Badger to the Bone

by Shelly Laurenston

  “Awwww, Dee-Ann. What about our love?”

  “Get your sister out of here before these cops get real cranky.”

  Laughing, Max walked out and caught up with her friends and sister at the elevator. Her teammates were huddled together against the wall but Charlie was just standing there, quietly, seething. She was quietly seething.

  Max decided to take over. “You guys find a cab when we get downstairs and we’ll—”

  “No,” Charlie said, watching the numbers on the wall that told her which floor the elevator was currently on. “They’re coming with us.”

  “Why?” Nelle asked, her voice ridiculously shaky.

  Slowly, Charlie looked at the four of them over her shoulder and growled out between clenched teeth, “Because I said so.”

  Max didn’t really think much about her sister’s statement until she realized that her teammates were silently crying. From fear.

  Good Lord! The drama with these idiots.

  chapter FIFTEEN

  Rina knew she wasn’t alone. She was reaching for the light switch when she realized that she could see fine in the dark. Always could. She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t all that human.

  So, instead of waiting for her eyes to “adjust,” she simply looked around her cabin and saw them. All of them. Most sitting on chairs or the chaise lounge or the desk, watching her. One of them, however, was holding her sister from behind, a knife to Tina’s throat.

  “Hello, niece,” one of the older ones said. “I’m your aunt. By marriage, but still . . . You can call me auntie. Isn’t that nice?”

  Rina sat up, but when she started to get out of bed, the one holding her sister pushed the knife into her neck. Not all the way, but just enough to bring blood and a bit of panic.

  “Now, now. Let’s not forget we’re all ladies. Yeah?” her “auntie” said. “We’re just here to talk. You up for listening? I was told you two speak English . . . yeah? ’Cause I don’t know any Italian and I ain’t about to learn now.”

  “Where are my men?” Rina asked, proving she spoke English.

  “Those full-humans?” Her auntie laughed and the women with her joined in. “Yeah . . . they’re all dead,” she explained, her laugh abruptly ending. “You didn’t really think they’d stop us from gettin’ on your fine boat here, did ya?”

  The woman pulled one leg up, resting her foot on her knee. She wore thick work boots like a man would. “We’ll make this fast, yeah? You see, little girl, this could have been a little skirmish between gods. But then you released the Kraken . . . didn’t ya? And now the Kraken’s running free.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Greek mythology. Thought you two would know that.”

  “Italian,” she reminded them, punching her chest.

  “It doesn’t matter. You released the Kraken, and now she’s going around, terrorizing the villagers.”

  “I still do not understand—”

  “Mairi,” another one said. “You let out Mairi.”

  “Mairi hates us,” her auntie explained, “because we didn’t dig her out of prison. That’s what she wanted. And if it had been almost any of our other kin, we would have done it.”

  “But Mairi’s a right bitch, ain’t she, Ma?”

  “That she is, my darling girl. Our Mairi’s a right bitch. And you two let her out.” She studied Rina for a moment. “Do you know why we’re here, luv? Do you know how we found out where you are? Because Mairi told us. She wants us to kill you. And we could have, as you see. Poor Mairi, though, she keeps forgetting something about her aunties: Her uncles may be blood . . . but we’re just family. Married into this shit, didn’t we? We know we’re dealing with a right bitch and we don’t want her back. Because once she’s done with you two and those three illegitimate Yanks, she’ll be coming for us. She only told us where you two are because she wants”—she waved her hand, gesturing around the cabin—“all this tacky shit. And if she were any one of me other nieces, she could have it. But she’s the Kraken and we need her dead.”

  The auntie stood and walked across the cabin. “So when I heard from her, I stopped and thought: Which is worse? Dealing with you two crazy cows, who blew up me husband and sons, or that psychotic cunt? That’s when I knew: I had three choices. One, I could just come here with me girls and kill ya both. Which, I have to admit, crossed me mind. Two, I could do nothing, and let Mairi kill ya when she’s done with the Yanks. Or three . . . I could let you know that the Kraken wants you dead. I went with three. And all I gotta say is, you two better get rid of her before she comes back here and gets rid of you.”

