Using the dim moonlight to read the manager’s instructions as I jogged, I followed the faint stars through the thick forest canopy until I hit a clearing. Harsh fumes hovered in the open space, thick enough to sting my eyes. Smoke puffed from an off-center chimney, warming the surrounding area.
Maximo’s illicit distillery was bigger than anticipated, a veritable warehouse that would’ve taken up half a city block. But then, Lexington’s zoning committee probably would’ve taken umbrage to the horrid aroma. Something akin to an unholy matrimony of rotting grain and diesel fuel.
Instead of racing through the front door of the two-story structure, I circled around the side, hugging the treeline. No movement came from the foggy windows, so either the burly bastard was running a solo operation, or his associates were lurking unseen within, tending to their foul-smelling liquor.
The scope of the distillery suggested that Maximo was no small contender to Shiv’s bootlegging throne. I guess when you could rip trees from the ground like small twigs, a ruthless vampire didn’t scare you that much, though. Broken jars of clear littered the ground, making for a moonshine wasteland. I picked a fragment out of the frost and held it up to the moonlight.
Blood.
“Damnit.” I tossed the debris away and pushed onward. Maximo hadn’t just stolen a shipment of wolfblood clear. He was trying to reverse-engineer his own batch—and failing, if this ethanol graveyard was any indication.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t succeed. Which would be very bad for my payday. This job was sprouting more heads than a hydra.
Beneath the powerful fumes, I caught the vague scent of pine. The logs weren’t freshly cut, but they weren’t old, either—no more than a year, if I had to guess. Maximo might not have been able to read well, but his construction background wasn’t lacking.
I reached a cellar, which was more a hastily dug pit with a slapdash bundle of sticks for a door. Pressing my ear against the wood, I heard a low, frantic panting.
Taking a step back, I racked the shotgun.
Then I flung the door open.
Growls came from the darkness.
I’d found Maximo’s stockroom.
And it was full of werewolves.
3
I slid down the rickety ladder, keeping the shotgun close. My boots landed on a soft, earthen floor. Pockets of warmth emanated from the darkness—small space heaters to keep the special ingredients alive until another full moon.
Feral, yellow eyes peered at me from rusty cages. These were no ordinary werewolves—the kind you might see down at Bloomingdale’s perusing hats, but never notice. No—these wolves had grown up in the hills, far away from civilization. They were the creatures from horrible fairytales and children’s nightmares. Rip your throat out, feast on your entrails. Even when they were human, they were consumed by bloodlust.
That wasn’t why Maximo had chosen them, though. It wasn’t like their wildness gave the clear anything special. A healthier, well-adjusted wolf would probably make for a cleaner high.
Really, these were just creatures no one would miss. No police reports, no fliers blanketing the neighborhood’s telephone poles. Perfect for staying off the radar.
A skinny wolf flung himself against his cage as I walked past. The rusty bars creaked. Shadowy flame danced across his pale, sallow skin from one of the few dim torches. A cut on his neck indicated he’d been bled—recently. He snarled, mangled teeth ready to remove my throat.
“Anyone who tells me where the shipment crate went goes free.”
A real long shot, but I had nothing to lose. I was greeted by a symphony of snarls. Who knew if these animals could even speak English? When the chorus of growls subsided, a wobbly female voice said from the darkness, “I can help you.”
It came from the far corner, near the stairs heading up to the first floor. That gave me hope that, indeed, this woman had witnessed something. Hell, if that was true, I could even check off my good deed of the day. Set her free into the wilderness for being a good little informant.
Lucky me.
Since the corner was dark, I made a detour, creating a torch from an old two-by-four. I still clutched the shotgun with my other hand. You could never be too careful around wolves. The ghostly light flickered as I swept it in front of the battered cage.
A diminutive woman—definitely the runt of her litter—shivered inside, arms clutching at her rags for warmth. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Basically naked. Unlike the other wolves, that didn’t really work for her—she’d been born and raised in the city, as a human.
She wasn’t built to survive the elements.
“You have to let me go.”
“I don’t have to do anything if you don’t tell me what I want to know,” I said. No one would ever accuse Ruby Callaway of being a humanitarian. Charity was a good way to get dead.
Besides, I wasn’t fond of werewolves to begin with. One had almost killed me back in 1812. You could even argue he’d succeeded.
But all that was semantics, really.
I stared at the young woman. Attractive, despite the dirt. Not knock-you-on-your-ass pretty, but enough that the boys down at the dance hall would take notice. I couldn’t read the wisps in the bad light, but her nails were well-trimmed.
And even the leaves in her hair couldn’t hide the expensive cut.
“You haven’t been bled.” I wagged the makeshift torch at her neck, which was devoid of marks. “How’d you get in with the rest of the mob?”
Her cool blue eyes blinked, adjusting to the light. “My daddy’s looking for me, Miss—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there.” I jabbed the torch through the bars and she retreated with a minor yelp of surprise. “You said you knew something about a shipment of wolfblood clear.”
“A few guys dragged a crate through here yesterday.”
“A little more specific than that.” I poked the torch farther inside the cage. She whined and backed away.
