by Selina Woods
“Look, can you run out and get me some clothes?”
Getting her amusement under control, Jae wiped her face with her hands and sniffed, still grinning. “I suppose I can. What size?”
After I told her, Jae pulled on her coat, then ruffled my mane, still grinning. “Wait here, I guess. There’s some food in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
“I am, thanks.”
She left the apartment, leaving me to shift into my human self, and, wearing just the peacoat, ambled to her refrigerator. With all the cash and the jewelry, I had, I could pay her back. Leaving cash on her table, I hummed to myself as I dined on some leftover spaghetti. “Damn, this girl can cook.”
Even cold, the dish tasted of nirvana. I had few means of cooking for myself, and only occasionally had the cash to eat at a café or diner. Subsisting primarily on whatever I managed to steal, it very seldom was someone’s home-prepared dinner. After eating, I wandered around her apartment, looking at pictures of people I suspected were her murdered family—parents, a sister who looked like Jae, and a small brother.
From what I could tell, she didn’t own many possessions. The pictures, a small jewelry box that held a couple pairs of earrings, her clothes in the closet, some books. Only the bare minimum of furniture occupied the place. Her bed, the kitchen table and chair, and a couch in the sitting room were all worn, scratched, threadbare.
Her key in the lock warned me in time to shift forms, and thus I greeted her on four paws and not two with my lower half bare under the coat. Jae grinned when she saw me and held up a bag for my inspection. “Jeans, shirts, underwear, and a pair of sneakers. I hope they all fit.”
“You’re my hero,” I said gratefully, taking the bag in my teeth.
Padding to the bathroom, I shifted into my human half and quickly dressed. The clothes and shoes fit me well enough, and I emerged to find her holding the bills from the table. Jae nodded her approval upon seeing me dressed, then waved the money.
“What’s this for?”
“You.”
“You saved my life. I’m hardly going to take money from you.”
With a grin, I took her hand and folded it around the small wad. “You need it. Look, with what we took from Barry, you should have it. You bought me clothes; I ate your food. I should be giving you more.”
Jae shook her head. “You’re making me feel bad.”
Stepping closer to her, I put my hands on her cheeks, and kissed her. “Don’t. I’ll walk you to the bar.”
Her smile lit the room. “Okay. I’ll let you.”
Hand in hand, we strolled openly on the street, keeping a wary eye out for enforcers, especially Jonesy. Cars and trucks passed us without a second look; folks we walked by gave us quick nods of greeting, then hurried on by. Of course, we did spot enforcers busy robbing people of their livelihood to keep Raphael greedy for more.
None accosted us, and we entered the back door of the Tiger’s Paw to find the irritated owner glowering over his broken front door. A big lion shifter with shaggy blond hair and pale, icy blue eyes, he stared at us. “What happened, Jae?” he demanded.
Before she could answer, I stepped toward him. “Barry the Blade kicked it in with the intent to rape her. I killed him with your shotgun.”
Chad put his hands on his hips, his expression softening. “Are you all right, Jae?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Chad, this is Declan. Declan, Chad. I’m sorry, I had to use your truck to get rid of his body.”
He waved his hand. “No worries. I can’t tell anything had happened here, other than the busted door. No one saw you dump it?”
“We don’t think so,” I answered, shooting a glance at Jae.
Chad finally gave me a small grin. “Thanks for looking out for her. Jae’s become part of the family.”
“If you have the tools,” I offered, “I’ll help you fix the door.”
“Naw, I can handle it. You’re welcome to hang out, Declan. Are you two, er, involved?”
Jae chuckled, blushing. “We just met. I hid him from Raphael’s goons, and he saved my life.”
“Ah, young love.” Chad sighed dramatically. With a grin, he vanished into the back as I sat down on the stool I used the previous evening.
“He seems like a good guy,” I said.
Walking behind the bar, Jae nodded. “The best of friends. Helped me after my family died, gave me this job.”
