Big Bad Bite (18 page)

Jenna suddenly had the overwhelming urge to
fill that reporter with bullet holes. She was never going to live
down that damn picture of her in her sports bra!

“Up yours, Ivanov. We all can’t have a rack
like my partner here to lure innocent reporters into her web of
camera hog-ism. Although, I have to tell ya’ Jenna, if I did have a
rack like yours, I’d probably play with them all the time.”

Totally disgusted with the lack of male
maturity between the two supposedly grown men in the room, she used
her hand to swat Kent upside the back of his head. “Focus, you
pervert.”

“Alright, alright already. Anyway, Ivanov,
yeah, it’s about what you saw in the papers. These were not your
run of the mill idiot criminals. These were eight criminals of the
Other
variety. Wolf shifters to be more precise. We’re
trying to figure out why they would do something so brazen to draw
attention to themselves. Even if we hadn’t killed them during the
rescue, and if they had managed to escape the hundreds of cops
surrounding the restaurant, the minute their wanted pictures were
released to the media, they would have been recognized and issued
death sentences.”

The playful, lazy demeanor had disappeared
from Gage and he was now one hundred percent focused on what was
being said. “Do you know what pack they were from or if they had a
pack?”

She’d been quietly fascinated by the
immediate change in fur ball’s attitude while he listened to Kent’s
rundown of events, but now she jumped in before her partner could
answer the question. Making sure she made eye contact with Gage so
she could catch the full range of whatever reaction he might have,
she answered, “The Corvus Pack.”

His brows shot up to his hairline in obvious
surprise; she had a feeling that this was a man who was not
surprised easily. After a moment, which Jenna had spent watching
what she could swear were literal wheels turning in the tiger’s
head, he murmured, “You’re absolutely sure about that?”

Jenna nodded her head as Kent answered with a
low, ‘yes’. The quiet that descended the house as she and Kent
waited for his response was consuming. In fact, it was so quiet she
could hear crickets starting to chirp in the yard around the house,
an extremely relaxing sound. So when a loud ‘
thwack
’ hit the
glass set of French doors closest to them, she damn near jumped out
of her skin. Looking over, she saw an orange tiger with one paw
against the doorframe holding its body upright while its face was
pressed against the glass so that its nose was smashed up too.

Gage’s growl of frustration made her jump
again, “Come on Babushka! You’re getting nose prints all over the
glass.” Walking over, he turned the knob on the door, and then
swung it open for the tiger to slowly stroll in. Jenna could now
smell that it was a female and she watched the unknown woman’s fur
and muscle ripple through her body as she shifted while still
walking towards them, never missing a step. That trick alone was
enough for her to know that this female tiger might have the outer
appearance of youth, but she was old. As in really, really old.

Even in her limited education on
Others
, Jenna had picked up the fact that it took hundreds
of years to be able to shift with that kind of ease. Well, that was
if you weren’t her. It was one of the minor secrets she still
managed to keep from everyone she wasn’t related to. However, she
couldn’t shift that effortlessly while walking yet. And how much
easier could the tigress have made it look when she’d so
effortlessly transferred from one form to the other without so much
as a hitch in her step?

By the time the tigress was just a few feet
away from Kent, standing as a naked human, Jenna thought Kent’s
tongue might loll out of his head like a panting dog. She had to
admit though, the tigress was utterly striking with her carrot top
red hair, lustfully glittering feline golden brown eyes, and pin-up
curvy body. The woman also seemed to be entirely oblivious to the
fact that Gage’s eyes were starting to haze over in
frustration.

With the type of voice that Jenna could
undoubtedly describe as a phone sex operator’s purr, she said in
halting English leaden with a thick Russian accent, “Hello there,
boy who is big. You are very hot with the smoke for one so young.”
Running a fingertip down Kent’s cheek, then lightly over his lips
she murmured, “Would you like a Momma filled with sugar?”

