Page 136 of Hoofin’ It

Laughing, I flipped her a salute. “When else has he said nice things to me?”

“Every time you kneecap him, Shane.”

“True.” I grinned at Ernesto. “Stop flirting with me. Marian doesn’t like it.”

“I’m beginning to think your parents are right. You truly are an awful child. You were put on this Earth to punish us, weren’t you?”

“He can punish me anytime he wants,” Marian chirped.

Could I get away with stealing her, finding somewhere nice and private, and skipping the battle altogether? I could think of a lot of things I’d love to do with her. I pointed at her and smiled. “I’ll remember that.”

“I think he’s almost as enthusiastic as you,” Bai Bao Chen said, sidestepping and bumping her hindquarters against Fang Jaihao Yi’s. “New love. It’s a precious thing, isn’t it?”

“As long as they engage in their new love somewhere other than on my back,” the kirin stallion replied.

Now that was a thought. I’d never considered trying anything like that on horseback. Could it be done?

“I don’t like that look, Shane. Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.”

Bai Bao Chen laughed. “We will wait a few minutes for the others to exit the caverns, then we will follow. Since you lack the ability to camouflage yourselves, we will use our magic. It is part illusion, part misdirection. They will mistake us for horses, because they don’t believe creatures like us exist. The more imaginative ones will see us for what we are, but even if they told the tale, who would believe them?”

Not many, and I nodded my agreement with her wisdom. “Do we know where O’Conners is?”

Ernesto growled. “Not far from the scene of the crime. He watches, hoping one of you will show up. He missed Marian coming down the spillway, which was luck more than anything else, but I’ve seen him several times since the attack. I worry he’ll try for Pierina next.”

“That would be the last thing he did in this life,” I muttered. “She’s almost as dangerous as you are.”

“You flatter me, dear boy. She eclipses me daily. Daughters are amazing creatures, and she’s more amazing than most.”

“And my parents?”

“Waiting for O’Conners to be lured out. We’ll strike in front of my daughter’s restaurant. Quinton, you and I shall flush him out, and once we have him, we’ll tear him apart. Don’t toy with him. Make him dead. We’ll get our satisfaction mutilating the body. Corpses can’t hurt us. Since he’s likely bound to Ricci, we’ll want to make certain he can’t be raised. I wouldn’t want him to become one of us.”

I agreed. “Violent in life, violent in unlife?”

“There’s no knowing what he’d become, but there’s no doubting who his master would be—Ricci. If Ricci has drunk from O’Conners many times, we may hurt him when we make our move.” Ernesto’s tone and grim smile told me that was exactly what the vampire hoped for. “I don’t know which one of you O’Conners will go after first. He may try to take Marian and leave you for another day, dear boy.”

“Over my dead body.”

“That’s what he wants, so let’s avoid that.”

Scowling because he was right, I reined in my fraying temper. “Okay. So what do you want me to do if he tries to take Marian?”

“Shoot him, of course. In the head. Multiple times. Splatter his brains all over the sidewalk. The kirin don’t care if their food touches the floor, so don’t be shy. Make a mess.”

“Mhmm,” Bai Bao Chen agreed. “Brains. I like them scrambled.”

Riding a kirin turned out more pleasant than I expected. Bai Bao Chen’s stride rolled, and made keeping my seat easy, allowing me to instruct Marian on how to ride without worrying she’d fall from Fang Jaihao Yi’s back. We reached the spillway in thirty minutes, but instead of the impenetrable darkness I expected, I was able to see the outline of the stones and the concrete, although I couldn’t make out any details.

From what I could tell, the spillway, rather than being simply a slope for water or a slide for unfortunate sentients swept beyond the grate, truly was a mad scientist’s architectural nightmare consisting of bumps, curves, twists, and in several spots, a loop-de-loop.

I thanked my lucky stars I had missed the loop-de-loops my first trip down the demented slide; it’d been bad enough with Quinton.

Marian made a distressed sound, and with a gentle pressure of my leg, Bai Bao Chen stepped closer to her stallion, allowing me to reach over and take her hand. “It’s all right.”

“It’s so dark,” she whispered.

I frowned at the fear in her voice and the tightness of her grip. “It won’t be too hard to get to the top, not with the kirin helping, for which I’m truly grateful.”