Breaking Badger

by Shelly Laurenston

  “Would you stop! Nothing’s wrong! We’re just hanging out. Me . . . and my friends.”

  Eyes narrowing, she leaned back and studied Max. “You . . . and your friends?”

  “Yeah. I have friends now. It’s junior high.”

  “What kind of friends?”

  “Friends.”

  “What kind of friends, Max?”

  She shrugged. Sighed. “Honey badgers.”

  “Honey badgers. You managed to find a group of honey badgers in the middle of this town?”

  “They’re not a group. We just happened to be on the same bus.”

  “That seems strangely unlikely.”

  “You make it sound like I set this up! I’m thirteen! Even I couldn’t manage to arrange something like that. This is just—”

  “Luck? We’re MacKilligans. We don’t have any luck.”

  “I do. And I found friends who get me.”

  “You mean friends who’ll get you in trouble.”

  “No. They won’t! I promised you last night, no more problems.”

  “Did you bring scorpions to school?”

  “No.”

  “Then where are they? I looked for them in the case under your bed and didn’t see them.”

  “I had breakfast.”

  It took Mads a second, because they really didn’t look alike, but she realized that this teen was the sister Max had been talking about. Her sister. They weren’t stepsisters either. Half, maybe, but they were definitely blood related. They had the same shoulders. Like fullbacks for the Detroit Lions.

  The teen looked over Max’s honey badger “friends,” and that’s when Mads saw Cass hide the lunchbox with the remainder of Max’s scorpions behind her back. She almost frowned at that move, confused. Why was Cass protecting this girl? Yeah, they were all honey badgers—well . . . Mads was only half honey badger—but they barely knew one another. Why would they get involved in all this drama?

  “So you guys are close?” Max’s sister asked.

  “Close enough.”

  “Then what are your friends’ names?” the teen questioned. It was like an interrogation.

  Max gestured at each of them and correctly remembered their names, “Emily, but we all call her Tock. Cass. Mads. Nelle. With two Es.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The teen opened a random backpack, which turned out to be Tock’s, and checked out her notebooks. They were completely empty, so she searched out her wallet. It was black and closed with Velcro. It had several forms of ID in it. She also found several passports for different countries. Slowly, the teen looked up at Tock with one raised eyebrow. Tock merely shrugged and asked, “What?”

  The teen put everything back in the bag and stood, handing the pack to Tock.

  “So what are you and your not-causing-trouble friends planning for today?” the teen asked. But before Max could answer with some lie, the teen pointed her finger at Mads. “You tell me.”

  Mads blinked and simply replied with the truth. “Basketball tryouts. After school today. That’s my plan.”

  “Our plan.”

  The teen faced her sister. “See? You always go too far, Max MacKilligan. Because even Stevie wouldn’t buy that line of bullshit.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You? You expect me to believe that you are going to basketball tryouts? To try out for basketball? You?”

  “Why do you say it like that? I can play basketball.”

  “First off, you’re a munchkin. And second, you hate team sports. You hate gym. And when Stevie tossed a tennis ball at you, you slammed it back at her and threatened that if she ever threw a ball at you again, you were going to remove all her teeth.”

  “She chucked that ball at me—”

  “It was a toss.”

  “—and she started it. But none of that means I dislike team sports. I am absolutely dying to be a team-sports girl. In the wonderful world of . . . um . . .”

  “Basketball,” Mads prodded.

  “Right! Basketball.”

  “Name one basketball player,” her sister tested. “Any basketball player.”

  Mads, trying to help while the teen had her back to her, lifted up her leg and gestured to her foot. Specifically the Nike Air Jordans she was wearing. Everybody knew Michael Jordan, right? Even people who didn’t know anything about basketball knew that man. Mads had no idea why she was trying to assist this lying kid, but now she felt as invested in this situation as Cass, who was still hiding that stupid lunchbox behind her back.

