Fox Hunt

by J. Leigh Bailey

  “If I were you,” I said, “I’d have run as soon as you knew your cover was blown.” I stalked to the back door and tugged at the knob. I didn’t want to open it right now—better to let Buddy and William deal with the pretend FBI guys without interruption—but I needed to know if I could open it if I needed. It didn’t budge. Not that I actually expected the delivery door to be unlocked while unsupervised, but it would have made a nice contingency plan.

  “I needed to know who they sent, and how much they know. To see if I could salvage any of this.” The desperation in his voice gave me chills. Desperate men did desperate things.

  The scrape of a shoe on concrete notified us of another’s presence. The burned coffee scent was so strong, I’d missed the stranger’s scent. It was dark behind the building now that the sun had officially set, so I’d also missed the shifting shadows. Which meant I was completely unprepared for the stranger who approached us. The man looked human, but there was something about him that vibed wrong.

  The guy was my height, but more muscular, with broad shoulders and a straight military bearing. He wore dark tactical gear with a numbered patch on his chest. The utility belt around his waist carried an assortment of equipment, only half of which I could identify. One of the pieces I could recognize was the handgun—a SIG Sauer commonly used by special forces military.

  Everything about him screamed military. But he smelled off—familiar, but wrong. I finally figured it out. He smelled a little like a wolf shifter, but with a rotten edge.

  Behind me, Darren whined.

  “Ah, hey, dude. Something I can help you with?” I held my hands up and reminded myself of Mom’s order: information, not confrontation.

  He ignored me. He touched something along the side of his face, then said, “The subject has been spotted. Behind the café. Requesting backup.”

  The subject? I craned my neck to see Darren behind me. “Is he referring to you or me?”

  The panic in his eyes told me.

  I held my hands up to the stranger. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.” I scanned the area around us. Hanging around long enough for this creep’s backup to arrive seemed like a very bad idea. The problem was, this space was little more than a turn-around for delivery and garbage trucks. Surrounded by buildings or chain-link fences, there was only the one way in or out, and this guy had it blocked.

  “We need to get out of here,” Darren said. “You can’t let them kill me.” His words cracked.

  “Excuse me? This coming from the guy who hired contract killers to get rid of me.”

  His breath caught.

  “Yeah, guess you didn’t think we’d figured that out yet. Next time, don’t hire idiots.”

  The emotionless and unmoving way the stranger watched us really freaked me out. What was he waiting for?

  An owl soared low over the building, releasing a piercing screech before swooping away. Owen. Two hawks followed close at his tail feathers. Chasing him?

  Someone was coming. But who? The good guys or the bad guys?

  The owl looped back, his fierce hunting cry echoing through the night.

  Bad guys. Definitely bad guys.

  I took a half step closer to the café’s back door.

  A second later the delivery area was swarmed with a dozen more off-smelling, military-looking men decked out in tactical gear.

  Darren moaned. “This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have double-crossed us.” The sea of black-clad men parted to reveal a silver-haired man in the same black uniform as the others. Unlike the others, none of that strange rotten wolf scent wafted off this guy.

  “General Mason,” Darren whimpered.

  The more time I spent with him like this, the more I wondered what on earth my mother ever saw in him. Sniveling coward.

  “I didn’t, I swear. It was him!” Darren shoved me toward the group.

  I stumbled forward. One of the bad-smelling guys caught me, hands gripping my upper arms. Nearly face-to-face, I realized that his scent wasn’t the only thing off about this guy. His eyes were totally fucked up too. It looked like glowing yellow shards pierced the blue irises. Red bled from the blue into the whites of his eyes like the veins in his eyes had burst. Horrifying, like a vampire movie in real life.

  Shaking, I pulled myself free and shot a withering glare at Darren.

  “This is all your fault! They think I betrayed them because you managed to hack their system. From your mother’s computer! From the house where I live! Now they think I gave the Council the data you stumbled onto.”

