by Selina Woods
“You’re staring,” she accused.
“I can’t help it.”
Facing me, her hands on her hips, she managed a scowl. “Yes, you can. Now knock it off.”
Leaning both elbows on the bar and resting my chin on my fists, I waggled my eyes brows up and down. “I’m not staring. I’m leering.”
Jae laughed and shook her wealth of rich hair. “I’ve certainly been leered at before.”
“Of course, you have. Who wouldn’t want to eyeball that delectable little ass you got there?”
She flushed. “Now you’re embarrassing me.”
“Sorry.”
Standing up from my stool, I asked, “You got a bathroom in this place?”
Jae jerked her thumb toward the back. “Over there.”
“Be back in a jiffy.”
I sauntered past her as she swept the floor in the midst of the tables, setting the chairs atop them to give herself more room to clean. I found the bathroom and used the toilet and was just zipping up my jeans when I heard the front door crash open. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as Jae let out a small shriek, then yelled, “Get your ass out of here.”
“Not till I’ve had my fun, baby,” growled a voice I recognized.
Making no noise, I slid down the short hallway to the bar and peeked around the corner. A big lion shifter named Barry, one of Raphael’s top enforcers, swaggered inside, closing the door behind him. Self-styled Barry the Blade, he stood between Jae and the bar, meaning she had no way of getting to the shotgun.
Though she must have seen me behind him as I slithered around the corner and ducked behind the counter, Jae never moved her eyes from him.
“I’ll report you to Raphael,” she warned, taking a step back. “We pay our taxes.”
“I ain’t gonna kill you, sweetheart,” he said, his voice smooth, taking off his jacket. “Raphael doesn’t care if we get a little piece now and then.”
I found the shotgun on the shelf, and lifted it, making sure the safety catch was off. Though I had never fired a gun before, I did make sure to learn how in case I ever found myself in a situation that required it. This one certainly did. Straightening, I stepped out from behind the counter.
“Leave her alone, Barry.”
Chapter Three
Barry the Blade swung around, his eyes wide in shock, taking in the gun leveled at his chest. A smart girl, Jae edged away from him, stepping out of his reach as well as my line of fire. The enforcer recognized me instantly, and his lip curled in a feral grin. “You don’t have the guts, runt,” he growled, stalking toward me one slow step at a time. “Put it down, and I’ll forget I saw you.”
“Nope. Leave now, and I’ll forget to kill you.”
With Jae now safely behind me, I waited for Barry to realize I would shoot if he didn’t leave quietly. Killing an enforcer was a death warrant in Cheyenne, and every one of them would never rest until they hunted the murderer down. I knew full well what I risked by picking up the gun, nor would I put it down and step aside while he raped Jae.
“Put it down, runt,” he ordered, standing still once he realized I wasn’t backing down as he expected me to.
“Get lost.”
Barry licked his lips, clearly growing nervous as he tried to make a decision. Risk a huge loss of face by letting me chase him off or take his chances that I would be too cowardly to pull the trigger no doubt ran through his mind. I knew the instant he decided I’d never dare kill him.
His brows lowered, and his eyes flattened. “Give me that gun—”
I pulled the trigger. The resulting explosion nearly deafened me. Barry, hurtled backward by the lead shot from the twin barrels, crashed to the floor amid the tables, and lay still. I gazed at him, half expecting him to get up and make a run at me now that the shotgun was empty. Barry’s foot twitched a little, and that was all.
Jae stepped up to my side. “Now look at the mess you made.”
Surprised, I glanced at her. Her lips curved upward in a nasty sort of grin. “Oh, sure, make me work harder to clean up around here.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” I replied. “What are we gonna do with him?”
“Chad has a truck out back,” she answered. “The keys are here, but I’m not supposed to drive it.”
“Well, I don’t know how to, so you have no choice. Let’s get him into it before he bleeds too much onto the floor.”
With a quick nod, Jae picked up one of his legs, but I took a minute to search his corpse for anything valuable. Enforcers didn’t get paid much, but either Barry got paid a helluva lot, or he hadn’t yet brought his take to Raphael. I held up the wad of cash to Jae.
