Page 43 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

B ernice MacKilligan stuck her hand into the hive and tore off a chunk of honeycomb.

The African killer bees that she’d had smuggled into the country—they were considered an invasive species—immediately attacked her arm, but she ignored them, taking a big, messy bite of the warm comb.

She ate the honey, larva, and adult bees with gusto.

It was her way of starting her day before the entire world annoyed her.

Her hives were her pride and joy. Much more than her children were, but that wasn’t surprising.

Her children were one of the things in the world that annoyed her so much.

They all lived together in her fifteen-thousand-foot mansion, despite the many times she’d thrown her adult offspring out.

Now, she also had to deal with her half-brothers and their sons from Scotland.

They’d arrived not long ago for a funeral, and now she couldn’t get rid of them.

They’d almost left, but their private jet had been blown up with them on it, and they’d been thrown out of the shifter-run hotel they’d been staying in.

They’d even tried to stay at their nieces’ house first, but Freddy’s three girls had quickly—and wisely—thrown the lot of them out.

Now here they were. In Bernie’s house and refusing to leave.

At least all their wounds and burns had healed so she didn’t have to look at that anymore, but they still wouldn’t get the fuck out!

Some days she really did believe honey badgers were an invasive species, too.

Keeping a small cube of the honeycomb so she could drop it into her morning coffee, Bernice started back toward the house, free hand slapping at the aggressive bees still attacking her head and neck.

She abruptly decided to go around and enter through the front.

She wanted to see what was going on with the flowers there, so she could discuss it with her full-human gardener.

She liked her gardener. He knew when to keep quiet.

Sure, he’d asked her about the small black animals with a white stripe running down their backs that he’d spotted around the property sometimes.

Quick to note that he didn’t think they were skunks.

But when she started paying him a little more, he stopped asking, and it was never discussed again.

Besides, it was because of him that she had award-winning roses.

One can overlook a lot from a full-human when they help a person win awards.

Bernice was just coming around the corner of her home when the gardener called out to her from the opposite direction. She had just stopped to go back when she saw her half-brother Will get into one of her cars, a favored Mercedes Class S that she didn’t want his stupid ass riding around in.

She opened her mouth to tell him to “get the fuck outta my car!” when the engine turned over and the accompanying blast sent Bernice flying back at least one hundred feet. She hit the ground and tore up her precious lawn as her body continued to slide another fifty feet before coming to a stop.

“Ms. MacKilligan! Ms. MacKilligan! Oh, my God!”

Her gardener had an arm around her back and another on her shoulder, helping her to roll over and sit up.

“Are you all right?” the man asked, out of breath and clearly beginning to panic.

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said, between panting and ignoring the pain in her currently broken neck. It would heal in no time. One of the few benefits of being born a MacKilligan. They even healed faster than most badgers.

“No, no,” the gardener begged, openly gawking at the way her head was twisted on her body. “Don’t get up. I need to call an ambulance.”

She put her hand over his phone to stop him from dialing. “Not yet.”

“But—”

She grabbed her skull with both hands and, gritting her teeth, yanked it back into place so it properly aligned with her spine.

The color in her gardener’s normally suntanned skin quickly drained away, and he stared at her with his mouth open.

Then the next hit came . . .

“Fer fuck’s sake,” a voice with a Scottish accent growled out from the remains of the destroyed vehicle. “What the fuck happened?”

Will pulled himself from the rubble and, after shaking his head and body to dust off, he looked around. Other than some second-degree burns on his face and hands, he was as strong and sound as anyone who had not just been in the middle of an explosion.

“Why do they keep trying to blow me up?” he yelled, as their offspring came running out of the house to see what had happened.

Letting out a sigh, Bernice looked up at her stunned and horrified gardener. At the same moment, several bones on her neck and spine loudly snapped back into place.

She cleared her throat and said, “Uh . . . let’s just say you’re getting another raise. Okay?”

