CHAPTER 3
The morning brought light and magic. I took a few extra minutes to decide what to wear. Not that it would make any difference, but I put on my pale blue shirt. It matched my eyes and looked nice. I put on my favorite jeans and looked at myself in the mirror.
Full-on makeup would be too much. I brushed some mascara on and styled my blond hair, which was doing its best to grow out of its shorter hairdo. Right after I got kicked out of the Order, I’d “frosted” the tips of my hair blue, but now the dye was all gone and I’d ended up with a head full of highlights instead.
Like a kid before the prom: gussying up and shaking with nerves. I crossed my arms and glared at myself in the mirror. Sniper, death, kill, tough, hooah. Okay, that was better.
Raphael always brought out a strange side of me. The wild side, the one that was knitted from pure emotions. That wild Andrea loved him completely and did irrational things, like sitting by the phone with her heart beating too fast, waiting for him to call, or running headfirst into danger against overwhelming odds to fight by his side. That wild Andrea once got arrested. We had gone away for a romantic retreat and while I left the hot tub in the courtyard of the hotel to use the bathroom, some floozy had attached herself to Raphael, not taking no for an answer. When I returned, instead of beating a swift retreat she suggested we should all have fun together. I had dunked her a couple of times. Unfortunately, I was pointing a gun at hotel security at the time, and the sheriff’s deputies showed up. Raphael ate it up. I was finally acting like a mated shapeshifter: irrational, possessive, and head over heels in love.
I didn’t know if that part of me was my hyena side or just that uncompromising fifteen-year-old girl that lives inside every woman, but now wasn’t the time to let her out. I had to stay rational, so I could apologize and try to mend things between me and Raphael.
Cutting Edge occupied a sturdy building on the northern edge of Atlanta, about an hour from the Keep. The Beast Lord, also known as Kate’s sugar woogums, had chosen the location, and he pretty much picked the closest place to the Keep that was still within city limits. Curran didn’t like to be without Kate and Kate didn’t like to be without Curran.
The door was unlocked. Great. I walked in. Ascanio looked up from his broom.
Despite having very few clients, Cutting Edge had an excess of employees, partially because Kate kept hiring them. According to her, Ascanio Ferara was an intern. In reality nobody with a drop of sense would hire him as an intern or anything else, except maybe as a traffic jam generator. If you stood him on a street corner, sooner or later some female driver would wreck.
Fifteen going on thirty, with glossy black hair and green eyes, Ascanio was beautiful. Not just pretty, not just attractive, beautiful. He had that whole fallen angel thing going—there was a devious, sly mind behind that innocent face and pretty eyes.
Like most male children of Clan Bouda, he was treasured and babied, more so because he was lost for most of his life and his mother had just found him a few months ago. In this short period he had gotten into every possible trouble imaginable, culminating with being arrested for having a threesome on the courthouse steps. The boy did not understand how the Pack worked, and finally Aunt B foisted him off on Kate. It was that or kill him. Kate’s solution was to make this raging ball of problems and hormones into our intern. How her mind worked, I would never understand. It was a mystery.
Ascanio snapped to attention and saluted me, holding the broom like a rifle.
I pointed at the broom. “No.”
“Why not?”
Because it would’ve made every ex-military instructor I ever had foam at the mouth. “You salute with your weapon as a sign of respect.”
He presented me with an expression of puzzled innocence. “I don’t have a rifle or a sword. The broom is my weapon.”
Smartass. “Kid, you make my head explode.”
“Ave, Andrea! Ianitori te salutant!”
Hail, Andrea, those who janitor salute you. Kate was forcing Ascanio and Julie, her ward, to learn Latin, because a lot of historical magical texts were written in it and apparently it was an essential part of their education. Since the lessons were conducted in the office during our copious spare time, I was learning the language along with them.
I pointed at Ascanio. “Not another word. Latin is a dead language, but that doesn’t mean you get to molest its corpse. Finish sweeping, ianitor.”
He spun the broom with the dexterity of a Marine on Silent Drill Platoon, planted the handle into the ground, jumped, spinning around it, his legs straight out, and landed on one knee, his head bowed, his right hand extended, holding the broom in his fist parallel to the floor.
“You had coffee this morning, didn’t you?”
He looked up at me and nodded, a big grin plastered on his face.
