and landed on its top. I didn’t land softly. I landed with a serious thud.

The mercs turned and looked at me. Recognition registered on some faces.

“You know me,” I said. “You know what I can do.”

They were looking at me.

“A one-armed woman came here yesterday in a blue FJ Cruiser. Someone took it. I want to know who.”

“Daniels.” A woman got up from her table and started toward me. Forty, built like a brick house, and mean eyed. She looked familiar. Her clothes and the bruise on her face said she had had a rough night and was looking for someone she could use to vent her frustration. “I owe you.”

I knew her but couldn’t remember the name . . . I gave her my hard stare just in case. She kept coming. Shoot. I was out of practice. “Really?”

“Yeah. You took my gig.”

Ah. Alice Golansky. The last time I saw her was almost two years ago. Well, wasn’t that a blast from the past.

“So let me get this straight. You’re mad, because two years ago you were too drunk to do a job and passed out in the Guild’s mess hall, and the Clerk sent me out in your place?”

She shrugged her shoulders and raised her fists. Well, well. Someone had some karate training. “I’m going to teach you not to steal jobs.”

“You do realize that gig was assigned to me?” Not to mention that the job happened two years ago.

“You think you’re so high and mighty. I’m gonna pull you off that table and stomp your face in.”

Curran smiled.

Okay. “You thought this through?” I asked.

She looked up at me and punched her palm with her fist. “Oh yeah.”

I dropped to my knee and hammered a punch into her jaw. My fist had shot down like a jackhammer. I’d sunk all of the momentum of the drop into it. Knocking someone out was tricky, because it required power, speed, and the element of surprise, but when it worked, it made a statement. Alice’s eyes rolled into her head. She went rigid and fell straight back, like a cut tree. Her head bounced off the floor a bit.

The hall was suddenly silent. Ha! Still got it.

“Anybody else got any disputes they’d like to settle?” I asked.

The mercs sat silent.

“I’ll ask again.” I stood up. “Blue FJ Cruiser. Who has it?”

No answer.

“Maybe you didn’t hear her,” Curran said. “Or maybe you can’t see her well. Let me help.”

The table under me moved. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him holding it a foot off the ground with one hand. Okay then.

The mercs froze.

“It was Mac,” a large Latino man wearing faded fatigues said from the left. His name was Charlie and he used to be a regular when I worked for the Guild. “Mac and his idiot redneck cousin, what’s his name . . . Bubba? Skeeter . . . ?”

“Leroy,” Crystal said, tossing back her bleached blond hair. “Mac and Leroy.”

The names didn’t sound familiar. Curran quietly lowered the table back to Earth.

“Yeah, Leroy,” Charlie said. “I saw them getting into it this morning. They were going to do a job in Chamblee on Chamblee Dunwoody Road.”

I was pretty sure Chamblee used to be in Heyward’s zone.

“The cat lady?” a short skinny guy in a red sweater asked. “The one who called before?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “She’s got something with wings trying to eat her cats on Chamblee Dunwoody Road.”

That’s right, tell me more.

“Again?” Crystal asked. “Eduardo already went out there on Sunday. He said this lady had a giant tick eating her cats.”

“This was no tick,” Charlie said. “She said it flew. Ticks don’t fly.”

“Well, whatever it was,” Crystal said, “I know he killed it on Sunday, because he came back here to get paid, and then she called again on Monday and he went out there again. That’s the last I saw him.”

It was a repeat job. The client called the Guild the first time on Sunday about a tick, and Eduardo went out and took care of it. Then she called again, on Monday, probably because the problem recurred. He went out to that call and disappeared. Then the client called for the third time, today, which meant that either the creature bothering her had a large family or that Eduardo never made it to her job. But he did finish the Sunday job, which meant there would be a record of it.

“Did this lady say Eduardo showed up on Monday?” I asked.

Charlie shook his head. “She was at work, so she didn’t know if he showed up. But she was really heated it wasn’t taken care of.”

“When did Mac and Leroy leave?” I asked.

“Half an hour ago,” Charlie said.

We’d just missed them.