“Whoa,” she breathed. “That’ll come in handy. Does he have anything else?”
Rather surprised by her mercenary outlook, I checked his pockets and found some expensive jewelry. “Maybe he was going to give this to his girlfriend,” I suggested, putting it in my pocket.
“Eww.” Jae made moue of disgust. “Who would want him in bed with her?”
“Someone as sleezy as him. Let’s get him to the truck.”
Together, we dragged his body across the bar and through the rear door into the cold. The truck stood in the alley, and neither of us saw anyone watching as we struggled to heave the corpse into the truck’s bed. Once we had him inside, I, panting with exertion, threw a tarp over him. “Run, get the keys and lock the bar,” I told Jae.
She obeyed and came back out by the time I climbed down from the bed and opened the passenger door. “You never learned to drive?” she asked, turning the engine over and putting it in gear.
“Nope. Had no one to teach me, and no vehicle anyway.”
Without the headlights, Jae drove the truck out of the alley and into the street. “So, tell me something?”
“Sure. What?”
I turned my head to find her watching me. “How many times have you killed someone?”
The question stunned me and made me laugh at the same time. “Until this asshole, never. Why?”
“You were so cool, so collected,” she admitted, glancing at me then back through the windshield. “It seemed as though you’ve killed dozens of times.”
I gazed through the passenger side window at the dark and silent buildings we passed: closed businesses, shuttered houses. I tried to feel some remorse for what I had done—taken a life. Yet, there was none in me. I did what I had to do, and that was that. “I should feel bad for killing,” I said, my voice soft. “But I don’t. Is that wrong?”
“Wrong? Hell, no.” Jae’s beautiful face turned nearly ugly with the deep scowl she sent me. “That bastard would have raped me until I was dead, Declan. You know he would. Now he’s dead, and I’m not. We’re not.”
“Better him than us?” I tossed her a wan smile. “I don’t feel bad, I guess, because it was the right thing to do.”
“The only thing to do. Now, where are we going to toss him?”
“The creek. It’s a dumping ground for just about anyone who wants to get rid of a corpse. And there won’t be any ties to you or the bar.”
“Sounds good to me.”
The creek that ran through the southern edge of town once had been a drainage canal, and only during heavy rains did it ever get any real water running through it. In the dark, we dragged Barry’s body to the edge and rolled it down the steep hill to the small trickle below. “There might still be some blood in the truck bed,” I commented as we climbed back into the cab.
“Do you mind helping me scrub it?” she asked, shooting me quick glances as she drove. “And the bar?”
I grinned. “Nope.”
Jae breathed deeply. “Thanks. Blood can be hard to get rid of.”
Fortunately, as well as oddly, what bloodstains there were came up easily. I used soapy water and a push broom to wash the truck while Jae started cleaning the mess inside the bar. I hoped there weren’t smaller stains I couldn’t see in the dark, then went in to assist her. Together, talking easily a
nd cheerfully about our lives, we wiped up the gore. To me, and quite possibly to her, it felt as though we hadn’t just met that day, but had been friends for years.
“We need to disinfect it,” Jae told me as we finished. “There will always be blood we can’t get up, and it will get nasty.”
“As well as smelly,” I agreed. “Wolf noses will notice immediately.”
Thus, we scrubbed the floor again with a disinfectant cleaner and found it was nearly two in the morning. There was little we could do about the lock Barry had busted crashing in, so we tied it shut as best we could, then left by the back way. Jae locked it behind us and pocketed the keys.
“I have to tell Chad what happened,” Jae said as we both hunched into our coats and headed down the alley. “I won’t lie to him.”
“No,” I replied, walking quickly to stay warm. “You shouldn’t. But he won’t squeal, right?”
“He hates Raphael and his goons as much as we do,” she replied, her teeth chattering.
