The man, whose arm had morphed into a great, mauling paw from the elbow down, dropped his chin. He looked at the hilt sticking out from the left side of his chest, at the torn fabric and forest of coarse hair singeing and smoking in the heat. It was as if he didn’t feel the pain at all, for a moment.
“Demon!” he snarled at me. He wasn’t wrong there.
Then he let out a choking, garbled cry. It was hoarse, and it wouldn’t carry far. I grinned and twisted the knife in the wound. I wrenched the knife deeper, my hand coming flush against the beast’s hairy skin. I put my weight behind the blade and shoved.
The body was dead weight before it hit the ground. I glanced back at the bar, distant but not out of sight for any intruders, at the moment of impact. A tremor ran through the frozen ground. Then all was still. I glanced down at the lifeless, sprawling figure at my feet. A trickle of red ran from the parted lips into the silver-brown beard. The hand that had been a huge bear paw lay open in the snow, returned in death to its human form. Two dark eyes stared upward, glassy, unseeing.
In the end, the beast-man hadn’t stood a chance. Like always.
I tightened my grip on the knife hilt. It was buried so deeply that for a moment, I thought it might not emerge. But then my grasp tore it free, cutting a wide swath across the upper torso.
My job was complete, and a sense of satisfaction flooded me. The vampire, Orion, who sent me on the kill reiterated that this dead bear shifter was part of the tribe trying to claim his Anchorage territory, plus had slaughtered two humans since arriving in town. More reason for him to be wiped from existence.
Five minutes later, I had slipped into the trees along the roadside, out of view of any unlucky bastard who might happen to pass by. For the moment, the kill lay shrouded in relative darkness, but the Rabbit’s Foot wasn’t far away. It would only be a matter of hours, if that, before the scene was discovered.
That was the vampire’s intention all along. Kill him near the bar, he’d ordered me. The other shifters and vamps in his tribe need to see the warning so they leave town.
“It’s done. Part one of your plan is complete,” I murmured. I spoke aloud into the quiet darkness, knowing the others heard me. In answer, an impatient whisper returned on the breeze.
“What took you so long?”
I glowered at the trees around me. I recognized the vampire’s maddening condescension at once. “Me? I’m not the one who picked the slowest target in this gods-forsaken city.” My sudden burst of rage manifested in a quickly suppressed flash of fire. “You asked. I delivered. Come see the proof yourself.”
“Fine. You’re through for tonight. We’ll take care of the rest.”
I bristled but managed to swallow the brunt of my anger. “Don’t wait up for me,” I growled. The footsteps I left as I stalked off into the woods melted and ran across the crunching snow.
No reply came from the vampire. It was just as well. I had no further interest in whatever that freak had to say.
Logan
Moments ago, Seth had announced his triumph over the bear shifter, which meant I was up to implement part two of our sordid little act to get these assholes out of Archorage. Now I stood outside Golden Klondike club, at the edge of the spread of lights out front. A larger establishment that seemed to attract supernaturals for a drink.
A whisper touched my ears. “Where are you?” The voice was mildly impatient. It belonged to Orion, the local clanmaster who’d hired me.
“I’m coming in,” I answered.
Orion never responded, but it didn’t matter. I already knew our time had just become limited. He’d spent weeks planning out the impending confrontation; its effectiveness hinged on the element of surprise. We weren’t there to engage in a spectacle. The example had already been made of their bear shifter friend—they simply did not know it yet.
Now, it was my turn.
I slipped through the main door. An acrid haze of smoke threatened to blur my vision, mingled with the thick scents of sweat and cloying perfume.
The front room was dark and looked small, despite its size. Its main source of light were the muted lamps illuminating a handful of barely-clad women on a raised stage in the center. They rotated to hypnotic beats before a throng of admirers. Money littered the floor at their feet. I looked away.
“Not your problem, Logan,” I muttered. Indeed, my problem occupied the circular booth in the back corner, which was stuffed to overcapacity with the club’s most raucous patrons. The glint of raised glasses frequently caught my eye as I made my way closer, accompanied by loud laughter. This was the group of shifters and vampires ordered here from the Seattle clanmaster to claim Anchorage from Orion. To lay his stake, not to mention the vamp seemed to have some personal vendetta against Orion. Regardless, I was about to instigate their removal.
I stepped up to the end of their table and gradually their mean dark eyes swept over to me, six or seven sets in all.
“Can we help you?” The one who spoke smiled thinly. The very tip of a hefty fang protruded from beneath the edge of his upper lip. His arms were covered in coarse hair; tufts of it poked out from the open collar of his work shirt. In the low light, he could easily have been mistaken for some kind of bestial mutant—which is exactly what he was.
“You’re making too much noise,” I said.
The daggers in their gazes would have been practically lethal, were they aimed at someone prone to fear. I just stared back and grinned.
“Who’re you?” The same shifter asked this question as well. He fought to keep his smile, but it was quickly curling into more of a sneer. “I can’t imagine you’d do something so damn dumb on purpose, boy. You don’t want to start nothin’ with us tonight, I promise.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Does it look like I’m playing?” A mortal man would have struggled to hear me over the awful cacophony of the music. To him, I knew my words rang clear as a bell.
He scowled deeply. Dark furrows materialized in his forehead. One hand, the fingers like a vise of flesh and bone, clenched fiercely on the edge of the table. “That was my one attempt at bein’ polite,” he growled. “I ain’t gonna make another.”
The shifter’s cheeks and neck flushed a deep, searing red. A feral wildness seeped into his expression, to the point where the human shape of his body felt like a deviation, a gross mismatching of forms. I smiled at the strangeness of it all.
“Something funny, wiseass?” One of the others leapt to his feet, knocking over a glass in the process. The flood of beer doused the tablecloth, dripping in amber rivulets onto the floor. Some of the group jumped back, shouting outrage over wasted drink. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. These creatures were nothing more than instinct and raw emotion. Heads empty of everything other than hunger, thirst, and base brutality.
How pathetic. These enemies of Orion’s were neither interesting nor entertaining.
“Answer me!” This one was younger than the others at the table, more rambunctious and lithe. Before I’d even had a chance to think of a reply, he shoved his way out of the booth, sending one of his companions sprawling.
A bark of warning went up from the kid’s elders. “Control yourself, boy!”
But it was too late. Blinded by inebriated rage, the boy leapt toward me, reaching with balled fists toward the front of my shirt.