“Are they poaching in Eduardo’s territory?” I asked.

Crystal spread her arms. “He ain’t here to call them out on it, is he?”

“They’ve got a problem with him?” Curran asked.

Charlie shrugged. “They’ve got a problem with everyone. Ortego’s got good territory. They tried muscling in on him and he beat their asses for them.”

“He wasn’t worried about it,” Crystal said.

“You knew him well, huh?” I asked.

“She talked to him every time he came here,” Charlie said.

Crystal shot him a dirty look.

“Don’t stare at me.” He pointed at us. “They have issues with you. They have no issues with me. Don’t drag the rest of us in with your sorry ass.”

“I tried to know him well, if you catch my meaning.” Crystal made a sour face. “Apparently he’s one of those ‘got a girlfriend’ types. She was over here yesterday. Nothing special. And she’s a cripple.”

Oh, you sad, pathetic excuse for a human being. My fist itched. I really wanted to punch Crystal in the face.

“So you saw a young one-armed woman desperately looking for her guy. You knew Leroy and Mac took her car and you didn’t say anything. None of you assholes told her or offered to give her a ride back home?” I could barely keep a growl out of my voice. “You must’ve all had important shit to do like sitting here, getting drunk, and spitting on the floor.”

Nobody looked me in the eye.

“What are you, the morality police?” an older drunken-looking merc asked.

“Yeah, I am, Chug. Remember that time your leg was broken and Jim and I came to get you out of the hole under a collapsed building?”

“So what?”

“Next time you’re in trouble, don’t call me.”

“I’ll survive,” he said.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I jumped off the table and headed for the Clerk’s desk. We needed job logs.

“Where are we going?” Curran asked quietly.

“To get the logbook. When a job is completed, it’s written into the logbook before the payment is authorized. According to those clowns, Eduardo had already gone to do a job at that address. On Sunday this lady called about a giant tick, and he went out and killed it, and he got paid. The logbook should have a record of it.”

The problem he had gone out to fix on Monday was still active, because the client had called the Guild again about it this morning and the car-stealing rednecks took the job. Sometimes that happened—you killed some creature but didn’t realize it wasn’t alone, so you had to go out the second time and complete the job. We had to talk to the client. Mac and Leroy would’ve taken the gig ticket with her address with them, so the logs were our best bet.

Something had happened to Eduardo on Monday, during the second job or on the way to it. If he were a normal human, I’d be calling hospitals to see if he was somewhere with an injury, but the standard protocol for hurt shapeshifters dictated that medical personnel notify the Pack immediately. The Pack had its own medmages, led by Doolittle, who had brought me back from the brink of death so many times I had lost count. Eduardo could be hurt, he could be dead, or he could be in jail, arrested for something, but he wasn’t in a hospital.

I crouched behind the Clerk’s desk and tried the log drawer. Normally it was under lock and key. The drawer door swung open.

The mercs watched us.

“Try to look casual.” I pulled the top book out and put it on the desk.

“Why?”

“Because what I’m doing is illegal without a warrant, and we have about twenty witnesses observing our every move.”

Curran crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge, leaned against the desk, and fixed our audience with his stare. Everyone spontaneously decided to look anywhere else but at us. Right. Casual, my foot.

“See,” he said. “No witnesses.”

I flipped the pages. Eduardo was like a brand-new merc. He would do things by the book. Only three log entries on Sunday. Wow. There should have been a dozen or more. On a good day the Guild used to be chaotic with a steady stream of mercs coming and going, and Sunday during a strong magic wave should’ve been a good day for business.

Second name down. Mrs. Oswald, 30862 Chamblee Dunwoody Road. Complaint: giant tick eating cats. Status: resolved, Biohazard contacted to remove the remains. Eduardo Ortego.

