The priest was dressed in his Roman collar shirt, white tab gleaming under a salt-and-pepper stubbled chin. His pants were black military-issue BDU’s. Combat boots on his feet didn’t make enough noise to disrupt Charlotte’s story for the kids, although some of them did turn around and watch him walk over. He hugged Tiff, pulling her tight, mussing her hair with affection. Next his hand fell on my shoulder. It was warm and hard with calluses. The firm touch was masculine and reassuring, like a father’s would be. Me and the priest have a long history and a lot went unsaid in that hand on my arm.
He motioned to the left where a hallway branched off the back of the room. We both followed him there to a table. It was odd to see him without a Kool cigarette hanging from his lip. He didn’t smoke in Mass or around children, but any other moment he is awake, Father Mulcahy has a Kool in his mouth. A Kool cigarette and a cup of black coffee.
He kept his voice low when he spoke. It was good to hear his light brogue again. “It’s a fine thing to see you up hale and hearty, son.”
My arm went around Tiff’s shoulders. She leaned into it. “It’s good to be back on my feet.” I nodded toward Tiff. “This one was worried about me.”
“Hey!” Her hand slapped my chest lightly. “I have never seen you that hurt before.”
Father Mulcahy’s face grew somber and still. He had seen me hurt far worse than that over the years. He’d been my medic in the field more than once. Patching me up and praying me back to healing with hands covered in my blood. “It has been a quiet six months.” Hard, appraising eyes scanned me again. “I thank the Lord that your Angel blood fixes you up quickly.”
Yep, die and get a blood transfusion from an Angel of the Lord that resurrects you and you get accelerated healing. It doesn’t lessen the pain at all, and it isn’t instantaneous by any means, but my head injury was completely gone after giving my body some hours to heal.
“What the hell is that?” I pointed.
On the table lay what looked like a rifle, kind of. It had a giant scope, a rifle barrel in shiny stainless steel, and a handled trigger mount, but after that the resemblance to a rifle ended. Where the stock would be was a bulbous tank of metal that was about the same size as a two-liter bottle. Off it was a gauge of some kind and a series of tiny metal mesh hoses that ran to various points on the rifle. Jutting from the side was a curved clip made of clear Plexiglas that held a row of wicked-looking darts almost the length of my hand.
I’ve got really big hands.
Father Mulcahy picked it up, cradling it in his arm. “This, my son, is the Airsnipe Armageddon T-38. I ordered it last year when we were dealing with that troll problem downtown, but it didn’t get here in time.”
We had been hired by a building owner in Atlanta who had a pack of trolls squatting in one of his empty warehouses. He wanted to put it up for sale, but it’s a hard sell when all your potential buyers who come to look over the property wind up with their bones broken by what are essentially eight-foot-tall garden gnomes with bad hygiene and an attitude problem.
It took a bit of work, including some “negotiating” with a sledgehammer, but we got them relocated to the Okefenokee swamp in south Georgia. Now they live happy working for Wildlife Management, listening to country music, and brewing the best moonshine I have ever tasted.
Father Mulcahy’s gruff voice brought me back. “It was designed originally to down elephants from long distances for tagging. This one is Orion Outfitters’ modified version. It should work fine for our current critter control problem.”
Father Mulcahy is a real Catholic priest. Genuine, one hundred percent man of the cloth with all that goes along with that. He held his priesthood dear. It was a part of him that couldn’t be set aside. He was a Catholic priest down to his DNA.
But somewhere in his past, before he put on those black robes and Roman collar, he had led a different life. Somewhere on the way he had learned how to knife fight like a convict. He had also learned the skills of a sniper. I have seen the man shoot a penny glued to a tree from 500 yards.
I don’t know the details of where he learned that skill, but it wasn’t hunting. There was blood on his hands. Righteous blood spilled in service to his country, but blood nonetheless. I didn’t know any details, but I did know it is one of the reasons he became a priest to begin with.
