Werewulf Journals 2: Trolling for Love (18 page)

That bitch and her pup are lethal. They’d make a fine set of guards.” His lips curved in a baiting smile, and he turned taunting eyes on his quiet companion. “I still can’t believe they took Kerry out with just cookie dough and a skillet.”

“Taylor ...” Chase spoke only the one word, the rumble of low thunder in his voice.

The black wulf huffed, but subsided. “You keep stealing my joy, boss man.”

“Children, can we focus on the problem at hand? Keep your mouths shut and your eyes on the screen.”

“Does that mean I can’t kiss my husband?” Hands on her hips, Fort’s Hispanic lady closed the front door behind her, eyebrows raised at the edict she’d heard Hunter lay down.

Hunter’s lips twitched. Rosa always made him smile. She was such a short, lively little bundle. Plenty of spunk, though not enough curves for his taste. Still, Fort seemed taken with her, and that was the only thing that mattered. “I wasn’t talking about you, Rosa, but you newlyweds kiss so much I’m surprised your lips haven’t fallen off.”

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“Look who’s talking!” Rosa muttered under her breath, reaching up to greet her husband. “Eh, hombre mia, ¿cómo es ustéd? Whadid I miss?” She landed a smacking kiss on Fort’s pursed lips.

“I’m fine, baby and you’ve missed nothing. Except for Hunter taking a break to fuck Auntie Mel, there’s been no other excitement since you left.”

“Hey Fort ... TMI! Keep a civil tongue in your mouth!” Melody gasped.

“Or in mine,” Rosa suggested, going up for another kiss.

Hiding his grin, Hunter picked up the remote and moved to where Melody was perched on the edge of the wide armchair. Lifting her up, he sat and plopped her down on his lap, one arm going round her thick waist to hold her across his knees.

“Let’s get this over with, shall we? Watch carefully. I need you to find any and every advantage, something we can use against this troll.” He pushed the pause button a second time and the playback resumed.

Hunter watched as an aerial camera panned over the bridge, highlighting the devastation of lives lost as the troll, to establish the perimeters of its territory, ruthlessly used humans and their vehicles.

With seemingly indiscriminate force, the creature snatched cars and vans, SUVs, and cycles off the ground and hurled them through the air. They fell on other vehicles trying to swerve out of the way, or crashed down onto other vehicles already disabled. Traffic quickly snarled. The line snaked back toward Marin County, clogging the roads leading up to the toll bridge. The footage ended with the troll in command of the bridge, before Hunter had arrived on the scene.

The next portion, from another camera angle, showed much the same carnage and destruction, but shot from a closer range. The cameraperson had captured the image of the troll close up and everyone looked on as the hairy beast snarled into the camera. As the video scanned down the lumpish, hulking body, Melody and Rosa both gasped.

“What is it, hon?” Hunter asked softly, soothing his mate with a gentle sweep of hands.

She settled against him with a slight shake of her head. Her eyebrows drew together. “Maybe nothing ...” she murmured, still watching the screen. “ We’ll see ...”

The last footage was from very close up, no more then twenty feet, taken with a digital zoom lens. Hunter sat up straighter, lips tightening as he recognized the camera angle. This segment of the CD had to be police generated, from where the city officials, the commissioner and the NHP team had stood.

“That son of a dog!” Hunter leaned forward, causing Mel to clasp his neck to keep from sliding off his canted lap. “He’s been compiling proof ... or blackmail material on me --

possibly on all of us.” He thought about the implications of that, the hand holding the remote coming up to rub against the grain of his heavy five o’clock shadow. “We’ll have to do something about this.”

94 Camille Anthony

The screen now showed Hunter walking toward the center of the bridge, his broad back to the camera, encased in the plaid shirt and blue jeans. Wincing, Hunter watched his image being swept upside down and shaken. He saw the peppermint candies showering out his pockets and cringed as his image landed head down on the deck, casually discarded by the creature greedily stuffing the candies into its gaping mouth.

As everyone looked on, Hunter talked on the walkie-talkie, ordered all cameras off the bridge and away; he removed his shirt and boots and slid into the fighting structure of mid-form -- the half-wulf, half-humanoid shape that loomed large and fierce, the stuff of nightmares.

