Hiding behind a corner and peering out around the wall, I watched the handsome werewolf bound up the steps of the Pack Lodge with an energy that I blushingly recognized. That this was his destination told a story. That he passed by the guards with barely more than a nod deepened that story.
What now?
I determined to hang around awhile to see if he came out again – there might still be more I could learn by following Kessler. Every minute or so, as I waited, I darted out a glance at the entrance to the building, but this would soon start looking suspicious. The trouble was that any human seated outside the Lodge of any werewolf Pack would soon find themselves with questions to answer. Wolves don’t like being watched by humans. So I went for a nice, slow walk along the street past the Lodge, not looking at it but just wandering by, as if it was the last thing on my mind. Reaching a turn off, I heard the sound of a door from behind me and, before I could stop myself, I looked around.
The man standing at the top of the steps that led into the Lodge was not Kessler, but he was sure as hell looking at me.
Damn it.
I didn’t run, I kept walking in the same direction, increasing my pace ever so slightly but still not rushing. I turned left down the next side street I came to and, now I was out of sight of the Lodge, I started to run.
I ran straight into a hulking guard.
“Can we help you with something?”
“Sorry?” I feigned confusion.
“You seem interested in the Pack Lodge of the MacKenzie.”
“Is that what that is? I’m a stranger here, myself.” As I spoke, another two werewolf guards lined up behind me. In this district, with its almost one hundred percent werewolf population, no one would ask questions or call the police if they dragged me kicking and screaming into the Lodge.
“Why don’t you come with us?”
“Why don’t you bite me?”
As the first guard lunged for me, I was ready for him, grabbing his arm and yanking him hard into one of the others, their skulls cracking hard together with stunning force. The third took the butt of my gun to his head and dropped to his knees.
I took off as fast as my legs would carry me and was immediately aware of someone on my trail. It surely could not be one of those guards – had there been a fourth? Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw the man I had seen on the steps giving chase. While the guards who had initially caught me and who, if I said so myself, I had easily outwitted, had been hulking slabs of men – the preferred shape for guards the world over – this guy looked more like a street runner. I only took a quick look at him but that was enough to impress me with his speed and athleticism, and enough to scare me. Back when I was a cop I went for a run at least every other day and worked out regularly, I’d run marathons for charity and had taken the gold medal at the inter-precinct mixed martial arts championship held by the city PD. Since I quit, I had let a lot of that slide, and although my muscles still remembered what they were supposed to do, the way they were currently complaining suggested that they might no longer have the ability to do it. I felt like an old man who bags a hot eighteen-year-old wife just after his ninetieth birthday.
Even given a head start, I knew I wouldn’t be able to out-pace this guy for long, so I had to out-think him. I took a sharp left, scrolling through my mental map of the city to think of places I might be able to lose him. The alley I had picked was an assault course of trash cans, piles of boxes and the occasional hobo sleeping rough, and I negotiated my way around it all like an Olympic gymnast. But glancing back, I caught a glimpse of my pursuer vaulting over a sleeping bum, easily tackling every obstacle.
I doubled back into a parallel alley and jumped up to grab the hanging ladder of a fire escape. My legs were glad of the rest as I hauled myself up hand over hand till I could get my feet on the rungs. A clang behind me told me that my pursuer was still with me. I looked down and saw him grab the bottom rung and use it to swing himself up to the first balcony like a trapeze artist. Even though I might have been in real danger, I still stopped for a moment to stare – he was incredible; a muscular powerhouse but as graceful as a cat. He moved like a young Burt Lancaster - circa The Crimson Pirate. At any other time, he would have been a treat to watch.
Reaching the roof, I ran at the edge, increasing speed as I went. Back in the day, I’d have made the jump without a qualm. Did I still have it? I sprang off the edge and landed, a little wobbly but safe, on the roof of the next building. Pride swamped me but I didn’t stop to congratulate myself, I had to move.
But instead I stopped.
I couldn’t help myself, I guess I knew that the guy would make the jump, but I still wanted to see him do it. Maybe it was suicidal, but I had to see him do it.
He ran towards the edge with a turn of speed that Usain Bolt would have been proud of and took off into the air, landing with the poise of a cat, his eyes already on me, meeting my stare and questioning why I had stopped. It was a good question.
“Call me crazy,” I said, “but I get the impression you’re following me.” Sometimes disarming humor can put off a pursuer and I think it would have worked with Kessler. This guy didn’t even crack a smile.
He straightened up and I got my first chance to take a proper look at him. The first thing that struck me was that he wasn’t out of breath, there wasn’t a bead of sweat on his forehead. What had been a manic chase for me seemed to have been no more than a casual jog for him. The second thing was that he was breathtakingly handsome. I seemed to have been thinking that a lot about men recently. Perhaps it was because I had been so starved for male company of late, but I thought it was more likely because I had met three of the best-looking men on the planet in quick succession. The man’s dirty blonde hair was an unruly tousle; his hazel eyes, flecked with gold, stared at me with flinty resolve; his features had a classical beauty, like a Greek statue come to life. He was at least six foot six, taller than Kessler, perhaps broader, too, though he carried his muscle supremely well. I had thought earlier that he moved like a street runner – one of those assholes who jump about on buildings in Paris for no reason – but there was also something of the street fighter about him; a boldness, an unwillingness to back down. Tough – that was the word.