One of the two conference doors in the opposite wall opened and Mark Meadows, the Guild’s head admin, stepped out. I almost did a double take. Mark had started as the Guild’s secretary, but after the death of the Guild’s founder, Mark became chief administrative officer. Mark’s slogan in life was, “I’m middle management and proud of it.” His jaw was always perfectly shaved; his face showed no bruises; his hands had no cuts. His nails were manicured and the light scent of expensive cologne followed him wherever he went. He stood out among the rough-and-tumble mercs like a professor at a prison rodeo. Most mercs despised him, because Mark had no mercy. Profit was his god and no hard-luck story would sway him from following the letter of the Guild’s law in pursuit of the bottom line.

That was the old Mr. Meadows.

This Mark had let himself go. His normally impeccable suit was rumpled. His face was red, his expression flustered. His hair looked like he’d clutched at it with his hands but stopped short of actually pulling it out. His face wore a haunted expression. No doubt coming off another session of the Guild Assembly.

Do not see me, do not see me . . .

His eyes lit up. “Daniels!”

Damn it. “I don’t have time, Mark,” I called.

“But you have time to break the law and invade client privacy by reading the log.”

Ugh. “I’m looking for a missing merc.”

“Too bad. I’m a member of the Assembly and I call on you to formally appear before the Assembly. You can’t refuse.”

The hell I can’t. I slapped the book closed and slid it into its place. “This is me refusing.”

“Well, well, well!” Bob Carver emerged through the open door. He was the same height as Mark, and their hair color was a similar shade of brown, but there the resemblance ended. Mark was in his thirties, ate well, and spent a lot of time at the gym. He was toned. Bob Carver, on the other hand, was lean and hard, whittled by life like a walnut wood carving. In his late forties, he looked like a guy who had been through some rough shit and came out of it tougher.

“Look what the cat dragged in.”

He was playing to the audience. Never good.

“Is he talking to me or you?” Curran asked. His voice was deceptively light.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure he’ll get around to telling us.”

“Hello, Your Highnesses.”

Bob pretended to bow with a flourish, eyeing us. Behind him more familiar faces appeared as the mercs inside the room came out to see what the hubbub was about. Veteran Guild members Rigan and Sonia, and the rest of Bob’s Four Horsemen: Ivera, a firebug good with bladed weapons; Ken, the mage, tall and phlegmatic with a distant look on his narrow face, as if he were perpetually pondering something beyond human understanding; and Juke. Juke was a few years younger than me, a good deal thinner, and she wanted very hard to be edgy and hard-core. Instead she managed a pissed-off Goth Pixie look: her short hair stuck out from her head in a short asymmetric cut, her arms were thin like chopsticks, and her smoky eyes and purple lipstick made her delicate features even more fragile. She studied Sōjutsu, the art of yari, Japanese spear, and she was pretty good with it.

“So glad you graced us with your presence,” Bob said. “Came to slum with us mere mortals?”

Bob and I never had a problem. Juke and I had a problem, because I enjoyed jerking her chain, but Bob and I always leveled. Where was he going with this? I leaned back. “You’d have to clean the place up a bit for it be a slum, Bob.”

Bob narrowed his eyes. “I know what you’ve been doing. I know your Pack conned enough mercs into selling you their shares so you’d control a third of this Guild. I know you’re thinking of buying those shares.”

Jim would be overjoyed to hear that someone had been talking to the Guild behind his back. That wouldn’t increase his paranoia. Not at all.

Bob was building up steam. “So that’s it, huh? You thought you’d come here, throw your weight around, and save us. Whip us into shape. I’ve got news for you.” He looked around dramatically. “Nobody’s whipping us. There won’t be any bowing or scraping.”

Curran shrugged. “Okay. Fine by me.”

Bob glowered. “I don’t give a fuck if you think that’s fine or not. I’m telling you how it’s going to be.”

Bob, you sad, sorry sonovabitch. If I didn’t steer this away from Curran, he would redecorate the place with the Four Horsemen’s guts.

I grinned. When in doubt, piss them off with humor.

“Something funny, Daniels?” Juke asked me.

“Just enjoying watching your boss here dig the hole deeper.” I nodded at Bob. “Keep going, Bob. Don’t hold back. Share your feelings with the group. Get it all out.”

Mercs at the tables chuckled.

Bob growled. That’s right, concentrate on me . . .

