by E A Price
“I don’t think so,” he rumbled.
“Okay.”
She tried to budge him, but it did no good. He snorted with merriment and told her she was absolutely adorable. She huffed, pretending that her flamingo wasn’t preening at the compliment.
“I hate you right now,” she muttered.
He laughed and blew her a kiss.
A shiny-looking man in a well-cut suit got on the subway car; he was talking loudly and disagreeably on his cell phone. The rest of the passengers took an instant dislike to him.
“Yah, yah, my car is in the shop. Well, it’s a classic car, I just hope that damn weasel shifter mechanic doesn’t ruin in. Dirty little bastard shifters the lot of them.”
Stone curled his upper lip and looked away in disgust. The shiny man looked at Stone and his muscles and did the same.
Francine wasn’t great at placing species, it was hard when you didn’t have a very good nose, but this guy looked like some kind of medium-sized shifter. With his rusty red hair, she’d guess red wolf. Yuppie types.
Stone wasn’t paying any attention, and the shiny man was otherwise engaged. Francine didn’t want to have to do this, but…
Against strenuous objections from a certain feathered creature, surreptitiously, she snaked a hand out and swiped the wallet out of the wolf’s pocket. When she was younger, she had been a magician’s assistant in a few stage shows and had actually learned to be pretty good at sleight of hand. That was back when she was young enough. For The Great Ronaldo, the cut off age for his assistants was twenty-three.
Carefully, she pushed it into Stone’s pocket and pretended like she was patting his butt. He smiled at her, clearly enjoying the attention. No he didn’t see anything wrong with what she was doing, nor was he questioning her sudden mood change – apparently he was just happy to accept it.
Francine fluttered her eyelashes, and he dove in for a kiss. Apparently he didn’t need much of an invitation. She enjoyed the way he nibbled on her bottom lip for a few moments, before horrifying her flamingo by reaching out and lightly brushing the shiny wolf’s pocket.
The shiny wolf growled and out of the corner of her eye she saw him patting his pocket, before looking around wildly. Lo and behold he saw the wallet sticking out of Stone’s back pocket.
“Hey, thief!” snarled the wolf.
Stone ignored him; he kissed and cuddled with Francine as she felt her heart sink a little. He must have sensed something was wrong. Perhaps it was in her scent. She heard that a lot of shifters could scent changes in emotions, but it wasn’t something she could ever imagining being able to do. He pulled back and frowned at her before slowly training a hard-boiled look at the wolf. He breathed out and seemed to grow an extra few inches both in height and width.
“You want something?” Stone rumbled, in a deep voice that even had the wolf pausing for thought. Not for long, though.
“You stole my wallet,” hissed the wolf.
“I didn’t steal a thing.”
“Well it’s in your pocket!” he howled.
Stone felt his back pocket, produced the wallet, raised an eyebrow at Francine, who had a 'butter wouldn’t melt' expression and tossed the wallet at the wolf. “Problem solved.”
He returned his attention back to Francine, but there was a reproachful look in it that did make her just the teensiest bit guilty. Okay! A lot guilty.
“Problem not solved!” snarled the wolf in disbelief.
Everyone else in the carriage was watching with interest. This was about as exciting as subway journeys got.
“Is anything missing?” asked Stone, slowly.
“Well, no,” admitted the wolf, thumbing through the huge amount of bills.
“Well then.” Stone turned away, and the wolf caught his meaty arm.
Stone didn’t get mad. He didn’t howl or rage. He merely looked at the wolf and his hand and gave him a pointed, cool stare. The wolf took his paw away, but his belligerence wasn’t going anywhere. Yep, you can rely on wolves – even red wolves - to be hot heads.
“You tried to steal from me.”
“No, I didn’t.” Stone gave him a look that dared him to disagree with that.
The wolf looked around frantically and his gaze alighted on Francine, a much smaller and much less dominant shifter. Francine could see the wheels turning in his mind. Yes, she’d do as a scapegoat. Typical! She was ignoring the fact that she was actually guilty in this instance.