  And even the others were trying to assist by gesturing to Mads’s Jordans and mouthing Michael Jordan over and over again.

  But the confused look on Max’s face told Mads that the kid had no idea who they were talking about.

  Her sister, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, began to turn away when the kid suddenly burst out with, “James!”

  The teen turned back around and waited.

  “Uh . . . La . . . LaBronnie James.”

  “Who?”

  “LeBron James,” Mads corrected. “But close enough.” When the teen stared at her, she lowered her still raised leg and said, “He’s on the Cleveland Cavaliers. A rookie, but a pretty decent player.”

  You know . . . for a full-human dude.

  “See, Charlie?” Max pushed her sister with a big smile. “I love the basketball.”

  “Great!” the older teen pushed back. “Then I’ll see you guys this afternoon. At the tryouts. Can’t wait to watch you all try out for the team!”

  Without another word, Max’s sister got back into the overloaded convertible, and with another smile and a wave, she told the teenage girl in the driver’s seat to go.

  Once they’d driven far enough away, Tock threw up her arms in frustration. “Why do I have to go to tryouts? I don’t want to play basketball!”

  “You have to come! She’ll be expecting all of us,” Max said.

  “She’s not my sister!” Tock blinked, then asked more calmly, “She is your sister, right?”

  “Yes, she’s my sister. Racist!”

  Tock’s jaw tightened and she looked at Mads. All Mads could do was quickly look away. Because she had to laugh. Tock appeared part Black, so the accusation was pretty funny.

  “And you people don’t know my sister,” Max went on. “She’s crazy. If we’re not all there, then we all die.”

  The group gawked at Max for several long seconds, and then Cass asked, “Why would we all die?”

  “Yes,” Nelle agreed. “Why wouldn’t just you die? You should be the only one who dies.”

  “Because she’s crazy.”

  “Are you lying?” Tock asked. “I sense you lie a lot.”

  “Of course I lie a lot. That’s how I survive. By lying.”

  “To your sister?”

  “Yes.” She shrugged. “And to the government.”

  Mads frowned. “Why are you lying to the government? You’re thirteen.”

  “You certainly ask a lot of questions.”

  “Actually, I don’t. But what I do know is that I don’t care what you guys do. I’m going to be at the tryouts today and I’m going to get on the school team. Because I’m going to be in the WNBA.”

  “What’s the WNBA?” Cass asked.

  Mads started walking away. “It’s sad you have a vagina.”

  “So I’m not getting points for remembering LaBronnie James?” Max demanded.

  Mads spun around and yelled in Max’s face, “It’s LeBron!” Of course, the kid didn’t even blink. “His name’s LeBron James. Not LaBronnie! How did you even know about him anyway? I mean, he’s blowing up the NBA, but you are clearly not a fan. I mean, you called it the basketball and couldn’t even pull Michael Jordan’s name out of your ass and everyone on earth knows him.”

  “Oh, I needed some extra cash last week and I saw this kid walking around with these brand-new sneakers that I knew I could sell for a really high price. So first, I asked him about them and he bragged they were LaBro
nn—” She briefly paused when Mads growled and self-corrected. “LeBron James’s newest shoes or whatever. So when he separated from his friends, I tackled him, dragged him into the bushes, beat him up, and stole his shoes.”

  Horrified, Mads gasped. “You what?”

  “I needed the money!”

  “So you had to beat up a child?”

  “He wasn’t a child. He was, like, seventeen. And I had to bail my father out of jail again, but you can’t tell Charlie because if she finds out, she’s gonna lose it. Again. But Stevie was hysterical. She knew that if Charlie found out Dad was in jail again, she was going to have him killed while he was stuck there.”

  Tock folded her arms over her chest. “Your sister would have your father killed while he’s in jail?”

  “She’s been a little angry since she discovered Dad used our Social Security numbers to not only steal our identities but also for some long con he was working that eventually and typically blew up in his face.”

  “Is that why he was in jail?”

