Page 65 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

“Do not tear those out of your arms, Nelle, just so you can get out of that fucking wedding,” Keane ordered.

“Cops will be here soon,” the Russian explained. “We have no choice.”

“Nelle,” Keane warned. “I’m serious.”

“Do it,” she told Lenkov.

* * *

The Russian grabbed the chains that were still attached to the contraption on Nelle’s arms.

Rutowski’s eyes grew wide. “Ox, no !”

But Ox had already slid her claws under the metal against Nelle’s skin and, without even a warning to brace herself, yanked those things out of Nelle’s arms. Blood splattered across them all, and Nelle let out a startled roar.

Keane caught Nelle as her body gave out and she dropped. He stopped her from slamming into the marble floor.

The Russian motioned to the horrible thing she held in her hand. “This looks like sick sex toy.”

“We need to wrap these,” álvarez said, leaning in to see Nelle’s wounds without getting close enough for Nelle to rip her face off with her claws. “I think they may actually need stitches too.”

“Stitches?” Keane snarled through fangs. “Don’t you mean skin grafts?”

“Why? Her skin is still there. It’s just . . .” álvarez shrugged. “Mangled.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Rutowski informed them, even as she paused to also look at the wounds.

He was fascinated by how calm these females were being. All he could hear were helicopters and drones and emergency vehicles bearing down on them. Yet they didn’t seem to notice. How could they not notice?

“I don’t think we should leave until we get her sewn up.”

“Just slap a bandage on these wounds and let’s go !” Nelle roared.

“First, you need to calm down,” Rutowski said in a chastising-mother tone that Keane had often heard from his own mom. “And second, we’ve got this.”

“Do you?” Keane demanded. “Because I’m pretty sure we’re in Versailles right now.”

The She-badger looked around, smiled. “Very good! We are at Versailles. Beautiful, isn’t it? This is one of the bedrooms of—”

“I don’t need a tour, woman!”

Nelle pulled out of Keane’s arms and spun around, splashing blood on them again.

“Are you crones insane? We’re in Versailles? You dug us into Versailles?”

“We needed a place to regroup.” Again, that was said so calmly. So rationally. Even though Keane and, clearly, Nelle were not feeling rational. And it wasn’t because they were the crazy ones in this current situation.

Nelle had no time for their insane rational tone, either, Keane guessed, because she looked at him and said, “Fuck it, I’m going to shift and—”

“No!” Three of the elder badgers yelled. The Russian just smirked and said nothing.

“You can’t shift,” Rutowski quickly explained. “You’ll get smaller, but those wounds won’t. And your bones may shatter when they change. Right now, they’re simply broken.”

“Who the fuck would invent such a device?” Nelle asked.

Rutowski shrugged. “Manse.”

“He’s full-human.” Nelle stepped into Rutowski, the pair eyeing each other like the predators they both were. “That man is full-human. So mind telling me how he knows what I am?”

Before Rutowski could answer—not that she necessarily would have—Yoon called out, “We gotta go!” She ran back from the big window she’d been looking out of. “Cops. I’ll get in first,” she added, dropping to her knees in front of the hole they’d just recently left.

“You know where to go?” Rutowski asked.

“Yep.”

“Wait, wait.” Keane looked at the females. “We’re going back underground?”

“We don’t have a choice.” Yoon pointed at the window. “Cops. Everywhere.”

Keane understood that. He didn’t need to see the cops to believe they were outside and closing in fast. What he did understand, though, was that he did not want to go back into that hole.

“Forget it,” he finally said. “I’ll just turn myself in.”

“Do you know how many bodies we left behind? The explosion? They’re going to think you’re a crazed terrorist. You can’t turn yourself in.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re covered in someone else’s blood. Trust me when I say, if you turn yourself in, you’ll never be outside a prison ever again.”

“I don’t want to go in that hole,” he told them. The last time, he’d felt like he was suffocating. Like it was his grave. He just didn’t think he could do that again.

Nelle’s hand pressed against his neck, and she gazed up at him. “I won’t leave without you.”

Behind Nelle’s back, the other females rolled their eyes in exasperation. But he didn’t care. The way Nelle said it . . .

“Promise you won’t leave me in there to die,” he begged.

“Never.” Nelle smiled. “You ripped a guy’s head off for me. That is so romantic.”

