by Debra Dunbar
Jake and I stared at the delicate filigree gold ring on the thick, stumpy man-fingers of the severed arm.
“Let’s give it a shot,” I said. “Worst thing that happens is the arm catches on fire, and you lose out on a few hundred dollars in scrap gold.”
Karl shoved it into the magical barrier, and I felt it fall. The blue flame extinguished, although the dead guy that lay across the barrier still was blistered and burned. Jake motioned me back and carefully extended a hand across the barrier. We all exhaled when nothing happened.
“I’m going in,” Jake told us. “Karl, you keep holding the hand there. Tupper, I’m going to hand you boxes.”
I didn’t like this plan. “I should go in. I’m the one who can sense the magic. For all we know there’s an additional ward on those boxes.”
“You’re not going in. I am.” Jake’s voice was commanding, and I knew there was no arguing him out of this. The Alpha had spoken.
He slowly made his way through the barrier, stepping over the dead guy. “Here goes nothing,” he commented wryly. “If I turn into a frog, will you still have sex with me?”
I laughed.
“I’m not gonna fuck you, Jake,” Karl growled. “Now hurry up. I’m getting tired of holding this dead arm here.”
Jake handed the boxes through to me and I stacked them over by the door. There were twenty of them, each one weighing over fifty pounds. How the heck we were going to get all of these to the truck was a mystery. When all the boxes were moved, Jake stepped back through the barrier, and Karl removed the arm. I felt the static of the magic springing to life once more and saw the blue flame leap across the dead guy.
Jake hadn’t been turned into a frog, and I couldn’t feel any magic on the boxes themselves, so I ripped one open, pulling out a box of shotgun shells. “Huh. They feel normal to me,” I commented.
Jake and Karl exchanged worried looks. The bear took the box from my hand, running his fingers over the tops of the shells.
“Cause they are normal,” he announced.
His words set off a flurry of activity and we all tore into the boxes, running our hands over all of the bullets and separating the ones that fell all gross and slimy with magic from those that didn’t. By the time we were done, there were empty boxes and stacks of bullets all over the blood-soaked floor. Only a few hundred of the thousands of bullets were coated with the magic.
“Do you think they sold the rest, or they have another warehouse somewhere with more?” Karl asked.
“Or they knew we were coming and moved most of the magicked bullets out of here,” I added darkly.
Jake shook his head. “Gwylla would have picked up on another warehouse. They either moved them, or sold them, and as much as I dread the thought, I’m leaning toward sold them. One of their partners is dead as is the elf that was creating these bullets. Their videos are being debunked and with law enforcement on our side, their organized hunting tour business is going to eventually be impossible to maintain on any sort of decent scale.”
“Best to sell the stock, make a ton of money, and move on,” Karl added.
“From what Gwylla said, the elf was the one driving the whole ‘kill the shifters and angels, drive the humans to rebellion, and take over the world’ plot. These guys were using fear of us to make money, and with their supply cut off, and the increased risk of facing murder charges…”
“So there are a ton of these bullets dispersed all over the country?” I asked, looking down at the boxes.
Jake sighed. “Probably. I’ll see if someone can verify it, but in the meantime, at least we have these bullets off the market and out of reach of hunters.”
Karl scooped them up in his arms, stuffing boxes into pockets and his waistband. “I’ll walk you guys back to the truck, just to make sure you don’t meet with any unexpected surprises. Then I’ll take off back south and deliver these to the angels. Let them deal with disposing of them.”
Jake eyed the bullets. “Sounds good to me. I sure as heck don’t want those things in my compound.”
Chapter 18
“Thinking that was a smidgen too easy,” Karl commented, echoing my thoughts. We were back at the truck, the sky a dark gray in preparation for the coming sunrise. I was tired, dirty, bloody, hungry, and my clothes were rather fragrant. Yes, Mir had helped me pack and I had another pair of jeans and a shirt, but I was reluctant to put them on over my very filthy body.
