“That,” the honey badger announced, “was unnecessary.”
Kapowski pointed his paw at the cat she was standing in front of.
“No,” she immediately replied. “He doesn’t know what he is. He’s still learning. And he didn’t know that chubby kid was your nephew. So I’m telling you to leave him alone.”
The bear took two big steps toward her and the badger held her hands up. “Don’t make me get nasty, Kapowski.”
The bears laughed at the tiny female. Harsh because bear laughter was always particularly mocking in its tone.
But as the bears laughed, the woman slid one hand behind her back and carefully lifted her shirt. She had a knife sheath strapped to her back and with deft fingers pulled the weapon from its holster. Imani had done a lot of work for Katzenhaus. They had trained her from the time she was fifteen with the blessing of her mother and grandmother. And if there was one thing Imani knew, it was a fellow trained combatant. This badger, no matter how small, wasn’t going to let her claws and fangs do her talking for her. Not when she could open arteries and remove eyes without working up much of a sweat.
Imani stepped forward, finally ready to intervene, but she heard that sound first. Even from this great distance, she could hear it perfectly. So could everyone else. The cats, dogs, and most of the bears hit the ground or made a mad run for it. Except for Kapowski, who had reared up onto his hind legs to scare off the She-badger. It wasn’t until that tranq dart hit his neck that he became aware of anything other than the honey badger and that black cat.
From her spot on the ground, Imani watched the bear blink, stumble back, blink, stumble forward . . . blink . . . and go down like the Titanic.
That surprised Imani. She’d been hit by a tranq once, shot by scientists at an animal park in Botswana. It took her ages to finally pass out, only to wake up with one of those damn collars on her neck so that the scientists could monitor her location and vitals. The worst part was the laughter of her mother and aunts before they took the damn thing off, but that was beside the point. A bear shouldn’t go down this fast. Especially not a one-thousand-pound bear with a thick neck.
But there he was . . . snoring.
Standing, Imani looked in the direction the shot had come from. There was no one standing in range. Tranq rifles were not long-distance weapons. The shooter had to be pretty close for it to not only hit the target but also get past the target’s hide.
The honey badger had slid the blade back into its holster. She crouched beside a snoring Kapowski, her hands on his shoulder. But as soon as she attempted to push him over, his two brothers were there, snarling in warning.
“He should be on his side to sleep this off,” the badger explained. “If he’s on his back and vomits, he’ll choke. If he’s on his front, I’m afraid he’ll stop breathing. You should get him home. Put him to bed.”
One brother leaned forward and roared in her face and Imani heard it again. That sound of a trigger pull and a projectile racing toward them. She didn’t drop down this time; instead she watched.
It wasn’t a bear that was hit this time, but the black cat. He’d launched himself at the bears roaring at the badger, claws and fangs out, all four legs spread wide. But that tranq hit the cat right between the eyes, flipping him back and over. When he landed, he was out cold.
“See what you did?” the badger asked the bear. “Causing problems!”
In obvious exasperation, the bear finally shifted. It was the youngest Kapowski, Matt. “I’m causing problems? You steal our honey—”
“Prove it!”
“We have video of you!” the third brother yelped, now also human. “Stealing our honey in both your honey badger and human forms!”
“Oh.”
“—you let your friend try to eat our nephew—” Matt continued.
“If he lost a few pounds, he wouldn’t look so tasty!”
“—and you get my brother tranq’d—and I’m causing problems?”
The badger stared at him a moment before replying, “Yes.”
Then, without another word, she easily hefted the more than two-hundred-pound cat onto the back of her neck like she was putting on a stole, and returned to the streets run by bears.
They all watched her go. In silence. She wasn’t running. She wasn’t fearful. She was just . . . a honey badger with a live but unconscious cat around her neck.
Glad the drama was over, Imani looked at the bears and ordered, “Mind getting your walking bear rugs off my territory?”
With a few snarls and some snaps, the bears left and the cats shifted back to human and put their clothes on. Everyone’s day finally returning to normal.
Shaking her head, Imani turned to go back to her house when she came face-to-face with the She-tiger and the dog.
“What?” she asked.
“Interesting, huh?” Malone asked.
Imani frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Jutting her chin, Malone motioned toward the retreating bears.
“Sorry. I have never found bears remotely interesting.”
“Not the bears. The honey badgers.”
“I only saw one badger and I didn’t find her that interesting.”
“The one doing the shootin’ was Charlie MacKilligan,” the dog explained.
“Even I couldn’t make that shot,” Malone admitted, which was huge. Because Malone was the go-to gal when it came to long-distance kills. It was, in fact, her specialty.
“And the one who combined a long-distance rifle with a tranq gun and created a knockout drug for shifters that wouldn’t kill them but could automatically adjust to their body chemistry was their baby sister, Stevie. Although anyone with any sense would just leave her out of this.”
“Why is this dog talking to me?” Imani asked Malone.
“Because we need you.”
“I’m retired. I’m especially retired if you’re thinking of going after the de Medicis. You can just leave me, my Pride, and the entire cat nation out of that shit.”