He has helped me take out countless monsters, and I knew with no uncertainty that he would shoot to kill if it would save someone’s life, especially one of the children who filled the room we were in. But if he could drop a lycanthrope without killing it, he would. They were human and he would do everything he could not to take their life.
Myself? I wasn’t willing to work quite that hard.
Not after all that had happened with Leonidas and his crew. Not with what they did to Sophia. Not after the motel last night. Not after the Coopers’ house and the things that had been done to them. No way in hell.
I guess that’s why I would make a really shitty priest.
“Where’s Marcus?”
The priest jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing down the hallway. “Last door on the left.”
I handed the bandolier of grenades to Tiff. “Stay here and keep people out of the back room. I need to have a talk with Marcus. Alone.”
She nodded. Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed me on the mouth. It was a warm kiss made sweeter by how quick it was. The priest looked at us, scar tissue masquerading as an eyebrow cocked up in askance. I ignored it. He could ask Tiff while I was gone if he really wanted to know. If I knew the Padre, I wouldn’t get halfway down the short hallway before the first question was out of his mouth.
Turning away, I began to settle back into the task at hand. As I walked down the hall, my hands moved quickly around my body, checking my weapons. The fingers of both hands touched the .45’s, one under each arm. My right hand moved down and across my body to my waist. My palm brushed Bessie’s handle, pushing slightly forward to ease my ability to drag her from the holster slung low on my hip. I reached up to settle the katana between my shoulder blades.
Each step down the hallway carried me closer to the Were-lions and closer to my center. My being settled around the molten core of anger I carried in my chest. Inside, I huddled around the heat of it like a homeless man in winter. Rage sparked through me, roiling and building like thunderclouds.
Both Marcus and Leonidas wanted Sophia and her babies. Again, when it comes to supernatural shit, there are never any coincidences. The only way Leonidas could even know that Sophia was pregnant with Marcus’s babies would be if Marcus told him. I had no idea what kind of game they were running, but I damn sure was going to find out. Too much blood had been shed by people I loved to let it go.
The last door on the left was painted dark green and was made of steel. I stood outside of it for a moment, gathering myself. I could hear voices in a heated conversation but could not tell who was talking or what they were saying. The thrum of lycanthropic anger throbbed through the door itself. It pulsed and crackled along the surface, popping the air in front of me, spitting at me like bacon grease. Marcus was on the other side, mad as hell.
Fine by me. I could walk that road with him.
My hand closed on the knob, tensing to turn.
I was in an ugly mood and betting this was going to get real nasty, real quick.
I looked forward to it.
27
Marcus and Shani stopped talking as I strode into the room slamming the door behind me. They had been arguing, energy spiking off them, snarls still pasted across both their model faces. Marcus swung his finger at me as I walked across the room at them. His throat was knotted in anger, spittle flying from his mouth as he growled at me.
“Get away from us, Deacon. I don’t want to see you after the shit you pulled last night.”
I didn’t answer, just kept walking across the room until his finger hit the center of my chest. My left hand clamped down, squeezing and twisting. The wet, brittle snap of broken
bone shot out of my grip and Marcus’s knees gave out, buckling him toward the floor. Right fist knotted in anger, I drew back, ready to smash him in the mouth.
Hot lycanthropy washed over me from the right and a flash of golden fur in a blue dress caught my eye. Shani launched herself at me, claws out ready to rip and rend. Letting go of Marcus’s hand, I twisted, dodging the razor tips of her fingers. They slashed the air under my chin, missing my throat by mere centimeters. My arms closed around her waist as she went by.
Muscles in my back pulled against her momentum, the staples on my left side pinching as they pulled tight. I swung her up to my chest. She kicked and flailed the air. With a heave, I lifted, spun her body around, and slammed her back down. The pool table she had jumped from cracked as I tried to drive her through it with my weight. The breath shoved from her lungs washed over me with a rank, carrion scent that watered my eyes.
“Stay down!” I yelled at her. She lay in a heap, heaving breath in and out. She wasn’t truly injured. It takes more than that to hurt a lycanthrope. But if you can’t breathe, you can’t fight. I left her there while I spun to find where Marcus had gone.