“They complained about how they’d have to carry it up to Max’s office. He’s the big guy. Takes care of the wolves.”
“Takes care of?”
The young woman made a slicing motion across her neck, then another like she was trying to strangle a chicken. Guess if your blood was no damn good, you got put out to pasture.
Kudos for efficiency, I suppose.
I didn’t want to be on the wrong end of that, though.
I scratched my chin with the shotgun stock, lacking a free hand.
Footsteps pounded outside the cellar. Maximo, or his men, were still on my trail.
“Where’s the goddamn office?”
The young woman looked at me frantically. “He’s coming back. You have to let me go!”
“What’d I tell you about that?” I stared back at the darkness, seeing only a gauntlet of glowing yellow eyes and weak flames.
I turned toward the stairwell, ready to search for the office myself.
The woman made a desperate grab for the shotgun, and I almost pulled the trigger by accident. Instead, I released the tension for a split-second, allowing her momentum to carry her back. Then I pulled up hard. The sudden shift slammed the barrel against her ribs with a hearty thud.
She gasped, wind knocked out of her, as the footsteps stopped. I needed to get upstairs, find the shipment, and get the hell out before the welcoming committee found me.
I yanked the torch out of the cage. The smell of ethanol flooded my nose as I took a step toward the stairwell.
“Don’t…bring the fire upstairs.”
Letting out an annoyed grunt, I threw the torch down to the earthen cellar floor. It sputtered into a collection of faint embers in the dirt. Then I racked the shotgun and aimed it at the cage. The young woman shrunk back as a blue bolt of lightning streamed across the short distance.
It illuminated the basement for just a moment. Half-dead mountain wolves, crumbling walls. The full light treatment wasn’t kind to the décor or its inhabitants. This was a place rats av
oided.
The splintered lock tumbled to the ground with an echoing clang.
Back toward the darkness, I called, “You coming?”
She bounded up the stairs behind me and said, “I’m Evelyn.”
“Ruby.”
A booming roar shook the cellar. Maximo was coming for a visit.
I took the first few steps, but Evelyn hung back.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked into the almost pitch black.
“He’ll kill us both if we don’t leave.”
“That’s why I brought a big-ass gun.”
4
Picking up strays was neither a good way to survive nor a good way to get paid. Hopefully word wouldn’t get out that Ruby Callaway was going soft. If business declined, Pearl would have a shitfit.
But business would be at zero if Max caught up with us. I nudged Evelyn into the distillery, urging her to hurry along. Maybe the werewolf could help me find a way out of this mess quicker.
“Why do I have to go first?”
“Because then they’ll shoot you before me,” I replied, only half-joking. A string of lights buzzed, swinging gently from the ceiling’s wooden braces about twenty feet above us. Between the smothering haze of bootleg whiskey and the uninsulated wiring, this place was a tinderbox waiting to erupt.
One spark in the wrong place, and the Kentucky hills would be awash in flame.
The main floor area of the two-story building was populated by a sprawling series of stainless steel stills, all neatly arranged in rows. They were perhaps twelve feet high, planted thick as a densely packed forest. Aside from the poor electrical work, the place could have almost passed for an officially licensed operation.
Even a moonshine runner was only ever a stone’s throw away from going legit. That was Capone’s dream. The Feds got him for tax evasion before he could pull off that trick. But Kennedy’s support was growing across the United States. No one seemed the least bit bothered that some of the campaign funds might’ve been acquired by selling a little clear back in the thirties.
I’d have voted for him in next year’s primary, if I’d ever bothered to register.
A little tough when you’re two hundred years old.
I listened, but Max’s footsteps from earlier had died.
Evelyn folded her thin arms and whispered, “We can’t just stand here.”
“You’re right.” I took her roughly by the shoulder and marched to the nearest window. Without warning, I smashed it out. A cool winter chill swept through the cozy interior, diluting the eye-watering ethanol haze. Outside, a short hill sloped down into a motionless forest.
Groans snaked their way up from the bottom stairwell, the half-dead mountain wolves reacting to the disturbance. I waited until the murmurs died. None of Max’s associates crawled out of the woodwork.
And the big man himself was nowhere to be found, either. Whatever we’d heard downstairs must’ve been a false alarm.
Guess we were suddenly all alone.
“What are you doing?” Evelyn looked aghast at my brazenness. “The half-titan—”
“Half-titan?”
She blinked, eyes full of surprise. “I thought you knew.”
No.
But that explained the feats of strength.
“If that idiot comes up here shooting, this whole place is gonna explode.” I read the wisps floating around her dirty ears. Her arm hairs were pricked up—not ready to turn, but on alert. But I didn’t think my renovations were responsible for her paranoia.
“What?” I raised my eyebrow and shook her.
“I told you Daddy wouldn’t leave me here.”
“Which means?”
I narrowed my gaze, trying once more to picture her cleaned up. The remnants of a manicure clung to the tips of her nails, and the wave of her haircut suggested it would make for quite the impressive beehive—perfect for a government cocktail party. Slip on an evening gown, and she could rub shoulders with Lexington’s elite.
“I tried telling you.” Evelyn wrinkled her nose like a protesting child. “He works for the FBI.”