  “Oh, no. He was in jail because he stole a car with a baby in it, which just happened to belong to the mayor of some little town. Both the car and the baby, unfortunately. Honestly, it’s just another day with my dad and normally I wouldn’t care. I’d leave him there to rot in prison or I’d happily help Charlie hire a dude to hang him from the bars. Either of those options would work for me. But Stevie got really hysterical and when Stevie gets hysterical, Charlie starts freaking out, and when she starts freaking out—”

  “Okay, okay.” Mads held her hands up, palms out. Essentially giving up. “Forget I asked.”

  “Look, you guys don’t owe me anything. But if you come to the tryout this morning—”

  “Afternoon.”

  “Whatever. She just has to see me line up and, I don’t know, dribble a ball or something. If she can see me doing something normal, for once, it might actually get Charlie off my back so I can get through the next few days . . .”

  “Until you break out the poisonous snakes?” Mads joked.

  And that big grin returned. “I did find a couple of timber rattlers on Pack property. If you guys are interested, you can join me for some fine honey badger dining.”

  “They’ve probably slithered off by now,” Tock warned her.

  “No. They’re in a duffel bag under my bed.”

  Max headed off down the street until she seemed to realize that the rest of them weren’t right behind her. That’s when she stopped and turned to find them all watching her aghast that she’d left a bag of poisonous snakes under a bed in a wolf-pack house. Throwing her arms out at her sides, she asked, “What now?”

  chapter ONE

  Fourteen years later . . .

  The paws landed on her, hitting her upper chest. The legs they were attached to wrapped around her, and a thousand pounds of Siberian tiger flipped her over and took her to the ground.

  She’d have been angry and put up a fight if machine-gun fire hadn’t lit up the sky moments later, bullets tearing across the ground inches from where they’d landed. The tiger rolled them away from the danger but the bullets came closer.

  The cat pulled her in tight and used his thousand-pound body to shield her.

  For a brief, panicky moment, Mads almost giggled. Because she felt like she was being shielded by a giant stuffed toy.

  Refusing to become a giggling psychotic, Mads pulled herself out of his arms and climbed his body until she could look over his shoulder. She was a nocturnal shifter and she could see deep into the darkness. She caught sight of a good target and resting her bullpup assault rifle against the black-and-white fur—where was the orange?—she took aim with her weapon and opened fire. Her rifle made little noise because her team always used suppressors. They were supposed to get in and out without being seen, but that hadn’t happened today.

  Because, Mads now realized, they’d been expected.

  How the big cat figured into this, she had no clue and absolutely no time to consider.

  She sought out another target and opened fire again. She heard her team also returning fire, as well as the tongue clicks and tiny throat growls that told her they were alive and well. It didn’t mean they hadn’t been shot, just that they were going strong. She wasn’t too worried. Honey badgers were hard to kill.

  Just as she had that thought, though, something small and metal landed a few feet away from her and the cat. Mads had only a brief second to wonder what it was before her teammate Tock charged past her, grabbed her arm and yanked her up. As she moved, she screamed out, “Five! Four!”

  Tock was counting down. It was never good when Tock was counting down. She’d gotten her nickname because of her obsession with time. A “nightmarish gift” Tock’s father always joked, which had made itself evident when she was still in the “goo-goo, gaa-gaa” phase of babyhood.

  But organizing everyone’s time wasn’t Tock’s only area of expertise. She also had a gift for explosive devices. She knew them all. From the lowest kind, made in some mad bomber’s basement, to the kind developed by an entire array of scientists run by a government entity. And because Tock was a true info junky, she didn’t just know how to build, detonate, and disarm the world’s explosives, she’d also forced herself to learn the damage those bombs did. She wanted to understand so she never used them lightly. She never used them just because a boyfriend broke up with her or some cheerleader made her cry.

  Which meant that when Tock began counting down out of nowhere, it was for one reason and one reason only.