“Well then she did – that bird,” he spat, disdainfully. She figuratively ruffled her feathers at that. What the heck was wrong with being a bird?
Stone wrapped his arm around her, almost crushing her ribs. He seemed to have lost his usual good nature. And instead of a large, friendly man, in his place was a man who could turn into a hulking great killing machine on a whim. “You have your wallet, no big deal.”
“That fucking whore’s a…”
Stone let go of her, and with a roar his fist connected with the wolf’s jaw. People in the carriage screamed, it lurched to a stop as they naturally came to a station, and everyone was flung everywhere.
As Francine dragged herself to her feet, dislodging a couple of people who fell on her, she saw Stone, barbarously trying to smash the wolf’s teeth in. Lucky for the wolf he seemed to be quite fast.
Francine, with a mewl of regret from her feathery friend, whispered that she was sorry and ducked away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Francine huddled in the bushes. She’d considered just marching up to Michael’s house and banging on the door, but his wife and kids were there – she didn’t want to make a scene in front of them. Or enrage his wife who was also a hyena and looked like she could happily take a bite out of a down on her luck flamingo.
Instead, she had called Michael and asked him to meet her. Boy had he been unhappy to hear from her. But when she threatened actually to march up to his door, he agreed that he would meet her at the end of the garden.
Why was she hiding in the bushes? A couple of dog walkers had already walked past and eyed her curiously, and she didn’t want anyone to call the cops about a weird woman loitering in a nice neighborhood.
She heard some voices from the house.
“Just putting the garbage out, darling,” called Michael. The pervert.
Francine heard his swift footsteps as he walked towards her. “You can come out,” he whispered.
She stood up to find him glaring at her. “Well, what do you want? Haven’t you caused enough damage?”
“Me?” she almost growled. Flamingos weren’t very good at growling. “None of this would have happened if you had just kept your hands to yourself.”
Michael’s upper lip curled. “Please, as if you didn’t know why you were coming to my house.”
“For an audition!”
He arched a supercilious eyebrow. “Surely at your age…”
“No, I’ve never had to get a part that way before!” she denied, hotly. She really never had. She thought the idea of a ‘casting couch’ was just an outdated myth. She’d been leered at, but she’d certainly not had any offers in that department. Made her feel a little unwanted if truth be told.
“Well, given your age you may have to start,” he said nastily. “You’re at a tricky time in your life, you can no longer be a young woman, but you’re not old enough for hag yet.”
“Boy, those are my choices, huh?”
“What do you want? I’m supposed to be playing Twister with my family.”
Time to get down to brass tacks. “You need to tell the cops that I wasn’t trying to murder you.”
He rubbed the back of his head and looked at her, awkwardly. “Then what am I supposed to tell my wife?”
“The truth, of course!”
“Yeah, that’s not going to go down well. I had to tell her that you wanted to sleep with me and when I said no you stabbed me and attacked our car.”
Her flamingo gasped, and Francine almost stopped breathing. “You didn�
��t have to say that!”
“Well, I had to say something and how would it look if I changed my story now?”
“I don’t care how it will look – you’re ruining my life!” He didn’t look overly convinced by this reason. “Besides if this whole dumb thing does get to court, what do you think I’ll say? Your wife will hear every detail of what happened that night. Don’t you think she might have a few doubts about your story.”
“I was planning on asking the prosecutor to be lenient. I was going to say that you had some kind of deranged hero worship of me, and that you should get a plea deal and community service. At least you would have if you’d turned up for court.” He frowned at her in disapproval.
“Hero worship?” she repeated, faintly. “Are you kidding me? And I am not doing community service. You need to end this.”
“Or I’ll take my chances in court. I can be very persuasive when I want to be. I’m successful and well known and have a beautiful family. You have nothing. I could say that you’re grasping at straws to try and get money out of me – I can make my wife believe you made the whole thing up. Or…” He paused and seemed to be thinking. It was hard to tell with the glowing hyena eyes.
