The Bucklin Wolves Next Generation: Return (2 page)

“I thought things were going pretty good until the end,” Seth said.

“No,” William said. “Most of the wolves in this town were beasts trying to hold on to humanity that wasn’t there. That’s why they all left so readily. It would have happened eventually, mark my words.”

“We came out of the forest all those years ago to be human,” Seth said. “You’re right, it’s time to rehabilitate this town.”

“I’ve been grooming you to lead for two years, my boy,” William said. “All those dinners where I explained the decisions we’d made? It was all to prepare you for this moment, when you’d take control of this town and fulfill your destiny. You’re in charge now, Seth, and I couldn’t be prouder.”

Seth smiled. It had been a long and frustrating road. The thoughts of frustration had been flying through his head even during this meeting, but now he was feeling more empowered than ever before. He was the man in Bucklin and now everyone was going to recognize it.

“These are my people,” Seth said, then stood up and walked to the window of the conference room. “I’ve let them sit in limbo for two years because I wasn’t ready to lead. But here I am now and I will rescue them. The blood of the first alpha, the rightful leader of this town, runs through my veins.”

“That’s right,” William said. “Aster should never have taken over as alpha of this town after your father’s death. Rowan wouldn’t have been much better, but at least he would have had the right blood.”

“None of that matters now,” Seth said. “We haven’t seen any of them in two years. At least none of you have. They’re gone and they have no more claim.”

“Have you thought about that?” William asked.

“Thought about what?” Seth asked.

“About their claim?”

“They have none.”

“Yes, but do they know that? You’re young; you’ve never been around a wild wolf. You don’t know how… well, how do I put it? Territorial. That’s the word. How territorial they get over what they perceive to be theirs. You saw the way Rowan was willing to murder over Eva. What do you think he’ll do when he sees humans moving into his town?”

Seth looked down. That was one of the more attractive parts of this plan. They would finally open Bucklin up to humans and the population would boom. It was controversial amongst the council, but all the wolves who would have had a problem with it had followed Aster and Rowan into the wilderness. They had their pack land in the mountains and they hadn’t been seen in the city in two years.

“If Rowan or Aster has a problem with it, I’ll deal with them myself,” Seth said. “What’s our next step?”

“I’ll make the phone call and they’ll be here in no time to sign the contracts. In the meantime we’ll get word out to the town residents and start getting them on board with this plan.”

“Excellent.”

“Give it about a week and Sokolov Enterprises will send an envoy to meet with us to start the construction. By this time two weeks from now you’ll be breaking ground on the casino and every news station in the state will be here.”

Seth could only smile. Bucklin would spring forward into a new age, a new generation, and Seth would be firmly planted at the helm.

Chapter 2

As the black Mercedes roared to a stop in front of city hall Maribel couldn’t help but do the sign of the cross over her body. This had been one of the wildest rides of her life. All three of them driven up from Dallas this morning, but she had never expected the head of Blue Moon Security to drive like such a bat out of hell.

All she could do was sit in the backseat, afraid to unbuckle as she tried to gather herself. Out of the front passenger seat stepped a stunning redhead who made what few men were on the street stop and stare with awe. Maribel was used to seeing men drool over Ms. Wilson, but that didn’t stop her from shaking her head and stifling a laugh every time it happened. Stacy Wilson was a big time project lead at Sokolov Enterprises and she got the job done, but all men saw was her impossibly long and smooth legs, her tight waist and her fiery red hair. Maribel knew for a fact she’d been asked on more than one occasion if the carpet matched the drapes. Those poor bastards never saw her surprisingly strong right hook coming when they stepped over the line.

She was a shark renowned around the country for her ability to close deals and make sure a project stayed on schedule. Legend had it the trains in Italy had hummed like clockwork when Mussolini was in charge. Apparently sociopathic dictators got the job done more often than not—Ms. Wilson was a perfect example.

Of course Maribel had read the studies and run the numbers. Everywhere else in life, being a sociopath was a bad thing, but in her business that kind of ego got the job done ninety-two percent of the time. The numbers were solid enough for Maribel to believe in them. Unfortunately Ms. Wilson was nigh on insufferable to spend time around.