“You used to be somebody, Lennart.”

Damn it. He was asking for his head to be bashed in, and if he said too much more, I would do it myself.

He kept going. “I’ve got news for you: you’re a nobody.”

Really? A nobody?

Bob squared his shoulders. “We’ll throw you out on your ass . . .”

A deep inhuman sound rolled through the Guild, the sound of a predator’s voice, humorless and ice-cold, and I realized it was Curran laughing. I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat.

The Guild Hall went completely silent. Oh no.

Curran studied Bob Carver, as if he hadn’t really seen him before this moment and now he’d finally noticed Bob existed and decided to dedicate his complete attention to that fact. His eyes sparked with gold, his gaze pinning Bob in place. I knew the weight of that stare. It was like looking straight into the jungle’s hungry maw. It knew no mercy and no reason. It only knew that it was hunter and you were prey. Blood rushed to your limbs, your breathing sped up, and your thoughts fractured and melted into your brain until only two options remained: fight or flight. Picking one was torture.

Bob paled. He stepped back, almost in spite of himself, falling into a familiar defensive stance, half-turned toward Curran, his hands raised. All of his bluster faded. Suddenly everyone knew who the baddest monster in the room was and nobody wanted to be his target.

Curran pushed off from the desk, his movement smooth and measured. His eyes were like two shining moons. His voice had a deep undercurrent of a snarl. “So you want to throw me out on my ass?”

Bob swallowed.

“There aren’t enough people here, Bob. You need to get reinforcements. Go ahead.” He smiled, baring his teeth, a sharp carnivore grin. “I’ll wait.”

People were slowly reaching for their weapons. The mercs had leaned forward, their weight barely on their chairs. Any loud noise and they’d run.

In the quiet, Curran’s voice rolled through the Guild Hall. “When I came here today, I hadn’t decided what I was going to do. Thank you. You helped me to reach a decision. You chose to start something here today. When it’s over, you will come to me and you will ask me to take charge of you.”

I had to give it to Bob Carver. He managed enough willpower to open his mouth. And then his brain must’ve kicked in, because he clamped it shut.

Curran turned to me. “Kate? Do you have everything you need?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then we’re done for now.”

We walked out. Nobody said a word.

IT TOOK US fourteen minutes to chant the Jeep into action. Cars with enchanted engines ran during magic waves, but they made enough noise to make even metalhead teenagers beg to turn the volume down. The Jeep’s cab had been isolated against noise, but we still had to raise our voices to be heard.

Curran drove out of the parking lot. The streets flashed by. I opened the glove compartment and pulled out a couple of throwing knives. According to the mercs, the cat-eating creature flew. I didn’t use guns. I didn’t get along that well with tech-related projectile weapons in general. I could manage a decent shot with a bow, but give me a rifle and I’d miss an elephant from three feet away.

Curran’s face was calm, the line of his mouth relaxed.

“Are we going to take over the Guild?” I asked.

“Yes, we are. Well, I am. You are invited.” He glanced at me. “You should join me. It will be fun.”

“After we find Eduardo.”

“I wasn’t going to drop everything and crush the Four Horsemen,” Curran said. “Give me some credit. Eduardo is one of our own. Finding him is all that matters. Besides, if I’d decided to pull Carver’s spine out of his body, I would’ve done it already.”

“Can you actually do that?”

Curran frowned. “I don’t know. I mean theoretically if you broke the spine above the pelvis, you could, but then there are ribs . . . I’ll have to try it sometime.”

Okay, then. That was not disturbing. Not at all. “What do you suppose normal people talk about on their car rides?”

“I have no idea. Tell me about Bob Carver.”

I sighed. Once Curran focused on a target, getting him to change course was like trying to nudge a moving train to the side.

“Bob is a shark. I read somewhere that sharks have to keep swimming or they drown. I have no idea if that’s true, but I can tell you: Bob keeps swimming. I learn things. Every fight is an opportunity. Every time we spar, I learn more. I learned from fighting the ghouls. I learned from watching and fighting Hugh.”

