Shelly Laurenston: Bite Me

“Mates complicate things.”

Livy shrugged. “Never did for my parents.”

“Now, now . . .” He motioned to Livy’s mother and their aunt busy slapping each other like they were on an old episode of Dynasty . “Clearly your mom is going through her own form of mourning over her mate.”

“Clearly.”

Vic Barinov waited with his back to the wall. And while he waited, he thought about food. He was hungry.

Thankfully, he knew of at least two good steakhouses in this Albanian city. One catered to all shifters and the other specifically to bears. There were a lot of bears in Eastern Europe, some of the biggest in Ukraine and Siberia.

Unfortunately, Vic wouldn’t be able to have something to eat until he got this done. And he’d already been standing by this wall for the last three hours. But Vic had lots of patience. He could lie in wait for days, if necessary. Yet that sort of thing hadn’t been necessary since he’d stopped working for the U.S. government. He’d left suddenly, fed up with all the politics, but at the time, he wasn’t sure what he’d do with the rest of his life to ensure he could pay his bills, especially his food bill, which could be quite substantial.

Freelance work, however, had worked out better than he could have hoped. And being a crossbreed—grizzly bear and Siberian tiger—had, for once, been to his benefit. Plus his ability not only to speak eight different languages, including Russian, Polish, German, and Albanian, but to know and understand the culture of most of these nations, kept the money rolling in, and for the first time in a long time, Vic was beginning to feel his life had some stability. It was nice.

Ears twitching, Vic heard the sound of heavy panting. He lifted his head, sniffed the air. Scented the full-human running down the street toward him.

Vic waited until the panting was right beside him, then . . .

Reaching out, Vic caught hold of his target’s neck and yanked him into the alley.

Feet still running, arms still pumping, his target hadn’t even realized he was no longer touching the ground.

Vic held him like that until the local police charged past. Once he was sure they were gone, he lowered his target to the ground but kept hold of the man’s neck. By now, the target had realized he was no longer running from the police. He briefly seemed relieved by that, until he was forced to drop his head back in order to see Vic’s face.

“Oh . . . Victor. Hello.”

“There are people looking for you, Bohdan.”

“Don’t hand me over to them, Victor,” Bohdan begged while trying to twist out of Vic’s grasp. “You know what they’ll do to me.”

“I don’t know anything. Except that people are looking for you.”

Vic pushed away from the wall, Bohdan still in his hand.

“Wait! Wait! I have information. Information you’ll want.”

“I don’t need any information.”

“What about Whitlan?”

Vic stopped moving, eyes narrowing on Bohdan’s desperate face. “Lying to me won’t help you, little man,” Vic growled in Russian.

“I’m not lying.”

“No?”

Bohdan pointed at Vic’s hand, which was still around Bohdan’s neck. “Little tight.”

“And it can get much tighter. Don’t make me show you how much.”

Bohdan’s eyes widened in panic, which was kind of sad, because Vic really wasn’t putting any effort into what he was doing. If he did, he could pulverize the bones in Bohdan’s neck. These full-humans . . . so breakable.

“Talk, little man.”

“Packages sent in and out of country from Whitlan.”

Vic frowned. “How do you know they were from Whitlan? They could have been from anybody.”

“I saw him. I saw Frankie Whitlan.”

Now Vic smirked. “You? You saw Frankie Whitlan? A man no one has seen in more than two years?”

“No one has seen him in America, maybe. But he is friend to many in Russia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria . . .”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

“No. But I was in warehouse that day. Big boxes he sent out. He wanted to make sure everything perfect. He sent them on boat.”

“Going where?”

“All over. But I know that at least one went to Miami.”

“And who helped him ship these boxes?”

Now Bohdan smirked. “I like my throat without big slash across it, Victor Barinov.”

That was fair enough. Most likely Whitlan had gotten himself involved with mobsters who’d tear someone like Bohdan apart for no other reason than they were bored.

Vic opened his hand and Bohdan dropped to the ground, landing on his knees with a grunt.

“You won’t regret this, Victor Barinov,” Bohdan said, grinning widely and rubbing his throat. “I knew I could help!”

Vic stepped over Bohdan and walked out of the alley. He stopped at the curb, pulling his phone out of his pocket. While he speed-dialed a number, he saw a few of the local police running back toward the alley, still searching for Bohdan.

Vic pointed into the alley and the officers nodded their thanks before charging in and taking Bohdan down. It was a loss of some easy cash for Vic, but the information he’d received about Whitlan was much more important.

“Yeah?” he heard on the other end of the phone. Dee-Ann Smith of the Smith Pack was not what one would call a chatty She-wolf. Or friendly.

“I’ve got information,” he said cryptically, not willing to put too much detail out over the air. But he didn’t need to say Whitlan’s name to Dee-Ann. Frankie Whitlan was the most wanted full-human in shifter history. All three major organizations were trying to track him down and execute him for participating in and running expeditions to hunt shifters. But the man had the uncanny ability to disappear. Or he had some very powerful people protecting him. Whatever it was, the Group—the American shifter protection agency; Katzenhaus Securities—the feline protection organization—also called KZS; and the Bear Preservation Council—the worldwide bear protection organization—also called BPC, simply could not track the man down. All they needed was a location so they could send in either Dee-Ann Smith or KZS’s sharpshooter Cella Malone to take him out. But after several years, they’d been unable to lock on the guy.

“When can you get back here?” she asked.

“I’ll get the first plane out.”

“Good.”

The call disconnected and Vic continued moving down the Albanian street toward his rental car.

“Where are we going?” a voice said behind Vic.

“Back to the States.”

“Cool.”

Vic stopped walking, faced the shifter behind him. Shen Li smiled at Vic around the short bamboo stalk he had in his mouth.

“I don’t need you to come with me.”

“Were you planning on leaving me in Albania?”

Shen, a giant panda born and raised in San Francisco, had a specific set of skills that Vic used for some jobs. They were longtime colleagues who’d worked for the government together. Now that both were doing freelance work, Vic brought Shen in as needed. But Vic didn’t think Shen was needed for this.

“You can get back on your own, can’t you?”

“Don’t speak Albanian. You do.”

“Oh. Right. Okay. Well then, sure. You can come with me.”

“Great.”

The pair started off again in silence, except for the seemingly never-ending sound of Shen chewing on his bamboo stalks.

“So what’s our next job?” Shen asked and Vic stopped again.

He faced Shen. “You do understand we’re not partners, right?”

“We’re not?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s easier for me to work alone and call you in when I need you.”

Shen chewed and chewed while his dark brown eyes gazed at Vic.