Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Rocks the House

We had troops in reserve: Shaun, Tom, and Wes, the toughest males in the pack. They followed us in a second car. Darren hadn’t talked to anybody else in the pack. He recruited Becky and expected the two of them to be persuasive enough to convince everyone else to drive us out. He was old-school, monarchical. All he had to do was prove he was stronger, and everyone else would fall in line.

Shaun parked, and Ben pulled our car up beside his, my passenger window next to his driver’s window.

“He’ll smell you as soon as you get close,” I said. “So hang back. Ben’ll call you. Keep your phone on and you’ll be able to hear everything. Maybe this’ll just blow over.”

He grinned. “You just keep thinking that. The rest of us will be ready to pounce.” He gestured to his companions, who glared with lupine glints in their eyes. Yeah, I was glad they were on my side. “We’ll stay downwind,” he added.

And so the general marshals her forces.

“Worried?” I asked Ben, as he guided the car along the last hundred yards of dirt lane to the meeting point.

“Naw, not really,” he said, though the hint of sweat on his skin put the lie to that. “I probably ought to be. But I have the confidence of the righteous. It’s like a trial—I can’t walk into a courtroom expecting to lose or I’ve already lost.”

He kept his handgun in the glove compartment, just in case.

Around the next curve in the road sat a car I didn’t recognize. Darren’s, I assumed. We parked behind it. Under my rib cage, Wolf kicked. The triggers were here—the place, the time, the smells. Ben at my side, moving carefully, keeping a strict control of himself. It was time to run. Everything said so. But no, not now. Maybe later. Next full moon for sure. That was how this worked.

We stepped out of the car. “Shall we?” Ben offered his elbow, an elegant gesture.

Smiling, I wrapped my arm around his and we continued on, as if heading to a fancy dinner or the symphony. Hmm, there was an idea, for after we got through this. Assuming we got through this …

Ben dialed Shaun’s number on his phone, exchanged a short greeting, then put the phone in his pocket. “There. We’re bugged.”

Twenty more paces brought us into the clearing, a meadow bounded by pines on one side and lichen-covered boulders on the other. Nice, open ground, all of it shadowed in the twilight. Nowhere to hide. Darren and Becky stood in the middle, waiting.

“Hi,” I said, super cheerful, arm raised in a wave. “We’re here to rescue Becky. That’s what’s on the script, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d show up,” Darren said.

“What, was there a schedule? Are we late?” I said, looking at Ben.

“Hmm, my watch must be slow,” he drawled.

“You can’t lead this pack,” Darren said, hands in fists, teeth bared in anger. “You haven’t been leading it for a long time. You should admit it. Step aside. It’s best for everyone.”

I clicked my tongue. “Wow, about that. We have different ideas of what’s best. You put on a good show, but you strike me as being one of those alphas who thinks all they have to do is beat people up and that makes them strong. Did Becky tell you, we had a couple of those alphas in charge before I took over? Nobody liked it much.”

“And you were stronger than them, to be able to take over. You’re stronger than you look. I get it.”

“No, not really. Meg was stronger than me in a straight-up fight. So I shot her. Silver bullet. Worked great.”

Taking a reflexive step back, he was unable to suppress the flash of panic in his eyes. But I didn’t draw, and neither did Ben. This wasn’t the case of blind rage and desperation that that previous confrontation had been, so we’d left the gun in the car. Darren figured that out after a few deep, testing breaths, his nose flaring. But the damage was done; he’d shown that sliver of weakness.

“Becky?” Darren said. “Tell her.”

Becky stood to his right, a step or two behind, waiting for a cue. His or ours. She was tense, hands clenched, arms at her sides, shoulders bunched. Schooling her expression to calmness.

“Becky?” he said again, when she didn’t come forward.

She licked her lips. “I can’t do it, Darren.” Her voice was steady. Mine probably would have cracked.

“Yes, you can.”

“Then I won’t do it.”

“We talked about this. I thought you agreed with me—”

“I said I wanted to be alpha of the pack. I wasn’t thinking about … what the consequences would be. But Kitty’s right. Things have been so much better since she got rid of Carl and Meg. She’s earned a little loyalty.”

“It’s too late for that,” Darren said. “There needs to be a change. We all know what’s coming, the vampires, werewolves, all of us. Someone strong needs to lead that fight. Someone physically able to fight, who doesn’t have any doubts at all.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “History is full of people who didn’t have any doubts.”

He stalked forward. His voice growled, “I’ll take you down, I can fight you both.”

I was very careful to stand rooted. I couldn’t afford to be scared; the stakes were too high. I said, “By any chance do you know what happened to Carl? The other half of the old alpha pair?”

He pulled up. “I’m guessing you shot him, too.”

“No,” I said. “The rest of the pack tore him to pieces.”

They came when I called, as I’d had no doubt they would, stalking through the trees and into the clearing. Shaun went shirtless, displaying lean strength in his arms and chest, his gaze locked on Darren. Tom and Wes had shifted and trotted on either side of him, each of them two-hundred-plus pounds of wolf, lips curled back, ears pinned.

I smiled, showing teeth. “So?”

Darren laughed. “So what? You know what that tells me? You’re not strong without them. You can’t be alpha without your pack backing you up.”

“That’s the whole point.”

Shaun and the others kept moving, fanning out around the clearing, keeping Darren in the middle.

Darren wasn’t backing down. The challenge had faltered, but he was still focused, radiating aggression. No wonder—we’d cornered him. He’d fight us all if he had to. Even if he had to know he couldn’t stop us all.

“Hold up there, guys,” I called. Shaun and the wolves stopped pacing, though my four-legged henchpeople padded in place, heads low, circling, anxious. “Darren, you’re not a bad guy. I really do think we’re all on the same side, and we need all the people we can get to face off against Roman and his army. I don’t want to hurt you—”

“You can’t hurt me.”

I waved him off. “—but I want to know something. Did Nasser send you here to take the pack from me? Because he doesn’t think I can handle it?”

When he didn’t answer, I knew.

Ben huffed. “How do you like that? Guy comes here looking for allies and thinks he can do better?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m kind of used to people not taking me seriously. You want to go back and tell Nasser that we’re doing just fine?”

I’d hoped to give him an out. He could just walk away. Or he could talk back, engage in an actual conversation, tell me more about Nasser, find a way to work with me and mine. Convince me we really were all on the same side. He was a cornered wolf, but a smart one. But I misjudged.

He turned and lunged at Becky.

She scrambled back, but his arms were around her, one hand at her throat. Shaun let out a snarl and charged, along with the wolves, who reached them in a handful of long strides. Ben and I also lunged without thinking, ready to pounce on him to tear him apart before our claws had time to sprout.