Page 5 of Reaper
“No,” Saint replied.“He got lucky.He told me he’d been off alone fishing when he changed and woke up butt naked with half a deer carcass strewn all around him.”
“That must have been fucking terrifying,” I said.
“It’s an Alpha’s worst nightmare, a newly turned lycanthrope going through that alone.Okay, I guess it’s my second worst nightmare.My worst is that the baby were kills somebody.Anyway, he hooked up with a few other para kids around town and got into a little trouble, but nothing major.Vandalism, petty theft, a few burglaries down in Ballantyne, that kind of shit.Then they fucked up and tried to rob Jermone in a park one night.”
“Oh, there’s no waythatended badly,” I said, remembering how much of my mojo it took to lay the big were-elephant out.
“Yeah, you called it.”Saint nodded and took another swig from the bottle.I couldn’t tell if he was playing at being a hardass not using a tumbler, or if he thought drinking from the bottle would keep me out of his liquor.Either way, I reached across the desk and poured myself another slug.“Jermone’s a peaceable guy until it’s time not to be, so when four idiot kids jumped him, he tried to keep it chill until one of them landed a good punch on him.Then he went all gray and stompy on their asses.He brought the whole lot of them back here, we patched them up, and I had a conversation with the crew about how to behave in a city with multiple groups of paras.”
“You mean, you told them if they fucked around with any of your people again, you’d string their intestines from streetlamps,” I said.I’d gotten the same “conversation” from Saint about twenty years ago.In my case, it didn’t stick.I thought it probably went better with a bunch of scared kids that he actually could disembowel without too much effort.
Saint ducked his head and gave me a grin.“Yeah, that was about the gist of it.But then Willy started coming around the clubhouse.He never made like he wanted to join the pack, and he certainly didn’t want to ride with us.The kid never even looked hard at a bike.”The incredulity on Saint’s face was funny.It was like he couldn’t fathom someonenotwanting to ride a motorcycle.“But we’re not gonna shove some kid out in the cold just because he’s not a member, so I let him come and go as he pleased.He’s been bouncing around town for about the last two years.”
“When was the last time he bounced through here?”I asked.
“Been a couple months.He actually looked good, you know.Better than usual.He was clean and well-fed for a change.Usually these street rats are scrawny, haven’t showered in about a week, and are broke.But Willy paid for his drinks, was cleaned up, and had on clothes that looked like they’d seen the inside of a washing machine recently.I figured something had turned around for him.I was happy, you know?Even though he wasn’t one of mine, I had a soft spot for the little idiot.Now he’s dead.Fuck.”
“Yeah.”I took another sip of Saint’s bourbon.“Did you talk to him?Maybe poke around a little about what changed for him?”
“I didn’t, but I think Cindy did.He always followed her around like a puppy dog, offering to bus tables for her, do dishes for her, that kinda shit.Reminded me a little of some other guy who used to hang around my niece.Only difference was, I liked Willy.”
Okay, that one stung.But Cindy was a beautiful woman, and given that lycanthropes age slowly, she looked a lot closer to twenty-one than to the fifty she was really pushing.“You think she might know more?”I asked.
“Maybe.But she ain’t gonna tell you.She waspissedwhen you stopped coming around, Harker.Pissed.”
“You told me never to darken your door again, remember?That’s what the whole fight we just had was about.”
“Yeah, I might not have mentioned that to her at the time.Better to have her hate your guts than mine.I gotta live with her.”He tipped the bottle in my direction, and I begrudgingly toasted him with my glass.I couldn’t argue his logic.Since Saint never mated, Cindy was his Alpha female, basically the second in command of the pack.A real argument between Alphas could tear a pack apart, and he didn’t think a fling with me was worth that.Hell,Ididn’t think a fling with me was worth that.
We are going to have a chat about this ‘fling’ when you get home,Becks said in my mind.Sometimes, like when walking into a bar run by the uncle of your ex-girlfriend, it gets real inconvenient having your significant other riding shotgun inside your noggin.
“You want to call her in here and ask about Willy, or you want me to leave through the back door and ask her after I’m gone?”No point trying to pressure Cindy into saying anything if she didn’t want to talk with me around.She was one of the most stubborn women I’d ever known.I guess I have a type, I sent to Becks, getting a mental image of a raised middle finger in response.
“She’s mostly over being pissed at you.Let’s get this over with, so you can go back to never setting foot in my bar again.”He tapped on his cell phone, then set it back down on his desk.“She’ll be back in a minute.She’s stocking the beer coolers right now.”
Sure enough, less than two minutes of uncomfortable toxically masculine drinking and glaring at each other later, me and Saint were rescued by Cindy sweeping through the door.“What do you want, Harker?”she said, standing in front of Saint’s desk.“I’ve got a bar to run, and a bunch of broken furniture to replace, thanks to you.”
“Willy’s dead,” Saint said, cutting off the argument before we got started.
Cindy looked like she’d taken a punch to the gut, sitting in the other visitor chair with a soft “oh.”
I gave her a second to collect herself before opening my mouth to start asking my questions.She held up one finger, and I sat back, silent.
“When?”she asked.
“Last night.”
“Where?”
“We’re not sure.The…his body was found on a private golf course, but the scene indicates he wasn’t killed there.”
“How?”
“We don’t know.Without a crime scene, and since all but the most grievous injuries heal as soon as one of you shifts, we can’t tell what happened, or where, or why.”The last was to save her from asking yet another question I didn’t have an answer to.“I was hoping you could tell me where to find his friends, so I could ask them about it.”
“You gonna ask them questions, or slaughter them?”Cindy asked.
I took a second before I answered, giving the question the weight it deserved.I’m not known for my restraint.“I’m going to question them first.Then, if it turns out they killed him, and that they killed the other shifters that have shown up mysteriously dead around town over the past six months…well, then I’ll probably slaughter them.”
