Behind the Eight Ball (23 page)

“I just don’t know what I’ve done. This doesn’t make any sense.”

Heller hugged me one last time then stepped back. “We’ll figure it out.”

My head was starting to hurt. Great. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re pale. You may be a little shocky. Why don’t you sit down? Do you guys have any sodas here? The sugar would probably do you good.”

I sank down in one of the kitchen table chairs, my legs shaking. “Um, there are some cans in the pantry.”

Heller dug around. “Found them. Coke okay?”

“Sure.”

Heller fixed it and brought the glass to me. “Here. It may help settle your stomach too. Would you be okay here alone for just a second?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’d like to take a look around. I want to check the other bedrooms and see if they were damaged too.”

“Okay.” I sat there trying to figure this out while he looked. Things like this didn’t happen to me. I was boring. I didn’t make waves. I minded my business.

Heller returned and sat down next to me. “Okay, Marshell’s bedroom hasn’t been touched. The were’s scent is in there, but it’s in Janelle’s room too.”

“So it at least checked out their bedrooms, even if it didn’t do anything.”

“Looks like. Her room’s empty, though, so I’m assuming she must have moved her stuff out before this.”

“That really doesn’t narrow down the time frame. She started moving some stuff last night, and again this morning.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t help much.”

Silence filled the kitchen. Finally I spoke again. “So just my things were destroyed.”

“It looks like it. You should know it was
just
your stuff. There are no holes in the walls, no scratches… nothing. This was all aimed at you. Well, the carpet in there is damp since he pissed all over your clothes.”

“Jesus.” I scrubbed my hands over my face then caught what Heller said. “He?”

“Oh yeah, the werewolf is male.”

“How do you know?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yeah… no. Never mind.” I wanted to bang my head on the table. “What’s with the pissing deal?”

“Wolves do that to mark territory,” Heller said. “It’s a warning to others. I’d definitely say pissing all over your stuff is a warning.”

“A warning of what, though? That’s what I don’t get.”

“If we knew that, then we’d know the why for all this.” Heller reached over and took my free hand. “Make your calls, babe. Your Vetalas need to know about this so they can take precautions. I need to let my Alpha know too.”

“Lovely. I get to hear them yell all over again.” Giving up, I lowered my head to the table.

“A sentiment I well understand. If I thought it would do any good, I’d yell too.”

Sighing, I sat up and fished my cell out of my jeans.

Heller

FUCK YELLING.
What I’d really like to do was gut the cowardly bastard. Lawson appeared to be handling it well, but his scent belied that. If those were
my
clothes, Lawson would’ve probably had to peel me off the ceiling.

The sheer amount of destruction was bad enough, but the evilness of the act worried me. I’d told Lawson this was a warning, and I wasn’t kidding. I had the really bad feeling the next thing this werewolf intended to claw up was my mate. To hell with that. The only imitation of a scratching post Lawson was going to be doing was for me.

I’d stepped out of the kitchen to give Lawson some privacy while he called his friends. I checked the front door. As best I could tell, the lock was intact. So the wolf hadn’t broken in. When Lawson finished speaking with Janelle and Marshell, I’d check the back door, and the door to the garage too. Dammit, that wolf had to get in here some way.

Lawson’s voice drifted to me from the kitchen. He must’ve been talking to Marshell, from the aggravation I heard. Now that I knew Marshell wasn’t trying to come between Lawson and me, I could enjoy how Marshell picked on Lawson.

I laughed out loud when Lawson snapped right back at Marshell. I liked that my mate gave as good as he got. I continued wandering around the living area, vaguely listening to Lawson’s end of the conversation. His tone of voice changed now. He must he speaking to Janelle.

I switched on the TV to see what the weather was doing. It was getting dark, but that was partly due to it being overcast. Instead of moving Lawson’s things to my house, we’d be moving them to the street. I’d bet there wasn’t anything worth saving. Hope we weren’t doing that in the rain. My hair would be a frizzy mess.

I was standing by the fireplace when Lawson joined me.

“Well, how did it go?” I asked.

