In a Badger Way

by Shelly Laurenston

  Gwen stood. “We need to get out of here.”

  “There’s only one air vent,” Stevie pointed out. “It’s very small and very high. The walls are either lined or made out of titanium. Or a combination of steel and titanium. We are fucked.”

  Blayne stared at Stevie. “Are you having trouble breathing?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “Probably.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “No, no. I’m okay. I’m okay.” She took in a deep breath, let it out. “I’m okay.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Gwen asked.

  “She panic-shifts,” Blayne explained

  “So?”

  “We do not have that much room in here.”

  Gwen crouched in front of Stevie. “Look, I don’t know you, sweetie. But all this is for you. To keep the rest of us imprisoned, they just had to put us behind iron bars. That’s why when one of us goes to prison, we usually stay in prison.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

  “Why did they build this for you? What do they think they’re stopping? And I’d also like to point out that they thought their little DNA thing would shut you down. But that didn’t work either.”

  Stevie gazed at the woman with the ridiculously long fingernails.

  Scrambling to her feet, Stevie faced the wall and unleashed the claws on her right hand, which didn’t affect the width of her wrist, didn’t cause her any problems with the titanium cuff she had on.

  She pulled her arm back.

  “Are you sure about this?” Blayne asked.

  “Nope,” she replied. Not wanting to see her claws mangled and destroyed, Stevie closed her eyes tight and swung her arm forward with all her strength.

  “Holy shit,” she heard Gwen whisper and Stevie opened one eye, then the other.

  Her claws had torn a giant gash through the titanium-steel walls.

  Carefully, slowly, Stevie pulled her claws out of the wall and examined them. Her hand was shaking but her claws were undamaged. Thick and strong and lethal.

  She looked down at her wrists, studied the titanium bands.

  “Stevie?” Blayne said softly. “They’re coming.”

  Blayne was right. Stevie could feel the vibrations through the floor.

  She faced the women. “I’m about to do something,” she informed them, “that is probably very, very stupid. But I think we’ve run out of options. So . . . yeahhhh . . . I’m sorry in advance.”

  “If we survive this, Gwenie,” Blayne said to her best friend, “I’m going to tell you very loudly, I told you so!”

  chapter THIRTY

  The trucks and SUVs pulled to a stop in front of the single-story building.

  From the outside, it looked like a small office building with reinforced doors and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. But that was only because the real doings were going on in the floors underneath the ground. The floor on top was just the entrance, and it was heavily guarded, according to the Wells Pride, who eventually told them everything just to get the crazy MacKilligans out of their house.

  Like the Group members, Shen and the Dunns were dressed in black body armor. Shen had his weapon unholstered and a round in the chamber as he stepped out of the SUV and walked around to the front where he met up with the Dunns and Dutch Alexander. The MacKilligan cousins had wanted to come, but their uncle had ordered them back to their hotel. Probably a good idea. This was more a job for professionals, not guys who just enjoyed terrorizing cats.

  The sun was barely coming up when Ric Van Holtz, who was leading this raid, stepped in front of his people.

  “Everybody knows what they need to do. Stay calm. Move fast. Don’t forget we’ve got at least four civilians in there. Maybe more. So be careful.”

  Charlie, dressed just in jeans, a blue T-shirt, and sneakers—not looking tactical at all—had a gun in each hand, and the back pockets of her jeans were stuffed with fully loaded clips. She listened silently to Ric’s unusually gruff speech. Her expression was blank until Max stepped in beside her. The smaller MacKilligan also had on jeans, a black T-shirt, and thick work boots.

  They looked at each other and something passed between the siblings. It felt like an entire conversation in one glance.

  Max went back to the SUV they’d driven up in and while Ric ensured that his team knew the details of the plan to breach the building, Shen watched the sisters.

  A minute later, Max returned. She stepped in front of Charlie and placed a small rocket launcher on her shoulder. One shot and the blast took down the door . . . and blew out a good chunk of the building’s front as well.

