Wolf's Bane, page 5
part #1 of Moon Marked Series
“Thanks but no thanks,” I told the waiting werewolf, tucking his business card into one pocket while turning back in the direction from which I’d come. I’d hand over three bucks for the milk, then my star-ball-turned-conscience would leave me alone.
And even though my life was tricky enough without werewolves in it, I was subtly disappointed when Gunner’s footsteps failed to follow me down the block. Apparently, though, lack of sound didn’t equate to lack of movement. Because werewolf breath soon warmed the back of my neck despite the distance I’d moved since his last words.
“You can go straight home,” the werewolf noted, apparently having realized why I’d switched directions without me having to explain the action in words. “I paid for your milk.”
This time, the lizard of debt inside my chest cavity scrambled up my spine with scratchy claws even as Mama warned inside my brain: “Specks of dust slowly accumulate into mountain ranges.”
“Let me pay you back,” I started, knowing my mother was right. I couldn’t afford to be indebted to a werewolf....
But this time Gunner was the one backing away, was refusing the bills I fumbled out toward him in an effort to stave off further star-ball compulsions. “It was my pleasure,” my companion answered, the distance between us growing with every word. “Maybe next time you’ll let me buy you a beer. Or at least we could drink some milk together. You have my card.”
He was flirting. Sweetly almost. If only he wasn’t a werewolf, perhaps I would have said yes.
Instead, I squashed the niggle of complaint from my star ball, shook my head once, then swiveled around yet again to head in my original direction. If the werewolf didn’t want my money, then I’d save it for my sister. It was time to get home and check on Kira.
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN relieved to finally achieve the anteroom of my den, but I winced as I pushed open the heavy fire door that separated stairwell from hallway. Because my least favorite person was waiting on the faded welcome mat outside our apartment, and I really could have done without dealing with Simon tonight.
“Mai,” the gangly social worker greeted me, his voice as droopy as the wrinkles around his eyes. “I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes.”
“Shi—oot,” I parried. “So sorry about that.”
Meanwhile, my mind was running a mile a minute. What was Simon doing here? Had he found out about my lost job and about Kira’s precarious school situation? Was he ready to live up to past insinuations that my sister would be better off placed in another home?
If our conversation had been a cage fight, I would have been backpedaling rapidly while hoping my hind end didn’t end up against the chain-link before I came up with a strategy other than retreat. Luckily, Simon took pity on my confusion before I let anything particularly incriminating slip. “Did you forget we had a home visit planned for today?”
A home visit? That’s all this was? “Yeah,” I admitted, brushing past the state employee as I turned my key in the lock. I’d likely noted down the date in my planner, then lost the reminder during Kira’s ill-fated magic trick last week. After a building evacuation, two hours of mopping up sprinkler water, and a furious tirade by the apartment supervisor, the fate of my planner—and the dates of any upcoming home visits—had been the least of my concern.
As if reading my mind, Kira’s bushy tail flicking apologetically from her perch atop the bedroom lintel and I found myself smiling instead of fuming. At least my sister had made it home safe and sound.
“So,” Simon said, walking in behind me without invitation and settling into one of our two dining chairs. “How is everything going here?”
As he spoke, his gaze flicked around the tiny apartment, and I scurried along in its wake, moving dirty cereal bowls into the sink and picking up place mats that had been knocked onto the floor by fox action. It wasn’t as if we lived in a pig sty, but I worked two jobs and Kira was a shifter cooped up in a one-bedroom apartment. Our home wasn’t exactly spic and span.
On the other hand, I loved my sister, I neither used nor dealt drugs, and I didn’t bring home pervert boyfriends who snuck into her room to fondle Kira’s underage body while she slept. It was hard to believe this was the worst fostering situation Simon came in contact with. So I mustered a smile and offered foodstuffs I didn’t actually have on hand rather than remarking upon the financial upset threatening Kira’s and my lives. “Would you like some tea? Or a cookie?”
