Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2) (19 page)

Josh offered them a pleasant nod in greeting.  “Who’s running things now?”

The female wolf ignored the question, saying, “No one here wants to see you.”

“This isn’t my show.”  Josh jerked his head my way.  “This is Caine Deathwalker.  He’s here to speak on behalf of the L.A. Courts.”

The male wolf stepped down off his porch, his gaze coming back to me, acquiring a bit more calculation.  “And he needs a cat and a half-bat to feel safe?”

I sighed.  “Too bad we can’t be intelligent about this.  Apparently, I need to make an example out of someone.”  Both my guns were in hand.  I raised the one in my right and shot the male wolf in the balls.  He grabbed himself and slammed his knees to the ground, screaming like he’d lost something important.  Several more wolves came out from behind the cabins, looking mean and pissed, but happy to have something to play with.  If I’d actually killed the wolf instead of giving him a flesh wound, they’d be coming in much faster, looking for blood.

I pointed my left gun at the woman.  “We’re using silver ammo.  The rest of you might want to think about that before irritating me.”

“We don’t have anyone in charge,” she said.  “Not really.  We got some bone-heads fighting it out, but until someone gets on top and stays there…”  She shrugged.

Vivian took a few steps toward the female wolf.  “How are they deciding things?  Ritual combat, one challenger at a time?”

The wolf bitch nodded.

The wolf I’d shot was dragged away.  The rest of the wolves spread out, a half-moon around us.  One of them with red-tipped blond hair scowled at the female wolf.  He said, “Marsha, shut up.”

She didn’t.  “Standing around and beating your chest may feel good, but it comes with a hell of a price.  Not cooperating with the liger got five wolves killed last time, including our old Alpha.”

The male wolf glared until she dropped her eyes.  He said, “Doesn’t matter.  Wolf business is for wolves.”

She shrugged and headed back inside her cabin, muttering over her shoulder, “Whatever.”

I pointed a gun at Red-tips.  “You—take us to where the dominant wolves are fighting, or I’ll sic the liger on you.”

Josh raised his eyebrows at my statement, but didn’t contradict me.

Red-tips looked me over.  “Who’d you say you were?”

Josh’s voice casually boomed out, “He’s the Red Moon Demon.  I’d step lively if I were you.  Cars everywhere fear him.”

Shoot one VW…

Red-tips looked doubtful.  “Really, I thought you’d be taller.  Well, you better be who you say, or it will go badly—for us both.  I’ll just get beaten, but you?  Well, the top three have been working up a hell of an appetite.”  He pointed at Josh and Vivian.  “You stay, but the bitch can come.”

“You know,” Josh sounded slightly whimsical, “there aren’t a lot of you wolves left.  You don’t really want to get in my way.”  He stared at the wolves.

One by one, they dropped their gazes.  Josh headed between the cabins.  No one tried to stop him. 

He smiled to himself.  “That’s what I thought.”

Taking point, Josh strolled ahead.  I followed with Vivian at my right side, and took the opportunity for a closer look at the wolves escorting us.  When a pack loses their Alpha, it hurts them all—there’s no core to their pack magic, no sense of stability to their ties—but these wolves took starved and dirty to a whole new level.  They didn’t seem to notice my stare, keeping attention on Josh.  Their eyes betrayed no fear, but I smelled its stink on the air.  They were easily cowed, like puppies beaten into timidity. 

Were I capable of mercy, I might have felt sorry for them.

THIRTEEN

Throw a wolf a bone and

he’ll take your hand too.

                                 
              
—
Caine Deathwalker

We curved around a ranch house with stucco walls the color of butterscotch.  The inside curtains were drawn, no sign of life.  Oddly, our werewolf escort grew silent, scarcely seeming to breathe.  None of them looked at the structure.  The backs of a few of the wolves shuddered with the twitchiness that comes from a close threat.

Interesting.

