Gunmetal Magic

In the parking lot, Deb crossed her arms and kicked a tiny rock. It flew out of our view like it had been shot from a cannon. Deb watched it go, winced, and hid behind the Jeep. Carrie shook her head.

Any shapeshifter in the Pack’s territory had three days to present themselves to the Pack, at which point they would either obtain a visitor’s permit, allowing them to carry out their business; they would petition to join the Pack; or they would be asked to leave. While I was in the Order, Aunt B made no move to bring me into the fold. I thought she didn’t want to cause a problem with the knights. I discovered I was wrong—she left me alone because Raphael had a thing for me and then we became an item. The moment we had a falling out, she came after me like a shark.

Aunt B wanted me to play ball, join Clan Bouda, and be one of her girls. I’d been in a bouda clan once. No thanks.

“We could go out the front door,” Ascanio said.

They thought they could intimidate me. Well, they should have brought a lot more people, because I was done doing things by the book. “Hell, no. We’re going out the back. Whatever happens, you stay out of it or I will never take you with me anywhere.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I marched out through the back door.

The boudas took me in, fur and all. Their eyes widened.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going like that?” Carrie asked.

Wrong thing to say. Wrong, wrong thing to say. “Wherever the hell I please.”

“I don’t get it.” Carrie shook her head. “Are you trying to provoke Aunt B? What, your life’s too nice and you need some misery?”

I grinned at them. See the teeth? Take note, you’ll see them up close if you’re not careful. “Can I help you, ladies?”

“Sure,” Carrie said. “You can tell us what the meeting between you and Raphael was about.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because Aunt B wants to know,” Deb said.

They must’ve tried to listen in, but before Kate got this office, the same Jim who put me on this case had remodeled it. I didn’t know what he put into the walls, but the place was shapeshifter soundproof.

“Aunt B’s tailing her own son now?” I asked.

“That’s none of your business,” Carrie said. “Look, we can go with Plan A, where we all have a nice chat and go our separate ways, or we can do Plan B, where we have a more vigorous chat and tune you up a bit until you feel like sharing. Either way, Aunt B will get what she wants.”

“How about Plan C?” I asked.

“What plan would that be?” Deb asked.

“The one where you go fuck yourselves.” A snarl crept into my voice. “You come here to my territory and you think you can push me around? Well, come on. Push. See what it will get you.”

Deb blinked.

“Fuck you, you stupid bitch,” Carrie growled. “You want a lesson, I’ll give you one.”

Carrie’s body flowed, snapping into a new shape: half-person, half-animal, wrapped in sparse, sandy fur. Thick ropes of muscle corded her massive neck, supporting her round head with giant jaws and a forest of sharp fangs soaked in drool. The muscle continued to knot between her shoulder blades, forming a hump. Colossal biceps powered her arms, the network of veins bulging through her hide. Her feet and hands bore three-inch claws that would shred flesh like a knife cut through a ripe fruit. She looked like the stuff nightmares were made of. If you didn’t know any better.

I took a couple of steps forward, so I’d have plenty of room to maneuver. My furry me was proportionate: my limbs were properly formed, my jaws fit together into a neat muzzle, and although my hands and feet were oversized and armed with claws, my fingers weren’t misshapen. Maintaining this form came effortlessly to me. But Carrie was a regular shapeshifter and her warrior form was on the shaky side. Her jumbo biceps bulged from her too-long arms, limiting her movement, while her short legs barely had enough meat to support her top-heavy frame. She hunched over, because her spine fit into her pelvis at an angle, and no effective kicks would be coming my way. She didn’t specialize in combat, which meant she’d fight just like any other civilian shapeshifter: claws, teeth, nothing fancy. Good enough to tear most normal humans into pieces.

Next to her Deb raised her arms. No warrior form, but she was good at boxing.

Carrie’s eyes stared at me, shining with ruby light. She outweighed me by a hundred pounds. She thought the fight was in the bag.

Inside my head, Michelle’s squeaky voice mocked from the depth of my memories, “Hit her again, Candy. Hit that beastkin bitch. She deserves it.”

Never again.

Carrie charged me. She thundered across the pavement and lunged at me, swiping with her right arm diagonally and down, trying to gash my chest open. I leaned back. Her claws sliced through the air, an inch from my chest. I caught her wrist, yanked her massive arm straight and smashed the heel of my hand into the back of her elbow. The cartilage crunched, the joint popped, dislocated, and her arm bent the wrong way, its elbow inside out. Carrie howled and dropped to one knee, her right leg bent, her left almost flat on the ground. I stomped on that weak calf. I sank all the power of my hip and butt muscle into it. Like getting hit with a jackhammer. The leg didn’t stand a chance. Carrie screamed as the bone broke.

