Bad, Dad, and Dangerous

by Rhys Ford

  Five

  “WHAT THE hell did you hit him with? A brick? He’s out like a light,” Levi complained loudly as they maneuvered the cop’s limp body up the stairs to his apartment’s front room. “He’s snoring!”

  “Just my fist,” Kawika shot back. “I didn’t have anything else. I only came back there to toss out the other bag. Didn’t know you were trying to get a date.”

  The kahuna was easily holding up his end of the cop, hefting the man with a firm grip under his armpits. Levi tried to reason he’d gotten the wiggly end. Having to hold ankles and limp legs up on an incline was never going to be easy, but he was also smart enough to realize Kawika could probably have carried both him and the cop up the narrow stairs under his arms, but the journey wouldn’t be a pleasant one.

  Mostly because the stairwell was tight, and they’d already banged the unconscious man’s head against the rail twice just getting him past the security door.

  As stupid as it was, the cop was still as smoking hot passed out as he was when he’d been sitting in the corner of St. Con’s, studiously avoiding Levi’s occasional glance. There was a lot more power in his long body than Levi first guessed—thick muscles now slack beneath his worn jeans. Those jeans weren’t on tight enough, because after a couple of tugs on the man’s ankles, they settled down on his hips, leaving a bit of his flat belly and hips exposed.

  It was that stretch of golden skin with a peek of pale beneath it that drove Levi nuts. The guy obviously was in good shape. His body was sleek, but the contrast between the tan and light gold got Levi to wondering what type of shorts he wore while swimming and if the light swirl of brown hair trailing down from his belly continued on to dust his thighs as well.

  He appeared younger than he looked from across the pub, but that probably could have been due to the fact he was passed out. His relaxed features still held their strong, slightly off-kilter beauty, but the softness of his pout gave the cop a vulnerability Levi didn’t think actually existed. He’d seen the fierceness on the guy’s face as he stared down a much-too-large coyote, his gun trained on the threat despite the wildness in his eyes. There’d been surprise there, but despite what was obviously a shocking situation, he’d stepped in to protect Levi.

  Only to discover Levi wasn’t anyone who needed protection.

  “Eh, take it easy. No push,” Kawika scolded. “I gotta watch for the top of the stairs.”

  “How the hell can I push up?” he groused back, looking up at the huge man, the entire length of the cop slumped between them. “I am just trying not to drop him. Son of a bitch is like a noodle.”

  “Okay, that’s the last step, so watch when you come up.” The kahuna frowned, moving slowly backward so Levi could feel his way up. “Where do you want him? And what are you going to do about him?”

  “Put him on the couch. Shit, he’s heavy.” Swinging the cop’s legs up onto the long couch, Levi sighed heavily. “I have no damned idea what to do here. Guess I’ve got to talk to him. Providing he ever wakes up.”

  “He had a gun. It’s down there someplace,” Kawika reminded him. “And I have to go back and get it. I kicked it under the dumpster so no one would pick it up.”

  “I’ve never had to deal with a discovery before. I mean, shit, Gibson was found out, and he married the guy,” Levi said, eyeing the cop. “I don’t know if I want to go that far to keep us safe from the mundane.”

  “Didn’t you marry one? Or at least was in deep enough with her to have a kid?” Kawika asked, jerking his head toward the photos of Declan hanging on the wall near the front door. “I mean, unless you got Deck in a cabbage patch or something.”

  “I never told Ashley,” he replied with a shrug. Smiling at Kawika’s exasperated hiss, Levi sighed. “I figured I’d have time, and then, well, she booked it. So it was never an issue. This is an issue. There’s some stuff the old Warder told me when I went through training, but most of it was about military situations or while hunting. Not a cop stumbling through the back alley of a pub. Training stuff’s out of date. What do you think?”

  “We’re Peacekeepers, and we’re supposed to keep everyone safe from bad shit. Sometimes mundane humans find out about us, brother, but most of the time, our kind just says you ate spoiled shrimp or something.” Kawika took a long hard look at the cop. “I don’t think this one’s going to believe you. And besides, it was your kitchen that gave him the salad, so if you’re slinging rainbow mushrooms back there, he’s going to bring the health department and the DEA down on your ass. You’ve got to make the call. I’m junior here.”

