Chapter 8
Werewolf Captain America?
Kit groaned when he saw both their names in bold letters at the bottom of the page.
He’d meant to spare Yordan this task. He knew how close Yordan and Coffee were.
Hadn’t he just walked in on the guy sobbing out grief that had been churning inside him for nearly two years?
It was not Yordan’s task to fix Coffee’s screw-up.
It was Kit’s as head of all the combat packs.
But now, they were both tied into this disaster, and they had better start working on it now.
Fortunately, he knew just the person to help.
If he ever needed something to be handled super quick, he called on Pee.
Her name was actually Serena Chin. She was a Chinese werewolf whose magic somehow made her work at twice normal human speed.
And that was on a slow day. She’d picked the name Speedy Gonzales, which her friends shortened to Pee because packmates could be obnoxious.
He grabbed his cell phone and typed his first email to her.
The second went company-wide, saying that any debts to Coffee were now held by a fairy.
All forfeits must be dispatched immediately to Pee or suffer the consequences.
He didn’t bother to spell out the threat.
Everyone knew that fairies could be real assholes.
Serena was in the room before he hit send on the second email.
Her eyes were bright, her expression calm.
One might even call her inscrutable if it weren’t for her mouth that perpetually quirked into a half smile.
As if she knew something funny but wasn’t going to share.
Which she probably did. Also, because she was busy, not inscrutable.
He shoved the diary at her without a word. Yordan was already going through the spiral notebooks. They had to figure out who owed what and get all debts resolved ASAP.
It took Pee all of two minutes before she looked up and said, “You two are idiots.”
Yordan snapped back, “Opinions like that waste time.”
At the exact same moment, Kit tossed her the rest of the spiral notebooks. “Organize and start collection. Meanwhile...”
Meanwhile, what? He swallowed and tried to think through things clearly. There was too much. Flexible thinking was no help when the task was so big his mind shorted out.
Worse, he kept remembering his own bet with Coffee.
Why the hell hadn’t he realized it long before now?
Here was the cause of his “shifting problem.” One night of drinking with Coffee and...
Fuck! A drunken confession turned into a challenge, which led to a stupid bet.
He hadn’t even remembered that night until he’d seen the bet written dark and bold in the spiral notebook.
Well, at least he didn’t have to go to Scotland now. The cause of his freakish debilitation was now clear.
“I can’t think...” he murmured. Fortunately, Yordan was able to help cut through the chaos.
“Focus on the alphas first. If they have a debt, that’ll screw up the whole pack.”
Only one pack was on a mission right that second. All the others were resting or en route to one. “Oh shit. It’s a puppy pack facing their first monster.”
He punched a number into his phone and spoke for everyone’s benefit. “I’m taking the helicopter to Torch Lake. I’ll be in there in ten. Who have we got who’s combat ready?”
Pee frowned. “Torch Lake?” She got it a second later. “Fuck.”
Again, Yordan kept them on track. “Not helpful.”
“Right,” said Pee. “But there’s no one available.”
“I’ll go,” Yordan said. “What’s at Torch Lake?”
Kit shook his head. “You haven’t slept in thirty-six hours. A shower doesn’t make you rested, and I don’t allow stupid macho shit.” He thought about his options. “I’ll fly up there. Hopefully in time. Pee, you organize this shit and recall Gummy’s pack.” He glared at Yordan. “You get some sleep.”
Yordan arched his brows, a look that had no right to be so sexy on him, then he crossed to the back corner of Coffee’s closet. He tossed aside a pile of clothes to uncover a safe. He punched in the code—a not so clever 7734 which spelled hELL upside down—then pulled out a paper envelope.
Both Kit and Pee watched with interest.
“What is that?” Kit asked. “And why didn’t you tell me he had a safe?”
“Because I know what’s in here. We all did.” He lifted out small plastic container filled with colorful somethings.
“And what’s that?” Kit asked as Yordan ripped it open and pulled out a long, thin, and very gross gummy worm.
“A week’s sleep,” he said as he stuffed the whole thing into his mouth and started chewing.
“Bullshit.”
“Truth,” Yordan said between bites. “Not all his fairy bets were moronic.”
“But—” Kit’s eyes widened. “Is that what Gummy eats all the fucking time?”
Yordan shook his head. Apparently the worms were really chewy. “Nah,” he said as he worked the worm in his mouth. “His are mundane candy store stuff. But this is how he got the taste for them.”
Kit sighed. Clearly, Yordan was privy to a whole world of combat secrets. “No way does magic work as well as a good night’s sleep.”
“Course not,” Yordan agreed. “But I’m not letting you go up to Torch Lake without backup.”
Kit wanted to argue, but he didn’t have any good options and time was running out. He couldn’t get Marsha on the phone. She was the one leading a pack of new puppies against the Torch Lake monster. For all he knew, he was already too late.
Damn it. He couldn’t think straight. Yordan wasn’t the only one who was operating with too little sleep. With a groan, he held out his hand. “Give me one.”
