Avery met Erin at the crime scene – the house where her four victims died. Erin called and said she wanted to visit, thought she might be onto something but needed to visit the actual scene. Her mate, Gunner, on the other hand wasn’t particularly pleased. He never was about Erin going out into the field. He insisted on accompanying her and his face was now set to glower.
“Honey, this is my job,” chided Erin gently.
He muttered and then Erin patted his arm and passed him her phone. “Why don’t you step outside and check out the adorable pictures I took of the triplets this morning – look, they have applesauce all over them. I don’t think they ate any at all.”
He did as she asked, mildly mollified.
The house was still in the awful mess it had been. The only difference was that all the body parts – and there had been so many – had been taken away.
The family didn’t have any next of kin – they couldn’t find any bears that claimed the father, the wife’s parents were dead, and there were no other family members still alive. They had just been a quiet family who kept to themselves.
Avery supposed the house actually belonged to the park and therefore the city – but who would want to live there after this?
Erin wrinkled her nose. “I’m glad I can’t smell all the blood.”
“Well, it smells a lot better now than it did when it was fresh, but that’s not saying much.”
“Hmmm.”
Erin wandered around trying not to touch anything. Avery followed in her wake, not saying anything. She was never very sure about how Erin’s power worked, and she didn’t think Erin was a hundred percent certain either.
She held still and shuddered. Avery and her lion held their breaths.
“What do you see?”
“I can see the creature. He’s running through the park. He’s hungry, looking for food. He smells the house. There’s a window open, and he can smell something cooking.” Erin bit her lip. “He goes in through the window but before he can get the food, the father finds him and attacks him. Then… then…”
Erin scrunched up her face and closed her eyes. “I think he was just hungry and scared and when he was attacked, he couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t stop his aggression. He was in pain from being in his half-beast form.”
“He did all that as his half-beast?”
“Yeah, I think he was trapped. He didn’t seem to be able to shift one way or the other.”
Avery and her lioness withheld a shiver. There were always urban myths about shifters who got stuck part way through their shifts, but she always thought they were put about by parents to encourage their kids to practice shifting.
Erin shuddered. “Ooh, that’s going to give me nightmares for a while – don’t tell Gunner I said that, he’s so easily upset. Oh…”
She blinked her eyes open. “I lost it but… I saw some men in black with guns come into the house and shoot a tranq dart in the creature.”
“Really?”
Curiouser and curiouser purred her beast.
“Yeah.” Erin weaved on her feet. “Gunner?”
He was there in a second, propping up his small mate, and scowling at Avery. Avery chose to ignore him – he would never say no to Erin’s help on any of their cases. He just needed someone to blame whenever he thought his mate was in danger in any way, no matter how small the danger.
“I’m taking you home,” he grumbled.
“I just need some sugar,” she said, “that really zapped me.”
“I’m taking you home,” he repeated a little more insistently.
“Oh, fine.”
Erin gave in and flashed Avery a tolerant look.
Avery smirked. Yes, it was so hard to be so loved!
“I’ll write it all up in a report,” said Erin as Gunner hustled her out the door.
Avery nodded and allowed them to leave, Gunner fussing over Erin to the extreme. She took one last look around the house and left. She didn’t know what was going on but she suspected something sinister.
*
Kay fearfully pulled the syringe out of Eleven. She needed a blood sample – needed to make sure the same thing that happened to Nine wouldn’t happen to him, too. But she feared getting near him.
She thought of that poor family, how he had ripped them to shreds without pity or mercy. But it wasn’t his fault she told herself firmly. If they hadn’t done this to him, he’d just be his normal, harmless self.
She didn’t even know his real name – he was just test subject Eleven, one of the people who came to them drugged and apparently untraceable. There were so many victims here.
He growled at her, and she jumped back. The others started growling too, and she ran out the room, her hands trembling.
She could not do this anymore! She bit her lip so hard to hold in the sob that she tasted blood.
Kay frowned as she noticed the light on in exam room two. The other lab technicians were out for lunch.
She wasn’t allowed to leave – she couldn’t. Unlike the others, she was not a willing participant in all this. No, she just had a mildly better cage than the poor creatures back there.
She pushed the door open and gasped as she found one of the female subjects unconscious on the table, and Dr. Froggett behind her starting to undress. The female was a cheetah shifter – who many of the guards dubbed Cheetara after the cartoon character – she looked just look her in this form.
“What the hell are you doing?” she cried.
He flashed her a guilty look. “Now there’s no need to overreact…”
“Overreact?! Are you freaking kidding me?” she yelled.
“She’s still a female,” he said defensively.
Her blood boiled – he stated that as if it was some kind of excuse for what he was about to do.
“Exactly! She’s still a female. You disgusting pervert! How many times have you done this?!”
His cheeks bloomed deep red. “Never, this is the first, ah, I… I just wanted to try it.”
“I’m calling security.”
Kay reached for the phone.
“The hell you are!” he snapped and lunged at her, wrapping his hands around her neck.
“’elp! ‘elp!” she gasped.
Froggett’s face twisted in malicious glee as he tried to wring the life out of her. Her vision started fading as she struggled uselessly against him. Well, at least she was getting away from this awful place. But just when she thought it was all over, Froggett stilled, and blood spilled out of his mouth.