  “Only ’cause you don’t want your own place.” The air conditioner in the apartment cranked back on, and Levi shivered. He’d dressed hastily, shoving his feet into his boots after dragging his jeans and shirt on. “Can you see if the coyote’s colors are still down there? He might swing back around and grab them while we’re doing this. Maybe we’ll be lucky and this guy won’t be a cop after all.”

  “Oh no, he’s a cop.” Kawika held up the wallet he’d just dug out of the man’s back pocket. “Gold star. So megacop. ID card says Lieutenant Joseph Zanetti.”

  “Shit.” Levi closed his eyes. “Well, it can’t get any worse.”

  “Oh no, brother, it does.” His friend shot him a broad, white, shit-eating smile. “Boy here is Toni Zanetti’s grandson.”

  “No! Maybe they just have the same last name. Just because someone—”

  “Yeah, here’s a picture of the strega and Joey here at maybe his cop graduation? Baby cop. Wearing a uniform, and she’s hugging him.” Kawika flipped the plastic sleeve over. “To my Joey. You’re my favorite grandson. Don’t tell your brothers and cousins I told you that. Love, Nana. Yeah, totally not related. This must be the cop kid she’s always talking about. Never saw a photo, but I know the servers have. Debbie could have known.”

  “Well, then Debbie should have told us,” Levi growled, pacing the room. “Shit. Shit. We’re going to have to call her. He acted like he didn’t know. His face was… he was shocked about the coyote.”

  “Yeah, he was sputtering when I hit him.” Nodding toward the unconscious man on the couch, Kawika sighed. “I’ll go get the stuff out of the alley and then see if I can get her on the phone. It’s late. She might not answer. And she doesn’t know me. Different circles, yeah? You might be stuck with him until morning.”

  “So you know where she lives?” Levi turned from his pacing, scrambling to think of a way out of dealing with a passed-out cop on his couch and the problems he’d brought to his own door. “Maybe we can dump him on her doorstep and have her deal with it.”

  “No.”

  The word was a hard stone skipped across Levi’s thoughts, leaving ripples where there was already a choppy surface. Sighing heavily, Levi stared at the cop, wondering what he’d done to deserve a mundane human dropping into his life. It was already bad enough he’d been called upon to broker a peace between the Vikings and Los Lobos, but a cop falling into his lap only complicated things.

  “Okay, first I’ll deal with Zanetti here,” Levi said, wincing at the name. “Of all the cops, he has to be Strega Zanetti’s kin. I got a look at that jacket the coyote dropped. Not a good look because, you know, carrying this guy up here wasn’t easy, but it looked like Los Lobos colors. If it is, then I’ve got to get ahold of Paolo and have a good talk with him. That guy came here to mess someone up and didn’t seem to give a shit about this being a Sanctuary.”

  “I’ll grab that too,” Kawika promised. After emptying the fruit from a heavy koa bowl sitting on the dining table, he hefted it up and said, “In the meantime, if he wakes up, crack him over the head again. If I can’t get the Italian witch to come and get her grandkid, we might be able to say he slipped or something and hallucinated the whole thing. Because you, brother, are going to have to deal with him seeing you and that coyote. Just hope that strega doesn’t turn you into a newt.”

  THE LOS Lobos colors weren’t a full patch. It was missing its rockers o
r anything else to mark the member as someone of any distinction. Levi sat on the old purple velvet wing chair he’d dragged up from a consignment shop years ago, resting one bare foot on its matching ottoman, its slightly worn nap speckled in places with strands of long black fur. The cop on the couch was still out like a light, and his unconscious state worried Levi, despite Kawika assuring him the man was all right.

  “You don’t look all right,” Levi told his passed-out guest. “You look like you lost a fight with a wall with the back of your head. Which you kind of did.”