Deciding nothing else needed to be said, Imani started toward her house.
“They’re using full-humans,” Malone called after her.
“They’ve always used full-humans. Humans deal for the de Medicis. They spy for them. They kill for them. This is not news, Malone.”
“The de Medicis are using them as product.”
Imani was halfway up the steps to her porch when she froze.
Slowly she faced the cat and dog. “What?”
Malone shrugged.
“What kind of product?”
“Well, much to our surprise, given their history, they seem uncomfortable with sex trafficking so they leave that mostly to the full-humans, but anything else the buyer wants . . . From what we can tell that includes hunting, food, and on several recent occasions, ritual human sacrifice.”
Imani’s mouth briefly dropped open; then she closed her eyes, shook her head, and once again asked, “What?”
chapter SIX
Zé woke up and quickly realized that he was, again, naked and on top of the china cabinet. How did he keep winding up here? What was that about?
At least this time he wasn’t alone. He had a furry companion cuddled up to his side. Not the dogs, thankfully, but the stray cat that Max seemed to hate. The cat was sweet to him so he didn’t understand what her problem was.
“Why are you up there again?”
Zé looked over the side of the cabinet. Max stood below.
“I really don’t know. Is this normal for cats?”
“I have no idea. Are you hungry? You must be hungry.”
“I could eat.”
“Do you need help getting down?”
“No,” he said quickly. This time he didn’t even have a towel. It was just all him . . . hanging out for the universe to see. “I’ll get down on my own.”
“Great.” She took a step away from the cabinet but then stopped, looked back at him. “By the way . . . did you know it’s
been forty-eight hours since our last conversation?”
Zé blinked. “Wait . . . what?”
“My sister tranq’d you so you wouldn’t be torn apart by bears. She also tranq’d a bear, but he was only out for, like, ten minutes. But he’s a thousand pounds, compared to your two-hundred-and sixty, so that’s a substantial difference, right? Anyway . . . thought you’d want to know.”
Then she walked off. Just like that. As if what she’d just said was in any way a normal or reasonable conversation!
“Wait . . . what?”
* * *
Dutch walked into the communications room of the Group’s Team Center.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked the She-bear hybrid sitting in front of a bank of monitors.
Hannah was one of Dutch’s favorite people aside from Max and Stevie. Just a relaxed female who didn’t let the little things bother her. She’d had a very tough life growing up, but you couldn’t tell because she handled things so well. Although that mellowness could be because she vented any aggression she might still have in her system on the ice by playing hockey for a minor-league team.
“I thought you should see this.” She motioned to the chair next to her and he sat down. “I haven’t said anything to anyone else. Yet. You always told me to alert you first if this came up.”
“Alert me first?” Dutch didn’t remember all the things he’d told Hannah over the years, because he tended to talk a lot sometimes, and couldn’t keep track of everything he said. “About what?”
“Just got this from one of our Bulgarian contacts.”
Hannah brought up a shot of a hole in a decrepit-looking cell. A big hole. Not neatly dug but . . .
“Oh, God.”
“Renny Yang’s cell in Bulgaria,” she said. “Although once the authorities found out she’d left the country, they haven’t exactly been scouring the streets looking for her. Or alerting anyone else to her sudden disappearance.”
“They don’t want her back,” he guessed. “No one would.”
Dutch could think of a thousand things he’d rather do than deal with this right now. A thousand things! But he couldn’t avoid it. Or her.
He couldn’t avoid dealing with Renny Yang. Jewelry thief and bank robber who’d only been caught because she insisted on making very bad choices with men. Oh, Renny was also the mother of his best friend. A mother Max hadn’t seen since she was eight. Sure, they’d kept in touch via smuggled cell phones and the occasional letter, but Dutch always got the feeling that Max didn’t know her mother as well as she thought she did.
And Renny definitely didn’t know her daughter any longer. Because Max wasn’t the little girl Renny had left behind. She’d grown up with Carlie Taylor and then Charles Taylor. Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan and Stevie Stasiuk-MacKilligan were her sisters. All these people had taught Max a different way of life. A chance to be something more than a really good thief.
Not only that, but Renny was a true honey badger. She knew how to start shit. She knew how to cause problems. She knew how to blow up a person’s life and not feel a bit of remorse about it. And he was afraid that would go for Renny’s daughter’s life as well.
Sadly, Dutch had always known this time would come. Unless Renny had been put into a specially built prison just for shifters—and there were a few of those around the world—she wouldn’t be stuck in Bulgaria for long. He was surprised she’d stayed as long as she had. But Devon, also a bad choice of boyfriend for Renny, had gone too far in the last month. He’d forced Renny’s hand by going after Max. And doing that more than once.
Like most honey badgers, Renny wasn’t going to let some guy hurt her kid.
“Ric will have to be informed,” Hannah reminded him.
Ric—Ulrich Van Holtz to the rest of the world—was in charge of the New York division of the Group while his older cousin was the head of the entire organization. Dutch enjoyed working for Ric. He was calm and rational. A typical wolf, really.
