Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  “Should discourage them?”

  “The alpha seems to have a short fuse. That kind of attitude filters down. His pack might act without stopping to think.”

  Tom grunted. “I’ll send two. They’ll be there in an hour. And you, House Farrell, need to get back here quickly with the minimum of risk.”

  “Yeah. I hear you, Tom.”

  With that, we ended the call. Dominé was about to leave the office, but I stopped her.

  “Hold on a second.”

  “Yes, Mistress?” Dominé said, looking adoringly up at me, with just a hint of a smile in her eyes to tell me she was laying it on.

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s Amber. This is serious. When was it the Redondo alpha warned you about the Pasadena pack?”

  “This morning. I was about to call Rita to ask what I should do when your call came in.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “We can’t assume that Pasadena hasn’t put a plan into motion already. We’re not walking outside without a few basic checks. Yelena, go out and buy something from the shop across the street, please. See if you can spot anyone looking suspicious.”

  She nodded and left, coming back barely five minutes later, shaking raindrops from her hair.

  “Two possible groups. A half-dozen bikers standing around across the road, and an SUV with three guys inside it parked in the lot out front.”

  “Nine werewolves for one hit?”

  Not good odds.

  Yelena shook her head. “The bikers aren’t Were. I got close enough to check that. Can’t tell you about the guys in the car, though.” She shrugged. “There might be no Were out there at all, but the knife you don’t see is the one that’s in your back.”

  I snorted. That saying was worthy of Ben-Haim, one of my old Ops 4-10 instructors.

  “You realize we can’t kill them,” I said.

  “What the hell?” Dante said. “If they’re these Pasadena guys, they came to kill Dominé.”

  “You’re going to have to start thinking in a different way. First off, you don’t know if the Pasadena alpha really is out to get you—it’s only what some other Were has told you. What if the Redondo alpha has some kind of axe to grind? What if he just wants to scare you off his territory? Secondly, if they are Were out there and they’re Pasadena, are they here to kill Dominé? You don’t know, and you have to find out. Thirdly, it gets way more complicated if I start killing Were. I’m part of a pack as well as the Athanate, and my actions are taken as being on behalf of the pack, whether I intend them to be or not.” Dante and Dominé looked slightly stunned by this, and I hadn’t even gotten into the issue of being syndesmon. “And finally, why the hell am I explaining all this to you?”

  “So what do we do, Boss?” Yelena asked.

  “If they’re Were, they’re here as a threat at the least. We can hurt them. We need to make sure we know which pack they’re from and why, and then send them back with a message that Club Vasana is under Athanate protection.”

  She waited.

  “We have to get them somewhere quiet with no witnesses,” I said. “We’ve got to drive and make them follow.”

  “There’s a building down in Long Beach the realtor tried selling me when I came to LA,” Dominé said. “When I saw it, it was surrounded by empty warehouses. I imagine it would be quiet enough, if we can get in.”

  “Check that it’s still empty,” I said, and she returned to her desk.

  “They’ll get suspicious,” Yelena said.

  She was right. I gave it some more thought while Dominé called the realtor.

  Stop complicating it with Were and Athanate politics. It’s a simple undercover setup, and I need a simple solution.

  “It has to be a sting,” I said. “And I have an idea.”

  A risky one, but I needed to get active again. I needed to be the one protecting myself and my House.

  “It’s still empty,” Dominé said, putting the phone down. “What else do you need?”

  I liked the sound of trust in her voice.

  “Not much. Your car. Bolt cutters to get in the building in Long Beach. Zip ties. Gloves for Yelena and me. Duct tape, of course,” I said, and looked over at Dante with an evil grin. “And a sack.”

  Chapter 17

  The evening had turned dark, cold and wet when we emerged.

  The bikers had gone away when the rain had gotten harder.

  Yelena had brought Dominé’s car to the front and opened the back door.