Out of the front seat came a man whom Maribel had just recently made the acquaintance of, but he’d never failed to scare her shitless in the short time that she’d known him. First of all there was his insane driving. When he screamed around the corner to Bucklin City Hall and nearly took the Mercedes up on two wheels she’d seen her life flash before her eyes—and it looked like a math textbook.

But his driving wasn’t the scariest part. Jacko was the head of Blue Moon Security, a private firm that had done more tours of Afghanistan and Iraq than any other firm in the world. Now they were under exclusive contract with Sokolov Enterprises. Jacko wasn’t the biggest man, but he was solidly built. His head was shaved, a look that just accentuated the hard lines of his chiseled face. He had more scars on his face and body than Frankenstein’s monster. He’d seen action in his life and he’d lived to tell about it.

However, the thing that bothered her the most was his eyes. If Ms. Wilson was a sociopath, then Jacko was a psychopath. There was a great intelligence in his eyes. She didn’t detect murder or insanity in there. He was hungry, there was no doubt about it, but the intelligence in his brown eyes only made the cruelness in them that much scarier. This was a man who was cruel and he knew it… and he was in control of it. This was the stuff that nightmares were made of.

And then there was Maribel. Somehow an overweight Hispanic girl from south Texas had ended up with this cast of characters at the behest of her vampire boss, smack dab in the middle of a town populated exclusively by werewolves. If only her parents knew what she was doing on this business trip, they’d move back to Mexico and take their chances with the cartel over this insanity.

But it was Maribel’s job. Numbers were easy for her, humans were not. The entire ride up from Dallas with Ms. Wilson and Jacko had been torture. It wasn’t like they had a lot of human feelings to talk about, but they’d still felt the need to drone on and ask her personal questions. Of course to Maribel a question as innocuous as “What’s your favorite restaurant?” was too intrusive. But if they’d asked her the statistical probability of gaining weight while eating out one night a week and then asked her to calculate the probability for time if they added a day, she would have readily hashed it all out for them. Numbers had rules, humans didn’t. Maribel wanted to stick with the rules.

“Maribel?” Ms. Wilson asked with authority in her voice.

“Yes, Ms. Wilson?” she said, then hopped out of the back seat and pulled her satchel out just before the car door slammed shut.

As Maribel joined Ms. Wilson, she caught a look at Jacko over the top of the luxury sedan. He had his hands in his pockets as he chewed on a toothpick and let his eyes wander around the street they were standing on. She knew he was casing the area, preparing for a band of ninjas to leap off a rooftop or whatever it was security guys thought about. Was he flexing his muscles or did he just always look like that? Why did his veins pop like caterpillars crawling under his skin? Even his musculature was unsettling.

“Is Mr. Sokolov out of his damn mind?” Ms. Wilson asked as she shook her head. “This town is half-abandoned and it smells like wolf shit. How can we expect to build anything out of this place?”

“To be fair,” Maribel said, knowing instantly that she should just keep her mouth shut and agree, “Sojourn, Louisiana was in much worse shape than this place when we looked at it two years ago, and the city’s annual income has already risen an astounding forty-two point five percent while the population has grown by thirty-eight percent.”

“Just let me have this, honey,” Ms. Wilson said, glaring at Maribel over her black-rimmed glasses. Somehow the glasses made her look even sexier. “I know we’re miracle workers. We’re going to turn this place around. But that doesn’t change the fact that I think it’s a shithole, just like every other town we’ve gone to. Why can’t he build a casino on the Vegas strip?”

“He has a sixty-seven percent chance of failing in his first year. Oh, wait. He’s not established in that sector. The chance goes up to seventy-three percent.”

“Well, without you I guess Mr. Sokolov would just piss all his money away, wouldn’t he?” Jacko said, walking around the front of the car to stand by them. “You’re the real brains behind this operation, aren’t you?”

“Brains aren’t anything without muscle,” Ms. Wilson said, winking at Jacko. “We never would have been able to do it in Sojourn without you clearing out that wild den of wolves who were eating and raping the town’s residents.”

“Just doing my job, Ms. W,” he said with a leering smile.

Maribel wanted to gag. This was how Ms. Wilson generally got her way with men; it was why she was sent to close any deal with a man. If the job called for a man, Mr. Sokolov had plenty who made Brad Pitt look like a hobo, but Ms. Wilson was top amongst his female executives. Still, she wasn’t so sure Ms. Wilson’s feminine charm would work on Jacko. There was something about him, something that told her sex wasn’t a big motivator for a man like him.

