Vargas watched Vanessa drive out of the parking lot before he spoke. “You’re lucky I don’t think you’re the reason she was crying, tiger.”
Jack yawned and nonchalantly examined one dinner-plate-sized paw, being sure to extend his claws.
The wolf laughed. “Yeah, I get it. You’re the big bad kitty. Well, this should be an interesting run. Try not to frighten the elk.”
Vargas stripped down and entered the shift. It took him longer than it had Jack, but he was faster than most wolves Jack had known, even faster than most of the alphas.
Vargas was a big wolf. Taller, broader, and heavier than a natural wolf, the alpha was easily close to two hundred pounds as a wolf, which was probably what he weighed in human form. His coat was beautiful in rippled dark shades of gray, with black tipped ears and tail.
Jack looked down at the wolf, pointedly, being more than twice Vargas’s size, but the recognition of smugness probably crossed species, because the wolf bared his teeth and faked a snap at Jack’s face before he took off running down the hill. Jack rolled his head and then stretched his body for a long, luxurious moment—it had been a long week on the bike, with no time to run—and then he leapt down the hill and followed the wolf.
After they left pack HQ, they kept to paths and areas that were virtually empty of humans, and when they did see someone, Jack faded back into the trees to avoid detection. It would make a tourist’s day to see one of the mysterious gray wolves roaming free—at least at a safe distance.
It would give a tourist nightmares to see a Bengal tiger.
The run wasn’t entirely free of encounters, though. After turning a blind corner on a wooded path, Jack managed to startle the hell out of a bull moose. He bounded past it in a series of giant leaps and sailed right over Vargas’s head, landing next to a copse of Rocky Mountain maple trees. The wolf snarled at him, but then tilted his head toward the other side of the trees. Jack could hear it now, though; he didn’t need to smell it. He shifted back to human shape and slipped silently through the trees until he could see, while staying hidden from the group below.
The rogue wolves had set up an almost-certainly illegal campsite in the clearing at the bottom of the hill, next to a small stream. There were six of them, unless there were more in the three ratty-looking mud-brown tents, and they were already drunk.
Vargas, human and dressed, quietly moved up next to him and stared down at the group. “These, I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet.”
Jack nodded, but then realized something was odd, and he looked back at Vargas, who was now wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, in spite of the cold. “How did you do that? Do you have clothes all over the forest?”
Vargas grinned. “No. I can pull clothes into the shift. I just don’t know how to dematerialize them, so I have to undress or I get tangled in my pants. These clothes are easy to shred in the throes of the shift.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Wolves. TMI, man. Okay, so you don’t know any of these rogues? Aren’t unaffiliated wolves supposed to check in when they’re in your territory?”
“Yes. They are. These have not. Why don’t we go have a little chat with them about it?”
“And about Mr. Clark,” Jack added grimly. “What a great idea.”
The rogues were drunk enough that Jack and Vargas made it to within thirty feet of their camp before being spotted. One of the men reached for the hunting knife at his belt, but another one elbowed Knife Boy in the gut, hard.
The one who did the elbowing ambled over to Jack and Vargas, pasting a wildly insincere grin on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes were cold black holes that hadn’t smiled in forever, Jack was guessing.
“Howdy, howdy. What’s shaking, gents? I’m afraid we don’t have dinner going yet, but we can offer you a beer.” The man jerked his head at one of his buddies, who rushed to open a cooler.
Jack folded his arms over his chest and said nothing, since this wasn’t his show. He figured even wolves this stupid would realize that Vargas was an alpha, and a powerful one, in about five seconds. Vargas said nothing, but stared at each of them in turn.
Five, four, three, two—
“We’re sorry, man, uh, sir,” the guy who’d gotten the beers babbled. “We didn’t realize you were an alpha, um, the alpha. I shoulda gotten you the good beers.”
Jack had to clench his jaw shut to keep from laughing at the idiot.
Vargas shot the babbler a single look that reduced him to speechlessness, and then he focused on the apparent leader who’d welcomed them. “You are aware of the pack law that requires you to check in with the alpha when you enter a pack-owned territory?”
The babbler cringed. “Frank, I told you we should have checked in, I told you—”
“Shut up, you moron,” Frank snapped.
Jack glanced between the two and caught the family resemblance. Brothers. Or cousins, at least. The other four didn’t look anything like Frank and the moron, but they were doing a pretty good job of forming a loose half-circle behind Jack and Vargas.
But none of them smelled like the wolf he’d scented at the town hall, or like fresh blood, either. It didn’t conclusively rule them out for the attack on Vanessa’s dad, but it didn’t help the odds that they were involved, either.
Jack couldn’t hear anybody else in the clearing, but he went ahead and asked the question anyway. “Are there more of you in the tents?”
“Who’s asking?” Frank said belligerently.
“You’re stupider than you look, evidently,” Vargas said in a pleasant tone of voice. “You insult me on my territory by not checking in with me, and then you are rude to my friend.”
