Bite Me

CHAPTER 17

Vic woke up in a very good mood. But as soon as he turned over and saw that Livy wasn’t lying in bed beside him, his mood quickly soured.

Had she left? Had she already bailed on him? He wouldn’t put it past her.

“Well, I’m not chasing after her,” he muttered, sitting up. “If she wants to go, that’s up to her. It’s not my problem.”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I do need coffee, though.” Vic stood. “And I’m not sure where that is.”

Dragging on his boxers, Vic walked barefoot and bare-chested down the stairs and into the living room. He headed into the kitchen and quickly located the coffee beans. He ground them up, put them in the European coffeemaker, and patiently waited with his back against the counter and his arms crossed over his chest.

Vic looked around the kitchen. He knew there was no food in the refrigerator but he wasn’t in the mood to cook anyway. He decided to check the cabinets and, to his surprise, he didn’t find Livy in any of them. But he did find several cans of honey-covered peanuts.

As he walked back toward the coffeepot, he noticed that the shadows outside the French doors leading to the yard abruptly changed. Vic stopped and leaned over so he could look around the large marble counter, and that’s where he found . . . not Livy.

Wondering whom Livy had pissed off now, Vic put the peanuts down on the counter and walked outside.

“Hey, Mike,” Vic greeted, gearing himself for a statement that started off something like, “We put that honey badger friend of yours in jail . . .”

“Barinov.”

“What’s going on?”

“Thought you’d want to know about your girl.”

“What about her?”

“John Leary saw her going through his territory not too long ago—”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it, and if she attacked any of Mr. Leary’s beehives, I’ll replace—”

“Nah. That ain’t it.”

“It’s not?”

“Ya see, she kept walkin’, didn’t she? Right past all those beehives. Seemed strange, especially since she was in her honey badger form and all, so Leary followed her for a bit. See if she was up to anything.”

“And?”

“Well . . . she kept walkin’, didn’t she? Right over county lines.”

Vic stared at the deputy. “What?”

Mike shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and looked down at the ground, but didn’t repeat what he’d just told Vic.

“Are you telling me that Livy went into cat territory? And no one stopped her?”

“Well, Leary’s never been a chatty black bear.”

As if that excused the man somehow. Because it wasn’t just about Livy going into cat territory that was the problem. It was that she was going into cat territory after she’d just kicked their asses at yesterday’s joust.

Vic’s boxers began to rip apart as he shifted to his hybrid form. Mike backed away from him, hands raised. “Now come on, Barinov. We don’t need a whole heap of problems from those cats, now do we? And you . . . going over there looking like . . . like . . . that . . .”

But how this turned out was up to the felines. And what those felines were currently doing to Livy.

Livy had been climbing up a tree, trying to get to the hive of Africanized bees, when she was yanked down by a leopard.

She landed hard on her back, but quickly flipped over. There were about twelve of them. All big cats. Two leopards, a cougar, three She-lions, two cheetahs, a jaguar, a Bengal tiger, and two male lions.

And at least four of these cats were ones that Livy had defeated at yesterday’s joust, which was probably making them pretty cranky about Livy being here.

She’d known exactly when she’d crossed over into cat territory, but she hadn’t cared. She’d spotted some Africanized bees and had followed them back to their hive because African honey was one of her favorite raw honeys.

In retrospect, though, this was probably not one of her better ideas. But here she was. On her own. Facing down a bunch of angry cats.

So Livy charged the biggest one. One of the male lions, who was a few pounds heavier than the tiger. And much bigger than a honey badger,

Livy was able to launch herself at the lion’s face, attaching herself to his skull with her claws and fangs.

Roaring, the lion swung his head and tried to use his paw to knock her off. Livy held on, digging in deeper with her fangs while tearing at the cat’s flesh with her front paws.

One of the She-lions grabbed Livy from behind with her mouth and yanked her off. She swung Livy around, shaking her. She tossed Livy in the air and managed to catch her on the way down. But Livy’s body had flipped around in midair so that she was able to clamp her front claws onto the She-lion’s muzzle, lacerating the fur and flesh on both sides. The She-lion began her own attempt to shake Livy off, but she was smarter than the male, waiting until Livy lifted her paws so she could start raking them again through the cat’s muzzle.

A good shake and Livy was again flying. She hit a tree, bounced forward, and landed on her paws. She hissed and moved away from the tree so she didn’t have anything blocking her back. She sized up her opponents, deciding to go for that tiger next. But the cougar charged first, coming right at her. That’s when Livy saw a shadow fall over her. She looked up but all she could see was a mass of shaggy, black-striped brown and orange fur.