Francine fidgeted. “Or what?”
“Or if you do something for me, maybe I can make this go away.”
Her blood turned icy cold. Oh lord, here it comes. “Like what?” This was it, he was going to get her to sleep with him - he was going to turn her into a whore! What was it going to be? A blowjob? Ten blowjobs! Was he going to blackmail her into sex for the rest of his life?
He glanced back at the house before looking at her again. “I need you to kill someone.”
Francine blinked at him. Perhaps she was hallucinating. “I’m sorry, what now?”
He groaned and repeated the words. Yep, he wasn’t kidding.
“Kill someone? You’re not serious.”
“Deadly.”
She pinched her hand in the hope that she was hallucinating and had just fallen asleep in the bush. Sadly, that didn’t seem to be the case. “But… why?”
“None of your business. If you do it, I’ll convince the cops that this whole thing between you and me was all a mistake. You’ll get off with nothing – and I’ll pay your legal fees. Hell, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars, too to make sure you haven’t lost out on any earnings.”
“Ten thousand?” That sounded like a lot of shoes. Her animal huffed. “No, I can’t kill anyone.”
“She’s an old woman with no family and no friends – no one will miss her.”
“That’s not the point! If you want her dead, why don’t you do it?” She ignored the wince as she said that. It kind of sounded like she was encouraging him.
“I can’t.”
“But I… I can’t do that.”
He smiled, nastily. “Do you know that in general people who are convicted of murder spend ten years in jail, and some get life.”
Francine bit her lip. This conversation was running away from her. “But…”
“She’s an old woman near the end of her life, ten years of your life for hers – that’s not nothing.”
“But…”
“I need this done, and if you don’t do it, I’ll make sure you spend a very long time in jail.”
“But…”
“Now, we can’t be seen talking.” He fished in his pocket and produced a cell phone. “Here, take this. It’s a burner cell; I keep it around just in case.”
The nasty part of her, the part still functioning, thought that he had it in case he wanted to make calls that he didn’t want his wife to know about.
“I’ll call it tomorrow with more instructions.”
Dazedly, she took it. “But…”
“Don’t worry,” he said in an ingratiating tone. “This way we both get what we want.” Then he smiled, creepily. “Maybe I will give you a part in my new movie after all.” He spun around and hurried to the house.
What the hell just happened? She looked to her bird, but she didn’t seem to have a better grasp of the situation either.
Francine disentangled herself from the bush and started walking down the street, staring at the phone. She sniffled and pushed it into her pocket. What had she got herself into?
She only managed a few steps before big, meaty hands clamped around her.
“You’re not getting away again, feathers.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Stone was unnerved. He had plucked her off the street and carried her all the way back to the ancient truck he had been forced to borrow from his dad.
His dad had been trying to call him for a few days and – gawd – he wanted to talk. He agreed to lend him the truck because Stone promised to stop by and have a talk as soon as he could – ugh.
He could have asked a friend for help. He could have called the bail bond office; after all, Mia had been trying to call him. The little rabbit seemed eager to find out where he was exactly with Francine – but he was too embarrassed to tell her.
It was bad enough when he had to beg Zara to do a tracing spell on Francine two times; he was lucky he had the feather otherwise it wouldn’t have worked. The feather was something that had previously belonged to Francine and had touched her recently – if it hadn’t the spell wouldn’t have worked.
Zara had almost laughed herself silly when he had to admit that Francine kept getting away from him. Even more so when he admitted he might just sort of maybe have feelings for the flamingo.
He wasn’t open to ridicule yet. Or at least he wasn’t open to more ridicule yet. He didn’t know how he felt about Francine. He found her attractive. He enjoyed being with her. His heart sped up whenever he saw her. And he would massacre any man who ever tried to get near her and would not allow her to be with another man.
