Page 81 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

Keane kept going until, finally, he felt Nelle’s hand against his neck. He lifted his blood-covered head away from the polar’s corpse and nuzzled against her hip before briefly wondering why he smelled the glue he once used to repair Dani’s old dollhouse.

* * *

A roundhouse kick to the head sent Trace out of the den and into the hallway. Smirking, ready to tear limbs off this bitch, Jules followed, but as soon as she stepped outside her den . . .

She wanted to curse, but she didn’t want them to see the weakness.

This was what had kept Trace Rutowski alive all these years, despite so many chances for her to be taken down by entire governments and armies. Her friends. Because wherever she was, they were right behind her.

And this time, her friends were holding Jules’s stupid nephew.

Lenkov held an axe, the blade against her battered nephew’s throat.

“Kill them!” Johann yelled at her in German. “Kill them all!”

So dramatic. Did he forget how hard it was to kill a honey badger?

Did he forget the risk they took if they actually killed all of these She-badgers?

The Van Holtz trouble alone! There were entire nations that fell when the Van Holtzes got pissed, and this idiot wanted to kill the only badgers who had ever married into that Pack?

Then, as if to solidify how lost this particular battle was, Gong Zhao walked in, and she wasn’t alone. She had the tiger beside her, in all his black-and-white-striped glory. An eyeless polar bear head hanging from one fang like a well-used chew toy.

Jules blew out an angry breath. “What do you want?” she asked Tracey Rutowski, whose friends had helped her back to her feet. But it was Lenkov who answered.

“I am owed blood!”

“I am not talking to you, Russian!”

Rutowski began to answer, but she stopped, held up a finger to give her a moment as she tried to breathe around cracked ribs.

Jules couldn’t help but smile. “You are getting old, my friend.”

“Fuck you!” Tracey snapped. Always an American first, that one.

“You know what we want,” CeCe said, taking over for a now-angry Tracey. “We get what we want, or . . .”

“I,” Lenkov said, “or one of my many kin, come back for him. And we split him into pieces to send to his dear mother.”

“How is she, anyway?” Steph asked. “Still hating you, old friend? But absolutely adoring her perfect, perfect son?”

Dammit, they were right. If anything happened to this idiot, her sister would have Jules’s skin.

“Fine,” Jules agreed. And this time, she meant it. She had to. She knew the damage a Lenkov could do when that particular family decided to restart a blood feud.

CeCe nodded her approval.

It was done. No other words had to be spoken.

But there was still Gong Zhao, who also felt betrayed. What would she demand? Jules wondered.

Reaching over to the big cat beside her, she took the polar bear head from his mouth and held it in both hands like a ball.

Waiting for the threats, Jules folded her arms over her chest and let out a long sigh of annoy—

Jules screamed out a long string of curses after that dead bear’s hard head slammed into her face, breaking not only her nose, but her cheeks and both eye sockets!

Unable to see at the moment, she could still hear Gong Zhao loudly cheer, “WNBA MVP and still championnnnnn!”

* * *

Charlie slid out of the vent and landed on her feet in the middle of what appeared to be a private office.

When she turned, Paolo de Medici was waiting for her, a Desert Eagle handgun pointed at her head.

Not only was it a .50 caliber, which could actually kill her with a straight headshot, but the gun itself was, of course, gold.

Because you couldn’t be a tacky mob boss without a tacky gold weapon of some kind.

With a tactical knife in each hand, Charlie readied herself to move. She had one shot at this and—

“Stevie! No!”

But it was too late! Her baby sister charged into the room from the open door and threw herself onto Paolo’s back.

Confused by the tiny female on him, he rolled his eyes and reached back to yank her off.

Afraid he would cause Stevie panic—and with panic, came a shift, and with a shift came a possible Godzilla movie storyline—Charlie yelled out, “No, no, no!”

But just as Paolo gripped the back of Stevie’s adorable sleeveless sundress—the one with little pink hearts all over it—Stevie had one arm around Paolo’s throat and was raising her other hand into the air.

Charlie thought her sister was holding a knife, which would be . . . crazy. Her sister didn’t really wield knives the way Charlie and Max did. But it wasn’t a knife. It was a titanium syringe. And her baby sister slammed that syringe into the cat’s jugular vein and pushed the plunger.

Paolo roared and shook Stevie off, sending her into the wall.

Charlie ran across the room and put her body between Paolo and her sister.

Hand against his throat, Paolo’s entire body began to shake, the gun falling uselessly from his hand.

“Stevie,” Charlie asked her sister without turning around, “what did you do?”

“You know what I did.”

Stevie stood behind her now, resting her head on Charlie’s shoulder.

Paolo dropped to his knees; then his hands landed on the floor, and he was on all fours.

Roaring, the male’s body was forced to shift into lion.

It wasn’t an easy shift, though. The kind every shifter but her would have.

The one that only took a second or two for someone to painlessly go from human to powerful beast.

No. This was different.

This shift took time and caused Paolo de Medici great pain. Endless pain as he screamed and roared through every moment of his DNA permanently changing from one thing to another.

When it was done, the lion passed out, his body landing with a crash.

“We have to move,” Stevie said. “He won’t be out for long.”

“What are we supposed to do with him?”

Charlie could, of course, open his veins while he was out cold, but she had the feeling that’s not why Stevie had wasted their one chance to deal with their father forever. Her baby sister had something else in mind.

Maybe a zoo or an animal rescue. But that seemed . . . risky, at best. His body and most of his DNA may be lion, but Charlie had the feeling that the appalling human Paolo de Medici still existed inside the powerful jaws and paws of this lion male.

“Don’t worry,” Stevie said, going over to Paolo’s side. “I’ve got it covered.”

“Hello?” a male voice called from a few flights down.

“Up here!” Stevie called back.

A minute or two later, the three older Van Holtz brothers walked into the room. The last time Charlie had seen them, they’d been taking her father away. She hadn’t heard from that bastard since. It had been bliss.

“Ladies,” one of the handsome wolves greeted them. “We see you’ve been . . . uh . . .” He looked around and finished with, “. . . busy.”

Stevie took off the small backpack she had strapped to her shoulders and dug out a leather case.

“Here,” she said, handing the case to Wolf Van Holtz. “These should keep him out until you get him caged and moving.”

“Great. Anything else?”

She shook her head. “No. Except thank you for this.”

“Our pleasure.”

“Uh,” another brother asked, “if he does wake up and shifts back to human, what do you want us to do then?”

“He won’t shift back.”

“How do you know that?”

Stevie didn’t answer the wolf’s question, simply said, “You better get going. It’s Manhattan. It’s still early evening. People will wonder what’s going on if you’re caught carrying a lion around.”

She gave a laugh so fake, Charlie had to turn her head before the wolves saw her cringe.

“Okay.” Wolf motioned to his brothers. “We’ve got an ambulance outside and some paramedics from one of our hospitals. We’ll cover him up and make it look like a drug overdose or something similar.”

The three brothers surrounded the big cat and were about to heave him up, but Charlie wasn’t in the mood to witness that pitiful display. Besides, she owed them for giving her a respite from Freddy MacKilligan.

“Hey,” she said, stepping between them and the cat. “I’ve got it.”

“I don’t think—”

Charlie grabbed the cat by his mane and dragged him out of the room and down the hallway toward the stairs. As she moved, she could hear one of the brothers behind her say, “I see why she plays football.”