Bite Me (Woodland Creek) (8 page)

The snake wasn’t surrounding it in a way that suggested it was about to eat the critter, either. The artist had done an amazing job in changing the snake from looking like a fearsome creature, into something that appeared to be protecting the squirrel itself. She was jealous of how well done it was, knowing that her lousy skills, little that they were, could never compare to this, but her throat closed for a different reason.

“I didn’t know you that well back then either,” Jake said. “But I did know I loved you.”

He was going to make her cry again. He really was.

“I knew I liked you whenever you got all sassy with me and told me to bite you, and I knew I loved you when I took that bullet for you. I especially knew I would never forget you when you told me that you knew I was a cop that whole time.”

“Snakes and rodents don’t get along,” Alice said, repeating the same words she’d coyly told him one night after they’d finished having sex in her bed.

Her bed, which had been a mattress on the floor back then.

The first time she’d told him that all those years ago, when something frightening had been building between them that Alice didn’t want to name, his response had been to leave, but then to come back and show her a cute video clip of a snake and a hamster living together in harmony in some science lab in Japan.

“See?” he’d said, smiling like he was proud of himself. “They gave the hamster to the snake for him to eat, but he doesn’t eat him. They even named him.”

“They did?” she’d asked. “What did they name him?”

“Snack.”

Of course, he would remember that exact same situation.

“Don’t make me remind you of the snake and the hamster.”

Alice laughed. She couldn’t help it.

The only thing that would make this more movie-perfect was if it would start raining, but Alice never liked the idea of kissing in the rain. Getting water in her eyes while she was trying to have an emotional conversation didn’t seem so great. Especially when she couldn’t stop herself from crying anyway.

“Come here,” Jake said, and he put his arms around her and hugged her. He hugged her so tightly that the squeeze almost hurt, but she didn’t mind it. She actually kind of loved it. She loved him. More than anything else in the entire world.

His hands moved up and down her back in a slow motion slide that was so comforting and soothing it chased away everything else. Alice didn’t come out of her little Wonderland, even after Jake spoke.

He had to say it again, louder this time, before she could hear him.

“Alice,” he said, shaking her a little.

The tone of his voice was jarring after the romantic moment they’d just shared. “What? What is it?”

The look on his face wasn’t pleasant. He was frowning, and his eyes scanned the road in all directions.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, having a look with him. “I don’t see anything.”

“Yeah, exactly,” he said, which was about when Alice finally came out of it and realized what the problem was.

The police cruiser, the one with one of Rickman’s men in it that had been following them…it wasn’t there anymore, and they weren’t exactly on a road with a lot of people.

There weren’t any people around at all, and certainly no more shops on this street for them to run into for safety.

“M-maybe they’re just switching shifts?” Alice asked, hoping against all hope that was the case. The burning feeling in her gut that promised her an ulcer later on said it was something much worse, and then she could swear she heard a deep, rumbling growl coming from somewhere to their right.

She and Jake both spun around just as a massive Rottweiler stepped out from its place in the shrubs, way off from the road and in the grass.

Alice swallowed hard. Bobby hadn’t left with his friends after all. In the next moment, the dog charged.

Jake pushed Alice back. He had seconds to act. “Run! Get out of here!”

The dog barked as it ran, already almost upon them, but then it slowed to a trot, and then came to a complete and full stop ten feet away from them.

“What’s he doing?” Alice asked, clutching to the back of Jake’s shirt.

“Don’t know,” Jake said, keeping himself firmly in front of her in case the dog decided to lunge.

It was highly unlikely it was a real dog. It had to be Bobby. The smell was right on target for it to be him.

Also, the one side of the dog’s face was pretty fucked up to look at. It definitely wasn’t a real dog. No point in even entertaining that hope.

“What do you want, Bobby?” Jake called. He didn’t take his eyes off it, but he turned his head slightly to address Alice. “If he does anything, run back to Main Street and get Rickman on a phone,” he said.

He was going to find out the name of that cop who’d left them to this, and then kick his damned ass for leaving them high and dry.

Alice didn’t answer, so he was going to take that as an okay.

The dog in front of him shifted. Partly. Bobby pushed himself up onto his hind legs, and his paws turned into feet and hands, most of the fur on that muscular body falling away, but he didn’t completely melt out of his dog form. The head mutated into something that looked between vicious dog and malicious human. Bobby now had a permanent ‘fuck you’ sort of scowl on his face, thanks to the number Jake had done on it with his bite, but while his head and face was in between human and dog shape, he kept his extra-long, sharp-looking teeth right there for Jake to see. He just knew Bobby was thinking about chomping those suckers down on his flesh.

