“It should be any time— There.” Rigo nodded towards the road in, where a trail of dust rose up beneath a pair of fast-moving tires.
“Good. Pass those out as soon as she gets the box open.” Shane stepped over to his own bike to check it over. I meant to ask Erin if she would look at this today. Maybe convince her to have a Bully Bikes Party at the garage. We feed her and have another get-together with the excuse of her checking our rides over. She’d never accept help, but she’d accept us asking her for help and feeding her on the sly. I want her to feel like this is her place to stay. Her home. With me.
She was a short drive away, but she could be in danger, and it tied his heart and mind in knots. His wolf snarled within, anxious to charge up the highway to ensure she’d come home again. He’d lived without her all these years. Two days in her company and he wondered how he’d lived without her near him.
Kerri barreled into the lot to park next to Shane’s ride. Her tires had barely stopped before she threw a leg over her seat and pulled the crate off the back of her motorcycle. “Looks like I got back just in time. I would have been here earlier, but they had to dig the crate I wanted out of the back.”
“We got a call, Kerri. Erin found Ferals holed up in Levalle. They’re holding hostages while they plan something. We’re not sure what,” Shane said.
Kerri snorted as she opened the crate. “Fuck that. Let’s go run them out of town. Erin all right?”
“She’s fine,” Shane answered, and pulled two walkie-talkies out of the box. Kerri’s idea, and a good one. With cellular service out, they needed a way to communicate. “I’m taking an extra for Erin so we can tell her when we’re coming in with busted bikes.”
“Good idea,” Kerri said, and didn’t mention the other obvious reason for having Erin on the line. “These are top of the line. They have a range of fifty miles. Sporting goods store just got them in a month or so ago.”
“Nice. I’ll go by and pay them later.” Shane clipped both to his belt.
“You can try, but they waved me off when I said we’d come by with cash later. Word’s gotten out about what happened here today. The town’s keen to keep us running smoothly.” Kerri handed the devices out as the rest of the pack came by for them.
“Then we’d better get our asses in gear and honor that,” Shane said, and cracked open the stock on his sawed-off shotgun. Two shells. Good to go.
As was the pack within a few minutes. Shane gave the signal, and engines roared to life. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Anita steal a final kiss from Jake, tender yet fervent as she said goodbye. Her brow furrowed with worry when she stepped away to let him go. When she caught Shane’s eyes, he could see the silent plea there. Do your best to take care of him.
Shane nodded once. He thought of the photograph on his mantel. I’ll do my best to take care of your sister, Meghan. Promise.
Then he kicked the motorcycle into gear. Time to fulfill that vow and kick some Feral ass besides.
The alpha hadn’t spent much time in Levalle, but he’d spent enough to know how wrong the town felt now. Not enough people on the dusty streets, not enough cars on the roads or in the parking lots. Tension prickled at the hairs on the back of his neck. Whatever pack of Ferals is here, they’ve already driven out one pack. Mine won’t be next.
A familiar form waited in front of the fire station’s huge garage doors. Shane’s heart beat harder as he pulled onto the wide concrete slab that served as a driveway between the firehouse and the street. Relief showed clearly in both her posture and her expression as she watched them, shoulders relaxing and lips parting as she gusted out a breath.
All his instincts screamed for him to throw himself off the motorcycle seat to catch her up in his arms. To hold her against him and ensure her safety. Instead, he waited as she trotted the couple steps to where he’d stopped the bike.
“You made good time,” she said.
“We’ll always come when you call,” he replied, catching her eyes so she could see how deep that statement ran.
A worried smile curled up the edges of her lips. “I know you will. I’ll thank you later. The Ferals are asleep in the back of the store. They didn’t even stir when I walked in, though I didn’t run around yelling, ‘Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey’ either.”
“Probably just as well. The hostages?”
“I’m not sure. They’re probably in the front, where the doors are chained.”
“All right. We’ll see about breaking into the front when we get there. Where’s the store?”
