“Course, there’s others he mighta sent you to chat with.” He nodded to the pool area and hit a red button under the bar mirror. Clanking overhead startled me and I stepped away from the bar as a metal wall, shaped like a garage door, but made of short lengths of chain formed in squares, rolled down and hit the floor. It was a security device, like mall stores draw down at night to protect their wares. Another wall did the same in front of the food bar. Two more slid down over the windows in the arched insets. I tensed to sprint into the night, but it wasn’t a cage. The doors to Booger’s had no obstructions. The people sitting at the tables got up and left, letting the night air in. The jukebox went silent. No. Not a cage. A fighting ring. But with a way out if I wanted to take it.

Beast growled low inside. She sent a thought picture to me. A pack of wolves against a snowfall, a full moon overhead.

And I got a real bad feeling.

CHAPTER 3

She Was Wearing a Red Thong

I recognized the smell now, like wet dog, but rangier, wilder, feral. Them. The pack. All but one of them male. The girl was watching me from the shadows, her bottom lip caught in her teeth, her eyes excited and gleaming and possibly not quite sane. She was a tiny, blond thing with a deep tan, her skin catching the light with a sheen of perspiration. She was loaded down with bling-style jewelry, dressed in a skirt with a tight, spandex waist that left her pierced navel bare, the short skirt belling out around her hips. With it she wore a tight tank and no bra and red platform sandals with four-inch heels. Reaching behind, she gripped the pool table and levered herself up, her feet swinging, sandals flying off and into the darkness. She was wearing a red thong and made sure I knew it. Oh joy.

As the wolf-bitch moved, she stirred the air, and I caught the reek of sex hormones. She was in heat. No wonder she was so demonstrative.The men I could see all wore jeans and T-shirts. And except for Fire Truck, were barefooted or wore flip-flops. Which was weird until I spotted the boots lining the wall near the side door. I sniffed one last time, scenting them. I had never met a werewolf, but I was meeting them now. Leo hadn’t sent me to meet a vamp and send him packing. He’d sent me to meet a pack of wolves. Without warning and without backup.

These guys didn’t ride down from Wyoming today, which told me the interview footage from this morning—the one where a wolf had accused Leo of the murder of a man named Henri—had been taped, suggesting the wolves had been here longer than a few hours. They’d marked territory and were willing to fight for it.

One of the wolves stepped forward, his feet bare and silent on the painted concrete. I recognized the angry werewolf from the TV. The strawberry blond leader who cussed so much. His movements were graceful, feral, deadly. Around him the others fanned out, starting to form a semicircle. Fire Truck stood in the back, pulling off his boots.

“Jane Yellowrock. Rogue-vamp hunter,” I said to the leader, loosening my knee joints and adjusting my balance. “I was sent to deliver a message. But none of you matches the description.” Pretty wasn’t a term anyone would use for a werewolf.

He slowed his advance at the words and his men stopped dead—not quite the dead immobility of vamps, more like the unmoving quiet of hunting predators. “Rogue-vampire hunter? I have hear’ of such. Human who are licen’ by the bloodsuckers to hunt down those they cannot.” His accent was Cajun, a robust version, words full of harsh Rs and shortened or missing Ts, so that when he spoke it came out, “Rrroguevampirrre hunterrr.” And, “hun’ down dose dey canno’.” An intriguing, rumbling growl. The taped TV interview this morning had been so full of bleeped cussing that I’d had no clue of an accent.

He smiled and I could see the wolf below his skin, all teeth and canine ferocity. “Roul Molyneux,” he said, introducing himself. I had a feeling I was neck deep and sinking fast in vamp politics. Leo had sent me into this, whatever this was. “I am alpha, pack leader of the Lupus Clan of the Cursed of Artemis, of the United States of America.”

Roul wasn’t a big guy—not like Fire Truck, standing in the back of the room, lighting a cigarette despite the no smoking laws—but he was well built, with that full mane of hair and blue eyes, his looks enhanced by the sensation of power that surrounded him, a charismatic command-mode power, something all his, over and above the wolf magic and pack energies. An alpha wolf.

I took in the others at a glance, various mixtures of humanity—wolfanity?—and I wanted to laugh, but figured I might end up dead real fast if they thought I was making fun of them. There were two black guys, the wolf-bitch, two white guys, Fire Truck, a mixed-race block of muscle who might once have been human, and Roul, who was more gorgeous in person than on TV. Three other men appeared in the side doorway, limned by the security lights outside, and there were likely even more I hadn’t seen. Considering the number of bikes parked outside, I was guessing twelve to twenty wolves, all in human form. Not good odds if this went beyond chatting. I had seven shells in the M4, ten rounds in the H&K and one in the chamber, and another six in the ankle holstered gun. The derringer would only make them laugh. I had extra magazines, but if I needed them I was probably dead anyway.