When Bobby spoke, his voice sounded somewhere between an actual human voice and a growl. It even kind of looked like he might be smiling in some crooked, toothy way.

“I always thought you might’ve fucked off somewhere, been alive this whole time,” Bobby growled. He was still smiling like he was proud. “I thought that smell was familiar when I slashed the tires on your car, but I couldn’t entirely be sure.”

“So you just slashed my tires for the fun of it?”

“Yes,” Bobby said, still smiling at Jake with that fucking stupid, asshole smile. His eyes held none of the friendliness that one would think of when they thought of a dog, when they glanced over at Alice.

Jake stepped to the side, now completely in front of Alice, preventing Bobby from even looking at her.

“Just let her go. This has nothing to do with her.”

That eerie smile left Bobby’s face. “It has everything to do with her. That little bitch was feeding secrets to a goddamned undercover cop.”

“Hey, come on now. There’s only one female dog here that I can see.”

Okay, not the best comeback in the world, but he was shocked it had the impact that it did. Bobby actually scowled at him, like what Jake had said had really bothered him.

“You shouldn’t be here, Bobby. You can’t pay off your parole officer enough to keep this from getting out and from going back to prison. For the rest of your life this time.”

Another sinister, deep-throated growl left Bobby’s muzzle, and his body started to change as he slumped forward. “I don’t care,” he said, and then he was a full-on Rottweiler again, slinking forward with red murder in his eyes.

“Okay, I really hate to say this, but you have a better chance of running if you get into your squirrel form,” he said.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Alice said as Jake backed up, pushing her back with him.

Jake quickly put his leather jacket back on. He’d need the padding for the extra protection against those teeth.

“Not kidding, now go!” he snapped, and didn’t look back to make sure if she did it or not as he charged the dog.

Bobby tried to run around him, but Jake tackled him, wrapping his arms around the beefy neck and yanking him down as Bobby turned on him and bit and slashed with his claws.

Jake hoped Alice was running.

*****

Alice ran for maybe fifty feet down the road before the police cruiser rounded a corner and made a slow, leisurely drive toward her. She was so fucking pissed off at the man that her hot anger boiled over everything, even the possibility that the cop behind the wheel might try to run her over as she ran toward him.

All she could think about was digging her fingernails into the eyes of the officer when he pulled up and got out of his car as she turned into her human form.

“
Where the hell have you been?
” she shrieked, and her hands did make a go for his eyes, as if her limbs had a mind of their own.

The only thing that saved the officer from certain blindness was the fact that he’d grabbed onto her wrists. And of course, Alice only came back to herself and realized she was probably still in trouble when the cop looked over her shoulder at the fight Jake was having with Bobby.

Alice looked, even though she didn’t want to. There was blood. It was so bright and thick that she could see it even from the distance she stood. The snarling and barking as the animal above Jake went wild, followed by the grimace and shouts of pain from Jake as he fought to keep the Rottweiler from coming at Alice and protect his face at the same time, was almost too much.

She looked at the cop. “Do something!”

His face was pale. His lips were paler as they trembled. He shook his head. “I…I can’t.”

“
What?
”

“He knows where I live. My family…”

“For fuck’s sake!” Alice reached for the man’s gun, which was still in its holster at his side. Maybe it was some sort of cop instinct to not let anyone else touch his weapon, but the officer finally seemed to wake up out of his stupor when Alice yanked on the gun. His hands were tight on her as he struggled to keep her away from his weapon.

“Stop that!” he yelled.

“Then
do
something!” Alice yelled back.

Fuck! He was going for his handcuffs.

Wait. Why was she worried about that?

Alice shifted. She did it probably faster than she’d ever done it in her entire life, becoming small, furry, and hard to get ahold of.

The cop yelled in shock, his hands flying away from her as he jumped back.

If he was being threatened by Bobby, then there was no way he couldn’t know about shifters, but having someone transform while he’d been holding onto them had clearly been a surprise.

Good. Alice was on the ground, looking up at him. People always looked so much taller and bigger than they actually were when she was in this form, but she had to act before he could stomp on her in a panic.

She leapt at him.