Jack gave the rogues his best impassive face instead of rolling his eyes at all this friendship talk. All he’d wanted was a second breakfast. Instead, he’d gotten involved in an abduction and gained himself two shiny new friends that he’d never wanted.
To hell with diners. He was going to eat at Wendy’s from now on. Nobody ever got caught up in a Santa shooting at Wendy’s, and they had good fries.
The moron started whining, but Frank gave them an unpleasant smile and two middle fingers.
Jack couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. “So, this is what? Wolf Junior High?”
Thanks to tiger hearing, he knew that more company was bearing down on the party before the newcomers attacked. “Vargas. These idiots have got a couple of friends who are already in wolf form, and they’re closing on us, fast.”
“The odds are unfair,” Vargas said calmly.
Frank sneered. “Too bad for you we don’t give a shit about fairness.”
Vargas laughed and then whirled around and slashed one hand—now shifted into a paw with deadly sharp claws—across the throat of the wolf flying at him. The wolf was dead on the ground almost before Jack had the chance to club the skull of the other one.
Almost before, but not quite.
“I’m pretty sure he meant that the odds are unfair to you, asshole,” Jack told Frank. “You’re in trouble now.”
Seconds later, Jack was a tiger, thoroughly enjoying the drop-jawed shock on the rogues’ faces. He swatted Frank across the side of the head with one massive paw, knocking him several feet through the air. The moron—Frank’s brother—took one look at Jack and pissed himself, before rolling up in a fetal position on the ground and starting to weep.
Vargas, now in wolf form, moved so fast that the rest of the shifters looked like they were performing a bumbling, slow-motion ballet. A kick here met a slash there. A hand clutching a hunting knife met claws. Only one of the rogues was fast enough to shift by the time Vargas had taken the rest down. That wolf looked around, saw all seven of his companions on the ground, turned tail—literally—and ran.
Vargas shifted back to human, and Jack followed suit. “That’s five to two, my orange friend,” Vargas said smugly.
Jack shrugged. “Your territory, your justice. I just wanted to find the wolf who was hiding in the place Mr. Clark disappeared.”
“Check the tents?”
“Yeah.” Jack unzipped the first tent, but smelled nothing but stale beer and wet wolf—either Frank or the moron, or both, slept in that one.
The second tent yielded nothing.
The third, though…maybe. Jack bit the bullet, stuck his head in through the tent flap, and inhaled deeply, in spite of the unwelcome aroma of dirty sock.
Bingo.
“He was here. The wolf from the town hall,” Jack said, striding over to where the moron huddled on the ground. “Where is the wolf who slept in that tent? The one who wasn’t here today.”
The man snuffled and cried, and Jack lost patience and yanked him up. “Your friends aren’t dead, they’re just unconscious. You can go forth and do bad things together when they wake up.”
“If I don’t kill them all,” Vargas pointed out, making the moron cry even harder.
“Fair enough,” Jack said, shrugging. “But first, I need to know who was in that tent.” He lifted the sobbing man off the ground by the throat.
“Marvin,” the moron cried out, choking and gasping. “It was Marvin, but he stayed at his girlfriend’s last night and he hasn’t come back yet. Let me down.”
Jack dropped him, and the man curled up in a pathetic ball again. “I’ll leave you alone as soon as you tell me how I can get in touch with Marvin. What’s his phone number?”
“He ain’t got no phone,” the moron said, with a touch of defiance. “He’s broke, like the rest of us.”
Jack reached for his throat again, and the man collapsed back in a heap.
“You can find him at his girlfriend’s, I bet. Go see her, already. Leave us alone,” he blubbered.
Vargas sighed. “This is what you get when you allow rogue wolves to run freely. No pack discipline, no training, no courage. This man is a pathetic coward, and his brother is a vicious criminal.”
“Yeah, pack discipline, great, fine,” Jack said impatiently. “But I need the moron to tell me how to find Marvin’s girlfriend first.”
The man sat up and glared at Jack. “My name is Fred, not moron.”
Jack crouched down, getting right in Fred’s face. “Okay, Fred. You’re not a moron. You’re a perfectly intelligent guy who realizes that if you don’t give me Marvin’s girlfriend’s location within the next ten seconds, I’m going to reach into your chest, rip your heart out, and eat it right here in front of you.”
Fred’s face turned red, then white. “You’d do that?”
Jack bared his teeth. “Tigers love to eat hearts. It’s our favorite dish.”
The man nearly passed out, and Jack realized he might have overdone it with the heart thing. He grabbed Fred by the shoulders and shook him. “The girlfriend, Fred.”
“I don’t know where she lives,” Fred shrieked. “I only know her name.”
“Then. Give. Me. Her. Name,” Jack said, biting off each word.
“Maya. Her name is Maya.”
“Son of a bitch.” Jack dropped Fred back on the ground and started running. “Vargas, I need a ride to Hope Springs. I’ve gotta talk to an elf.”