A paw the size of two platters swung out, and the cougar went flipping off into the trees. Livy didn’t even see where he landed.

All that fur over her head moved forward, the body so tall, she didn’t even have to scrunch down for it to pass. It just walked right over her like she wasn’t there.

The cats backed up, and Livy scrambled around so she could get a good look at what she now scented was Vic.

She’d never seen him in his shifted form and she understood why. He kind of resembled a woolly mammoth in a way, but that could have been all the fur. There was just so much of it! He didn’t have tusks like a woolly, but his front fangs extended past his lower jaw a bit. Still, that was nothing compared to the size of Vic’s paws. They were just so . . . big. Giant paws attached to giant legs, which were attached to a giant . . . beast.

One of the lion males charged and Vic turned slightly so the cat ran right into his side. Vic didn’t budge from the force, but the lion flew back and landed unconscious a few feet away. It was as if he’d run into a brick building. The other lion male roared and charged; Vic brought the cat down with one blow against the shoulder. Livy heard a crack as Vic and the cat made contact, and screaming, the lion went down. But it wasn’t just his shoulder. It was his shoulder and chest. They appeared . . . concave. He was even having trouble breathing.

Vic looked over the other cats, waiting to see if they would challenge him.

For some unknown reason, the tiger raised his front paw, suggesting he was about to walk toward Vic. In response to the tentative move, Vic took in a breath. When he released it, the breath came out as a roar. A roar that shook the ground beneath Livy’s paws, tossed the smaller cats back, and had the tiger carefully putting his paw back down on the ground.

When the roar finally ended, everything was silent. The birds. The Africanized bees in the hive above Livy’s head. Everything was silent. Except Livy. Who gave out a hissing laugh that her full-human friends often called “Livy’s evil laugh.” And it was even more evil-sounding when she laughed like that in her honey badger form.

Vic chuffed at her and Livy walked around to his back leg. Using her claws, she climbed up onto his back until she realized that her paw was tangled in his mass of fur. She tried to get it free, but she was getting to the point where she was afraid she’d have to cut her way out.

That was when Vic’s tail swung around. Compared to the rest of him, it was a very unimpressive tail. Barely any fur on it and extremely thin considering his overall size. But long like a tiger’s tail. So, yeah, unimpressive. At least that was how Livy felt until that unimpressive tail dug into the fur around her paw and untangled the mess. That was when she realized that Vic had a prehensile tail.

How cool was that!

She’d always heard that shifter grizzlies, polars, and black bears had prehensile lips just like the full-bloods, but because Vic was a hybrid, it seemed that prehensile addition had landed elsewhere.

When Livy was comfortably secure on Vic’s back, he turned his nearly fifteen-foot-long body around and slowly made his way back into bear territory. He didn’t seem to have much speed at what was nearly two thousand pounds, but then, he didn’t really need it.

They made it back to the rental property without any problems and Livy quickly shifted to human.

“Don’t shift,” she ordered Vic. “Not yet.”

She jumped off his back, shocked at how long it took her feet to touch the ground. She walked around until she faced Barinov. She studied him closely, then walked up to him and pushed a mass of stringy fur off his face. That was when she finally saw his eyes. And they were human eyes staring back at her. The one physical part of him that didn’t change.

Livy grinned and stepped back. She walked all the way around him, and when she was right in front of him again, she finally announced, “You look . . . so . . . cool!”

No. That wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. Not that he minded. It was nice to hear someone say something other than, “Uh . . . oh . . . my . . . um . . .” upon seeing Vic’s shifted form. Or screaming and running away at the sight of him.

Livy didn’t do that or react as anyone else had when he was in this form. Instead, Livy stepped close and ran her hands down the fur on his muzzle. Vic lowered his head and she pressed her face against his snout. He felt the sigh she let out to his very bones.

When she moved away from him, Vic knew something was very wrong. Something that had absolutely nothing to do with the bitter cats in the next county or his shifted form.

Vic shifted back to human and waited. After nearly a minute, Livy said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah. I’m hungry.”

Livy nodded and walked into the house through the back door. Vic followed and found her looking into the refrigerator. There was a little Chinese food left, but neither of them wanted that. So they called in an order to the local diner and had it delivered.

Vic had showered and put his jeans on by the time the food arrived. He was setting it out on the table when Livy came downstairs.

She carried a cell phone and wore a bathrobe that was several sizes too big for her. She finger-combed her wet hair off her face and sat down at the kitchen table.

“Looks good,” she stated.

With all the food out, Vic sat catty-corner from Livy and reached for the bacon.

“My father’s dead,” she suddenly announced.

