by Rae Foxx
I crossed my arms over my breasts and cocked out my hip.
“Oh...I don’t know...how about a hard twelve!” I shouted at him at the top of my lungs, pretty much fed up with him, this place, and any other plan that didn’t have me directly looking for Owen. Missing my mate was clearly making me prissy beyond repair. Well, the repair would be finding him safe and sound.
“Look,” Travis turned with his cop face on, all diplomatic and shit. He had put his sunglasses on even though the sun had barely peeked out for the day. “We can cover more ground if you two are working on Poetry while I investigate whatever in the hell happened here. Plus, I know you don’t care about this, but you would be safer. Either the dragon or Poetry know something, so we can divide and conquer and you know, not die.”
I shook my head. He was adorable when he tried to manipulate me. He tried so damned hard. Too bad I wasn’t falling for his bullshit. Not for a fucking minute.
I stared behind him at the dragon’s keep, knowing exactly why he was so wary of going in with me. He was afraid. End of story. It looked like someone had beat the windows in with a bat or something larger, even the cobwebs had been torn down, and trash littered the front of the door. Someone had clearly broken into the dragon’s nest and maybe left no one alive.
I groaned and stomped my foot. I’d already admitted to being at a level twelve, so I will show him exactly what that meant.
“Poetry is out cold and snuggling with her boy toy. There’s no point in asking her what planet she lives on right now, much less anything about the murders. I could likely get more information from that wall over there. Anyway, I’m your partner. You said I’m a legit sleuth. You can’t just go sending me off on my own task. Imagine the chaos. I might get hurt on my own, or ask someone a wildly inappropriate question. You wouldn’t want that on your hands, would you, mate?” He deadpanned, so I answered for him. “I’m in this. Let’s go in. Stop fucking around.”
Travis sighed and slapped his forehead with his palm. Before we went in, he pulled out a large-and-in-charge flashlight from his belt harness thing, and Evan cracked up.
“Dude, are we trying to compensate for something? I mean, I’ve seen your junk, not that I was checking you out or anything, but why the big...wide...overpriced...light?”
I laughed but knew that Owen would’ve come up with something much better.
“I just do,” Travis grumbled, making Evan laugh harder.
“Shut up, Evan.”
Ouch, we’d hit a tender spot for sure. As we walked into the musty, dark place, the door creaked and slammed against the wall behind it. Then it gave up and teetered to the ground with a great plume of dust. I shivered at the scene. Everything that had been so well-placed before, even if it was covered with a fur coat’s worth of dust, was now disheveled. Shelves were knocked down and Quinton’s precious treasures were strewn about the place.
It looked like an earthquake had struck the town light in this exact place. It was clearly not a robbery though, seeing as they didn’t take any of the priceless pieces.
I shivered as we walked forward. Travis shined his light in every corner with the other hand right on the butt of his gun.
Even though I made a good show of looking brave, I tried to stay at his back. He did have the weapon, after all. I breathed out a sigh of frustration. At our pace we were moving too slow. Everything was taking too long. Owen was out there somewhere. I didn’t know in what condition he was in or what those assholes were doing to him. Had he eaten? Was he cold?
I grabbed Evan’s hand for moral support while I took in more of the place as we walked forward. There was no way Quinton was responsible for this mess. This place was his haven and he treated each piece with care or tried to.
I tip-toed through the mess, careful not to step on anything that looked of value or might be evidence, which was pretty much everything on the floor. We came to the end of the display cases, or what was left of them, and Travis stopped and turned on me again.
Fuck, not this bullshit again.
“Scarlet, please. I’ve got a bad…” If he said a bad feeling I was going to clock him right in the cock. “I want you to go...please.”
In my frustration with Travis’ overprotective male horseshit, I kicked at a teapot, not caring if it could be evidence or not. The teapot hit a pile of things in the corner and clattered and clanged all the way down the pile onto the floor where it circled like a toy top and then stopped with a tinkling drumroll.
We all froze in place at the silence that followed, waiting to see if anything stirred from the commotion. I was about to lay into Travis again when a low, menacing moan reverberated through the dank place, echoing over the walls. If I didn’t know better it sounded like ‘help me’.
“Did that say…” Evan started, but I slammed my hand over his mouth to quiet him. Another low cry for help bellowed through the place, and together we took off toward the sound.
As we did, the cries became louder and more frantic, the desperate pleas piercing my ears and sending my heartbeat into a flutter.
“Quinton!” I shouted as we came upon the dragon. He was nestled in a circle of his blood-covered silver. I followed the splatters and wavering rivers of blood until I found where they converged at his neck. A huge, gaping wound pulsed as the blood spewed from it in gushes of scarlet.
“It must’ve just happened. Let’s try to stop the bleeding.” Evan whipped off his shirt and pressed it against the dragon’s neck and he roared in pain but his breathing started to even out.
“Quinton, I know you are hurting and weak, but can you tell us who did this to you? Can you tell us anything? Was it an ambush?” Evan rolled his eyes at the same time I did at Travis’ attempt to be polite, but in true Scarlet fashion, I butted in.
“Quinton, tell me who did this to you.”
