Walk on the Striped Side (6 page)

He feels his even white human teeth
bite down into his bottom lip. Damn but she was determined to rub his face into
all of her revelations about him. Was she trying to tell him that she was disgusted
with him because of his tiger? The thought that she might hate him for what he
is starts to fray the tenuous leash he has on his inner beast. It’s taking
everything he has not to let the animal free to claim the contrary woman that
they both want so badly. Elena’s attention is drawn to the bar top between
them, and she snorts. He looks down to see what her reaction is about and finds
that his long black, curved claws embedded into the wood.

“Well I hope those suckers don’t
pop out while you’re wiping your ass, because that would be awkward.”
Tap
.

Alec and Jenna who are standing at
the end of the bar bust out laughing. Gage doesn’t laugh though. No, he starts
to growl. He knows the sound is low and menacing. Pretty much how he’s feeling
at the moment. Snarling in frustration, he watches Elena stare back at him with
a mask of indifference on her face. Which pisses him off. She’d never been able
to hide her emotions from him before. He doesn’t like that she can do so now
when he feels like he’s about to all but burst from what he’s feeling right
now. Chagrin. Anger. Hope.
Love
.

Unaware of his predicament with
reigning in his beast, Elena continues to taunt him and his tiger. “
Awww
, what’s the matter Mr. Kitty? Don’t be mad and scratch
up the furniture. You do that too much and someone might want to declaw you.”
Tap
.

“Don’t.” He snarled.

Cocking an eyebrow, Elena asked.
“Don’t what Mr. Kitty?”
Tap
.

“Don’t come after my sister because
you’re looking for payback. She didn’t do anything to you. I’m the one you want
to hurt here and we both know it. And if you tap that fucking finger one more
time there will be consequences Elena.”

She barked a laugh at him. Her
pretty smile morphs into an ugly sneer. “Consequences? Just what do you think
you’ll do? Scold me like a recalcitrant child? You sure as shit won’t be laying
hands on me, because the time where you were allowed to touch me is long gone.”
Tap
.

His tiger surges forth in anger.
All rational thought is gone. Determined to make their mate listen to them,
Gage uses his hands to push himself up and forward, about to lunge over that
countertop and tackle Elena to the floor. He never makes it. The barrel of her
.45 pressed against the center of his forehead stops him dead in his tracks and
sobers both him and his tiger immediately. Not because Gage fears that he was
about to hurt her. He’s incapable of physically harming or endangering his
mate. The gun stops him because it means that she thinks he would hurt her. And
that sad fact rips his insides to pieces as effectively as his claws slash open
a deer at dinner time.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a
sound. Hell, he doesn’t even breathe. Just stands there and lets Elena keep the
gun’s barrel pressed against his flesh. His brother Alec however is roaring in
anger. Instead of standing down at the end of the bar, Alec is now standing
just to the side of him as he leans over the bar towards his mate. Threatening
to rip out her throat if she doesn’t lower the gun. Her relatives are now
braced around her, ready to defend Elena’s safety if need be because Jenna,
Adam, Owen, Logan and Kent surround them. Preventing any avenue of escape they
might have had. Weapons that hadn’t been visible on the Amazons a moment ago
are now waiting to strike if need be. The situation is rife with tension.
Everyone is waiting to see what happens next. Instead of being concerned for
his own welfare, all Gage can think about is that his mate is now in danger.

He retracts his fangs and claws,
but doesn’t move in any other capacity. Keeping his eyes glued to the bright,
determined blue-green gaze in front of him he raises his voice so everyone can
hear him. “Back away from the Amazons.”

He sensed his brother’s and
companions confusion. They don’t move right away so he growled, “NOW.”

They all slowly started to back
away from Elena and her relatives, but Gage didn’t move a muscle. There’s no
way to tell that if he tried to back away from her if she would pull that
trigger or not. Does she hate him that much now that she could kill him? With
the .45 this close to his head, it would basically blow it clean off, and there
was no coming back from that. Immortality and an advanced healing system
couldn’t cure missing most of your cranium.

Feeling the stirrings of a despair
he’s never known before, Gage wonders if he has a chance in hell of fixing
things between them. Never taking his eyes off of hers, so that she could see
the sincerity he was baring here, he raggedly whispers. “I would never hurt you
Elena.”