  “We could hide,” Rina pointed out. “She will never find us.”

  “Oh, you think so?” The auntie laughed and shook her head. “All this money you made and not a brain in either of your heads. She’s a badger. Finding shit is what we do. The farther underground you go, the easier it is for us to find ya.”

  “You did not find us.”

  “We weren’t lookin’, were we, girls?”

  “Nah,” all the other women said.

  “Do you know why, my Italian princess?”

  Rina sighed. “Because we had the Kraken?”

  “Exactly. And if we had liked the Kraken, even a little bit, you’d both be dead. Be grateful we don’t like her. That being said, she’s still family. Her uncles and cousins won’t want to kill her. Being loyal to each other is all we got when we have to go up against lions and hyenas and shit. You, however, don’t seem to have a problem with all that. So we’ll leave it to you.”

  The auntie nodded at the one holding onto Tina, and Rina’s sister was immediately shoved to the ground.

  “We’ve done what we can for ya,” the auntie said. “You take care of Mairi and you stay away from ours, and we leave you be. But if you try to come for us again—especially me sons—it’ll be the last time anyone outside the family ever sees you. But I can promise you one thing, niece: it won’t be over quick for you or your sister. Remember that when you think about fucking with the MacKilligans again.”

  She raised her hand, made a circular motion with her forefinger. Instantly the other women slipped out into the darkness, disappearing. Not making a sound. Just going. The yacht wasn’t even docked. They were anchored in open waters. And yet . . . Rina never heard them actually leave.

  Tina sat down on the bed next to Rina.

  “This,” her sister pointed out, again speaking in their language, “has not been working out for us.”

  Slowly Rina turned her head toward her sister and told her plainly, “Shut the fuck up.”

  * * *

  “I am in love with whoever this guy is.”

  Irene Conridge looked up from the book she was reading. Her former protégé was grinning at the computer screen, entertained by what she was seeing. Of course, Miki Kendrick was entertained by many things. Unlike Irene, who found most things annoying and a distraction to her work.

  “So you have the hacker locked down?” Irene asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then why are you boring me with this conversation?”

  Miki glared at her from under all that curly hair. Of course Irene also had curly hair but anytime she brought that up to Miki, she would just grumble, “It’s not the same, dude,” and they were meant to leave it at that. Of course, Miki was African American, so that could have something to do with it, but Irene didn’t let things like race or religion or any of the usual reasons human beings disliked each other affect her life. Instead, she saw people in one of two ways: annoying . . . not annoying. It used to be “stupid . . . smart” but she’d found that there were so many stupid people in the world, she began to run out of people she could allow into her life. Even smart people tended to be stupid and the frustration was more than she could handle. So she’d settled on “annoying . . . not annoying.” It worked for her.

  “I said one fucking thing,” Miki complained, “and it wasn’t necessarily to you.”

  “So
you often speak to yourself?”

  “Sometimes. I find myself quite interesting.”

  “That’s called delusion, dear.”

  Irene hid her smile when she saw that middle finger raised in her direction.

  “You’ve been working on this for quite a while,” Irene reminded her. “I don’t mind your staying in my New York home, but is there any chance you can find the culprit before my daughter gets her second doctorate?”

  Miki turned in her chair, resting her arm on the back. “While your middle son has gotten his . . . what was it again? That ‘degree’ ”—she said with air quotes—“at Jiffy Lube?”

  “He’s taking a gap year, thank you very much. This is just a temporary delay before he—”

  “Makes it to a BMW dealership as head mechanic?”

  “Engines are hard.”

  “Are they, though?”

  Irene lowered her book, raised an eyebrow. “And how are your two friends doing? The one who dresses like she’s expecting Coco Chanel to come visit? And the tall one who knows all about how a bicycle works!”

