No one had followed them. Other bars, other places, they’d have had an audience. The people who drank in this bar were damaged enough to knowwitnesswas another name forvictim.
Reynolds was already naked to the waist, jacket and shirt discarded in a messy pile. He kicked off one boot, then the other, and stepped out of his jeans. Naked, he drew his lips back off his teeth and changed, man to wolf, as he charged.
Henry released his hold on the Darkness. Kevin Groves hadbeen skinned alive because of him. Had been skinned alive to send him a message. Henry closed his hand around Reynolds’s muzzle, yanked the wolf’s head up, and ripped out his throat.
Ignoring death throes that shuddered between skin and fur, he fed.
Replete, he dropped the body and turned to face the other shifter, the world in sharp-edged focus.
Baden sighed, still fully dressed, body loose and relaxed. “Yeah, that lasted about as long as I thought it would. Just don’t expect me to bury the fucker. Any dumbass who thinks a few years spent terrorizing humans has a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning against five hundred years of experience deserves to feed a few rats. Not to mention that the reaction to headlines proclaiming ‘Exsanguinated Wolf’ will be funny as shit.”
Henry snarled.
“Yeah, fine, whatever. I’ll dump him in the river; I owe you for saving me the effort of putting that mangy disaster down. Reynolds was not meant to be lone; he truly sucked at it. Had maybe two functioning brain cells left, and neither of them were within shouting distance of self-preservation.” Baden paused, sighed again, and added, “Or species preservation, for that matter.”
Anchoring himself to the flow of words, Henry clawed the Darkness back. The night was young, and he had work to do within the human world if he wanted justice before dawn.
“Back with me, Fitzroy?”
He began to answer when he realized what killing Reynolds meant, and the Darkness surged up again.
“Yeah, hard to get the name you wanted from a corpse,” Baden agreed placidly. “Not impossible, but necromancers are paranoid bastards. I don’t know why you’re all Prince of Darknesstonight, but I do know that you need to hunt smarter. Fortunately for you, while I can’t name the guy you’re looking for, I know who can.”
Over the scents of blood and a cooling corpse, Henry could smell wolf and man and beer and leather…but not fear. He drew in a deep breath, finding himself close enough to Baden that the shifter’s body heat had warmed the air between them. He didn’t remember moving. “I could have killed you.” His head barely topped the other man’s shoulder. Neither of them pretended size mattered.
Baden shrugged. “You got no reason to kill me. Not when you’ve got a belly full of blood and I’m a joy to be around. Also, I’m not Reynolds. I’m bigger, I’m smarter, and I haven’t turned my brain to mush; there’s a good chance I’d do some damage before I go down. You can’t risk that, not tonight, Nightwalker. Not on the hunt like you are.”
He couldn’t. Had that stayed his hand? Had he realized he couldn’t waste time on Baden, not when he intended to rip the heart out of whoever had tortured Kevin Groves? “I need…”
“Don’t tell me. My guess, some anonymous asshole challenged you, but I don’t fucking care.” Baden stepped aside, giving Henry a clear run across the parking lot to his car. “Go talk to some upper-level members of the Pride,” he continued, falling in on Henry’s left. “Gang’s been around for a couple of years, but they’re trying to move up. Word has it you stand against them, they send out some crazy fucker with tranks and a knife and that one of the Devil Dogs came to with the sigil peeled off his arm and the skin wrapped around his dick.”
“Reynolds was working with a gang?” Henry could feel Reynolds’s blood sharpening his focus.
“Fucked if I know. Maybe. Doesn’t matter now.”
It didn’t. “Where do I find the Pride?”
“Generally, downtown. Maybe even in that fancy condo building of yours.” Baden’s grin showed teeth. “You might want to pay more attention to who’s shitting on your doorstep, Nightwalker, and a little less time drawing comics.”
Successful gangs drew wannabe gangbangers like corpses drew flies. With the Pride ready to move up, their circle of hopeful applicants had expanded. The third street tough Henry questioned pointed him to a peripheral member who gave up an address.
The young man stumbled forward, Henry’s pale fingers wrapped around both his hand and his weapon. Bone broke against steel. He sobbed out an address. Sobbed out a plea for mercy. Henry left him slumped against a urine-stained building, pupils dilated, every exhalation a terrified sob.
The Pride hadn’t set up in Henry’s “fancy condo building” but two blocks away. Close enough to be considered “shitting on his doorstep.” Fortunately, developers were more interested in profit than safety, and while the bolt on the entrance was solid, the mechanism controlling it was not. A quick twist tore it apart.
He got off the elevator on the fifteenth floor, walked to 1536, and knocked on the door in a parody of unconcern, as if he weren’t about to kill anyone who got in the way of the name he needed. Seven heartbeats. Cannabis. Too much cheap aftershave on the man peering out at him.
“The fuck do you want?”
With less than ten hours until dawn, Henry had neither time nor inclination for subtlety. He slammed the door open, grabbed the man who’d answered it by the throat, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind him.
Red-faced and gasping for breath, the man Henry held went for a knife. Trained then. A mercenary acting as first-line defense for people willing to have a man skinned alive. The vicious dilettantes turning to face him hadn’t ordered the torture of Kevin Groves, but they’d used the man with the knife on their enemies. Guilt by association.
He tightened his grip, crushing cartilage and stopping air and blood, dropped the body, and counted five guns pointed at him.
No one fired. Gunfire was still rare enough in Canada, even in gang-plagued Vancouver, that neighbors would undoubtedly call the police and the shooters would have to abandon the condo.
Henry could appreciate hanging on to real estate, but they should’ve fired regardless. If they’d shot him, if enough of them had taken the time to aim, they’d have survived the night.
