Beast Behaving Badly (18 page)

He knew he couldn't, though. Not because he was determined to live—although he'd definitely like to do that—but because he had to get to Blayne. If there was anything he could do for her, he would.

Bo made his body get up, but it was a new experience in torturous pain. An experience he hoped to never go through again. Forcing himself to see past everything that swimmed before him, Bo stumbled his way over to the van, his shattered right arm tucked tight against his body.

He felt panic sweep through him when he saw that the van had wrapped around a tree, the front and side windows blown out, bodies lying everywhere.

“Blayne?” His voice sounded garbled, and he knew that blood poured out of him. He ignored that and searched among the blood-covered and dressed-in-black bodies, hunting for Blayne.

Panting and trying not to pass out, Bo sniffed the air. His eyesight may be average but his sense of smell . . .

His gaze snapped over to a tree about twenty feet away. He walked/limped over to it, and as he got closer he saw her.

The wolfdog was covered in blood and, even scarier, she was wrapped around her own tree. He crouched beside her and touched her shoulder. Like a broken rag doll, she rolled over, and he could tell from the way her body moved that her bones were broken . . . possibly all of them.

“Oh, God. Blayne.” He touched her cheek with the back of his left hand. She still breathed but barely. “Blayne. I'm so sorry.”

His legs gave out from under him and he fell back on his ass. He sat there, panting, wishing he could change the entire night. Wishing he could tell Blayne how he really felt before he lost her like he'd lost nearly everyone else that had mattered to him. He wished he could—

Bo glanced around, everything growing hazier by the second. Yet he knew his uncle's voice. He could hear it, like he'd been hearing it since he was ten years old.

His uncle was right. Bo had to do something. Anything.

He looked over at Blayne. She still had on the watch he'd given her, his having been ripped off when he tore through the van roof. The outside had been badly damaged, but Bo still held out hope for the inside. And at a cost of nearly fifty grand, the damn thing better survive a monumental crash.

Reaching over, more blood pouring from his mouth in the process—
at least nothing hurts anymore—
Bo grabbed Blayne's watch and pushed the tiny button on the side, releasing the face plate. And thankfully, unlike the outside of the watch, the inside remained in perfect working order. Using the tip of his pinky finger, Bo pulled out the now active antenna and pressed the button built inside.

Letting out a relieved sigh he'd done that much, Bo dropped. The last thing he consciously remembered before everything ended was putting his arm around Blayne and wishing that everything could have been different for them.

CHAPTER 15

G
rigori Novikov woke up snarling.

“It's not my phone,” a female voice snapped in the darkness.

Moving away from the warm body he'd been wrapped around, Grigori reached down to his jeans lying on the floor and dug the phone out of his front pocket.

“Yeah?”

“Grigori?”

Grigori had a hard time hearing the voice on the other end. There was a lot of background noise. Sounded like choppers. “Yeah.”

“It's your cousin. Yuri.”

“Yeah?” Because God knew he had a lot of cousins.

“From Brooklyn. We got a retrieval call.”

“Yeah?”

“It's Bold.”

Wide awake, Grigori sat up. “Are you sure?”

“We're sure. He's in bad shape.”

“Bring him here.”

“There's a hospital in the city—”

“That's not prepped for a hybrid bear. Bring him here. We'll be waiting for him.”

“Okay. We're moving. One other thing.”

“What?”

“There's a female.”

“Full-human?”

“No. But if she's not dead, she will be.”

But he knew his nephew. If she was with Bold, they at least had to try. “Bring her.”

“You got it. I'm sending my son. We've got clean up here.”

The call disconnected, Grigori turned and dropped his feet to the floor.

“What is it?”

“It's Bold,” he replied to the concerned voice. “He needs us.”

 

 

Gwen pushed up against Lock's side until he took the hint and put his arm around her. She laughed again at the conversation between the two males. If anyone had told her a year ago she'd be engaged to a geeky bear with a honey fetish, she would have slapped some sense into them. But she was starting to realize that life was always about a little confusion. The more confusion, the more interesting.

“Maybe I should call Blayne,” Ric suggested after they'd finished their dessert and he was poured another cup of coffee.

“Why?” Gwen asked, although she already knew the answer.

“I don't know if I trust him.” Something Gwen had already figured out, based on the reaction of both males when she told them how the hybrid had trapped Blayne into a dinner date. She thought it was funny and cute. The guys? Not so much.

“He's an asshole,” Lock muttered in between sips of his coffee. Considering Lock usually had nothing bad to say about anyone, made it all the funnier when he did.

“I don't know if I'd go that far, but I don't trust him with our Blayne.”

This was the problem with Blayne. She became friends with all these guys, turned them into the big brothers she never had, and ended up dateless but well protected from any other male who may have an interest. And who had to fix the problem? Who else? Gwen.

