Chapter 14 Debts Paid, Debts Owed
Chapter fourteen
Debts Paid, Debts Owed
Jon squeezed the trigger as he moved, letting the loud and obvious weapon consume his opponent’s focus while his conscious mind did the real work.
Shifters weren’t so biologically different from humans that they weren’t also mostly water when it came down to it.
But he had questions for these bastards, so instead of executing his attacker, Jon used his invisible advantage to slow the panther’s movements and weaken the shifter from the inside.
The panther sliced through air, skidding and tumbling across the tall grass where Jon had been standing. He righted himself quickly enough, gave his sleek form a hard shake, then turned his head toward Jon with an agitated roar, and promptly collapsed in place.
“Hey!” the other guy shouted. “What the fuck? Were those silver bullets?” He was still shouting in Spanish and had only moved about half a foot from the tree.
Jon rolled his eyes and turned his head toward the guy, switching to Spanish to accentuate his point when he asked, “You know that’s a myth, right?”
The asshole visibly jumped, jerking around and raising his rifle but failing to bother bringing his trigger finger into position. “Shut up! What’d you do to him?”
“Less than he deserved,” Jon replied. “You fuckers put my buddy in the hospital. You’re going to tell me why. And depending on how that goes, maybe you live.” The odds were low, but he tossed it out there in case it moved things along.
It did not.
The panther made a sound of discontent, his muscles straining against Jon’s influence.
The gunman looked between them for a beat, then pulled his trigger hand from his weapon and flexed it carefully.
He was obviously testing it, and Jon could practically read his mind when all five digits responded properly.
The finger he’d claimed to think was broken was not, in fact, broken.
In the next heartbeat he would think that was great, that it was his chance, because his gun was superior to Jon’s and Jon couldn’t possibly close the physical distance between them faster than he could depress that trigger.
Jon watched it all play across the dumb shit’s face and blew out a sigh. So much for an interrogation.
The gunman had his back to the stream, so he didn’t see the two hard-water projectiles Jon had lifted from it.
Neither was larger than a single finger in length or broader around in diameter, and they formed quickly, because it was a technique Jon had used before.
It was much more subtle than raising an entire wave to crush a single person, his old CO had been right about that.
The panther made another noise and one of his claws scraped against rock as he struggled to rise. But it would have been in vain, anyway.
Jon held the gunman’s gaze as the man curled his finger around the trigger, a familiar glint of determination in his eyes. It was Jon’s projectiles that found their target, one tearing through the gunman’s throat and severing his spinal cord while the other pierced and exploded in his heart.
The man’s eyes widened, his grip went slack, his body spasmed, and he collapsed in a bloody heap to the ground.
Jon turned to face the growling panther.
“I’m only going to ask once,” he said, returning to English, “and I trust you understand what happens if you play fucking dumb.” He dropped into a crouch just outside the infuriated shifter’s reach to make it easier to stare into the shifter’s eyes.
“Why the goddamn hell did you and your friend back there come around to shoot up a fucking bakery this past Monday?” They both knew the bakery hadn’t been their target, but he wanted to hear the bastard say it.
With an unmistakable grunt of frustration, the shifter dropped his head and Jon felt his body begin vibrate. Jon relinquished his hold, allowing the man control of himself again, and took a step backward. He had fast reflexes, but so did shifters. It wouldn’t pay to drop his guard.
The panther transformed back into a man with a ripple of skin and an echoing series of snaps and pops that could only come from bone realignment.
He dug human fingers into the earth his claws had previously gouged, pushed up to his knees, and heaved a hard breath before shoving to his feet.
Dark, stringy hair hung to his shoulders and tattoos covered his torso, shoulders, and arms. His human eyes were no less angry than the feline eyes he’d had seconds prior.
“What kind of monster are you?” He spoke in heavily accented English.
Jon scoffed. “Kinda rude coming from the guy who turned into an oversized cat and tried to tear out my insides.” He tucked away his gun, because they both knew it wasn’t the weapon Jon would go to when the fight resumed. “Answer my question.”
“Burn in Hell.”