Jae drew me a soda with ice and placed it in front of me. “You don’t pay,” she ordered, her eyes narrowed as I reached into my pocket.
Grinning, I complied. “That’s Chad’s drink you’re giving away.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Chad said, emerging from the back. He opened the front door and started working on the splintered wood and broken lock.
Hunching my shoulders over the bar, I wondered how I might bring up the subject of leaving this town with Chad within hearing range. “We didn’t get a chance to finish talking about maybe escaping this place.”
Jae shot a glance at Chad, who looked up with a slight frown. “You know what’ll happen if we get caught,” she said, her voice low.
“Unless you have a vehicle,” Chad went on, his attention on fixing the door, “you can’t make out on the prairie in winter. Even as lions. You can starve or freeze to death out there.”
“And staying here is just as risky,” I protested. “I have a kill-on-sight order on me.”
“And if Raphael suspects we killed Barry,” Jae continued, her eyes on me, “then we’re all dead.”
“How can we get past the road blockades?” Chad asked, his voice reasonable. “I’m not unwilling to take my family and run, Jae, but I won’t risk it unless we have a foolproof plan.”
“Then we start working on one,” she answered firmly. “There are free cities out there, places not under the rule of gang lords.”
“Yes, there are,” Chad agreed, installing a new lock. “But dying to get to one of them isn’t a good idea.”
As they spoke, I pondered. “If we had a four-wheel drive vehicle,” I said, we might get around the roadblocks.”
“Maybe,” Chad said. “I’ve thought of that before. But even those can get stuck, and if we do, we die.”
“What about during a bad snowstorm?” I asked. “Don’t the enforcers on the roads come in during them? When they do, we can drive out, then find a place to hole up until the storm passes.”
“Son, there’s nothing out there except hundreds of miles of open land with nothing to stop the snow from piling up. That is a death sentence for certain.”
Glum, I drank my soda and watched Jae’s ass as she worked to get the bar ready to open. “That’s why so few people try to escape,” she said over her shoulder. “Going off-road and across country is so dangerous.”
“We lions are at the top of the food chain,” I grumbled. “We should be able to survive out there.”
Chad eyed me sidelong from his lock installation. “When was the last time you hunted an antelope?”
I looked away. “It can’t be that hard,” I muttered.
“Even as humans with guns,” he went on, “hunting isn’t easy. I see your point, though, and maybe in the spring we might try to find a way out.”
As he finished replacing the lock, a few customers trickled in, and I hunched my shoulders, lowering my head in an effort to not be recognized. None of the people were enforcers, and Jae went to work serving them with drink and taking their money. Sipping my soda, I had no doubt I wouldn’t survive until spring.
That notion grew even clearer to me when two big enforcers ambled in through the newly repaired door. Oh, shit. It was too late to hide, and if I tried, the customers might point me out. Sitting still and pretending to be invisible might work, but if they recognized me, I’d be dead before I could even think about escaping.
Chapter Four
This is why I don’t stay indoors. Nowhere to run. The goons didn’t pay me any more attention than they did the other patro
ns. Instead, they focused on Jae and Chad. Chad, effectively placing himself between them and Jae, nodded to them politely. “I already paid my taxes,” he said, his voice calmer than my stomach, which roiled and churned in dread.
“We know,” said one, and fortunately, they were enforcers I didn’t know, and thus they wouldn’t know me.
“Then have a seat, and we’ll get you whatever you want to drink.”
“We’re looking for someone.”
Here it comes: Jonesy somehow found out about Jae and me, and now will demand my location.
“Who might that be?” Chad inquired, still polite.
“An enforcer named Barry,” replied the foremost.
Chad feigned confusion. “Sorry, I don’t know him. What makes you think he’s here?”
“Obviously he isn’t,” snarled the other. “He told a few friends he was coming here last night.” The shifter’s eyes flicked to Jae. “No one has seen him since.”
“Again, sorry, but he never showed up here.”