“She'll be fine,” Gwen assured both idiots. “Trust me, Blayne knows how to take care of herself.”

“Yeah, nothing like a mighty slap fight to throw off a hardened scumbag.”

“Slap fights are for her friends. If she was in real trouble, I have no doubts Blayne could handle it.” She looked at Ric. “So feel free to call off your pit bull.”

Ric choked on his coffee. “What?”

“You know, Ric. Your pit bull—Dee-Ann? You hired her to protect Blayne, yeah? Well, if I'm right, Blayne will soon have her very own hockey star to watch out for her, so you can put your bitch back on her chain.”

“I'm not clear what you—”

“You did hire her, didn't you? To watch out for Blayne? Because of all the hybrid attacks? I mean,” she added, “I hope you hired her. Otherwise it's just goddamn creepy that she's been hanging around.”

Ric blinked. “Yes. Right. Of course. I hired her. To protect Blayne. Exactly.”

Lock placed his mug down on the table. “You're lying.”

He said it so quietly Gwen knew he wasn't teasing. And she watched Ric's expression go from charmingly muddled to predatory cold in two seconds.

“You are,” Lock went on. “Because no one in their right mind would hire Dee-Ann Smith to follow someone as a precaution. So you tell me right now”—and that's when the grizzly boar exploded—
“why the fuck are you following Blayne!”

The full-humans in the diner jumped a little at Lock's outburst, but Ric's head only dipped a little, bright eyes focusing on the grizzly.

Gwen tapped the table. “Outside. Both of you. Now.”

She reached for her backpack to get her wallet, but Ric dropped a small wad of cash on the table to cover the bill and the tip.

Once outside, she pulled the straps of her pack over her shoulders and focused on Ric. “All right, start talking.”

“Perhaps we can—”

“Don't hand me that shit, Ric,” Lock cut in. “This is Dee-Ann we're talking about. And I know her well enough to know that I'd prefer almost anyone else on the planet to be following Blayne around of her own volition. So what's the deal?”

“I can't discuss it.”

“Why the fuck not?” Gwen snapped. “What are you hiding?”

Lock stepped in close to Ric, the two best friends staring each other down. One an angry grizzly, the other a wolf not ready to back down. Gwen held her breath and balled her hands into fists until her nails dug into her palm.

After a long minute of mutual staring, Lock stepped back. “Oh, my God. You stupid son of a bitch.”

“What?” Gwen demanded.

“You did it, didn't you?” Lock kept going, ignoring Gwen. “You joined the Group.”

Gwen shook her head. “What's the Group?”

Lock gave a very short, brutal laugh. “They're like the National Guard. The Unit handles problems outside the States while the Group likes to handle problems inside.”

“What does that have to do with Blayne?”

“Answer her,” Lock snapped when Ric didn't respond.

Ric folded his arms over his chest, no longer looking like the sweet, unappreciated wolf she always thought of him and replied, “Blayne's name was sold. For the pit fights.”

“Sold?” Gwen tried desperately to understand all this secret agent bullshit. “You mean so she could be taken?”

“Right. Dee-Ann's been watching her to protect her.”

“That's a lie,” Lock growled. “I know Dee-Ann. She's nobody's babysitter. You've been using Blayne as bait, haven't you?” She knew what Lock said was true when Ric didn't bother denying it. But Lock snapped, not surprising since a lot of his time in the Marines was spent playing the bait for the rich fuckers who hunted their kind.

Lock's grizzly hump began to expand as he grabbed Ric by his leather jacket and lifted the wolf from the ground.
“Haven't you?”
he roared, and the wolf snarled, lips pulling back to reveal two-inch-long fangs.

“Stop it!”
Gwen yelled, slamming her body into Lock's. “Stop it right now!” When the two didn't move, she said, “Put him down!”

Lock did, dropping the wolf. Ric landed without a stumble, and Gwen stepped between the two, facing Ric. “Did you tell any of this to Blayne?” she asked him.

“No. It was decided that it was best if we didn't.”

Gwen briefly closed her eyes. “No, Ric. That was not best. Not with a wolfdog. And not with Blayne Thorpe.”

“We've got her protected.”

“Dee-Ann's with her Pack tonight,” Lock said.

“We have someone else covering her tonight.”

Lock sniffed. “Trainees.”

“You put trainees on Blayne?” This was getting worse, and Gwen quickly dug into her jeans to retrieve her cell phone.

“She'll be fine. It's not like they're fresh out of high school, Gwen.”

“You guys don't understand,” she said. “You think you know Blayne . . .” Gwen again shook her head and speed-dialed Blayne's cell. She did it two more times, knowing her friend's phone always ended up at the bottom of her bag. But after the third time of not answering, Gwen knew it was time to worry.