“Someday, probably.” Jon held out an arm and an arc of stream water lifted to greet him, stretched across the distance between where he stood and the actual creek bed as it coiled around his hand and forearm. He watched the shifter’s eyes widen. “Now, tell me about Monday, while I’m asking nice.”
The blue jay Jon had heard earlier suddenly dove down from its perch—the perch Jon would have expected it to have abandoned when the fight started—aimed straight at Jon’s face. It let out a grating, almost frenzied cry and made a vicious jab for his eyes.
Jon twisted sharply away, using some of the water he’d gathered to swat the bird aside in the hopes of chasing the damn thing off. What the fuck? It was just a goddamn bird as far as he could tell, but that behavior was definitely not natural.
Of course, the unavoidable distraction cost him.
The shifter he had no name for rushed forward while he was preoccupied and only sheer luck kept Jon from taking a swipe of a shifted, clawed arm to his left side. It was the same kind of assault that had shredded Lance’s leg. He knew damn well what those claws could do to a man’s flesh.
The damn blue jay flipped a U-turn in midair and doubled back for more, not seeming to care about the feline-man at all.
Jon bit out a rough laugh. “Never in my fucking life would I have pictured a big cat walking around with a trained attack bird.”
On cue, the blue jay dive bombed him again.
It aimed for an ear instead of his eyes, which Jon thought was an interesting choice.
Not that it mattered. As much as he actually hated using his power on innocent creatures, or to end lives, circumstance had forced his hand on enough occasions that Jon knew precisely what to do.
He took hold of the hydrogen inside the creature, same as he’d done with the panther, and he used that hold to snap its neck in one swift movement. The bird dropped to the ground.
The shifter cut his eyes to the fallen bird, going still for a prolonged moment.
“You should’ve called it off,” Jon said.
“I don’t fucking like doing that, but I’m not some sap who’s gonna let myself get pecked to death, either.
” He cracked his neck and let the water still mostly gathered around his forearm spread up and out, swirling like a snake around his entire upper body from waist to throat.
It was armor as much as threat and his opponent would know that.
“I’m only going to repeat myself because I hate owing my friends apologies. Tell me about Monday.”
It was half bullshit. He already owed Lance the apology, because the bastard in front of him wasn’t walking away. But he did hate having to do it, and he did want to see if he could get any information out of the guy.
The feline-man took a half-step backward and raised his shifted arm to hold it between them, claws curled, as if they were about to launch into some kind of fucked-up brawl.
His lips curled back in a snarl when he spoke.
“Whatever you do to me,” he said in Spanish, “PJ will do worse to you. He loves his birds.”
PJ? An alias or stupid-ass nickname, most likely, but it was a lead. However small. Some ass who answered to PJ and had a thing for birds. Probably either was Hispanic or at least fluent in the language, judging from the preference and obvious ethnicity of the two Jon had dealt with.
Jon cocked his head. “Are you saying I have to talk to this PJ to get my answers? You’re just some brainless trigger-guy?”
The shifter growled and flexed his clawed hand-paw-whatever. “Arrogant American!” He launched forward, swinging his weaponized arm with a fury that would kill most men.
Jon had fought beside a shifter for four years when he’d first started out. He knew damn well the kind of strength and unimaginable sharpness they possessed. He also knew that, sometimes, their instinctive methods left them exposed.
It only took a thought—a mental visual—to reshape the water curled around him.
Two angled, sharpened edges shot upward, meeting the shifter’s lunge even as Jon himself pivoted to the side.
The smaller extension sliced clean through the feline-man’s shifted forearm at the elbow, but before the man could process that enough to react to it the second sharpened stream had torn into his chest. The silver bullet thing might have been a myth some asshole made up along the way, but stabbing into a living creature’s heart usually did the trick. Shifters were no exception.
Jon let the water recede, returning it to the stream without any contaminants from the blood or forest, and the shifter’s corpse dropped to the ground.
God-fucking-dammit. Not only had he gotten very little out of the bastards, but he suddenly found himself with two bodies to explain or get rid of in a community where the local law despised him. On top of all the other shit.
Fan-fucking-tastic.