Her unflappable mask is back in
place so he has no idea what she’s thinking. No way to know if she believes
him. All he can do is stand here, with the cold steel of her gun digging into
his skin reminding him of just how badly he’s fucked this all up, and wait for
her response.

Finally, after what felt like an
eternity, but in reality was more than likely only a minute, those lush lips of
hers part, and she turns all his hopes to ashes.

“What a lie Ivanov. We both already
know that you don’t care about anyone else but yourself, and this
hot piece
of ass
knows better than to trust anything you have to say. If you see your
sister, give her my card and tell her it’s in her best interest to call us. If
she continues to hide from us, I’ll just keep assuming she’s guilty. And don’t
think you can hide her from us, because if I get wind of it, I’ll be back.
Trust me when I say, you don’t want me to come back because of that.”

With that, she lowers her weapon,
but keeps it in her hand at the ready as she departs the bar with the three
other women. She doesn’t look back to see that for once, Gage isn’t wearing a
mask to hide what he’s thinking or feeling. Anguish is written plainly on his
face for everyone to see. But even worse, the fact that she doesn’t look back
is a silent message to him. She’s doesn’t consider Gage a threat, and she no
longer cares enough to give him a second glance. It’s the last part that
bothers him the most.

CHAPTER-SIX

Elena

With her chin held high, Elena
marched out of that shifter run bar like she wasn’t afraid of anything. She should
be scared. Absolutely terrified even. But the part of her brain where the fear
to survive is supposed to be embedded isn’t there. According to her Aunts, it’s
part of her nifty Amazon breeding. So, instead of fear she feels damn near
giddy on the inside. She’s so freaking stoked right now to have finally put
Gage Ivanov in his place that she could do a damn cartwheel!

She’s aware this reaction isn’t
normal, but after everything she’s learned these last few months about what
really lives in the world, what exactly is normal? And she could care less that
she’s just potentially pissed off a lot of super-fast, seriously powerful
supernatural creatures that have the ability to turn into some form of animal
and run her down like she’s a happy meal on legs. Nor does she care that they
don’t really
need
to turn into said animal to rip her into teeny tiny
pieces. No, the only thing she can think about right now is the fact that she
finally,
finally
, got the chance to give the jackass who broke her heart
the proverbial ‘fuck you’. Frankly, she hasn’t felt this good since the last
orgasm that douchebag gave her a couple of years ago. But Elena refuses to
linger on that sad truth.

As she reaches the front passenger
side door of their SUV, Delta’s delicate hand lands on her shoulder. Her soft
voice asks, “You okay?”

With a wide grin she answers,
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

Delta’s eyebrows furrow down into a
‘v’ and she cocks her head to the side. “Because you just confronted the man
who broke your heart? Maybe because when he told you that he’d never hurt you,
implying physically, it was written all over his face that he meant it? He
looked almost as heartbroken as you have these past two years. Are you sure he
doesn’t care for you Elena?”

Confused, she stared unseeingly
towards the bar’s entrance. Her sister’s questions caused some of her inner joy
to fizzle. Could Delta be right? Had Gage really meant what he said? She’d
taken in the look on his face when he’d spoken those words, but had chalked it
up to him lying because he thought he had to save his worthless furry ass. Not
that Elena would have ever pulled that trigger anyways. She’d put that gun
against his forehead to send a message. To warn him that she
wouldn’t
let
him hurt her in anyway ever again. But the thought of actually pulling the
trigger and ending the life of the man she’d once loved… well, something inside
of her just wouldn’t let her do it. She’d spent half of that intense situation
silently pleading in her head for him to back off so she wouldn’t have to test
the theory on whether she could pull that trigger or not.

Yet, when he’d said those words ‘
I
would never hurt you
’, any second guessing she’d had went out the window.
All of the pain she’d felt when she had overheard him telling his brother Alec
on the phone that she was just ‘
a hot piece of ass
’ and that she wasn’t
‘
worth going through all of that trouble to make this something more than
that
’ had overwhelmed her all over again. It was a fabulous reminder to her
heart that this man never cared one iota for her. So she’d buried all of that
pain again and went back to business.

Delta was wrong. Gage Ivanov wasn’t
capable of an emotion such as love. And hell would probably freeze over before
he ever felt sorry for what he’d said about her. That’s why she was determined
to hurt him anyway she could. Right now that meant going after his sister for
this murder. If Lulu turned out to be innocent after all, well at least Elena
had been a pain in his ass for a while. But if Gage’s sister was guilty, what better
way to cause him the level of pain that he had cause her than to hand over his
beloved sister of the Ninth Circle for execution? From what she’d heard of the
Demon’s ruling Council, they would torture her in ways that would make her
eventual death seem like a reward.

