Badger to the Bone

by Shelly Laurenston

  Livy gave herself a moment to get control. She had to or she was going to rip her aunt’s fucking face off and eat it like the skin off a freshly roasted turkey.

  When she knew she had control, she quietly replied, “I’ll talk to Max.”

  Her aunt smiled. “Thank you, niece. You’re the best.”

  * * *

  “It smells in here,” Nelle complained as they sat on the bench next to each other, Nelle’s fist under her nose.

  “Would you stop? You act like we took you to a pile of clothes we found in the subway. It’s an army surplus store.”

  “I don’t understand why we couldn’t just stop by—”

  “If you mention Ándre—accent over the A—one more time, I’m going to beat you to death. And there’s ample shit I could take off the walls to do it with.”

  “Rude.”

  “Snob.”

  Max couldn’t believe the bitching she was getting from Nelle simply because she’d been forced to spend a few minutes in an army surplus store.

  Vargas returned from the dressing room in a pair of blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and thick work boots.

  “Seriously?” Nelle asked, lip curling in disappointment . . . possibly disgust.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  Max had the same question as Vargas. She didn’t understand what Nelle was complaining about. It was a basic outfit. Typical of any of the former military guys she’d dealt with over the years, but she couldn’t remember any of them looking this . . . tasty.

  The Levis cupped his exquisitely formed ass perfectly. The T-shirt had a worn look so that the sleeves were a little tight on his massive biceps and the bottom hung just at his hips. When he put his hands in his front pockets and lifted his shoulders, the T-shirt rose up, giving just a tease of the magnificent abs and narrow hips it was hiding.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to see Ándre?” Nelle practically begged.

  “Shut up about Ándre!” Max bellowed, startling everyone in the store. Startling even herself.

  She cleared her throat. “I mean . . . we don’t have time for that.” She focused on Vargas. “Let’s just get a few more of those exact same jeans. And a bunch of those T-shirts in, um, red, dark green, and blue. A nice, deep . . . blue.”

  Vargas frowned at Max. “Uhhhh . . . okay.” He looked at Nelle. “And I promise I’ll pay you back once I get a new debit card and have access to my bank account. Or I can write you a check . . . once I get my checkbook.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Max told him, leaning her arm on Nelle’s legs so that Vargas was looking at her again with those green eyes. “She’s rich. Like, disgustingly, horrifyingly, amazingly rich. You don’t ever have to pay her back.”

  “Oooohhhh . . . kay.” He blinked several times before saying, “I’ll pay you back, Nelle.”

  “Sure,” Nelle replied. She waited until Vargas had gone back to the denim section before she brutally shoved Max off her lap. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

  “Well—”

  A man who had been lingering near them while they spoke to Vargas suddenly sidled up to Nelle. She turned only her head to nail him with one of her ball-shriveling glares, and said, “Get the hell away from me or I will kill you.” He smirked and again started to say something, but she added, “You can look in my eyes and tell that I will kill you. You can feel it in your soul. Like a dove when a hawk is nearby. So what you’re going to do at this moment is walk away from me. Because if you don’t, we both know I’ll kill you and that it’ll be messy, but that I’ll definitely get away with it. Because I’m pretty and I’m rich. And rich people get away with everything.”

  Frowning, the man looked at Max next and she replied with a fangless but spit-filled hiss that had him quickly scurrying off. When they were again alone, Nelle asked in a whisper, “Are you into him?”

  Max knew that Nelle was talking about Vargas but a different full-human male approached, apparently sensing an opening. Nelle dismissed that belief by snapping, “I’m not talking to you, idiot.”

  With that man gone, Nelle again focused on Max. “Well?”

  Max sat back down on the bench. “I wasn’t, but then . . . he came out in those jeans and T-shirt . . . goddamn!”

  “You know what it was? He didn’t smell like Dutch anymore. I told you he smelled like Dutch!”

  “I don’t mind Dutch’s funk. Unless he’s gone to a wolf party. All that tequila does not come through his pores well.”

  “No. But Dutch might as well be your brother. He’s not someone you’ve ever had a thing for. And Zé was covered in that brotherly funk. But now he’s in clothes that only reek of this horrible place, which allows you to drill down to his natural musk.” She grinned, crinkling up her nose and nodding her head. “Musk.”

  “Did you have to say that twice?”

  “I totally did.”

  * * *

  They took a ferry over to Staten Island, stopping at a diner that was apparently within walking distance of what both Max and Nelle kept calling “the old sports center.” Zé had no idea what that meant but he didn’t care enough to bother asking any more questions. Especially when the answers he got were . . . off-putting.

  For instance, the diner they stopped at seemed to be manned by very large women with a less-than-friendly attitude toward Nelle and Max, even though they were both being very nice. When Zé asked about it, he was told, “Well . . . they’re bears. What did you expect?”

  He expected people in a service business to know how to treat their customers! Growing up in New York as a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx, he was used to being treated in a less-than-friendly manner by some. But if service people wanted a good tip or his return business, they hid the bullshit. Not these people, though. They let their bigotry hang out there for the world to see. It wasn’t color or religion they reacted to, though. It was species and breed.