Words garbled from his enormous mouth, but either I didn’t speak proper dragon or he wasn’t making any sense. Might be both. He was losing a lot of blood fast and we had to know who had done this, if nothing else to know if they were the same one that might have Owen.
“White Spy,” I heard, and looked to Evan for confirmation, but he and Travis both shrugged.
Quinton tried to get up and sputtered out something else, but it all sounded like White Spy. He coughed, and thick redness covered the walls and began to seep from his nostrils. Trying to get to a stand, he pushed us all off and scattered the silver with his tail. The wound at his neck spewed like a geyser with fresh blood that pooled under the dragon’s belly and at our feet.
Another cough or two and the dragon tumbled back down, sending his silver treasures in all directions. I watched as the life in his eyes faded and he coughed out another bubble of blood with his last breath.
They had killed the dragon of Cummings Cove.
“Who would do this? He was yelling for help. It must’ve just happened. They have to be…” Travis was babbling, probably in shock.
We all turned as a clattering of metal against metal sounded from another part of the store, a deeper part of the dead dragon’s lair. The three of us took off toward it, slipping in some of the blood and trying not to trip on the rest of the silver hoard.
We got to the back room where Travis got his flashlight out again and hovered the light over the floor. I gasped and stepped back at the sight.
Fuck me. No, it couldn’t be...anyone but…
“It’s paw prints, Scar. It’s fucking…” Evan started but Travis finished for him.
“It’s wolf paw prints.”
11
In seconds, I shifted into my fox and hit the ground running on all four paws. Behind me, I heard Travis and Evan as they yelled for me to stop, but nothing was going to stop what had already started. I had to find out what was going on with the paw prints, wolf paw prints of all things. I felt the change in the air as Travis and Evan both shifted, but they were too late and I was too fucking quick.
I sniffed at the paw prints that went through the doo
r and down the alley behind the dragon’s nest. As I ran, I saw that the trail of blood went over to the dumpsters and then across the street. The motherfucker, whoever he was, wouldn’t get away from me this time.
I followed it for what felt like miles, pressing my fox nose to the ground to keep the scent alive while my eyes kept track of the blood along the concrete of the streets. As I turned a corner, the blood trail ended. For several seconds, I circled the corner making sure I was correct and didn’t get turned around. How in the fuck did the trail just end like that?
Good thing the scent was fresh. Ignoring the rough edges of the concrete, I stuck my nose down further, scrunching it against the ground and following the scent, slower this time, taking precise steps so that I didn’t lose one inch of the trail.
Travis and Evan caught up to me at that corner. Evan approached first and nipped at my heels while mewing for me to stop, or follow him away.
He was my mate and wanted me to be safe, but my hunger for finding out whoever killed Quinton, and all that would hopefully lead to, was more important than me being safe in that moment. Especially if it led me to Owen.
I picked up a hint of the person I was following and took off in that direction, not giving three fucks if Travis and Evan were following me or not. I bolted down the alley and halfway through, lost the scent completely. It just disappeared as though the person had vanished or was abducted by an alien. I wouldn’t be shocked by anything in Cummings Cove anymore.
A noise across the street caught my attention and I looked up to realize that I was right in front of that bar, Tie Down N Cum. I remembered the place with a shudder-worthy thought. Not wanting to lose the trail of whoever I was following, I darted across the street, not bothering to look both ways. Travis surely would’ve been ashamed of me. I waited for someone to go in and nosed my way through the entrance with them. Once inside, I was blasted in the face by the volume of music and raised voices. The place was awfully rowdy for a weeknight, but then again, it wasn’t just a bar. People came here for way more than a vodka on the rocks.
Still on all fours and with my tail swishing around, I zipped between chairs and barstools trying to evade the rowdy crowd, while still trying to get another scent trail going. The place smelled overwhelmingly of spilled beer and fulfilled fantasies, but I put my nose into it anyway, trying to get something. Anything. While I tried to stay out of the way and find the scent again, people started throwing beer bottles. My fox ears quivered, picking up every clink of bottles and every crack of breaking glass. I cringed at the loud batting of pool balls hitting each other even over the pulsing, booming music that girls were shaking their asses to on the stage.
Didn’t they know I had investigating? Fuck. No, they didn’t. They hadn’t even noticed there was a goddamned fox in the bar. I leaned in closer to the bar counter, keeping out of the way of kicking legs and sliding bar stools, while trying to scope out the place, nearly impossible from my vantage point on the ground. I considered shifting to two legs, but knew me appearing naked out of nowhere would cause even more trouble. Suddenly, I spotted Wulf across the way, in the same booth that we had spoken to that Bountier before.
Easing down to the ground to keep from being seen, I army-fox-crawled to the edge of the bar so that I could get closer to hear what they were talking about. On my right, I saw a crowd coming out of the back hallways and watched for my chance. Wulf was nervous. He wrung his hands under the table while his knee bounced uncontrollably. Wulf was never nervous.
As the crowd moved past, I took my chance and, as low to the ground as I could get, darted under the table and toward the curve of the booth where I could curl my little body in and listen without getting kicked or pummeled by the two huge guys that sat above me. I turned around, almost expecting Travis and Evan to be on my flank, but they were nowhere to be found.