“No.” Simon’s mouth pursed as if the mere idea of eating something inside my home gave him the willies. He paused, then added: “Thank you.”
We stared at each other in silence for enough seconds that the meeting began to feel profoundly awkward. Then the social worker pinned me down with a specific question I didn’t know how to sidestep. “What is it you’re working so hard not to tell me?”
The man was too astute for my own good. And I couldn’t risk being caught up in an untruth.
So I went ahead and spilled the beans. “I lost my job at the school,” I admitted. Then, figuring a little white lie wouldn’t kill me, I added: “I’ve got several leads on new ones though. I swear to you, Kira isn’t going to end up starving or on the streets. I just need a little time to work things out.”
Rather than answering immediately, the social worker clambered back to his feet so he could take my hand. His palm was faintly damp and chilly, but I forced myself not to jerk away from the contact. Instead, I met Simon’s gaze head on as he spoke in what he probably thought was a compassionate manner.
“I’ll return Monday with my supervisor,” he told me. “Please have Kira packed and ready. If your work situation hasn’t improved dramatically by that point, I’m afraid we’ll need to move your sister to a more appropriate home.”
Chapter 11
“Stay here,” I ordered Kira fifteen minutes later while molding my star ball into its favorite shape—a long, slender sword hanging at my hip where it would be easily accessible. “Don’t go out, don’t open the door, and don’t let anybody in.”
As I spoke, I kicked off my PE teacher shoes, donning high leather boots instead. Off went the fitted gym pants, on went the knife-resistant leather. A school-themed hoodie electrified my hair as it slid off my slender frame, then I drew my favorite shiny, black jacket back up around my shoulders like a shield.
“Go over the next chapter in your math book,” I continued. “Just because you’re suspended doesn’t mean you can afford falling behind.”
“Where are you going?” Kira spoke as she shifted, a shimmer of light and air turning fox into girl with the effortlessness of magic. She hadn’t bothered leaping down from the lintel before transforming, so she ended up chinning herself onto the floor, landing as silently as she would have in her animal form.
Unfortunately, my sibling was even more inquisitive on two feet than she had been on four. And no more interested in schoolwork either.
“Tonight’s not an Arena night,” Kira pointed out, padding in a circle around me as she completely ignored all preceding instructions. Her agile fingers twitched my hair out from under the collar of my jacket and straightened my sword in its sheathe even as her equally clever tongue pinned me down verbally as only a little sister could. “Where else can we get enough money to satisfy Simon?”
I wasn’t in the habit of lying to my sister, so I told her the cold, hard true. “From werewolves,” I answered, eyes closing as I made a decision I knew in my heart would lead to yet more trouble. But I couldn’t lose Kira to the foster-care system. And Gunner possessed both the funds and the ability to make my upcoming employment appear legitimate enough to satisfy even our dour social worker’s unattainable standards.
I’d just have to keep a tight rein on my abilities until Gunner left town. Easy enough.
As if she was reading my mind, my sister raised herself on tiptoe until she could look me in the eye. Then she parroted back words I’d tossed in her direction far too often over the years. “Foxes and wolves don’t mix. You can’t let them know what we are.”
My chest expanded with pride as I gazed upon a young woman growing into wisdom by the moment. “I won’t,” I started. But Kira wasn’t done with her efforts to rule the roost.
“You need backup. I’m coming with you,” she decided, dropping butt-to-linoleum by the door while yanking on recently discarded tennis shoes. The math textbook beside her was nudged subtly aside as she dressed, a sprawl of notebooks turning dog-eared and rumpled as she used them to pry dirt out from between her cleats. “I can be a distraction.”
She sure could. Right now, for instance, I was distracted with worry that Dad might think my sister was better off in a wealthier household than the one I was able to pay for, or in a family where textbooks weren’t used as doorstops. After all, our father had believed in education just as firmly as he believed in kinship. What would he think if I was forced to yank Kira out of the academy just because I couldn’t come up with enough cash to pay the bill?