  According to Max, wolves didn’t like dogs; dogs and wolves didn’t like cats; bears didn’t like dogs, wolves, or cats; and absolutely nobody liked honey badgers.

  “And none of that covers the internal bigotry.”

  “Internal bigotry?”

  “Tigers think very little of lions, lions think very little of jaguars and leopards, grizzlies tend to slap around black bears, jackals find African wild dogs really annoying . . . the list goes on and on.” Max took another bite of a burger that was nearly the size of her head before muttering, “It’s endless. Just do what we do . . .” “Which is?”

  “Which is?”

  “Ignore it,” the two women said together.

  After finishing a meal so large it would kill most people, they made their way down the street to the “old sports center.”

  “You can wait in there. We’ve gotta hit the locker room.” Max gazed up at him. “Need anything else?”

  Wondering why she was looking at him like that, Zé replied, “No. You can go away now.”

  She chuckled and headed off.

  Okay, there was one thing that Zé did really like about being around his “own kind,” as Max called them. Their reaction to him. Specifically, their reaction to his attitude.

  Since childhood, everyone around him had made it very clear they didn’t like it. There were comments on his report cards, his grandfather heard about it in parent-teacher conferences, his commanding officers told him often “you have to work on your attitude, Vargas.” He’d heard it so much for so long, he’d gotten used to it. But here, among these people . . . ? His attitude didn’t seem to faze any of them. He enjoyed that.

  Zé made his way into the basketball arena. Women were already practicing on the well-worn court, and none of them were what Zé had been expecting. They represented a broad swath of humanity, including different sizes, different races, different hair colors. So many hair colors, in fact, sometimes on one head alone! And along with the usual array of tattoos came scars. Lots of scars. As if several had been attacked by dogs at some point in their live
s.

  Hell, maybe they had.

  No, this wasn’t like the WNBA at all. He knew that when he saw one player who was so tall—well over seven feet—she simply stood under the hoop so that when one of her teammates passed her the ball, she simply tossed it into the basket. Zé sensed that was her only purpose.

  Then Max and her friends walked out, all in bright yellow team sweat suits. They were the smallest women there, even though Mads, the tallest of the five, was at least five-eight. In fact, they appeared so tiny next to the rest of their teammates that Zé wondered why they’d be chosen for the team. They were like hobbits in comparison.

  Max spotted him sitting in the stands, close to the floor, and waved. She’d been much . . . nicer to him since they’d left the army surplus store. He tried not to be paranoid about her change of attitude but he’d managed to live a relatively long, healthy life so far by being incredibly paranoid.

  Turning to speak to another teammate, Max revealed her team’s name on the back of her team jacket. The Wisconsin Butchers.

  “Well, that’s lovely,” he muttered.

  “What is?” a woman next to him asked.

  Zé quickly looked to his left, his hand immediately reaching for the sidearm that wasn’t there.

  “You’re okay,” the woman said. “I would never hurt a fellow cat.” She scratched a spot under her eye. “Unless he started some shit, of course. You planning on starting some shit?”

  “No.” He lowered his hand, returned his focus to the team in front of him. Max had taken off her sweatpants and jacket, leaving nothing but her tank top and shorts and revealing the body of a gymnast. Her shoulders and thighs were massive for a woman her size, and her arms were muscular. She cracked her neck and the sound radiated across the arena.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” the woman next to him asked.

  He looked at her again. She was black. Older. Beautiful. Her dreads were brown, blond, gold, white, and gray. Her eyes dark brown. She wore an African-style necklace made of wood and ivory that looked, at least to his eye, expensive. Her bracelet was white gold and diamonds. But despite the money around her neck and wrist, she wore only casual shorts and a worn Bob Marley T-shirt. The flip-flops on her feet probably only cost her three bucks at an Old Navy summer sale.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

  “Well . . . you were in the middle of recovering from brain damage.” When he frowned, she added, “You came to our street when you got busted trying to eat a bear cub.”

  Horrified, Zé closed his eyes and lowered his head. If he could have, he would have disappeared into his seat, never to be seen again by any decent person.

  “Don’t feel bad,” she said with a smile. “If they don’t want their cubs eaten, bears shouldn’t let them get so juicy looking.”

  Zé was looking at her again. Gawking might be a better word.

  “Oh, don’t worry.” She patted his knee. “Most of us don’t eat humans anymore.”

  “Most of you?”

  “Some hyenas . . . they still have the taste. There are some of them that do cleanup work, if you need it.”

  “Please stop talking to me.”

  She laughed and it made her even more beautiful, but holy shit! This conversation was freaking him out.

  “The name is Imani Ako.” She held out her hand and he took it.

  “Zé. Zé Vargas.”

  “Nice to meet you, Zé.” She refocused on the team practice. The players were doing warm-up drills. Not exactly interesting. “Sooo . . . you really didn’t know that you were—”

  “No.”

  “Wow. This must be hard for you. I mean, I’ve known all my life. Was raised to understand both sides of myself. I can’t imagine finding out about all this when you’re . . . ?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Thirty! Wow.”

  He really wished she’d stop saying “wow.” It was giving him a complex.