Looking back to Delta she forced a
smile she no longer really felt. “Don’t let him fool you little sister. Gage
Ivanov wouldn’t know how to care for someone other than himself or his siblings
if his life depended on it. Now let’s go home. We need to go over this case
file again to see what our next move should be.”

Elena climbed into the vehicle,
buckled up, and looked back to the bar entrance one last time before her Aunt
drove them away. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and she felt
like someone was staring at her from the other side of that tinted glass, but
it was probably just her raw nerves making her paranoid.

Gage

He watched as the SUV drove away.
His mate was staring right at him through the door and she didn’t even know it.
In that small moment of time, that mask of hers had dropped, and everything she
refused to let him see before was there plain as day. He hadn’t just hurt her
feelings when he’d ended things between them two years before, he’d broken her.
That gutted him. The woman who had awed him with her feisty personality and
inner strength while they were together seemed a shell of what she once was.
He’d done that to her. And if he didn’t somehow fix this between the two of
them, he would never forgive himself for it.

An irritated Alec snarled from
behind the bar. “You want to tell me what that was about brother?”

Stalking back to the bar Gage
grabbed a bottle of high dollar whisky and a clean glass. “Not really.” As he
poured himself a generous amount he added, “Besides, we have bigger problems
than Elena right now.”

“Like what? What exactly is a
bigger problem than a crazy ass, gun toting, Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe
Amazon who wants your striped, orange hide as a new rug for the front of her
fireplace?” Alec snapped.

“Elena doesn’t like fireplaces.”
Gage deadpanned. When he looked back to see Alec’s look of disbelief, he
continued. “Lulu, a dead demon and the Ninth Circle Council sound like a bigger
problem to me, dipshit.” He threw back his glass and swallowed the whisky in a
couple of big gulps. The fiery liquid burnt as it went down his throat, but he
ignored it and poured himself some more. Jenna chuckled and he looked over to
see that everyone was staring at him. When he saw the curious look on Adam’s face
he grunted, “What?”

“I thought Russians liked vodka?”
Adam intoned while eyeballing his most expensive bottle of bourbon.

“And I thought dogs liked to chase
their tails and lick their own ass, but you don’t see me assuming that about
you, now do you?”

Adam growled at him, but Jenna put
a hand on his chest to calm him while chuckling. “Don’t bother, babe. Let the
cat drink his whisky. He’s going to need it.”

Adam looked down to his mate in
curiosity. “It’s not that bad Jenna. If Lulu is innocent, Gage will figure it
out and get her out of that mess.”

She chuckled again. “That’s not why
he needs the booze, babe.”

“No? Then why?” he asked her.

Jenna snorted. “Are you kidding me?
Can’t any of you see it?” Jenna looked around questioningly at the group’s
confused faces before cackling. “He’s in love with a woman who hates his guts,
not to mention she appears to be as gun happy as me! Does
no one
find
this as funny as I do? Just think about it! What are the chances that he’s
going to come out of this without at least a
few
bullet holes? And then
we’ll all get to sit around and laugh at him as he has to pop those fuckers out
and heal. The Great Gage—
Mr. no-one-is-better-at-mayhem-and-killing-than-me
—Ivanov
is scared of one little non-
Other
woman!
He’s practically shaking in
his little fur-lined boots he’s so scared of her!
”

Gage slammed his glass on the bar
top and snarled, “She’s damn near six feet tall; that is
not
little! And
don’t make fun of my boots you crotch-sniffing bitch! They’re special ordered
through a supplier for the military’s Special Forces and you’re just jealous I
won’t get you a pair.”

Jenna growled at Gage.

Gage snarled back her, flashing a
fang.

His brother walked up behind him laughing
and slapped a hand down on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it bro, I’m sure
you’ll get the Amazon to come around. Eventually. Like when she’s ninety and
too old to fight
yo
-.”

Before Alec could finish his
sentence, Gage reached up, wrapped his hand around the back of his brother’s
thick neck, and slammed his head down on the bar top. The bar went eerily
silent and Alec’s unconscious body slid to the floor with a thump.

Then Jenna said, “A hundred bucks
says the Amazon tries to skin him the first time she sees his shifted form.”