“Up that road, take a right, drive until the T intersection, go left, and keep driving until you can see it on the right. You can find it from there.” She jerked her thumb to indicate over her shoulder. “This place is full of dead men. They aren’t going anywhere, but we’ll need to find someone to handle it once you discourage the Ferals from breathing anymore.”
Shane nodded. “We’ll let the local police know once it’s done. You said the Ferals are in the back?”
“Yes. All the doors are chained closed except the back door. There’s a semi parked behind the place, where the loading bays are. I’m pretty sure they mean to fill it up once the sun goes down.” Her brows furrowed together. “There’s barrels in the refrigeration section. Milk, eggs, and strange kegs. I don’t know what they are, but I’m pretty sure the Ferals aren’t throwing a kegger tonight.”
“Maybe we will instead. Oh. Here.” He reached for his belt to pull off the second walkie-talkie. “This has a range of fifty miles. I already set the frequency to the one we’re using. Keep it with you, since the cell phones are useless.”
She reached out to take it from him. Angry red streaks stretched out from behind the adhesive bandage on her arm to map the veins for an inch on either side. He caught her arm, pulse throbbing in his ears, to stare first at the crimson marks, then at her.
Slowly, she shook her head. “Not now, Shane. Ferals first. The people need you. I’ll be fine.”
It’s just an infected cut. You worry too much. She isn’t Greg. Get your shit together. He nodded. Yet he couldn’t help but bring her palm to his lips. Too many scents lingered on her skin for him to learn more about the wound, but her skin against him galvanized his determination.
Her fingertips brushed his cheek as she pulled away. “Try not to get blood on your clothes. It stains.”
A flippant comment, but one he knew the meaning of. Stay safe. I’ll wear this brave face for your pack. He chuckled. “I’ll be back soon. If you can bear to go back in there, use the phone to call the police station. See if they’ll pick up. If they do, let them know we’re here to clear out their Feral infestation.”
“Will do.” She tried to put the walkie-talkie into her pocket, frowned as she found the pocket too small, and jammed it into her back pocket instead. “Then we’ll go have a talk with women’s clothing companies about their damn jeans.”
“Holly and Kerri will want a piece of that conversation,” Shane said. Backing away from her to rejoin the pack on the road didn’t sit easily with him, but he had work to do.
He didn’t look back as they drove away, but he did glance at the rearview mirror on his handlebar. She waited outside to watch him go until he couldn’t see her anymore.
No one had ever looked at him like she did. Neither had anyone lingered in his mind the way she did, like a melody he couldn’t stop turning through his thoughts. Knowing she waited behind him in a building full of corpses, inexplicably wounded and unwilling to say why, roused his inner beast to a protective rage. This time, he embraced it, allowed the fiery strength to flow through him. The Ferals had threatened her twice. They might have left her wounded, and the mere thought of that nearly stole his control from him. He refused to deny the wolf again today, to smother it down and tell it the time had not yet come for it to hunt.
He was the wolf. He was her wolf. And they would pay for endangering his beloved mate.
Metal shrieked as Shane, huge and unnaturally stron
g in his half-shifted shape, ripped the door off its hinges. He threw the mangled slab of steel, and it crashed through the windshield of the semi parked nearby. Glass shards showered the asphalt beneath the truck and glittered in the sun.
Shane lifted his head to give a short, sharp howl. Two howls answered just before he heard the shatter of glass and scream of metal from the front and side of the building. Then he charged through the hole he had just created, claws out and ready to fight.
The stench of Ferals and rotted food fouled his sense of smell, but his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness of the grocery. Shapes moved on the floor, startled and sleepy and slow. Shane lunged for one and felt his claws sink into furred, warped flesh. An offended snarl became a high-pitched yelp as Shane threw it violently towards the door.
Others of the pack fell on it to finish what Shane had begun. The alpha took only the time to see that the enemy would die before he waded into the growing fray.
A Feral rose up out of the darkness, teeth bared and bright in the dim light. Shane put his shoulder down to bull rush the beast into the rows of shelves behind it. Boxes tumbled to the ground around them, but Shane paid them no attention. He drove his fist into the Feral’s almost feline face over and over again until its desperate struggles ceased.