“No, you’re not coming with me,” I countered, squashing second thoughts even as I pulled up Gunner’s address on my cell phone. The closest bus stop was a mile from the alpha’s office and I’d have to make two changes to even get that far. “Math is an essential life skill,” I muttered both to myself and to my sister. For example, math told me I couldn’t afford a taxi...which meant I’d take the bus for the first leg then walk the rest.
I should have realized that Kira’s mercurial nature was shifting from helpful to fretful, but I was too busy plotting out my plan of attack to notice the symptoms. Now, though, the leggy tween eased between my phone and my face, forcing me to pay attention to her expression. And I winced as I caught the red flush of anger brightening her cheeks.
“Kira...” I started.
“I’m not a child,” my sister countered. “I deserve to be involved. I deserve to know what I am.”
“We’re foxes...”
Kira didn’t even wait for me to finish that particular sentence. Instead, she pressed closer into my personal space, standing on tiptoes not so much in solidarity this time around as in an attempt to intimidate. “We’re fox shifters,” she corrected as if she was the adult and I was the child. “But what does that even mean? Why do the werewolves hate us if we’re just like them except with red fur and better style? It doesn’t make any sense.”
She was right, unfortunately. But Mama had been my only link to knowledge about our heritage and our mother was long gone...or was she?
Absurdly, I waited ten long seconds for a voice in my head to illuminate the darkness. And during that delay, my sister’s stewing erupted into outright rage. “If you don’t want to tell me...” she started.
“I don’t know, okay?” I snapped back, ashamed of myself even as I lost my temper. “Do you think turning into a parent at age eighteen came with a handbook? It didn’t. I’m doing the best I can and you’re not helping matters. Now do your homework then go to bed.”
And, predictably, Kira lashed right back with her own fox fury. “I hate you,” my usually sunny sister emoted, family cohesiveness and math textbooks forgotten in the face of my badly chosen honesty. Then the girl fled to her bedroom without another word and slammed the door behind her back.
Chapter 12
I’d managed to make the switch onto the blue line and was relaxing as the third city bus of the evening wended its way into the good part of town before it occurred to me that I wasn’t the only person in the vehicle’s shadowy posterior. How had I missed that hint of fur beneath the stench of unwashed bodies and spilled soda pop when I boarded ten minutes earlier? My only defense—that I had more important matters on my mind than getting jumped by a stray werewolf—failed to hold water when my attempt to swivel in search of further information was stilled by a flash of silver flicking in front of my eyes one millisecond before cold steel came to settle beneath my chin.
“Eh, eh, eh. Not so fast.”
I froze, running through possibilities in my mind. Was this an unaffiliated drifter, an Atwood underling, or one of Jackal’s henchmen? My opponent’s identity should have made a difference, but the male’s subsequent words turned off my rational side and prompted me to throw caution to the winds. “Your sister....” the male started.
And without giving him time to spit out whatever thinly veiled threat he’d dreamed up, I acted. One hand rose to pry his blade-holding fingers back into a painful reverse stretch even as my other arm leveraged me off the seat sufficiently to get my feet underneath my butt.
Then I was the one attacking. My sword was less than useless in such a confined situation, but I could spring upwards holding onto my opponent’s hand while leaping. No wonder his knife clattered to the floor between us even as the male—scruffy, badly dressed, older than I’d expected—exploded into the aisle with teeth sharpening within his still-human mouth.
“You little bitch,” he started, shaking out his right hand even as his left inched toward what appeared to be another knife marring the drape of his Hawaiian shirt. And here Kira thought my clothing needed assistance....
Wardrobe aside, I refused to be intimidated by my opponent’s bulk or by his small-space-appropriate weapons. Instead, I bought a little breathing room with a verbal attack. “Nice flowers,” I started. “But I thought Casual Friday wasn’t until tomorrow....”
Before I could finish, I was sliding sideways, the non-slip matting beneath my feet insufficient to hold me in place as the bus driver slammed on his brakes. My stomach hit the plastic of the nearest seat back, breath whooshing out of me even as I scrabbled against the floorboards in search of my opponent’s dropped weapon.