My face was met with a hard punch. The taste of blood exploded into my mouth, hot and metallic. It would have broken my jaw if I hadn’t been turning away already.
My feet went out and I fell to the floor. Sharp pain blossomed as my shoulder took my weight, slamming into the cold tile. Rolling with it, I scrambled back up to my feet. The room pulsed, waving in and out just once in my vision. I shook my head to clear it.
Marcus charged across the room, arms wide to grab me in a bear hug. Leaning back, I braced on a video game. I threw my foot up as he closed in. He smacked into my foot, hard leather boot heel driving in just below his collarbone. The jolt of it slid me and the game back almost a foot.
His dress shoes slipped, skidding out from under him. He fell flat on the ground. The hollow thunk of a ripe cantaloupe sounded as his skull bounced off the floor. My hands knotted around the expensive cloth of his suit. My head was full of what he had done to Sophia. Using his influence as a predator to get her to sleep with him, knocking her up, setting her up to be caught by Leonidas and beaten. I hauled him to his feet.
BAM! My fist smashed into his eye socket. Skin split under the blow. Thin red blood welled up, spilling out immediately.
“Tell me . . .”
BAM! My fist drove his nose crooked, one nostril flattening closed, the other shooting blood and snot out of it.
“. . . what’s going on . . .”
SMACK! His bottom lip broke apart, swelling instantly, pushing blood out of it to run and pool in the cleft of his chin.
“. . . with you and your brother.”
His hands came up weakly, waving away any more violence from my fist. His eye had swollen shut, turning purple as I watched. Nose too broken to breathe out of, blood bubbled into foam under the one open nostril he had. He panted through lips swollen to the point of throbbing, each pulse trickling more blood from the split. His voice drug out of him, oatmeal thick, chunky from the broken nose. “Stop. Just. Stop. Hitting me.”
He hung limp in my grip, knees buckled, head lolling back. “He hates me. He hates that I am a pacifist. He hates that I try to change the way things are.” It was a struggle for him to swallow. “He just hates me. Always has. Since we were litter cubs.”
I shook him, ivory teeth rattling in his head. Pulling him up to me, I snarled in his face. “What kind of game is going on with you two?” I shook him again. “Why did you tell him about Sophia’s pregnancy and send him to kill her babies?”
His one unswollen eye flashed wide, white around the light caramel iris. “Sophia’s pregnant?”
“You didn’t know?”
He shook his head. Blood had run into his tiny dreads, soaking into them like a sponge.
My skin went cold. I dropped him to the floor with a thud. Whipping my head up, I scanned the room wildly, one of the .45’s in my hand tracking, seeking a target, the laser sight dancing over an empty room. The door was slowly drifting closed again.
Shani was gone.
That bitch. That damned bitch had set me up. Set Sophia up anyway; me and mine just got caught in the crossfire. Stepping over Marcus, I stalked toward the door.
When I caught her I was going to make a rug out of her traitorous ass.
28
“Did Shani go by here?” Father Mulcahy looked at the gun in my hand and nodded. “Is she still in the building?”
“No, she went right out.”
Shit. There was no way to catch her in a chase, not by myself. I’m built for power, not speed. Holding my free hand out, Tiff put the bandolier of grenades in it. “Go find Boothe. Tell him to put word out to every one of his people that Shani is to be stopped, even if she has to be shot. She’s dangerous, so they don’t need to take chances; but if she gets out of the Warren, then she will spoil the trap.” She nodded. “And tell him to get in here ASAP so we can plan our next move.”
Tiff nodded, spun on her heel, and moved quickly out the door. I watched her stride across the room. One leg in front of the other, with a nice up-and-down rhythm that was distracting to say the least. The old Werewolf got up and followed her out, slipping through the door as it shut.
“You seem a bit distracted.”
I turned to see Charlotte stepping up to join us. A man and a woman had taken her place onstage with puppets over their arms. I shrugged. “It happens.”