I flicked my gaze to Jae’s face. Like Chad, she wore an expression of vague confusion as she washed glasses, as calm and collected as I was when I shot Barry the Blade. The enforcers gazed around, the patrons lowering their eyes just as I did when their heads turned toward me.
“The place is pretty clean,” one muttered. “I don’t think he came here.”
As I kept my eyes on the bar’s mahogany surface, I didn’t know what might have transpired except that at long last, I heard their boots on the floor, and the door open and close. When I glanced up, the pair were gone. Sweat trickled down my ribs and back, but I slowly breathed in and out, not visibly indicating the relief I felt in case one of the customers watched me.
Jae and Chad exchanged a look, then went back to work as though nothing had happened.
As Chad would be driving Jae back to her apartment after closing, I made my farewells and wandered out into the night. The snow I scented earlier in the day had arrived, and I left my footprints in the pristine white along the sidewalk. They made me too easy to track, so I went lion and loped across the street to an abandoned building. Climbing up to the roof, I jumped from structure to structure, pausing now and then to peer down to the street below.
It appeared even the packs were reluctant to have their paws so easily traced and maybe stayed indoors to rape each other, for I saw nothing. Falling snow tickled my ears and whiskers, landing in my mane. Continuing on, I felt reluctant to head for one of my lairs as my tracks would inform just about anyone where it was. Hungry, I went back to the street level and wandered the alleys in search of a store that wasn’t as closed up as tight as it should be.
Growling voices emerging from a broken window of a grocer’s had me crouching beneath it. Pawprints had flattened the snow all around the alley, scrapes and pieces of broken glass indicated where something had busted in and were even now dining inside. The odors of meat wafted out, making my mouth water.
“Ain’t nobody out there to rob,” said a voice. “Fucking snow screws everything up.”
“Too cold to be out anyway,” chimed another. “It’s warm in here.”
“Don’t get comfortable,” growled the first. “We eat, then we hunt. I need to put my dick in something.”
I cringed, my tail tucked, and crept away from the window. The snow fell harder but wouldn’t cover my tracks completely as I loped away. They might see them and may pursue, or the pack might go the other way and never see them at all. The drugs they took to get high fried their brains and messed up their ability to think straight.
Making my way to the rooftops again, I headed back to the shop where the pack was, needing to know if they were going to follow me or not. If not, then I planned to pick up where they left off and have a late dinner inside the store. Peering down, I watched them leap through the window—two lions and two wolves. Might very well be the pack that chased me last night.
Holding my breath, I watched, fearing the wolves would catch my scent. While I didn’t think the snow would mess with their sense of smell, neither of them put their noses to the ground to sniff. The leader led them at a trot away from me, down the alley to vanish into the swirling snow. Giving them time to put distance between them and me, I waited for thirty minutes. When they didn’t come back, I retraced my steps and went back to the grocery store.
Too vulnerable indoors, I quickly gulped down fresh meat from the cooler, steaks and chops, enough to satisfy me without gorging. If I gorged, I couldn’t run fast enough to escape anyone. Switching forms long enough to leave cash near the register to pay for what I took, I regained my lion body and leaped out the window into the alley again.
Full and satisfied, I loped toward the street, remaining cautious before slinking from doorway to doorway, keeping to the shadows. The snow made it difficult for me to see, but it also hid me from an enemy’s view. The wind had picked up, thus blowing the ever-thickening snow into covering the tracks I left behind. It also stabbed deep into my bones.
A truck turned the corner and drove toward me, its headlights burning through the swirling blizzard. Crouching in a doorway, I huddled low and turned my muzzle away. I couldn’t risk my eyes reflecting the light and revealing where I was. It rolled slowly past me without stopping. “Time to get out of this shit,” I muttered, heading back down the street once the truck was out of sight.
No longer worried about someone following me to a lair, I rushed through the streets, trying to see everywhere at once. I had no sooner crossed a wide lane when headlights blasted me right in the face. Shit! Sprinting back the way I had come, I heard a voice behind me yell, “Declan!”