The fight that took place caused the bridge to sway and creak, the struts and stays --

designed to resist a magnitude eight earthquake -- groaning under the massive shocks of otherworldly, animalistic energy.

They broke apart, Hunter bending over to suck in deep gulps of air, the troll to squat in the center of its cleared territory, eyes glaring accusingly. A large fist pounded the street. The troll’s mouth, opened, formed two words ... no three. Hunter, remembering the shock of hearing it talk, recalled the words: G’way! Mine! Mine ...

He sighed, now, as he watched the replay, unable to deny the thing that had been niggling at him, causing him to doubt himself. The thing -- no, the troll, whatever its name might be -- was sentient, a thinking being.

High and piercing, as clear as it had been in real life, the troll’s trilling keen rose in volume, its agonizing shriek causing the five wulves to cringe and cover their ears. Eyes squinting against the pain, Hunter noticed Rosa and Melody exchanging glances, smiles blossoming on their faces. How could they stand the noise? How could they smile while he and the other wulves were writhing in agony?

He pointed the remote and pushed the stop button. The relief was instantaneous.

Resting his head on Melody’s breast, Hunter’s chest rose on a grateful sigh. Ears blessedly numb, he rolled his forehead against her chest, resting in the circle of her arms.

“I can’t stand that trilling noise the thing makes. It’s worse than fingernails on a chalkboard! It kept on and on like that the entire time I was there at the bridge.”

Chase stood up and walked closer to the television, bending down for a closer look at the troll. “You didn’t tell me about the noise earlier, Hunter.”

“Other than giving me a massive migraine, I didn’t think it was that big a deal. Was I wrong?”

“Oh yes. I think you’re in deep shit, man.”

Chase’s words, spoken in a carefully neutral voice, brought his head up and around. His cousin’s serious face confronted him. The immediate urge to bash it in almost overwhelmed him. Melody must have felt him tense, for she leaned into his side, wrapped her arms tighter around his neck and pressed close, hindering his instinctive surge upward.

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Chase had betrayed him. It was impossible to look at him without wanting to kill.

Heart stumbling, Hunter stiffened his shoulders. The soft, clinging weight of his woman helped calm his instincts, and allowed him the space to control the urge to rend and tear.

Shuddering, Hunter pushed his anger aside. He needed answers to questions, information only Chase had. He had no choice but to work with him. Somewhere -- Hunter knew, buried under his present anger -- lurked the life-long love he had shared with his cousin. That alone held his hand, postponed his justice. Family connection notwithstanding, he’d never forget that Chase had tried to steal the love of his life, the only woman ever to hold his heart.

Through trickery and underhanded collusion, Chase had breeched his den, had planned and almost carried out the heinous act of what Melody would consider rape. For that, she deserved justice. There was a reckoning due, and one day, Chase would pay in full.

Until then, he’d try his best to keep his cool. The calming touch of Melody’s hand on his helped ... a lot.

Hunter’s voice grated when he asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Because that’s not trilling the troll is doing. It’s trolling.”

Rosa jumped up, clapping her hands. “I get it! It’s trolling for love! Isn’t that sweet?”

“What?” Hunter came to his feet so fast; he spilled Melody out of his lap. Absently catching her before her full bottom hit the floor, he set her on her feet while staring in confusion at the hyperactive antics of Fort’s Hispanic woman. “Calm down and try to make sense, Rosa.”

She couldn’t be still. “Oh, for heavens sake, Hunter, don’t you get it? The troll is looking for a mate!”

“No fucking way!” Hunter’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “How the hell does it expect to find a female troll in San Francisco?”

Rosa planted her hands on her hips. “Men are so blind,” she said, sharing a female-knows-best look with Melody.

“Too true,” he heard his mate agree. “Hunter obviously wouldn’t know a breast if he socked one ... which he did.” A glint that boded evil for him sparked in her eyes. “It only took one glance for me to realize that troll was female.”

Consternation was a rock thudding in the pit of his stomach. Hunter felt sick when he remembered how hard he’d hit the troll in the -- great heavens! -- he’d hit a female in her breasts ... hard! He gagged. “Mother Night!”

Melody patted him on the arm. “You didn’t have any way of knowing, Hunter.”

“You knew.” He didn’t see how she could have, but both she and Rosa had known the troll’s sex immediately. “How did you know?”