The door swung open again. Boothe came in speaking low into a walkie-talkie, head cocked to the side. He let go of the button as he came to a stop in front of us. The rubber soles of his boots gave a little squeak as he drew up short. “What the hell is going on? I just gave orders to shoot to kill if Shani resisted being taken in and I am not sure why.”
Charlotte cleared her throat, lifting her chin to indicate the room behind me. I turned to find dozens of wide eyes staring up at us. The two adults were trying to get the kids’ attention, but they were having no luck at all. “Maybe we should take this conversation somewhere else.”
She was right. We were about to discuss killing someone. Even though all these kids were lycanthropes, and while some of them would know bloodshed on a level equal to a third world country when they grew up, they were still kids. The oldest one I could spot looked to be about twelve. If we could keep them from this, then it was our responsibility to do so.
“Follow me,” I said, and began walking back down the hall to the last room on the left.
Marcus flinched as the door swung open. He was sitting on the pool table gingerly touching his broken nose. Blood was drying on his face, becoming darker. His fancy linen shirt, once a clean butter crème, was now tie-dyed with spatters and blotches of blood drying to a dark burgundy. His eye was still swollen shut, although not as much as before, and the purple bruise was fading into a sickly greenish color. His lycanthrope healing was hard at work.
“Where is Sophia? I need to talk to her.” His voice was still chunky through the broken nose.
“No, Simba, you need to shut the hell up or I will kick your ass again.” I walked past him and went to lean on a video game as everybody else came into the room. It was a fighting game of some kind, cartoon kung fu guys battling across the screen. “Everybody here will have questions for you. Answer them, but other than that, keep a button on your cock holster.”
Anger swept the Were-lion’s face like a grass fire, flashing hot and burning out quickly. I could feel the contempt on my face, staring at him until he dropped his eyes again.
The others all stood in a semicircle around us. Charlotte took a step toward Marcus and was stopped by Father Mulcahy’s hand. The priest lit up another cigarette, drawing the flame into the end and smoke into his lungs. With a sharp exhale, a stream of gray-white shot from the corner of his lips. He spoke around the cancer stick.
“So what is going on, son?”
“Shani is a traitor. She’s the one who called Leo a
nd his gang in to kill Sophia’s babies.”
Charlotte held up her hand. “Wait. I thought Leonidas was trying to kill Marcus, and when did Sophia become pregnant?”
“Apparently Leo just wants to kick Marcus’s ass, which having just done so, I can highly recommend.” I looked over at Marcus, waiting for him to take offense, but he just sat there, still touching his nose gingerly. “The reason Leo and his merry men have come to town is because Shani called them and wants them to terminate Sophia’s pregnancy.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Marcus is the father.” I waited for their reactions. Charlotte looked as shocked as I knew she would. As a lycanthrope, she knew that breeding between species was impossible. Boothe’s face got harder as the muscles in his jaw clenched. The priest took another drag on his cigarette. I kept talking. “Sophia told Shani she was pregnant by Marcus’s bodyguard Cash, but truth is it was Marcus who knocked her up.”
Marcus looked up, his hand falling away from his face. Arrogance swept back into his battered features. “It can’t be mine. I am not a dog.”
“What you are is an asshole who takes advantage of young girls. Sophia has never been with anyone else, so that makes you the only suspect.” I stepped up and uncrossed my arms. My voice was low when I spoke, coming up from that dangerous place inside me. “And I know about the end, where she tried to stop sleeping with you and you used your predator powers to ‘persuade’ her.” I leaned in close, letting my size loom over him. “We will be visiting that situation again. There will be a reckoning for that. Mark my words.”
He turned away, not looking at my eyes. Good. One wrong word from him and the desire I had to break his neck would explode. I stepped back, shaking out my hands from where they had been clenched tight. I caught Charlotte from the corner of my eye and looked at her. Her eyes were pinned on Marcus, face harder than flint. Marcus looked at her and reached out a hand.
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