Moon's Law (New Moon Wolves 2 ~ Bite of the Moon ~ BBW Romance) (6 page)

Or, maybe, it wasn’t him the shooter was after. Maybe this had nothing to do with him at all. Kane glanced at the back-seat of his cruiser. What if the two men he’d taken into custody were in some kind of trouble? Was that why one of them had already been shot? Was this a professional hit of some kind?

Another bullet came toward him, this one closer than the others. It skidded across the hood of the cruiser and he ducked out of the way, watching as the bullet fell harmlessly to the ground and landed next to his shoe. He picked it up and frowned at the warm bullet. The metal was bright, similar to chrome, instead of the usual brassy yellow. Strange. Slipping it into his pocket, he focused back on locating the shooter.

But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t see anyone and bullets kept coming at regular intervals. Out of patience, Kane fired a shot…which promptly lost itself in a pine tree.  With no clear target, his aim was off.

A car whizzed past, oblivious to the shootout in process. Looking down the road, Kane spotted a semi with two trailers headed his way. Clearing his throat, he yelled, "This is your last warning. Surrender now, or I will shoot to kill."

The sound of harsh laughter filled the air. "Stupid wolf. There is no surrender. Only death."

Kane ducked down low as a succession of bullets was launched toward him. "What do you mean wolf?" Did this have something to do with being a werewolf?

"Your kind must die. All of you. I’m the hand of right, the heart of justice, and the blood of the pure."

"What the hell?" Kane muttered to himself. The guy sounded like a racial purity wing nut, one who knew about werewolves. The realization sent a chill up Kane's spine. 

The semi reached them then, lumbering past with a roar and blocking the shooter. Kane took advantage of the lull and pulled out his phone, reaching out to the only person he knew could help: Tao. The big alpha and his two brothers had stayed in Glen Vine to help the people who’d been bitten. Partly, Kane felt, to absolve them of the fact that their fourth brother had been the one who'd done the biting. They had other reasons to stick around, too. From what he’d been told and overheard, the brothers hadn’t exactly been wanted in their own pack. They needed a new home, and Glen Vine needed some experienced werewolves to show the new ones the way forward.

As a bonus, Tao and his brother Leo were crazy strong. And Kai, the third brother, had some kind of magic mojo thing that could be useful. Or so Kane had heard. He would prefer to believe magic didn’t exist, that deductive reasoning made the world go round, but now that he turned furry and howled at the moon on a regular basis, he had to accept there was more to the world than science and cold, hard facts.

Fingers flying over his phone, he sent a quick text to Tao. If anyone would know what to do it would be him. Failing that, he could call in the shooting and get some back-up, but his instincts said the less humans involved the better on this one.

His phone vibrated with a response from Tao.

Where are you?

Kane texted back his location.
What do I do?

I’ll be there in a second. Sit tight.

The semi was gone now, leaving the cruiser wide open. The shooter didn’t waste time slinging more bullets. "Come on, wolf. Let’s make it a clean kill."

Kane pressed against the cold metal of his cruiser and tried to think. Crawling forward, he peeked around the bumper, figuring the shooter would be watching the hood. Nothing. He saw nothing but woods and brush. Where the hell was the shooter?

As if in answer to his question, something moved in the shadows across the street and a man stepped forward. Tall and broad, he wore camo gear with a sash of bullets over his chest. He held a rifle in his hands, and his gaze was fixed on the police cruiser.

He whistled. "Here, wolfie, wolfie."

Kane grimaced at his attacker’s sneering contempt and scooted back to the passenger door, which gave him more cover.

"I’m not alone," he called out, hoping to stall the man. He checked his phone, looking for evidence that his words were true, but Tao hadn’t sent any new texts.

The shooter snorted. "You mean those two humans in your back-seat? You already tied them up for me. What are they going to do?"