Another leapt at him from a tall stack of pallets. Shane tore one of the long shelf support beams from the wreckage and drove it at the pouncing Feral like a spear. Metal pierced the creature from collarbone to waist. It landed, mangled and dead, where Shane had stood moments before.
But he had already moved deeper into the store’s storage area, towards the refrigeration cases. More Ferals had slept here, and now, they died here as they defended whatever they guarded in the cold room. One tried to escape into the chill of the freezer, but Shane threw himself forward against the metal door. He bashed the door against the Feral’s head and shoulder to stun it. It was all the opening Shane needed. He slammed the door over and over again until the Feral’s movements stopped.
All around him, the pack fell on the surprised Ferals. The creatures tried to fight back. One had managed to sink teeth into Kerri’s calf. She curb-stomped the beast’s face with her free leg until it let go, then continued to kick until it had no teeth left to bite with. Holly had half-shifted for a fight of her own. Blood trickled down her forearm from a chunk of viscera clenched in one clawed hand.
Screams and pained yowls from the front room told Shane the forward assault proceeded as well as his own did. Rigo, Jake, and the rest would have broken through the chained doors and boarded windows to secure the hostages kept in the aisles by now. None of the humans sounded as though they were in pain, just startled and afraid. Shane took that as a good sign and returned to the slaughter.
What few Ferals remained fought like cornered rats. Desperate, vicious, and cleverer than Shane would have given them credit for. They didn’t possess the mass of other Ferals he had seen. Instead, they moved with a cat-like speed, with an intelligence behind their slitted eyes that bothered the alpha werewolf. Knowledge of what awaited them lurked there. So did a bleak determination that Shane didn’t understand.
“Hold!” Shane barked.
Half-shifted werewolves growled but disengaged, backing into a partial circle that enclosed the last Ferals in a corner. The mutated beasts kept their heads low, never taking their gazes from the wolves who had them trapped. Their lips curled to show teeth as Shane stepped forward, shifting back to human with every heavy step.
“Do you understand me?” he asked.
“We understand,” one said, words slurred by the animal shape of its mouth.
“Do you know who I am?”
“You are alpha. Leader who cannot keep his pack alive,” the Feral sneered.
Shane felt fur bristle over his forearms. “I am the alpha. And you are only alive because I have called off the pack.”
“We are already dead.” The Feral bared its teeth. “The sunset will not know us. Our pack mourns us now.”
That would mean the pack already knows what has happened here. And that there are more of them. “Why would they be mourning you? They aren’t here to see what’s happened.”
In reply, the Feral laughed. It laughed with the grim humor that lingered around gallows and in the back rooms of slaughterhouses. Shane’s pack growled at the sound, low and hungry for blood. He didn’t blame them.
“What are you doing here? Tell me, and we might let you live.”
“Lies do not sit well on a wolf’s tongue. I have said it. We are already dead.”
“Then we will kill you quickly. No pain.”
“Quick or slow does not matter. Death waits either way.” The Feral canted its head. It looked to Shane as though it were listening to a distant sound. “The Leader of All Packs has not forgotten you, alpha of our prey. Your death waits three steps away.”
Shane’s jaw ached from clenching it, and from the teeth that fought to grow from it. “I doubt that.”
“Do you doubt? Ask the Fixer. She will tell you.” Another flash of teeth in a malicious grin. “We hear her voice in the song. She will not be your pack. She will not sleep in your den. Your mate will join the pack that waits for her. They mourn us. They sing in joy for her coming.”
Shane’s vision turned red. Wrath overtook him, a crimson rage that consumed what shreds of his humanity he held onto. He lunged toward the Ferals, snarling his refusal of their temerity. Blood and flesh hit the walls and slid down in gory streaks to puddle on the floor.
Only torn-open corpses remained when Shane’s mind emerged from the blood rage. His pack had dispersed to deal with the aftermath of the ambush, but for Holly, who lingered nearby. She watched him with a casual expression, though with enough caution to tell him she wouldn’t come near until he indicated he wouldn’t beat her with her own femurs.