96 Camille Anthony

“Well, on my part, it was pure instinct. Any time my man gets up close and personal with a female, alarm bells are gonna go off.” Melody shrugged. “They went off. Especially when she said, ‘Mine!’ the way she did. That possessive note just sounded feminine to me.”

Hunter rubbed the back of his neck, wondering if his embarrassment could get any worse. “I swear she didn’t seem at all feminine to me.”

“It’s not your fault, Tio Hunter, really.” Rosa tapped her foot, and, barely holding back peals of laughter, drawled, “After all, how could any male -- no matter the species -- imagine a female being a big, strong creature ... especially when she wipes the floor with his ass.”

Hunter’s lips thinned. “It’s not a laughing matter. I take hitting a female very seriously.”

Rosa laughed harder. “Of course you do, Uncle.”

“The stench made my eyes water and the smell of carnage had the ... er ... inner me straining at the leash. Besides, the last thing I was expecting was a courting female. She certainly wasn’t all sweetness and light toward me ...”

“Any old excuse will do ...”

“Rosa!” Fort’s voice held a sharp note. “Take a chill pill.”

With a sly grin directed at Taylor, Rosa borrowed his earlier taunt. “Aw, you keep stealing all my joy, boss man.”

Fortrayn cocked his head and held out a hand, silently demanding Rosa come to his side. With an exasperated sigh, she did as he bade her, settling down beside him on the loveseat Melody had found last month at a yard sale. Looking at it now, Hunter still couldn’t understand what was so exciting about bargaining down the price on a used couch when she had enough money to buy anything new she set her heart on.

Behind Rosa’s back, Hunter flashed his young protégé a thumbs-up gesture, glad to see Fort exerting his Alpha role in the relationship. Melody whacked him on the back of the head. “That’s what gets you guys in trouble ... always going too far.”

Rubbing his scalp, Hunter looked around the room. “So, how do we get a love-sick troll off the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“On the East coast, we run into trolls more often. We’ve found ways of dealing with them. Until now, it has always been the males occupying the bridges. We were given to understand they were responsible for supplying the home.” He frowned in thought. “There’s only one way that I can think of,” Chase said, sitting back down and crossing his legs at the ankle. “We’ll have to lure her off the bridge.”

Hunter narrowed his eyes, hating he had no answers. It burned him that now of all times he must obligate himself to his cousin in order to solve the problem facing his city, his territory. “And how are we going to do that?”

Chase’s eyes looked bruised when he met his hard gaze and Hunter saw this new estrangement was painful to him. He hardened his heart. The damned dog should have Werewulf Journals 2: Trolling for Love

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thought his asinine plan all the way through before acting on it. Now he could fucking live with the consequences.

Reading the banked vengeance in Hunter’s eyes, Chase smiled without mirth. “We secure a male troll and use him as bait, of course. If she accepts the troll’s suit, she’ll have to follow him home to his bridge.”

98 Camille Anthony

Rosa and Melody watched the wulves peel away from the curb, Hunter leading out on his Harley Road King, Fortrayn riding pillion behind him. As one, they turned from the window and stared at each other in exasperation.

“’It’s too dangerous for you women. Stay home and man the phones for us,’” Rosa sing-sang, her voice filled with disgust. “Can you believe the nerve of those guys?”

Melody shook her head. “Can you believe their insanity, thinking we’re actually going to do what they suggested?” She picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV “Come over here. I want to show you something I noticed earlier.”

When the playback began, she stopped frequently, enlarging the frames that showed the cars and their inhabitants. “Notice anything unusual?”

Rosa leaned forward, studying the video with eyes squinted, intent on every facet of action. “They’re all males. The drivers of the cars she stopped from crossing her barrier were all driven by men.”

“Good. Now, watch this ...” She fast-forwarded to the scenes showing the troll squatting on the bridge, banging her fist on the gray macadam. “There! Do you see it?”

She still-paused the last frame, fingered the zoom button and brought the troll’s face into sharp focus.

“¡Madre de Dios! Pobrecita! Oh, Melody! The poor thing ...”

“Is crying,” Melody finished quietly. “Our guys are going about this thing all the wrong way, Rosa. We have to do something before they screw up royally.”