Page 5

5

Half-wishing I had the sword, though a single lesson had barely taught me how to hold it, I left the van and walked onto the pavement where the motorcycle riders wouldn’t miss seeing me. The first time thugs like this had rolled into the lot, it might have been chance—a little vandalism partaken in for fun—but this time… I had little doubt these guys were here for me. Or at least because of me.

Engines roaring, all four men rode around the lot, circling the cars, going up and down the lanes.

I didn’t sense anything magical about them, nor did I recognize them. These weren’t Radomir’s thugs, amped up on Tiger Blood potions. That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Each of the big men wore black leather pants and a studded jacket and carried cudgels or tire irons as they eyed the windows of parked cars. They hadn’t come here to tour one of the vacant units.

“On second thought,” I murmured, “that one looks a little familiar.”

Had he been one of the thugs present when Duncan jumped into the fray to help? On the day he’d first arrived to metal-detect in the woods next to the apartments?

Back then, the intruders’ eyes had been bloodshot and glazed, as if the men were on drugs. Today, they looked more alert as their gazes fixed on me. Two kept riding up and down the lanes, waving their cudgels in the air, though they hadn’t yet struck anything. The other pair slowed to a stop a few paces from me.

My phone was in my pocket, and I thought about calling 9-1-1, but I remembered the last time the police had shown up. It had been in the aftermath of Duncan and me changing into werewolves and tearing out throats. The authorities had found mauled bodies and heard reports of wild dogs—or wolves. If another incident like that happened, with me in the middle of it, someone might figure out that the property manager for Sylvan Serenity Housing was a werewolf.

At least none of the tenants were in the parking lot at the moment. That was a small blessing, but it wasn’t that late at night, so people might come and go. Bracing myself, I groped for a way to deal with these guys quickly.

“Luna Valens,” one of the stopped men said. He had a faint accent, a wispy black mustache, and dark eyes that bored into me.

“Congratulations on your ability to read my name off the mailbox,” I said, though I doubted these thugs had read anything. “How can I help you?”

He gave me a long once over, like he was checking me out, though he was probably trying to tell if I had weapons. I bared my teeth, letting him see my canines—my lupines , one might call them. Too bad my five-foot-three-inches of height and one-hundred-and-ten pounds didn’t lend any extra menace to my sharp teeth.

“You’ve been making trouble,” his partner said, a bald guy with a similar look. Maybe a brother .

“ I’m the one making trouble?” I touched my chest, then pointed to his cudgel.

It rested across one of his handlebars, but he still gripped it.

“This town doesn’t belong to you. Mind your own business, or we’ll tear up your place.” He looked toward the van where Rue’s nose was pressed against one of the windows as she watched. “ And the people who live here.”

My skin warmed, my blood tingling as indignation at the threat filled me. Indignation and anger.

This was my territory, protecting the people who lived here my responsibility. The rational part of me knew I should avoid changing, but emotions rode higher, and, in case I couldn’t control the magic, I tugged off my jacket and pulled my phone out of my pocket, tossing both to the sidewalk. But I didn’t want to change in front of witnesses. I had to talk these guys into leaving. Somehow.

The other two men revved their engines and continued to ride around. Rue probably wasn’t the only one nearby with a nose pressed to a window, watching.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, though I had an inkling. The thugs who’d tried to rob the convenience-store owners had also ridden motorcycles, and they’d had a similar vibe as these guys.

“The police know better than to mess with the Fellowship,” he said.

“The Fellowship? Are you on a quest to save Shoreline from the Dark Lord Sauron?”

If he caught the reference, he didn’t show it. “Mind your own business, or we’ll make sure you don’t have a business to mind.”

“That’s a clever play on words, but you need to be more specific. What is it you want me to do? Or not do?”

“You attack our people, and we’ll attack yours.”

His buddy thumped him on the arm and pointed at the Roadtrek. No, at Rue. “Valens needs a lesson. To see what happens to her renters if she gets in our way.”

He turned off his motorcycle and hopped off, heading for the van.

Skin pricking and adrenaline rushing hot through my veins, I strode over to intercept him. Rage rode with the adrenaline. How dare this guy stomp presumptuously into my territory and threaten those under my care?

Rue might have a potion she could throw at the man, but she also might have come out with nothing but the sample kit. She needed protection.

“You girls need to leave men’s business alone,” the first speaker said.

When I planted myself in the path of the man heading toward Rue, he hefted his cudgel. The threat called to my magic as surely as the presence of a full moon would. When he swung, I ducked. The cudgel whistled over my head, missing by inches. Instead of rising back up, I dropped to all fours as the change took me.

Fur sprouted from my skin as magic morphed my limbs, torso, and head, and my mouth elongated into a fanged snout. The thoughts and emotions of a wolf took over as my body changed, shoes and clothes disappearing into the ether. Abruptly, I smelled everything around me, fir and pine sap from the woods, gasoline from the vehicles, the body odors of the men around me—the enemies around me.

