by Selina Woods
I hit the button for the top floor, and it rose swiftly. “Did the enforcers find him?”
“Yes, but the place is like a fortress, they told me. They could tell from the smell around it that it was the right place, but it has no glass over the windows. It’s all heavy grade steel.”
“Steel?” The doors slid open in my penthouse, and we stepped inside. “What’s the dude afraid of? Us or his customers?”
“Maybe both,” he told me, finally calming.
“So, how do the druggies pay for and get their dope?” I asked, heading for the refrigerator for something to drink. Running hard for the past four or five miles made me thirsty. I gave Brand a soda and popped the top on the other, then gestured for him to sit down in the comfortable armchairs. He obeyed me with a sigh and popped the tab on his can.
“They didn’t come back with that kind of information,” he said. “They just found it and told me where it was with the description.”
“These guys are flipping useless for anything except collections,” I complained, then took a long swallow. “They couldn’t have stuck around to watch from hiding and come back with more intel?”
I swore and rubbed my face with my free hand. “All right. I’ll go there myself tomorrow and check it out.”
“With your guards?” he asked dryly.
“Yeah, yeah.” I blew out a breath of frustration. “I’ll have to watch the place after dark falls. It’s not likely any stalker would go there during the daylight, but you never know. They might need a fix and actually move about on two legs, try to blend in with the rest of us.”
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ve never actually seen one in his human form.”
“Would you have even known?” I asked, curious.
“Maybe not,” he replied, taking a drink. “Unless their behavior while they are seeking their dope is different, but I can’t see how. They’re so crazy while on that shit, they have to be even crazier when not on it.”
“Have you had any luck in the enforcers finding some of their hiding places?”
Brand actually grinned. “That your guys were much better at finding. They didn’t attack, as you didn’t order them to, but they found a bunch of hiding places where they sleep through the day.”
“No, I don’t want the stalkers attacked yet,” I told him. “Not until we locate as many as we can and cut off their supplies. Then we go in all at once.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Attacking some will warn the rest, and they’ll hide better.”
“Exactly.”
I leaned back against the sofa and rubbed my itching, healing cuts as best I could. “You want to come along tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I would. I was hoping you’d ask.”
I took another long drink, then wiped my lips with the back of my hand. “So, if this guy is holed up in his fortress, where does he get his ingredients?”
“It depends on what he uses to make the shit,” Brand replied. “Back in the old days, they made a dope out of common household chemicals.”
I blinked. “It was that easy?”
“That’s what I read once.”
“Jeez.” I stared blankly at an oil painting, thinking. “If it’s that easy, then someone else will come along and set up shop once we stop this one.”
“Not if his customer base is wiped out.” Brand grinned. “If we kill the predators, and if neither the civilians nor the enforcers use it, what’s the point? Make it for himself?”
“Maybe not. But the stalkers came from somewhere, and my guess would be enforcers gone rogue. They’re all lions and wolves with a few tigers thrown in. You don’t see deer shifters running amok, spearing folks with their antlers.”
“Good point.” Brand gazed at the tabletop in front of him. “Then yeah, if someone else sets up shop, you’ll find enforcers going for the dope and becoming the new crop of night stalkers.”
“Then we’ll kill them, too. And keep at it; as soon as a pack starts to prowl, we kill them.”
He grinned. “The enforcers like killing; it’s what draws them to the job. We can set them to killing their own gone stupid.”
Nodding, I pondered how I had become an enforcer—survival. If I didn’t kill, I’d have been killed. But not all enforcers came up the way I did. I never enjoyed killing, but it became something I was good at. And still was. “Have you ever seen lion shifters with lightning bolt tattoos on their faces, Brand?”
His expression grew puzzled, then smoothed out. “No. I haven’t. Why?”
I barely kept my emotions from my face. Brand just lied to me. Why, I had no idea, but I just caught him in a flat lie, and I didn’t know what to do about it. “A pair followed me today.”
“Followed you? What for?”
His questions were too pat, almost rehearsed, as they’d be the expected response. I kept my expression bland as though it were all inconsequential, and that I believed him. I gave a light shrug. “No idea. I lost them, though.”
“Good. You don’t need any more trouble. If there’s nothing else, then I’ll head down.”
“No, that’s all. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Brand went to the elevator and rode the car down to the suite he called home several floors below mine. After a few minutes of useless thought, I got up and went to lock the elevator. I also checked to make certain the door to the stairwell was also securely locked, all the while recalling that Brand, too, was a lion.
“What are you hiding, Brand?” I said into the silence as I sat down again. “You know something about them, don’t you?”
With his lie, I decided that these guys with the tattoos were a danger to me, and as Brand also knew and wouldn’t tell me, I went back to full distrust of him. I paced around the penthouse with only a few lights on to illuminate the place and pondered the notion of simply killing him.
I didn’t want to execute him without knowing the truth, but how would I arrive at the truth if he lied to me? How could I trust him with my life? What about Iliana? If Brand was a danger to me, he was a danger to her. As were these tattooed freaks. Opening the door to the balcony, I braved the cold wind as I stared up at the moon floating high above in its bed of stars.