But the male was no longer attacking. Was, I realized as I looked up, instead halfway down the aisle where he’d been slung by the vehicle’s abrupt halt.
Which meant his second knife was now poised half an inch away from the eyeball of a boy too young to be out by himself after dark. Yes, I was now safe from the werewolf’s weaponry. But based on the curl of the shifter’s upper lip, he was well aware that harm to an innocent was just as damaging as harm to myself.
The boy whimpered as the scent of smug shifter filled the enclosed space so densely it choked my attempted inhale. “The brain is right behind the eyeball,” my werewolf opponent observed smoothly. “I learned that from a Hawaiian medicine woman. Are you ready to deal yet?”
THE BASTARD THOUGHT he had me over a barrel. But he’d missed my fingers closing around the knife recently abandoned on the bus’s floor, and he must have also missed the memo that street fighters never back down.
So, unlike him, I attacked without warning. Didn’t open my mouth or even flick my eyes to give away my intentions. Just twisted and flung the knife in one unerring movement, gaze following the blade as it sliced through my opponent’s sleeve and bicep, ripping him away from his current victim and pinning the male against the back of the seat in front of them both.
The werewolf howled in agony, the boy shrieked in terror...and I was slung around hard as handcuffs pinched shut around my left wrist. “Police! Don’t move!” a human shouted in my ear. Then my face was squished up against a seat back while my right hand was wrenched up behind me, only the faint musk of receding werewolf suggesting what I’d see once I was finally allowed to stand erect.
My opponent had taken advantage of the tussle to flee, I noted. And the humans, predictably, took one look at my ragged clothing combined with the massive sword still belted at my waist and rewrote the past with chilling inaccuracy.
“She was attacking that boy!” a cane-wielding matron exclaimed, pointing at the child who’d survived the scuffle without a single scratch...thanks to me.
“She pulled a knife,” the bus driver confirmed, watching as I was frog-marched down the aisle and out the front door of the bus. I’d nearly made it to my destination, I realized. Was standing in a residential neighborhood full of mansions and bigger mansions and vast expanses of emerald green grass.
And...werewolves. Because the scruffy male was long gone, but another shifter waited at the bottom of the bus steps. This one reminded me of a more wiry version of Gunner and Ransom with a wardrobe even Kira would have considered both stylish and smart. Another brother? A cousin? I couldn’t be certain. Whatever his lineage, the mild-mannered shifter in his bespoke business suit was a good fit for talking the policeman off my back.
“Is there a problem, officer?” the not-quite-stranger asked, the query so clichéd it might as well have rolled off the lips of a B-rate movie actor. And yet, he managed to pull off the impression. Could almost have been readjusting a monocle as he superciliously stared the policeman down.
“This woman attacked a boy on a city bus...” the officer started. But the stranger cut him off with a single raised hand.
“Did you see the altercation in person? Was anyone injured?”
“Well, no....”
“Then I highly doubt you have your facts straight. Because this young woman is my house guest. Not a troublemaker in the least...although she could use a better tailor. I’ll admit that part.”
Together, the werewolf and the police officer looked me up and down, lips similarly pursed as they passed judgment on my thrift-store attire. Hey, it was better than a hot pink Hawaiian shirt....
And even though my escape from potential incarceration shouldn’t have been that easy, the bus of witnesses was already rolling away down the street. Meanwhile, the officer before us apparently had no incentive to argue with a well-heeled resident of a top-tier neighborhood. “I apologize for any inconvenience,” the official told me after a single second of consideration. Then air flowed in to replace the pinch of handcuffs, my former captor strolling away down the sidewalk before my rescuer could lodge an official complaint.
Which left me in the custody of a werewolf who had every reason to berate me at length for nearly revealing myself to humans. But the stranger just raised one eyebrow and shook his head slowly instead. “Not smart,” he chided almost gently before adding: “Go home.”
