Tesler senior rushed me. A high kick caught him in the chest and he stumbled back, then caught himself. I waited for him to rebound, but he stood there, rubbing his jaw. Playing possum again. The guy had a very limited repertoire. I waited for his move. But he didn't run at me... he went the other way.
Only after I'd chased him about a kilometer did I realize my mistake. I glanced back and, sure enough, Clay was in hot pursuit, his prey abandoned. Any other time, he'd have waited for my signal saying I needed help, but he wasn't leaving me alone with this one.
Even on open ground, Tesler kept his advantage, and a stabbing pain in my left thigh slowed me down, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it.
When I heard the squeal of the train leaving the station, it gave me an idea. I waved my plan back to Clay. I didn't really need to. We've been together long enough that if he sees a runaway mutt and an oncoming train, he'll know what I'll have in mind.
I slowed. Clay changed direction, circling wide around Tesler. The mutt, hearing my pounding feet slow to a patter, glanced back and although I was a good ten meters away, I swore he smiled. I looked at him, then behind me, searching the empty horizon, as if looking for Clay.
I whistled. Then I whistled again, louder and more shrill, moving from "Hey, where are you?" to "Oh, shit, where are you?"
Tesler bent over, hands on his thighs, catching his breath. The wind had died down and I could hear him panting, almost in time with the chug of the approaching train. Behind him, Clay circled, unseen.
Still bent, Tesler studied me. He really wanted to finish it, but long fights and long runs weren't his forte and he was winded. He had to weigh the thrill of dominance against the smack-down of potential defeat at the hands of a woman, maybe his last defeat if Clay caught up. I could say the survival instinct won out, but I suspect it was ego--if he didn't choose to fight, I couldn't beat him. He straightened, then started turning to run.
I rushed at him before he noticed Clay. He wheeled, fists going up. I danced back. He swiped a fresh gush of blood from his lip and smiled. I was spoiling for a fight, but I was afraid--an irresistible combination. He turned his back square on Clay. I took one boxer's two-step forward, then back, going a little farther back than forward, as if inching away while trying to convince myself I was ready to take him on.
Finally Clay reached the point where Tesler smelled him. His nose jerked up and he spun so fast he almost lost his balance. Then he tore off south... just as the train started to pass--a solid wall of slow-moving cars blocking his escape route.
He turned almost full circle and realized he was trapped. I braced myself for him to charge the weakest obstacle--me--and he started to, then he feinted to the side and ran full out toward the train.
"Fuck no," Clay growled under his breath.
"Fuck yes," I said as Tesler grabbed a ladder between cars.
We followed. It always looks so easy in the movies. But even with a slow-moving train and werewolf agility and strength, getting on that ladder was a feat... particularly with a 250-pound mutt at the top of it, determined to keep you from catching his ride.
Clay was almost to the top when Tesler's foot shot out, aiming for his jaw. Clay grabbed him by the ankle and wrenched. Tesler went down, scrabbling and kicking to keep from being pulled over the edge, holding on with every ounce of strength in his overpumped arms. Meanwhile, I was hanging from the bottom rung, trying to keep my back from scraping along the tracks.
Tesler scrambled out of Clay's reach, got to his feet and took off across the tops of the cars. We gave chase.
At any moment, I expected the train to grind to a halt, throwing us through the air as someone spotted us and sounded the alarm. But it kept chugging along, picking up speed as we raced over the cars, bent forward, the metal vibrating under our feet, train rocking from side to side, every freezing-rain-filled dent enough to send us skating, the stink of diesel filling our nostrils, the whine and grind of metal setting our teeth on edge, drowning out every word Clay called back to me. Well, not every word... just the ones like "stay there" and "keep back" and "wait."
And of course every car had to end... in a fifteen-foot drop over ground whizzing past fast enough to make my stomach lurch. That leap between shaking cars set my stomach plummeting every time, no matter how much clearance I had. My first foot would land and it always slid a little, just enough to rip an "oh shit" from my lips before I found my balance.
Finally Tesler reached a flatcar loaded with timber, took one look and decided that jumping onto those logs was one feat he didn't care to attempt.
