I exhaled and set my shoulders.Okay…that means I get to question the dwarf. That’s great.
“Excuse me…Hoder. Did you recognize any of the werewolves who attacked you?” I took my cellphone out andopened up my notes app, recording Hoder’s name and reason for being in Magiford.
“Nope. I don’t recognize so much as a whisker.” Hoder casually slapped his potbelly.
“Do you have any idea why they attacked you?” I asked as the light on Brody’s cellphone flashed when he started to take pictures—of the street, the broken ornaments, etc.
“Well…” Hoder scratched his chin through his wild beard. “It might have something to do with who I am.”
I held my fingers poised over my cellphone. “…Yes?”
“I’m a bit of a craftsman—somewhat known for my forge work,” Hoder said. “They probably either wanted me to do a bit of work for ‘em—unlikely, werewolves aren’trefinedenough to use blades—or ransom me.”
“Ransom?” I repeated.
“Yeah. I get ransomed a fair bit,” Hoder said.
The casual way he said it shocked me. “A fair bit?” Apparently I had been reduced to echoing Hoder’s words.
Hoder nodded. “Yeah.”
I typed away on my cellphone, thoroughly confused.There must be something I’m missing.
Dwarves were their own type of supernatural—though they usually cloistered themselves among fae, who most appreciated their skills. I hadn’t learned much beyond that in my slayer schooling. No slayer had ever been offered or would accept a contract to take out a dwarf because of their specialized artisan status, so there wasn’t a point in learning about them.
“It’s because he’s a dwarf, Midnight Rations.” Considine skulked up to me and pressed his shoulder against mine. “Dwarves are well off and possess unique skills, but aren’t all that numerous or as powerful as, say, a dragon shifter. As such, they’re a common snatch target.”
“How dare you! We’re plenty powerful,” Hoder complained.
“You can’t crush an entire werewolf pack like a dragon shifter could just by turning into their dragon form,” Considine said.
Hoder’s shoulders hunched. “I can’t argue that…”
“I see.” I typed out Considine’s explanation on my cellphone, then twisted to look back at the werewolves. “You finished with the werewolves quickly—what?”
Three vampires I didn’t know were organizing the werewolves, securing them with duct tape—which I didn’t think was going to do much when the werewolves woke up—along with chains with links as thick as my wrist.
One of the vampires, a male with brown skin, black hair, and a tailored suit—a Drake vampire, obviously—was divvying out the chains, which looked like he had brought.
The other two vampires—a brown-haired female who had on a straw boater hat and a form fitting suit that was straight out of the 1910s, and a black-haired male who wore trousers and a slitted Manchu riding coat I recognized from my fashion history schooling—were kneeling among the werewolves, securing them.
I stiffened and almost automatically reached for my gun before I suspiciously turned to Considine. “I told you to handle the werewolves.”
“I am handling them,” Considine said. “I delegated.”
I looked from Considine to the vampires industriously hogtying the werewolves. “Youcommandedthem?”
Older, powerful vampires could issue commands on less powerful vampires, magically bending them to their will so they did what they were told, even if they didn’t want to.
If Considine issued a command, as old as he was, I wasn’t sure any vampire in the USA—besides the Ancient—was capable of refusing him.
“No, they’re not doing this under a command,” Considine said.
As if to demonstrate his point, the Drake vampire bent in a respectful nod to me.
“Then…how?” I asked.
“I asked,” Considine said. “Well…I commanded them to come here—there’s no other way to recruit them without getting them here first. But then I asked them, and they were all game.”