  General Mason raised his brows. “Are you telling me the data breach happening in your home, a breach that led to the destruction of a facility you were linked to, was a coincidence?”

  “Yes!”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “It’s true! But I was taking care of the situation. I stopped the information from getting out. David’s the one who accessed the info, and once he’s gone, the info is gone with him.”

  I snorted. “You’re full of shit. You didn’t care about the information getting out. You just didn’t want it to get into shifter hands. You were covering your own ass, not the Initiative’s.” I gestured to the small army in the open space. “You are part of the Moreau Initiative, right?”

  “I don’t like your attitude,” General Mason said.

  Personally, I was pretty damn proud of my attitude at the moment. Who knew snark could hide terror so well?

  “I would say I’m sorry,” I told him, “but I just found out my soon-to-be stepfather is trying to sacrifice me to save himself. I figure I’ve earned my attitude.”

  An owl hooted from the roof of Buddy’s Café. Three short sounds, followed by three long, then finished with three short. Help was on the way.

  General Mason cocked his head at the sound. I guessed it was too much to hope that someone with a decidedly military background wouldn’t recognize Morse code for SOS, even if it was sent by an owl. Of course if he was Moreau Initiative, then he knew about shifters, so he could probably make the leap to owl shifter.

  Shit. I needed to stall. Give the enforcers time to get here.

  “What I don’t understand,” I said to Darren, “is why you’d help a group like this? You’re a shifter. You’re on the Shifter Council. Why would you betray your kind that way? Money?”

  “Of course it wasn’t for money.” He sounded disgusted.

  “What, then? What could they have possibly offered you to have you turn on your own people? The people you have been entrusted to protect?”

  “What do I care about my people? What have they done for me? I’ve been mocked and ridiculed. We say we’re evolved, that we’re more than our animals, but we still play dominance games, and the more predatory the animal, the more respect they have.”

  “That’s such bullshit. In case you forgot, my mother is one of the most powerful, respected shifters in the country. And she turns into a twenty-five-pound fox.”

  “She wouldn’t be half as respected if it weren’t for the enforcers she surrounds herself with. If it came to a dominance challenge, she wouldn’t last.”

  “Have you even met my mother? She may be smaller than a lion, or whatever you consider properly dominant, but she’s wily and mean when she has to be. And dominance challenge? What century do you live in? Physical challenges for dominance and position went out of style a hundred years ago.”

  “Do you know what the Moreau Initiative does?”

  “Experiment on shifters like some Nazi-era scientists with no morals?” I suggested.

  “No. They are developing the means to enhance humans with shifter traits, something to make them stronger, faster, more agile.”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding like I thought he was an idiot. “And they’re doing it by experimenting on shifters like some Nazi-era scientists with no morals.” I repeated. “It’s inhumane.”

  “We’re not human!”


  The odd smell and horror-movie eyes suddenly made sense. “Holy shit! Neither are they.” I pointed to the soldiers. “At least, not anymore. They’ve been changed, haven’t they? Altered somehow with wolf shifter traits.”

  “These men are from the latest class,” General Mason said. “So far, these have been the most successful. Enhanced vision and olfactory senses. Completely obedient to their alpha.”

  That explained why they just watched placidly. They were waiting for their orders. As if the creep factor couldn’t get any higher. “There are some side effects, though, aren’t there?”

  “So far the benefits outweigh the costs.”

  Just when I thought my disgust with Darren hit maximum capacity. “And you condone this?”

  “Condone? Absolutely. If they can amplify a human’s abilities using shifter DNA, imagine what they can do with a shifter?”

  “That’s it? You want them to make you bigger, stronger, faster? You sacrificed children, betrayed your people, all so you could increase your street cred? Look at these guys. They’re slowly rotting from the inside out. What’s their life expectancy? How long before their bodies reject whatever they were injected with?”

  “That’s the best part,” Darren said, zealotry ringing in his tone. “I’m already a shifter. My body won’t reject it the same way. It’ll be a true enhancement. Their army needs an alpha. I will be that alpha.”