  They’d agreed Levi would stay up in the apartment with the cop while Kawika closed up the pub and tried to get ahold of Toni Zanetti, but now Levi was having second thoughts about the plan. If Joseph Zanetti woke up, he’d have to scramble to handle the situation, and Levi hadn’t quite figured out how to approach it.

  “Not like there’s an instruction manual,” Levi grumbled, scraping at the velvet with his fingers. “That would be leaving information out where someone could find it. Stupidest rule ever. We can totally play it off as a game system. Who the hell is going to believe a Peacekeeper instruction manual was anything but some shit set of rules some kids pulled together so they could go play werewolf someplace in the woods?”

  His ringing phone pulled Levi away from worrying about the cop waking up and onto the prayer that Kawika had found the strega to come and get her grandson. His hopes were momentarily dashed when he heard his son whisper his name over the phone line. Then alarm struck.

  “What’s wrong? It’s nearly one thirty. Why are you up?” Levi checked the clock on the wall, frowning at how late it was, but the panic at hearing Deck ramped up. “Kiddo, what’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I’m okay. I just… needed to talk to you,” Declan whispered. “I got one of the counselors to loan me his phone, but—”

  “You stole his phone?”

  “I didn’t steal his phone!” Declan protested, his voice squeaking, then dropping back down. “He told me I could use it, but I didn’t want anyone to overhear me. Sheesh, steal one thing—”

  “It was a tank,” Levi shot back. “Okay, a Hummer, but still, it was a SWAT vehicle.”

  “I went like six feet!” his son grumbled. “And I was ten. Who the hell leaves keys in an armored Hummer for some kid to find?”

  “So nothing’s wrong? You don’t need me to come get you from camp?” Levi leaned forward, dropping his foot from the ottoman. Despite the day’s heat, the apartment got chilly at night, and the air conditioner needed to be kicked back, but it could wait. “Not that I don’t love you, but why are you calling so late? Shouldn’t you be in bed? Isn’t there a basket-weaving class at seven in the morning or something? What am I paying that camp for if it’s not going to teach you life skills like building a fire with a piece of string and a bit of wood? Never know when that’s going to come in handy.”

  “Uncle Gibson said you were mad you couldn’t ever get that fire drill thing to work.” Declan’s laugh was mean and low, much like Gib’s was when he taunted Levi about their time at summer camp.

  “Yeah, well your uncle Gibson could only do the doggie paddle until he was about eighteen,” he shot back, happy to hear Declan’s laughter. “Now seriously, kiddo. What’s going on? You didn’t call me in the middle of the night to tell me you know how to start a fire. I got that call when you were in preschool.”

  “You know the girls with the clippers?”

  “Yeah, I’m not that old and feeble I can’t remember what happened yesterday, kid.” Levi pondered the fridge, wondering if he had a bottle of beer in it or if he could somehow convince Kawika to bring up some from the bar, but then Declan was off and running. “Wait… wait… slow down. How many guys ended up looking like poodles? Where the hell are the camp people while you all are being sheared like sheep?”

  Levi caught the cop’s eye twitch before he heard the man’s breathing shift and then saw his body clench tightly. Wrapping Declan up was going to take a few seconds at the most, and he didn’t want to startle Zanetti, not when the man had already taken a beating across the head from Kawika’s fist. The guy might have fooled a human, probably even a young shifter like Deck, but Levi knew better. He’d known the moment when Joseph Zanetti roused back to consciousness, and it looked like he was going to have to deal with the strega’s grandson by himself.

  “Okay, Deck, time to get some sleep. Your old man’s got to do a few things. I had to work tonight,” Levi said, hedging his words around the pub closing and hoping Declan would assume he had to do some cleanup. “I’ll talk to you later.” Declan cut in with another rambling, sleep-heavy comment, and Levi murmured, “Yeah, I guess I’m glad you’re not the only one sporting a Pomeranian cut. And just so you know, I’m going to be calling the camp tomorrow to talk to the director. Giving you a heads-up because I’m not too happy—”

  Zanetti winced almost imperceptibly but enough for Levi to see the squint of his crow’s-feet and the deepening of his laugh lines around his mouth. Declan protested a bit on the other side of the line, without catching a breath, giving argument after argument about why Levi should leave things alone. When Declan finally inhaled, Levi slid back into the conversation.

