Gears started up the Humvee, and I pointed to the launch pad that would take us up to the garage hidden in the back of the house. I pulled out my phone and made a call to the tow company for their bikes while Gears explained the situation to Dino. He complained for about a second about having his bike in other people's hands, but when I explained that I had an in with the owner of the company, he backed off. The owner's daughter was caught up in a fae trafficking ring a few years back, and I helped her escape and returned her to him. This had him always up to do me some weird favors.
“So, an assassin can do some good in the world?” Dino’s skeptical tone had me want to turn around and yell at him, but I think that was what he wanted. He wanted me to be the worst towards him, and I just didn't understand why.
Instead, I took a different approach. “If you look at the kills that I have done, then you must know that I have taken out a lot of people that do very bad things. I would even say that most of my work is taking out the garbage people in this world.”
He looked at me through the rearview mirror, his eyes softening before he looked away and grumbled something under his breath that I couldn't hear.
“Back to the situation at hand…” Gears' calm, even voice called out, “I only saw one car out front, but what do you want to do if they have another in the back waiting?” The lift stopped as we entered my makeshift garage.
I popped the glovebox and pulled out two pistols and handed one behind me to Dino. “Then we'll take care of them. Right, Dino?”
I heard him pull back the slide, both clicks echoing in the car. “Right. We got this, Gears. Just get us home.”
“All right.” Gears focused on the wheel before I hit the garage door clicker in the car, and it slowly opened. We creeped out, all of us looking for anyone suspicious. As soon as we pulled out onto the street, we heard a loud screeching of tires from down the road. Gears quickly reacted, “Hold on tight,” and he slammed on the gas.
Both Dino and I turned around to see the black SUV with blacked-out windows racing to catch up with us. Could they be any more obvious? I immediately stuck out my arm, aimed my gun at the windshield, and shot two bullets.
“What are you-” Dino started, but I shook my head as I saw the damage it did.
“Just as I thought.” Dino swiveled back around and looked at the car still charging with a fully functioning windshield.
He turned around, and we both said at the same time, “Bulletproof.” He smiled briefly until he looked down and immediately wiped that grin off. Oh, well, sometimes you win, and sometimes you don't.
Gears jerked us around a bit, swirling around corners, ducking through alleyways, and slamming through side streets, but the SUV seemed to find us. I saw we were on the outskirts of downtown and realized there was a mage shop not too far from here, and I got an idea.
Most mage shops didn't like to be tracked and would have a natural barrier around them that would cloak it from eyes not looking for it. So, for example, if a client wanted to find it, you would see it clear as day. However, if you were just passing by, walking a dog, it would look like whatever they cloaked it as. If we parked behind the shop, it would conceal us enough to get the drop on them.
“Turn left.” Gears immediately did what I asked as Dino’s head popped back up between us.
“Where are we going?”
I looked at Gears, hoping he would understand what I was thinking. “Have you ever been to Magic Magic Poof?”
“The mage shop?” His question turned into a smile as soon as the words came out. “No, but tell me, as I would really like to go now.”
I smiled as I gave him directions, and Dino’s face turned to me and then back to Gears. “What are you two planning?”
“We’ll tell you later. We are almost there.” I pointed to a small side street. “Turn into there and the parking lot is to your right.” He turned and saw the red brick wall where I told him to turn, Gears’ eyes flicked to mine before he gunned it, Dino screamed in the background that he was going to slam into the wall, and I smiled like a loon.
As soon as it got to the point that he should’ve killed us, the brick wall shimmered, and he went right into the parking lot. “Park behind the building, wait for ten minutes, then go forward, and it will dump us onto the freeway. They got a permit for it since they are so busy during the weekend.”
“What the fuck?” Dino gasped as he looked around, eyes wide as he thought we were going to be in a deadly crash with a brick wall.
Gears idled behind the store as I instructed, and I let him explain as I looked out for the owners. Sometimes, they were cool about this kind of stuff, and sometimes, they were just cranky and made people leave. The one thing you didn’t want to do was go head-to-head with a mage who was cranky. That's how people get turned into toads and shit.
“Most mage shops have a cloaking spell around them. This one seems to be higher-end since it also encompassed the parking lot.” He looked at me this time, and I winked at him.
“They have some higher-end clientele and like to keep that as private as they can,” I supplied as I kept an eye on the door. “We only need to be here for about ten minutes. Really lose them before we head on our way.”
We all stayed quiet for a full minute until Dino asked, “So, are we storing all these in the shop until you figure out a place?” He pointed behind him, and Gears nodded.
“Yeah. I was thinking I would figure out the best place before the pack run tomorrow.”
“Pack run?” I knew that shifters sometimes held activities that they would do as a pack, but I never thought I would be able to see it with my own eyes.
Gears smiled at me. “Yep. We will all get together at about six pm, shift, and do a run together, usually patrolling the whole compound. It bonds us with our wolves, and as a pack, so we do it about once a month.”
Dino tilted his head towards Gears as he glared at him. "It’s just a bunch of rowdy wolves running around and getting messy. I'm sure it's not something you would be interested in… so you can stay at the house if that weirds you out."