Teenage boudas. Enough said.
I sat down and tried my best to concentrate on going through my case. The survey of the evidence only confirmed what I had already realized last night: I didn’t find any smoking guns. Most of what I had picked up looked just like common trash, which didn’t necessarily mean it was trash. It was evidence, the significance of which wasn’t immediately apparent. I catalogued it anyway. Crimes were rarely cracked by the super-brilliant detectives in a blaze of intellectual glory. Most of them were solved by the patient and the meticulous grunts just like me.
The roar of a water engine–powered vehicle thundered outside of our door and died. Raphael. Had to be. Kate would have parked in the far corner of the parking lot on the side, because she had trouble backing out.
I pretended to be absorbed in my likely worthless evidence. I had spent the entire drive to the office trying to figure out what to say, how to say it. I wanted to explain why I had done things. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I had tried to prepare myself for the possibility that he would tell me off, but most of me hoped with a desperate naive hope that he would forgive me and we would go home together.
A knock sounded through our absurdly reinforced door.
“Periculo tuo ingredere!” Ascanio proclaimed.
What the hell did he just say? Ingredere…Enter…Enter at your own risk. “If it’s a client, I’ll shoot you,” I told him.
The door swung open. A new scent swirled around me, a heavy fragrance—rose, patchouli, and coriander—an expensive perfume. A tall woman stepped inside. She was close to six feet and her shimmering golden heels added another four inches to her height. Her hair, the color of luminous white gold, fell down over her shoulders past her butt. She wore a really short black dress or a long T-shirt, I couldn’t quite decide which. Whatever it was, it was cinched to her improbably narrow waist by a white belt with golden studs. Her face, pretty and painted with makeup to near perfection, had that slightly vapid expression sometimes seen on models: she was either sleepy, horny, or just badly needed to sneeze.
A dark figure stepped into the office behind her. Six foot three, lean, wearing a black leather jacket and faded jeans…He stepped into the light. Dark blue eyes looked at me and the world fell apart around us. His face, framed by soft black hair, wasn’t perfect in the way Ascanio’s was, but it was masculine and handsome, and his eyes communicated a kind of sexual intensity, a promise and a challenge, that made women lose all of their self-respect and try to proposition him in plain view of their dates. The familiar scent washed over me like a pain-filled perfume.
Raphael.
As if in a dream I saw him put his hand on the woman’s butt, gently pushing her toward the two chairs by my desk.
Oh sweet Jesus.
He replaced me.
He replaced me with a better version of me.
And he brought her to the office. To rub it in.
The planet snapped back into place with an agonizing crunch. I stood up, saw myself extend a hand, and heard myself say, “Good morning.”
“Rebecca.” The woman shook my hand.
I concentrated so I wouldn’t crush her finger bones into cartilage pancakes.
“I got your message,” Raphael said.
And I’ve got yours, loud and clear. Inside me, the other me, the one that grew claws and fangs, howled in helpless fury. She didn’t understand nuances. She understood only that the person who loved her and cared for her had betrayed her and now she hurt. He was mine. Mine! The other me screamed inside me, tearing at the walls to be let out.
I struggled to keep her in check, imposing logic over emotion. Moving on was one thing. Moving on I could understand. It would break my heart, but I would understand it. This was a giant “fuck you” spelled out in glowing letters.
I forced my mouth open. My voice sounded flat. “Please sit down.”
They sat. Behind them Ascanio stared at us, his jaw hanging down.
“Ascanio, would you mind getting our guests some coffee.”
“Black, please,” Raphael said, his voice pounding a sharp spike into me. “Cream and sugar separate.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” Rebecca informed us. “It stains your teeth.”
“Did you have any trouble with the cops?” I asked, my control so tight that if I let myself go a hair, I would snap.
He looked directly at me. “Just minor formalities. Did you have any trouble at the dig site?”
“None at all. Stefan helped me.”
“He’s a good man, Stefan.”
“Yes, he is. Who is your lovely associate?” I unleashed my best smile in Rebecca’s direction. Raphael leaned forward, sliding his left arm along the back of Rebecca’s chair, his body half turned to shield her. He recognized the smile—it was the kind that meant someone was about to get shot.
“I’m his fiancée,” Rebecca said.
