Page 5 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

Eleven years later . . .

C laws slashed by, missing her by no more than half an inch. Nelle ducked under the big fur-covered forearm swiping at her, and went back to work on the lock.

“Get him off me!” she yelled out when she felt another swipe near her spine. “Get him off!”

The full-humans trapped inside the cage she was working on continued to scream until she snapped, “Quiet.”

They immediately did as ordered, giving her a few seconds of peace. She worked the lock until it finally released. She yanked off the thick metal and pulled open the cage door.

“Out!” she ordered, the full-humans stumbling as they pushed and shoved one another to get free. She was about to roll her eyes at the pathetic way these people were acting when something grabbed her around the waist and yanked her off her feet.

The next second, Nelle was flying. Across the room and directly into a wall. She hit it hard, her nose crushed on impact, before she rebounded off and landed on the floor.

She laid her hands flat on the ground and pushed herself up until she was on all fours. But before she could stand, that forearm grabbed her again and threw her.

It was Nelle’s back that hit the other wall this time before she slid down and landed on her ass. She lifted her gaze in time to see the thousand-pound grizzly charging toward her.

They’d been told that Lithuanian bears would be protecting this transport ship filled with full-human cargo, but no one had told them the Lithuanian bears would be drugged out of their minds.

There was a combination of cocaine-infused honey that had been making the rounds with bear addicts, but whatever these bears were on was way stronger.

Because no matter how many times they were getting stabbed or shot, they just kept fighting.

As the bear neared, it opened its maw and grabbed her leg. If she were another breed, it would have bitten her leg clean off, but she was badger. Made of tough bones and even tougher skin.

Frustrated she wasn’t already bleeding out, the bear swung her around for a few seconds while Nelle reached over that giant head to tear out the bastard’s eyes with her claws before bashing him, headfirst, into the floor. But the doped-out-of-his-mind bastard still didn’t release her.

Nelle grabbed at the gun holstered to her hip, yanking it out just when Max landed on the bear’s back and stabbed at it with two tactical knives, hitting it in the neck and head.

It dropped Nelle, and she landed at its giant back paws, the front ones trying to slap Max off.

Nelle put a round in the chamber of her Sig Sauer and, ignoring the blood pouring from her leg, proceeded to quickly climb the front of the bear while it tried to get Max off its back.

She avoided its swinging forearms and snapping fangs, which allowed her to reach its shoulders.

She moved to its right side and wrapped her legs around its neck, pressing the barrel of her gun against the top of its head.

She pulled the trigger three times, and the bear dropped to its knees, then face-first to the floor.

Before it could hit the ground, though, she had already rolled clear.

Too bad there was another crazed bear just a few feet away. She only had a moment before that claw hit her right across the face and sent her flying again.

When she landed on the ground this time, she raised her weapon to start firing, hoping to at least get the bear to back off until she could shoot it directly in the head, but she never pulled the trigger.

She was too busy staring at the older She-badger.

It was Tracey Rutowski. Mads’s aunt whom they’d only recently met.

And the female had an axe. A big one, probably grabbed from somewhere on the ship.

Holding the weapon with both hands, the She-badger lifted it above her head and, with a roar, swung it down.

The axe head embedded into the middle of the bear’s face.

The crazed beast screamed in pain, blood spouting from the wound, but that didn’t stop Rutowski.

After a couple of hard tugs to dislodge the weapon from its skull, Rutowski kicked the bear in the chest, knocking it to the ground.

Her sleek, gray bob—expertly cut in some exclusive Manhattan salon, no doubt—fell in front of her face as she swung that axe again.

She hit the bear in the face, then the neck, the shoulder.

She just kept swinging the axe again and again until the bear stopped moving and its face and head were nothing but hacked bone, muscle, and blood.

Panting a little, the She-badger stopped her assault and held out a blood-soaked hand; Nelle grabbed it and allowed the female to help her up.

Rutowski studied her for a moment. “Your nose. Here.”

“No, n—” was all Nelle managed to get out before Rutowski viciously yanked the pieces of bone back into what probably looked like a nose. Maybe. Nelle felt less certain about that when the older badger cringed a bit after taking a look at her handiwork.