“If anyone up there is on my side,” I murmured, “I sure could use a little help.”
After a restless and nightmare-haunted sleep, I woke up early. I showered, my back itching horribly, and almost wished I hadn’t destroyed every mirror in the place so I might see if the damn cuts were healing. I used the bath towel to ease the itch a little, then got dressed. Clad in my usual white t-shirt, jeans, and boots complete with knives, I stuck my gun in the small of my back, then put on my leather coat.
Though I could have called down for the guards to bring breakfast up for me, I also knew they had a table of food brought in every morning and every night. They all ate from it even as they guarded me, and I figured I’d simply join them. Sure enough, in a big conference room off the foyer, the huge table stood laden with bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, hash browns, coffee, orange juice, fruit, and fresh bread.
They glanced up in surprise as I walked in, and those sitting jumped to their feet. I waved them back down. “I thought I’d join you boys this morning.”
Freddy moved over a seat while someone else handed me a plate. I filled it with the hot food, grabbed a glass of orange juice, and sat beside Freddy. “You all know what Brand has been up to?” I asked, digging in.
“Yeah,” the guard across from me answered, then was sharply nudged by his neighbor. “Uh, yes, sir. He said you want to get rid of the night stalkers’ dope.”
“Yep. So, I’ll need a bunch of you to come with Brand and me,” I told them, still eating. “I’m not sure what to expect, but we will have to watch until after dark.”
“We’re with you, sir,” Freddy said with a grin. “But he said the place was armored up. What are you planning?”
“Nothing until I see the place,” I replied. “We may have to use a ruse to
get him to open up. I just don’t know.”
We kicked around ideas for a while as we ate, and then a furious Brand burst in. “That damn Griffin has—”
He caught sight of me, and his face lost color until it held the same shade as raw bread dough. “Griffin, sir,” he stammered. “I thought—you know—”
I scowled, and even Freddy drew away from me in fear. “That I took off again? I gave my word, and here I sit. Now get some breakfast so we can go pay a call to this drug dealer.”
My contented mood was gone, and the camaraderie among my guards evaporated. I finished eating even as Brand hastily ate while standing, and I pondered the best strategy while calming myself. “I don’t want a huge number of cars going in at once,” I said, glancing around the table. “And we’ll have to park blocks away so we don’t alert our target. Some of you guys can come with me. We’ll park, then go the rest of the way on foot. We don’t know if the stalkers come for the dope during the day or not, but we have to stay behind cover to watch for a while in case they do.”
“Are you thinking to get in there today, sir?” asked a guard.
“Again, I need to see for myself first,” I replied. “But that’s why I trust you guys to help me rather than enforcers. It’s the bad enforcers who became addicted and are now our stalkers.”
Low growls and dark looks among them greeted my statement. The guards never much liked the enforcers, who in turn, hated the guards that protected me, and the gang lord I killed to take his place.
“I’m told it’s armored tight,” I went on. “But there has to be a weakness we can exploit. What do you think, Brand? Twenty guys?”
He nodded. “Enough to get something done, yet a small enough number to keep hidden.”
“I know you’re all hot to go with me,” I told them. “But some have to stay and watch this place.”
“How will you decide, sir?” Freddy asked.
I shrugged. “I won’t. You will. I suggest an impartial drawing of straws or some such, so get together and decide who goes and who stays.”
Chairs scraped across the tiles as the guards stood up, and they all went out into the lobby, leaving Brand and me alone. He eyed me.
“Sorry about earlier, sir,” he told me, his eyes down.
So why did you lie to me last night? I kept that question to myself and merely said, “Forget it.”
Thinking about Iliana and the promise I’d made to watch over her, I grimaced. Of course, I wanted to see her and knew that a few brazen enforcers might decide to harass her in spite of the corpse hanging in public. When the guards returned and said they knew who was coming with me and who was staying, I asked, “All right, who is staying?”
A dozen hands rose. “You and you,” I ordered, pointing. “You two will go to the Devil’s Headmaster and look after the owner’s daughter.”
They glanced at one another, confused. “Sir?”
“I gave her my protection,” I snapped. “The enforcers might not have gotten the message. Tell the owner, her father, that you came from me to keep an eye on her.”
“Yes, sir.” They almost saluted before dashing across the foyer, their rifles in their hands.
“And you kill any enforcer that tries to bother her,” I yelled before they reached the doors.
They turned and waved acknowledgment before rushing out toward the cars. I glanced over my twenty. “All right, gents, let’s go see a man about a drug dealer.”
Chapter Eight
Six, including Brand, piled into my SUV while the others filled another six cars. With three ahead of me and three behind, we drove away from my building and toward the old car manufacturing plants. Like the others, Brand carried his semiautomatic rifle with its butt on the floor and his hand on the barrel, ready to flip it up and sock it to his shoulder if the need arose.
I tried not to be nervous with all those big guns so near to me and their owners’ loyalty in question. Watching Brand from the corner of my eye as I drove, I found him gazing out the side window with his body relaxed. I wanted to believe he had no plans to kill me that day and didn’t truly know if the guards with us would obey him or if they’d obey me.