Fiancée? Fiancée.
Raphael’s eyes widened a fraction. He hadn’t wanted me to know, but it was too late. She had let the cat out of the bag.
“How lovely,” I said, sweetness dripping from my voice. “I hadn’t heard the announcement.”
“We’re engaged to be engaged,” Rebecca said. “We’re waiting until the end of the physical year to officially announce.”
“You mean fiscal year?” Dear God, she was a moron.
“Yes, that’s what I meant.”
Raphael slid his hand over Rebecca’s fingers tipped with hot pink acrylic nails.
I closed my eyes for a long second. “Congratulations to the happy couple.”
“Thank you,” Rebecca said.
Raphael toyed with a lock of her hair.
That did it.
“I see you’ve upgraded to the deluxe model,” I said. “Must’ve set you back quite a bit.”
“Worth every penny,” he said.
“You always had expensive tastes.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged his muscular shoulders. “I’ve been known to slum on occasion.”
I will kill you. I will hurt you, you wretched bastard. “Be careful with that. Sometimes slumming can be dangerous for you.”
“I can take care of myself,” he said and winked at me.
“What are you talking about?” Rebecca asked.
“My car, doll.” Raphael picked up her hand.
No. No, he wouldn’t.
He kissed her fingers.
Every nerve in my body burst on fire.
“You seem like such a well-matched couple.” I smiled at them. “Physically and intellectually. Rebecca is so stunning.”
“Don’t forget loyal,” Raphael said. “And loving.”
So is a dog. “I’m sure your mother is simply delighted with you both.”
A muscle in Raphael’s face jerked. My goodness gracious, I’d hit a sore spot. Aunt B, his mother and the head of Clan Bouda, was a legend. Boudas were wild, and she ruled them with sweet smiles and razor-sharp claws. One look at Rebecca and Aunt B would have an instant apoplexy.
Raphael’s eyebrows furrowed. “My mother’s approval isn’t necessary.”
Aha. “Does she know that?”
Ascanio approached, carrying a coffee mug on a platter, with a small jar of sugar and a cup of cream.
“She is a terrible woman,” Rebecca said.
Ascanio froze.
I stared at Raphael. Are you going to let it slide? Honestly? Aunt B was his mother, but she was also his alpha, and Ascanio was a member of the clan.
Raphael leaned toward Rebecca, his voice intimate but firm like steel wrapped in velvet. “Sweetheart, never insult my mother in public.”
“She insults me. And you don’t do anything about it.”
Ascanio focused on Raphael, waiting for a cue. Aunt B ruled the clan, but Raphael was the male alpha.
Raphael leveled a warning stare at Rebecca, but it had no effect.
“She’s rude and spiteful—”
Ascanio picked up the jar of sugar and emptied it over Rebecca’s head. The white powder spilled over her hair and dress.
She gasped and jumped off the chair.
“Oh no!” I opened my eyes wide. “I’m so sorry. Teenage boys are such a clumsy lot.”
“Raf!”
Raf? What was he, her poodle?
“Why don’t you go outside and wait for me in the car,” Raphael said.
“But—”
“Go outside, Rebecca.”
She marched out of the office, pouting. Raphael’s eyes sparked with a deep ruby glow. He looked at Ascanio, as if deciding what he should do about him. The boy ducked his head and said nothing, his gaze firmly affixed to the floor.
Ascanio was a talented young shapeshifter, but I had fought beside Raphael. He could go through a room full of Ascanios in seconds and leave none of them alive.
“Ascanio,” I sunk so much quiet menace into the word, the boy froze, as if petrified. “Did your alpha look like he needed help?”
Ascanio’s voice was clipped. “No, ma’am.”
“Go outside and wait until I come to get you.”
“Outside. Stay in the back lot. Don’t speak to Rebecca.”
He clamped his jaw shut and took off. A moment later the back door closed.
Raphael had shattered my heart into tiny little shards and they were hurting me. Never in all of our time together had he so much as mentioned engagement. And now he had found a pretty, empty-headed idiot and he was going to marry her. Why her? What was she giving him that I hadn’t?
The answer came to me in a painful burst. She was there for him. I hadn’t been. I’d shut him out. I’d thought he would wait while I sorted myself out. My own damn fault.
I leaned forward, my voice steady. “Are you high?”
