“Kyle Bell is either really ballsy or really stupid. Probably both.”
“Why?” Ascanio asked.
“Because doing any sort of reclamation at the Glass Menagerie is suicidal. Especially with the magic up. It’s also illegal. And now we have to drive through the Burnout to get there. I hate the Burnout. It’s depressing.”
We got back into our Jeep.
“Take the right, then another right. We need to get on Hollowell Parkway and make a left there.”
“What’s the Glass Menagerie?” Ascanio asked, steering the Jeep out of the parking lot.
As far as I knew the Glass Menagerie was off-limits to adventurous Pack persons below eighteen. For a good reason, too. “You’ll see.”
As the road climbed north, the landscape changed. The ruins of warehouses and the greenery remained behind. Around us old husks of burned-out houses crouched, accented by an occasional spot of green.
Being stuck holding the fort at the Order left me with a lot of free time, so I had read guidebooks and familiarized myself with the city maps. In my spare time I’d jogged through random Atlanta neighborhoods on the off chance I might have to visit them in my professional capacity. My guidebooks mentioned that years ago a devastating fire had swept through the western section of Atlanta, taking out the older residential neighborhoods north of 402. The fire had burned with an intense, unnatural orange and raged for almost a week despite heavy rains and many attempts to put it out. When it was finally over, the land had lost its ability to support plant life. In other parts of Atlanta, any spot of clear ground was immediately claimed by vegetation that grew like it was on steroids. The Burnout remained weed-free for a decade. The plants were finally coming back—kudzu draped a crumbling wall here and there and bright yellow dandelions and crimson bloody dandies, the dandelion’s magic-altered cousins, poked out between the fallen bricks.
A few months ago, during Indian summer, Raphael and I had a picnic under a giant oak in a field outside the city. I had always wanted to have one of those movie picnics with a red-and-white checkered cloth and a wicker basket. We ate take-out fried chicken, washed it down with root beer and cream soda, and lay about on our tablecloth. I had picked a bunch of dandelions and bloody dandies and made two flower crowns.
It seemed so stupid now. What the hell did I do that for? Like some besotted silly ten-year-old.
“Why didn’t you just fight Rebecca?” Ascanio asked. “You’d win.”
“Of course I would win. Even if she spat frag grenades and sweated bullets, I’d win. She’s a human. I’m a shapeshifter with ten years of combat experience and some of the best martial education you can get.”
“In nature you have to fight off your competition.”
In nature, huh? I’d heard that one before. “In nature, hyena cubs are born with open eyes and a full set of teeth. They start fighting from the moment they come out of their mother. They dig tunnels in the den, too small for adults to get through, and they fight there. About a quarter of them don’t grow up. So if this was nature and you were a twin, you’d have to murder your newborn sister or brother. Should we dump all of the bouda babies into a playpen and let them starve until they start killing each other?”
Ascanio frowned. “Well, no…”
“Why not? It’s natural selection. Just like nature.” I wrinkled my nose. “Boudas love this argument, because it gives them an excuse to do all the wrong things. ‘I’m sorry I screwed your sister and got my penis stuck in your German shepherd. It’s in my nature. I just couldn’t help myself.’”
Ascanio snorted.
“Don’t be that guy,” I told him. “It’s bullshit reasoning. We are not animals. We are people. And a good thing too, because it wasn’t hyenas who conquered the world. And yes, I know it’s ironic as hell, given that I’m all fur and claws right this second, but the human part of me is still in the driver’s seat. We all know what happens when the animal side starts running the show.”
“We go loup,” Ascanio said.
“Exactly.”
Loupism was a constant threat. It claimed fifteen percent of shapeshifter children, some at birth, some in adolescence, forcing the Pack to humanely terminate them. For boudas, the number was even higher—almost a quarter. Both of Raphael’s brothers had gone loup and Aunt B had had to kill them. That’s why any surviving adolescent in the bouda clan was treated like a treasure.
If I ever had babies with Ra…The thought twisted in me like a knife in the wound. There would be no little bouda babies. No Raphael. That door slammed shut and I needed to put him out of my mind. In this life you’re lucky if you get one shot at happiness, and I had missed mine. The fact that it was a joint screwup just hurt more.
Water under the bridge.
“But she is stupid,” Ascanio said. “She insulted Aunt B!”
“And for that we should rip her throat out?” I glanced at him.
“Well, no.”
“Suppose I did beat the snot out of her. What would it accomplish? In nature animals fight to demonstrate superiority. The more powerful you are, the better your genetic material is. Stronger animal, stronger babies, a better chance of survival for the species. Raphael already knows I’m a better fighter and he chose her over me anyway. That’s a lesson for you—when you get a chance to be happy, you take it and you treat the other person the way they deserve to be treated. Don’t take things for granted.”
Giving advice was easy. Living by it was much harder.
We took a right at the fork, heading farther north. The charred houses continued. To the right, a large sign nailed to an old telephone post shouted DANGER in huge red letters. Underneath in crisp black letters was written:
IM-1: Infectious Magic Area
Do Not Enter
Authorized Personnel Only
A second smaller sign under the first one, written on a piece of plastic with permanent marker, read:
Keep out, stupid.
“We aren’t going to keep out, are we?” Ascanio asked.
“No.”
“Awesome.”
We rolled by another blackened home. To the left a large blue-green shard protruded from the ground at an angle. To the right, by the metal carcass of a fire-stripped truck, another sliver, pale blue, waited to bloody someone’s ankle. The first signs of the Menagerie.
Here and there more shards punctured the soil, and in the distance, far to the right, a jagged iceberg rose at a steep angle twenty feet high, glowing with translucent green and blue in the morning sun.