A muscle in Curran’s face jerked slightly. It was a tiny movement. Had I blinked, I would have missed it. Hugh was still a problem for both of us.

“Bob is like me. People see him and think, ‘Oh, he’s past his prime. He’s good, but he isn’t as fast or strong as he used to be.’ But Bob is like one of those martial arts instructors who have been honing their bodies for years. When he needs to, he moves fast, because he doesn’t think about it. He just does it. I once saw him take down a man who was fifteen years younger, faster, and better trained. A group of seven mercs, including the Four Horsemen, had done a job and this guy didn’t like the way it went down. He got it into his head to fight with Bob. His exact words were, ‘I’ll beat the shit out of you and make you eat it with your face.’”

Curran smiled. “A poet.”

“Yeah. Bob warned him that if the guy put his hands on him, it wouldn’t end well. The guy said it was fine with him, so they brawled in the Guild Hall. Bob goaded him during the fight. He went for fun cheap shots. A slap on the cheek. A quick kick to the shin. Finally the guy lost his patience and the moment Bob gave him an opening, he went for Bob’s throat. Bob almost let him get his hands around his neck and then hit him really fast with the flat of his hand in the Adam’s apple. The guy let him go, staggered a bit, and kept going. Thirty seconds and he started getting sluggish. Bob worked him over for another minute and then the guy went down. Five minutes later the Guild paramedic had to cut his neck open. Bob had hit him just right and the blunt-force trauma to the trachea caused inflammation. His windpipe had swollen shut.”

“Did he survive?”

“He did. He moved out of the city. Here is the thing: while the paramedic was trying to realign the trachea, Bob went to the mess hall and got himself a hamburger. Bob’s not really an asshole, until you put your hands on him or try to screw him over. Then all bets are off. Thank you for not killing him, though.”

“I have no plans of killing him. He might be useful, and one should never throw away good manpower.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say in your head you already took over the Guild, restructured it, and found a place for Bob in it.”

He smiled at me.

Sometimes he . . . “scared” would be the wrong word . . . alarmed me. The Guild had no idea what was about to hit it.

We turned onto Chamblee Dunwoody Road.

I braced myself with my hand against the dashboard as our Jeep hit a bump in the road. The vehicle jumped, Curran made a sudden right, and the Jeep screeched to a halt. My seat belt jerked me back.

“There it is.”

A large two-story house of brown brick rose at the end of a driveway. The house had been built pre-Shift, before magic and technology started their crazy waltz. Modern builders kept their windows small. Less chance of something with teeth, glowing eyes, and an appetite for human meat surprising you in the bedroom after a hard day of work. The windows of this house were large enough for Curran in his beast form to go through. Mrs. Oswald compensated for the windows’ size by installing two-inch steel bars over them. Most of the grates were intact, but the bars on a large window above the garage were bent to the sides, as if something had smashed against them with great force.

A beige woman’s shoe with a high heel lay on the ground midway up the driveway. A little farther on, a matching beige purse lay on the lawn. Mrs. Oswald must’ve come out, seen something that alarmed her, and run back inside, dropping her purse and her shoe. Whatever she saw scared her so much, she just left her things sitting there.

I rolled my window down. Curran did the same.

“I don’t smell any blood,” he said.

No blood was odd. If this was the house, Leroy and Mac should’ve gotten here by now. They’d left almost an hour before us. The street was empty. Where the hell were those idiots?

“Eduardo’s scent is here too, but old and faint. I do smell something odd. Smells like a wolf.”

“A wolf?”

He nodded. “With a touch of bittersweet scent to it.”

From what the mercs had said, the creature threatening Ms. Oswald’s cats had wings. A wolf with wings? Russian mythology included a wolf with wings, and a prominent volhv, a Russian pagan priest, had one as a pet. I really hoped the Russians weren’t involved. Dealing with volhves meant dealing with witches, and claiming Atlanta had not endeared me to them in the least.

We sat quietly.

Minutes dragged by.