“What?”
“Did you smoke something before you decided it was a good idea to flaunt her in front of me? Maybe you ate some weird-looking mushrooms?”
He smiled at me. It was a brilliant Raphael grin, sharp like the edge of his knives.
“You know I could kill her before you could stop me.”
“No danger of that,” he said. “That would mean you’d act like a shapeshifter and we all know that’s not going to happen.”
Ouch. “My memory must be malfunctioning. I don’t remember your being this cruel.”
“People change,” he said. “Did you expect everyone to pause their lives while you were having your little pity party? Was I supposed to sit there and wait like a good boy, until you were ‘in a good place’?”
It hurt so much, I was beginning to go numb. “I didn’t bar my door. My phone still worked. If you wanted to get in touch, you could have.”
“Please! You think I have no pride? I loved you, I cared for you, I offered you a place in the Pack beside me, and you betrayed everything that was important to me. How did that turn out for you, Andrea? Was it worth it?”
I winced. “No. It wasn’t.”
“My door wasn’t barred either.”
He had saved it all up since the night we’d fought. Now everything was coming out.
“You betrayed me, you let the Order treat you like shit, and then you hid in your apartment. That wasn’t the Andrea I knew. I thought I could count on you. I thought you had my back.” His face was a furious mask. “I would’ve done anything for you.”
I would have done anything for him, too. If it had been him in that Wolf House, I would’ve run there so fast, the entire Order wouldn’t have been able to stop me. My other self was howling in my ears, loud, so, so loud…
“You spat on everything I am. You picked the knights over my people, which means you picked your precious Order over me.”
I was shaking, straining to contain myself. My body struggled to counteract the stress, betraying me.
“Anything to say?”
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“Too little, too late. I’m tired of waiting for you to stop running away from who you are. You want to know what the best thing about Rebecca is?”
His eyes were pure ruby and they burned. I was hanging on by a thread.
“She isn’t you.”
My humanity tore and the other me spilled out.
Raphael stared at me, suddenly silent.
The shreds of my clothes fluttered around me. I had this curious feeling that I was watching it all from some point above my head. My arms still rested on the table, but now soft sandy fur with a scattering of brown spots covered the hard muscle. I knew what my face looked like: a meld of human and hyena, with a dark muzzle and my blue, human eyes above it.
Most shapeshifters had two shapes, human and animal. The more talented of us could maintain a warrior form, halfway between animal and beast. I didn’t have an animal form. There were only two choices: my human self and my other me, neither human nor hyena, but an odd creature in between. I was beastkin. My father had started his life as a hyena, caught the Lyc-V virus, and turned into a human. For that, other shapeshifters hated me and some tried to kill me on sight.
I examined myself sitting there. I’d held back for so long. I’d been good for so long. I always did as expected. I followed rules and regulations. Look where it got me. Being good hurt.
“I didn’t mean that,” Raphael said.
Why had I wasted all my time pretending to be someone I wasn’t? I was tired, so very, very tired of standing on my own brakes. I felt…right. I felt free. I hadn’t felt like this since I’d lost control and slapped Aunt B. She had backhanded me right down two flights of stairs, but it was worth it. It was so worth it.
What did I have to lose anyway?
I took a deep breath and let the old good Andrea go. Magic coursed through me, making me stronger, sharper. Scents filled my nose, stole through my mouth, and expanded my lungs.
“Andrea?”
I tilted my head and looked at him. He’d brought another woman into my office. Whatever made him think I would stand for that?
I opened my mouth and showed him my sharp teeth. Most shapeshifters couldn’t speak in a half form, but then I wasn’t most shapeshifters.
“You meant every word. I told you I was sorry. I took responsibility for my actions. It is over now.”
My voice was deeper, permeated with the rough notes of a growl.
“This office is my territory. If you bring your woman here again, I’ll consider it a challenge.”
He leaned forward, inhaling my scent. His upper lip trembled, betraying a flash of his teeth. “Been studying the Pack’s Law?”
I laughed and heard an eerie hyena cackle in my voice. “I don’t have to study. I know all the laws.”
“Then you know you can’t attack a human.”
“Who said anything about attacking a human? If you bring her here again, it will be your fault. I’ll beat your ass and not even your mommy will be able to stop me.”
