I heard the pained “Oof” of air leaving a body behind me.
Make that four down, four left.
The two female werewolves who’d been trying to hold the dwarf—each wolf yanking on an arm—gaped at me with…surprise?
“The task force?” one said. “She said no one would patrol downtown at this time.” The talking werewolf was wearing a hoodie, so I grabbed her by the hood and smashed her head against her friend’s.
Both wolves let go of the dwarf as they groaned in pain. I sheathed my dagger, then yanked both of my cuffs off my belt, cuffing the werewolves with their arms behind their back. When they recovered enough to growl and fight me, I kicked the backs of their knees so they fell face first onto the sidewalk.
Two left…
Behind me, a shrill, pained scream and another thud meant Considine had taken care of another werewolf, so there was one werewolf remaining.
“You broke my ornaments!” the dwarf roared before he picked up his crate of shattered ornaments and flung it at the last werewolf’s face, sending him crashing to the sidewalk.
And that’s the last one.
I scanned the area, confirming all eight wolves were down as Brody, still holding the radio, finally caught up.
“That was something,” Brody said as he looked from me to Considine, who dragged an unconscious werewolf by the collar of his shirt and tossed him on top of the pile he was creating.
The werewolf on the bottom of the pile was conscious and groaned with the added weight. “How could this happen? We paid for reassurance!”
Considine put his dagger away. “Do you know what he’s moaning about?”
“No,” I said. “Though one werewolf mentioned a she. We’ll have to question them.”
“So I won’t cancel the call for backup, got it,” Brody said.
I nodded, then turned to the dwarf, who was grumbling under his breath as he brushed himself off and returned order to his thick jacket. “Are you injured, sir?”
“No, no, I’m fine. But my ornaments!” The dwarf shook his head. “I came to Magiford just for these!”
“You don’t live here?” I asked. I was firmly in my work mode, so the words came to me more easily than if I were attempting small talk.
“No, no—I’m Hoder son of Hodr, from Iowa.”
Brody fished his handcuffs off his belt and started cuffing some of the unconscious werewolves. “You said you came to Magiford for…ornaments?”
“It’s an annual trip,” the dwarf said. “I hit up the German Christmas market in Chicago and Milwaukee, then hit up a couple of smaller events.”
“Why?” Brody asked, bewildered.
Hoder made a face—at least I think he did. It was hard to tell with his beard. “Trust a wolf not to see art when he lives among it. Human craftsmen do the cleverest things with glass blown ornaments!”
I stepped back to stand shoulder to shoulder with Considine while Brody kept the dwarf engaged. “I’m going to attempt to question him to find out what motives a bunch of werewolves would have to jump him. Could you secure the werewolves?”
Considine twisted at the waist to look back at the pile of half cuffed werewolves we’d created. “You want me to knock them out again?”
“No,” I said. “Cuff them together—get them tied up somehow. The goal is to immobilize them so they can’t run when they wake up.”
Considine tilted his head. “Understood.”
I turned back to Brody and the dwarf. The dwarf was mournfully poking the brightly colored, broken remnants of his ornament haul while Brody fiddled with his cellphone.
“Question, or record?” I asked.
“I’ll record and take pictures.” Brody waggled his phone. “Got the app all open and everything. Blood.” Brody snapped off my nickname and saluted me as if the more-than-a-little-hurtful nickname was a title and not an unfortunate byproduct of me being a feared vampire slayer.