Gage bared his teeth at the
annoying cop before picking his glass again to take a healthy swallow. He
ignored the group of dummies as they started laughing hysterically at him,
taking bets on if he’d end up a tiger striped rug, and he poured himself
another drink. He’d find a way to get them all back later. Right now he had to
figure out how to fix things with his wayward mate. Because part of him was
afraid Jenna was right, and he didn’t want to end up as a damn rug.

Elena

Sitting down at the oversized
kitchen table, Elena opened the file on the dead demon and started spreading
out the information they had. They had to figure out what their next step was
going to be. Chairs scraped against tiles as they were pulled out from around
the table and her Aunts and sisters sat down.

“What’s next?” Chloe asked while
studying her manicure.

“We need to track down Lulu
Ivanov.”

Chloe pulled a nail file out of
somewhere and started slowly filing her nails. “Should we buy some catnip and little
mouse toys? Maybe we can use those to lure her out to talk to us.”

Elena felt that muscle under her
eye start to twitch again. If she didn’t know that Chloe was being purposely
daft she’d give into the urge to throttle her. Grabbing a typed report, she
started skimming over it. “Let’s go back over what we have. The victim, a
demon, according to the Ninth Circle’s coroner, died as a result to a
penetrating wound to the chest cavity-”

“
Ewwww
.
Something penetrated him to death?” Chloe gasped in horror. Leaning forward,
“Did they at least use lube to make it easier on the poor guy?”

Elena’s hand crumpled the report in
frustration. With a mock growl she leaned towards her sister and snapped “Would
you let me finish my damn sentence before you cut me off with your nonsense?”

Chloe shrugged her shoulder and
started filing her nails again as a response.

Clearing her throat, Elena tried to
get through the report again. “Like I was saying, the victim died as a result
to a penetrating wound to the chest cavity, where his heart was then removed.”

Delta stopped rubbing her bottom
lip, a habit she did while deep in thought, to murmur back. “So, the
Others
are immortal, can heal from most things that
would kill humans, but they can’t regrow organs. Interesting.”

“Nope. We can add organ removal to
the ‘It kills them list’ Miss.
I-must-study-everything-like-a-science-experiment. Moving on.” Elena dropped
the coroner’s report to the table and pushed some of the pictures out so that
they were in the middle of the table. Pointing to the graphic up close shot of
the victim’s chest she went on. “See the edges of the wound? The coroner goes
on to state in the report that they’re jagged. Not a clean cut edge like you
would get from a scalpel or knife. He states they’re consistent with torn skin
from claw marks. Their conclusion makes sense given the fact that the body has
wounds all over consistent with claw marks. Most noticeably are the deep
scratches on his face, neck, arms and hands.”

“Defensive wounds.” Aunt Thea
murmured.

“Exactly. Those claw marks, along
with a report of the victim fighting with Lulu hours earlier, are the evidence
they submitted to us. Because of those two things, the Ninth Circle says Lulu
is guilty.”

“Did any of their documents about
the crime scene mention scents from the room?” Aunt Indigo asked.

Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. I’m
ever going to get used to the fact that they can
smell
things.”

“Like that you’re full of shit?”
Elena muttered.

Chloe started to sputter in
indignation at her sister but Aunt Indigo cut her off. “Not now girls. Focus.
The Ivanov’s have a reputation and we don’t want to piss them off.”

Chloe snorted. “What’s wrong? You
afraid Gage will have a hissy fit?” She looked over to her sisters. “Get it?
Hiss-y fit?” Chloe started giggling but stopped when it was met with silence.
Throwing her hands up in the air, “Get it? Cats hiss, so hiss-”

“Don’t ever tell that joke again.”
Elena interrupted.

Chloe stuck her bottom lip out in a
pout. “
Ohhhh
… did I make you mad? Are you upset
because I made fun of your boyfriend Garfield?”

“Not at all. I could care less
about Gage Ivanov.” Elena lied. “That was simply the worst joke I’ve ever heard
and I never want to hear it again.” She looked down to the pictures before her and
shuffled them around until she found the one she was looking for. Using her
finger tips she pushed it out so that everyone could clearly see it. Pointing
to shards of glass lying on the floor next to the wall, “That’s what is left of
a woman’s perfume bottle. Because it had been thrown at the wall and shattered,
they claim that was all they could smell at the scene. The Ninth Circle
investigators state that it’s Lulu’s perfume.”