  “It’s called a hog,” Miki shot back. “And motorcycles like that are part of the American—”

  “Criminal underworld?”

  “I was going to say landscape.”

  “Ah.”

  They glared at each other but they weren’t remotely angry. This was just something they liked to do. Ever since Miki had bravely walked into her office at the university and asked if Irene would be her doctoral advisor. Only the bravest students ever did that because most of the students found her “terrifying.” And Irene rarely said yes, but there was something about the tiny young woman in cutoff shorts and steel-toed Doc Martens that she’d found interesting. At the time, neither Irene nor Miki knew that one of her best friends was a wolf. Then again, Miki hadn’t known that Irene’s husband was a wolf as well, although the two wolves were from vastly different Packs.

  Now, however, Miki not only had a canine best friend, but a wolf mate of her own, a wolf pup that was turning out to be smarter than Miki and Irene combined—which was a terrifying thought for either of them—and both of them were forced to help shifters survive in an increasingly horrifying world.

  These insult-breaks were something they did to keep long periods of work entertaining. No one else understood them, but no one else mattered.

  Irene had just returned to her book when her husband, Niles Van Holtz, stormed into the room. He looked around, walked out again, but returned a minute later with a suitcase.

  “Get packed up,” he ordered, opening the suitcase. “Both of you. We have to get out of here.”

  Irene watched her husband begin shoving random things into the suitcase. There was no rhyme or reason to what he was grabbing, but he was canine. She was surprised he didn’t just grab a bone and make a run for it.

  “Is there a reason we’re escaping?” she finally asked when he slammed closed her laptop and shoved it into the suitcase.

  “The MacKilligans. The oldest. I’m pretty sure she’s coming to kill us all.”

  “Holtz, perhaps you should calm down and tell me—”

  “Why aren’t you moving?” he demanded. “Do you want to live without skin?”

  At that point, Miki had turned around in her chair again. “Live without skin? What now?”

  “Yes! She promised to skin us!”

  “You know it’s not really that easy to skin a person, right?”

  “What?”

  “I’m a hunter,” Miki explained. “Me and my girls—”

  “My girls and I,” Irene corrected.

  “Stop it. We go hunting all the time. And it’s not easy to skin a deer, and they have that thick hide you can pretty much grab and pull. But humans . . .” She lifted her left hand and with her right began to simulate removing human skin. “Our skin is so thin, you’ve gotta be real careful about removing it. It’s not like skinning an orange.”

  Holtz turned to Irene. “Why are all our full-human friends weird?”

  “I didn’t major in psychology,” Miki said before Irene could reply, “but I’d say you draw weird to you.”

  “No one asked you, tiny female.”

  There was a knock at the door and it opened to reveal her cousin-in-law’s giant mate filling the doorway. The woman boasted shoulders Irene imagined Neanderthals once had. They were enormous!

  “Hey there, cousin!” Dee-Ann greeted Holtz, her Tennessee Titans baseball cap low on her head. Irene often wondered if the She-wolf could see or if she was so canine, she simply sniffed her way around. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “We’re leaving. Ric told me what happened with those idiots and that psychotic badger. We warned them and they didn’t listen. Now I have to evacuate my family from the state.”

  “Or you can calm down,” Dee-Ann suggested, “and not worry. Charlie MacKilligan knows it wasn’t y’all.”

  “You do understand ‘y’all’ is not a word?” Irene once again reminded her.

  “I’m supposed to believe,” Holtz said, “that the woman who threatened to skin me and my wife in the dark of night if we went near her sisters is rational enough to know we didn’t have anything to do with this?”

  “Yep.”

  Holtz looked at Irene and she repeated, “Yep.”

  “Besides, she made her point,” Dee-Ann continued. “Beat those boys and their friends within an inch of their lives, sending a very clear message.”

  Holtz shook his head. “They’re lucky she didn’t kill any of them.”

  “That was not luck, cousin.”

  “Stop calling me cousin. I am not your cousin.”