When he spoke, his voice was as classically perfect as his face. “You were following a friend of mine.”
This guy and Kessler were friends? A world of wicked possibilities flooded my brain before I could stop it. After the day I had had, I ought to have been purged of sexual thoughts for the foreseeable future, but this guy had me ready to go another round. Even though he was perhaps going to kill me.
I shrugged. “Yeah. I didn’t know he was coming here. I… that is to say; he and I, we… This afternoon… You know?”
This was a good excuse for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Kessler had given the impression of being a lady’s man and if this guy was his friend then he might buy that. Secondly, chances were that a wolf would still be able to smell Kessler on me, which backed up my story.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“The Pack Lodge.”
“Why?”
“There are some questions you have to answer.”
“Pass.”
Wolves sometimes acted like they were the law in the districts where they were in the majority, but they weren’t. Human law was the only law, and if they were going to get me into that Lodge then it would be against my will. I had questions of my own about how the MacKenzie pack was tied up in all this, but this wasn’t how I wanted to be asking them.
“I’m going now.”
As I turned away from him, I felt a hand on my shoulder stopping me. I ducked away from it, rolling across the ground but the man was there to meet me. I spun to take out his legs but he jumped, quick like a cat, and we backed off, facing each other down.
“The only way off this roof is through me.”
“Can do.”
I dived forward, feinted left and went
right, dodging under his arm, for once too quick for him. This time he ducked and spun to kick away my legs and I went flat on my face. Rolling over, I sprang back to my toes and found him waiting for me. He could have pinned me while I was on the ground and yet he hadn’t. For the first time, I thought I saw a glint in his eye. He was enjoying this little showdown. He could have turned wolf and that would have been the end of it, but he didn’t want it to end.
“You’ll have to do better than that, Miss Philips.”
He knew my name. “You have the advantage of me.”
“Get used to it.”
I took a step back and sat on the parapet. “Okay. Maybe I can’t get off this roof through you. But I can wait it out. You still have to catch me if you want to take me back to the Lodge.”
He didn’t hesitate and I sprang up to meet him. His hand shot out to grab me and I kicked it away – a move I hadn’t executed for over a year and it was nice to know I could still get my leg that high. He tried again, I kicked again, but this time he was ready and grabbed my leg under the knee, dragging me to him as if he were executing an aggressive tango. Thinking fast, I bounced up on my other leg, pressing down hard with the one he held, using his arm as a pivot to flip myself backwards and out of his clutches, a move that succeeded more because it surprised him than because I executed it well.
I grinned. “You wanna play?”
There was a slight regret in his eyes. “I’m done playing.”
This time, when he went for me, he went in hard. I ducked and weaved and for a moment our bodies twisted together as he fought to catch me and I stretched to get free. But this was only ever going to end one way, he was too strong for me, his arms like steel cables wrapping around my body, trapping me against him and holding me fast so we were face to face. I stared up into his hazel eyes and for a moment that predator-prey dynamic between us fizzed in a different and still more heated direction.
The moment was broken as the three guards I had outwitted earlier lumbered onto the roof to join us.
My adversary broke our locked stare and twisted my arm behind my back.
“Take her to the Lodge. Tell Talbot.”
Talbot, too? Were the MacKenzie breeding ultra-handsome werewolves to trap girls like me?
I tried to look on the bright side as I was frog-marched back towards the Pack Lodge; at least I might be in a better position to find out the pack’s involvement in all this. But although the investigator in me was interested, the rest of me was slowly filling with a sense of keen foreboding.
Chapter 8
The interrogation room in which I had been unceremoniously dumped was like such rooms everywhere; bare, chill and unfriendly. It was designed to intimidate, and being handcuffed to the table didn’t help. I had been in many such rooms in my life, but never before on this side of the table. I didn’t like it much.
After about ten minutes of sitting alone in silence, the door opened and Talbot walked in, followed by Kessler and my rooftop sparring partner. In different circumstances, being presented with such a vista of attractive masculinity would have been a treat for every sense, but right now I wasn’t enjoying it. That said, I was determined not to be cowed by it, either. I knew all the interrogation tricks, I had played them on people myself, and I wasn’t going to play ball. It would have helped if I knew what they wanted of me or what was going on, but maybe I could still use this turn of events to find out. Being chained to a table in a werewolf Pack Lodge was a tough situation to turn to my advantage, but I liked a challenge.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Talbot.
“No you’re not,” I started on the front foot. “You did it to make me anxious.”
Talbot met my gaze for a moment. “Did it work?”
“Can I get a coffee?”
“No.”
“You drink too much coffee,” added Kessler.
I looked up at him with a smirk. “Didn’t take you long to get me into handcuffs.”