  As soon as she pulled up, I came out, dragging Dante. We had tied her hands behind her and covered her head with the sack. I shoved her into the car, glancing around as if checking to see if anyone was watching. Dominé was right behind me and got quickly into the front passenger seat. With the dome light shining, there was no mistaking her, even if they hadn’t checked which car was hers.

  Yelena pulled away in a hurry.

  The SUV followed.

  “Hooked,” I said, carefully not looking back.

  They’d been watching the front of the building and they’d seen our charade. The owner of a sex club gets in a car with two enforcers and someone tied up. They’d be expecting us to take her somewhere to conduct our business without witnesses.

  “Can I sit up?” came from inside the sack.

  “No.” But I pulled her around until her head was on my lap and the sack was partly open. My hands rested on her neck. I could feel the bite marks already healing. And her pulse, a soothing rhythm under my fingers.

  Have I done the right thing for her?

  Yes, said my Athanate smugly. No argument there; it was up to the rest of me to make sure it was the right choice for Dante.

  Yelena drove east on the Pacific Coast Highway, and then Dominé directed us to Long Beach. The SUV tucked in two or three cars back and shadowed us through the rain-slicked streets.

  Three of them against two of us. We had surprise on our side—an enormous advantage—but a couple of bystanders to protect.

  They were acceptable odds.

  Dominé was right on two counts; the building they’d tried to sell her wasn’t suitable at all for her club, and it looked like exactly the kind of place where someone would go to conclude some criminal business.

  Yelena used the bolt cutters to break the lock on a sliding door and we were inside.

  Our pursuers were being careful. They hadn’t rounded the corner yet, but when they did, they’d see Dominé’s empty car and know we were inside.

  I scanned the interior. It had been an office, and then used as a warehouse by a firm that had gone bust. We were in an open area in the middle of the building. The place was littered with old office equipment and piles of boxes leaning against each other like drunks outside a bar.

  “Hide,” I said, and ran up the stairs to the second floor, leaving Yelena to shepherd them.

  The ground floor windows were boarded. Upstairs they weren’t, and I flattened myself against the wall to peer out through one, taking the opportunity to check the 9mm Sig Sauer I had in a shoulder holster. The gun was fine, but it felt wrong. I longed for my old HK, lost when I’d been captured at the convent in Taos.

  No time for that.

  The SUV came around the corner and drove slowly until it was behind Dominé’s car and right beneath my window.

  Two guys got out, holding what looked like machine pistols under their jackets: Uzis with suppressors maybe. They trotted to the sliding door we’d left invitingly open and disappeared inside, leaving the driver sitting in the car with the engine running. They wanted to be quickly in and out on this job. Not going to happen.

  I counted to five and then picked up an old metal filing cabinet.

  This is gonna hurt.

  The cabinet and I went out the window in a shower of glass. The cabinet went through the SUV’s windshield and I landed on the roof.

  I was right. It hurt.

  When something comes through the windshield like that, it’s got to be a shock. The Were inside didn’t stop an
d think through the possibilities, or wonder what had just dented his roof. He came out, snarling and spitting, looking up to see which idiot had thrown a cabinet at his car. He didn’t even have his gun in his hand.

  And as he came out the door, I came off his roof, knocking him down and landing on him with my knee in his guts.

  We were too close for anything subtle. I punched him in the face, breaking his nose, and then I slammed his head against the road until he was half-unconscious.

  He was Were, but I had no time to check which pack. No sounds of gunfire from the building yet, but the stopwatch in my head was ticking and I had two vulnerable House kin in there.

  It took me a valuable minute to zip tie the driver’s hands behind him. I tore his belt off and used that to lash him to one of the wheel rims. I lost more seconds taking his cell and gun. I wanted to search the car, but I couldn’t leave Yelena with two people to keep safe.

  I sprinted to the door.

  “One down. You okay?” I spoke into my cell.

