As Vance and Tucker disappeared into the bar, flanking Austin Graham and his friend, Bishop, I turned back to the crowd. “Nolan, stay put. Everyone else, please go back inside and enjoy your evening.”
As one, they headed into the bar, grumbling beneath their breath about the antagonistic new strangers.
“Nolan?” He had my full attention, with everyone else gone. “What’s going on?”
“I swear, Charley, I have no idea. I was just drinkin’ my beer, eatin’ my nachos, when that asshole sat down next to me and ‘suggested’ we go have a talk in the parking lot.” He used air quotes.
My brows dipped. “Why would you go outside with someone you’ve never met?”
He hesitated for longer than he should have. And finally, Nolan shrugged. “I didn’t say I’d never met him. I said he was an asshole. They both are. BishopandAustin.”
“I’m gonna need more than that, if you expect me to keep them out of your face.” A face which was already a patchwork of black and blue bruises, surrounding a newly crooked and bloody nose.
“Okay, look, I had a few run-ins with them, back in Covington—”
“They’re from Covington?” A small town about an hour west of here.
“Yup. I am too, though I don’t live there now. I stumbled into them when they were newly infected and offered to show them the ropes, and they acted like I’d just pissed in their faces. Needless to say, we didn’t get together for sleepovers and bake sales.” His nervous shrug told me that wasn’t the whole story. As did the sour scent of his sweat.
“They were newly infected. Were they sick?” Strays still in the grip of scratch fever weren’t able to process much, as they struggled with a barrage of overwhelming new senses and cravings. Needs and inexplicable instincts. Not to mention the fever itself.
I was out of my mind for a solid week, when I was infected.
“No, no,” Nolan insisted. “They were fully recovered. Just still new.”
“So, why would they attack you? Did they follow you here?”
“I have no idea, Charley. I swear. I didn’t know they were in town. I haven’t seen ’em in months, at least.” He ran one hand through his hair, staring down at me, and the scent of his sweat grew stronger. “This is totally random. Swear to god.”
“Okay. Go have a beer. But donotleave until you hear from me.”
I patted a few shoulders and smiled at everyone on my way through the front room. Mostly because the human women were still drinking at their corner booth, with a couple of the regulars, and the Fat Cat needed to feel like a normal bar where patrons might get into a fight in the parking lot, but they certainly do not grow fur and claws. Where there was definitely not a basement level full of steel-barred cells and emergency medical equipment.
“Charley!” Doug Myers slid off his barstool and fell into step with me as I rounded the bar. “It’s them. They’re the two strangers I smelled in the common run.”
“Thanks, Doug. I caught that.” I turned him by the shoulders and pointed him back at his stool, then I lowered the bar into place behind me and headed through the kitchen into my office. Where I nearly choked on the cloud of testosterone hanging in the air.
Austin and Bishop sat in the pair of matching chairs in front of my desks, with their backs to me. Neither of them turned as I closed the door and rounded the side of my desk.
“Gentlemen,” I said as I sank into my chair. Though so far, one of them hadutterlyfailed to earn that title. I focused on Bishop. “My name is Charley Studebaker, and I am Marshal of the northern zone of the Mississippi Valley Pride.”
“So I heard.” He crossed thick arms over the front of his red wool button up.
“Okay, that’s a good start.” Once, a newcomer had refused to say a single word. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you attacked one of my patrons?”
“Patrons?” Bishop frowned. “Are you a cop or a bartender?”
“Neither. As I said, I’m the local Marshal in charge of this zone. I also own and run this bar. And you are…?”
“Bishop Mattheson,” he grumbled.
Behind them, Tucker began typing silently on his phone, Googling both of them.
“And you’re both from Covington?”
Austin shifted in his chair. “Not originally. But that’s where we currently live.”
“And what is your business with Nolan Blake?”