  “I’ll leave it off this one time, but I’m going to tell you, anything else and I’m dropping a call in,” he warned. “I know shit happens at camp. It wasn’t that long ago when I was doing all the stupid things, but now I’m on the other side of the job, and I’ve got to keep you in one piece so I can get my parenting badge from your grandmother. So do me a favor. Keep your pants on, your fur on your body, and yeah, don’t set anything on fire. That’s still a given. Get some sleep, kiddo. Love you.”

  “It’s nice you tell your kid you love him,” Zanetti said, sitting up, then grabbing the arm of the couch to keep himself steady. The warmth in his honey-gold eyes faded, and they hardened, amber stones iced over with a bit of worry. “Now how about if you tell me what the hell happened to me and what the fuck you are?”

  HIS HEAD throbbed and the pit of his belly churned with sick, but Joe wasn’t going to take his eyes off the lean man sitting in a rather-violent-purple velvet chair on the other side of the shotgun-style living room. Or at least as much as he could see through his squint. Joe was lying on something soft, probably a couch, and a tiny shift of his hands and feet assured him he wasn’t tied to anything. Keller appeared to be deep into a phone call with what sounded like his kid, more than likely the slender boy he helped into the white van a few days before. The panic in Keller’s voice was oddly reassuring, connecting the man to his family in a way Joe could appreciate. He’d heard that elevated concern more than a few times in his own father’s voice, especially during the late-night calls he and his siblings sometimes had to make at various points in his life.

  Still, he didn’t know where he was, although he could guess he was in Keller’s apartment over the pub. But his gun seemed to be gone, and he didn’t know how long he’d been out. No one knew he was going to St. Connal’s, so it wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar if….

  It hurt to think, and for the life of him, he didn’t know who or what hit him. Whatever it was, it’d been solid, and he’d seen stars—literal stars—before a black wave seized him and took him down. The last and only time that’d happened before was when his cousin Mike cracked him across the forehead with a bat and he’d come to in a hospital room filled with praying Italian women and a priest assuring all of them he didn’t need last rites.

  Although he could have used a priest at the moment. Or maybe a shrink, because not only was his brain rattled from being smacked up against his skull, it was flummoxed by what he’d seen in the alley.

  Escaping from where he was being held seemed like a good idea, but judging by the massive painful spot on the back of his head, Joe didn’t trust himself not to vomit as soon as he stood up. Sifting through the events before he’d been hit, Keller didn’t take long to—Joe couldn’t believe he was even contempla
ting what he’d seen—but it wasn’t more than a few seconds for Keller to go from man to… whatever it was he’d become.

  A wolf? A dog? And what was that other man? It looked like a coyote, but one made by someone who’d maybe only heard of what one looked like. Maybe there’d been something in his salad after all, or the tuna sandwich he’d picked up for lunch earlier was bad, but then why would he have been struck unconscious unless someone was trying to keep secrets?

  Shit, if Keller could turn into a huge black dog, what the hell did the Hawaiian guy behind the bar turn into?

  “Going with crazy or food poisoning,” Joe muttered to himself, taking another peek at Keller. “There’s no way a human being can—”

  Then the phone call with Keller’s kid took a turn, and Joe was left with absolutely no doubt he’d seen what his brain still refused to accept as reality.

  Because Keller was talking to the kid about hoping his fur grew back quickly, and yeah, it was kind of funny to see some other kids’ faces when they discovered they couldn’t simply shift and go back to a full coat.

  He still had the element of surprise, and while Joe didn’t know what Keller had planned for him, he was going to have to do something. Waiting until it sounded like the man was done talking to his kid, Joe forced himself to sit up, swallowing down the wave of sick threatening to boil up from his belly, and fixed what he hoped was a strong cop-stare at Keller.

  “It’s nice you tell your kid you love him,” Joe choked out, hoping Keller didn’t notice how he had to grab the couch arm for support. “Now how about if you tell me what the hell happened to me and what the fuck you are?”