  Yelena was wearing an earpiece. She couldn’t talk for fear of giving away her position, but she tapped her cell.

  One click. Yes.

  They’d had too long. Long enough to become alert and suspicious. Long enough to start searching through the building.

  There was no time to split them up and take them individually.

  “Get ready,” I whispered.

  I went through the door, low and quick as an eel.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The good news was that they were still in the open area in the middle of the building.

  “Diversion, now,” I whispered.

  The Were heard me and they started to turn around.

  A rotting wooden box of metal spare parts came hurtling out of the darkness and crashed to the floor, disintegrating on contact. Random bits of metal jangled out and there was a scream like a tortured banshee from behind the screen of crates.

  Both Were lifted and fired a short burst in that direction. Quick, instinctive, halfway trained but just wrong this time around.

  I shot the closer one in his legs. Tap, tap, tap. Two out of three hits. Ankle and calf.

  As he was falling, I fired at the other Were. Missed. He’d had enough warning to swing around at what he thought was his most immediate threat, and I wasn’t happy to see the ugly barrel of the silencer looming.

  A second, smaller box hit him full on the side of his head.

  He staggered.

  I’d missed with my first, but my second shot hit him in the knee and his trigger finger spasmed, firing his Uzi into the concrete floor, ricochets snapping and buzzing like angry wasps in the gloom. There was more danger from those than direct shots, but then he started to lift his gun again, despite the pain he was in.

  Then his wrist got broken as he was flattened. Yelena was fast. She’s crossed twice the distance in the same time it had taken me to get to the closer Were and scoop up his Uzi.

  The pair of Were writhed in pain and anger on the dusty floor.

  It was peculiar; they were scared all right, but I could feel the anger blotting almost everything else out. As if they hadn’t been trying to kill us, as if it was unfair, as if they couldn’t believe they’d been tricked and taken down by a couple of girls.

  I flipped, but it was Yelena that reacted.

  Her Athanate fangs came out and she hissed, something halfway between spitting and the shriek of a demented hob-kettle. It seemed to come from deep inside. It was fierce, almost primeval.

  And I didn’t know about the two Were, but it scared the hell out of me. In a sorta good way—she was on my side, after all.

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  “So you sent them home, tails between their legs, with a message for their Alpha?” Tom Sherman asked. “That sounds like hardly any fun at all.”

  “Well, I wrecked their SUV with a filing cabinet. So there’s that,” I replied. That got a grin out of him.

  I was back at the house, reporting in to Tom. Like all the other Houses in LA, I had a 24/7 security watch against Basilikos and other nasties. Tom was in command of mine. Despite joking about the Pasadena Were, Tom wasn’t happy I’d gone in with so little backup. He had a point; if I’d been injured, he’d have been the one facing the hard questions from Skylur. I shouldn’t have put him in that position.

  “Security’s getting even more stretched,” I said.

  Tom looked like he was eating lemons.

  “Adding the Empire into our tasks is a helluva hit,” he said. “I guess asking the Were for help might have just gotten a little harder.”

  The door opened and Alex came in.

  His wolfy hearing had picked up our conversation, just as I’d picked up his wolfy scent coming across the hall.

  I stepped into his embrace.

  “Not the best opening for a conversation with the Pasadena,” he murmured into my hair.

  I rubbed my face against his neck, mainlining his scent and his touch. He was angry. I didn’t think that was directed at me or Tom, but Tom didn’t know what to make of it.

  He headed out the door, pausing only to say stiffly: “We’re all being called on to make sacrifices.”

  Ouch. That wasn’t like Tom. If he had something to say, he usually said it. I’d have to find out what was twisting his tail later.

  I took Alex in to meet Dominé and Dante.

  Jen was away on urgent business in New York for a couple of days. Julie and Keith had gone with her. Dominé was on the phone to the club, and Vera was talking to Dante, who immediately jumped up from the sofa. “I was just going to complain you’d oversold me on the hot vamp guys,” she said. “This is more like it.”