Gage hung his head in mortification, Kent
looked as if he had a winning lottery ticket, and for once Jenna
covered her
own mouth
with her
own hand
to try and
stop the laughter that was burning her through chest. She knew she
shouldn’t remove her hand, that saying anything at all was risking
the ire of the annoyed male across the room by the French doors,
but she just couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke at his obvious
humiliation after he’d needled her so badly earlier with his
sister’s clothes.

So now Jenna was going to needle Gage back.
Tucking her hands in her front pockets, she cleared her throat to
get the woman’s attention, and once she had it she said, “I’m sorry
ma’am, did you mean to say that Kent is a ‘big boy’ who is ‘smoking
hot’ and that you’d like to be his ‘sugar Momma’?”

The woman’s face brightened like a flippin’
Christmas tree when she smiled, “Yes, yes! Thank you tiny, pretty
wolf. My Lulu, she teach me your American lingo. Such a sweet
granddaughter. She said I had to work on my eater of man game.”

Kent had started to inch closer to the
insanely beautiful woman, who apparently was Gage’s grandmother
although she didn’t look a day over thirty five. Kent had the look
of an eager puppy ready for his treat, his hand already on the move
to grab his prize, when all of a sudden there was a giant sized
obstacle in between Kent and the naked man-eater-in-training of a
grandmother.

Gage.

He bared his teeth at Kent before spitting
out, “She’s off limits to you, man whore.”

Before Kent could get a word in, the
grandmother peeked around her grandson’s massive shoulder. “He is a
whore of men?” Looking suddenly forlorn she added, “That is
disappointment big.” Turning her head to look at Jenna she asked,
“Why are all of the pretty ones always – wait what is that word,
Gage? When they are the lovers of men?”

Kent’s face turned purple and he started
sputtering. Or maybe he was having one of those epileptic seizures
again… it was kind of hard for Jenna to tell the difference when
her eyes were tearing up in mirth.

She didn’t bother trying to hide the
body-jarring laughs that racked her body. She was laughing so hard
that tears started slipping down her cheeks. Gage’s grin was so
wide; his face looked as if it might split in half when he
answered, “Gay, Babushka. Men who love men are gay. Now go get
dressed so we can go see Alec.”

Carrot top clapped her hands in delight, “We
go to fights, my Gage? Good, good! I’ll get dressed like bitch who
is sexy and grab my purse. There will be betting at the fights, and
I can bet a wad of fat cash on my darling little, Alec!”

Jenna watched Carrot top race down the
hallway before she looked back to Gage, “What fights?”

Gage’s grin went from bright amusement at my
still sputtering partner to a devious sexy smolder aimed at me.
“We’re going to The Arena, sweetheart. Where every well-to-do
Other
goes to have a little fun, and the unsavory of us go
to indulge in our vices. Ready to take a walk on the wild side with
me?”

Good gravy!

She wasn’t so worried about that walk as she
was about the unsavory part, and her being a cop and about to walk
into a confirmed den of depravity. And here she was still dressed
like a skanky streetwalker, too. She could just see the headline
that the newspaper reporters would write on her next, after she was
arrested coming out of this hellhole.

HERO COP TURNS HOOKER

Great. Just flippin’ great.

Chapter Nine

Walking through the low lit alley, Jenna watched as Gage stopped at
a metal door and banged on it harshly. She had to physically stop
herself from rolling her eyes when she saw a clichéd small
partition slide open at the top so a pair of eerie yellow canine
eyes peeked through at their group. It was like she’d jumped onto
the scene of a bad gangster movie. The only thing that could make
it worse was if the guy asked for a password.

The body behind the door barked,
“PASSWORD?”

After that one word, Jenna lost the battle
and crossed her eyes. Just when she’d thought it couldn’t get any
worse. Gage murmured something back and the door silently eased
open far enough to allow them to entry in a single file line. Gage
was the first through the door with his grandmother Vera following.
Jenna was behind Vera, with Kent walking so close behind her that
she had to stifle the urge to turn around and tell him that she had
already bought herself a new coat this year, so he could get the
hell off of her back. The second Kent had stepped through the
narrow opening of the door, it was slammed shut behind him and her
sensitive ears could hear the numerous bars sliding into place
inside the door as it locked. They stood in a small room with
cement walls and floor that circulated stale air until the boorish
guard stepped up to another door that was hooked up to an
electronic keypad. Using his body to block the view, he quickly
punched in a succession of buttons before several clicks were
heard, and then the guard opened the door to wave them through.