A high-pitched shriek rang from the sky above. It started on a high note, a forlorn mourning cry, and built on itself, growing harsher and sharper until it shredded the air like a high-velocity crossbow bolt. A dark shape swooped from the sky and rammed the bars. The steel grate shuddered from the impact. For a moment I thought it would fall out of the brickwork, but the bars held.

The creature fell to the ground, landing on all fours. Gray fur covered its lean body, sheathing its flanks and long lupine tail. Its legs terminated in furry, owl-like feet armed with sickle-shaped talons the size of my fingers. Two massive wings spread from its shoulders. The beast turned toward us. An eaglelike head crowned its powerful neck, complete with a dark beak the size of a hatchet.

“Kate?” Curran asked.

“It’s a wolf griffin,” I murmured. “Lion griffins come from Crete and Greece. This guy is from North Africa. They are mentioned in Berber folklore. Something about a giant bird and a wolf mating.”

“Anything I need to know?” Curran asked me. “Does it spit fire?”

I’d run across a wolf griffin only once. “Not that I know of. The one I encountered before didn’t, but I can’t guarantee this one doesn’t.”

The wolf griffin ducked its head and fixed us with an unblinking predatory stare. It was at least forty inches at the shoulder.

“Do we take care of it or do we wait?” I wondered.

“We could kill it.” Curran focused on the griffin. “That way when those two scumbags show up, we don’t have to deal with them and the griffin at the same time. Besides, we need to get into the house to talk to the owner, and that’s not happening until this thing is dead.”

We both looked at the griffin.

“This is the second cat-hunting creature Mrs. Oswald reported,” I thought out loud. “Someone or something is deliberately targeting her cats. If we kill it, there is a good chance that Mrs. Oswald’s mysterious nemesis would just send something else.”

“It’s not our job,” Curran said.

“I know, but what if something worse shows up the next time?”

The griffin spread its wings, took a running start, and flew up. We watched it rise with every beat of its wings, until it became a dot among the clouds. We didn’t even know if Mac and Leroy would do this job. Maybe they’d decided not to show up.

The griffin swooped down and rammed the bars again. They bent. He hung on for a long moment, his claws scraping at the glass, and dropped down to the driveway.

“The next time he hits, he’ll get through,” I said. If he managed to get inside, whoever was hiding inside the house would get ripped to pieces. This was no longer about cats.

“We net it,” Curran said. “I can wound its wings and we’ll wrap it in the net.”

“Once we’re done with Mac and Leroy, we can let it run home,” I finished. Tracking it through the air would be hard, but tracking it on the ground would be a piece of cake. “Right to its owner.”

“Sounds good to me.” Curran narrowed his eyes, measuring the distance between us and the griffin. “Mind playing bait again, baby?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Curran and I opened our doors at the same time. I slipped out, held my arms out to make myself bigger, and moved forward. The wolf griffin focused on me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Curran gliding soundlessly across the pavement.

I took another step. That’s it. Easy does it.

The griffin spread its wings. Its hackles rose, the fur standing straight up like spikes on a hedgehog.

Easy now.

The griffin bent its neck, turning its wings downward, so the entire width of its gray-and-black dappled feathers faced me. It looked huge. That’s right, pretty boy. Show me all you’ve got. I’m a threat and I’m coming for you.

Curran was almost in pouncing range. He could leap from where he was, but the griffin looked agile enough to dodge and then it would be gone. Three more feet and we’d be there.

The roar of an enchanted water engine rolled down the street, coming toward us. Argh. That was the last thing we needed, some idiot neighbor to spook it.

I took another step. The griffin clicked its beak at me, the two honey-colored irises glowing faintly. It was a shame to hurt it, but it couldn’t be helped. Curran gathered himself, about to leap.

Easy . . .

A blue FJ Cruiser hurtled toward us, spitting thunder, and screeched to a stop. The doors of the cab popped open. A large man in black pants and a tiger-stripe camo T-shirt jumped out, combat-rolled, struck a pose hefting a crossbow, and fired two bolts at the griffin.