  “What she did was very precise. She knew exactly how much strength to use to do the most damage without killing her prey. That’s the mark of a real killer.”

  “And you know that because . . . ?”

  “How do you think?” Dee-Ann smiled. “My daddy taught me well.”

  Miki snorted as she tapped away at her keyboard. “Anyone else hear banjos playing anytime this woman speaks?”

  Dee-Ann’s wolflike gaze immediately locked on Irene’s protégé. “Well, ain’t you the cutest, tiniest, little full-human I ever did see? I could eat you right up.”

  “I guess we’re done here,” Holtz said quickly, trying to escort Dee-Ann out the door.

  But Miki Kendrick had been around wolf packs all her life and, just in general, was a difficult woman to terrorize.

  So she laughed and shot back, “Bitch, I’m a black woman from the wilds of Texas. Trust me when I say I can have your wolf ass hunted, stuffed, mounted, and displayed in my living room before the day’s over.”

  “This has been fun!” Holtz interjected into the following silence before he shoved Dee-Ann out into the hallway and left Irene and Miki to their work.

  chapter SIXTEEN

  The drive back to Queens in a limo ordered by Nelle was so silent that Max was sure her teammates were going to burrow out of the vehicle at one of the red-light stops. Because every time Charlie crossed her legs, every time she let out a loud breath, practically every time she blinked, the others jumped.

  It was like they were expecting her to beat them to death right there in the car. But Max knew she wasn’t mad at them. Charlie was mad at her. Because she knew exactly how Max had made her money over the years. The things she’d done. The people she’d ripped off. Yeah, she liked to pretend she was sort of being Robin Hood. At least in the sense that she only ripped off people or organizations that she knew had the insurance and money to handle the loss.

  But did it matter? She was still a thief. Just like the MacKilligans and the Yangs.

  Max hadn’t known about her teammates, though. Not once had any of them discussed what illegal jobs they had done or were doing, aside from Mads occasionally asking for their help when she needed to get out from under her hyena family’s claws.

  The limo pulled to a stop in front of their house and Charlie got out.

  “Everyone in
the house. Now.”

  Max waited for the others to start moving but they just sat there, staring at one another. Terrified.

  “Oh, my God. Would you guys just go!”

  With sighs and grumbles, they got out of the limo and tromped into the gated yard.

  Charlie was about to go up the stoop stairs when she heard Berg call to her from his house across the street. “Get inside,” she ordered the women. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  She headed across the street to her boyfriend and Max jogged up the stairs to the front door. But it opened first and Stevie motioned her in with a quick wave of her hand.

  “What?”

  “Just come on!” she whisper-screamed at her.

  Max glanced back at her teammates and, after making sure that Charlie was still talking to Berg, they all hustled into the living room.

  “We have a problem,” Stevie said. She was no longer whispering, but still kept her voice low.

  “What problem?”

  She motioned at Max’s teammates. “Can they keep their mouths shut?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Because seriously.

  “Fine.” She clasped her hands together and straightened her back. “Your mother was here.”

  Max stared at her sister. “Whose mother?”

  “Your mother, dumbass. I told her she had to go, but she wants to see you.”

  Confused, Max scratched her jaw. “She was here? They let her out?”

  “No. They didn’t let her out.”

  Later, Max would be ashamed at how long it took her to understand what her sister was telling her. What she was explaining. Especially because it was so obvious.

  “Oh, my God. Does Charlie—”

  “No, but I don’t know what she’ll do when she finds out.”

  “Kill us all,” Streep whispered desperately.

  Max briefly closed her eyes. “Ignore her,” she told her sister.

  “You better call her.” Stevie handed Max a small notepad with a number on it. “Before she shows up again and Charlie sees her.”

  “Or,” Nelle suddenly suggested, “you could just tell Charlie what’s going on.”

  “Oh, you mean, tell her that every time my mother comes here, we’re aiding and abetting a fugitive and might go to prison?”