Deb bladed her body, standing sideways, trying to present less of a target. Her hands were up, curled into fists.

I took a step, spun, and hammered a roundhouse to the back of her thigh. My shin smashed into her leg. Her knee bent, her thigh suddenly powerless. She gasped, dropping her guard, and I turned, swinging into the punch, and landed a haymaker to the side of her head.

The blow took her off her feet. She flew, rolling, and smashed into the stone wall bordering the parking lot.

That’s right. No shapeshifter would ever beat on me again while I curled into a ball on the ground. Especially not a bouda.

Carrie sprawled facedown on the pavement, out cold. The pain must’ve been too much and Lyc-V had shut her down while it made repairs. Deb moaned weakly by the wall. Ascanio still stood by the door, his eyes opened wide, his face glazed over with shock and something suspiciously resembling admiration.

I walked over to Deb, grabbed her hair, and pulled her face up. She stared at me, her eyes terrified.

“Now you listen to me,” I said. “You tell the clan that I’ll come to see Aunt B when I’m damn good and ready. And if I catch any of you at my place of business or near my apartment, you will regret it.”

I let go of her and straightened. “Ascanio! I need that motor running.”

He ran to the Jeep and began to chant. Fifteen minutes later we drove out of the parking lot. As we turned, I saw Deb pick herself up and stagger over to Carrie. For better or worse, she would deliver my message. I was sure of it.

CHAPTER 4

Bell Recovery was headquartered in a sturdy brick building on the edge of a large industrial yard on the southwest side of Atlanta, all ugly ruins surrounded by bright green growth. Nature waged a relentless assault on the city. People burned it and cut it, and still it came back, fed by magic and growing faster than ever.

Ascanio parked and didn’t bother shutting off the engine. It would take too much chanting to start it back up and considering the Pack’s paw stenciled on its door and the fact that I exited it flashing my claws and teeth, there wouldn’t be anyone dumb enough to try to steal it.

Ascanio and I marched through the front doors.

A harried receptionist raised her head from the papers on her desk and jumped a little in her seat. She was middle-aged and her hair had been dyed an unnaturally red color.

“Good morning,” I said, smiling.

She pushed her chair as far back as it would go.

“We’re here on behalf of the Pack to chat with Kyle Bell.”

“He’s on site,” the receptionist said. Her eyes told me she would answer any question just to get us out of her office.

“Where would that be?”

She swallowed. “The east end of Inman Yard.”

You don’t say. “At the Glass Menagerie?”

The receptionist nodded. “Yes.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, ma’am.”

We headed back out to our Jeep.

“Kyle Bell is either really ballsy or really stupid. Probably both.”

“Why?” Ascanio asked.

“Because doing any sort of reclamation at the Glass Menagerie is suicidal. Especially with the magic up. It’s also illegal. And now we have to drive through the Burnout to get there. I hate the Burnout. It’s depressing.”

We got back into our Jeep.

“Take the right, then another right. We need to get on Hollowell Parkway and make a left there.”

“What’s the Glass Menagerie?” Ascanio asked, steering the Jeep out of the parking lot.

As far as I knew the Glass Menagerie was off-limits to adventurous Pack persons below eighteen. For a good reason, too. “You’ll see.”

As the road climbed north, the landscape changed. The ruins of warehouses and the greenery remained behind. Around us old husks of burned-out houses crouched, accented by an occasional spot of green.

Being stuck holding the fort at the Order left me with a lot of free time, so I had read guidebooks and familiarized myself with the city maps. In my spare time I’d jogged through random Atlanta neighborhoods on the off chance I might have to visit them in my professional capacity. My guidebooks mentioned that years ago a devastating fire had swept through the western section of Atlanta, taking out the older residential neighborhoods north of 402. The fire had burned with an intense, unnatural orange and raged for almost a week despite heavy rains and many attempts to put it out. When it was finally over, the land had lost its ability to support plant life. In other parts of Atlanta, any spot of clear ground was immediately claimed by vegetation that grew like it was on steroids. The Burnout remained weed-free for a decade. The plants were finally coming back—kudzu draped a crumbling wall here and there and bright yellow dandelions and crimson bloody dandies, the dandelion’s magic-altered cousins, poked out between the fallen bricks.