Curran leaned out of the way, preternaturally fast. The left bolt whistled past his side and planted itself in the garage door. The right bolt bit into the griffin’s throat. The beast shrieked in outrage. A second man fired a crossbow over the hood of the truck. The bolt punched into the griffin’s chest. The great wings beat once, in a desperate attempt to launch the body off the ground, and went limp. The griffin sank to the pavement. Honey eyes shone at me for the last time and dimmed.

Did that just happen?

“Yeah, bitch!” the first man roared. “Yeah! Come at me!”

Curran spun around, his face terrible. He sprang at the man, grabbed him, and hurled him across the lawn.

His buddy in urban fatigue pants and a black T-shirt got the hell out from behind the truck, brandishing his crossbow. I moved at him, but my sword was securely hidden in the leather sheath on my back and Curran was bigger and scarier, so Camo Pants ignored me. “Hey! Hey, you let him—”

I kicked him in the gut. It was a low front kick that took him right above the groin. People overextended on these kicks, but the trick was not to kick. The trick was to lift your knee high and stomp. Camo Pants’ arms went toward his legs, and he went backward and slammed against the truck.

On the lawn, the loudmouth rolled into a crouch, his crossbow still in his hands. Curran started toward him. The loudmouth fired. Curran leaned out of the way just enough to let the bolt whistle past him and kept coming.

I yanked Camo Pants’ weapon out of his hand and threw it aside. He swung at me. I caught his wrist and twisted it, right and up. He went down on his knees and I kneed him in the face. He took a moment to come to terms with it, and I locked his elbow with my left hand and twisted, just in case he developed any interesting ideas.

The loudmouth swung his crossbow like a hammer. Curran caught it, jerked it out of the man’s hands, and broke it in half. The pieces of the crossbow went flying. Curran grabbed the man, pinning his arms to his body, and lifted him off his feet. The skin on Curran’s face crawled.

“No,” I called out.

Curran’s human features melted. Bones shifted as his jaws extended, growing thicker, stronger, his skull expanded, and gray fur sheathed his new face. The merc in his grip stared at the new monstrous face. The rest of Curran remained completely human. I never met a shapeshifter who could do a partial transformation the way he did. His control over his body was absolute.

The merc opened his mouth, wide eyes staring into the violent gold in Curran’s irises. “Mwa maah maaah . . .”

Curran unhinged his jaws. If he took that man’s head into his mouth and bit down, the merc’s skull would burst like an egg dropped on concrete.

“No,” I repeated.

“He’s gonna kill him,” Camo Pants wheezed. His eyes were watering. Being kneed in the face will do that.

Curran’s fangs emerged from his jaws, becoming longer and longer . . . I never realized how creepy it was to see teeth growing in real time. Here’s one for my nightmares.

“Curran, you can’t bite his face off.”

“Yes, I can,” Curran said in a monster voice.

“You shouldn’t.”

“He stole George’s car. And he shot me.”

“He missed.”

“He missed, because I’m fast and I moved out of the way. If I bite his head off, he won’t shoot me again.”

“He’s gonna kill him!” Camo Pants tried to pull out of my grip and I twisted his arm a little higher.

“If I need your help, I’ll ask you for it,” I told him. “Curran, please don’t bite his head off.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s illegal. Technically you assaulted him first when you threw him across the lawn.”

“I didn’t throw him very far.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I could’ve thrown him straight up and let him land on the pavement.”

“That would also be illegal.”

“You keep bringing this ‘illegal’ thing up as if it means something to me.”

I couldn’t tell if he was just scaring them or if he really intended to kill them.

“As a favor to me, please hold off.”

“Fine.” Curran loosened his grip slightly. “Want to add anything to this discussion?”

The big merc sucked in a hoarse breath. His face shook with the strain of making words come out. “. . . Fuck you!”

Oh, you dimwit.

“Fuck you!”

“Leroy!” Camo Pants barked.

“And fuck your bitch, too!” Leroy declared.

Curran looked at me. “How about now? Can I twist his head off now?”

“Still illegal,” I told him.

Curran squeezed Leroy’s shoulder. Bones groaned. Leroy clamped his mouth shut.

“Don’t!” Camo Pants yelled.