He feinted left, then right, then took a running leap toward the side of the car. Clay did the same, and leapt off... as Tesler checked himself at the last moment and stayed on board. With me.
He turned to face me, that ugly smile twisting his lips--then disappearing as it met my fist. It took him a second to recover from the shock, not of the hit, but of finding me standing my ground when surely I should be running as fast as I could. I hit him again, knocking him over. Predictably, he tried to grab my legs and bring me down with him. I stomped his hand hard enough to make him howl.
As he scrambled up, I kicked. He instinctively closed his legs, but I wasn't aiming there. When it works, it works, but if that move was as reliable as it looked in the movies, no man would ever get the best of a woman in a fight.
As he concentrated on protecting his valuables, he hunched over, his jaw coming into perfect alignment with my foot. I kicked him, and he fell back hard enough to make the roof twang.
I grabbed his shirtfront and hauled him up. Clay was back on board now four cars away, making his way toward us. He motioned for me to hold the mutt and wait for him. I pretended not to notice and dragged Tesler to the front of the car.
I held him over the edge, getting a good long look at his face, drinking in his fear as he realized he was about to drop head-first under a running train--
Tesler bucked. I braced, steadying myself, but when he rocked again, his bulk was too much and I lost my balance. He grabbed me and, for a second, I was the one looking down at the train tracks rushing below, hearing Clay's bellow, his pounding feet. Then I twisted and kicked, and we rolled onto the roof of the car.
Tesler caught me and tried to toss me over the side, but I grabbed his wrist and flipped him over my shoulder. He managed to snag my leg at the last second, and dragged me over the edge as he fell. My fingers grazed the steel edge, found a hold and clung on. One solid back kick with my free leg struck Tesler square in the jaw and he let go, hitting the ground and rolling away from the train.
"Hold on," Clay shouted into the wind as he made his way toward me.
"That's what I'm trying to do!" I called back.
And trying was the operative word. I was barely clinging by my fingertips, legs knocking against the side of the train as it chugged along. I glanced back at Tesler, now up and running, and flexed my fingers.
"Don't you dare," Clay said, grabbing my wrists before I could drop and go after Tesler.
He was right, of course. Given the angle I was hanging at, letting go would run me a good chance of falling right under the train. That didn't keep me from watching with regret while Tesler disappeared into the distance as Clay hauled me onto the car.
"We have to go after--" I began, heading for the ladder.
Clay caught me and pulled me down into a crouching position to keep my balance. "Take a second."
"I don't need--"
"Yes, you do, and he's already too far away. Whether we leave now or in two minutes, his trail will still be there."
As I looked out over the now empty field, shame licked through me. How long had it been since I had done something so stupid? I always appreciated that Clay never tried to fight my battles, never interfered unless I was in serious danger. So when he'd warned me to stand down, I should have known he had good reason.
When I apologized for the bone-headed move, he said, "Circumstances." Nothing more, but it was all that ne
eded to be said.
It had been the circumstances--Tesler plus that damned letter, coming too close together, those old fears resurrected. An explanation, but not an excuse. If I was going to be Alpha, I couldn't have weak spots. I had to overcome my ego and my fear and my rage, and trust my bodyguard.
I stayed on the train only long enough to catch my breath, then we climbed down, backtracked, found and followed Tesler's trail. A real warrior would have lain in wait and ambushed us. Tesler ran straight for a wide stream that, judging by the signs, was a popular fishing spot, and waded through the icy water to hide his trail.
We walked along the banks for about a hundred meters, then decided the smarter move would be to predict his destination--back to his brother and buddy. We took off that way.
QUESTIONS
WHEN CLAY CAME after me, the other two mutts had chased him only as far as the edge of the building, like dogs making a token effort to frighten a trespasser off the property while really hoping he doesn't turn around. Then they'd stayed there, waiting for Tesler. Unfortunately, he didn't return. We snuck up close to them just as he called his brother, apparently telling them to meet up someplace in the city.
"Follow?" Clay said.