Raphael leaned closer, his eyes glowing. “Promises, promises, honey.”
I snapped my teeth at him. “I’m not your honey. Your honey is out in the parking lot.”
The beginnings of a snarl reverberated in his throat, but his eyes were puzzled. He wasn’t sure what to make of me.
I wanted to bite something. I wanted to rend and carve things with my claws and get rid of my hurt. I wanted him to leave. But if he left, we would have to do it again. I still had a job to do. This sonovabitch would not keep me from it. I would get the information I needed and I would not let him bother me any further.
I picked up the pen with my clawed hand. “I find your scent disturbing. Let’s finish this up so I can air the place out and get you and your girl candy out of my life. The Blue Heron building. How did you buy it?”
He stared at me.
“We have four dead people. Your people. Do try to keep up.”
Raphael leaned back, studying me. “It was a sealed bid auction.”
“Were there any other buyers?”
“Yes. It was a very valuable building.”
“Do you know who they were?” A sealed bid auction meant that each of the participants submitted a confidential bid for the building, but Raphael would’ve done his homework and researched other buyers to know how much to bid against them.
“I can give you the top three,” he said.
“I’m all ears.”
“Bell Recovery. Kyle Bell has been in the business for a long time. He does decent work, but he’s expensive and slow. I can usually underbid him.”
I wrote it down. “What’s your relationship with him?”
Raphael shrugged. “We don’t like each other.”
“Was he bitter that you outbid him?”
“Kyle exists in a state of bitter.”
“In your opinion, would he stoop to murder?”
Raphael shook his head. “No. Kyle makes a lot of noise and stomps around. He might get his people to rough someone up, but he wouldn’t get into anything that required outside help, like magic snakes. He doesn’t trust anyone.”
So Stefan had already told him about my visit. “Got it. Next.”
“Then there is Jack Anapa of Input Enterprises.” Raphael leaned forward, resting his forearm on the table. His scent was scraping against me like fine-grain sandpaper. “Anapa is an ass. He has mountains of money and he plays with it.”
I squinted at him. “Don’t like him much?”
Raphael grimaced. “He dabbles. He dabbled in construction, he dabbled in shipping, now he’s dabbling in reclamation. He’ll get bored and move on; for him it’s a game. For us it’s business.”
“Was he upset at losing the bid?”
“Initially he won it, but his permits weren’t filed properly, so they went to me as the second-highest bidder. A skyscraper has a lot of mercury. It’s in the thermostats. When a building crashes, mercury drips to the bottom. Before you can reclaim a building, you have to prove to the city—”
“That you’re qualified to safely remove it,” I finished. “I remember.” I was with Raphael once when he filed for permits. “Would you say Anapa is capable of murder?”
“Yes. But I don’t think he’d murder my people. He doesn’t seem to have the motivation. I was there when he lost the bid. He was looking over some papers his assistant shoved under his nose. He waved his hand and said, ‘Yes, yes. C’est la vie.’ Oh, and he invited me to his birthday bash before he left.”
Interesting. “The third bidder?”
“Garcia Construction. I’ve known the Garcias for a long time. They were in business for about ten years before I started. It’s a family-operated business. They mostly took medium-sized reclamation jobs and didn’t get very ambitious until about two years ago, when Ellis took over the company from his father. They went big real fast, too fast, and bought rights to a huge apartment complex.” Raphael grimaced again. “It was a monster of a building. I wouldn’t have taken it.”
“Too expensive?”
“Not too expensive to buy, but too expensive to reclaim. The way it fell, you’d have to shift a ton of rubble before you got to anything decent. Too many man-hours. Ellis started it that May and last February the Garcias were still digging in it when a section of it collapsed. Killed seven workers. Apparently Ellis had sunk all his resources into the building and let the insurance lapse. The insurance companies hate us. The premiums are through the roof. The Garcias did the right thing and paid out the death benefits anyway, out of their own pocket. The company was finished after that.”
“So how can they afford to bid on Blue Heron?” I asked.
“Word is, they got a substantial investment. This was their comeback attempt. They are decent, hardworking people, Andrea. They wouldn’t kill my crew.”
“Somebody did, Raphael. What about the seller?”
“The city of Atlanta.”
That was a dead end for sure. “Did you know about the vault?”