  “You are a fucking moron.” I turned to General Mason and his goons. “You weren’t really going to help him, right? I mean, the Moreau Initiative has been actively trying to destroy shifters, to use them, so why would you do anything to benefit a shifter who has clearly grown too big for his britches?”

  General Mason didn’t even blink. Neither did his soldiers. I took that as agreement, so turned my attention back to Darren. “You’re a moron.”

  Wolves howled in the distance.

  There was a ripple among the dozen men standing in front of me. I swore their eyes blazed gold for a moment.

  For my part I almost sank to the ground in relief. The enforcers were close. Not all wolf shifters were enforcers, nor were most enforcers wolf shifters, but many of the enforcers stationed at the Western Division Shifter Council headquarters were. Help was on the way.

  I just needed to keep stalling. No one had been hurt yet, and I wanted to keep it that way. For some reason, General Mason and his soldiers had been surprisingly nonviolent. None had reached for their guns. None had made a threatening move forward. That had to be weird, right?

  I licked my lips. “You guys are waiting for something, aren’t you?”

  The general’s lips twitched just the slightest, but he didn’t say anything.

  I thought about the implications of them just standing there. Waiting.

  Soldiers were like enforcers. They had a specific job, and though there was some freedom in how they did their job, they still followed orders. The general, while in charge of the soldiers, also took orders. They were waiting for a decision-maker.

  “Out of curiosity, are you guys planning to kill me and Darren?”

  They didn’t say anything. Not that I’d expected them to.

  But the sinking sensation in my gut told me I was onto something. Generally speaking, the Moreau Initiative’s MO tended more toward human trafficking and experimentation than assassination. And honestly, if it came down to it, I think I’d rather be killed quickly than die painfully over a long period of time.

  As one, the soldiers came to attention. One in the back wrinkled his nose. “Sir, incoming.”

  “Into formation,” he barked. “You two, 14578 and 14901, cover the prisoners.” Two of the soldiers stepped forward, sidearms drawn. The rest spread to the edges of the space.

  Darren sucked in a breath. I caught the same thing he did. Shifters, a variety of types, moving en masse toward us.

  “Have you ever faced off against shifters?” I asked General Mason. “Real, healthy, adult shifters who haven’t been tortured, and who fight back?”

  He didn’t say anything, but the answer—no—was obvious by the caution in his eyes.

  “I hope you’re ready.”

  A second later a dark, growling form leaped over the chain-link fence, landing on the two closest soldiers. Immediately following that, a phalanx of enforcers, both in human and shifted form, descended up the area. The quiet night was broken by a cacophony of gunshots and wild roars. Fangs gleamed white in the moonlight, and claws flashed dangerously. The scent of gunpowder and blood permeated the air, cloying and bitter on my tongue. I scuttled back to the dumpster. I was not equipped to join this kind of fight. I knew the basics of self-defense, but a full-on brawl was outside my ability.

  I’d let the enforcers take the lead. The little hairs on my body stood to attention as a pulse of something blasted inside the café. The acrid odor of ozone and burned hair followed.

  One of the enforcers, a guy named Matt I’d run across at my mother’s house more than once, fell in front of the dumpster. In a gap between the bottom of the metal container and the pitted concrete, I could see the small hole in his forehead and the blood seeping around it. His eyes were open wide, but completely empty.

  Pain lanced through me. I’d never seen a dead body before, let alone death by gunshot. I didn’t know Matt very well, but he’d seemed like a good guy. Loyal. To have him die in front of me—because of me—was too much to take in. I shoved my fist in my mouth to keep from crying out.

  The back door to the café opened, and William and Buddy charged into the melee. William grasped a handgun that looked like one of the Initiative’s SIG Sauers. Buddy carried an aluminum baseball bat.

  A soldier charged him, brandishing a combat knife splattered with red. Buddy swung the bat, smashing the man’s wrist, forcing him to drop the knife. The soldier bellowed in pain. Buddy swung again, crashing the bat into the soldier’s head.