The gardener closed his eyes and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

* * *

Keane didn’t know what was going on. They’d been sitting in the SUV for at least fifteen minutes, but Nelle wouldn’t get out. She simply sat there, both hands clenched into tight fists, head bowed, eyes closed tight.

He’d never seen her like this. Uptight. She looked uptight. She never looked uptight. She was one of the most relaxed people he’d ever met. But not right now. Right now, she looked like she might snap at any moment.

“Maybe we should—”

“I’m fine,” she snipped back.

“Really? ’Cause you don’t look fine. Is this because of that stuff with Rutowski?”

“Who? Oh. No. Nothing to do with her.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I’m fine!”

“She snarls through gritted teeth,” he muttered.

“All right,” she said, after taking a deep breath and blowing it out, “are you wearing a watch?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a good watch?”

“I got it downtown on the street from this Haitian guy.”

“Oh, God.”

“His stuff is really good. I mean, I know that Rolex isn’t spelled with two extra Ls, but—”

“What about your phone?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s made in China like the Rolllex I’m wearing.”

“Gimme your phone,” she snarled.

He unlocked it and handed it over. She found the timer app he used during practice and put fifteen minutes on it.

“When this goes off, you go into that store.”

“That’s a store?”

“It is. You come in, you get me, you drag me out. No matter what is happening, no matter what I may say, no matter what anyone may say . . . you drag me out. Understand?”

“No.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Why I need to drag you out no matter what’s happening? What do you think will happen?”

“I don’t know. But this is what it means to be my backup?”

“It means following your nonsensical orders blindly?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

She started the timer, handed back his phone, and got out of the SUV.

“What are you doing?” he asked himself out loud, watching her disappear into what appeared to be an abandoned space waiting to be sold to whomever put in a bid.

“I know what you’re doing,” he replied to himself.

“You’re waiting to get the hot girl out of a store when she’s bored.

Because you’re pathetic. She’s obviously playing with you, and you’re buying into it.

Because you’re pathetic. And now you’re talking to yourself like a serial killer, which is even more pathetic. ”

He entertained opening a book on his phone—which he hated doing.

He liked to actually hold a book, not read it on his damn phone—but he knew if the book was any good, he’d get lost in it and forget all about the timer.

He was known to even ignore alarms when he was into a great book.

That was why he didn’t read anything but sports magazines on his lunch breaks during practice.

The articles were usually short, and he wasn’t completely distracted, because they were all about full-human sports.

Although he didn’t know why any full-human played sports. They were all so fragile.

Finally, the alarm on the timer went off.

An annoying sound that had him gritting his teeth as he desperately tried to turn it off.

Once that was done, he got out of the car and walked up the street until he reached the storefront with the windows covered by brown kraft paper so no one could look in.

Worried about exactly what illegal nightmare situation he was about to find behind this closed door, Keane entered . . . and immediately froze in the doorway.

He’d expected all sorts of horrors, but not this. Never this.

Nelle slammed the fellow Asian female into the floor and straddled her chest, knees on either side so that the arms were pinned there. Then Nelle began to pummel the other woman in the face. Punch after punch after punch.

Maybe it wouldn’t look so strange if the other Asian wasn’t in a white wedding dress and Nelle wasn’t in a champagne-colored, full-length gown.

At first, he thought the dress was sleeveless, but it had a thick strap over the left shoulder.

It was made of silk or satin or something shiny and smooth that was popular at weddings.

There were two sets of non-Asian women attempting to pull the pair apart. There was also lot of screaming and crying and threats to call police “. . . if this doesn’t stop right now! You’re ruining the dress!”

If Keane wasn’t so horrified by the whole thing, he’d be really entertained.

It took longer than he would have liked to snap out of his temporary psychosis, but when Nelle grabbed the other female’s head between her hands and slammed it against the floor over and over again, he knew he had to step in.

The two females fighting might be shifters—probably Nelle’s dreaded sister, by the way she was going after her—but everyone else in this place was full-human.

He could tell, despite all the expensive perfume these ladies had practically bathed in to block their natural human scent.