"I wasn’t talking about them." Kane wiped sweat from his brow and looked at his phone again. Still no messages. Where was he? Hoping to stall things, he yelled out, "And besides, I’m armed, and now you’re out in the open." Not willing to risk his head, he put his gun up and let loose one shot. Unfortunately, even his keen senses weren’t able to do much blind. The bullet went wide.

"How many bullets you got left, Sheriff? How many extra clips do you carry? By my count you’re on your last clip and only have a few more bullets before you’re out. Feel free to keep wasting them. It makes my job easier."

"Job? This is a job for you?"

"Of a kind. Some would say it’s a calling." Boots scuffed on the ground, sending little bits of gravel skittering across the road.

"Don’t come any closer," Kane said, infusing his voice with as much authority as he could muster. "I will shoot you."

"You can try, Sheriff, but you’ll miss because you can’t risk exposing your head to get a visual on me. I’ve got my rifle trained on your cruiser and I’m just as fast as your wolf is."

Kane looked at the brush in front of him and considered running for it, but that would mean leaving the men in the cruiser behind. Spotting the side mirror, he grabbed it and pulled with all his strength. The metal groaned and bent before finally snapping free. He then raised his hand up, flashing his gun over the hood and causing the shooter to take a shot. As fast as the man had boasted he was, Kane had no problem evading the bullet.

Mirror in one hand, gun in the other, Kane army-crawled to the back end of the cruiser. Raising up the mirror, he tried to get a look at the shooter, but all he could see was the man’s elbow and a bit of his thigh. The angle wasn’t right, and he saw more of the cruiser’s back window than anything else. Ducking down, he looked under the car, thinking to target the shooter’s feet, but his boots lined up with the cruiser’s front tire. Kane didn’t have a shot.

Damn it. Where’s Tao?

Kane slumped back on the ground and then made a quick decision. Cocking back his arm, he heaved the mirror into the woods, wanting to make it appear as if he’d made a run for it. While that drew the shooter’s attention, he jumped to his feet and took aim with his gun.

The shooter saw him, though, and raised his rifle at the same pace as Kane’s. They both shot. Kane’s bullet flew past the shooter’s shoulder, while the shooter’s bullet hit the passenger window. Again.

"Oh no," Kane groaned softly. Sure enough, when he ducked to avoid the shooter’s next shot, he caught sight of another bloody head with empty eyes and the neck at an odd angle. The other man hadn’t stayed down and had paid the price for it. Damn it.

"Why are you killing them?" he shouted, angry, not just at the shooter, but at his own inability to protect them. "They’ve done nothing to you."

"They were interfering with my hunt, trying to take my kill from me." There was a click as the shooter reloaded his gun. "And they made good target practice."

Anger pushed Kane to act. Jumping up, he aimed for the shooter once again, determined not to miss, but before he could take the shot, a large, moving blur rammed into the man, throwing him to the ground. Kane blinked until his eyes could make sense of the action.

The blur was Tao.

Chapter Nine

The men tumbled to the ground, striking each other with fists. The rifle lay abandoned on the street. Kane ran out and grabbed it, figuring Tao could hold his own against pretty much anyone. He popped the trunk and dropped the weapon inside for safekeeping.

When Kane shut the trunk, he found another blur had joined the fray. This one he recognized as Leo because of the long blond hair. Within seconds, the two brothers had the shooter subdued, pinning him to the concrete. He didn’t stop struggling though, and finally, Leo just hauled off and punched him in the face, rendering the man unconscious.

Tao looked to Kane. "You okay?"

Kane nodded. "Yeah. Who the hell is this guy?" Lowering his voice, he said, "He knew I was a wolf."

"He did?" Tao asked.

Everyone looked down at the shooter. Tao and Leo cocked their heads at the same time.

"Huh." Tao nudged the shooter with his toe, but that didn’t provide any answers.

"Weird," Leo said. "Do you think…" He gave his brother a meaningful look.

Tao shook his head. "How would they know about us? Find us? Glen Vine isn’t a pack town. It’s not teeming with shifters."