Hmmm, but what could all that mean?
Francine was like a sack of potatoes in his arms as he handcuffed her inside the truck – yeah, he’d finally learnt his lesson. An attractive sack, a beautiful sack, but she had about as much life in her as a sack.
Stone cupped her face, and she gave him such a forlorn look that his rhino roared at him to do something. “Feathers, are you sick?”
“Yes, sick to my stomach,” she muttered.
He hesitated. He should take her to the cops. Her situation was only going to get worse the longer she was considered a fugitive, but he couldn’t take her like this. He had envisioned taking her back to the cops and then finding out just what was going on. But maybe he was doing this the wrong way.
Stone closed the door and jogged around the truck.
“Taking me to the cops,” she said, morosely.
“Not right now.”
Her eyes flickered with interest. And then he said something he had never said to a woman before in his life. “Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk.”
*
Stone unlocked the handcuffs. He was about to take them off completely then thought better of it. He slapped the other on his wrist, so they were cuffed together. A spark of annoyance crossed her face, and he grinned as he felt her slowly warming up to her usual self. Plus his rhino seemed to get a thrill out of the cuffs.
He led her into the house.
“Where are we?” she asked, suspiciously.
Stone clasped her hand. “Somewhere safe. But it’s late, so we need to be quiet.”
He found the back door key – hidden in the plant pot with the dead plant - and let himself in. His dad wasn’t much of a gardener, and someone would have to be crazy to try and steal from a rhino shifter. He was about to offer her something to eat when he heard some feminine giggles and deep male rumbles coming from the living room.
“Dad?” he called, worriedly.
He heard some loud exclamations of ‘shit’ from his dad and then some more feminine giggles. He switched the light on and found his dad rushing into the kitchen. His was about the same size of Stone, even in muscles. Ronald Stone had spent his life in construction and was bui
lt like a bulldozer. However at this moment he was looking a tad on the disheveled side. His shirt was inside out, and his naturally ruddy cheeks were beet red. He was also followed by his dad’s next-door neighbor, Magda. She matched his dad in disheveledness. To Stone’s shock who had never seen her in anything but housecoats, she was wearing a tight black dress, that were it not so large might have been referred to as a little black dress. Magda wasn’t naturally slinky or thin; she was a hippo shifter. She was round on top and round on the bottom with a nipped in waist. She actually had a shape a lot like Francine's, but on a larger scale, what with her being over six feet without heels.
Her cheeks were also dark red, but she managed to recover quicker than his dad who was opening his mouth like a goldfish. “Ronny, so nice to see you.” She walked over and placed a kiss on his cheek while asking if he was eating right and telling him that he looked too thin. She always did that. Magda had six kids and seemed to be determined to adopt and mother even more.
“Ronny?” whispered Francine with a raised eyebrow.
Yes, he was called Ronald Stone Jr. which is why he went by Stone.
“Yeah, ah…”
His dad cleared his throat. “Everything okay, m’boy?” Since Stone could remember, his dad had called him ‘m’boy’.
Stone looked at his dad and Magda, who were panting as if they’d just run a marathon. To his horror, his dad’s zipper was down. His rhino actually started laughing. “Uhh, yeah…”
His dad looked at Francine. In a daze, Stone introduced them. Francine tried to raise her hand to shake, and they noticed the handcuffs.
“It’s a long story,” said Stone. It was his turn to be embarrassed.
Magda looked at Francine wonderingly. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Francine looked surprised. “Well…”
Magda thought about it and clicked her fingers. “Weren’t you in the Draco Dinner Theatre’s production of The Invisible Man?”
Francine’s cheeks flushed lightly, but a smile played on her lips. “Oh, yeah…”
The hippo shifter nodded. “It was… interesting. You were wonderful; I liked the way you kept going when that waiter walked up on stage to get to that woman who needed salt. And also when the strings broke, and the invisible man’s glasses were dangling and flying around the stage. You were very professional.”