My instincts and senses on high alert, I kept Jae in the shadows as we headed for her apartment. A few lone cars, no headlights on, passed us by as we hid in the darkness and waited for them to roll out of sight. Then we hurried on, not talking much as conversation tended to interfere with one’s survival skills.
Arriving at her apartment building, I escorted her to her door, keeping an eye out as she unlocked it. Swinging the door wide, Jae paused to gaze at me, her hazel eyes locked on mine. “Want to come it?”
Her voice, tentative, uncertain, informed me she wasn’t sure how to proceed. Ask me in, and accept the possibility I may wind up sharing her bed with her, or wish me goodnight and shut the door. I bent my face close to hers and kissed her slowly, giving her every opportunity to withdraw, to shove me away. Jae kissed me back, her mouth opening in invitation, encouraging more, her tongue dancing with mine.
That told me how much she trusted me. Rather than push where I wanted to go, I withdrew from her and smiled into her eyes. “Next time.”
“Declan.” Her voice still held that hesitancy, that need, the desperation to do the right thing with me.
Holding her hand in mine for a moment, I kissed her again, then winked. “Get inside and lock your door,” I murmured. “Too many bad guys out there.”
Jae started to go in, then stopped even as I headed back down the hall to the stairs. “Declan, wait.”
I half turned.
“How will I find you?”
Grinning, I replied. “You won’t. But I’ll find you.”
I offered her a jaunty salute, then continued to the stairwell. I moved slowly until I heard her door close and the lock click shut. Feeling pleased with myself, I made my way back outside and shifted to my lion form. My four-legged self moved faster in case of trouble, and even at this late hour, packs of marauders outside of Raphael’s influence roamed freely.
These lions, wolves, and even the rare tiger shifters tended to use drugs that made them high and stupidly dangerous. They feared nothing, raping and killing anything that crossed their paths. Female, male, it didn’t matter to them; they would rape her or him, murder their victim, and move on. Raphael didn’t like them preying on his populace that paid his taxes but could never hang enough of them to stop it.
My keen night vision saw them before they saw me. Crouching behind a rusted wreck of a car, my belly low to the ground, I watched them cross the street about a block away. A lion leading four wolves. Even in their drugged-out high, the wolves' sense of smell was too good to risk messing with. Edging my way backward, keeping the wreck between them and me, I watched them continue on without stopping.
Breathing a fraction easier, I slunk to the other side of the street and struck a fast lope in the opposite direction. Where there was one pack, there would be others. The night was their territory, and if I wanted to remain uncaught and unraped, I needed to get to one of my “homes” and out of any possible sight. I had one not far away, and I raced to get there, my paws flying.
“There goes one.”
I heard the shout, and, too late, realized I had sped past a pack wandering down the alley I had just galloped past. “Oh, shit,” I muttered, risking a lightning glance over my shoulder.
Two lions and two wolves this time. Once the wolves had my scent, there was no place I could hide. Nor could I lead them straight to my hidden lair, even if I could hold them at bay once I got to it. Putting on more speed, I flew down the street, trying to think of a way to get the wolves’ noses off my scent. I heard their shouts as they chased me, but their drugged systems wouldn’t allow them to keep up. They didn’t have to, I reminded myself grimly. The damn wolves would simply follow my scent, run me down to exhaustion.
How to confuse them? I ran down an alley, thinking to lose them by climbing to the rooftops. I passed a dumpster, then instantly skidded to a halt. The damn thing reeked of rotten garbage and the corpse of a dead dog. “Time to get stinky,” I muttered, then leaped inside. Trying to hold my breath against the horrid stench, I rolled in the nasty mixture until my fur and mane were covered in the nasty mix. Hearing them only a block away, the wolves yelling that they still had my scent, I climbed from the dumpster.
A fire escape loomed above me. A good dozen feet above my head, its lower rung offered a tempting escape. Crouching low to the ground, I leaped upward, and seized the iron in my paws. Lions don’t climb straight up very well, so I switched to my human. Hand over hand, I lifted my body until my boots hit the rung, then up I climbed.