Vic pulled his hand back, focused on Livy. “I know. And I am sorry.”

“No,” she said softly. “You don’t know.” She rested her arms on the table, hands clasped together over the plate he’d put out for her. “I just assumed his funeral was probably one of my parents’ schemes. Another way for them to somehow make money. That in four or five years Damon Kowalski would suddenly pop up and say, ‘Why do you get so upset, troch rage. Always sensitive . . . like your mother.’ ”

“ ‘Troch rage’?” Vic repeated, with a small laugh. “Your father called you Little Rage?”

“Since I smacked him right across the mouth when I was six months old.”

Vic leaned down a bit so he could look in her eyes. “But now you’re sure your father’s gone. Why?”

Livy let out a big breath before looking directly at him and replying, “Because I found his stuffed carcass in Allison Whitlan’s apartment.”

Vic blinked those gold eyes at her, his entire body jolting in surprise. “Wait . . . what?”

“She had him by her fireplace. Someone went to a good taxidermist. You could barely tell he’d been shot in the back of the head.”

“Livy . . . I . . . um . . .”

“Please don’t say you’re sorry. I don’t want to hear sorry.”

“What do you need from me?”

“You gave me what I needed. Time. I needed time to figure out what I should do.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Now we know that Allison Whitlan must be in some kind of contact with her father. Dee and Cella can take it from there.”

“It’s not that easy, Vic.”

“It’s not?”

“Not for me. It’ll never be that easy for me.”

Vic placed his hand over her forearm, his fingers warm and dry. Comforting. “I can’t even imagine how hard all this must be for you. I really can’t. But what I do know is that you need to let the people paid to protect our kind do their jobs.”

“They may be paid to protect your kind but not mine. The honey badgers have always been on our own. We always will be.”

Vic leaned back in his chair. “What’s your plan, Livy? Track down Whitlan by yourself? Take him down by yourself?”

“Honey badgers are a lot of things. We’re mean. We’re rough. We’re mostly felons. We take shit from no one. But the one thing we’re not . . . is stupid. I have no intention of going after Whitlan by myself.”

“Then what are you planning?”

“The only thing I can.” Livy picked up her cell phone, pulled up an important number she’d never used before, and sent out a quick text before she focused back on Vic and said, “Vengeance.”

Baltazar Kowalski pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and looked at the text he’d just gotten.

One of the men breaking into the reinforced safe in the basement of the bank—a safe that held millions in diamonds—glared at Balt over the ski mask he wore.

“Do we really have time for you to chat with your pretty girlfriend?” the man whispered in French.

Balt ignored the man and studied the text.

“What is it, brother?” Kamil asked, his gaze straying from the guards they’d secured and drugged so that they were out cold during the job.

“It’s from Damon’s girl.” Damon. Their brother was supposed to have been with them on this job. They all did their own individual jobs, of course, but several times a year, the Kowalski brothers worked together. Especially on these kinds of jobs where a lot of money and risk were at stake. And Damon had been the best at organizing and pulling these jobs off without a hitch. So his loss was felt most at this time.

“What does she say?” Edmund asked.

“She wants us to meet her in New York. Now.”

The five brothers stared at each other. Olivia wasn’t like any of their children. She never contacted them for anything. Had never involved herself in the family business. Before Damon’s funeral, they hadn’t seen her for a good seven years or so. When they did see her, she did no more than wave at them before disappearing with Balt’s boy, Jake. For waffles, Balt had been told later. Although he could never understand why anyone would go out and get waffles when they had perfectly delicious cobras slithering around the backyard of Damon’s old house.

No. The Kowalski men had never understood Damon’s girl . . . including Damon. But Olivia was still family. She was a Kowalski. A strange Kowalski, but still one of them. Which meant only one thing to Balt, Edmund, Kamil, Gustav, Otto, and David.

The brothers locked gazes and, without another word between them, stopped what they were doing and packed up.

The full-humans they were working with looked up at the brothers. “Where the hell are you going?” one of them asked.

Balt zipped up his black bag, and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t answer the man; there was no point.

Another full-human pulled his .45 and aimed it at Otto. Baltazar stepped in front of his brother and walked up to the man until the gun pressed against Balt’s chest. He gazed at the full-human and waited. After several seconds, the man looked away. Balt reached over and took the gun from the full-human’s grasp.

“Nice Glock,” Balt said in French. “I have one at my house.” Then he used the weapon to beat the man who’d pointed it at Otto until he was bleeding and sobbing on the ground.

Balt tossed the gun to the ground and motioned to his brothers. “Come,” he said in English, trying to get used to the difficult language again since they were going to America. “We have plane to catch.”