Guard Wolf (Shifter Agents Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  "I kinda wondered what brought you here," Avery said. "Here, instead of somewhere else. It's a long way from home, your home I mean, and a big world."

  "It was also just wanting to get out of Brisbane. The fact that Erin and Tim lived in Seattle gave me somewhere to go. He's local; they met in uni, and she moved here when they got married. Erin kept saying I should come up and see North America. And ... I needed to get out."

  Avery's hand found hers in the dark. "Is this to do with—the other thing you talked about?"

  She nodded, though she wasn't sure if he could see it in the dim light. "Yeah. Things started going downhill when I was a teenager, but uni was bad for me. Really bad. I was ... institutionalized, I think I told you, because of suicide attempts. I ended up failing a bunch of classes and dropping out."

  Avery rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, slowly and rhythmically. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

  "Do you mind?"

  "No," he said quickly. "No, not at all. I just don't want you to feel like you're obligated to tell me any of this."

  "I don't. It actually feels good to talk about it. I haven't really, with anyone except my therapist. Erin and Tim know the whole story, of course, but I didn't want my co-workers to know about it. I didn't want them watching me all the time, waiting for me to crack up again. That's what my family does, even though they mean well."

  "I hope I won't do that."

  "I ... don't think you will. It's hard to explain. I feel like I can trust you."

  He held her hand in the dark, and after a little while, she leaned her head on his shoulder.

  "So that's the exciting part, anyway," she said at last. "By the time I started pulling my life together again, it felt like there wasn't a whole lot left. My friends, what friends I had left, had all graduated and gone on to get jobs. Going back to the same place where all of that had gone down, except now I'd be five years older than everyone else in the program—I couldn't take it. I felt like it would be throwing my failure in my face with every class I took."

  "You didn't fail," he said gently. "You got sick."

  "Well, yes, I know that, but my subconscious doesn't seem to. I also had a deep-down fear that if I tried the same program again, I'd fall off the same cliff. You know that saying about getting back on the horse? Well, I waited too long, I guess, and when it came time to mount up, I just couldn't. Mom and Dad didn't mind me being at home if that's what I needed, but I minded. I was starting to look ahead to months and years of lying on their couch watching soap operas and getting older and feeling my ambition leak away like air out of a balloon. I thought maybe it would be easier if I was somewhere so different from my old university that I wouldn't be running into reminders all the time. At the very least, even if school didn't work out, I could be a help to Erin."

  "I guess it must have gone well."

  "Reasonably well. It was difficult, of course, but a good kind of difficult. You know how it feels when you do something you're pretty sure you're going to fail at, and then you don't? I needed a little of that feeling."

  "Looks to me like you did a lot more than not fail." Avery turned his head to kiss her lightly on the temple. "You're the go-to person for shifter social work in the Pacific Northwest."

  "For whatever that's worth," she said, laughing. "And now I'm on my first stakeout."

  "Pretty dull, huh?" Avery reached for his coffee thermos, then held it up and shook it. "And we're out of caffeine."

  "I could go get us some. Advantage of having a partner on your stakeout."

  "Huh. Good point. Maybe in a little while. You seem pretty comfortable there."

  "On your shoulder, you mean? Yes," she said, snuggling down a bit. "It's nice here."

  "Steering console isn't digging into your hip too badly?"

  "Oh, is that what that is. I thought you were just happy to see me."

  This made him laugh his quiet laugh. She liked hearing that sound. "I'll show you how happy I am to see you," he said, and tipped up her chin with his fingertips to kiss her.

  There was no urgency, no rush, and nowhere to go. He explored her mouth gently, sucked at her lips, smiled into her mouth as he drew soft gasps from her. She hadn't known that just kissing could be so enjoyable, or so enticing.

  When they broke the kiss, he rested his temple against hers.

  "I guess sex on a stakeout is a big no-no," she murmured.

  "'Fraid so." Avery nipped playfully at the corner of her mouth. "Sex after the stakeout, though—" He broke off, going tense against her.

  "Avery? What?"