"Who’s they?" Kane asked, but no one answered him as Kai arrived, driving Tao’s big, extended cab pickup.

He pulled over to the berm and parked the vehicle. Jumping out he brushed his long dark hair out of his face and said, "I see things are going according to plan. The wind told me we were favored today."

"The wind talks to you?" Kane asked.

Kai nodded. "It talks to you, too, but you don’t listen." Walking over to where the shooter lay unconscious on the ground, he bent down and studied the man. "Bad energy here," he said, waving his hand over the man’s body. "His kind definitely needs to go."

"He’s a
kind
? What kind?" Tao squatted down next to the shooter and stared at the man. He looked like any other human. There were no tattoos that might denote a gang affiliation. Nothing except a regular guy who had, for some reason, been hell bent on murder.

"A hunter," Kai said as if that explained everything.

"You really think so?" Tao asked. He came over and sniffed the air around the shooter. "He doesn’t smell like one."

"He attacks like one," Leo said. "He was obviously targeting Kane."

"What happened?" Tao asked Kane, his voice calm and steady.

Kane ran his hand through his hair, flustered. "I don’t know."

"Start at the beginning," advised Kai with an encouraging nod. He had a mess of eagle feathers and sticks in his hair, which made him look like he’d been rolling around in birds’ nests. The guy was a bit of a kook, but he made sense...sometimes.

Kane nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Charlotte ran into those two guys at Java Jump." He jerked his thumb toward his cruiser, where Dylan and Stan were slumped over and still. "They were talking about hunting wolves and had her all upset."

"Did they hurt her?" Leo’s hands clenched into fists.

"No, but something happened at Java Jump, and she lost control of her wolf and ran. Somehow, they found her and started shooting at her. They grazed her leg."

Tao’s expression grew dark. "Is Charlotte okay?" The three brothers looked at Kane, anxiety stamped on their faces.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Almost good as new." Charlotte emerged from the woods and swept a hand over her body. "Although I keep hearing guns going off everywhere. What the hell is going on out here?"

"We're trying to figure that out," Tao said. "Did you see anyone or anything?"

She shook her head. "Just Kane and the guys who shot me." She looked over to the cruiser and caught sight of the bullet-riddled safety glass. Stepping toward the car, she peered into the backseat, the color slowly draining from her face as she did so. "Oh." Her voice came out small and full of shock. She looked to Kane, who went to her and drew her away from the car.

"It's best not to look," he said. The two men would haunt him for the rest of his life. They should've been safe. He should've been able to protect them, but he'd failed. All because he was a werewolf. Damn. Was being bitten ever going to be a good thing?

"Well, shit." Her eyes wide, she met each of the men's gazes in turn. "Are you guys okay?"

"So far," Tao said. "Kane was just filling us in on what happened." He motioned for the sheriff to continue.

Kane nodded and cleared his throat. "Well, I caught up to them and put them in the cruiser to stew while I looked for Charlotte. I got her home safely, came back out here, and," he waved helplessly at his car, "this happened."

Kai pulled a bullet out of the shooter’s belt and sniffed it. "Smells like silver."

"Silver?" repeated Leo, his golden eyes going wide.

"That’s not good," Tao said, his voice still calm.

"What does this mean?" Kane asked. "What do I put on my report?"

"There won’t be a report." Tao said. "This never happened."

"We don’t need humans mixed up in this," added Kai. "It’s not their business, it’s ours."

"That’s against the law," Kane said. looking at each of his fellow wolves in turn. They didn’t share his legal concerns, though. He could see it on their faces. "I need to arrest him and charge him with murder."

"That will not solve the problem," Kai said, calm in the face of Kane’s agitation. "It will only put more of us in danger."

Kane stood up and stepped away from the brothers. This wasn’t what he'd signed up for. Why was everything a lie when it came to werewolves? First, Charlotte, then his mom, and now this. When did it end?

"We’re past the law, Kane. This has nothing to do with humans," Tao said, his voice remaining slow and even.