Page 79 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

Satisfied with that, she headed on. But when another cat came charging at her out of the darkness, she realized she should have stuck with just the silent blades. Because even suppressors didn’t help with hearing-amplified shifters.

* * *

A badger came at him, and Keane slapped it away with his front paw. Another came from behind him, and he slashed it with his back paw.

He didn’t have time to deal with all these badgers. They weren’t what he wanted. What he was looking for.

Another badger slid to a stop in front of him, slashing at him with a knife, and Keane slapped him down with his paw, held him there, then leaned in so that he crushed the badger’s face with his weight.

It was strange, though, hearing the badger still breathing after he’d walked away. Usually when there was spurting, he didn’t have to worry about anyone breathing afterward.

He reached the kitchen, but he could see in the darkness that the room was empty.

He started to turn around to walk back out when he heard the gallop, spinning to face it when those fifteen-hundred pounds hit him full-on and knocked him deep into the kitchen, right out the back window—glass exploding all around them—and into the garden.

* * *

Nelle moved past the battling badgers and went up the stairs to the second floor.

She briefly stopped to sniff the air, trying to locate Jules’s scent, when Johann’s scent suddenly filled her nostrils.

He grabbed her from behind before she could react, and a knife swung down.

She pushed it before it could hit her in the chest and, instead, it dug into her belly.

She snarled and grabbed his arm. Pulling it away, she twisted until bone broke and Johann screamed.

Still holding the badly damaged arm, she yanked it away from his body, and snapped it at the shoulder, the bone shattering. Shoving him away, she took the blade from her gut.

Using his still-working arm to drag himself to his knees, Johann snarled in direct challenge. But Nelle merely sniffed the air again, and went off in search of Jules.

“Wait!” Johann called out in French. “Where are you going? We are not done here!”

But she ignored him and, as she passed a blood-covered Russian in the tight hallway, snarled, “He’s all yours, comrade.”

* * *

“You wouldn’t dare,” Johann told the Russian looming over him. “You wouldn’t dare kill a Von Sch?fer-Müll—”

“In 1766,” the psychotic bitch said in flawless Polish, “your ancestor stabbed my ancestor in the back after agreeing to a fair duel over the honor of Catherine the Great. From that day until now . . . blood was owed. And the Lenkovs do not forget . . . nor forgive, Comrade Kopanski.”

“Mad cow!” Johann screamed. “I will kill you! I will kill you all!”

Slapping him to the floor with the back of her hand, Ox grabbed the royal badger by the ankle and proceeded to drag him down the hall to where most of the fighting was taking place.

“My friends!” she called out, ignoring his threats. “I need an axe!”

* * *

The lion tackled Charlie to the ground, knocking the gun from her hand, and brought his massive head down to bite off her face.

She slapped her free hand against the cat’s jaw and pushed up and away.

With her right hand—and the blade it held—pinned under the cat’s weight, she continued to push with one hand while trying to pull her legs out from underneath the beast. He slapped at her with his paws, tearing into her tough skin and roaring for the help of his litter mates.

She heard feet—and paws!—running in the floors overhead, and angry Italian being spit out from those still human.

She only had seconds.

Slipping her fingers into the cat’s mouth, she started to twist his head away.

He bit down on her hand, and she felt fangs hit bone.

She growled at the pain, but she kept twisting.

The cat tried to turn his head back, but she used all her strength and pushed and pushed, even as she feared her fingers would be chewed off for good, until she saw the muscles in the cat’s neck strain against his fur and, finally, burst through to shower her with arterial blood.

The cat slumped down on top of her, and she pulled her mangled fingers out of his mouth. Bullets hit the ground next to her head, and Charlie moved to use the lion’s corpse to give her some protection.

* * *

Nelle kicked the den door open and found Jules standing by the window that looked out over her territory.

Slowly, the older badger faced her, and the pair stared at each other until, with an instinctual agreement passed down through generations of breeding, they both snarled and charged each other.

When they reached the middle of the room, Jules slashed at Nelle with a tactical blade. Nelle avoided it, but barely. She knew instantly that Jules was as well-trained in combat as she was. Not what she was hoping for with a still-bleeding stomach wound, but what was she going to do?

Jules slashed again, then stabbed for her gut. Nelle caught her hand before it hit her and twisted, slashing with her other hand, which Jules quickly caught. They held onto each other like that, both fighting for dominance, snarling at each other, fangs out.

Nelle twisted Jules’s hand hard, and the blade dropped, but now that her hand was free, she yanked it away and used her arm to grab Nelle around the neck.

She pulled her close against her chest before releasing her hand.

That’s when Nelle slammed the blade she still held into Jules’s leg, but Jules immediately retaliated by pushing her free hand into the open wound on Nelle’s stomach.

She hissed, the pain from that fist digging around inside her, making her think death had to be better than this. It had to be!

Nelle jerked her knife from Jules’s leg and raised it again, now aiming for the bitch’s head, when a hand grabbed her first and held it.

Rutowski stared into Nelle’s eyes, a small smirk on the crone’s face.

Nelle’s lip curled. “You, bitch,” she snarled in accusation.

“Know who your friends are, little badger,” Rutowski said, before ripping Jules’s fist out of Nelle’s stomach and throwing the other badger across the room.

“Here,” the crone said, while shoving a bottle of glue at her. “Use this on your wound to close it up. Then go help your boyfriend.”

“What?”

“He’s an eight-hundred-pound cat fighting a fifteen-hundred-pound bear. The odds are about even, but still . . . wouldn’t risk it. Now go. But take care of that wound first,” she told her before facing a snarling Jules, who’d picked herself up off the ground.

“Hey, old friend,” Rutowski said in Polish, pulling a black tactical knife from the sheath on her leg.

“Old friend,” Jules said back.

Then the two She-badgers bared fangs and charged each other.

Nelle didn’t watch; she simply turned and headed out to find Keane.