Page 4 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

S o what the fuck do you want, Harker? And why did you have to wreck half my bar?” Saint asked, leaning back in his desk chair and putting his motorcycle boots up on a scarred corner.

“For the record, I only started wrecking shit when you got all up in my face. And most of that was when your pet elephant fell down and went boom. When the fuck did you add a were- elephant to your pack? Isn’t that a little far afield for wolves?”

“We don’t discriminate,” Saint said, taking a long pull off the bottle and passing it to me.

“Jermone came to us about five years ago after he got trafficked here for his ivory. Some asshole realized that his tusks grew back every time he shifted, so he wrapped the big guy in silver and forced the change on him over and over again. Poor bastard was down to a hundred-thirty pounds when we got him out.”

I poured myself a healthy slug of Kentucky’s only notable export and passed the bottle back across the desk. “You could have called for help, you know. I was in town.”

“Didn’t need your help,” Saint replied. “And sure as fuck didn’t need the drama that seems to pop up every time you’re around.”

He had me there. I’m kind of a shit magnet, even when I’m not trying to stir any up.

I guess it’s my winning personality. Or maybe my complete lack of impulse control.

Or the zero fucks I have to give about how people perceive me.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Any of your people go missing last night?” I asked, ready to quit dancing around and get to the real reason I was there.

“It ain’t a fucking dorm, Harker. I don’t know where all my folks are every minute of every day. But nobody’s missing that I expected to be here, if that answers your question.”

“It kinda does, but let’s get more specific. Is this guy one of your wolves?” I held up my phone, marveling that once again it had survived a Quincy Harker fistfight. The new cases Homeland had built for me and Bubba were worth however many thousands of dollars they cost the taxpayers.

Saint sucked in a breath and his eyes widened at the photo of the most recent victim. “Willy. He’s not pack, but I know the kid. What happened to him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said. “I figure the best way to find out what happened to him is to find out who he was first. So who was he?”

“He’s a stupid kid from somewhere in flyover country. Nebraska, maybe. Went on some church trip to build houses for poor people in Canada or some shit, got himself bitten, and when he turned fuzzy a few weeks later, he ran away from home and landed here.”

“He went through his first shift alone? Did he kill anybody?” Weres could eventually control themselves when in their animal form and, except for the three nights of the full moon, were in control of their changes.

They had to shift for the full moon, no matter what, but the rest of the time they had a handle on it.

Unless they got badly injured or really pissed off.

“No,” Saint replied. “He got lucky. He told me he’d been off alone fishing when he changed and woke up butt naked with half a deer carcass strewn all around him.”

“That must have been fucking terrifying,” I said.

“It’s an Alpha’s worst nightmare, a newly turned lycanthrope going through that alone.

Okay, I guess it’s my second worst nightmare.

My worst is that the baby were kills somebody.

Anyway, he hooked up with a few other para kids around town and got into a little trouble, but nothing major.

Vandalism, petty theft, a few burglaries down in Ballantyne, that kind of shit.

Then they fucked up and tried to rob Jermone in a park one night. ”

“Oh, there’s no way that ended badly,” I said, remembering how much of my mojo it took to lay the big were-elephant out.

“Yeah, you called it.” Saint nodded and took another swig from the bottle.

I couldn’t tell if he was playing at being a hardass not using a tumbler, or if he thought drinking from the bottle would keep me out of his liquor.

Either way, I reached across the desk and poured myself another slug.

“Jermone’s a peaceable guy until it’s time not to be, so when four idiot kids jumped him, he tried to keep it chill until one of them landed a good punch on him.

Then he went all gray and stompy on their asses.

He brought the whole lot of them back here, we patched them up, and I had a conversation with the crew about how to behave in a city with multiple groups of paras. ”

“You mean, you told them if they fucked around with any of your people again, you’d string their intestines from streetlamps,” I said.

I’d gotten the same “conversation” from Saint about twenty years ago.

In my case, it didn’t stick. I thought it probably went better with a bunch of scared kids that he actually could disembowel without too much effort.

Saint ducked his head and gave me a grin.

“Yeah, that was about the gist of it. But then Willy started coming around the clubhouse. He never made like he wanted to join the pack, and he certainly didn’t want to ride with us.

The kid never even looked hard at a bike.

” The incredulity on Saint’s face was funny.

It was like he couldn’t fathom someone not wanting to ride a motorcycle.

“But we’re not gonna shove some kid out in the cold just because he’s not a member, so I let him come and go as he pleased.

He’s been bouncing around town for about the last two years. ”

“When was the last time he bounced through here?” I asked.

“Been a couple months. He actually looked good, you know. Better than usual. He was clean and well-fed for a change. Usually these street rats are scrawny, haven’t showered in about a week, and are broke.

But Willy paid for his drinks, was cleaned up, and had on clothes that looked like they’d seen the inside of a washing machine recently.

I figured something had turned around for him.

I was happy, you know? Even though he wasn’t one of mine, I had a soft spot for the little idiot. Now he’s dead. Fuck.”

“Yeah.” I took another sip of Saint’s bourbon. “Did you talk to him? Maybe poke around a little about what changed for him?”

