“Perfect, perfect,” he said, smiling as he hit send. “Just the look I want.”
He leaned back and showed the picture to the hooded figure, who nodded.
“You have a great eye,” the figure said. “As always, you truly are an artist.”
“Thank you,” Transomnia said, with a small bow. He winked at me as he bent down, and I looked away again. “Don’t fret, little one,” he said, reaching down to tousle what was left of my hair, making me flinch, and him giggle. “It will all be over in—”
And then what had been the service door of the Masquerade exploded, showering Hell with shards of corrugated metal and sparks.
“Oh, if only help would arrive!” Transomnia said, grinning. “That was fast—”
“At last,” the hooded figure said, reaching out and pulling a staff into his hands with nothing more than the force of his will. “At last. He’s here.”
Lord Buckhead stood in the shattered door in his man-stag form, North Avenue behind him. His huge antlers cut through the upper ridge of the doorway like a hot metal knives as he strode under it. The matching antlers on his staff began to crackle with power, and the feathered skull between them glowed with a warm, green light.
His alien eyes swept over Transomnia, over me, and his brow wrinkled with rage. But then he saw the hooded figure beside me, his eyes widened, his forward charge halted, and his deer’s mouth opened. “The Archmage.”
The figure beside me tensed slightly, drawing in a breath. I expected some kind of banter, some kind of taunt; but the two figures just stared at each other.
Then Buck snorted and he swaggered into the room. I knew that look. I owned that look. It was bravado. Half of me felt flooded with relief that even Lord Buckhead resorted to bravado when facing a serial killer—and the rest of me was batshit terrified.
“You should never have come here,” Buckhead’s deep voice boomed. He extended his arms, and a small army of coyotes, hawks and smaller creatures began slipping through the door behind him. “I do not permit necromantic rites in my domain.”
“You don’t permit?” the ‘Archmage’ asked. Casually he swept his silver dagger across my right forearm, and I cried out in pain. He jammed the bloody blade into a socket in his staff, just beneath its skull and crossbones, and it began to glow a deep, ominous red. “I’d wager you didn’t permit skyscrapers in your domain, but humans built them anyway.”
“I do not begrudge the humans their hives,” Buckhead said.
“Really? How… magnanimous of you,” the Archmage said, and I could hear a glimmer of genuine appreciation. Then the glimmer turned to sarcasm. “And wise. One should never begrudge the success of those one is too weak to stop.”
Buckhead snorted and stepped forward, onto a design I could now see inscribed on the stage of Hell, and I panicked. “Buckhead,” I croaked. “It’s a trap—“
Transomnia rapped me sharply on the head, but the Archmage pushed him aside. “Give me some distance, lad,” he muttered. “For this to work it must be one on one—”
“Fear not, Dakota,” Buckhead said, striding into the hall with his hunt assembling around him. “Obviously it’s a trap. I expected this, and will deal with this pathetic wizard.”
“Pathetic?” the Archmage said. His voice, which at first had been cautious even when taunting Buckhead, now became openly mocking. “This from you, Looord of the Hunt, who once had the mammoth at your beck and call, now reduced to coyotes!”
“They serve,” Buckhead said.
“They serve,” the Archmage said, spreading his arms wide as Buckhead advanced upon him. “See how well they serve—facing my animal, the Wolf!”
A low guttural growl rippled through the room, like the tail end of a clap of thunder, and Buckhead and all his hunt paused.
I raised my head.
Wulf prowled into the room—eyes golden, and muzzle stained with blood.
41. HOUR OF THE WULF
“Oh, no,” I moaned, as Wulf entered the room, big as a tiger, teeth stained red, snarling, driving Lord Buckhead’s hunt backwards slowly. “It’s not true. It isn’t true—”
“Of course it’s true,” the Archmage said genially. “Why do you think he was so keen to have you ink a control charm? He tried so hard to maintain control, so hard, but things kept… happening. He didn’t know—I didn’t let him—but obviously he needed more control.”
The Archmage rapped his staff against the floor, and dozens of concentric lines of light glowed through Wulf’s fur.