“Shit.” The man backed away, cudgel raised. “I told you she was a werewolf. Pedro saw her change. He said so.”

“Hit her before she finishes,” the other rider barked. Instead of raising his cudgel, he reached inside his jacket, withdrawing a handgun.

Even as a wolf, I recognized the danger. When the closer man stepped forward, swinging for my skull, I jumped to the side, using his body to block me from the firearm. I also caught the cudgel, my powerful jaws snapping down on the wooden weapon, and tore it from his grip.

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed his pack mate jumping off his wheeled conveyance and aiming the handgun in my direction. I darted toward the closer man, using his body as a shield, and bit him in the thigh.

He screamed and tried to kick me with his free leg. I jerked back, pulling him off balance. He pitched to the pavement and clutched the bite wound, out of the fight for the moment. That left me without cover. Further, the other two riders had turned down this lane, their noisy vehicles roaring. I sprang between two cars.

With a crack that hurt my pointed ears, the firearm went off. A bullet took a chunk out of the pavement where I’d been standing. The two riders came through, their cudgels raised, but such weapons couldn’t reach me as long as I stayed between the cars.

A thunk sounded nearby. It came from Duncan’s rolling den, and I remembered a human ally was within. Or had she exited the vehicle and put herself in danger?

I backed out from between the cars to circle around several and come at the men from another direction. The roar of the motorcycles made it easy to track the riders, but I couldn’t hear the gunman who’d stepped off his. I also couldn’t smell him over the pervading odor of gasoline.

Needing a better view, I sprang lightly onto the hood and then the roof of one of the parked vehicles. The gunman crouched on the other side—he’d been trying to sneak closer to me. He shouted in alarm when he spotted me. Before he could point his firearm at me, I jumped down, jaws snapping.

Some vestige of my human brain remained, despite the overpowering wolf magic, and I remembered that I did not want to kill these foes, lest it make trouble for me later. At the last second, I diverted my aim from his throat to his shoulder. My fangs sank deep through clothing and muscle and flesh, and bone crunched .

The man screamed in my ear and dropped his gun as we tumbled to the pavement. I came out on top and bit him again, this time on the hand he’d used to fire that weapon.

A motorcycle roared right behind me. I whirled and sprang as the rider came into view. His cudgel was raised to strike me, but he wasn’t fast enough. I arrowed into his side, my momentum taking us both tumbling off the motorcycle. Like a mountain cat, I twisted in the air to land on my paws. Freed of its rider, the motorcycle ran into a car. The wrenching of metal assailed my ears and made me want to run from the area.

But another rider remained. He was angling toward the human woman who’d come out of the rolling den. I sensed power from her but recalled that she brewed magical concoctions; she wasn’t a fighter. Or so I thought. She gripped a large cylinder on a rope that she twirled, then flung. It struck the rider in the face, knocking his head back. He released the handlebars and lost control of the motorcycle. As he fell off, it nearly ran over the man I’d bitten in the thigh. Struggling to rise, he barely managed to scramble out of the way.

“Do not underestimate the power of a grandmother,” the woman called, reeling the cylinder back in.

Nobody answered her. Our enemies were hobbling away. Only one managed to salvage his motorcycle, get back astride it, and ride out of the parking lot.

Hackles up, I growled, considering taking a few more bites of flesh from those who weren’t leaving as quickly. But the human woman—Rue, that was her name—lowered her coiled rope and cylinder and approached me without fear. Though I believed her an ally to me in my human form, I watched her warily. Not all those who allied with humans were willing to ally with werewolves.

She stopped at my side and patted me on the back.

“I believe the incinerated ashes from the toilet droppings will do for the location formula. As long as they don’t belong to you, that is.” She cocked her head, regarding me curiously. “No, you probably go in the woods. Yes.”

Even though I mostly understood the words, they did not make much sense to me. As I waited for the wolf magic to fade, I growled again, irritated that the men had dared intrude upon my territory. Perhaps my instincts had been right and I should have killed them so they could not prove nettlesome again.

Looking in the direction I was growling, Rue asked, “Do you want me to make a formula so you can locate them too?” She withdrew a napkin from a pocket and dabbed the corner of a dented fender, hair and blood darkening it, not yet washed away by the drizzle. “This is fresher than the ashes. Yes, indeed.” She patted me on the back again but paused, looking up at the sound of a car driving in.

I noticed it but also spotted another human in the area, a woman with an electronic device. She was on the far side of the parking lot, many vehicles in between obscuring my view, so I hadn’t noticed her before. She was pointing her device in our direction.

“You may wish to disappear into the woods and hope she didn’t get a good photograph or video.” Rue stepped away, lowering her hand. “I believe from what I have heard that the tenants do not know of your alter ego.”

I was already backing away. My wolf instincts cared nothing about humans and their electronic devices, but I remembered that it would matter to me in my other form. Trouble might yet come of this night.