“So you’re new in town,” Justin said, before true amusement lit his eyes. “Hell, talk about smooth. Why don’t I just ask if you come here often?”
“I’m an Aquarius and like to run under the moon,” Dave offered.
“And evidently have a great sense of humor,” Justin said. He smiled a little longer at Dave, and there was something in his eyes, something warm and open andeasy,that had Dave looking back and smiling.
“Yeah, I didn’t mean it that way,” Justin said at last, turning his attention back to the bottle in his hands. “I just wondered what brings a strange shifter to Buttfuck, Nowhere.”
“Me and Christian,” he nodded toward where Christian was watching the others around him like a hawk, “we wanted a change of scene so we’re just traveling around a bit. You know how it is.”
Justin nodded, his eyes still on Dave’s face in a way that let him know he had his full attention.
“And when Christian saw the town, he remembered coming here years ago and staying for a while with a pack that lived around here. Close to the cliffs, he thinks, because he remembers caves or tunnels or something.” He shrugged casually, as though it didn’t matter. “We went up to the bluff earlier, but there was no pack there. Maybe he got it wrong, or maybe they’ve moved on.”
He stopped himself before asking the question outright because that would be too obvious. Hopefully, the fact Justin seemed happy to talk would get him an answer. Except Justin’s face had closed off and tension was tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“They’re gone,” he said abruptly, his fingers tightening on the neck of his bottle.
Before Dave had a chance to follow up that statement, the constant background noise quieted, and he looked up to find Tony standing in the middle of the cage. Without any fanfare, he announced the fights for the night. Christian was drawn to go second, against someone rejoicing in the unlikely name of Raptor.
Dave grinned at the fanciful name as he met Christian’s eyes across the room. They were lit with feral anticipation, and Dave couldn’t be entirely sad when someone moved between them and cut off their direct line of sight. Why did Christian have to look so alive when he was preparing for a fight?
He turned again to Justin, who was leaning back from his crate so that he was propped against the wall behind him, beer clutched closely against his chest. His rather broad chest, Dave noticed.
“So you say the pack on the cliff’s gone,” he said, letting his voice rise into a question at the end of the sentence.
Justin’s gaze rested on him, but Dave had the impression he wasn’t seeing him. “That’s what I said.”
“I don’t suppose you know where? I figure Christian would like to catch up again.”
“No.”
That was obviously all he was going to get. “It’s a pretty fancy setup you’ve got here,” he said, as the noise from the crowd grew again and two fighters entered the floodlit cage. If he didn’t say something more, the questions about Jesse’s pack were going to seem pointed.
“Gotta spend money to make money,” Justin said. “It’s a business,” he said, when he saw the puzzled expression on Dave’s face.
“Right up until someone gets killed,” Dave said, honesty winning over tact.
“So we’re not going to see you in the cage anytime soon, then?” Justin asked.
Dave snorted. “Not really my thing.”
“Mine neither.”
“Yet you’re here.”
“Barton, our alpha, likes a good pack presence. We sometimes get the anti-shifter brigade turning up. And then there’s people like them.” Justin pointed his bottle at a group of very loud guys who looked about Tristan’s age. Their level of excitement gave away that it was one of their friends currently in the cage, stalking around opposite a shifter who was so at ease that Dave was sure he did this regularly. “They just want the chance to pit themselves against a shifter. But if they were to lose too often, things could get ugly if there weren’t enough of us around.”
“Do they lose often?”
Justin shrugged. “It varies. We put some of the pack youngsters in there sometimes. They need to learn to fight, and it gives some of the non-shifters a better chance at winning. And some of those non-shifters are serious contenders—violence is as much a part of their lives as it is ours. Not to mention, every now and then you geta guy who’s done a bit of proper MMA training somewhere along the line.”
“They come and let it all outhere?” Dave looked around with bemusement. If the cops were to come through the door, they’d have a field day with illegal booze, illegal betting, and he was pretty sure staging prizefights without some sort of license was illegal too.
“It gives them what they need,” Justin said. “A chance to win when it’s just you and the other guy. Your history doesn’t matter and there’s no system against you—it’s pure combat, where the only things that count are how hard you train, how fast you are, and how badly you want it.”
Dave cocked his head to one side as he looked at Justin, who must have been aware of his gaze but was watching the cage. The fighters had at last closed and were trading blows. Whenever the shouts from the crowd wavered, he could hear the sickening sounds of flesh striking flesh and grunts of pain and effort. “It’s about control,” he said, echoing his earlier thoughts.
“That’s it exactly,” Justin agreed, cutting a sideways look at Dave. Then his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Though some of them just love whaling the crap out of one another.”