  Avery touched his fingertip to her lips, hushing her. His head was up, looking around. If he'd had wolf ears right now, they would be pricked.

  Nicole looked around too, but she couldn't see what had alerted him. The street had gone dormant for the night. A few porch lights and silently gleaming Halloween displays broke up the dark row of houses; in illuminated windows, shadows moved behind closed curtains. The cloudy sky was bright with the glow of the city, casting a reflected light like dull gold moonlight over the street and the sleeping houses.

  Avery made a slight movement against her and rolled his window. The soft noise seemed very loud in the silence. Cool night air blew into the car, damp with a promise of future rain. Avery took deep breaths, scenting the air. Nicole tried, but all she could smell were the crisp autumn smells of dead leaves and dry grass, overlaid on the usual smells of the city.

  Leaning so close her lips brushed his ear, she whispered, "What is it?"

  Avery gave his head a slight shake. "Not sure," he whispered back. "Feel this."

  He took her hand and guided it to his lower arm, placing it above his wrist. The hairs were standing up on his arm, prickling against her palm.

  "What's that mean?"

  "I don't know," he whispered. "Something's got my instincts on alert. I'm just not sure what."

  A sudden, sharp clatter rang out somewhere along the street. It was close. Nicole jumped. It had sounded like something being knocked over in one of the yards. From a house farther down the street, a dog barked.

  "I'm gonna check it out," Avery whispered, rolling the window back up.

  She didn't realize until he shrugged out of his shoulder holster that he meant check it out as a wolf. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" she asked quietly.

  "Maybe not, but I need to be able to use all my senses to their fullest." He laid the holster in the backseat. "Do not use my gun."

  "Even for self-defense?"

  "Are you trained to use firearms?"

  "No," she admitted.

  "Then don't." He skinned out of his sweater, leaving his chest bare; the collar was a dark slash across his neck. "There is no situation that could possibly be improved by having an untrained civilian bring a gun into the middle of it. Hang onto these for me, though."

  He pressed a handful of hard objects into her palm. She felt keys, and the outlines of his phone.

  "After I leave the car, lock the doors. If anything happens, call for backup." As he spoke, he unzipped his pants, lifting his hips to slide out of them. "Use the preset for the SCB first, and if you just get the switchboard, try Jack. If you need to leave the car for some reason, make sure it's locked."

  "That's all?" she protested. "Just sit here in the car and wait for you to come back?"

  "Believe me, having you here to call for backup if I need it is plenty useful." Avery flashed her a quick grin. "Not to mention rescuing me from Animal Control if I get impounded."

  He kissed her, then crouched down, hunching as low in the seat as he could. The shift was startling, this time, from a pale human body to a mass of black fur in the seat next to her. Avery had to thrash a bit until he was sitting up, wolf-shaped, in the driver's seat, looking out the windshield with his ears pricked forward.

  Nicole leaned over to open the driver's door for him. Avery jumped down to the sidewalk. She considered following him—it wasn't as if he could stop her�
��but reluctantly had to admit he was right. She'd just get in the way; the best thing she could do was stay behind and call for help if he needed it.

  So she popped the locks down and squirmed over into the driver's seat, in case she needed to go anywhere in a hurry. From there, she watched Avery's long dark shape lope furtively across the street and fade into the shadows at the edge of the Hodgsons' lawn.

  ***

  In wolf form, Avery was even more aware of the uncanny strangeness nagging at the edge of his pack senses, drawing a sharp fingernail down his spine and raising his hackles in its wake.

  When he was a human, the street had seemed dim to him; now, as a wolf, he found it too bright, and himself too exposed. He was drawn to the deeper shadows along hedges and house walls, and in particular, in the Hodgsons' yard, with its maze of potential hiding places. One advantage to being a wolf was that he no longer needed to worry about trespassing.

  The Hodgsons' fancy decorative fence was for show only. It ran along the front edge of their lot, but not the sides, and ended at their neighbors' lawn. Avery circled the end of it and slid seamlessly into the pool of darkness behind a tall plastic tombstone.