“No.” He scowled. “Rianna, one of the guards, just had her baby three months ago. It was her second day back on the job. Nick is her husband. You remember Nick Moreau?”
“Nick the carpenter? The one that redid our, no, I’m sorry, your kitchen?”
Raphael nodded. “Yes.”
I remembered Nick. He’d cracked jokes while he had installed the cabinets and showed me a picture of his wife and told me she was the most wonderful woman on Earth. He’d said they were trying to have a baby and if it was a boy, they would name him Rory, and if it was a girl, they would name her Rory, too.
Raphael had teased him that they were setting the baby up to be made fun of, to which Nick had pointed his hammer at Raphael and told him that if he wanted to name babies, he would just have to make some of his own.
“Was it a girl?” I asked quietly. “Baby Rory?”
“It’s a boy,” Raphael said.
And now his mother was dead. I would get those bastards. I would find them and make them pay.
I got up. “Thank you for your cooperation. We’re done. I’ll inform you when I have a lead.” This interview is over. Get the hell out of my office and out of my life.
“Do that.”
Raphael rose and left.
Work was the only thing I had left. Everything else was gone now. I would find the murderers. I would find them if it was the last thing I did. I had to do it to prevent them from killing anyone else, to offer their victims vengeance and solace, and most of all I had to do it to prove to myself that I was still worth something.
I pulled out a phone book and tracked down the three addresses of the bidders.
His scent was still here. I snarled at it, but it refused to vanish.
Hurt and frustration bubbled in me. I was keyed up too high, my skin was on too tight, and I wanted to shoot something just to vent all the pain boiling up inside.
So Raphael had replaced me with a seven-foot-tall dimwit, so what? Good riddance. I was better off on my own.
The back door opened with a faint creak. Ascanio walked into the office and froze.
“What?” I asked.
He opened his mouth, his eyes wide.
“Speak!”
“Breasts,” he said.
Female shapeshifters didn’t have breasts in warrior form. There was no need for them. They were either flat-chested or sported rows of teats. I had breasts. They were covered with fur, but they were recognizable adult female boobs.
“It’s not your first time seeing a pair, is it?”
“Um. No.”
“Then do act like you’ve been around the block before.”
Ascanio closed his mouth with a click.
“Don’t test Raphael,” I told him. “If you do, he’ll cut you into itsy-bitsy pieces and leave them in a pretty pile on the floor.” I decided I liked my beastkin voice. It was deeper, more powerful, and sounded better. In an attractive female monster kind of way.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He gave me a look suffused with teenage arrogance. “I think he might find it difficult.”
“No, he won’t. We once fought a dog the size of a two-story house. Raphael ripped one of its heads off.”
Ascanio blinked. “One?”
“It had three.” I got up and pulled a change of clothes from my bag. My other me was about twenty-five percent larger, but my long-sleeved T-shirt had a lot of stretch in it. I pulled it on and put on my pants. They were more like capris now and they were tight on my calves. “I’m going out.”
“Like that?”
I pulled out my knife and sliced the hems of my pants. Much better. “Who’s going to stop me?”
“But you’re…not in human shape.”
Yes, and I was sick of being ashamed of who I was. I looked at him for a long moment. “If I change back into a human, I’ll need a nap. I don’t have time for naps. If someone has a problem with the way I look, fuck them.”
“Uhh…”
“And stop looking so scandalized. I covered my boobs, didn’t I?”
“But I still know they’re there. I saw them.”
“Treasure the memory.” I grabbed my bag off the table.
Ascanio jumped in front of the door. “Can I come with you?”
“No.”
He fluttered his eyelashes at me. “I’ll be very quiet.”
“No.”
“Andrea, I’m sick of being stuck here by myself. Please, please, please, can I come with you? I’ll be good.”
He’d been cooped up in the office for the last few weeks, at first because he was injured, then because he wasn’t and we wanted to keep him that way.
“I’m going to look for a murderer. If you come with me, you’ll get hurt when we run into trouble on the way. And then I will have to have a very unpleasant conversation with Aunt B, which will go like this: ‘You won’t join Clan Bouda, you broke up with my son, and you let that sweet precious boy get hurt.’”
Ascanio picked up my desk with one hand and held it four feet off the ground.