“A werewolf?” Bold move. Not the path I’d have chosen.
“If you keep control, they’ll never know. That’s what Daddy says.”
“Is Daddy the janitor?”
Evelyn looked down her nose. “Regional Director of the Louisville Field Office.”
I swallowed a groan and said, “Christ, you gotta be kidding me.”
Looked like Daddy’s little girl had a disagreement and fell in with the wrong crowd. Which wouldn’t have been my problem, had she not been standing two feet from me. Because one thing you could count on about wolves was their loyalty.
They came back for their kin.
“We should’ve left when we had—”
A crash came from the stairs leading to the cellar of horrors.
I didn’t have time for this.
I pinched Evelyn’s arm, dragging her to the ground. Slinking along the windows, I continued my ventilation. A booming voice reverberated across the warehouse, making the vast space seem much smaller.
“Quit doing that.”
“Maximo, I presume?” I hurried to the next window. From his lumbering footsteps, he’d never catch up—once I decided to stop making noise, that is. This wasn’t one out of the stealth handbook.
But again, fire hazards.
I heard a revolver cock. “I got no problem protecting what’s mine.”
“Well then, the two of us have a big problem.”
“The Feds know better than to send one little girl out to stop me.”
“I’m not just any little girl.” Smash. The string of lights on the ceiling dimmed, threatening to go out. “I’m a little girl with a big gun.”
“I saw.” Maximo grunted like a mule. His heavy footsteps seemed capable of tipping the gleaming stills over.
“Right before you tried dropping a tree on me.” Last window in the row. I smashed it out, the breeze rustling through my hair.
But this time, a different light glinted off the jagged shards still surrounding the frame.
“You call for backup?” Maximo sounded perturbed.
No.
Working with law enforcement wasn’t really my thing.
I remained crouched, giving Evelyn a stern look. She mouthed I told you so. It took epic restraint not to slap her. But that would be unnecessarily vindictive, and I hadn’t stayed alive all this time by being petty. So when I half-stood to get a better look, I just leaned into her a little with my knee.
Before I could say anything, the aura of the distillery changed. Bars slammed down over the ruined windows, pulsing with heavy magic. I stumbled backward, feeling the strength of the wards rippling from the ruined frames.
Max had been prepared for the day when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI would come to shut him down. And the dumb brute had a contingency plan.
The wards would keep the FBI out.
But there was a catch-22.
They’d keep us inside, too.
Forever.
5
“What the fuck did you just do?” I yelled over the massive stills. I could see the edges of my eyes flecked with burning red in the gleaming chassis.
Hold it together, Ruby. Don’t pull the trigger and blow this place sky high.
“Saved my life,” Maximo said with a dim-witted grunt. The room stopped shaking as the wards settled into effect. “And yours, too. Until I kill ya.”
I stomped through the broken glass, shotgun gripped tightly. What had—for a fleeting moment of glory—looked like an easy payday was now little more than fool’s gold.
The red and blues dancing outside the barred windows didn’t let me forget it, either. It looked like my final resting place was going to be a prison.
Either this putrid-smelling distillery or some FBI hole.
Always good to have things to look forward to.
I’d just have to take out my frustration on my half-titan quarry. Rou
nding the corner, I found myself face-to-face with a hulking brute of a man. His muscles bulged from beneath a simple white crewneck t-shirt. He had to stand at least seven feet tall.
Dull eyes stared down at me. He scratched his buzzed, receded hair with his revolver, as if trying to figure out what to do about my sudden appearance. A finger hooked over the trigger indicated he had no qualms about shooting.
That made two of us.
“How many came for me?” Max asked. He didn’t seem scared. More…curious about how much of a law enforcement presence his little enterprise rated.
“I’d say you should’ve left the director’s daughter in the hole where you found her.”
A hint of a grin crossed his broad face. “I knew you were no cop.”
“What tipped you off?” I rolled my eyes and brought the shotgun up. “Shiv sent me. Time to pay up.”
“That old vamper did that, now, eh?”
Maximo didn’t seem scared about the rival bootlegger hunting him down. Cool as ice. Props to him. Most men would be pissing themselves. Maybe he was too dumb to realize he was ankle-deep in shit.
“And he also hired me to put a bullet in your brain.” I let that sink in for a little, but his dumb expression didn’t change. “That might be harder than I thought.”
“Because I’m hard to kill?” His muscles flexed.
“Because your brain’s tinier than a fucking walnut.” I racked the slide and aimed at his head. “Shut down the wards.”
Maximo gave me a vicious smile as he opened his free hand. A crumpled aluminum can dropped to the floor. A faint aura emanated around the flattened metal.
A precast ward-in-a-box. Must’ve bought it from some two-bit wizard in a whorehouse or seedy bar. Not quite as good as the custom solution, but like a shitty TV dinner, it hit the spot in a pinch.
The FBI was finding that out now. I heard muffled voices filter through the broken windows talking about how there was no way inside.
“Looks like you and me are in this together, girl.” Maximo’s voice boomed off the ceiling.
“And your men?” I still wasn’t sure if he had backup or not.
Ruby Callaway: The Complete Collection Page 68