  The smell of the air hinted at later rain. He smelled people, and neighbors' cats, and a lingering hint of Nicole that made him lift his tail and ears in the wolf equivalent of a smile.

  He prowled through the yard, avoiding the brightly lit areas (the pumpkin patch, the glowing green witches' cauldron) and sticking to the shadows. If anyone saw him, no alarms were raised. The only other living creature he encountered was a cat, probably a stray for the lack of people-smell on it, crouching under the edge of the Hodgsons' porch. It stared at him in wild-eyed disbelief, then puffed to twice its normal size and fled like a streak. Humans might take him for a dog, but animals knew when one of the true wild predators was among them.

  He did not, however, smell the rank strangeness of the mysterious other werewolf. Had he been wrong? Then his ears pricked forward. There were sounds coming from the backyard, a rattling of metal and a low, muttered voice. Male. Adult.

  Avery skulked around the shadowed side of the porch. He remembered as he came to the low bar of chain-link that the Hodgsons' backyard was fenced. It looked like it had been done to contain dogs or small children, and was low enough that he could probably jump over it, but not without making a target of himself.

  He smelled humans, fresh and strong and nearby. Someone was in the backyard. He thought the smell seemed vaguely familiar, but he encountered so many people-smells in the course of the day that it was difficult to pin them down unless it was someone he was familiar with, or a smell he'd made a point of memorizing. Still ... could one of these intruders have been among those who broke into Nicole's office?

  Avery pressed against the wire, and finally caught sight of them. They were at the backdoor. Two people, dressed in dark clothing. They were close together, back to back. One seemed to be keeping lookout while the other was crouched, tinkering with the lock.

  So much for any chance they weren't up to no good.

  Avery took a few quick steps back from the fence and took a run at it. Jumping over things wasn't one of his best skills, due to his weak hindquarters, but this wasn't a particularly tall fence and he made it, barely. He cracked his back leg against the top bar, and stumbled as he landed, taking a moment to get his feet under him. He was snarling, an involuntary reaction he didn't even notice until they whirled around in shocked reaction.

  "Shit, Mike, they have a dog!" yelped the one picking the lock.

  Avery charged, running low across the damp backyard grass. He caught, belatedly, a glint of light off something in Mike's hand. Gun, his brain supplied just as the crack of the gunshot reached his ears. Something stung his side; he wasn't sure if he'd been hit or spattered with dirt and gravel from a ricochet.

  One shot was all Mike had time for; then Avery was on him, bearing him down, jaws open and teeth flashing. He went for the gun hand first. As soon as Avery's jaws closed over his wrist, Mike's hand opened and the gun clattered onto the patio—from shock rather than pain. Avery was trying to hold himself back. The Hodgsons didn't need two dead intruders with their throats torn out in the backyard, and he needed answers.

  Answers which he was currently in no shape, literally, to get. He hadn't been expecting this kind of threat. He should have come human-shaped, with his service weapon. Why did my wolf instincts react so strongly to human-caused danger? That's never happened before—

  Something heavy smashed into his back. Avery let out a loud squawk of pain and outrage, and whipped around on the other intruder, who was wielding a large wooden folding chair he'd picked up from the patio. The impact had damaged the chair more than it had hurt Avery's muscular wolf body; the legs were hanging askew, and his attacker dropped the chair and scrambled backward, fumbling at his hip for what was probably—shit. Another gun.

  The lights were on in the house now. Avery hoped to hell that Nicole had had the presence of mind to call the SCB as soon as the shooting started, and that his people got here before the cops did.

  "There wasn't supposed to be a dog!" Goon #2 yelled, scrambling backwards and trying to aim his weapon at Avery. "You said there wasn't a dog!"

  "That's not a dog," Mike said, fumbling around—not for his gun, but, instead, reaching into a rucksack he'd dropped when Avery attacked. "It's one of them. Don't kill it!"

  They know about werewolves, Avery thought in shock.

  But neither of these two were shifters. He would have been able to tell.

  "I think it's trying to kill me, Mike!"