Jae.
Sliding on the snow to a stop, I turned, seeing the truck follow me, Jae’s head and arm sticking out the passenger window. “Declan,” she called as I trotted toward the vehicle, “we’ve been looking for you.”
Though I certainly appreciated a friendly face searching for me, I didn’t like the way she and Chad had put themselves at risk to find me. “Why? I thought you were at home.”
“I told Chad you shouldn’t be out alone like this,” Jae explained, opening the truck door and sliding across the seat toward Chad. “Get in.”
I didn’t argue. Changing into my human half, I got in beside her just as Chad hit the accelerator. “You’re too easy to track in the snow,” he said, “and you can freeze to death on a night like this.”
“I was heading to one of my lairs,” I replied, shivering despite the heat blowing from the truck’s vents. “Thanks for looking for me, but you shouldn’t be putting yourself in danger.”
Jae grinned; her eyes illuminated by the dash’s lights. “Too bad. You put your life on the line for me.”
Her hand crept into mine, and she gasped. “Damn, your skin is cold.”
“We’ll all have to be on guard,” Chad said, peering through the windshield and the wipers brushing the snow aside. “Raphael might accept Barry’s loss, or he might not. I haven’t heard that they found his body.”
“Wouldn’t he be looking there first?” I asked. “Everyone tosses corpses at the creek.”
“He may do that soon,” Chad agreed. “That may help us; it may not. Those enforcers believe Barry never made it to the bar, and they’ll pass that to Raphael.”
“Anyone with a big enough grudge could start killing his goons,” Jae added. “No reason for him to look at us, right?”
“Let’s hope for the best and expect the worst,” I commented. “Raphael will turn the city on its head to see what falls out when they find Barry’s body.”
“It still could be anyone who did it,” Jae went on, stubborn. “Raphael is smart enough to know that. He has no evidence.”
I eyed her with a small smile. “All he needs is a suspicion to start killing.”
“I wish there were a way we could implicate one of his enforcers,” Chad mused, rubbing his chin. “Then he can kill his own and not ours.”
“Maybe there is.” Twisting a little, I put my
hand in my pocket and withdrew the jewelry. “Plant these on an enforcer, and somehow get Raphael to search him. If Barry was known to have these, and another goon does, that’ll point the finger rather quickly.”
Chad glanced at my hand, then back at the road. “That might work, but we’ll have to involve others. We already said we hadn’t seen Barry.”
“I wasn’t recognized,” I said. “I can plant this on one of his guys, piece of cake.”
“All right, let’s think about it. Here’s your apartment, Jae. Both of you, get in, lock the door.”
Jae and I got out of the truck and ran into the apartment. Chad drove away, the headlights of his truck vanishing around the corner. “He doesn’t live too far away, does he?” I asked as we climbed the stairs.
“No, just a few miles.”
Jae unlocked her door and ushered me in, me appreciating the warmth inside as she turned the deadbolt. I took my coat off and went to the window to pull the curtain aside a little to gaze out and down. No cars or trucks moved sluggishly through the heavy snowfall, nor could I see any predators through the swirling blizzard.
Turning on only one small light in the kitchen, Jae took off her coat and hung it over the back of the chair. “Not much will be moving around out there until tomorrow,” she commented.
“Not unless Raphael gets his goons to fire up the snowplows,” I agreed, taking one last look down below before closing the heavy curtain.
I stared at Jae and she at me. It occurred to me that she had other reasons for hunting me down on a night like this. Her thick hair hung in tidy folds past her shoulders, her eyes luminous in the faint light. That I wanted her, I had no doubt. Nor could I be the one to suggest intimacy, as she didn’t truly know me from any lion on the street. I couldn’t take advantage of her. I wouldn’t.
“I’ll just crash here on your couch,” I said, my tone light.
Jae stepped toward me, her expression as uncertain as when I walked her to her door and left her there. “Declan,” she began, taking my hand. “I’ve—never done this before.”