Cuddles reared and tossed her head. The vamp slid on the glass and she dragged him left.

“Whoa . . .”

She dragged him right.

“Come on!”

Cuddles kept turning and rearing, her huge body going up and down, jerking the undead to and fro like a cheerleader with a pompom.

“Oh, you idiot,” the female vamp snickered in Jeff’s voice.

I saw the precise moment Cuddles realized that something was behind her and that something was the same unnatural thing that clung to her reins. Her eyes went big, and she planted her front legs down and kicked. The female vampire flew about twenty feet and smashed into a glass iceberg. Ouch.

The male vamp finally let go, fell, and slid down the glass. Cuddles backed up and braced herself. The male vamp rolled to his feet and gathered itself for a leap.

“Stop!” Jeff moved the female vampire between Leonard’s undead and the donkey.

“I’m going to kill that dumb animal.”

If he touched my donkey, I’d take his vamp apart.

“No, you’re not. It belongs to someone and if you harm it, we’ll have to pay restitution. I don’t feel like having my paycheck docked.”

“The bitch kicked us!” Leonard snarled.

“You put your hands on her. She was defending herself. Come on, the damage is minor. We’ll feed them tonight and nobody will be the wiser. But if some hick shows up claiming we injured his donkey, there will be an inquiry. Ghastek’s walking around like he’s ready to explode. I don’t want to be in his blast area.”

Leonard’s vamp twisted his face into a horrifying grimace.

“We need to move on anyway,” Jeff said. “In five minutes Rowena’s going to come down that hallway for check-in. I don’t want to explain to her that we’ve been playing with what may or may not be a giant donkey instead of sweeping the perimeter.”

The male vamp shook its head and circled around Cuddles, and the two undead took off into the glass labyrinth. We lay still for another five minutes, until they were a mile and a half away.

“I take back what I said about the donkey,” Ascanio said. “She’s awesome.”

I wished Curran could’ve seen this. He’d die laughing.

My heart stuttered for a beat. I slid down the glass, caught myself with my feet, and went to give Cuddles a carrot.

6