Puma Pride, page 9
“Did they go berserk,” Mia asked.
“Rushed into the store pushed racks over, pushed people over, and went right to the door. They rushed through the door to follow,” Jolyn said.
“Meanwhile my people arrived at the mall and there’s alarms going off and chaos with police being called. We thought we were too late,” Willie shook his finger at her.
“But you tracked my phone,” Jolyn patted his knee.
“Damn good thing I did,” Willie growled.
“It took him like two seconds to find me hiding in the back room,” Jolyn revealed. “I never went out on my own again.”
“Who were they,” Mia asked.
“They got away from the police,” Willie said.
“But,” Mia prompted.
“We’re better at tracking then the police,” Willie grinned.
“It was a paramilitary group of humans who were led by one of the ex-military,” Jolyn filled in.
“Okay so I’m hearing your parents’ work was digitized,” Mia said. “You’ve been in hiding for the last three years and then suddenly you come on my kit. Why didn’t you walk by?”
“I started to. Shifter kid getting beat up by humans? Not a good situation in our current political climate,” Jolyn confessed. “I should have gone to my apartment and called the police.”
“But,” Mia demanded.
“Pups,” Jolyn whispered one word.
“You put your whole life at risk. Risked exposing your situation to save my daughter,” Mia slumped back in the long deep seat of the limo.
“It was our most successful placement up until now,” Willie ran his big hand through his red brown hair.
“You’ll always be at risk,” Mia realized.
“Brady will have his work cut out for him,” Willie snorted.
“I didn’t want to take him as my mate. I didn’t want to put him at risk,” Jolyn confessed.
“Does he know,” Mia asked.
“He will after today,” Jolyn bit her lip. “I kept trying to tell him over the last week but…”
“He’s a newly mated shifter,” Willie snorted.
“It does make all of us lose our minds for a while,” Mia shook her head. “If everything is digitized, why are we out?”
“To get the data,” Jolyn confessed. “But we’re being followed, so we can’t go there.”
“Jeremy, go to Flora’s,” Willie pushed the intercom to speak to his driver. “We can still go. We’ll have to playact a bit.”
“Flowers,” Mia asked recognizing the store Willie referred to.
“Yes.” Jolyn took a deep breath. “We can make it appear normal.”
“Your father would love this,” Willie pulled her tight against him. “If luck is with us, this should go smoothly.”
“They’re still out there,” Brady noted as he paced back and forth in their security room.
“It’s not a big force,” Bryan took his feet off the desk. “Sit down.”
“Fine,” Brady took a screen and started flipping through the different camera views. “What are they waiting for?”
“Probably for our women to stop,” Bryan guessed. “They’ll attack us the same time they attack them.”
“We can’t go help them and vice versa,” Brady growled.
“If they’re all male, they probably don’t think the females are a threat,” Bryan snorted as he paced.
“They haven’t seen a female protect her cub,” Brady chuckled.
“Mia’s… fierce,” Bryan admitted.
“Jolyn’s barely recovered. We should have waited another week,” Brady grumbled.
“She seems all right,” Bryan dismissed.
“She still has bruises. She hides much,” Brady paused on one of the outside views. “Look at this?”
“Are you counting her bruises?” Bryan asked as he leaned close to watch the screen. “Shit they can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen.”
“There’s a lot of them,” Brady said. “Fourteen in shades of green and yellow. One stubborn light purple one.”
“You’re pulling my tail,” Bryan didn’t look from the screen.
“I’m not,” Brady sighed. “I hate she’s exposed.”
“Are they arguing,” Bryan asked.
“Get on the other monitors,” Brady said. “I don’t want this to be a distraction.” Brady shifted the view from the small screen to one of the bigger ones higher up on the wall.
“Here’s another one,” Bryan added to the bigger screens above.
“There’s one on each side,” Brady said. “If I’m counting right, we’ve got nearly twenty but some of them aren’t hounds.”