“Well?” Lock asked.

“She's not answering.”

“That doesn't mean—”

“You don't know Blayne!”
she yelled in Ric's face. She paced away from the men. “You don't know her at all.”

 

 

Christ, they were in so much trouble. Somehow, someway, they'd lost that damn wolfdog. Dee-Ann, also referred to around the Group office as “That Bitch” was going to have their collective asses for this. It would be especially hard to explain away considering Bo Novikov's truck was the size of a small tank and really hard to miss. But they got caught in New York traffic. It wasn't their fault!

“Turn here,” she told Tommy. He did, and after less than a mile, he pulled to a stop.

“Fuck.”

Gemma got out of the car. She pulled her weapon from the holster and quickly advanced to a damaged van and a full-human missing part of his head.

“This one got off a shot,” Tommy told her.

She nodded and walked over to Novikov's black truck. The driver's side window was broken, both front doors open. She heard House of Pain's “Jump Around” and knew someone had it as a ringtone. As she stood beside the passenger's side, she could tell it came from the backpack. Blayne Thorpe's backpack, which still had her wallet and credit cards. Nope. Not a robbery.

“I'll call Dee—” she began, but stopped when she saw the look Tommy gave her. Or, should she say, that Tommy gave whatever was behind her.

Gemma sniffed the air and unleashing her fangs, the She-leopard spun around, her claws out. The grizzly caught her by the head and lifted her off the ground. She hissed and snarled, slashing at him with her claws. She heard Tommy roar and then she was flying, right over the truck and right into her tiger partner. They hit the ground hard, rolling on impact. She got up first, and that's when she saw the black bear and the polar lumbering toward them.

Tommy was up, too, but he was about to launch himself at the grizzly. She caught his arm. “Run,” she said. And when he only stared at her, she screamed,
“Run!”

They took off, getting back to their car in seconds. She got in the driver's side, slamming the door and putting the still-running vehicle in reverse as Tommy got into the passenger side.

The car jumped back several feet, but the polar had it by the front, lifting the vehicle off the ground.

“Shit! Get him off!”

Tommy pulled his weapon and opened the window. He leaned out and started firing, hitting the polar in the shoulder and upper chest. It didn't kill him but it sure did piss him off.

He roared and yanked, tearing off the hood. But it freed up the vehicle long enough for Gemma to reverse down the street half a mile. She shifted to drive and spun the car around, heading back the way they came. Tommy relaxed back into his seat, panting, his eyes shifting from gold to brown as he tried to calm down.

“Bears?” she demanded. “Goddamn bears?”

“Not our bears.”

She knew that. Although the Group had bear team members, the bear nation, as they liked to call themselves, still did their own thing. It was a very weird and very dangerous relationship between all the breeds. Yet as long as they were left alone, bears never bothered the other shifters. But piss them off or go after one of their own and all hell could break loose.

And, at the moment, it looked as if hell was running free in Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

Yuri Novikov looked up as one of his men stood in front of him. A fellow polar, bleeding from gunshot wounds. “Full-humans?” he asked as he crouched beside a dead one.

“Nah. Cats. Military issue weapons.”

He knew it couldn't be the Unit. They didn't get involved inside U.S. borders. That left the Group.

“What does the Group have to do with this?” Yuri asked.

“Don't know.”

“Did you ask or just attack?”

The polar sniffed. “You know I hate cats.”

And wolves and coyotes and hyenas and anything else not bear.

“Your cousin?” the polar asked Yuri while trying to dig out the bullet in his shoulder with his own fingers.

“Heading home. They'll take care of him. And leave that alone.” Yuri slapped the idiot's hand away from the worsening wound. “You're worse than my grandkids.”

“Those cats may have been looking for that wolfdog.”

Then the Group could take that up with Ursus County. The wolfdog, and whether she lived or died, wasn't his problem.

“Look at this,” Yuri said, pointing at the full-human body. The polar crouched down.

“Nice cuts,” he said.

“All strategic. Major arteries only. Neck, inside thigh, upper inside arms. I haven't seen work like this since the military.”

“Your cousin?”

“The kid's a hell of a hockey player and a hell of a predator, but that's about it. Ripped-out throats and torn-out thighs are probably more his style. This . . . this takes skill. And a coldness I've only seen among the Unit.”

“The wolfdog?”

“She has no tatts. No serious scars. Kinda tiny. And the Unit doesn't take hybrids. Especially the canines. Too hard to handle. Too unstable.”

“Then who?”

“Don't know. But,” he pulled out his cell, “I better call Grigori just in case. He hates surprises, and I think he's had enough for one night, don't you?”