A change of wind brought a charnel house smell—old, rotted blood, decomposing flesh.  I gave Vivian a hard look, then shifted my eyes to the building, my way of saying we need to check that place out—discretely.

She nodded subtly.

Threading a grove of oak, she slid around a tree bole and vanished in a moment when only I watched her.  As we broke between two natural columns of white-gray granite, one of the wolves noticed her absence.

“Where’s the dhampyr?” he asked.

“She stopped to take a piss,” I said.  “She’ll catch up soon.”

“I should go find her,” the submissive wolf said.

I smiled.  “Yeah, you go do that.  Walk up on a high-strung dhampyr with her drawers around her feet.  Startle someone whose guns are loaded with silver ammo.  That’s real smart.”

Another wolf told him, “It’s just a bitch.  Forget about her.”

The wolf growled annoyance, but dropped the issue, staying with Josh and me, and the rest of the wolves.  The misogynistic attitude didn’t surprise me.  While European wolf packs were matriarchal, the American ones were patriarchal.  They had dominant females among the higher males, but they were skilled warriors who’d fought for respect, claw and fang.  Having pumped iron and learned martial arts in their human form hadn’t hurt.

We broke into the open and walked over to the edge of a depression too shallow to be called a pit, though it had a coliseum feel.  The far lip had a shell of rock along it.  Our side had a couple more pillars, pointed at the top like fangs sticking out of the ground.  Down in the flat center of the bowl were four wolves.  One was on his knees, off to the side.  His neck was mending from a terrible wound.  We seemed to have arrived during an intermission.

Josh noticed the injured wolf.  “He’s out of the running.  Looks like he had to offer his throat in submission to stay alive.”

Red-tips nodded.  “It’s the way of the challenge.  The defeated wolf must yield or die.”  He pointed at the center wolf among those standing.  “That’s our shaman.  He isn’t fighting to lead the pack, more like a referee.”

“What happens in case of a draw?” I asked.

Red-tips answered after a long pause, “The shaman gets to kill the one he thinks is weakest.”

I huffed something close to a laugh.  “I wouldn’t mind that job.”

“Trust me,” Josh said.  “Killing gets old fast.  The worst part is when they beg for their lives.  I mean, I believe in the milk of human kindness, when appropriate, but wolves tend to be too stupid to learn from their mistakes, not like natural wolves at all.  There are times when mercy is simply pointless.”

“I’m right here, you know?”  Red-tips growled under his breath.  “C’mon, let’s get this over with.”

The forty-foot basin sloped gently to its center, covered in a dry brown grass that needed watering with something other than blood.  We kicked over an occasional skull on the way down, crunching assorted bones underfoot.  The two contending wolves looked up at our approach.  Both were bare-chested and in human form, but with claws and wolf teeth in evidence, faces twisted and bestial.  They took in the liger and froze, eyes flooding with golden rage.  The tension in their bodies doubled.  I smelled adrenaline hitting their system as we stopped a few feet away.

The air also reeked of pack magic, strongest around the shaman.  He gave no sign he was worried about anything.  His human face displayed only mild curiosity with the slight lifting of his brows.  He wore torn jeans, boots, and a black, sun-faded Metallica tee shirt.  His long brown hair fanned behind him.  The only mystic items I saw on him were a copper wristband with crossed eagle feathers made of turquoise, and a necklace of teeth, wolf teeth.  His facial features didn’t look Native American, but a lot of Indian blood was thinner these days.

Unlike the other waiting wolves, the shaman’s stare was fixed on me.  I figured he was sensing the dormant dragon magic of my tattoos.  He’d know I was a special threat the others might overlook.  “Why have you come uninvited into one of our most sacred ceremonies?”

I started to answer, but paused, noticing that when he spoke the bone splinters in the grass vibrated, giving off a soft whirr. 
Yeah, this guy is for real.
  “I may not have an invitation, but I do have a get-outta-jail card.  Here…”  Slowly—not wanting to provoke an attack—I drew a crumpled envelope from my side coat pocket and held it out.