We reached the neighborhood near the old Ford plant without the question in my mind needing answers, and we parked in an old lot a few blocks from our target. The skies overhead were dull and gray, perhaps promising snow later, and the wind had me flipping the collar of my jacket up to cover my neck.
“Where is this place?” I asked, my smoking breath pulled away by the wind.
Brand knelt down to the gravel, and I dropped down with him, the guards circling us. He drew a crude map with his finger. “Behind the Ford plant,” he said, “there’s what used to be an administration building. It’s not huge, so it was more easily fortified. The enforcers told me it’s there.”
From his map, the building stood about a half a mile down the road from the plant, and I stood up to gaze in that direction. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. That building stands along a road that has a bunch of old bombed structures along it. We’ll surround the place, as there’s plenty of rubble to hide behind. We get as close as we can, and we watch.”
Brand stood up, dusting off his hands. “Sir, someone should get a closer look, examine the place.”
“I know,” I replied. “That’ll be me.”
Protests arose until I scowled them down. “I can’t get a feel for what we need to do from reports,” I snarled, glaring. “I need to see it for myself. You all here are enough to protect me from a short distance. If I’m in trouble, try not to shoot me.”
The guards and Brand subsided. “Now go on,” I ordered. “Stay hidden, circle the place, and for shit’s sake, don’t shoot me if you get trigger happy.”
The shifters took off in different directions while Brand, Freddy, and one other followed me. We strode openly through the empty streets, seeing nothing at all moving, and I knew that in itself was creepy. There should be some people here, even if they eat from the dumpsters and live in the old buildings.
I kept my body low to the ground once the structure came into view, and we hid behind a pile of blasted rubble. Lifting my head over the top, concealed behind a chunk of cement, I examined the solid building and the steel over the windows. “How in the hell did he do that?”
The cement block building had not just iron bars over the windows, but heavy steel slabs welded over them from inside. It was a single-story, long and wide, and covered nearly half a block. The doors were also solid metal, and from what I saw, there was no way into it.
“That has to be the place,” Brand muttered, staring beside me. “Who else would reinforce it with steel?”
I sniffed the air and scented a hot, bitter odor that lingered on my tongue. “The stalkers like putting that nasty shit into their bodies?” I grimaced and spat.
“It gives them an incredible high,” Freddy told me. “Then their next fix requires more until their bodies can’t live without it. That’s when they’re addicted.”
I stared at him. “How do you know so much?”
He grinned. “In guarding you, there’s not much to do, so I read a lot.”
“I guess I need to put you to work, Freddy,” I muttered, then peered again at the building. “Do you think he can see out?”
Brand shook his head. “There’s no way to know until he shoots at you.”
I shifted into my lion. “All right. I’m gonna check it out.”
Keeping my body low to the ground and hidden behind piles of rubble, I slunk forward as though I were stalking a gazelle. Creeping from pile to pile, wishing my light brown hide blended into the gray landscape, I drew closer to the structure. No rifle fire barked, no shots struck me or around me, and I finally reached the side of it.
Staying under the windows, I prowled all around it and glanced around to see if I saw any signs of my guards. They, too, remained well hidden, and all was silent as I padded my full way around the building. The scent of the drugs made me dizzy,
and I hoped I wouldn’t become addicted just by breathing the shit in. But I saw no opening by which one might enter unseen and unheard.
I paused at one window, gazing up at it. It, too, was barred, yet held signs the others did not. The steel showed silver where it had been pulled back on a regular basis. Looking down, I found I stood on a well-worn path. Ah. The junkies come here to this window, pay, and receive their dope. The bars prevent them from getting in, and it can be easily swung shut from inside if they threaten the inhabitant.
Now that I knew how the stalkers got their fixes, I prowled more to find a way inside. There were no helpful ladders to the roof, which I suspected might hold a potential weakness. However, there was a pile of rubble not far away, and I rapidly climbed it. Studying the distance from the top of the rubble to the roof, I found it considerable. Beyond the abilities of the drug addicts, perhaps, but not a young, strong lion such as myself.
Crouching low, I gathered my rear haunches under me and jumped. I sailed across the distance as though on wings and landed lightly on the roof. I paused, listening intently for any sound that indicated my presence had been detected. I heard nothing, then prowled the rooftop.
Old vents had been removed and sealed with steel, yet one remained. I crept nearer and cringed, baring my fangs at the stench coming from it. Stepping back, I studied it and discovered that if the vent were removed, an opening was left behind. It was sealed with aluminum, and large enough to drop lions and wolves through and into the building below.
I sat down, my tail curled around my paws, and thought. Yes, we could rip this open in a matter of seconds and drop down. But what were we dropping into? Would the manufacturer have a rifle, ready to start shooting? No doubt, he’d be armed, but would he have enough time to get to his weapon? Or would he be taken by surprise that his impregnable fortress had been invaded?
My gut told me that unless this idiot had gas masks, his brains would long have been rotted away by the product he made. A few whiffs of the stuff coming from the vent made me dizzy. What was constant exposure to it doing to his brain? If he had a gas mask, he still would have some brain cells fried, as he had to take the thing off some time.