Lying on the platform under a window, I lay in the shadows and tried to quell my breathing. The disgusting odor on me nearly made me hurl, but the pack hit the alley and all thoughts of puking left me. Motionless, barely breathing, I watched below as the wolves circled, their noses to the ground, trying to find where I went.
“Where the fuck is he, Dermot?” growled a lion, pacing, restless.
“His trail ends here. Is he hiding in the shit?”
The other lion leaped to the top of the dumpster and dug around in the trash. “Only a dead dog in here,” he snarled, leaping back down. “Where’d he go?”
Both wolves searched, but as the odor of the rotting corpse and the garbage was everywhere, they had no idea where I’d gone. Unless they looked up and saw me, they had no choice but to give up the chase.
The lion leader cuffed one of the wolves, making him yelp in pain. “You’re no fucking good. Let’s go.”
The small pack loped out of the alley, leaving me to breathe in my own stink with relief. I climbed back down the fire escape, then went lion. None of my lairs had showers, and I needed one desperately. No way could I sleep through the day like this. Fortunately, I knew of an old truck stop that had them, a place near the old highway that ran through the city.
Not many folks used the place, and the water wasn’t hot, but I wasn’t about to be picky. Keeping a watch out for my lusty pals, or any of their ilk, I galloped hard to the truck stop. Though long out of business, and often ransacked by anyone passing by, I roamed among the broken shelves until I found a packet of soap bars. In a back office, I lucked upon a ragged blanket and someone’s old peacoat. Stripping out of my clothes, stashing the cash and the jewelry in a coat pocket, I hit the icy water of the showers.
Soaping myself, my skin turning blue with cold, my teeth chattering, I washed the repulsive stench from my skin and hair. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I got out of the shower. While I could freeze to death in the icy cold, I dried myself as best I could with the blanket, then put on the thick coat. Back in my lion form, I started trotting, heading for my closest lair.
The movement kept me from freezing, and once I reached it, I lit a very rare fire with my human hands. Only in extreme conditions did I light one, as the scent of the smoke could be read and followed. Huddling next to it, my blankets around me, I finally warmed up. Munching on my cache of dried meat and some stale bread, I tossed a few more pieces of wood on the fire and lay down.
My instincts t
old me dawn approached. Exhaustion took hold, and I fell hard to sleep.
When I woke late in the afternoon, the fire had long since burned to blackened wood and ash. Stiff, cold, I sat up and yawned, the blanket sliding off my shoulders, and scratched a persistent itch in my neck with my hind leg. “Now you got no clothes, dumb ass.”
When I shifted forms, all I had to cover myself with was a peacoat. Pondering what to do, I sniffed the air drifting in for any potential danger, wondering if Jae might help me. If she was still at her apartment, that was. Deciding she was my best hope for much-needed attire on short notice, I left my quaint home and emerged under low hanging clouds and the scent of snow on the wind.
Trotting down alleys, avoiding people and cars, I slipped from street to street, pausing now and then to sniff the light breeze. Enforcers shagged the business owners and civilians for the taxes owed to the big guy, but as they were easy to spot, they were easier to avoid. During the cold weather, shifters often moved about in their four-legged forms, thus many wolves, lions, and deer trotted down the sidewalks.
Making sure I wasn’t seen, I entered Jae’s apartment building and loped up the steps. Paws weren’t great for knocking, but I scratched at her door, then stood back so she could view me through the peephole. Hearing her on the far side, I glanced around for any witnesses as I waited for her to identify me.
“Declan?”
“Yeah, I need a little help.”
She unlocked the door and swung it open, permitting me to slip in. “Why aren’t you on two legs?” she inquired, closing and locking it again.
“I, er, got no clothes.”
Jae’s eyes grew wide, and a small giggle popped from her mouth. “What happened?”
“I ran into a pack last night,” I replied, sitting on my haunches. “Wolves had my trail, so I had to roll in something nasty to hide from them.”
Her giggle blossomed into a full-blown gale of laughter. Holding her ribs with her arms, she roared and tears squirted from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Mortified, I grimaced and tried to scowl.