Shane cleared his throat. “I promised Erin I’d try not to get blood on my clothes.”
“You blew that promise. In fact, if you made a promise to keep your clothes intact, you blew that, too.” She nodded towards his lower half, where the legs of his jeans had split in places, and his belt had popped apart. “Feel better?”
“Think so.” He stretched his neck to one side, then the other. “Muscles are stiff. I really lost it there.”
“You did, and I’ve got a few responses to your tantrum that I’m keeping behind my teeth.” Holly quirked her lips in a wry smirk.
“Such as?”
“They start with ‘I told you so’ and end at ‘there’s something you aren’t saying but I’m too smart to push it’.”
“Yeah. Keep not saying those.” He wiped his bloody hands on his pants. It didn’t help. “What do you have for me, Holly?”
“Something you need to see.” She jerked her head for him to follow. “Those clothes are going to feel terrific in the refrigerator. We’ll try to stay out of the freezer section so you don’t end up a crusty bloodcicle.”
“That is the most disgusting thing you have ever said to me, Holly.”
“I’ll mark my calendar.” With another smirk, she led the way deeper into the store.
“Did the ones who stormed the front rescue the hostages?” Shane asked as he stepped over a body that hadn’t found its way to the inevitable pile of them outside. They’d burn the lot so no contamination would spread, and so the citizens of Levalle wouldn’t have to.
“They did. Travis is helping to get them to the hospital. None of them seem to have come down with a bad case of fur, but it’s better to make sure.”
Shane’s stomach clenched. Erin’s fine, but I’m still going to make her go see a doctor when we get back to Coyote Trail. That infection has to hurt. Don’t want her to lose that arm because she was stubborn.
“Better to make sure,” he agreed, then changed the subject. “This thing you want me to see. Does it happen to be a bunch of strange barrels?”
Holly glanced over her shoulder. “It does. How’d you know?”
“Er
in mentioned them.”
“Then Erin has big, brass ovaries that clank when she does the shimmy, because she would have had to wade through a lot of sleeping Ferals to see them.” They reached the wall where the big, metal door led into the refrigerator section. Holly yanked the handle to pull it open.
Cold air blasted out. Shane grimaced. She’d been right about how nasty his blood-soaked clothes would feel in the chilly air. “I am already regretting following you.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that.” Holly stepped inside. “And it’s only going to get better!”
“If by ‘better’ you mean ‘worse’.” Shane edged past a stack of milk boxes as he traipsed after her.
“That’s what I mean, yes. Over here. Look.”
Neither Erin nor Holly had reported the barrels wrongly. They were, in fact, very strange, and in a way that nagged at Shane’s understanding. Thick, quality metal, with all rounded edges and carefully crafted seals. They had handles, and a top that looked like it hinged open for easy access to what it held. Symbols marched across it in bold paint. Shane didn’t understand all of them, though they didn’t encourage him, either.
“Do you know what those mean?” he asked Holly.
“Unfortunately.” She pointed to them as she deciphered them. “Temperature requirements. Pretty much, ‘keep refrigerated’. These are medical jargon here. This one, though. This one says there’s shit in here that we don’t want to let out. These barrels are transport for an infectious biohazard.”
Both of Shane’s eyebrows went up. “What would the Ferals want with…”
His words trailed off as his mind caught up. No. It can’t be.
Holly nodded solemnly. “I know what you’re thinking, boss, and I wish I weren’t thinking it, too. I’m pretty sure these are samples of the Feral virus. This lab symbol is way too familiar to me for comfort. I'm going to have to confirm it, but I’m pretty sure I already know what I’m going to find out.”
“Fuck.” Shane shoved his hand through his sticky hair. “So the Ferals have samples of their own virus here. They’ve been stealing refrigerator trucks, which they could use to safely transport the virus over distances. Erin said they seemed to be planning something. I’m not sure I like where this is going.”
Brave the Night: A Bully Boys Novel Page 13