“It’s not your muscle I’m concerned about. It’s your brains. Or lack thereof.”
He set the table down. “Please, Andrea.”
He was going stir-crazy and doing broom drills. I could relate. I’d been there.
“Can you drive?” If I put my seat all the way back, I’d fit into the Jeep, but driving with my size-twelve feet and three-inch claws would be a challenge.
“Do the People navigate vampires? Of course I can drive.”
“Alright.”
He jumped three feet in the air.
“Now, while you’re with me, you will be acting as a representative of our firm. That means you will be respectful and polite. If some jerk calls you an asshole, you’ll call him sir. Even if you have to throw him on the ground and break his legs, you will still call him sir while doing it. You follow my lead and you follow my orders. That means not taking the initiative and starting fights without my express command. Do you get me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Excellent. Go get your knife.”
He ran into the supply room and came out with a tactical bowie knife in a sheath on his belt. The bowie, a “Mercenary Guild” model, boasted a sixteen-inch black blade and weighed almost two pounds. You could chop small trees down with it. It would be sufficient.
“Let’s go.”
He hesitated. “Carrie and Deb are in our parking lot. I saw them from the window.”
I went to the back and carefully glanced out of the window. Two boudas waited for us by my Jeep. The one on the left, Carrie, a tall Italian-looking woman in her mid-forties with dark shoulder-length hair, leaned against the vehicle, her hands in the pockets of her jeans. Olive-skinned, Carrie had a kind of raw-boned hardness about her that said you’d have to rip her arms off before she’d stop coming after you. Deb, her buddy, was about ten years younger, looked softer, rounder in the face, and stood two inches shorter. Her red hair, cut in a fluffy carefree bob, flared about her tan face. Her brown eyes brimmed with humor. She cracked up easily and usually went for the gut in a fight.
Aunt B used them for light enforcement jobs. That old bitch was at it again. Aunt B and I never saw eye to eye. She’d helped me once during the flare, when the magic made me lose control over my body, but that was the only moment of kindness I had ever seen from her.
“What are you two doing here?” I murmured to myself.
“Maybe they have some pamphlets that will save our souls and make sure we’re right with the Lord,” Ascanio said.
“Did those nice church ladies come by again?”
He nodded. “I asked them if a man died and then the woman remarried, and the three of them met in heaven, would it be a sin for them to have a threesome, since they were all married in God’s eyes. And then they decided they were late to be somewhere else.”
A little bit of knowledge was a very dangerous thing.
In the parking lot, Deb crossed her arms and kicked a tiny rock. It flew out of our view like it had been shot from a cannon. Deb watched it go, winced, and hid behind the Jeep. Carrie shook her head.
Any shapeshifter in the Pack’s territory had three days to present themselves to the Pack, at which point they would either obtain a visitor’s permit, allowing them to carry out their business; they would petition to join the Pack; or they would be asked to leave. While I was in the Order, Aunt B made no move to bring me into the fold. I thought she didn’t want to cause a problem with the knights. I discovered I was wrong—she left me alone because Raphael had a thing for me and then we became an item. The moment we had a falling out, she came after me like a shark.
Aunt B wanted me to play ball, join Clan Bouda, and be one of her girls. I’d been in a bouda clan once. No thanks.
“We could go out the front door,” Ascanio said.
They thought they could intimidate me. Well, they should have brought a lot more people, because I was done doing things by the book. “Hell, no. We’re going out the back. Whatever happens, you stay out of it or I will never take you with me anywhere.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I marched out through the back door.
The boudas took me in, fur and all. Their eyes widened.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going like that?” Carrie asked.
Wrong thing to say. Wrong, wrong thing to say. “Wherever the hell I please.”
“I don’t get it.” Carrie shook her head. “Are you trying to provoke Aunt B? What, your life’s too nice and you need some misery?”
I grinned at them. See the teeth? Take note, you’ll see them up close if you’re not careful. “Can I help you, ladies?”
“Sure,” Carrie said. “You can tell us what the meeting between you and Raphael was about.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because Aunt B wants to know,” Deb said.
They must’ve tried to listen in, but before Kate got this office, the same Jim who put me on this case had remodeled it. I didn’t know what he put into the walls, but the place was shapeshifter soundproof.
“Aunt B’s tailing her own son now?” I asked.