“Before this gets any weirder,” Rutowski cut in, “we’re really traveling far. So can we just . . . get moving? Please.” She motioned to Keane. “And you’ll do better with claws and fur, I think.”

She was right. He would.

After sparing a moment to gaze at Nelle for another few seconds, he shifted and waited.

Yoon went in. Nelle, after stroking the back of Keane’s neck, followed.

Keane leaned in and sniffed around the dirt, debating whether he should really do this, until he felt a foot shove his ass and he fell face-first into the hole.

He really hated when Rutowski did that!

* * *

Trace jumped up and down on the cat’s big ass until he started to move forward, disappearing into the tunnel that Yoon was creating.

She motioned to a laughing álvarez and stood back, allowing her friend to head in. Then she turned to Ox.

“You go first, my friend.”

Trace’s eyes narrowed. “No, Ox.”

“I will follow behind.”

“You’re not going after Manse on your own.”

“He is still dangerous. Look what he has done to annoying Zhao. Look what he has caused.”

“We’ll deal with him later. Right now, we’re all getting out of here. Now.”

Ox took in a deep breath. “When the time comes,” she finally said, “you will let me kill him. Not you. Me.”

“Absolutely.”

“You are good friend, Tracey Rutowski.”

“Because friends always let friends take the kill shot.”

Ox slapped Trace on the back, nearly shattering her spine. “You are funny, American.”

Tracey smiled until Ox entered the hole; then she took a second to crack all the bones back into place where her friend’s hand had hit her. When done, she let out a grunt of pain before following everyone else.

Man, it sucked getting old.

* * *

“You can’t do this! This is murder!”

“Stop whining. You big baby!”

Lot rolled his eyes at the chained badger.

Since meeting The Crazy Four, as he once called his now-wife and her friends, he had known many honey badgers.

They could be polite, crude, funny, tacky, angry, terrifying, sweet, and any other number of things.

But he had met very few pathetic crybabies!

He’d known newborn cubs less hysterical.

“Why is Uncle Edgar sending us pictures of France?” Hel asked, staring at his phone.

Wolf held up his hand. “I don’t want to know.”

“We don’t know where our wives are,” Lot pointed out.

“And we don’t need to know.”

“What if they’re burning down Paris?”

“This looks like Versailles.”

Lot and Wolf stared at their brother.

“What? It does.”

“We’re just surprised you would know.”

“I know things,” Hel reminded them.

“I say,” Lot cut in, “we pretend we didn’t get his texts until we get back home. Either our wives will have destroyed France completely by then, or they’ll be home and Edgar can yell at them rather than us.”

“He’ll still yell at us.”

“Yes, but it will be less, because the whole thing will have been resolved.”

The brothers all silently agreed and waited for their cue.

“You can go.”

Lot and his brothers looked at the full-human Nigerian who had spoken to them. He was staring at a laptop, studying coordinates and visuals from below.

They’d parked the jet at a private airstrip to be fueled and readied for their return. Now they were in a supply plane, flying low over an animal park.

“You sure, Henri?”

Henri’s half-sister was a wild dog who ran one of their restaurants with a Van Holtz cousin. Henri was the director of this park that protected the animals full-humans enjoyed hunting. Sometimes for poaching and sometimes because they were bored dentists looking for something to kill.

“Do not insult me, mon frère ,” Henri said with a smile. “I am always sure.”

“Apologies,” Wolf replied.

“You can’t do this!” MacKilligan screamed. “You—”

Lot kicked the badger out of the open door, watching him fall as they held on to the sturdy straps that kept them from following.

Wolf looked at his brothers. “I could forget... ?”

“Nah.” Lot shook his head. “We promised that tiny badger with the big roar. I’m not sure we want to make her mad.”

“Good point.”

At the right moment, Wolf pressed the button on his phone, and the parachute deployed.

The badger kept screaming anyway until he hit the ground.

As the door closed, Lot’s wolf ears picked up Fred MacKilligan yelling out, “This isn’t over!”

Wolf, staring at his phone, cringed and asked, “Is that some dude’s head stuck in a tree?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hel said, sitting on the bench next to Henri. “Whatever happened in France—it definitely involved our wives and Ox.”

Lot nodded, because his brother was probably right. That absolutely sounded like their wives.

And Ox.