Page 9 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)
W e found Randy’s pants and managed to achieve something resembling decency, then got him a sweatshirt from the bookstore and Becks handcuffed him to a chair.
The rest of the pack except for Rachelle had bolted, along with most of the store employees and all the customers but one weird guy sitting in the back reading a book called Dungeon Crawler Carl and muttering “Goddammit, Donut” every few minutes.
The manager stuck around to watch the weirdness, and one cashier with purple hair and a pierced lip hung out flirting with the barista, who said as long as there was anyone in the coffee shop, he had to stay, no matter what.
I thought he probably would stick around as long as Lip Ring was giving him the time of day, but let it slide.
“So, Randy, you want to tell me why you went all Wakanda Forever on my ass?” I asked, dragging a chair over and sitting in front of the bound were-panther.
“You gonna make Black Panther jokes all night, or you want to find out who’s killing shifters?” Rachelle asked.
I looked up at her with my most innocent expression, which hovers somewhere between Charles Manson and Jason Voorhees on a good day, and gave her my most Hannibal Lecter smile. “Porque no los dos?” I asked. I turned back to Randy. “Talk, asshole.”
“I don’t know nothing about anybody killing shifters, man. I just got scared when I saw the fucking Reaper at our meeting. Everywhere you go, folks come down with a bad case of dead. These are my peeps, man. I don’t want nothing to happen to them.”
I leaned forward, letting red magic trail from my eyes. “You ever think that maybe people end up dead when I’m around because dumbasses think fur and fangs are worth a fuck against a guy who literally throws fireballs? You started this shitshow, Randy, not me.”
He leaned back, giving him a little distance from my glowing eyes.
“Yeah, okay, I shouldn’t have started anything.
But I heard you threw down with Saint’s crew a couple days ago, and those guys are tough, man.
Anybody who’ll step to them wouldn’t have any trouble putting a hurt on some of our people.
I was just trying to look out for them.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Rachelle said. “We had lunch with one of the North End Whiskers yesterday, and he told us what happened with Saint’s people. And something about blowing up Mort’s bar again, too.”
I threw up my hands. “For fuck’s sake! I left Mort’s place in better shape than I found it. We had a goddamned meeting there, that’s all . I didn’t even punch anybody. Not even Mort, and everybody knows how much I like kicking his ass.”
“Wait a minute,” Becks said, holding up a hand before I really got rolling. “Who are the North End Whiskers?”
This was a crew we hadn’t heard of. Not that I try to keep track of all the packs in and around Charlotte.
It’s a decent-sized city, and most packs are just four or five people who hang out together, like an extended family.
I was only really familiar with the larger groups, like Saint’s or Dex’s, or the ones that got into some really ugly shit.
I usually didn’t let them live long enough to know their names, though.
“The Whiskers are a bunch of street rats that live up around Camp North End. There’s still a bunch of old industrial buildings around there, so they hang out in abandoned warehouses and dumpster dive behind the bars after closing,” Randy said.
“You didn’t know about the Whiskers? Where you been, man? ”
“Not going to trendy crowded bars with shitty chairs, loud music that sucked in the 90s, and overpriced domestic garbage beer. If I want to pay four bucks for a Pbr, I’ll…never mind. I never want to pay four bucks for a fucking Pbr,” I shot back.
“Well, the Whiskers been around for close to ten years now, and nothing goes on in the north side of town they don’t know about. You wanna find out what’s up in the cheap parts of town, you gotta be sure to bring some cheddar with you. And I don’t mean the kind you get at the grocery store.”
I glared at Randy, then looked over at Rachelle for confirmation. She nodded, and I turned to go, not before tossing a small fireball at his face. Not enough to do any damage, just a little puff of flame to remind him who the Alpha was. “Thanks for all your help, pal. I really appreciate it.”
“You gonna let me out of these cuffs?” he asked.
“Not my cuffs,” I said. “I’m not into that. Much.” I walked off with Becks right behind me. You’re not going to unlock him? I asked her as we got to the parking lot.
He did start a fight in the middle of a crowded store where children were present. That’s the kind of thing the local authorities frown upon, isn’t it?
You called the cops?
No, and I left the key with Rachelle, but I told her to let him sweat for a bit before she lets him out. He could use a few minutes to sit there and think about his bad decisions.
Damn, girl. Sometimes I wonder which one of us is the meanest.
Oh, it’s definitely me, Becks sent with a mental grin. You make the biggest messes, but I’m way more dangerous.
I could not disagree with her, not even a little bit.
* * *
Camp North End is a bunch of old warehouses and basically abandoned real estate reclaimed and converted into artsy spaces, trendy restaurants, clubs, overpriced apartments made to look old and weatherbeaten but actually newly built with state of the art everything, all nestled in what used to be a decent place to score drugs twenty years ago.
I mean, I’m pretty sure you could still find almost any drug you wanted, but you’d have to look a lot harder, you’d pay a lot more, and you were more likely to be scoring off some hedge fund douche named Chad than a biker named Little Jimmy.
In short, I liked it better when it was more dangerous.
But if that’s where I needed to go to find a bunch of rats, I was willing to make a few sacrifices.
At least there was decent beer. Some faux-German beer garden (of course, spelled biergarten because it would have to be to justify their prices) had good dunkelweizen, so I grabbed a pint and a pretzel as Becks and I wandered the area looking for shifters.
I kept my Sight overlaid on top of my normal vision, which meant I was more prone than normal to bumping into shit.
Looking at the mundane world through the magical spectrum is like staring at the sun through a tie-dyed shirt.
Everything is bright colors and shifting blobs of energy, and the occasional supernatural being pops out like a beacon in the night.
Only problem with that was that Camp North End attracted a lot of freaks and weirdos, and that means it also attracted a lot of faeries, witches, and other paranormal beings.
So by the time I got my belly full of dark beery goodness, I needed what little refuge alcohol could provide from the sensory overload I was experiencing.
See anything? Becks asked.
No. Well, more like I see too much, but I can’t pick out any shifters that might be rats.
I saw a couple walking back there near the gelato stand, but they were too muscular.
Most lycanthropes share physical characteristics with the animals they turn into.
Most aren’t as blatant as the buck-toothed were-rabbit back at Mort’s, but it would be very unlikely if the pair of buff guys I spotted as weres were anything other than predators.
They had the thickly muscled frames of lions or wolves, not the narrow faces and twitchy postures typical of rodents.
You okay? Becks asked.
Yeah, I’m fine. Just a lot of mojo floating around this place. I think we might be better off trying to find them without my Sight. I’m gonna get a lot of interference with all these paras around.
“Okay,” Flynn said, pulling out a chair and taking a seat at a round cafe table. “Then what’s the plan?”
“Well, rats are natural scavengers, and the Arboretum kids said they liked to go dumpster diving after the clubs close, so why don’t we just hang out for a while and see what we see when the crowd thins out?”
I could tell from the wrinkled-up nose that she didn’t like this idea. Becks might be the only person I know who hates sitting around doing nothing more than me. “Why don’t we see if we can spot them a little earlier?”
“You got a plan?” I asked. I knew the answer was yes because the corner of her mouth twitched up like it does when she gets a good idea.
“Rats are scavengers, but scavengers are often also thieves, aren’t they? Why don’t we make ourselves appealing targets for pickpockets and see who takes the bait?”