“You may still need a bit of plastic surgery there, kid,” Rutowski told her, before gripping Nelle’s jaw with her fingers and roughly turning her head to the right. “You may want to get this checked out, too. That bear got you good.”

Nelle was aware of the bodily damage she’d already sustained. She didn’t need this female tugging her face like a pimp checking out new product.

Instead of telling Mads’s aunt to unhand her, Nelle instead informed her, “Behind you.”

“Huh?”

“Behind—”

Rutowski didn’t wait for her to finish a second time, probably sensing the bear charging toward them both. She simply swung that axe again, more blood hitting Nelle in her already wounded face.

Rutowski was now having trouble getting the axe out of the bear’s shoulder, and this one was fighting back because his brain hadn’t been damaged yet.

The pair struggled away from her, and that allowed Nelle to see that this She-badger’s middle-aged friends had also found their own axes and were finishing off the rest of the drugged-out bears.

With axes. Because, clearly, none of them were part of a functioning society!

Who lived like this? Using axes in this way?

What was the eighties like, exactly? Nelle wondered.

Did the Cold War make them like this? Just turning them into wild badgers with axes?

Every last one of them had their own gun or tactical knife or bear-specific pepper spray!

This sort of messy violence was unnecessary!

To be honest, though, the axes were only a small part of the problem.

Because this was not how all this was supposed to be going.

Nelle and her teammates had just done some necessary work in Italy, before doing a little shopping in Switzerland—then, on the way back to the States in one of her family’s private jets, they’d gotten a message from Rutowski asking for help in raiding a transport ship outside Boston Harbor.

Charlie MacKilligan, who had been with them, had headed home immediately to check on family and friends, but the rest of them had all shrugged at each other and said, “Sure. Why not?”

It wasn’t until they’d invaded the ship and found the human cargo that Nelle realized she should have stayed on the jet and headed back to New York with Charlie.

And, for once, Nelle couldn’t even blame Max for this fiasco.

Max was usually the source of all their crazy, but not today.

Today it was Rutowski and her Old Crone Reading Club—as Max liked to call them—dragging them unprepared into a very bad situation.

Nelle and her teammates were already exhausted from what they’d taken care of in Italy, and now they had to deal with all . . . this .

Mads ran up to Nelle, shooting a charging bear twice in the face before stopping in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“My face—”

“Will heal. What about the rest of you? Any broken bones? How are your shoulders? Knees?”

Nelle could only open one eye at the moment, but she narrowed it on her teammate. “You’re not asking about this because you care. You’re asking because of the championships . . . aren’t you?”

“Of course, I care . . . about you . . . as a friend. My friend, I mean.”

“You liar! I have a crushed face, and you just want to make sure I haven’t broken my legs or arms because of that goddamn championship.”

“You’re our power forward!”

The five of them had been playing basketball since they were thirteen.

After they’d graduated from high school, they’d gotten picked up by the Wisconsin pro shifter-only team.

Most basketball teams were filled with big cats and bears.

The occasional She-wolf. While the badgers would normally be considered too small to go up against a six-five She-grizzly with aggression issues, honey badgers were all about aggression.

While others were running away from rampaging bears, honey badgers were running right at them.

Nelle and her teammates, though, were not simply vicious players. They were good. They worked together well and enjoyed taking other players’ balls away. It amused them.

But of the five of them, Mads was the most competitive about the game. She’d loved basketball from when she was a toddler, according to her great-grandmother. So anything, absolutely anything, that got between Mads and a possible championship win made her intolerable.

Intolerable!

“Stop touching me!” Nelle snapped, slapping at Mads’s groping hands on her shoulders.

“That bear tossed you around like a dog toy—”

“Thanks for intervening with that.”

“—and if you get any bones or joints replaced with titanium, you’re off the team, Nelle. You’re off the team!”

Nelle lifted her hand, palm out, and turned her face to the side. “You’re getting hysterical. I don’t like it.” She let out a small snarl before growling at Rutowski, “And would you stop hacking that bear! It is definitely dead!”