Since Curran was playing with Leroy, this knucklehead had to be Mac. “Don’t worry about him. Worry about me. What did you do to Eduardo?”

“I don’t know any Eduardo!” Mac wheezed.

I twisted his arm a fraction more. He cried out.

“I know your name is Mac. I know that’s your redneck cousin Leroy. I know you’re in Eduardo’s territory, muscling in on his gig, and I know that you stole the FJ Cruiser from his fiancée. Look at me. Look at my eyes.”

Mac looked up at me. His face went white.

My voice was barely above a whisper, but I sank a lot of rage into it. “Eduardo is my friend. His fiancée is my friend. She is his sister.” I pointed at Curran. “Tell me everything you know or I’ll break your arm right here.” I tapped his shoulder. “Then I’ll keep breaking it here and here and here. No amount of medmagic and steel pins will fix it. It’ll never work right again and it will always hurt.”

Mac stared at me, his eyes glassy. Words came tumbling out. “We don’t know what happened to Eduardo. This was his gig, but the lady called this morning and said Eduardo didn’t show up yesterday. We took the one-armed chick’s car. We were going to do her man’s job anyway, and it’s a nice car, so we were just going to borrow it.”

“Lie better,” Curran said, his voice cold. “She came looking for Eduardo last night. You didn’t know you would be doing this job until you got a call today.”

Mac’s voice broke. “What the hell do you want from me, man? Yes, fine, we took the damn car! We took it! Do you know how much a double-engine car costs? It was just sitting right there. We figured if that dickhead didn’t come home, he was probably dead anyway. What the hell would his woman do with that car? She’s got one arm anyway. We needed a car, so we took it.”

And they would do it again. I could hear it in his voice. I’d met his type before. Some people had a moral code. It might not have matched the current laws, but it was still a code. Mac and Leroy’s code consisted of one sentence: do whatever helps Mac and Leroy. It didn’t matter who got hurt. It didn’t matter that a person they stole from would have to do without or could’ve been injured or killed. If George’s half-eaten corpse were discovered this morning because she was murdered while walking home, they wouldn’t feel bad about it. They would simply keep going.

If they killed Eduardo, it would have to be a shot to the head with a silver round from far away. There was no way they could’ve beaten him in a close and personal fight, and they knew it. And if they somehow managed it, they would’ve taken his car and his equipment and they would be wearing it, because they were too stupid to hide it.

I glanced at Curran. He shook his head slightly. Leroy didn’t smell like Eduardo’s blood.

“Do you know what the Guild does with mercs who steal equipment from other mercs?” I asked.

Mac shook his head.

“They fine them. Ten grand. Poaching in another merc’s zone is another ten grand. That’s forty grand between the two of you. Guess what I’m going to do when I go back to the Guild?”

“Nobody knows you,” Mac squeezed out.

“You’re wrong. Everybody knows me. I have nine years in.”

Mac’s face went slack.

“So you have a choice, Mac. You can take your idiot cousin and you can leave this city. Or you can go back and face the Guild and work overtime for them for the next five years or so. But we’ll be around and I promise you, I’ll make your life as hard as I can.”

I let go of his arm. Curran casually tossed Leroy on the pavement. Leroy landed on his ass, jumped up, and rushed at Curran. Curran let him get close and backhanded him, almost as an afterthought, the way one would swat a fly. The blow landed on Leroy’s ear. The big merc spun, stumbling. Mac caught him.

“Our gear is in the truck,” Mac said.

“You can pick it up at the Guild,” I told him.

“You’re a fucking bitch, you know that?” Mac said.

“I’ll have to live with myself.”

“This isn’t over!” Leroy jabbed his finger at Curran. He probably meant it to look aggressive, but he was swaying on his feet.

“Yes, it is,” Curran told him. “Go before I change my mind.”

The corpse of the wolf griffin shivered. Flesh bulged in the middle of it, like a bloody red tumor, growing bigger and bigger.

“What the hell?” Curran snarled.

“I don’t know.” I pulled Sarrat free.

The tumor ruptured.