“I know.” He couldn’t stop the snarl.
One step back. Almost two, but Jack managed to hold his ground. “What can I do?”
“Clear the way to my car.”
“Is it safe for you to drive?”
“It isn’t safe to stop me.”
It should have taken Henry an hour and fifteen minutes to get out to the Pitt River Bridge. It took him forty-seven minutes, and he had to force himself to release the steering wheel once he was parked. He didn’t know of anyone capable of skinning a man alive, but he knew someone who would. Someone who kept track of the worst humanity could offer. Someone Henry had allowed to hunt around the edges of his territory.
The noise level in the River’s Pit slammed at Henry’s ears when he opened the door, but the smell was almost welcome. Whiskey and beer and urine and unwashed bodies chased the bleach from his nose. The place was half-full, heat cranked high, blood pulsing under sweat-streaked skin. Two men, their bulk run to fat, shoved each other, back and forth, in one corner. No one paid any attention. A working girl looked up as Henry closed the door behind him, looked hopeful, and hurriedly looked away. Three disgusting pay phones on the wall to Henry’s right hung under a handwritten sign that warned potential customers the machines were tapped by the VPD.
The man Henry wanted sat where he had a good view of both exits, his back against the wall, his gaze sweeping the room. He smiled at Henry, a smile that didn’t pretend to be anything but a challenging show of teeth. A younger man sat with him, leg jittering, fingers tapping, a scar cutting up the left side of his face almost to his eye. He turned to watch as Henry approached, opened his mouth, and was cut off by a terse “Fitzroy” from his companion.
“Baden.” Henry leaned in. “I need the name and location of a man with a skinning knife and the skills to wield it.”
“No hello? No ‘It’s been a long time’? No concern over how I’ve been?”
“None. Just the name.”
“Fuck you. You sure it’s a man?”
“Yes. Genderandspecies.”
“All right then.” Baden leaned back in his chair. “You want to hire this guy or kill them? Don’t answer that,” he continued before Henry could answer. “You stink of death. You want to rip the world apart right now, but you’ll settle for this knife wielder. Too bad. I don’t know who he is.”
“I do.”
Henry turned to the second man, who grinned at him, showing very white teeth, the drugs he was sweating out constricting the pupils of his yellow eyes to pinpricks even in the dim light of the bar. Another shifter. He turned his attention back to Baden, barely holding on to his humanity. “Pack?”
“Reynolds? Not likely. This asshole is another lone. Surprised you haven’t run into him, Fitzroy. He’s been…doing some work downtown.”He’s been hunting right under your nose, Baden’s smug subtext added.
“Reynolds.” Henry rolled the name past fangs he stopped trying to control. “Tell me what you know. Now.”
“Oh, it’s not going to be that easy, Lord Cashmere Sweater, virgin wool coat that you don’t even fucking need.” Reynolds giggled. “You want this guy, Nightwalker, you fight me for what I know.”
Baden set his beer bottle on the table and sighed. “Reynolds, shut up, unless you have a death wish.”
“Fuck you, Baden. You’re not my alpha. I show my neck to no one.” Reynolds got to his feet, jittering in place, rolling broadshoulders under his grimy denim jacket. “Well, pretty boy,” he jeered, “you got enough balls to fight, or did they shrivel up back in the fifteens with your whore of a mother?”
Henry growled.
The bar fell silent, a nineties country song suddenly foreground and not sounding too happy about being there. These were people who recognized a predator.
Reynolds’s yellow eyes glittered. “Fight me, Nightwalker. Let’s answer the question, once and for all.”
“Outside,” Baden snapped, surging up onto his feet. “Now. Whatever happens does not happen in here.”
Henry spun on a heel and headed for the door.
“Don’t turn your back on me,” Reynolds began.
Baden cut him off. “I said, outside!”
Both men were following; that was all Henry cared about right now. Outside. Away from witnesses. Outside. Where he’d release the rage that threatened to split his skin and rip the name he needed out of flesh and blood. He slid out of his coat and laid it on the hood as he passed his car, making his way across the parking lot to a patch of empty ground where dead grass crackled between his soles and the semi-frozen ground.
He turned as he heard Baden and Reynolds leave the gravel.