Ric also ran, and was the head chef at, the Fifth Avenue Van Holtz Steakhouse, which meant that every time Dutch went there for dinner or just to chat with his boss, he got food for free. Considering how much Dutch could eat when hungry and that Van Holtz Steakhouses were shifter friendly and offered the kind of meats one could usually only obtain by big game hunting, this was one of the best job perks Dutch could get.
“Can you wait a couple of days before you tell anyone else?” he asked.
“Sure. No one’s looking for her, so it’s not a problem.”
“Thanks, Hannah.”
“Need me to do anything else?”
“Find out when she gets to the States.”
“You sure she’s coming here?”
“Trust me . . . she’s coming this way.”
Dutch started toward the door, but quickly stopped, facing Hannah again. “Any sign of Freddy?”
“MacKilligan?”
“Yeah.”
Hannah spun her chair around. “I thought you said that guy was dumb.”
“Dumb as they come.”
“I don’t see how. He’s always one step ahead of me. And I’m good.”
“Could he be working with somebody?”
“He must be. Maybe he has a new girlfriend to help him out.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Also . . . someone else is looking for Freddy. That I can tell you.”
“Do you know who?”
“No. Want me to find out?”
Dutch shook his head. “Don’t bother. We need to just find him. Preferably before he gets himself killed.”
“It’s nice you care,” she said with a smile.
“I don’t. Not about him, anyway. And Max doesn’t care either. I just don’t want Stevie to cry. I hate when she cries.”
“Softy.”
“Again, thanks, Hannah.”
She faced her multiple screens. “Anytime.”
* * *
“I tried to eat a child?”
Max nodded. “Sort of. I mean, we assumed you were trying to eat him. You had him by the back of the neck and had dragged him off to a nearby tree. But that tree has a lot of leaves, so we couldn’t exactly see what you were doing. For all we know, you were just playing with him. You know . . . testing your claws and things.”
Vargas did that thing again. He had done it a lot in the last fifteen minutes. With his elbows on the table, he buried his head in his hands and dug his fingers into his scalp. It was like he wanted to massage his brain but the skull kept getting in his way.
Finally, he looked up again. “Was anyone hurt?”
She waved his obvious concern away. “The kid’s fine. His father and uncles are a little pissed but the Kapowskis are always pissed. They’re like the pissiest grizzlies on the block.”
“I think I’d be pissed, too, if someone tried to eat my kid.”
“Allegedly.” He frowned and Max explained, “In case there’s any legal trouble. We go with ‘allegedly.’ ”
“Legal trouble? As in getting arrested for eating a child? That seems like something one should go to prison for.”
“Allegedly eating a child . . . actually, allegedly attempting to eat a child. And you were having a rough moment. We thought you had completely healed up but it seems the damage to your brain was worse than we thought, so it took a bit longer for your recovery. You feel fine now, though, right?”
“Even if I can’t tell whether this is reality or a fantasy world where I’m a cat?”
“Christ, we’re not still arguing about that, are we?” Max didn’t even bother to keep the annoyance out of her tone. If he couldn’t accept this shit after everything that had happened, he’d never be able to move forward, and Max wasn’t one to linger on things for long. What was the point? “You now know what you are . . . right?”
Vargas looked down at his hand, watched as claws came out of his fingertips. Watched the skin become covered in fur.
He shook his hand out as if he’d just bur
ned it. But he was just trying to turn it back to human. Something every kid shifter tried in the beginning.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, I know what I am. I know.”
“It’s not a bad thing. It’s actually amazing.”
“Is it?” he asked.
“Of course it is.”
“But I tried to eat a child—”
“Allegedly.”
“—then I was hit by a tranquilizer dart—”
“You needed the rest.”
“—and I keep ending up naked on your china cabinet.”
“Yeah . . . that is weird.”
In confusion, his head tilted to the side. “Really? That’s the weird one?”
“To me. I’m not much of a climber. But I’ve got a hell of a jump shot. Oh!” She snapped her fingers. “I wanted to ask you if the team you said you were working with knows you’re still aliv—”
“Oh, my God!” He started to stand up, but Max put her hand on his shoulder and pulled him back into the seat. “I have to let my team know I’m alive. I have to let Amelia know.”
“Who’s Amelia?”
“My team leader and friend. We started in the Corps together.”
“You can’t tell her. At least not yet. Not until you head back home.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t want government types wandering around our bear-only territory. And you need to remember that when you leave. You can’t tell anyone about this. They don’t know we exist and we need to keep it that way. It’s the only way to protect ourselves.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Not even your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. Kamatsu’s my friend who happens to be a woman.”
“Whatever. Just keep your mouth shut.” Max looked at the kitchen doorway, heard her sisters heading their way. “And don’t say a word about any of this to my sisters,” she whispered.
“You are making my life complicated,” he whispered back. “I hate complicated.”
“Suck it up, pretty boy!”
Charlie and Stevie walked into the kitchen.
“Hey! You’re up!” Charlie smiled wide, surprising Max. Her sister wasn’t known for her . . . good cheer. If anything, she was known for her control issues. “How are you feeling, Zé?”
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