Magic Shifts Read online

  “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 groun
d, 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.