She couldn’t help but be a little surprised
at all of the security just to get into a place that Gage had
simply referred to as, The Arena. Once again, they moved as a group
through the door, but this time it wasn’t into a small space with
stale air. Dozens of new scents immediately assaulted Jenna’s nose
and she wrinkled it against the repugnant onset. Smoke from
cigarettes or cigars wafted over underlying tones of perfumes,
colognes, sweat, alcohol, and the muskiness of lust. The smells
weren’t surprising. What was shocking, was the enormous club that
she would have never guessed to be there.

On the outside, it had looked like a large
brick two story strip mall. It had approximately six store fronts
with various businesses such as a Laundromat, a small Mom &
Pop’s Steakhouse, a clothing store, a Sushi restaurant, and a spa
salon where, according to their sign, you apparently could get the
‘total package’ in just a few short hours and feel like a brand new
woman. Seeing as though she’d never been much of a salon kind of
girl, Jenna had no clue what the hell a ‘total package’ could be.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know either. It seemed like an odd
collection of businesses put together in a strip mall, but she
shrugged it off as no big deal. Now she could catch the occasional
whiff of steak or sushi, and it dawned on her. They probably owned
the whole strip mall, where they could easily hide the dimensions
of this extensive club behind and below it, and they’d put in
businesses that could be used by their customers in or out of the
club. It was a smart combo.

The door they entered through brought them
out by a bar that curved along with the wall it branched off of.
Right off, she could tell it was a unique set up unlike anything
else she’d ever seen or heard of. It was like a roman gladiator
arena meets sci-fi futuristic techno. The entire club had a general
oval shape of a Roman Coliseum. The floors and walls that connected
to the step, or level below it, were all made of stone that looked
as if could have been transplanted from the ancient Rome itself.
Looking up she could see a couple of stone staircases with metal
hand railings placed on either end of the oval that led up to a top
floor. That floor seemed to be lined with numerous rooms all the
way around, which could only be made out in the sexy red lighting
that shined from the outer rims of the ceiling by the black painted
doors covered in metal cage bars, and large mirrored windows that
dotted the outside of the deep beige faux stone painted walls.

Looking ahead and down, Jenna saw that there
were two levels lower than the one she stood on, making the club a
total of four levels. Unlike the top fourth level, the bottom three
levels had no rooms or walls. The only thing that kept patrons from
falling from one level to another was a glass-like half wall
railing with a thick metal bar on top that ran the entire
circumference of the floor. The third level that she stood on was
lighted a brilliant blue that peeked through small holes in the
level’s walls, shining like stars in the night sky. It had a
ridiculously long bar featuring bright neon lights on the front
face of the black wood and a stainless steel encased bar that ran
along the length side of the oval building. Mirrors were used as
decorations in between the shelves along the walls behind the bar
for storage of liquor bottles. The rest of the third floor was
dotted with numerous gambling tables. Several card games were in
progress, as well as a craps, roulette, and black jack. A few slot
machines were littered here or there, along with a couple of
machines that looked like they might be video poker. She didn’t
need to take that trip to Vegas after all, seeing that they had
their own ‘Vegas Strip’ right here.

Men and women carrying trays or working the
gambling tables moved through the crowds dressed in apparel that
looked reminiscent to what slaves of the time had probably worn.
With bare, shiny, oiled chests, the handsome male employees wore
nothing except for teeny tiny loin cloths, in a fabric that was
practically see through because of its luminescent quality. Jenna
had never seen fabric glow quite like these did. She felt her
cheeks heat when she realized that she could easily make out the
outline of what she guessed were extremely well endowed men as they
moved through the club doing their jobs.