Gunmetal Magic(21)

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.