Kessler shrugged, apparently not ashamed of the fact that he had bedded a person of interest in the case these three seemed to be working on. “It never does. Not really my thing, but some women like to be enslaved by the big, bad wolf and who am I to disappoint?”
“Shut up, Kessler,” suggested the third man.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I commented, still controlling the conversation.
“We ask the questions.”
I raised my hands, as much as was possible in the cuffs. “If you say so. You haven’t asked any yet and I could point out ten different things you’ve done wrong since you brought me in here. First up; no coffee. Coffee makes a person jittery and…”
Suddenly, the guy whose name I still didn’t know, leaned across the table, thrusting his face towards mine, shifting shape as he moved so his lupine visage was barely an inch from me when he roared full-bloodedly into my face.
I looked him up and down, taking in the tatters of his shirt where his wolf muscles had burst through it. “You’ve ruined your shirt.”
That tactic might have worked on someone who hadn’t spent years interrogating werewolves. Every wolf we brought in used to pull that, and the first few times it happens you do wet yourself, but after that it becomes predictable.
“His name is Reed,” said Talbot. “And he has a bit of a temper.”
“If he’s bad wolf,” I began, as Reed shame-facedly shifted back to human, “does that make you good wolf? And Kessler is what? Horny wolf?”
“Standard interrogation roles,” said Kessler, apparently incapable of taking this seriously.
“Kessler.” Talbot silenced his friend then turned back to me. “You told Kessler some things about the female, Lovely. We think you were holding back.”
“I told him everything I know about Lovely,” I replied. It was a carefully worded response because, although wolves cannot smell if you’re lying, they can smell the anxiety that lying sometimes leads to. And if you know that then you worry more when you lie and so smell more and so on.
“What did you find in Dog’s apartment?” asked Talbot.
“There was someone hiding in the closet,” I replied. “He saved my life, which I appreciate. My guess is he searched the place before I arrived and saw everything I did.”
“You arrived only minutes after he did,” Talbot said. “And he left without being able to finish his search because he was pursuing the wolf that attacked you.”
I nodded to myself. “That sucks. Any luck chasing that wolf down?”
“No.”
“Lost him, huh? That sucks, too. Any idea where he was heading?”
“We ask the questions,” Reed snapped again.
“What was the question?” I played for time. I didn’t have a specific reason for keeping the note on the matchbook from these guys, but you don’t give up information if you don’t have to. And the time might come when I needed information to trade for my life.
“Marley,” Talbot became more familiar – standard technique for the good cop in an interview. “No one knows you are here. If you vanish today, how long would it be before anyone noticed you were gone? A week? A month?”
“My mom’s birthday is in a few months,” I replied, still playing it cool. “If she didn’t get a card then there would be questions.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
I nodded. “If you kill me then anything I know goes with me. If you torture me then sure, you’ll get what you want – no one holds out forever – but then you have to kill me. Either way, I’m dead. And while I might only be an ex-cop, killing me will still bring down hell on your kind. Have you covered all your tracks? ‘Cause I gotta say, based on what I’ve seen, you guys are amateurs. Talbot; I spotted you following me in next to no time. Kessler; you questioning people in the Fox was a joke. Reed; you can fight but you can’t interrogate for shit. You all have skills – I have no trouble believing that – but you aren’t investigators and if you kill me the police will find you.”
&nb
sp; A look passed between the three wolves. I thought that they were pretty impressed. Even though everything I had said was true, it took a strong woman to stand up to three werewolves threatening her.
“We’re not going to kill you,” said Talbot, turning back to me. “We never were. That’s not how we operate. But equally, we’re not letting you go until you’ve come clean with what you know about this business.”
I laughed. “I don’t know shit about this business. I don’t know what ‘this business’ is. I got caught up and I guess I learned a few things but I still don’t know what any of this is about. If you feel threatened by how much I know – which, like I say, is shit – then you really are in trouble.”
There was a bang at the door. Reed opened it and a guard leaned in and whispered something to him. Reed looked around at Talbot.
“The Pack Leader wants to see her.”
Being in the Werewolf Squad, you inevitably see the Pack Leaders at events where you’re doing security and so on, but as a rule, you don’t get to meet them. That’s for the higher ups. I had seen MacKenzie Sean on several occasions but usually from a distance and never to speak to. After holding my own so well in the interrogation, I now felt oddly unnerved at meeting a man who held so much power. The MacKenzie might be the least of the four packs who split the city, the poor relation to the Hokkai, the Arctic and the Kenai, but Sean was still a powerful man who commanded respect in other wolves. And fear, too.
I tried to hide any fear I might be feeling as I entered the Great Hall. There was the open fire at its center that burned all year round – a nod to the older traditions of werewolves. Sean was a great one for older traditions, and though the MacKenzie were a city pack, they clung to some of the ways of their ancestors. It was a relief for me to see that he had put on clothes for my interview – I’m not a prude, I have no issue with nudity, but I think I would have found it distracting.
Her Guardian Harem: Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance Page 6