Free Transcendent by Lesley Livingston Page B

taken from the Weather Room, were white with tension and she shifted nervously from foot to foot. Mason could totally sympathize. She remembered how she’d felt on that afternoon with Fennrys, at the Boat Basin Café, waiting for a boatload of draugr to attack.
    Scared shitless .
    She vividly recalled the suddenly overcast day, thick fog on the Hudson River rolling in, bringing with it fire and steel and chaos. Monsters in boats, monsters in the water, monsters in the sky . . .
    Wait a minute .
    Something twigged in the back of Mason’s brain.
    Right. Now I remember. . . .
    The café. That’s where she’d seen the Harpies before. Winged, shadowy shapes falling from the sky like meteorites during the chaos of that attack, they had swooped down from out of the roiling storm clouds and torn through the ranks of the undead Norse warriors, helping to even the odds.
    â€œWait!” Mason strode forward, ignoring Toby as he glanced sideways at her from under a raised eyebrow. She lifted her voice and spoke directly to the Harpy perched on the statue, thinking that maybe there was a way they could talk themselves out of this situation without having to resort to fighting. “You helped us once before—”
    â€œMason . . .” Rafe’s voice held a note of warning.
    Heeding that much at least, Mason stopped walking and spoke to the ancient Egyptian werewolf god over her shoulder without taking her eyes off the ancient Greek bird-womangoddess in front of her. “They killed a bunch of draugr when Fennrys and I were attacked down at the Boat Basin,” she explained. “We might not have made it out of there alive if they hadn’t.”
    â€œHuh,” Toby grunted, unconsciously flipping the carbon-bladed knife he handled so expertly over and over in his hand, like a magician’s prop. “So that’s what happened. News reports were pretty confused about that whole thing.”
    â€œUh. Yeah.” Mason grimaced, remembering. “It was kind of chaos. Mostly screaming and running. Any way . . .” She turned back to the Harpy. “You must see that we’re not your enemies, then, right? We really haven’t stolen anything away from you. And you did help us—”
    â€œ Help you?” The Harpy threw her head back, shrieking with laughter that sounded like fingernails down a chalkboard. “Little Chooser, we did not help you. We will not help you. We merely understand that wherever you go, carrion is sure to follow.”
    â€œWhat?” Mason backed off a step, startled.
    â€œYou fill our bellies nicely.” The creature smirked, oozing cruel sardonic amusement. “For that . . . we thank you in abundance!”
    The Harpy smacked her thin lips. Suddenly Mason thought she might be physically ill. Was that what she was? A walking train wreck? A disaster waiting to happen, leaving a feast for Harpies in her wake?
    â€œStow it, Aello.” Toby snorted in disdain, pulling Mason out of her horrified mental tailspin. “Mason’s not your mealticket and this isn’t ancient Thrace. Stuff yourselves full of all the draugr you want. Hell, I think we even left a couple of centaur corpses a few blocks over—bon appétit—but heed me. You and your sisters don’t get a free pass to belly up to the Manhattan mortal buffet. Not while I’m here to say otherwise.”
    He glanced around at the rest of his companions and his eyes momentarily locked with Mason’s. His gaze, she suddenly realized, was filled with what seemed like thousands of years of dealing with this kind of situation. She was struck by the fact that she’d never noticed that weight of experience there before. But then he winked at her and turned back to the Harpy.
    â€œNot while any of us is,” he said.
    â€œYou’re a consort of war, old man.” Aello’s face twisted into a grotesque sneer. “And