Kate Daniels 02 - Magic Burns

snarling.
    â€œDerek, please. I know it smells weird, but I need your nose. Now. Please.”
    I coaxed him down the stairs. He gave the buggy a wide berth and looked at me.
    â€œCan you pick up Julie’s scent?”
    He put his nose to the ground and jerked back as if struck. He backed away, circled the buggy, circled wider, sniffed the ground, recoiled again, and whined.
    Too much wolfsbane. Red covered his scent well.
    A hushed moan emanated from the cart. Julie would have to wait, because Andrea couldn’t. At least I still carried the necklace. If I were right, the reeves would chase me instead of Julie. They were welcome to it. As pissed off as I was, I’d welcome an assault with open arms.
    â€œChange of plans. Take me to the hyenas. We don’t have much time. Please hurry.”
    Derek trotted down the street. I hopped into the driver’s seat and we were off. Slow enough to make me fight against the urge to grind my teeth, but we were off.
    All was not well in Atlanta. Magic sang through my bones as I piloted the cart through the rubble-framed streets as fast as the draft horse would allow. Strange things flew through the night sky, dark shapes blotting out the stars, gliding without sound. Twice we had to stop—first, to avoid a vampire patrol, four bloodsuckers in a diamond formation, and second to let a phantom translucent bear pass before us. The bear’s head was crowned with horns. It looked at the buggy with mournful eyes as rivulets of transparent fire cascaded down its back in a tangled waterfall, and ambled on its way, down the street.
    A ghost river ran parallel to the road, its water inky—black and dense like liquid tar. I tried to stay away from it. The things that howled and cried in the night stayed silent. Listening. Waiting. If by some miracle, the pulse of the city could be captured and played back, a single phrase would echo: “A flare is coming, a flare is coming, a flare is coming…”
    Andrea’s convulsions came faster now, every fifteen minutes or so. I knew when one gripped her because she let out a small pain-choked cry that made me wince.
    Finally we left the city behind, heading down the familiar road past the ruined industrial district and down the overgrown highway. The night expanded, the dark sky pierced with tiny lights of stars reaching impossibly high. The colors were muted; the shadows darkened; ordinary trees, so mundane and cheerful in the light of day, twisted into gnarled monsters lying in wait for their prey. This was the way to the Keep, the fortress where the Pack gathered in times of trouble.
    We passed an abandoned gas station, dark, its door missing, its windows broken. Small, gaunt creatures crawled along the windowsills and slunk in the doorway. Sickening yellow, like pus from an infected wound, they stared at us with glowing eyes and stretched their gnarled clawed hands in our direction, as if trying to rake us from a distance.
    Derek trotted down the road in that lazy wolf gait that ate up miles without effort. We reached the tree line. Massive oaks hugged the road, stretching to clasp at each other with their branches. Derek stopped, raised his head to the starry sky, and howled. His cry floated into the night, lingering, haunting, full of sorrow and chilling to the bone. Announcing us. He waited for a long moment, flickered his ears, and trotted down the overgrown road under the shroud of the trees. I followed.
    The buggy creaked, the beat of horse hooves steady and measured.
    An eerie cackle echoed through the night. A high-pitched, deranged sound, tight like a guitar string about to snap. Lithe shapes appeared, gliding through the brush on both sides. They ran upright, gray silhouettes in the gloom, too tall and too fast to be human.
    A shape leaped into the buggy and landed next to me. Red eyes shone in the dark like two stray sparks. A werehyena in half-form was a terrible thing to behold.
    â€œHi, pretty.” His monster mouth slurred the words.
    Ahead three hyenas, two in beast-form and one human, circled Derek, hooting and laughing in berserk glee.
    The male lunged at me. I twisted to the side, caught him in an armlock, and squeezed his throat, putting pressure on the artery. “I don’t want to play. Take me to Aunt B,” I said into the round ear.
    His clawed hands clasped my arm. “Mmm, hurts so good. Hurt me more.”
    God damn hyenas.
    Ahead Derek snapped at one of the