“I’ve got one who looks like a fox,” Bryan pointed to a young man with red and black hair and an angular face.
“These all look like hounds,” Brady pointed to the two cars on the east side of their compound.
“How are they planning to get in,” Bryan said. “The wall is taller there and has the barbed wire at the top?”
“We’ll find out,” Brady growled. “Time for movement.”
“I’ll send the alert,” Bryan let his brother make this call because of his expertise as an enforcer. He sent a message to all members.
“You watch the evacuation and make sure they move quickly,” Brady watched the higher screens while Bryan pulled up multiple views of the house. “Tell Chet to move his fat ass or I’ll come take a bite out of it.”
“This is not the time for sleepy kitty,” Bryan muttered. Chet, an older tiger, moved slower than most but you did not want to go up against him in his true form. He was fierce.
“They’re making me itchy,” Brady stood back from the desk and watched the four screens. “Fuck the oldest one is on the west side. We get rid of him, we might be able to talk down the others.”
“Is that a cat,” Bryan asked as a young man stepped out of the vehicle first.
“His skin looks like a clouded leopard,” Brady growled. “We know how they’re getting over the wall.”
“Somebody has messed with him,” Bryan muttered not liking one of their own was in the force against them.
They watched as the young man scaled the wall like he walked up steps. One of the other men threw a blanket up to him which he draped over the barbed wire. One by one, Brady and Bryan watched as they scaled the wall. Some needed assistance from others but most made it over on their own.
“Electric fence,” Brady muttered.
“Is that legal,” Bryan asked.
“Where are the kits,” Brady asked.
“Why don’t they shift,” Bryan asked. “Secured.”
“Places neither Mia nor Jolyn will know,” Brady muttered. “Ready for a fight?”
“We’re trying to take them alive, right?” Bryan took off his shirt and kicked off his shoes.
“Except maybe him,” Brady pointed to the oldest man in the group. “He’s the one giving orders.”
“Alive or dead, doesn’t matter,” Bryan shed the rest of his clothing. “We protect the kits.”
“With our lives,” Brady shifted. His black fur shimmered in the light. All lights would be off in the house, a few of the inner rooms had no windows the lower the light the less likely people were to see him and the others.
Bryan sent a final alert before shifting to a golden version of Brady. The two stalked to their positions. While some of their people remained in their human form, most chose to fight in their true forms.
Leopards, lions, jaguars, and a variety of smaller cats were all represented in their pride. They took any feline shifters.
Brady stalked towards the west side of the house. He wanted a chance at the older man. He’d try to keep him alive but not if it risked the kits. He hoped Jolyn could accept this part of him. He wanted to talk to her about it but during the past week he never found the time to share this. He hunkered down in a dark shadow most would overlook. The doors, even the terrace doors, were locked for once. Every door, every window, every entrance, locked up tight. If there were deaths, the authorities would have to be called.
He crouched in a dark shadow to wait. His senses on high alert. He smelled them before he saw them. He heard them next. Were they supposed to be stealthy? Someone bumped into a flowerpot and another scraped a chair across the patio. His muscles tensed as one of the younger ones pushed through the door despite it being locked. The young man, a hound shifter, turned away and didn’t notice Brady. He walked like he was coming in late from curfew but he held a gun.
Brady wanted to warn his people but he had no way without shifting and now was not the time to be human. A second young man stepped across the threshold. He at least scanned the hallway and the room but his eyes missed Brady. He turned to follow his friend, hissing at him to be quiet.
Tensed and braced to leap, Brady smelled the man, who made no sounds as he entered the house. Brady needed to protect. He kept still, silent and ready. He heard the slight creak as the man stepped into the doorway. His gun came first, followed by a man skilled in hunting. He stared long into the room where Brady waited to pounce. Brady heard him breathing, smelled his aftershave and his fear. The man stepped towards the room but the two who entered before him knocked something over. He rolled his eyes and turned to follow them.