  She got in close with Alex.

  He growled again—one of those chest-deep rumbles that everyone understands.

  “Oh.”

  Dante backed away quickly. It got quiet.

  Alex looked at me, his eyes hooded and the wolf-gold bleeding into them. He turned away and stalked upstairs to the bedrooms.

  Crap. Angrier than I thought.

  Dante was looking at his retreating back and me, working it out. There was nothing wrong with her brain, when she engaged it.

  “I thought you…I mean, I heard them telling you about Jen being away. She’s like your kin, isn’t she?”

  “She is my kin. So is Alex. And he’s a werewolf, not Athanate.”

  “Oh. Okay. My bad.”

  Dante’s eyes flicked to and fro again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was dumb. I didn’t mean to upset things.”

  She looked down at the ground, seeming even younger in her embarrassment.

  “I’ve come here into your world,” she went on, “and I know I have to understand it, I have to fit in.”

  I seemed to collect people like this. I’d rescued Savannah down in New Mexico and we’d had a similar problem, where she seemed socially awkward and what I had tried to do had only made it worse.

  I had to take responsibility.

  “No, I’m sorry, Dante.” I pulled her into a hug. “I should be giving you information and direction that gets us all to where we’re comfortable with ourselves and each other. No one explained things to you. You didn’t mean anything bad by it and it wasn’t your fault.” I patted her back. “Now, excuse me, I’ve got to go talk to Alex.”

  Dante was on the point of making another sassy comment, but she bit her tongue.

  I smiled.

  I can manage the little crises, I thought. Let’s go see if I can manage the big ones.

  Chapter 18

  He was in our bedroom, pacing.

  “I don’t know who we can trust anymore.”

  We. Small word. Important to me. I hugged him. “What the hell brought this on?”

  He hugged me back. He was still making wolf noises, deep inside, like he’d been long-term caged. Maybe the distance he seemed to have been keeping from me was all because he wasn’t at home here in LA. Nowhere to shift and run.
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  I pulled him closer, smothering myself in his wolfy scent. It would have been so easy to do nothing but stand there and inhale him, but I had a mission to find out what was wrong.

  Why did I always have a damned mission? I had to sweep aside a prickle of irritation. I had a mission because I was House Farrell. And I was his alpha. At least, while we were on two legs.

  “What’s up?” I prompted him again.

  “It’s getting to me.” He paused, as if willing himself to speak calmly and clearly for me. “We keep doing what Skylur and Diana say, without question, and there’s no return.”

  “How do you mean?”

  I ran my hands over his chest. My wolf wanted to join in his growling, and stroking him seemed to be the best way to keep her quiet for the moment.

  “You tried talking to Diana today?” he said.

  “Well, she’s not available. The Empire—”

  “I know. I got a briefing from Bian on the way back in,” he said. “Skylur has plans but she can’t actually tell me anything, and it’s all about what it means to the Athanate.”

  “Well, I’m supposed to be a link between the Athanate and the Were now, so I can start working on it.”

  “Yeah. I heard. How did that go today?”

  That got half a smile from me.

  “It’s not just the Athanate politics,” he said. “It’s you and your therapy.”

  He pulled free and resumed pacing.

  “Right up to today, we’ve all been treating you like a patient in recovery. Then today, you’re expected to handle Ibarre and Huang and binding. And being this syndesmon. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What am I allowed to even talk to you about? You think the rest of the world’s forgotten about you?” he said angrily. “Felix? Your mom? The FBI? Even those crazies down in New Mexico want to talk to you. They’re all being stalled.”

  I could see what he meant. Diana’s compulsion that protected me while I was recovering didn’t stop me from remembering the outside world, but it made it all seem less important, less urgent. Yet everything seemed so reasonable. Every time I thought about something too hard, my mind just seemed to slide away from it, as if that was the right thing to do.