His hands loosened, and Kay staggered back to find the female, ‘Cheetara’ with her claws firmly imbedded in him. Froggett gave Kay a helpless look, a pleading look. The female cheetah bared her fangs, twitched her tail and let out a deafening roar before ripping his throat out.
Kay clutched at her own throat, coughing and choking. The female hissed at her, about to pounce.
Right, this was how she was actually going to die. Well…
Marlowe burst through the door and shot the female full of sedatives. She dropped to the ground, twitching. Kay wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.
*
Wolfman clambered up the fire escape to Avery’s apartment. He was having a productive night. He had already foiled two pickpockets – again small kids. What was with all these kids today? One had been trying to take a diamond bracelet off a woman while she yapped into her cell phone. The other was attempting to steal a guy’s laptop – he had placed it on the ground while waiting for the bus.
He had stopped them, they had duly kicked him and scarpered. They were so freaking young.
Perhaps he would also ask Avery whether she knew about an Oliver Twist type situation going on with all the kids of the city.
He peered into Avery’s bedroom, and a thrill went through him as he found his long-legged object of desire sitting on her bed, eating a bowl of popcorn.
He tapped on the window, and she looked up, not with quite the ecstatic expression he was hoping for – in fact, she looked almost hostile.
But she duly came over and opened her window, and even stepped aside so he could come in.
Her bedroom! A squeal of delight went through him as he realized he was getting into her bedroom!
“I spoke to my colleague,” she said dully, “he’s going to look into the disappearances.”
“Good,” he murmured while trying to take in every single detail he could. Was that a Lego Death Star? Surely not.
She frowned at him.
“Something wrong?” he asked as he realized that instead of her usual breathy flirtation, she was staring at him quite grumpily.
“No, just tired and I have to get to work.”
His wolf rumbled unhappily. It was the middle of the night. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Tough luck,” she said briskly. “I said I’d check out the disappearances and I will, but I can’t be seen talking to you – I’m SEA, and you’re a vigilante.”
“Who’s going to see us in your bedroom?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’m just saying maybe we should keep our distance.”
Wolfman nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. He knew this was coming, knew he wasn’t good enough for her and that she deserved more.
Yes, it was for the best, he had enemies and surely someone would… ugh, who was he kidding? He had no enemies; he was just a mild annoyance to bag snatchers everywhere. He wanted to whine at what she said – but that was Winston inside him talking, not Wolfman. Wolfman was stoic. Wolfman didn’t bitch that the woman of his dreams had come to her senses. Wolfman got on with things. But at that moment, Wolfman was having trouble getting Winston to move his behind and get going.
“Yes, if you wish,” he said, in a rasp – which given that his usual Wolfman voice was quite raspy, didn’t make much difference.
Avery turned her back on him. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
Wolfman took the opportunity to disappear out of the window silently. Or at least that was the plan. He actually caught his cape on her bedside table, and on pulling it, knocked over her lamp, alarm clock and fell backward down a flight of stairs, letting out a large yelp.
Yep, real smooth. That was definitely the Winston in him.
*
Avery heard the yelp. Her lioness mewled at her to go to him, to make sure he was okay. But Avery remained firm. She marched over to the window and shut it.
Maybe she was overreacting, but she was pissed about meeting that girl Tara earlier – and she did mean ‘girl.’ The girl was barely over twenty, and it bothered her immensely that she was engaged to the comic book guy. Hadn’t he been flirting with her? She was sure he had. She wasn’t the best at spotting flirtatious behavior. When she flirted, she generally talked about the things she liked – comics, cartoons, and sci-fi. She had thought they were flirting with one another. Could she have been mistaken? Would he really prefer that mousy little thing to her? Why do men prefer women who can’t bench press more than them?
Then seeing that damn photo was the last straw. It was a photo of Wolfman being kissed by a lissome young brunette. It had gone viral, and one of her friends forwarded it on to her – knowing she was a fan, they thought she might want to see it. Grrr.
She had thought she was special to Wolfman, but maybe she was just one of many of the damsels in distress he saved throughout the city.
Ugh! She was behaving like a whiny teenager, and she hated it.
Avery slumped on her bed, groaning as she caught sight of Howie’s latest gift to her.
A tiny – very tiny – bikini that was worryingly in her size, a bottle of suntan lotion and a first class ticket to Fiji. It came with a note asking whether if he rubbed her back, would she rub his. Only, he didn’t say back – it was a lot filthier than that. She guessed that the ticket would be for a seat next to his. Yeah, pass.
Did he really think she would fall over his feet for this kind of extravagant behavior?
Ugh. Grrr.
Avery perked up her ears as there was a slight jingling noise. As a cheap burglar alarm, she had decided to put wind chimes on the door and all the windows to the apartment. Except they weren’t for burglars – they were sister alarms. It seemed like one of them was on her way in. Probably Adelle. Aimee would have already slipped on her ass by now, and Andrea had court-appointed anger management that evening. Honestly, if it weren’t for Avery, her scary sister Andrea would probably already be the leo of the pride.
Avery stood up and stretched. While she didn’t like her sisters attacking her, she had to admit, they gave her a good workout, and that evening, she was rather in the mood to punch something. Adelle would do nicely.