  Owen screeched out a warning. I looked up and saw General Mason aim his sidearm at Buddy. And time… just… stopped.

  Adrenaline was a funny thing. As it surged through me, everyone around me seemed to be stopped midmotion, like they’d been caught in a paused video.

  Owen got caught in the middle of launching himself from the roof, wings spread wide, talons extended.

  A wolf shifter in furred form clamped his jaw around a soldier’s throat.

  An enforcer in skin form grappled with a soldier, mouth open in a silent snarl.

  General Mason’s narrow gaze was frozen in concentration, his finger closing over the trigger of his SIG Sauer.

  And Buddy. Buddy had been stopped in midturn, his eyes finding me in my hiding spot, his wide chest a perfect target.

  With a whoosh of sound, time flashed forward, and I sprinted from the space behind the dumpster. I hurdled prone, bloody bodies like they weren’t even there. “Theo!” I screamed, not hearing the shout over the pounding of blood in my ears.

  His eyes widened.

  I launched myself at him. I slammed into his chest, knocking him back a few steps. He was big enough that if he fought me, I couldn’t have forced him to the ground. Either he was knocked off-balance in surprise, or he trusted me enough that when I hollered “Get down,” he listened.

  Searing pain sliced across my right biceps—a freezing-burning sensation that fried my nerves and sent jolts down to my fingertips.

  Buddy rolled, covering my body with his.

  “I’m going to whip your ass for that,” he grumbled in my ear.

  “Worth it.”

  As suddenly as it started, the fight ended. Mutters and scuffles told me we’d been victorious, but since I was buried under three hundred pounds of grizzly shifter, that’s all I knew.

  I pushed at Buddy with my good arm. “Get off me.”

  “Never.”

  “Really. I need to see what’s happening. And I think I’ll need a first aid kit.”

  With that Buddy surged off me and started examining me from top to toe. Catching sight of the angry
red wound on my biceps, he snarled. His fingers were gentle, though, when prodding around the tender area. It burned, but there was very little blood.

  “Just a graze,” I said, trying to be as stoic and manly as Buddy had been when he’d been hit the other day. This wound looked a lot like his, actually.

  “I’m taking you to the emergency room,” he declared.

  I shook my head. “It can wait, Theo. Look around us. There are a lot of people who need help more than me.” I thought of poor Matt. “I’ll be fine.”

  He grumbled, but then he stood and helped me to my feet.

  The small delivery area behind Buddy’s Café looked like a mini war zone. Enforcers had eight of the soldiers restrained against the chain-link fence. I assumed the other four were among the bodies laid out on the other side of the concrete. I saw Matt, along with one other man in an enforcer’s uniform. There were also two naked men lying next to them. Shifters who had reverted back to their human form in death.

  So much death. So much blood. For every deceased person, there were three times as many with injuries ranging from grievous to nuisance.

  The long-haired barista came outside, pulling four men in suits behind him. Each one was secured to the one in front of him wrist-to-wrist with what looked like duct tape. All were pale-skinned and glassy-eyed.

  “Your fake FBI agents?” I asked.

  Buddy looked down at me. “How’d you know?”

  I shrugged. The movement caused the pain to redouble in my arm. “I peeked in earlier. What happened to them?”

  “Ford did this whole… thing. Honestly, I don’t know what it was, but it was like he conked them on the head, but from a distance.”

  I looked at the barista. “Huh. What is he?”

  “No idea,” Buddy said. “Never asked. But I can tell you he’s one of the scariest motherfuckers I’ve ever come across.”

  William stalked past us. He pulled the dumpster forward, reached down, and pulled back an armful of spotted fur. The bobcat wriggled and hissed, trying to get away, but William’s hold was too strong.

  Darren.

  William tossed the cat to the center of the receiving area. He pulled his gun out and pointed it right between Darren’s tufted ears. “Shift!”