“Marshell ranted and raved, as usual. He said he’d be over after work. Janelle, on the other hand, was much calmer, with her creative threats on how she planned to kill the wolf. You know.” Lawson shrugged. “Business as usual with them. Oh, she also said she was on her way back over. She has some cleaning up to do from moving. She said she’ll give us a hand with my mess.”

“Any and all help is appreciated. So what do you want to do with the furniture?”

Lawson ran his hands through his hair. “It’s garbage now. I guess haul it to the street and let the city take it. Might as well bag up all my clothes too. God, Heller, all I have left are the clothes on my back.”

I pulled him into my arms. “I’d say I’m sorry again, but it doesn’t seem like enough. We’re pretty much the same size. As it’s been pointed out, I do have enough clothes for two people, so you’ll have something to wear until we can get to a department store.”

Lawson rested his head on my shoulder. “I fucking
hate
this, just hate this. A lot of my stuff I’d left at home when I first moved to New York was thrown out by my parents when they found out I was dating a black man. Now it’s happened again. I’m back to having nothing.”

My heart broke at the quiver in his voice. Hugging him tightly, I searched for something to say, and I had nothing. There was no way to pretty this up or make it better. He was right. He hadn’t had much to begin with, and now he had nothing. I hugged him, and a sound somewhere between a meow and a purr escaped me. I hoped it would help calm him.

Lawson snuggled closer and sighed. “What’s that sound?”

I stopped so I could answer him. “It’s me. It’s called trilling. Werecats do it as a way to offer comfort.”

Lawson lifted his head off my shoulder and looked at me. “Oh, I like the trilling, don’t mistake me, but I was actually talking about…. Don’t you hear that?” Lawson stepped back, frowning, as he glanced down the hallway that led to the back of the house. “It almost sounds like someone knocking.”

Now that he mentioned it, I did hear something. It was like a steady pounding, not so much knocking. I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. “I… the TV, maybe?”

“I don’t think so. There’s a commercial about cat food playing. I don’t think—”

A crash sounded down the hall.

“What the fuck was that?” Lawson demanded.

“Nothing good.”

It sounded like half the house had fallen down. If I wasn’t mistaken, I heard glass break too. The stench of werewolf and a low, menacing growl drifted down the darkened hallway.

“Oh, fucking hell.” I grabbed Lawson and shoved him behind me.

“Shit. I know
that
sound,” Lawson whispered. “Heard it that night by the garbage cans.”

From the darkened hall, yellow eyes stared at us. I had seconds to figure out what to do. If I planned to shift, I needed to do so now, but I wasn’t sure that was the best thing. In my cat form, I’d be quicker, but also smaller. Way smaller.

The wolf was in his shifted form; the bright yellow eyes told me that. The average height of a gray wolf, at the shoulder, was twenty-six to thirty-two inches. Werewolves ended up over forty inches. In other words about the size of a really big Great Dane. Alphas were even bigger. My werecat was eighteen to twenty inches at the shoulder.

I opted to stay in human form but let my fangs drop and my claws come out. The height and weight of this form was my best bet, even if my cat yowled madly for me to shift. If the were got those powerful jaws around my neck, it wouldn’t matter what form I was in—I’d be dead.

“I have my knife, so I’m not totally defenseless,” Lawson said from behind me.

What I wouldn’t give for that knife to be a gun. I’d seen what a gun could do. “It’s better than nothing. If… if for some reason I can’t…. Aim for the eyes or heart if it gets past me.” The only way that was happening was if I were dead.

My hair stood up at the clicking of nails on hardwood floors. The werewolf crept down the hall, growling the entire way. It finally left the darkness and stepped into the living area. My first impression was of a dull-brown coat and long lanky legs. It was male. I could tell by the musky scent. The snarls didn’t end as it stalked closer to us.

“I won’t let you hurt my mate,” I hissed, sounding more like a cat than a human. My arms hung loosely at my sides, ready to slash into skin or grab on to a body if the wolf sprang at me. “Why are you doing this? What do you think Lawson’s done to you? Shift and tell us what the fuck is going on! This
isn’t
the way we handle problems, you know that.”

The wolf crouched, growling louder now. So much for talking. He was going to attack.

“Get ready,” I whispered back to Lawson. “Get my keys out of my front pocket. When he lunges at me, run. Get to my truck and get the hell out of here. Go to my Alpha’s house and get help.”