“I’d expected more ammunition,” Jake said, eyeing the boxes that Karl carried. I figured total there was about two thousand rounds in there. I was no expert, but if someone had to magic each and every bullet, two thousand was a damned lot. According to the briefing the elf had been at it for three to four months, that worked out to a hundred and twenty days, which meant that elf was cranking out around sixteen bullets a day. That was if he never took a day off, and there weren’t any duds.
Assuming the bad guys had sold a thousand rounds already to hunters and paranoid humans, that would up the production to twenty-five bullets a day. Was that even possible? I had no idea the effort it would take to magic a bullet, or if twenty-five a day, every day, for four months straight was feasible.
“And we’re still missing the bullets that kill angels as well as the blades the elf told Gwylla he created,” Jake added.
“And what’s already been sold,” Karl said. “We’ll never be able to find all those bullets. A hundred years from now, some human’s’ grandkid could still have a few of them. We’ll never be safe, never be absolutely sure that some crazy isn’t gonna try to pop one of us.”
I could understand why shifters were scared. Heck, we’d been practically indestructible all our lives and gotten used to the idea that humans weren’t a threat to us. In all honestly, even that had been a lie. I’d seen wolves killed in serious auto accidents. I’d seen them drowned, decapitated, and even killed with a really well-placed gunshot to the head. We could be blown up to the point where we couldn’t heal. And let’s face it, remove our heart and we wouldn’t be able to regrow one fast enough to keep from going brain dead. Yeah, we didn’t get sick, and we weren’t so fragile that we died from things that killed most humans. We weren’t immortal by any stretch of the imagination, though. And five bullets in some dude’s attic weren’t going to wipe out our entire population.
“Say a thousand rounds have been sold,” I spoke up. “And of those, maybe half ever end up getting used. Face it, if you’ve spent five hundred bucks on one fucking bullet, you’re not going to waste it. You wouldn’t want to have it in a magazine and inadvertently use it while taking down a buck during hunting season because you grabbed the wrong magazine. Most of these bullets are going to be locked away in a safe somewhere and never used. The werewolf panic—it’s like the zombie apocalypse. Everyone wants to be prepared, but no one wants to waste their magic weapons until they are absolutely sure they need them.
“And eighty percent of the time humans don’t even fucking hit what they’re shooting at. Yeah, some are probably skilled hunters, but how many psychos are going to be convinced to tromp out into the woods and shoot someone who looks like a human with a five-hundred-dollar bullet?”
“That’s why we need to concentrate on getting as much of the ammo off the market as possible,” Jake told me. “That way it won’t fall into the hands of the psychos who will actually use it. If we can do that, and take down the people who are stirring this all up and organizing the hunting expeditions, then I think we’ll be able to start trusting again.”
“Maybe,” Karl grunted. “Ain’t never trusted or liked humans. Who’s to say some idiot decides the werewolf living next to him needs to go and organizes an accident? We’re stronger, faster, and don’t get ill. That’s enough to piss some people off, make them think we’ve got an unfair advantage over them. You think the psychos are only the ones hunting us for pelts, but in my opinion, they’re all one good excuse away from trying to kill us.”
“We have to trust that the governme
nt and law enforcement will support us,” Jake countered. “We pay taxes the same as the humans do. We volunteer, and purchase their goods and services. Take out as much ammo as we can and the ones instigating this, and we’ll go back to trusting each other.”
Karl shook his head. “I don’t see it. It’s not just us, Jake, it’s how everything is changing. This world is sliding into chaos, and the humans are going to feel powerless. People that feel powerless end up trying to take that power back in a violent way. They’ll want things to return to the way it used to be when humans were the top of the food chain. Now there’s elves, and angels, and dragons and other shit coming through those rifts faster than anyone can do anything about. Human are gonna start feeling puny and weak, and they’re gonna lash out. We may have been living side-by-side with them for thousands of years, but they won’t see that. They’ll lump us all in with the elves and mermaids and other shit. They’ll want us all gone—us and them. They’ll want this place to be human-only as far as sentient life goes.”
