Page 7 of To Hunt A Wolf
One, two, three; I put down the trio of Dirk supporters just as quickly as I did him. In the chaos, Dirk tries to make a run for it, but I drop his friends and then slide in front of him, blocking his exit.
His eyes are wide now, full of real fear.
“What are you going to do with me?” he asks.
“Well, I’m not going to do what you were going to do to me,” I say dryly.
It takes me all of two minutes to knock Dirk on his ass again, and this time, I restrain him. He fights me, but it doesn’t change anything. He still ends up as my prisoner. And his Hellion friends are still useless to stop me.
When I’m done, Dirk struggles against the ropes I bound him with like his life depends on it. Considering the mood I’m in, it kind of does. I finish him off by pressing a rectangle piece of duct tape over his mouth and then straightening. He looks up at me from where he’s slouched against the dumpster.
“Mmorfghoh.”
I roll my eyes at his attempt to talk through the tape.
“No questions until the end of the show,” I tell him.
His three Hellion buddies are lying around us in varying states of consciousness. My right ribs still sting from the brass knuckles the last guy surprised me with. I nearly shifted right then, but in the end, my wolf wasn’t necessary. I took these assholes down while on two legs like my mom taught me.
Four drifters for the price of one.
But I don’t bother with Dirk’s friends. Crigger doesn’t care about them, so neither do I.
Dirk doesn’t go willingly, though, and it’s honestly more exhausting to drag his ass to the back of the alley than it was to fight him and all three of his biker gang friends.
Finally, I make it to the warehouse door.
It’s non-descript and half-covered up with trash, old boxes, and a scrap of drywall beginning to blacken with mold. The area looks deserted at best. Dangerous at worst. We’re close enough to Inferno to still hear a low hum of music, mostly bass. It covers any small sounds, including my footsteps and Dirk’s muffled pleas. But underneath the music is a stillness that leaves an eerie chill in its wake. Nothing else moves. Nothing else even breathes in this place. Whether it’s from the awful music or the sense of death hanging about, not even the rats come back this far.
This is why Crigger picked it.
No one will look for him here.
And that means, if this goes badly, no one will look for me.
A dramatic thought, but our alpha isn’t exactly known for level thinking. And with Jadick missing and the fact that he requested me specifically for this job, I can’t help but think there’s more to this than just a shit-talking biker with a warrant.
I shove the door open, and it creaks on its hinges. Despite the inky darkness looming, my senses tell me what lies ahead is a large, empty space. Dirk’s muffled attempts to cuss me out echo off the walls, the sound of his voice pinging back and forth only confirming my suspicions about the emptiness.
Somewhere in this old, forgotten warehouse is my alpha. And my payout.
My eyes slowly adjust, and I start forward.
I’ve gone several steps when a grunt sounds from deeper inside the space. It’s followed quickly by a gasp and then a wet, gnashing sort of sound that makes me think of a blade scraping against bone.
I freeze.
Beside me, Dirk continues to struggle.
I punch him in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. In the ensuing quiet, I listen.
“You will not… get away with this… not this time.”
The voice is pained and sharp—and fading.
It’s Crigger, but not like I’ve ever heard before.
He sounds weak.
