A beige woman’s shoe with a high heel lay on the ground midway up the driveway. A little farther on, a matching beige purse lay on the lawn. Mrs. Oswald must’ve come out, seen something that alarmed her, and run back inside, dropping her purse and her shoe. Whatever she saw scared her so much, she just left her things sitting there.

I rolled my window down. Curran did the same.

“I don’t smell any blood,” he said.

No blood was odd. If this was the house, Leroy and Mac should’ve gotten here by now. They’d left almost an hour before us. The street was empty. Where the hell were those idiots?

“Eduardo’s scent is here too, but old and faint. I do smell something odd. Smells like a wolf.”

“A wolf?”

He nodded. “With a touch of bittersweet scent to it.”

From what the mercs had said, the creature threatening Ms. Oswald’s cats had wings. A wolf with wings? Russian mythology included a wolf with wings, and a prominent volhv, a Russian pagan priest, had one as a pet. I really hoped the Russians weren’t involved. Dealing with volhves meant dealing with witches, and claiming Atlanta had not endeared me to them in the least.

We sat quietly.

Minutes dragged by.

A high-pitched shriek rang from the sky above. It started on a high note, a forlorn mourning cry, and built on itself, growing harsher and sharper until it shredded the air like a high-velocity crossbow bolt. A dark shape swooped from the sky and rammed the bars. The steel grate shuddered from the impact. For a moment I thought it would fall out of the brickwork, but the bars held.

The creature fell to the ground, landing on all fours. Gray fur covered its lean body, sheathing its flanks and long lupine tail. Its legs terminated in furry, owl-like feet armed with sickle-shaped talons the size of my fingers. Two massive wings spread from its shoulders. The beast turned toward us. An eaglelike head crowned its powerful neck, complete with a dark beak the size of a hatchet.

“Kate?” Curran asked.

“It’s a wolf griffin,” I murmured. “Lion griffins come from Crete and Greece. This guy is from North Africa. They are mentioned in Berber folklore. Something about a giant bird and a wolf mating.”

“Anything I need to know?” Curran asked me. “Does it spit fire?”

I’d run across a wolf griffin only once. “Not that I know of. The one I encountered before didn’t, but I can’t guarantee this one doesn’t.”

The wolf griffin ducked its head and fixed us with an unblinking predatory stare. It was at least forty inches at the shoulder.

“Do we take care of it or do we wait?” I wondered.