Jake scowled. “The angels won’t go for that.”
“Won’t they? They’ve got their own problems from what the guy down in Juneau says. Angels wouldn’t cry if we were wiped out. And a good number of them are probably ready to wash their hands of the humans and go back to Aaru and lock the doors behind them. And as for the elves…well, you’ve seen how Gwylla is with metal. She says the elves are the same way. I give them a few years and they’ll be running back to Hel where at least they don’t get third-degree burns from leaning against a parking meter.”
Or taking a toaster to the head. But there was something Karl had left out of his scenario. “So the angels go home. We all get killed. The elves say ‘fuck this’ and leave. That means the humans are stuck here with a bunch of interdimensional rifts opening up and all sorts of freaky shit coming through. They’ve got no way to close them, and no way to stuff the monsters back through to the other side.”
“Yep. But humans don’t think far enough ahead to see that. They’ll just deal with the problems they can, then cry big tears when they’re here alone with dragons and manticores and mermaids.”
I’d met a wolf from Chicago that told me about the mermaids in Lake Michigan. Talk about freaky shit.
“You know those mermaids eat people, right? I mean, everyone thinks they drag sailors down under the sea where they suddenly breathe underwater just fine and get to fuck a bunch of hot, naked mermaids. Idiots. Mermaids drown them, then eat them. There’s no fucking involved.”
Both Jake and Karl stared at me as if I were insane.
“Well, that really sucks,” Karl grumbled. “If they’re gonna drown me and eat me, they should at least give me a hummer first. Wouldn’t mind dying if I could get in a decent fuck beforehand.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dude. From what I can tell you’re getting tons of decent fucking, and that skinny redhead doesn’t seem to want you dead. Yet. That might change. And you should watch out for the skinny girls, too. She gets hungry enough, you might wind up on the table with an apple in your mouth.”
“Annnd we do not need to go into the sexual innuendo of Karl naked on a table with an apple as a gag in his mouth and how kinky that might be,” Jake interjected.
And now Karl and I were staring at him.
“Will you eat me if I lay naked on a table with an apple in my mouth?” I asked him.
Karl snorted. “Girl, he’s gonna eat you without the table and apple. And I’m getting out of here before all that starts going down.” He shook hands with Jake and wished him luck, then turned to me and grabbed me in a tight, rib-crushing hug. “Don’t kill him, kay’? Thinking we’re gonna need him for a while.”
I grinned, hugging Karl back and grabbing a handful of his tight ass while I had the opportunity. “No promises.”
And then he was gone, leaving Jake and me with a pickup truck and a twenty-four-hour drive ahead of us.
“Thinking of stopping halfway and getting a hotel room,” the Alpha commented casually.
I wasn’t fooled. He didn’t look tired. I’d bet he could easily go another day or two without sleep, possibly more. “A hotel room with a table and an apple?” I asked.
“No on the apple. I want your mouth available for other things.”
Oh yeah. I was so gonna get laid. “Shotgun!” I shouted and ran for the passenger door.
Chapter 19
We drove halfway back to the compound, detouring a bit off the road at sunset to an area with something nicer than a no-tell motel. I would have been happy with a rent-by-the hour place, heck I would have been happy with Jake taking me up on the hood of the truck, but clearly the guy had standards.
Standards that meant the moment we’d checked in, he was on the phone, discussing business. Even with a hands-free speaker, Jake wouldn’t call while driving. Or go over the speed limit. Or park outside the lines in our designated spot. I swear I could be here naked on the bed, my ass in the air, and an apple in my mouth, and he’d have to complete his phone call first.
But then I thought of our kiss in the sparring room, his lighthearted playfulness as we were setting out on this trip, his insistence that what we were going to do would be “making love”, his wicked smile when he’d implied there was something other than an apple that he wanted in my mouth.
Maybe, in time, I could get this guy to break a few rules.