  She was silent for a bit—thankfully—until she asked, “Do you feel safe?”

  Zé frowned. “In life?”

  She chuckled. “With the MacKilligans. Those sisters have made quite a name for themselves since they came to our neighborhood.”

  “The bears don’t seem to mind them.” Wait . . . did he just say that? Why had he said that? What the fuck did that even mean?

  “The bears don’t mind for two reasons. One, because the oldest sister can bake her ass off. The quickest way to get any bear on his or her knees? Baked goods. The second reason is because they’re all so small, the grizzlies can just slap them right out of the neighborhood if need be. Which I thought they’d do right away when I heard there were honey badgers roaming around. The grizzlies and black bears are extremely protective of their hives. And yet . . . the three sisters are still there. And now you.”

  “Yes. Me.”

  “The little one, Max, she was very protective of you when you came to our street. She put those brawny shoulders between a group of confused cats and a gang of really angry bears. That’s not something even a honey badger would usually do.” She paused for a moment, then added, “I’m lying. Any honey badger would do that, but only for themselves. She did it for you.”

  “Your point?”

  “That protectiveness could fade. Badgers are crazy . . . and mean . . . and hate everybody. Remember that. Because if she changes her mind about you . . . Well, don’t let her tiny size confuse you. You might be a large cat but honey badgers are not easy to kill, they’re willing to take on anybody, and they won’t stop. They’ll attack and attack until you either go away or you kill them.”

  “That is lovely information you just provided. It should be put into verse.”

  She laughed and Zé had to ask, “Are you here for a reason? Or just to freak me out?”

  “Just observing,” was her reply but there was something really weird about it. So weird he decided not to engage in any more conversation unless it was about the weather or something else inane.

  Thankfully, the silence between them stretched on for quite a bit and Zé had just gotten comfortable again when a male he didn’t recognize sat down to his right, leaving only one empty seat between them. Which seemed strangely close considering they had the entire fucking arena to sit in.

  Holding a giant soda from the nearby 7-11, the man greeted Zé with a wide smile. “Hey-ya! I’m Dutch. Dutch Alexander. Max’s best friend. I was the one who tried to help you when your brain was still healing. You’re Zé, right? How are you doing? Holding up? You look really good. Like you’re all healed up. Must be a relief, huh? So what’s going on? You just hanging out here? Not that I blame ya. Max’s friends are cute, right?”

  Dutch was chatty. Dutch kept talking. Talking so much that Zé really just wanted him to shut up. But that wasn’t happening fast enough for him.

  So when the words just kept pouring from the man’s mouth, Zé did the only thing he could think of.

  * * *

  Dutch was trying to make Zé feel comfortable and relaxed in this new world he’d been thrust into. He knew how the MacKilligan sisters could be when it came to outsiders. It had to be rough on the poor guy. Right? So he wanted to let the cat know that if he needed someone to talk to after a lifetime of thinking he was one thing, when he was, in fact, another . . . well, Dutch was here for him.

  At first, the cat just stared at him. Frowning. He didn’t say anything. Just kept staring. Dutch was used to breeds that stared. Cats were big on staring. Lions, tigers, bobcats. All of them tended to stare. Even when Dutch tried to involve the man in the conversation by asking whether he’d always lived in New York . . . Zé continued to stare at him. For at least a good minute. Then, with his gaze still on Dutch, Zé slowly reached over and, with a flick of his wrist, knocked Dutch’s soda out of his hand.

  The Ako Pride She-lion sitting on the other side of Zé threw her head back and laughed as Zé returned his gaze to Max’s team practice.

  * * *

  “You five! Over her
e!”

  Max, Nelle, Mads, Streep, and Tock made their way over to their coach. They’d been practicing for two hours and were exhausted, sweating like pigs. Someone handed each of them a towel to dry off and they slowed down a bit to wipe their faces until Coach yelled, “I said move, move, move!”

  There were not a lot of people that Max and her teammates would run for but Coach Diane Fitzgerald had been working with them since they were in high school. She’d actually used the high school team’s record to get the job of coach for the Wisconsin Butchers. She didn’t need to be a college coach first. Which was fortunate, because she never would have lasted coaching a human college team.

  Full-humans could never handle having a She-wolf like their coach as a leader. To put it nicely, Coach Fitzgerald was a vicious animal with few boundaries.

  Max adored her.

  “Why were you five late?” Coach demanded once they were standing in front of her; her massive shoulders always made her appear as if she was ready to tackle any one of them like a linebacker for the New York Giants.

  “Why are you asking?” Max questioned. “You know we’ll just lie. We’re very good at lying.”

  “I’m not,” Tock admitted. “I believe in painful honesty. The kind that destroys your soul and breaks your mind.”

  “I was just going to blame my period,” Streep interjected. “Talk about my cramping. Then double over, with lots of sobbing.”

  “While I would quickly move to help Streep and rush her to the bathroom, begging everyone for a tampon as we ran.” Nelle looked around and called out, “Anyone have a tampon? Anyone? Dear God, she needs a tampon!”

  Everyone stared at Mads but all she did was shrug and softly say, “I would have just walked away. I always walk away when I don’t want to answer something.”