Brady leapt and landed on his back driving the intruder forward and down. With a whoosh of air, the breath left his lungs, he struggled to keep his gun but the force he hit the floor with knocked it out of his hands. The man squirmed and struggled. Brady snarled. The two young men yelled and rushed back towards them.
Struggling with the older man, Brady was vulnerable especially since they carried guns. “Shoot him,” the first one squeaked out.
“It’s just a cat… jaguar I think,” the second one said.
“They use it and train it to kill,” the first one said hiding behind the second one.
“Look at his eyes,” the second one said. “He looks more intelligent than just an animal.”
“You know our training,” the first one fumbled with his gun and dropped it.
A snarl from the other end of the hall, made the first one turn and scrabble for his gun but it skittered into the room beside them. “L…L…Look,” he grabbed at the second one’s arm dragging his gun away from Brady.
A solid brass lamp crashed down on the second one’s head knocking him unconscious. The first one jerked his head back and forth. Trembling, he backed up against the wall. Chet walked up and blew hair out of the kid’s face. Starry stepped out in her human form. “Gimme your hands,” she demanded as she slipped restraints on him. She bent down to put restraints on the other kid. Brady snarled as the man under him struggled to get out from under him.
Chet sauntered over and lay across the man. Brady knew no man could get out from under Chet’s six hundred pounds of all muscle tiger. Starry said, “Go. We’ve got these three.”
Brady scurried down the hall and towards the south side of the house. The majority of the young men came over the back wall he wanted to offer reinforcement.
He skidded to a halt as he rounded the corner to the screened porch. A dozen young men knelt while a black footed cat growled and hissed. When one young man started to move, she hissed in his face. Tiny Cordele was a fierce fighter and was a lot testy since she wasn’t sleeping because of her daughter. Brady snorted, sounding almost like a laugh. He saw Bryan round the corner and skid to a stop. One of the big bears in human form brought out the young men one at a time and put them in restraints. Did they have enough restraints?
Bryan shifted and the young men stared and gasped. Bryan took pants from one of their men and slid them on. “Somebody better start talking,” he demanded in a soft but deadly tone.
“You… You…” the fox shifter sputtered. “How… they….”
“You’re all different breeds of cats,” the one with the clouded leopard skin stared at all the different cats and humans in the room. “That’s not…” He shook his head and held out his hands to be restrained.
“Take them to the others,” Bryan indicated.
The black footed cat hissed again but stepped away. When Garriety held a robe, she walked behind the robe and shifted. “Come for my child,” she scolded. “Who do you think you are? Baby thieves. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. How dare you?”
No one stopped her scolding even as some of the young men bent their heads and tears fell. Tying the robe around her, she paced in front of them as she had before. “Who taught you to be so fucking despicable you would steal babies?”
“They said you were fake,” the clouded leopard shook his head. “All our lives, they said we were the only ones. We needed girls or women to continue to grow our tribe.”
Cordele grabbed his chin, pulled his face to force him to look at her. “You don’t have a Tribe. You should be part of a Pride,” she hissed out the words. “A strong young man like you. You’d be welcome in our Pride if you weren’t trying to steal our children.”
“My skin,” he shook his head. “I don’t fit anywhere. I’m a freak.”
“You’re a cat. You belong with other cats,” Cordele snorted. “What color is your coat?”
“I’ve never shifted,” he hung his head in disgrace.
“Because you can’t or you don’t know how,” Bryan demanded.
“I was taught how… I don’t know,” he realized none of the information from the others was reliable.
“Put them in the dining room,” Bryan ordered. He strode over to Brady, “We need to call Mia and Jolyn. Something’s not right with all of this.”
Brady shifted and Garriety handed him a pair of pants. “This was a weak attempt at an attack.”
“Which means they were sacrificial lambs,” Bryan murmured. “Let’s go to the security office.”
“We need to check,” Brady felt dread creep into his bones. If they were after the women, both Mia and Jolyn were in grave danger.