“Are you insane?” Lawson slapped me on the back. “I’m not leaving you!”

“Don’t argue with me.” Since he wouldn’t take my keys, I yanked them out of my pocket and shoved them behind me.

“Yeah, and fuck that too.”

But he took the keys, and that was all that mattered to me. I wished… I wished I’d had more time with him. We barely had a chance to get to know each other. Our mating was so new, maybe Lawson would survive if I….

The werewolf jumped at us.

“Run!” I barely got the word out before a huge, furry body slammed into me.

Damn thing is heavy.
Then I didn’t have time to think thanks to teeth snapping at my throat. I grabbed the wolf’s torso and locked my arms in front of me. I had to keep him away from my body.

I sank my claws into his sides, and I flinched at the howl the other shifter let loose. We staggered and slammed into a nearby wall. Stars flashed before my eyes after the hit, and sheetrock gave under our weight. I had no idea where Lawson was, but I hoped he’d gotten out.

Trying to hold on to this animal was like trying to hold on to a furry hurricane. Claws and teeth were everywhere. Pain exploded in my gut and along my sides as the wolf thrashed in my grip. My muscles shook from holding its weight away from me.

Blood seeped down to my hips and stomach as I fought to keep ahold of the damn thing. I stumbled, one of my knees giving out as it smashed into something hard. Coffee table, maybe? Down we went. I still had a death grip on the son of a bitch, but on my back was the last place I wanted to be.

It now had the advantage. I looked into the shifter’s furious yellow eyes. Saliva-coated teeth snapped at my face. My muscles shook; I had to do something and fast to get the upper hand. My claws were still embedded in its flesh, so I yanked my hands straight up his side.

It was one of the most disgusting feelings I’d ever felt as muscle and tissue tore under the strength of my claws. My hands were drenched in blood. It dripped on me along with the blood from the shifter above me. The wolf’s fangs drew closer.

Being in human form was working against me now. I wasn’t sure shifting was the best thing to do, but I needed out from under the wolf before it ripped my throat out. I prepared to shift. The wolf howled again, jerking madly above me, snarling and snapping.

Over its shoulder I saw Lawson stab the wolf with the knife he carried. Shit, what was Lawson
doing
? He should have been in the next county by now, not still here. Then I saw something I never thought I’d be glad to see. Janelle stepped next to Lawson, her eyes snake blue and fangs glistering in the light.

“
Fucking werewolf
!” Janelle snarled. She grabbed the wolf by the neck and yanked.

Even with my claws still embedded in it, she managed to jerk the were off me. Holy hell, just how powerful was she? My vision blurred and flickers of what was happening teased me. I watched as she threw the wolf across the room. It bounced off another wall and fell to the floor. Ha! That had to hurt the fucker. The impact left a nice dent too.

They were never going to get their deposit back if this continued. I shook my head. Wow, random, much? How hard had I hit my head?

Lawson crouched next to me. “Heller? Babe? Come on, look at me.”

Such big, pretty eyes my mate had.

“Yeah, all the better to see you with,” Lawson snapped. “Jesus, Heller, snap to. Admire my eyes later.”

I must have spoken aloud.

“Hellcat, please? We need to get you off the floor.”

A howl screamed through the room, and I remembered where we were. “Shit! Was that Janelle I saw—”

I scrambled off the floor and stood, hurriedly glancing around to find where the howling came from. I looked over just in time to see Janelle try to sink her fangs into the wolf. Fuck me running, those were some of the gnarliest fangs I’d ever seen.

The were must have agreed. It tore itself away from Janelle and threw its body through one of the windows in the living room. Janelle jumped through the window, following it. Neither of us spoke as Lawson and I stared at the window, shocked.

“What a way to make an exit,” I finally said.

“Which one?”

“Either.” I scratched my head. “Um, do you think we need to go check on her?”

“Depends. You want to get yelled at for ‘checking’ on her? I’d rather walk across hot coals. It’d be just as painful.”

“Sarcasm.” Janelle nodded as she walked back in. “Always a good sign. And yes, I’d yell. That overgrown puppy doesn’t scare me.”

“Overgrown puppy?” Seriously she called a werewolf an overgrown puppy?