  Avery had managed to back Goon #2 halfway across the yard, up against an arbor next to the playground equipment. Still, he didn't shoot. And Avery wasn't quite sure what to do. His wolf form wasn't well suited to fighting humans, especially armed humans, at least in anything other than a "bite and run" kind of way.

  "Gimme a minute," Mike muttered, fumbling open a dark plastic case. Something bright gleamed inside. A syringe?

  They were going to try to trank him. Suddenly Chester's paranoid fantasies about secret government labs didn't seem so paranoid after all.

  The back porch light went on. Both humans squinted in the sudden brightness, and something went whump into the grass, inches from his front paw. It was small and bright-colored and plastic.

  Tranquilizer dart!

  There was a third person leaning over the fence at the far end of the backyard, with a long-barreled pistol gripped in his—no, her hands. Avery decided she was the most pressing threat of the three, and abandoned Gun-Toting Goon to bound toward her with ground-eating strides. She slammed another dart into the pistol and made a game attempt to shoot him again, but the shot missed him completely. She broke and ran across the neighbors' backyard. Avery hurdled the fence and went after her. He could hear sirens now.

  He caught the running human easily. She yelped and went down under his weight. The neighbors' yard was very dark, screened from the street by a tall wooden privacy fence. The light from the Hodgsons' backyard was visible in narrow stripes through ornamental trees. In the darkness, they thrashed and struggled. Avery was much stronger, but hampered by his lack of hands. She clubbed him in the face with the butt of the dart gun. He bit her arm and made her drop it. Blech. Nylon jacket.

  If she knew what he was, then he could shift and ask her questions. If she didn't know, then he'd give himself away by shifting. Damn it!

  And then they were no longer alone in the backyard.

  A quick flash of the rotting-sick smell and a flare of Avery's pack instinct gave him a second's warning of the other werewolf's presence before it came down on both of them. The woman gasped, more startled than frightened. The werewolf was definitely after Avery, not her. Its impact knocked him off her, and she scrambled away while Avery and the newcomer wrestled on the grass, snapping at each other.

  The woman hesitated. Avery caught glimpses of her, standing with the tranquilizer gun dangling from
one hand. Then all his attention was taken up with the fight.

  This kind of fight, at least, his wolf side understood better. The other wolf's teeth raked him, and he snapped at it, tearing out hunks of fur and—denim?

  Something was wrong. Even as a wolf, in the depths of his fighting fury, he understood that. It wasn't correctly wolf-shaped at all. It had hands and it was wearing some kind of jacket. But it also had wolf jaws and wolf fur.

  What the hell was this thing?

  The woman with the dart gun was gone now, having taken advantage of the opportunity to run. Blue and red lights lit up the tops of the trees. The cops were here, and the intruders were getting away. Avery took a chance and shifted, going naked and human-shaped, flat on his back with the other werewolf on top of him. Even in human form, its garbage-and-sickness smell choked him. He held it off him with both hands, while it raked him with hands whose long, broken nails were more like claws.

  "Who are you?" Avery gasped. Its head was outlined against the brighter sky, ears flat. The reports didn't lie, this thing did look like a monster-movie werewolf, but that head was no mask. The eyes that glittered from beneath furry brow ridges were not human eyes; the subtle movements of its ears and the stubby whiskers sprouting from its short muzzle were the kind of embellishments no makeup artist could convincingly pull off.

  "What are you?"

  It didn't answer, except with short huffs of breath, but he thought it was no longer trying so fiercely to attack him. He stared into the dull gleam of the thing's dark eyes.

  Then it pulled back in a sharp quick movement, rolled off him, and was gone.

  Avery struggled to his feet just in time to see it take a running leap at the wooden privacy fence. The fence was at least six feet high, but the creature hit it running, dug in its clawed hands, and vaulted over, vanishing from sight.

  He couldn't possibly catch it.

  Avery limped shakily over to the fence. The deep score marks of its claws were on his chest level. He reached out and touched the splintered wood. So that was how it could climb so well. It had werewolf strength and speed, but human hands.