“I was just listening to the news,” she went on. “There was an animal attack in Mountain Lake Park last night. Two joggers were ripped to shreds. Right now the police are tentatively blaming dogs.”
“You think it was one of us?” I asked, frowning.
“Could be. The main thing is that it’ll be more dangerous for anyone to shift inside the city for a while. You know how people get about things like this.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I do. We’ll have to watch more closely for any loners for the next couple weeks, for their own good.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Autumn gave me a tight smile, then headed back out. I hoped Brandon wasn’t going to give her too hard of a time.
Focused again on the computer, I closed the personnel files and opened up my browser. A quick search found an article about the animal attack, but it had been written quickly and had little information to add to what Autumn had already told me. I skimmed over the comments, which were usually nothing more than inane babbling but occasionally held little nuggets of truth that hadn’t bubbled to the surface yet.
A commenter suggested the animal attack was staged to hide a hate crime, because the joggers had been a newlywed lesbian couple. Another somehow used the animal attack as an excuse to start a racist rant. There was even the standard crank declaring that it was a sign of the end times and the deaths were actually human sacrifices. Nothing useful.
I closed the laptop, then checked the time on my phone. Three more minutes and then I could leave guilt free.
Big Bad Security had grown from just Autumn and me to an operation with twenty-six people. Thirteen of those were paranormals of some type, including myself. One was a human single mom—Cristina—who ran the phones. The rest were human veterans, who were often puzzled by the low-key people they were partnered with. I was proud of how confused they were, because it meant my training was working. If we didn’t know how to control ourselves, those of us with sufficient power had a tendency to leak it all over the place. Even humans without any psychic sensitivity at all would notice it and be put on edge.
I didn’t often take jobs myself any more, putting more of my time into training and management, but I still felt obligated to put in full time in the office. The money came more easily than it used to, but I wasn’t going to be one of those assholes who got a little bit of success and then completely set himself apart from the employees who were responsible for that success.
I shut the door to my office and locked it behind me, noting that Cristina was on the phone when I stepped out. A moment of listening confirmed it wasn’t a potential client and just her babysitter, which meant there likely wouldn’t be any reason to linger that night.
Once she hung up, I flipped off the overhead lights and pulled on my jacket. “I’m going to walk you to your car.”
She frowned faintly as she slung her purse over one shoulder. “I really don’t need you to.”
There weren’t very good human words to describe it, but my instincts told me that there was something off. Letting her walk out of the office alone would be a mistake. Everyone else had left with other people, but Cristina would be walking out alone. So would I, but there were very few things in the world that I found threatening.
The idea that Pacific Heights was a place where it wasn’t safe to walk the streets at night was ludicrous, of course. Nicolas Cage and Nancy Pelosi and all of those other rich bastards wouldn’t live around here if private security and the police didn’t keep the streets suitably clean. That kind of logic didn’t matter in the face of instinct.
“I’d feel better if I did,” I said.
She turned her face away a bit, but I still saw her roll her eyes. She didn’t argue with me any further, though. Perhaps my insistence had come across as male chauvinism and Cristina was a new enough hire to not realize that my chauvinism was entirely based on species instead of gender. Not that she’d ever know what the distinction was between those I trusted to take care of themselves and those I had a tendency to view as stunted monkeys. There was a distinction there, though, and it wasn’t one I particularly tried to hide. Some people were simply better than others, at least when it came to defending themselves.
Her car was on a different floor of the parking garage than mine, but I didn’t complain. I just walked her to it and then waited patiently until the car was out of sight, then I headed for the stairs to get my own car.
Halfway between floors a rush of power rolled over me. Alpha wolf, my mind instantly identified. Even before I caught a scent, I knew what I was feeling. I set my foot down on the next step and paused there for a moment in the stairway, considering how dangerous it would be to continue up. I had little concern over taking on another wolf in a fair fight, but there were security cameras and lots of cars with alarms that would go off if a body was thrown into one. Plenty of reasons not to pick a fight here, including the fact that someone lurking in the parking garage screamed “ambush.”
None of my employees were wolves. What few wolves were in the Bay Area were part of my former pack and they could all fuck off forever. No, what I was feeling wasn’t anyone who had a right to be in my territory.
Walking away wasn’t an option. If it was a trap, I’d simply have to deal with it. The alternative would be to accede some of my own dominance over Pacific Heights. That decided, I continued up the stairs and stopped on the third floor. The aura of alpha power was hovering around a man standing near my car. He was wearing a trench coat and had a fedora pulled down lower over his face, which would have made me roll my eyes under any other circumstances. Did he think he was in a film noir? The only thing that stopped me was the buzzing, nagging energy surrounding him. As stupid as he looked to me, he wasn’t someone to dismiss easily.
I walked toward him with a more casual stride than I felt, refusing to show any signs of concern. “Can I help you?”
The man turned toward me, showing more of his face. He was white—pale enough to really justify that term—and had washed out blue eyes. His features were fairly ordinary and forgettable individually, but there was something in the way that it all came together that was unnerving. It had been some time since I’d been around another werewolf, but I couldn’t remember any of them being so creepy at a glance.