  “Run!” Mads yelled, not sure the tiger understood her team’s vocal codes.

  But he was tiger. Short sprints were their way. He was nearly past them when he abruptly shifted to human and his arms reached out to scoop Mads and Tock up by the waist. She didn’t know why. They were two of the fastest girls on their pro basketball team. And even with the extra weight of their equip—

  The cat jumped, taking her and Tock straight up. Tock kept counting.

  “Three! Two!”

  Near them, also making the insane straight-up leap, were two more Siberian tigers. One held a screeching Cass, now nicknamed Streep due to her dramatic antics on and off the courts. And an even larger one gripped both Nelle and Max.

  “One! Brace for impact!”

  The blast was so bright, it blinded Mads and sent the cat holding her flipping wildly and freely through the air. Something Mads did not like one bit. Even though she should be used to it by now. She’d been battered by enough predatory players over the years to have experienced this sort of thing before but still . . . she was not enjoying it at all.

  At some point, the arm around her turned from human to cat as the man shifted, so when they came screaming back to the ground several million miles away—okay, it wasn’t that far—he landed like a cat. That allowed him to flip head over tail over ass so that he landed safely on all four paws. Alive and pissed. Roaring and spitting.

  Mads, however, stayed human because it wouldn’t matter either way. So when she hit the ground, she hit it hard. On her back. Staring up at the stars.

  In all honesty, she should be crushed by the impact. All broken bones and destroyed insides. Brains nothing but pudding. The back of her head something not even a puzzle master could put back together.

  But, again, she was honey badger. So her ass was a little singed from the explosion and a couple of her fingers were broken, but they’d been broken before by rough basketball games on street courts. One eye did pop out, but Streep, of all people, crawled over to her, let out a loud, disgusted, “Ewwwww! Madsssss! That is sooooooo grossssssss!” and popped the eye back in, then used a bandana from her pocket to wrap her head.

  Max stumbled over to them. Her right arm hung at a weird angle, as did her jaw, but she was alive, too.

  She gave them orders but they couldn’t understand a word because, again, her jaw . . . weird angle.

  “What?” Tock asked.

  Max repeated her orders.

&
nbsp; Nelle approached but seemed unable to figure out where or how to put Max’s jaw back into place.

  Mads had just decided to take a shot at fixing her teammate when she was roughly pushed aside and a giant of a man stormed over. Two other men were with him and she now recognized all of them. The Malone brothers. Or, as they were called on the streets, The Black Malones.

  The oldest, Keane, was also the largest. And the most terrifying. She could see him living his life in Siberia among the few remaining cats of the region. Killing any and all human hunters that came into his territory.

  So Mads wasn’t exactly shocked when Keane grabbed Max’s head between his big hands and slammed her jaw back into place as if he was working on an old carburetor for free. The sound of bone being forced back into place had all the badgers bark-hissing in surprise and poor Max swinging her fists and ready for a life-or-death fight.

  Nelle stepped in to calm everything down, quickly moving a livid Max away from the naked Keane before their team leader could rip his cock off with her claws.

  Instead of Keane being grateful for their earlier assistance, he bellowed, “Why are you here?”

  “Should we be running away?” Tock asked, but everyone ignored her. “I feel like we should be running away.”

  “You—” Max paused, taking a brief second to twist her head one way, then the other with her hands. Finishing the job that Keane had started. “You seem tense,” she finally got out without any further difficulty. “You okay, sweetie?”

  Mads cringed. Because she knew that Max’s friendly, solicitous tone was antagonistic at its core. A tone that caused a brave Nelle to quickly step between the tiger and honey badger. Although ecologists would call only one of these two an apex predator, Mads strongly felt the need to correct the entire field of study. Because Max MacKilligan was an apex predator in her own right.

  She could change an entire ecosystem in a night if she set her mind to it. And she would do it all with a smile.

  The same smile she was wearing now as she gazed up, wide-eyed, at the Siberian tiger glaring down at her.