“Vampire hunter don’—” Roul’s eyes narrowed and he sniffed in quick bursts, wrinkling his nose, his neck outstretched like a dog on a scent.

“I smell catamount, I do. An’ ... owl.” He breathed slowly, his face hardening. “And Leo’s blood in your veins. He has fed you to heal, yeah, and his pet shaman too, I’m thinking. You stink of magic, sundry kind.” He sniffed again. “You not human. Yet, you not were, no.”

Beast tightened, claws out, painful in my mind, her body taut and ready. “Not entirely human,” I agreed, controlling the slight shudder of panic in my voice, knowing they would smell any reaction, the faintest fear-sweat. “I don’t want a fight.”

Roul laughed and, at the sound, his men moved forward again, spreading out. As if they had rehearsed, they kicked off their flops. Started stripping off their clothes, throwing them aside with casual abandon. Instant fear thudded through me; I couldn’t catch my breath. There was something primal about a group of men ripping off their clothes, moving toward a woman, no matter how well armed she was. “I just want to deliver my message and go. No blood spilled, no death.” Just an order to get out of town. Yeah, that was gonna make me real popular.

An electric frisson of magic danced along my skin, as if the air was suddenly filled with the ozone of a fresh lightning strike. They were going to change, right here. Right now. My lips pulled back from my blunt human teeth. Beast growled and the sound came from my own lips. One of them laughed and I backed away two steps, a chain wall clinking against my butt.

“I fear we don’ always get what we want,” Roul said.

Great. The guy was a philosopher. Something about the idea of an intellectual werewolf struck me as funny, and, despite the circling wolves, I grinned. Drawing on Beast’s speed and strength, I pulled my Benelli and the H&K, covering the males with a swing of the shotgun barrel, and sighting the 9 mil at the wolf-bitch girl. She didn’t smell dominant, but as the only female present, she had some kind of power. I assumed.

“No we don’t, Roul. So, tell me”—I moved the barrel of the Benelli from one male to the other, pausing on each for a moment before moving on, my emotions settling into battle readiness, cold and empty—“will I get what I want if I fill you all full of silver shot? Is silver deadly to weres, like the myths say? ’Cause I’m loaded for vamp with silver fléchette rounds, and I’m betting they kill your kind like they do the fangheads. Slow, painful poisoning.”

The pack-mates halted as one, midmotion, midstrip, mid-laugh, which told me the silver myths were true. But the pack was nearly in position to attack, and if they did, there wasn’t a dang thing I could do about it until after the fact. I was licensed to kill rogue vampires, not weres. If I killed them, it had to be provable self-defense. I had to have the wounds to back any claim in court. I hadn’t seen security cameras, but if I attacked first and someone was filming, I could have legal charges brought against me. Booger had disappeared. Convenient for him. Not so much for me. “Silver poisoning is a nasty way to die,” I said.

Thoughts danced behind Roul’s eyes like antsy fireflies. He frowned. “I was to meet here for parley, at invitation of ... another.” He jutted with his chin. “You Leo’ courier, I’m thinking. Deliver message what he say.”

At invitation of another? Another what? “Not much to it. Get out of town. You are persona non grata.”

“No.” He showed me his teeth, lips pulled back, nose wrinkling in a dominance snarl. His canines were longer than a human’s and looked wicked sharp. “No’ this time. We not leave. Leo stole much from us when he took our territory. Human law, I’m thinking, give it back to us.”

Again the pack began to close in. I had no room to back away unless I could reach the button to open the metal wall and jump onto the bar. I was being herded or circled, and either one was bad news. I fought down a flight reaction and aimed the shotgun at one male who was already naked, his back bowing and breath coming in pants. The sensation of ants crawling on my skin spread, thickened.

“If we don’ receive permission to enter the city and retake our hunting grounds,” Roul said, “there be a two-pronged consequence, yes?” He watched to see that I was following his words. “As we parley, here and now, in state capital our pack lawyers prepare to file injunction, they do, six, four, t’ree injunction, against Leo and his business concerns. In less than one week, the financial apparatus of all the Mithran’ will grind to a halt. Then, our lawyers, they turn over evidence to human law enforcement, provin’ that Leo Pellissier kill our former alpha. He will be charge with murder, yes? Brought to justice in a human court of law.” He smiled, clearly relishing the thought. “His power base will be destroyed by this pack here, Lupus Pack, utterly, forever. We leave him with nothing.”