And maybe, in time, he’d get me to actually follow a few of them.
“It looks like two cases…Yeah, I thought there would be more, too. Can you have someone look around the net’ and see if any of the company names they’re using have been selling a lot of these bullets? Or anyone is selling a lot of these bullets?” Jake paced as he spoke on his phone. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to his second, Jamie, or to the Alpha down in Juneau, but from the set of his shoulders, he was tense as all get out.
I was hoping to relieve him of some of that tension. I mean, we were in a hotel room for the night. I had every intention of taking advantage of this sweet king-sized mattress and getting as little sleep as possible.
But first, room service.
“Rare on the steak?” I asked Jake.
He nodded and kept talking.
“I’m assuming no on the salad?”
He nodded, then shook his head, then lifted his head from the phone. “No salad.”
“Baked potato with sour cream and butter? And what do you want for dessert? I’m eyeing this caramel apple pie thing here. Hope you’re paying for this because I’ve got no money.”
“Tupper, I’m trying to talk,” he growled in frustration. “And I’m taking this out of that fifty I owe you.”
Jerk. “Fuck that, the steak is almost fifty bucks. I’m just charging it to the room.” Which was on his credit card.
“I’m not buying you dinner. It’s coming out of your paycheck.”
I wondered what Jamie, or that other Alpha guy was thinking about our sidebar conversation.
“Hey, I thought I got a per diem or something? And what kind of cheap date is this anyway where you don’t even buy me dinner?”
Jake’s eyes bugged out. “This isn’t a date,” he sputtered. “We’re not on a date. This is business.”
Yeah, whoever was on the other side of the phone line was getting an earful. And they were about to get even more of an earful.
“I’m not fucking you unless you pay for dinner,” I said loud enough that a half-deaf human on the other end of the phone line could have heard. “You rent us this sex-pad hotel room with oils and lotions and vibrators and crap, and expect me to fuck your brains out, but you won’t spring for a damned steak?”
I thought Jake might be on the verge of having a heart attack from the expression on his face.
“I’m not…she’s joking,” he said into the phone. Then he held it to his side and told me to order whatever I wanted. As if that would keep any shifter on the other end from hearing.
“Thanks, babe,” I told him loudly. “You’re to
tally getting a blow job tonight. I’ll even swallow. And if the apple pie is as good as I think it is, we can do anal. You being the one getting stuffed, that is. I’m pretty sure I saw a strap-on somewhere in this drawer.”
The door slammed as Jake went outside to continue his phone call. I laughed and placed the food order, getting four steak dinners and a side of spiced shrimp. We were shifters—kind of—and we hadn’t had a decent meal in over twenty-four hours. I don’t know about Jake, but my stomach was on the verge of devouring itself.
The food had arrived before Jake returned to the room. In spite of his threats, he signed for the check and tipped the guy, then turned a stern expression on me.
“Tupper, I do not need Brent thinking that I’m having inappropriate relations with a member of my pack.”
What was this, the thirteenth century? A nunnery? Werewolf packs tended to be rather far apart in distance and, until recently, we’d been under strict rules that made having a relationship with a member of another pack difficult if not impossible. Add to that the fact that we’d previously been forbidden from mating with humans and all the rules had created an environment where relations between pack members—even with the Alpha—were commonplace and accepted.
Unless by “inappropriate” Jake had meant my joking of oral and anal sex. Maybe he was one of those missionary-only wolves. I certainly hoped not.
“Like Brent thinks we’re actually holed up here fucking each other in the ass with sex toys,” I scoffed. “I know you’ve got a sense of humor somewhere in that thick skull of yours, Jake. Calm down and eat your steak.”
The air crackled with tension. Jake’s eyes glowed, their light blue intense. Clearly telling my Alpha to “calm down” wasn’t the wisest thing I’d ever done, although the lure of a juicy steak must have been too much to resist, because he did sit down and yank the silver lid off his food, carefully spreading the napkin on his lap before cutting into his steak.