  Everyone except Shen and the Dunns ducked, because they hadn’t been expecting the MacKilligan sisters to let Ric and the Group lead anything.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Charlie said, “Wait here. We’ll let you know when it’s clear.”

  Then they were gone, Max briefly stopping to toss her rocket launcher at Dag before pulling out blades, one in each hand.

  Ric stared at the half-destroyed building. “What just happened?” he asked no one in particular.

  “It’s best just to wait until they’re done,” Berg explained. “Trust me on this.”

  * * *

  Gwen had a giant furry ass pressing her into the titanium wall. She was afraid she might die from suffocation, but she couldn’t be angry. That furry, striped ass had so far protected her and Blayne from Tasers, tear gas, and beanbag rounds. When the nonlethal didn’t even give Stevie MacKilligan an itch, they moved to lethal. That’s when the furry ass protected Gwen and Blayne from gunshots.

  Of course, the gunshots were what made two-ton Stevie really angry. Roaring so loud the walls shook, she lashed out with her front paw, sending a group of guards flying out of the room.

  It turned out the titanium bands didn’t cut into Stevie’s flesh. When she shifted, they just broke off and fell to the floor.

  The rest of the guards ran out, closing the doors behind them.

  Gwen assumed Stevie would tear the door open, but instead, she stomped to the wall and began to climb it, and not by digging her claws in. She just climbed it. Like a goddamn lizard.

  “Holy shit,” Gwen gasped.

  “Told you!” Blayne said, yet again.

  They watched Stevie easily move up the wall until she reached the extremely small air vent. She nosed the grate a few times, then used her claws to yank it out. The thick metal clattered to the floor and she poked her nose in. With a little push, she got her head in, too, but there was no way her body would . . .

  “Holy shit!”

  “I told you!”

  Stevie managed to get all two tons of herself into the vent, her giant shoulders slipping in after her head; the rest of her body following. Gwen worried the hybrid would get stuck, but they could hear her claws and fur moving against the metal above them.

  They waited in silence, their gazes locked on the ceiling until the doors were thrown open again. The armed guards had returned with weapons that could take down an elephant. But when they stepped inside, they froze and looked at Gwen and Blayne.

  “Where is she?” the woman in front demanded.

  Smiling a little, Gwen raised her hand and pointed her forefinger to a spot . . . behind them.

  She saw the color drain from the woman’s face before the guards all turned at once. But it was too late. Stevie had eased her gigantic body out of the tiny air vent on the other side of the door, lowered herself to the floor without a sound, and had attacked without hesitation.

  Blood splattered across the room, hitting Gwen and Blayne in the face. Then they had to duck the spitout body parts, boots, and weapons.

  Guards arrived from the hallway behind Stevie. Gwen didn’t think Stevie saw them and was about to call out a warning, but Stevie’s long, tiger-like tail lashed out. It wasn’t a tiger-like tail functionally. Nor was it like a honey badger’s. Because it cut through the
three men charging toward her. Cut right through them, splitting all three in half like they’d been hit with a giant sword.

  The tail was also whip-fast and prehensile, picking up guards and tossing them around the room like toys.

  Finally, Gwen had to say it, “I’ll never doubt you again, Blayne.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “You’re right. I will.”

  * * *

  All hell was breaking loose on the third floor lab, but he didn’t have time to check it out. Instead, he was running toward the explosion and gunshots coming from the ground-level floor.

  He stopped, silently ordering his men to stand by with a raised fist. He peered around the corner and saw the fight taking place in the hallway. There were two women. One had guns. The other knives. While the taller one shot her way down the hallway, nailing guard after guard with shots to the head; the other, smaller woman slashed and stabbed her way around. She moved fast, swinging herself onto guards’ backs and cutting their throats or stabbing them in the top of the head.