“Hunter Quezada?” the man asked. There was a slight accent to his voice, but I couldn’t quite place it. Italian, maybe, but it seemed muddled.
I nodded. “And you are?”
“Christopher.”
I waited for a moment, but he didn’t offer a last name. My concern over a stranger in my territory was rapidly getting eclipsed over my irritation. “What do you want?”
“I came to offer you a place in my pack. You’re too powerful to be on your own. It’s a waste, don’t you think?”
My upper lip curled in an automatic snarl. “I’m not alone and I have no interest in being anyone’s subordinate. I’m alpha here, in case you didn’t notice.”
Christopher smirked and used one finger to push his fedora back just a bit. I could see a hint of auburn hair under it. “Alpha to a bunch of misfits. Lions and tigers and bears, right?”
“No tigers. I’ve got a snake, though.”
“Not even a mammal?” Christopher laughed, though describing it that way didn’t seem quite right. It was as though he was actually speaking it, forcing sounds out instead of simply following a natural impulse. “Ha ha.”
I continued to stare him down, waiting for an explanation.
“They aren’t your own kind,” he said. “It’s never going to satisfy you to lead those lesser creatures.”
“But that’s the important part,” I said, glad for the irritation now. It drove away my concerns over how much power was hanging around the strange wolf, so I was less likely to show some sign of weakness. “I’m leading them, not following anybody, not offering my throat up to some other wolf. I don’t know why the hell you think I’d want to join your pack instead of taking it for myself.”
“There isn’t anyone—” I cut myself off, suddenly uncertain. Ric Leones had died of cancer several months before and I knew it because I had read the obituary, but there were others in the pack that I hadn’t seen in ten years. My parents would be getting on in years now, but were they as powerful as me? I doubted it, but I couldn’t be sure. Then there was Ric’s son Aidan, who was big and strong even when I’d last seen him as a teenager, but he had never exhibited the same raw potential I did. Everyone else was weak or old, unless there were new wolves I hadn’t heard about, but it seemed doubtful. I kept my ear close to the ground for new arrivals and the other shifters in my makeshift pack did the same. We stayed in our part of town and they stayed in theirs, but it was still valuable to know as much as we possibly could about our rivals.
That left only one person who might be on par with me and the thought left me conflicted. Sofia was powerful even at eighteen—it was why I had been so proud to accept her mate-claim—and there was no reason to think her power would have diminished by her late twenties. A strange new wolf in the area approaching her about merging packs might want more than just a beta. Worse, it could shift the balance of power to the point where sticking to our own territory wouldn’t be good enough.
Swearing under my breath, I unlocked my car and then slid into the driver’s seat.
Chapter Two
Sofia
“What was it? Dogs, wolves, or other?” Edie snapped her gum as she flicked her Zippo lighter on and off in one hand. She was doing her best to quit smoking—no easy task for a pyromancer—and projecting that frustration onto everything around her at the same time.
The grass under my knees was damp and soaking into my jeans as I knelt in Mountain Lake Park, my upper body carefully supported on fingertips so I could bring my nose within inches of the ground. It would have looked absurd to any normals watching, but if I had come here in my wolf form Edie wouldn’t have been able to speak to me freely. There were few things I hated more than the Lassie act and I had strictly forbidden any more of them, no matter how badly she needed my help on a case.
“Werewolf, I think.” I took another careful sniff, frowning.
“That doesn’t sound very definitive,” Edie complained.
“I know. I’m sorry. It doesn’t smell quite right, but I think that’s what it is.”
Detective Edith Cayubi—Edie to pretty much everyone who didn’t call her by her last name—sighed and shoved the lighter into a pocket of her jacket. “Anyone you know?”
Since my nose wasn’t going to be any further help for identification, I straightened up and wiped my hands off on my jeans. “Not anyone I’ve seen recently enough to identify their scent amid all the blood and whatever else that is.” Automatically, I reached up to trace my fingers against the raised scar on my neck. There was a man-eater who lived in the area, but would I have recognized Hunter’s scent if I encountered it again? I swallowed hard, hoping that the answer was a definitive yes. “It would be easier if you brought me in before dozens of cops and the forensics team tromped over everything. This was muddled to begin with and I’m just shocked I can smell anything but cop feet.”
“As soon as I figure out how to tell the captain I need a veterinarian here before CSI, I’ll arrange that.” Edie snapped her gum once again, then spat it back into the wrapper and tucked it into her pocket for later disposal, much to my relief. She couldn’t get over the nicotine withdrawals fast enough, in my opinion.
“If it is a shifter, you’re well and truly screwed. There’s no way you’ll ever convince anyone a person had claws and teeth like that,” I pointed out.
