And when is more appropriate to celebrate our beasts than Halloween?”
Oh, just wonderful. Halloween was just next Tuesday… and this was Friday night. This was literally a Halloween party. Every werekin in the Atlanta metro region was probably here tonight, and I’d wandered straight into it.
Lord Buckhead released the fighters, and they slunk away. The stag looked back once or twice, but Lord Buckhead did not acknowledge him. Buckhead just stared up at the end of the hall, to a raised platform, and even though he had a stag’s head I could tell he was glaring.
“But what is this?” the voice said, and I swallowed as the crowd parted to reveal the massive shape looming on the platform. “What have you brought before us tonight?”
A huge chair welded from parts of cars made the throne for a massive man-bear easily nine feet tall. The long claws of his “hands” curled over the working headlights of an old Cadillac. The engine and grille had been removed to make room for a huge bench seat groaning beneath the weight of two hairy, brawny legs. The hood had been flipped up into a backrest for his hyperdeveloped chest and shoulders, which were covered in a shaggy mane that would have made a lion proud. And atop his massive neck loomed a head that looked like it could have swallowed me whole, with two glowing green eyes fixed straight upon me.
“My name is Dakota Frost,” I said, voice ringing out in a silence that was unexpected. “I travel under the protection of the court of the Lady Saffron and the ban of the Lord Delancaster, but I come here to see the Marquis on business of my own.”
“I think Lord Buckhead was supposed to introduce you,” Calaphase said under his breath—and I noticed he’d moved quite a few steps back, with Transomnia skulking behind him like a wayward child.
“Ooops,” I said, turning back to face the Bear King. At least, I assumed it was the Bear King; hopefully there weren’t two of these monstrosities floating around.
A wolf lying at the monster’s feet snarled something, and the Bear King snarled back so deep it reverberated in my gut. “We have a human in our court,” he spat. “If you have not learned to use a human voice in that shape, don’t talk to me.”
The wolf ran off, snarling and whining, and the Bear King leaned back, seeming to become even larger against his oversized throne. He waved a hand at the throng. “We care not for vampire politics,” he said, eyes boring into me. “Tell me, why have you dared to interrupt our Halloween revels, little one?”
“Little,” I snapped, stalking forward. The vampires hung back as I walked forward through the predominantly werewolf crowd, climbed the steps of his throne and stopped straight in front of him. The huge beast’s jowls were only a few feet from mine.
“Little,” I said, projecting my voice, turning around to face the throng. On one level, I was scared out of my wits; on another, the only way I could get through this was to brazen my way through. “I can’t tell you how good it is to hear a man call me ‘little’!”
The bear leaned closer. “Are you challenging me, little one?”
“Good heavens, no,” I said, waving my hand to indicate his legion of followers. “You get plus three, plus three to attack as long as seven or more cards are in play.”
The Bear King froze for a moment, befuddled; I guess he didn’t play Magic: The Gathering. Then he laughed, a long, hearty laugh that sounded jarringly human coming from his monstrous face. “Very well, little one, tell us what was so urgent that it could not wait?”
“I’m doing a tattoo for a werewolf,” I said, “and he wants it done before the full moon.”
The bear head stared at me, then laughed uproariously, the whole crowd laughing and howling with him. “Oh, I very much doubt that.”
“A werewolf wants her to do a tattoo,” a female voice cried, and I saw the girl who had challenged me hanging on to one of her boys and pointing at me. I blew her a kiss, and quicker than a magic trick, she was hiding behind her friends. Satisfied, I refocused on the bear.
“Marquis, this one is no threat to you,” the Bear King said. “Approach without fear.”
I turned, and saw a man with a raised brown Wolverine haircut and long brocaded coat step cautiously out from one of the