Over the loud people and ear-busting music, I couldn’t hear much. Charles, the ex-Bountier, was leaned back in the booth, his beefy arm on top of it.
“Look, I got myself into this mess. I shouldn’t have disobeyed,” Wulf answered something but over the booming bass there was no way to tell what. Charles continued, “I’m not going to clean up that loose end. I’m a fool for thinking I could get away with all of this anyway.”
Wulf pounded the table with what I assumed was his fists, and countered with something inaudible. The words were garbled, but he sounded angry and defensive. I moved, trying to get closer to Wulf to hear and as I inched closer, my nose picked up that scent again, the one from Quinton’s keep, the one that I’d trailed all the way here. It was under this table, making my eyes water and my nose scrunch up from its pungency. It was right here but I couldn’t tell which person at the table it was coming from. Fuck, I had to get closer without getting caught.
My chest constricted with the need to know. I needed to know anything that would get me closer to finding out who could be responsible for all of this, because that led me closer to Owen. I put one paw in front of the other and leaned in to sniff Wulf’s boots when a strong hand clasped the back of my neck and lifted me by my scruff until I was face to face with Wulf.
Fuck me sideways and call me Sally. I was caught.
I yipped out and flailed, trying to move my little body in a circle to get him to let me go, but his fingers just dug in harder, not relenting one bit.
Charles chuckled loudly, even over the music. “Looks like you’ve found yourself a spy there, Wulf.”
Wulf looked at me and a smile pulled up one side of his mouth. “Looks like she’s doing a good job, too.”
Wulf gruffed out something to Charles about taking this one where she belongs and before I could stop him, he, gripping me tightly by the scruff, brought me down the neon-lit hallway and into one of the sex rooms. I yipped at him, trying to claw my way out of his grasp, but nothing was making contact or anything more than eliciting a low chuckle from him. After closing the door behind him, he tossed me onto the bed and I shifted midway so that by the time I hit the bed, I was back to human. I was also fucking fuming.
“You fucking killed him! It was you and I know it!” I pointed my anger and my shrill screams in his direction, hoping it pierced him like whatever weapon he used had pierced Quinton.
Wulf’s eyes went wide as I yelled and all the color drained from his face. “What the hell are you talking about Scarlet?”
“You killed the dragon! You sliced Quinton’s throat open and left him to die!” I used every ounce of energy I had in me to yell my accusations at him, knowing they were true.
“Scarlet.” He took a step toward me, and I scrambled backwards until my back hit the wall, which I hurriedly moved away from not knowing who or what was sticky on that wall. Eeew.
“I have been here all night, playing pool. Look,” he said, and stuffed his hand in his front pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “See? This is what I won at a game of pool.”
I laughed humorlessly. “Oh, so we’ve been out searching for the killer and you’ve been here scoring some cash? I’m supposed to fucking believe that?”
“Of course not. I came here trying to get information about Owen. I’ve been trying to find your mate. I tried to get intel from the guys playing pool, and then from Charles.”
“Then how do you explain the smell all over you, huh? You smell like piss and blood just like it did in the dragon’s lair!” I put my hands on my hips, sure as fuck that I had the upper hand and had him nailed to the corner.
“Scarlet, it’s a bar. I’ve already gotten into two fights. I mean, what do you expect?”
“Bullshit! You’re lying to me!’ Tears formed in my eyes from the sheer rage in my chest that needed some way to escape, and I swiped them away more violently than I intended.
Wulf took two steps back, looking like I’d slapped him. “I’ve been here, busting my fucking ass looking for someone who knew something about Owen, and you come in here accusing me of being a fucking murderer? Some mate you are.”
Ouch. T
hat one stung like he’d slapped me back.
I breathed out a sigh, but kept my ground. “I’m sorry, okay? Clearly I was wrong but I traced the scent here and you were gone and…”
“So your next conclusion was to accuse your mate of murder.” He huffed out a breath through his nose. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Scarlet.”
My eyes widened at the bass of his voice, the same bass he got when he was about to…
He closed the distance between us and stood over me, looking down his nose at me while he reached out and pinched my nipple—hard.
I quivered with both fear and exhilaration. And a little relief. My legs gave out and I sat back on my haunches.
“I should make you pay, little fox. I should remind you who is in charge. Who your master is.”
I tensed at the power in his voice, the command, as he threatened me with what would likely be a very rough fuck. I felt my core tighten and warm too, and watched him inhale, a smirk spreading across his face at what he smelled on me.
“Fuck off, Wulf. I’ve been out hunting a murderer all day, we just discovered a dead dragon, and I am in no mood to deal with your posturing.” A lie.
Wulf towered over me, his wolf glinting behind his one bright blue eye.
He lowered himself until our faces were at the same level and said, “Are you sure you aren’t in the mood, little fox? Your body seems to indicate otherwise.”
I gulped, backing up on the bed a touch. While the look in his eye exhilarated me, what I had said about the direness of the situation wasn’t a lie. Shit was going down in Cummings Cove, and if Wulf wasn’t part of it then that just meant I had followed another dead end. It meant I had more work to do.