My grandmother said that the paranormal community hadn’t always been so cautious about showing our true selves. There were times when we were completely open and acknowledged by the communities around us, even worshiped as gods in some places. We would always be outnumbered by the normals, though, and numbers mattered when people got paranoid. That paranoia had grown into witch hunts that just about wiped out shifters entirely, at least throughout Europe and Asia. Slavery, disease, and other ills of colonialism had reduced the native shifters in Africa, Australia, and the Americas as well and a lot of history and traditions were lost during those times. My grandmother’s side of the family was lucky that a lot of our history from West Africa and the Caribbean had been preserved, but most people didn’t have that benefit.
She said the worst were the European werewolves, ironically. They had avoided being targeted by much persecution, but only because they had perpetuated it themselves. A lot of the “great” witch finders of history had actually been wolves, twisted by self-loathing and fear of exposure until they sought the deaths of every other paranormal being on the planet. And so what history they still kept was all shaded by that.
My father had greatly disliked my grandmother’s views and the history she taught us pups. He’d had respect for her, of course, but just wished she’d shut up about topics he didn’t want to hear.
“So what the hell do we do? Why would a shifter do this?” Edie asked.
I shrugged. “Sometimes wolves who haven’t been well socialized will do what they think is ‘natural’ based on cultural biases. They don’t know how a real pack functions, either with werewolves or our wild cousins. They think wolves are violent, bloodthirsty monsters. They claim mates by raping them. They fight to the death to gain rank. They think that nature is nothing but brutal savagery and they act that out.”
Edie watched me for a moment with a frown, then gave me a little gesture to follow her as she began walking away from the crime scene. “You’ve seen a shifter behave that way?”
“Most of us behave that way to a mild degree,” I told her frankly. “We’re as influenced by culture as anyone else. It’s a constant struggle to find that balance between instinct, culture, and what’s actually right. Instinct and culture can both lead you astray.”
“Nobody in your pack eats people.” She said it more as a question than a statement. If Edie wasn’t a fiercely loyal friend, I’d never want to talk to her. She was too good at picking things apart and finding all the old scabs you were trying to keep closed.
I sighed, looking away from her. “No one who’s still in the pack, no.”
“What are you doing this weekend?”
The change in subject was abrupt, but welcome. I could tell her what I knew of Hunter’s crime, but I only knew my father’s side of it and even if I had seen and smelled the blood on him myself, I had never been able to fully shake my faith in him. I’d always hoped there was an explanation or some misunderstanding. Saying what I did know would implicate him in yet another person’s eyes, tainting his memory even further. It could also lead to a police investigation against him, because I knew Edie. Even if she had no hope of convicting a werewolf, she’d still do everything she could to make an arrest.
I gave Edie a quick smile. “Dawn invited me to her boyfriend’s house on Friday night. They’re doing a role-playing game and I guess they needed more women.”
“Role-playing like elves and hobbits or role-playing like sexy French maids?”
I laughed at Edie’s question. It had sounded like an awkward way to spend a Friday night to me when Dawn had given me the invitation, but I had accepted in good grace even so. I’d humored her Dungeons and Dragons hobby during college as well and it was a relief to see her getting back to her old interests since she left her worthless husband.
“There are no sexy French maids,” I assured Edie. “This new guy she’s seeing is as much of a geek as she is.”
“I still haven’t met him,” Edie commented thoughtfully. “Should I be upset I didn’t get an invitatio
n?”
“I’ll ask if I can bring you. I think they were just looking for a set number of players and Dawn remembered she got me to play before.” We reached the parking lot and I stopped beside my car. “I haven’t met him yet either, but from the scent on her I’m pretty sure he’s a feline shifter.”
I watched Edie’s eyes widen in shock, then narrow again. “Isn’t Dawn just an ordinary person? Is that safe?”
“She’s not as ordinary as she thinks.” I opened my door and leaned against the edge of it, fingers of one hand drumming against the glass. “I’m trying to trust her on this.”
Her ex-husband had abused Dawn for years, but she had been so isolated from her friends and family that it was difficult to provide much help, especially since she hadn’t been ready to accept it. Once she left him she started accepting help again and had even been seeing a therapist, which was all very encouraging. It was just hard to trust her insta-love relationship with Luke, who had left a mating mark on Dawn during their first weekend together.
I knew from my grandmother that the culture surrounding those marks was different among cats, but they weren’t that different.
Edie shook her head, apparently having nothing more to add on the fact of Dawn dating a shifter. “I’ll talk to you later. Thanks for coming out here.”
“Any time.”
The park wasn’t far from my office, but just far enough that it had made more sense to drive than walk. The lights were still on and Paul Quezada was sitting behind the desk with his feet propped up, one hand soothingly stroking along the spine of my dog Leggy. Paul was in his early fifties and still handsome in a dignified sort of way. His black hair had gone salt and pepper through most of it and had a gray streak sweeping back dramatically from just one temple.
He was the only Filipino wolf I had met. We tended to be rare on islands—being practically unheard of in Japan or Hawaii—and have higher populations in places that still had wild wolves. San Francisco was an anomaly for collecting so many of us in a place without wild wolves.
Once Bitten, Twice Claimed (Claimed by an Alpha Paranormal Romance Book 3) Page 2