“This is the shifter cemetery,” Mia recognized the area.
“Commonly called the pet cemetery,” Willie growled at the term.
“What’s the plan,” Mia saw the vehicle following them stop in the road.
“Willie’s the doddering old man,” Jolyn smiled when Willie growled.
“You’re the grieving daughter,” Mia pointed to Jolyn. “Which makes me what?”
“Support,” Willie said. “The two of you will approach the grave and between the three of us we’ll get the item and get out. Preferably covertly so no one knows the location.”
“Where is the location,” Mia asked.
Jolyn kept her eyes on Mia. “My parents’ headstone.”
“How are we…” Mia raised an eyebrow.
“If you push on the third letter of my mother’s name a small drawer opens on the side of the headstone.” Willie took Jolyn’s hand.
“My mother took her secrets to her grave,” Jolyn attempted to joke but it fell flat.
“You and I kneel by the headstone, put flowers out and what? You become overcome with grief and touch the headstone,” Mia asked.
“I’ll stand on the side of the headstone to block others from seeing,” Willie explained.
“All right,” Mia straightened her shoulders. “I can do subtle.”
“Once we have it, we come back to the limo and back to the house,” Willie said. “They can follow us all the way and hopefully they think this is a wild goose chase.”
“If it all goes right,” Jolyn took a deep breath.
The limo slowed. Mia noticed Jolyn didn’t look at the headstones. “Isn’t this…” she stopped when Jolyn closed her eyes.
“The Pack plot,” Willie nodded his confirmation. “Peter insisted her parents be buried there before he was killed.”
“Fuck,” Mia watched the headstones. So many the same. Families all with one headstone. Dates indicated the ages and so many of them puppies. She felt her eyes dampen. They pulled nearly to the center of the area for the Bloodhound Pack plots. In the middle of so many Bloodhound graves, Applegate stood out. The headstone was made of the same stone but only two names listed on it.
Willie stepped out first. He scanned the area. The trees offered places for people to hide. He scented the air and didn’t like how it smelled. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. He did a second and third scan before he allowed Jolyn to step out. She wore big sunglasses and a baseball cap. She carried two bouquets of flowers to hide her face. She stood close to the limo to give her protection. Mia stepped out wearing a floppy sun hat and sunglasses. She also carried a bouquet of flowers. She went to Jolyn and put her arm around her waist.
They walked to the headstone. “When was the last time you were here,” Mia asked to cover her nerves. Something felt off. A scent on the air or a stray movement. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
“The funeral,” Jolyn ground out the words. “I couldn’t risk…”
They stood in front of the headstone. It simply said the dates and Alice and Bernard Applegate. Jolyn didn’t want to see their names there. She swallowed as grief choked her. Mia stood to her left and rubbed her back soothingly. Their play acting wasn’t really play acting. Jolyn shook off the grief and did what was needed. She knelt to put the flowers on the grave. She knew Willie made sure flowers were placed there regularly. But there weren’t any here now. She thought it odd.
Mia knelt next to her, realized something was wrong. She scented Jolyn’s fear. With Willie on her left, he blocked her view.
“Willie, look out,” Jolyn cried out as she stood.
Willie turned to grab the wrists of a man coming at him with a shovel. Dressed as a cemetery worker, he and five other men charged them. Mia rolled away from a man trying to stomp on her. Jolyn blocked a punch to her face and thrust her knee up into the man’s groin. He doubled over and fell but another man grabbed her. She struggled against strong arms.
Mia came to her feet and tried to help Jolyn but a man grabbed her by the throat. She dug her nails which lengthened and hardened to claws deep into his arm forcing him to release her. She gasped for air but rushed to Jolyn. Four men attacked Willie, tried to take him down. His security fought at least two dozen men. The man dragging Jolyn away attempted to pick her up. Jolyn lifted her feet and let her weight pull them to the ground. He lost his grip on her but another man slammed his fist into her face. She rolled with the punch but the damage was done.