“Alright, numbers girl,” Ms. Wilson said, turning to Maribel. “Give me the numbers on this shithole one more time.”

“Yes, okay, then.” Maribel was having trouble opening her bag and pulling out the dossier she had on this town. She could feel her hands begin to sweat as their eyes burned into her, raising her internal temperature to a number on the dial she thought would cause her to spontaneously combust right there on the spot. Of course the chances of that actually happening were .0004 percent. “Here we go. This town was just a small, nothing town until the 1980s. Then a band of five werewolf packs descended out of the national park surrounding the town and bloodily conquered it. They left no humans alive. After that they established a government and a booming tourism sector. The town has only ever had two mayors: a man named Luke and another man named Aster. Luke died under mysterious circumstances and it appears Aster vanished two years ago. As a matter of fact, fifty-two percent of the town’s population vanished around the same time. The tourism sector was devastated and the town’s population never recovered.”

“That’s because the wolves won’t allow humans to move into the town,” Ms. Wilson said. “You’ve seen the reports. Plenty of humans have tried to snap up real estate out here, but they were turned down every time.”

“The town has a new mayor named Seth,” Maribel continued. “He hasn’t done a whole lot in his first two years. Quick research shows no new social programs, housing initiatives or urban renewal enacted under his administration.”

“Until now,” Ms. Wilson said with a sadistic smile. “He’s made the best decision of his career.”

“Why do you move into small places like this?” Jacko asked. When Maribel gave him a questioning look he just smiled. “Oh, come on, honey. I’m just the trigger man in all of this. The hired muscle, right? But this place is going to take a more… how do I say? Special touch. I might as well know what I’m getting into.”

“Research, and our own experience, shows towns like this are prime real estate for a casino and hotel. Most people in bigger cities don’t like a place like this so close and there are too many other things to compete for the entertainment dollar, anyway. But we’ve found citizens, especially in the Bible belt, love a weekend trip to the casino. The farther out from anything it is, the more hotel rooms we sell. Plus there’s a decent-sized city, Cedarville, that’s not far away. Those people would be willing to make weekday trips too. Sojourn isn’t the only town we’ve resurrected. There are countless other examples that have helped Mr. Sokolov build his fortune.”

“And it’s a sizeable fortune,” Ms. Wilson added.

“Of course I can give you the numbers,” Maribel said, feeling her excitement level rise as she dove into them. “The income of rural casinos like this is twenty-three percent higher than casinos in more densely populated areas, while they pay basically a third less taxes.”

“That’s okay,” Jacko said, laughing. “I don’t need you to peel back the curtain too much, girly.”

“And you won’t find everything in a report, either, dear,” Ms. Wilson said. “Jacko, why don’t you give her some inside information on this place? Let her know what really happened to Aster and all his citizens.”

“You see, honey,” he said, putting one foot on the bumper of the car and leaning forward to address Maribel directly. “This place was the victim of a pretty vicious gang attack.”

“There’s nothing about that in any public record,” Maribel started to protest.

“You won’t find it in a report or on a police blotter,” Jacko said. “You see, there was this band of hooligans called Satan’s Angels. I had a run-in with one of their chapters a few years back, real nasty bastards. Everyone in the gang is a shifter. The leader of this particular chapter was a werewolf named Abaddon. He wasn’t a normal wolf, no. He had demon’s fire running through his veins—literally. He was possessed by the spawn of Satan himself. He took a liking to Luke’s daughter and he kidnapped her, after killing Luke, of course. But then a funny thing happened. His son’s best friend, Aster, became mayor. He was mated to Luke’s daughter, but not anymore. Luke’s son became the town’s top enforcer. Nothing happened without Rowan knowing about it. Satan’s Angels returned and one of them took a shine to a local waitress. Being the chivalrous type, Rowan couldn’t let that stand and he killed the guy, igniting another war between the town and the gang. There was more to it than that, some intricacies and stuff that I won’t get into, but that’s the gist of it. In the end Aster defeated the demon, rescued his lost mate and decided human life wasn’t for him anymore. He and your fifty-two percent abandoned this place and moved into the forest to shit in bushes and never wear clothes or whatever it is werewolves want to do.”