The cop shouted and fell back on his ass. Alice used his shock to her advantage as she shifted back into her human shape, landing on the panting cop with the dead look in his eyes.

He wasn’t just pale now. He was kind of green around his cheeks and jaw. He looked like he’d just got off the worst roller coaster ride of his life.

Alice grinned. That was exactly how she liked the look of her men. At least, whenever she was forced to surprise them like this.

“Thank you,” she said, helping herself to his gun. “I promise not to give you too much paperwork if I have to use it.”

Which was a total lie. If this guy managed to keep his job after this, he’d be forced to sit at a desk for probably the rest of his career. But he deserved it.

That was what Alice said to herself as she spun around to go back to Bobby and Jake.

She stopped dead on her feet.

Bobby was…just standing there. Ten feet away from her. He wiped some blood away from his lip on a black handkerchief, the angles of his square face and head looking so much sharper than she was used to as he spat a red gob of phlegm on the side of the road.

And Jake…Jake was lying in a crumpled heap behind him, back where the fighting had first started, face down.

His hair and the angle of his head covered most of his face, but she could still make out some of the blood that was on his cheeks and nose. His hand was pressed into a loose fist on the black road, and there was even more blood on his knuckles. There was also the great big possibility that the shiny black pool he appeared to be lying in was blood. Or maybe it was just an actual puddle and she was only making herself nervous by thinking it could be blood. It was just the angle she was looking at him from. That was all. Nothing to be worried and totally mental over…

Nothing at all…

Bobby’s chest rose and fell, panting. He actually laughed a little. “Damn. Little snake had more fight in him than I remembered he did. Not enough, though.”

He wiped some more blood off his forehead, but a red line quickly reappeared and started filling with blood again. Jake had at least made him bleed.

Alice pointed her new weapon at him.

Bobby tilted his head to the side, heavy brows coming down in a bored expression. “Do you even know how to
use
that thing?”

“Point and shoot, right?”

“Sure. In a movie.” Bobby stepped forward. “Note how I am unafraid.”

She couldn’t find the safety. She was a cat burglar, so there had never really been a need for her to learn much about guns. Not until she had to live with Bobby and his gang. Unbeknownst to Bobby, Jake had taken her to the range several times, insisting she needed to learn how to use a gun.

She’d kept up with those lessons after thinking Jake had died, when she’d been on the run from Bobby.

It took her a second to remember these sorts of guns didn’t have the traditional safeties on them that other guns could have. The safety was internal, and the gun would only fire if she pulled the trigger in just the right way.

He was getting closer, and her heart beat even faster. She couldn’t let him near her. Not one step closer!

She fired the gun. Bobby fell back several steps, as though he’d been punched hard in the shoulder.

He stood straight, his mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened as he looked at Alice. Then he looked down at his shoulder. His long jacket was black in color, so it wasn’t easy to see right off that there was a hole in the material.

But Alice could see it, and Bobby could clearly see it and feel it as he looked at it. He poked his finger into the material, as if he still couldn’t believe Alice had shot him.

Alice couldn’t believe she missed. She’d been aiming for his head, but she knew about the statistics of actually hitting a person when trying to shoot one, especially when she was as highly strung as this.

But now that she’d fired the gun once, a lot of her adrenaline left her in favor of something else that made her heart jump around in her chest and beat like crazy. Namely a great deal of terror and blood-pumping anxiety. She’d never killed a man before.

She had to glance down at Jake to remind herself of just what, and who, she would be killing Bobby for.

Bobby growled, and he looked behind her. “Are you gonna do something about this, bitch?”

Alice made the mistake of turning her head and looking back. The cop was still there. When she realized what she’d done and looked back at Bobby, it looked like he’d rushed forward another five feet.

Her heart thumped louder, harder. She was going to have her very first heart attack if she couldn’t slow it down, and she wasn’t even thirty yet!

Wouldn’t that just make things a thousand times easier for Bobby? If she died and he didn’t have to raise another finger to make it happen? Could he go back to prison for causing someone’s death just by scaring them too badly? How did the law work whenever something like that happened?

“Well?” Bobby asked.

“She’s the one with the gun,” said the cop, his voice resigned, like he was giving up.

But Alice didn’t lower her guard. She was still surrounded, and her new mission was to walk sideways several steps, until she was off the road and onto the well maintained grass, with both the cop and Bobby well in her sights. At least now, if she were to shoot again, there was no chance of accidentally hitting Jake. That was the last thing she wanted.