“That’s none of your business,” Carrie said. “Look, we can go with Plan A, where we all have a nice chat and go our separate ways, or we can do Plan B, where we have a more vigorous chat and tune you up a bit until you feel like sharing. Either way, Aunt B will get what she wants.”
“How about Plan C?” I asked.
“What plan would that be?” Deb asked.
“The one where you go fuck yourselves.” A snarl crept into my voice. “You come here to my territory and you think you can push me around? Well, come on. Push. See what it will get you.”
Deb blinked.
“Fuck you, you stupid bitch,” Carrie growled. “You want a lesson, I’ll give you one.”
Carrie’s body flowed, snapping into a new shape: half-person, half-animal, wrapped in sparse, sandy fur. Thick ropes of muscle corded her massive neck, supporting her round head with giant jaws and a forest of sharp fangs soaked in drool. The muscle continued to knot between her shoulder blades, forming a hump. Colossal biceps powered her arms, the network of veins bulging through her hide. Her feet and hands bore three-inch claws that would shred flesh like a knife cut through a ripe fruit. She looked like the stuff nightmares were made of. If you didn’t know any better.
I took a couple of steps forward, so I’d have plenty of room to maneuver. My furry me was proportionate: my limbs were properly formed, my jaws fit together into a neat muzzle, and although my hands and feet were oversized and armed with claws, my fingers weren’t misshapen. Maintaining this form came effortlessly to me. But Carrie was a regular shapeshifter and her warrior form was on the shaky side. Her jumbo biceps bulged from her too-long arms, limiting her movement, while her short legs barely had enough meat to support her top-heavy frame. She hunched over, because her spine fit into her pelvis at an angle, and no effective kicks would be coming my way. She didn’t specialize in combat, which meant she’d fight just like any other civilian shapeshifter: claws, teeth, nothing fancy. Good enough to tear most normal humans into pieces.
Next to her Deb raised her arms. No warrior form, but she was good at boxing.
Carrie’s eyes stared at me, shining with ruby light. She outweighed me by a hundred pounds. She thought the fight was in the bag.
Inside my head, Michelle’s squeaky voice mocked from the depth of my memories, “Hit her again, Candy. Hit that beastkin bitch. She deserves it.”
Never again.
Carrie charged me. She thundered across the pavement and lunged at me, swiping with her right arm diagonally and down, trying to gash my chest open. I leaned back. Her claws sliced through the air, an inch from my chest. I caught her wrist, yanked her massive arm straight and smashed the heel of my hand into the back of her elbow. The cartilage crunched, the joint popped, dislocated, and her arm bent the wrong way, its elbow inside out. Carrie howled and dropped to one knee, her right leg bent, her left almost flat on the ground. I stomped on that weak calf. I sank all the power of my hip and butt muscle into it. Like getting hit with a jackhammer. The leg didn’t stand a chance. Carrie screamed as the bone broke.
Deb bladed her body, standing sideways, trying to present less of a target. Her hands were up, curled into fists.
I took a step, spun, and hammered a roundhouse to the back of her thigh. My shin smashed into her leg. Her knee bent, her thigh suddenly powerless. She gasped, dropping her guard, and I turned, swinging into the punch, and landed a haymaker to the side of her head.
The blow took her off her feet. She flew, rolling, and smashed into the stone wall bordering the parking lot.
That’s right. No shapeshifter would ever beat on me again while I curled into a ball on the ground. Especially not a bouda.
Carrie sprawled facedown on the pavement, out cold. The pain must’ve been too much and Lyc-V had shut her down while it made repairs. Deb moaned weakly by the wall. Ascanio still stood by the door, his eyes opened wide, his face glazed over with shock and something suspiciously resembling admiration.
I walked over to Deb, grabbed her hair, and pulled her face up. She stared at me, her eyes terrified.
“Now you listen to me,” I said. “You tell the clan that I’ll come to see Aunt B when I’m damn good and ready. And if I catch any of you at my place of business or near my apartment, you will regret it.”
I let go of her and straightened. “Ascanio! I need that motor running.”
He ran to the Jeep and began to chant. Fifteen minutes later we drove out of the parking lot. As we turned, I saw Deb pick herself up and stagger over to Carrie. For better or worse, she would deliver my message. I was sure of it.