I shook my head. "They'll catch on before we get to the rendezvous point, and we can't pull anything downtown in broad daylight. I say grab one and get some answers." I peeked around the building corner and sized the two up. "We've got the leader's little brother and a flunky."
"The brother," Clay said. "Interrogate, then hold him hostage."
"Where?"
Clay shrugged. "I don't care. Hog-tie him and leave him out here. Or kill him and pretend we've still got him, hope big brother takes the bait."
I shook my head. "He's family; he won't talk, and if Tesler decides he doesn't particularly want his baby brother back, we're screwed."
"You're the boss."
"You disagree?"
He leaned out to look at the two men. "I don't think it's a sure bet either way."
"We'll try the flunky, then."
CULLING ONE FROM a herd of two can be tough, presuming the other one wants to object to his Pack mate being taken. This one didn't. As soon as he saw we'd homed in on his companion, he took off to find his brother.
Then Clay held Dan while I found and secured the interrogation room--a storage unit for a business that rented boats and fishing equipment, seasonal rentals that were now out of season.
Clay brought the mutt in. When we put him into a chair, he started to fight in earnest until Clay clocked him, dazing him enough to get the bindings on.
"This scenario seem familiar?" Clay said as he booted the rolling chair into the middle of the room. "Remind you of what you did in a cabin up near here? To an old friend of mine?"
Dan's mouth opened, ready to spew some variation on "It wasn't me--I was just following orders." But before he got the first word out, he snapped his mouth shut and switched to a new tactic--babbling in his mother tongue.
"You can skip the 'I don't speak the language' shit," Clay said. "It's only gonna piss me off, and it won't help you one bit. You know Roman Novikov, Alpha of the Russian Pack? He's offered to translate, make sure your civil rights aren't violated before I break your kneecaps."
"It's not Russian," I said.
Clay glanced at me.
"He's not speaking Russian. We can get Jeremy or Roman to confirm that, but I'm pretty sure of it."
To a unilingual ear like Clay's or Reese's, I'm sure it sounded like Russian--it did even to a bilingual one like mine. But my mother used to sing to me in Russian and taught me some words in language games, like the ones Jeremy and I play with the twins. So while I couldn't remember more than a half-dozen words, I knew Russian when I heard it--and this wasn't.
I told Clay it could be Polish or Ukrainian. Neither Jeremy nor Karl nor any of our other multilingual sources could help with those.
"That's that, then," I said. "If he can't answer our questions, he's of no use to us."
"Kill him?"
Dan's head jerked up fast enough to tell us his grasp of English was adequate.
"Should have grabbed the brother," Clay said. "Held him as a hostage. Think we can still catch up with him?"
"He's long gone. But we can use this one to send a message."
Clay nodded. "Have to make it a good one, though. Scare the shit out of them. Snapping his neck won't do."
I took out my hotel key card and lifted it, just out of the mutt's view. "How about this?"
"Shit." Clay rubbed his chin. "The last time we used that..."
"Messy, I know. But we need messy. The only problem is the screaming."
The mutt jerked around, moving the chair enough to see what horrific instrument of torture I held. When he did--and realized he'd outed himself--he let loose a stream of Anglo-Saxon profanity.
"Huh," Clay said. "Seems he knows some English after all. Let's see if we can expand his vocabulary."
He slammed his fist into Dan's jaw. The mutt gasped and snarled, then started to swear.
"Nope," Clay said. "Same words. Let's try--"
He grabbed an oar from the wall and swung it against Dan's kneecaps. Wood and bone crackled. Dan bit off a scream, his eyes rolling. Then he lifted those eyes to Clay.
"What do you want to know?" he said in perfectly serviceable English.
WE MIGHT HAVE removed the language barrier, but that didn't mean we were getting anything useful from him. We started with the most important issue: why had they killed Dennis? And the corollary questions: Did they know about Joey and if so why were they leaving him alone? We weren't worried about tipping Dan off about Joey--it wasn't as if this mutt would ever see his buddies again to tell them. But Dan insisted he had no idea what we were talking about. Other werewolves in Anchorage? Never met them. His scent found at the site of a murdered former Pack member? Huh, we must be mistaken. Maybe our sense of smell wasn't as good as we thought.