“I didn’t, but I think Cindy did. He always followed her around like a puppy dog, offering to bus tables for her, do dishes for her, that kinda shit. Reminded me a little of some other guy who used to hang around my niece. Only difference was, I liked Willy.”

Okay, that one stung. But Cindy was a beautiful woman, and given that lycanthropes age slowly, she looked a lot closer to twenty-one than to the fifty she was really pushing. “You think she might know more?” I asked.

“Maybe. But she ain’t gonna tell you. She was pissed when you stopped coming around, Harker. Pissed.”

“You told me never to darken your door again, remember? That’s what the whole fight we just had was about.”

“Yeah, I might not have mentioned that to her at the time. Better to have her hate your guts than mine. I gotta live with her.” He tipped the bottle in my direction, and I begrudgingly toasted him with my glass.

I couldn’t argue his logic. Since Saint never mated, Cindy was his Alpha female, basically the second in command of the pack.

A real argument between Alphas could tear a pack apart, and he didn’t think a fling with me was worth that.

Hell, I didn’t think a fling with me was worth that.

We are going to have a chat about this ‘fling’ when you get home, Becks said in my mind. Sometimes, like when walking into a bar run by the uncle of your ex-girlfriend, it gets real inconvenient having your significant other riding shotgun inside your noggin.

“You want to call her in here and ask about Willy, or you want me to leave through the back door and ask her after I’m gone?

” No point trying to pressure Cindy into saying anything if she didn’t want to talk with me around.

She was one of the most stubborn women I’d ever known.

I guess I have a type , I sent to Becks, getting a mental image of a raised middle finger in response.

“She’s mostly over being pissed at you. Let’s get this over with, so you can go back to never setting foot in my bar again.” He tapped on his cell phone, then set it back down on his desk. “She’ll be back in a minute. She’s stocking the beer coolers right now.”

Sure enough, less than two minutes of uncomfortable toxically masculine drinking and glaring at each other later, me and Saint were rescued by Cindy sweeping through the door.

“What do you want, Harker?” she said, standing in front of Saint’s desk.

“I’ve got a bar to run, and a bunch of broken furniture to replace, thanks to you. ”

“Willy’s dead,” Saint said, cutting off the argument before we got started.

Cindy looked like she’d taken a punch to the gut, sitting in the other visitor chair with a soft “oh.”

I gave her a second to collect herself before opening my mouth to start asking my questions. She held up one finger, and I sat back, silent.

“When?” she asked.

“Last night.”

“Where?”

“We’re not sure. The…his body was found on a private golf course, but the scene indicates he wasn’t killed there.”

“How?”

“We don’t know. Without a crime scene, and since all but the most grievous injuries heal as soon as one of you shifts, we can’t tell what happened, or where, or why.

” The last was to save her from asking yet another question I didn’t have an answer to.

“I was hoping you could tell me where to find his friends, so I could ask them about it.”

“You gonna ask them questions, or slaughter them?” Cindy asked.

I took a second before I answered, giving the question the weight it deserved.

I’m not known for my restraint. “I’m going to question them first. Then, if it turns out they killed him, and that they killed the other shifters that have shown up mysteriously dead around town over the past six months…

well, then I’ll probably slaughter them. ”

“How many others?” Saint asked.

“How do you know they were all shifters?” Cindy jumped in.

I held up a hand to forestall any more questions.

“Willy is the fourth victim. I can only confirm two of them as weres. The other two bodies were disposed of before I could get a look at them. But I spoke to the coroner this morning, and he said the other two John Does were found the same way—naked, in relatively populated areas, and with no apparent cause of death, even after an autopsy. They were in perfect health, except they were dead.”

Saint sat back in his chair. “None of our people are missing, so they aren’t pack, but that doesn’t make me feel much better.”

“How many unaffiliated shifters are there in Charlotte?” I asked.

Saint looked at me like I was an idiot. “How the fuck am I supposed to know, Harker? That’s what unaffiliated means. Shit, I don’t even know how many members are in the other packs, much less who might be walking around fuzzy three nights a month that don’t run with a crew.”

“Crap,” I said. Then an idea hit me. A possibly terrible idea, but it was the only one I had. “How friendly are you with the other Alphas?”

“We’re pretty territorial, but as long as nobody pisses on the wrong fire hydrant, we kinda have a live and let live arrangement.”

“Would they take your call? Maybe come to a meeting?” I asked.

Saint was shaking his head before I finished my sentence. “There’s no fucking way they’d meet here. They’ll talk to me, but if I asked them to a meet here, they’d come expecting an ambush.”

“What about on neutral territory?” Cindy asked.

I looked at her, and as I realized where she meant, my heart fell, bouncing off all my ribs and stomach on the way down.

There was only one really neutral place for cryptids, fae, and other supernatural beings in Charlotte, and it was a place that I really didn’t want to go back to.

But it was probably the only place I could get all the Alphas together to try and figure out who was killing shifters in my city, and how.

Get the team together, I said over my mental link to Becks. We’re gonna have to go to Mort’s.