Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Wolf Hunter

Cameron held up his hands and kept his voice light. “Just doing my job. Keeping the streets safe.”

The tallest of the gang, wearing a torn white T-shirt and baggy pants, took the initiative. “Why don’t you do your job someplace else?”

Cameron shook his head. “No can do. This is my beat.”

“You’re a cop?”

Cameron shrugged.

“A filthy badge-carrying pig?” The speaker turned to his companions. “I thought I heard him squeal.”

The other three gangbangers chuckled on cue, cut off when the lead dog spoke again. “Or was it the girl that squealed?”

Cameron’s hands opened and closed, readying for a skirmish. “What girl would that be?”

“The one you let get away. The naked one.”

“Well,” Cameron said, “I’m wondering what that has to do with you.”

“That bitch needs riding. She’s been broken in.”

Cameron squeezed his hands tighter, sure he felt one claw spring through his fingertip, though that couldn’t be right.

“Go home, boys,” he said. “There’s plenty of help here on the street if I whistle, and I’m sure you have better things to do than wait for what will happen.”

“We’ll make a deal,” the leader of the unholy pack said. “You stay away from this park, and we’ll let you off with a warning this time.”

“Why? Are you hiding something out there?” Cameron asked.

“That’s none of your business. You might be a cop, but we know what else you are. We can spread the word.”

“Really? What am I?”

“A freak,” the guy said. “And all alone out here most of the time.”

Cameron nodded. “Does that make us cousins? Should I feel warm and fuzzy?”

“What you should feel is scared.”

“Scared of you?”

“Us, and others like us who can be your worst nightmare.”

“Sorry,” Cameron said honestly. “My worst nightmare has already come and gone.”

He realized someone was approaching from the street behind him before he had finished the statement. An authoritative voice rang out. “Is there trouble here?”

Recognizing the voice, Cameron called back, “Davidson, is that you?”

“Mitchell? Yeah, it’s me. Stegman is in the cruiser. Do we need to call him?”

Cameron eyed the pack of animals that looked at the moment like any Miami southside street gang with too much attitude. He smiled. “So, what will it be, boys? A truce, for tonight?”

“That would be a shame,” the tall guy replied. “Because I really feel like fighting, and the odds are in our favor.”

“The odds, I think, will be slim, since cops also carry guns.”

The big dog waved the suggestion away. “It just so happens that we eat guns for breakfast.”

Cameron nodded. “We’ll do some damage, though. I’m sure your pals here will agree that you might want to take your games elsewhere.”

“We don’t play games,” the lead dog snapped.

“Then maybe you should consider it,” Cameron warned, though it became obvious by the way the gang advanced, and the way they simultaneously reached for whatever they had tucked into their waistbands, that the damn hybrid idiots weren’t going to take his advice.

Davidson, a veteran cop and as smart as cops came, trotted around the corner. The poor guy had no idea what was in store, or that Miami could actually produce something worse than a street gang claiming public territory for their own.

If Cameron’s claws weren’t aching to spring a full night ahead of time, he might have been able to warn his badge-carrying brother of the danger ahead. But he looked down at his hands to make sure the sensation wasn’t real as the mindless Were pack barreled forward with the force of a battering ram.

Chapter 7

Cameron leaned up against a warm wood-paneled wall and scanned the room with half-closed eyes. The night outside those walls called to him. His skin twitched in reaction to the light floating through the open doorway. Answering that call was imperative, as soon as he could.

Like most pubs in Miami, the room around him was dim and smoky with an undercurrent of sweat and booze and too many men crammed into a small space. The odors fermented in his system, making breathing difficult.

He counted fourteen law enforcement officers in the crowd, plus a handful of detectives. Seven of those in attendance he knew by name; the others weren’t associated with his beat. The rest of the bar’s occupants were regulars, by the looks of things, and quite at home in the well-worn ambiance of the place. He, on the other hand, was a carefully managed mass of nerves.

Each of the men in his party were on their fourth or fifth raised glasses in honor of a fallen comrade named Stegman, the victim of the ongoing war between law enforcement and raunchy street gangs on the south side. That’s what they thought, anyway.

All of them had patted the shoulder of the man who had been responsible for taking their comrade’s killers down. Cameron’s shoulder. The shoulder aching to be free of shirts and praise and small indoor spaces because something far more primitive than the almost-constant hunt for bad guys existed outside the bar’s walls. Moonlight.

Madame Moon was full tonight and whispering to him like a lover. She taunted him mercilessly with the call of the wild, and he had to maintain a calm outward appearance at the moment, despite his growing anxiety. But centered within the chaos of his life rose a spiraling vortex of insatiable longing for freedom and for the chill of silvery light on hot, bare skin. Hunger had become a ravenous beast in itself, unpredictable and always insatiable.

“Hey, Mitchell!”

A creased-faced, gray-haired officer who went by the name of T. Garrison gave Cameron a friendly punch to the left biceps. Cameron smiled and touched his arm as if the guy had a powerful swing.

“We owe you for what you did. Davidson told us the story of how you chased those guys.” Garrison gestured exuberantly. “Next drink is on me. So is the one after that.”

In their off-duty drinking, these guys were doing justice to multiple bottles of fine Irish whiskey. Cops took care of their own, seriously mourning their fallen brothers and realizing every day that they might be the ones never to make it home from work.

They cared. Cameron sure as hell had to give them that. But he didn’t feel like a hero and preferred not to be treated like one. He had done what he had to do to keep a lot of people safe, and had, with Davidson’s help, removed four messed-up thugs from the mix. The only good thing here was that Davidson hadn’t known what they really were.

Like most of these guys on the force, he did his job—just in a slightly different way, with extra hours and the added bonus of special senses. Still, he hadn’t been able to save the man they were toasting. He couldn’t tell anyone in this room what those gangbangers really stood for, and what they’d had in mind when they’d geared up for a fight.

And here, in the crowded bar, fewer than twenty-four hours later, Cameron felt claustrophobic.

“Barmaid,” Garrison shouted. “Another round for this man.”

Though Cameron smiled his thanks, he hardly heard the offer. A fresh scent rode the breeze by the door, causing his surroundings to blur, taking Garrison’s friendly face out of focus. When added to the blistering heat of the summer night and the fall of light crossing the threshold, the fragrance came across as being something important to identify, something familiar and heady.

Roses. Also another scent that stirred Cameron’s baser instincts as he inhaled deeply and looked around the room for the source—a search that stopped near the long length of gleaming mahogany wood across from him.