Ingrid slid down off the opposite side of Rudolph and came up under his massive chest. With her hand that didn’t hold her knife, she felt the sleek hide, gauging where a dead reindeer’s heart must be. She peered out from underneath, at Nicholas. “Ah, but I have a dagger made out of silver bullets.”
“No!” The old vampire’s cry seemed truly anguished, but then his eyes turned sly again. “Even that won’t do you any good. I can’t leave without Rudolph. He guides my sleigh tonight.”
“You have plenty of horsepower without him.”
She moved the silver dagger closer to the reindeer’s chest.
“All right, all right, but I want him back!”
“I’ll let him go when I know you’re far enough away.”
“And how will you know that, little werewolf?”
In a mocking voice, Ingrid sang, “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way . . .”
“He left us!” Pasha cried, in astonishment, as they watched the sleigh fly off.
Briefly, the whole sleigh—minus its lead reindeer—was silhouetted against the full moon. And then it disappeared into the Milky Way.
“He left us in Africa!” Serge screamed, and then he started stamping his own feet, just as the remaining reindeer had done before taking off. “What are we supposed to do in Africa?”
“You can be useful,” Ingrid told them.
She slid down off Rudolph and gave him a mighty slap on his rump.
The great beast started running down the dirt road, and in only a few yards, he was airborne.
“Useful?” Pasha said it as if it were a bad taste in his mouth.
“Come on, boys,” she encouraged them, as she donned her clothing again. “Someday, you’ll thank me.”
Before she showed them the better way, she got down on her haunches to say both hello and goodbye to her family. There was whimpering on both sides, from her and from them. There were licks and nuzzles, sniffing and pawing, but none of them lingered, not Ingrid, and not the dogs. For her, it was too painful to go through a farewell a second time. For them, there was hunting to do, to compensate for the loss of the splendid feast they had missed.
When she rose to her feet, Ingrid slapped off the dust.
She didn’t glance behind her to see the dogs go, but she could hear them, could feel the pounding they made on the earth. If she looked, she thought her heart might break again.
“Follow me.” She started to walk but then stopped. “No, on second thought, I’ll follow you. Go that way.”
When they got back to where her gun was buried, she used her cell phone to call her assistant. “Damian. Yes, I’m fine. No, I didn’t locate them. What do you know about the poachers?” She listened for a few moments, then said, “Come get me.”
Under the full moon, she pointed the vampire cousins toward the south.
“Keep walking. In about twenty-five miles, you’ll come upon a band of soldiers. Paramilitary. They’re awful people. They force young boys to join them. They rape women, cut off limbs, kill everything in their path. Last month, they murdered a lowland gorilla. They’re all yours, boys.”
“Twenty-five myiles?” Pasha whined.
“To a smorgasbyord,” Ingrid reminded him, with a wicked smile.
When she could barely see the vampires in the distance, her assistant screeched to an angry stop beside her. Ingrid opened the door of the jeep, climbed in. Her face still held a remnant of the smile she had given the vampires. When her assistant got a glimpse of it, he caught his breath. Her face reminded him of how wolves looked after they had triumphed in a hunt and kill.
Damian, having nursed grievances all night and having intended to complain about them, felt the hairs rise on the backs of his arms. Instead of speaking, he shut his mouth, and drove home.
“Let’s be Santa Helpers,” Serge mocked bitterly as they trudged in the darkness. “Let’s go join up with dear old Santa Claus and get ourselves a lifetime’s supply of blood bank.”
“Okay, so maybe my plan didn’t work out perfectly.”
“Perfectly! How about not at all?! How about nearly getting us killed by wild dogs and a werewolf, not to mention the world’s oldest vampire?”
Their supernatural vision picked out a campfire in the distance.
“I think,” Pasha said, soothingly, “that this night is not over yet.”
“It better not be. I’m starved.” As the cousins started to run, covering yards where humans could have covered only inches, Serge turned his pale, handsome, hungry face toward Pasha and yelled into the African night, “And don’t you ever try to talk to me about the Easter Bunny!”
At the campfire, hearing something strange, men reached for guns that were not armed with silver bullets.
Rogue Elements
Karen Chance
Karen Chance grew up in Orlando, Florida, the home of make-believe, which probably explains a lot. She has since resided in France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, and New Orleans, mostly goofing off but occasionally teaching history. She is currently back in Florida, courtesy of Katrina, where she writes full-time in between dodging hurricanes (and occasionally drinking a few). Her USA Today and New York Times bestselling Cassandra Palmer series has recently spawned a spinoff, Midnight’s Daughter, following the adventures of dhampir Dorina Basarab.
“There’s no such thing as a half werewolf,” I said, trying not to growl. I’d been dreading this conversation for six months. It figured my boss would wait until now to bring it up. Way to ruin my Christmas Eve.
Gil looked at me impatiently, his bald head reflecting the office fluorescents. The same shiny dome and lack of humor could be seen in the painting behind him: Reginald Saunders, the newly elected leader of the Silver Circle of light magic users. He was the magical community’s version of a president, only without the pesky term limits. Gil was his older brother, and head of the Vegas branch of the War Mage Corps, the Circle’s version of a police force. It was my luck to get transferred from a nice, nondescript department in Jersey to one where any screwup would be all too obvious.
“Your mother was a Were, Lia. House Lobizón.”
“Clan Lobizón. And my mother was a human with a disease.” God, I got tired of trying to get that simple idea through thick skulls. “Lycanthropy isn’t a genetic trait, like eye color. It isn’t passed on to children—”
“Except when it is.” Gil regarded me narrowly, as if expecting claws to show themselves at any second.
It was the usual reaction. Dad was a de Croissets, from an old magical family with a tradition of service in the Corps. To counteract my human surname, my mother called me Accalia, meaning she-wolf in Latin. The combination was enough to get me a double take anywhere in the magical world.
“I’m a war mage, Gil,” I said after a pause. My therapist had suggested deep breathing for my occasional anger management issues. So far, I hadn’t seen a lot of improvement. Of course, working with Gil probably had something to do with that. “How many Weres do you know with magical ability?”
“None. But I know it has happened. They don’t die after being bitten, like vamps, and therefore don’t lose their magic.” He gave me a not-so-nice grin. “I looked it up.”
“I’m not a Were!”
“My point is that your connection to those . . . people . . . makes you perfect for this job.”
His tone made it clear that for “people” he’d just as soon have substituted “animals.” I seriously considered turning and walking out of the office. One reason I didn’t was the certainty that another incident of “insubordination,” as my superiors called anything other than unquestioning obedience, and I was out the door permanently. A second was the photograph of the girl staring up at me from the corner of his desk.