On to Reese, then. Nope, he didn't cut the fingers off any young werewolf in a museum. Hated museums. No, he hadn't witnessed any finger-cutting either. As for why his scent was there, he had no idea. Maybe another werewolf in Anchorage had a similar scent. Maybe that was the one we'd smelled in Dennis's cabin, too. All werewolves did kind of smell alike, you know.
What about the invasion of our room and the "deposit" he'd left in our bed? Nope, not him. Tesler admitted they'd been there? Ah, that might explain things, then. Tesler was crazy. He wouldn't put it past the guy to kill the old man for kicks, cut off that kid's fingers and jerk off in my underwear.
But we hadn't mentioned that the dead werewolf was old. Or where we found the second deposit. No, we must have. How else would he know?
Dan wasn't too bright, but he was tenacious. Though he was quick to turn on his leader, there was no way he was admitting to having done anything himself. Still, as if to prove his usefulness, he did volunteer to give us full dossiers on the Teslers if we'd put him into protective custody like Reese. When we didn't say anything in response, he seemed to take that as agreement.
As Roman had suspected, the Tesler brothers--Travis and Eddie--spent most of their lives in Ukraine. That's where their father was from, before he emigrated to the United States and tried to make a life as a farmer. When that failed, he'd gone back home, taking his young sons with him, and years later they'd met this mutt--Danya Podrova.
The story Podrova gave came close enough to Roman's that we knew he was at least attempting to tell the truth. The Teslers ran a small gang that had moved around Eastern Europe, staying off the Russian Pack's territory. Of course, in Podrova's version, the Russians were a bunch of bullies who'd kept them on the run, when all they wanted to do was settle down and ply their trade. And the nature of that trade? Gun-running, he readily admitted; he even offered to help the American Pack set up its own enterprise.
"Very good money," he said. "Lots of places, they need guns. Pay a lot of money."
So the Tesler gang had
jumped around Eastern Europe, picking up new members as it went. Then they'd run into a spot of trouble because of Travis Tesler's habit.
"He likes the girls. He likes the ones who do not always like him, if you understand."
Oh, I understood.
Podrova downplayed Tesler's problems with the law. They'd been planning to move anyway, he explained. Eddie had been researching Anchorage, thinking it might be a stable base of operations. A port city in the wild country, far enough from the American Pack that no one would pay them much attention.
Right now, it was just Podrova and the brothers, setting up in Anchorage. Two others were off on business, establishing trade routes in the Lower 48. And, as Roman suspected, more had been left behind, waiting for the brothers to get established here. Part of those efforts, it seemed, was clearing out all other werewolves.
That explained why they'd killed Dennis, but not why he'd been tortured. And what about Joey? Considering how quick these mutts were to pounce on Reese and now on us, it seemed unlikely that they'd been here for over a month and didn't know they still had another werewolf in town.
But here Podrova retreated into silence. He didn't know Dennis. And those men murdered in the woods? He didn't know them either. Wolves got them, he'd heard. As for the girls? Well, yes, Tesler did have a bad habit, but he didn't do that anymore, not after the trouble he caused back home.
So, Dennis had been killed by werewolves, three humans had been slaughtered by wolves and three girls were missing--all since this mini-pack had come into town. But they had nothing to do with any of it.
Clay took me aside.
"I need you to stand guard," he said.
"I know what you have to do, Clay."
"Yeah, but you don't need to see it."
"I think I do, if I'm going to be Alpha. Jeremy plays his part. He takes the lead and asks the questions."
"Maybe, but after all these years, I don't require supervision. I know what you want from him. I'll get it. If I have questions, I'll come out and ask."
"I need to see--"
"But I don't need you to see it."
I met his gaze and understood. It wasn't just about me. Alpha or not, I was still Clay's lover, and this wasn't a side of himself he cared to show me. As Beta and Alpha, Clay and I would never be like Clay and Jeremy. We shouldn't try. If we were going to make this work, I had to remember that.
Frostbitten Page 14