  One guard grabbed her off another’s back, and she turned lightning fast, slamming him into the wall and ramming one of her knives under his chin and into his head. She stared into his eyes, smirked, before letting him slip to the floor and yanking her weapon out.

  “Down!” the taller woman called out, and she fired, killing another guard about to attack the smaller one.

  He looked at his team, made a motion with his hand to ready for attack. His group had automatic weapons so they were just going to sweep the entire area with gunfire until everyone in that hallway was down. Unfortunate about any of his fellow guards, but he didn’t have time to play nice. Not when something had gone very wrong downstairs. They didn’t have time to play games with little girls.

  With a nod, his team started around the corner but the roar that made the glass in the office doors shake and then shatter, and the screams from below made everyone who wasn’t already dead stop.

  The building began to shake more but not from roaring. From something else. It took him a second but he realized it was running. Like a herd of animals, coming right for them.

  He turned back the way he’d come just as the stair door crashed down. The first thing that came running out had tusks. Behind it were a cat and a canine. But the thing bringing up the rear . . .

  “Run!” he screamed, trying to get his people to move, to use another exit, but before he could take a step, the blade slid across his throat and he saw that smile flash by him as he dropped to his knees, his hands wrapping around his neck, trying to stop the bleeding.

  But he only managed to give himself enough time to feel the paws slam into his back, push him into the ground, and crush his bones to dust.

  * * *

  Ric wasn’t exactly okay with the massacre that was going on inside that building, but he wasn’t going to complain either. He just wanted his friends back. Then he felt the earth move beneath his feet. Like an earthquake. And he heard the roaring.

  Shen stepped past him, staring into the building. Then he yelled, “Run!” And everyone scattered. No formation. No pulling back in an orderly line. Nothing. Nope. Like the true predators they all were, they thought only of themselves and made a crazed run for it.

  That’s what predators did when they came across a bigger predator. It was always your best bet.

  When Ric felt he was far enough away, he stopped and looked back.

  Bo Novikov came out of the damaged building first. He was in his shifted form, but once he was outside, he turned back to human, grabbed the still-shifted Blayne and Gwen around their waists, and ran. Then the front of the building was destroyed even more as something galloped from it.

  He watched at least two tons of beast tear out into the open. Tiger striped but built like a honey badger, it wasn’t alone. It had James Wells caught between its fangs.

  He was screaming, begging, trying to fight. But Stevie MacKilligan, in her shifted form, dove over the trucks and SUVs and went on a sort of romp around the property, shaking Wells, tossing him up in the air and catching him again. Then she dropped him to the ground. He tried to drag himself away, but she just batted him around with her front paws. Stopped once to scratch her ear with her back leg, which gave Wells a chance to get to his feet and run.

  That’s when Stevie pounced. Literally. She just watched him running for a few seconds and then up she went, crashing onto him with her front paws.

  He stopped screaming then.

  She batted his limp body around a few more times, but when he didn’t respond, she picked him up between her teeth, walked over to the front of the now-totaled building, and laid him out.

  It seemed a strange move until blood-covered Charlie and Max walked out. Unlike everyone else, the sight off their sister hadn’t sent them fleeing, so they’d continued their original mission and “cleared” the building.

  Now, standing outside among the debris, they gazed down at what was left of James Wells.

  Finally, Charlie looked up at her sister and grinned. “Breakfast?”

  chapter THIRTY-ONE

  It was the silence. Such intense silence.

  Stevie looked away from her sisters and saw that the agents who’d come here today to rescue her and the others were gawking at her. Some with wide eyes. Others with unleashed fangs and claws. They were disgusted, appalled, and absolutely terrified.

  Stevie lowered her head, began to back away. But her sisters had moved in front of her, Charlie’s forefingers tightening on the triggers of her guns. Max stood next to her, her blood-covered hands working the handles of her knives because, Stevie knew, they were sticky and Max hated a sticky grip when she was in a fight.

  Stevie didn’t want this, though. She didn’t want her sisters destroying those who’d risked everything protecting all of them because they were a little bit . . . overwhelmed by her.

  She’d shift. That would help. She’d shift to human and everyone would calm down.

  “Is there a problem?” Blayne Thorpe asked, walking through the group of agents, with Gwen by her side. “I’m not sure why you’re looking at my friend that way, but I have to say that I don’t appreciate it.”

  “You’re okay with this?” a jaguar asked, arms folded over his chest. “I mean . . . look at her.”

  “Look at her? I do look at her. And you know what I see?”

  “The woman who saved our lives?” Gwen asked. “Please say the woman who saved our lives.”

  “Of course that’s what I see. But I also see the mighty tiger badger! Ruler of all badgers!”

  “Oh, God,” Gwen glanced up at Stevie. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s happening?” Charlie asked.

  “Look, Blayne,” the jaguar said, “I get that you feel beholden to this woman—”

  “Tiger badger,” Blayne corrected.

  “But, I think we can all agree”—he looked around at the other agents—“that whatever she is, she’s just . . . she’s just . . .”

  “She’s just what?” Blayne demanded. “My husband would really like to know.”

  The cat glanced over his shoulder, where Bo Novikov was standing behind him, back in his shifted form, while the other agents had silently moved out of the way of the one-ton animal. When she’d first seen him, Stevie had been fascinated by the two big fangs that hung down far past his massive jaw. Like a saber-toothed cat. Yeah. That’s exactly what he reminded her of. A saber-toothed cat of yore!

  “Well?” Blayne pushed. “Bo’s waiting.”

  The cat shook his head while trying to inch around Bo. Especially when he started huffing.

  “You know what?” The jaguar cleared his throat. “I think we are all”—he began to walk backward, away from Bo—“wonderful and interesting in our own ways. And it doesn’t matter if you’re normal . . . like me. Or have freakishly sized tusks.”

  “Those are fangs!” Blayne snapped.

  “Or are disturbingly large and yet weirdly house cat–like. Non
e of that matters because we’re all one important thing. We’re human.” Stevie glanced at her sisters and all three of them rolled their eyes in disgust. “You. Me.” He looked over at Stevie. “It.”

  “Hey!” Charlie snapped.

  “We’re all human. And isn’t that what we need to remember when we talk about . . . Oh, my God! Would you stop it with that!”

  The group of trained agents faced the sound that had been getting louder and louder as the giant panda in human form walked closer, munching on a bamboo stalk.

  “What?” Shen asked, calmly gazing back at the others. “I was hungry.”

  “Do you have to make so much noise?” the cat demanded.

  In response, Shen bit down on the stalk, and the crunch echoed out in the fresh morning air.

  The bears began heading back to the SUVs first. “I can’t with that goddamn noise,” one of them complained. “I just can’t!”

  “Don’t you want some?” Shen called after them. “I have more in the car! They’re directly from China,” he finished in a singsong voice.

  When no one responded, and everyone simply packed up to go, Shen went back to eating, but he grinned at Stevie around his bamboo, winking at her.

  Stevie finally shifted back to human while Charlie held out shorts and a T-shirt for her. But before she put them on, she saw Shen coming toward her. She ran to him, jumped into his arms.

  Holding her, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “My DNA eats other DNA for lunch. So I am great! Emotionally and genetically.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” he admitted.

  “I know. But trust me . . . it’s astounding.”

  He pressed his forehead against hers. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “Me too.”

  They stayed like that for several wonderful minutes. Just holding each other, eyes closed; Shen’s hands under her bare ass, her arms around his massive shoulders. She’d never felt safer. Not simply physically safe. But fully understanding that she could be all she was with this man without doubt or fear.

  “You two gonna do it?” Max asked, standing right by them and being typically annoying.

  “Go. Away,” Stevie snarled at her sister, refusing to move from her lovely position in Shen’s arms.