Meanwhile, Pee was already halfway through the first notebook, but she had enough presence of mind to shoot him a long, hard look of fear.
“I had no idea,” she said.
“What?”
“That there was so much stupidity here.” Her gaze included the spiral notebooks and Kit.
Yordan swallowed the last of his worm. “You people in the home office have no idea.”
Kit had started on his own gummy worm, and the thing was like chewing warm tar. But it tasted great, which was a contradiction, but somehow made sense.
“That’s exactly why you’ve been promoted,” he said as he headed out the door.
Yordan shot him a look of pure hatred, and Kit had the gall to laugh. “Welcome to my world,” he quipped, then he abruptly sobered as he pointed to Pee. “Stupid we may be, but you need to keep these bets in absolute confidence.”
She nodded. She wasn’t there yet, but eventually, she’d find out his bet, and damn it, he shuddered to think how her opinion of him would plummet. But he hadn’t the time to be discreet.
Thankfully, she understood. Meanwhile, he jerked his head toward the helicopter pad.
“It should already have our gear,” he said to Yordan.
They were halfway down the hall when his scattered thoughts popped up a new horror.
“Run back and keep that door open,” he said to Pee.
“Last thing I want is to lose the bedroom again!”
She was gone before he finished speaking. He turned his attention to updating Yordan as they walked. It helped that whatever fairy magic was in those gummy worms was slipping through his body like ten hours of sleep followed by a massage and a nap. Hell, he hadn’t felt this good in years.
“Where did he get those worms?” he asked, a renewed strength filling his voice and his step.
“There’s a downside,” Yordan warned.
Wasn’t there always? “What?”
“When it runs out, it’ll hit you like a ton of bricks.”
“Great.”
“Tell me what’s in Torch Lake, besides the usual?”
“You ever meet Marsha?” She was named after the famous Brady Bunch kid because she’d spent her puppy year caught between two obsessive wolves who had eventually killed each other. Not every werewolf was stable, and she’d gotten the attention of two bad ones.
“The weirdly smart one?”
Kit chuckled. Marsha saw patterns others missed and usually tried to point them out.
When she’d first started training, she’d come up with the strangest conspiracy theory bullshit based on random evidence.
Most of the time, her ideas had been totally wrong, but as she’d matured, she’d honed that skill.
She’d learned to do research—and not the ten minutes on Google kind.
And she’d gotten a ton of experience. Her last alpha had warned Kit to never ignore her.
Never take her on blind faith either, but take her concerns seriously.
So what had he done? He’d ignored her. Or rather, he’d put her concerns on his list. Way, way, way down at the bottom of the list.
“Marsha told me that her missions were getting more dangerous. Always worse than expected. Always a bit weirder too, and the issue was accelerating.”
Yordan nodded. “That’s probably because of the black hole of death in Wisconsin. It should be easing off now.”
“That’s what I said.”
Yordan frowned. “But you took her off combat and set her on a training run to Torch Lake just to prove her wrong?”
Kit nodded, pleased that Yordan understood what he wasn’t saying.
Torch Lake had a lake monster created by a camp counselor and immortalized into song by a folk singer.
It was also on a nexus of energy lines, which meant that every few years, the Torch Lake monster manifested.
All that energy going into scaring little kids created exactly what they feared.
It wasn’t a big deal. In fact, it was the perfect training ground for new recruits. Entice the serpent creature out of the water, then kill it. Everyone came out covered in slime, but victorious.
“Why is this bad?” Yordan pressed. “What did she bet?”
“It wasn’t a bet. It was a curse phrased as a bet.”
They’d made it to the helipad in record time.
Their gear was just being tossed in the back, and they both pulled on helmets and strapped in like the pros they were.
And if Kit snuck a peek at Yordan’s ripple of muscles, broad shoulders, and tight ass, then who was to blame him? He couldn’t be all panic all the time.
Two minutes later, they were in the air.
Kit had started flying helicopters when he was a boy in Scotland.
Putting this one into the air was a sweet joy, even if the thing was a little rickety and desperately needed a few dozen replacement parts.
That was why it was the only one available. The others were already deployed.
Meanwhile, Yordan brought him back to business. “What was the curse?”
“That Marsha would face increasingly hard monsters until she admitted to Coffee that he was cute.”
Yordan groaned. “She’d never say that.”
“Exactly. She bet him that he didn’t have the strength of will to make a curse stick. Which we now know he did because Coffee was backed by fairy magic.”
“So, Marsha’s taken a bunch of puppies up north to fight—”
“The Torch Lake monster.”
“Do we know which monster it is?”
“Nope.” The Torch Lake monster had two manifestations—a huge, slimy, lizard dragon or a huge, slimy, panther dragon.
The difference was in the face and sometimes in how the creature attacked.
The lizard spewed scalding water out of its mouth.
The panther used claws to trap before biting off the victim’s head.
It was all part of the fun of monster manifestations.
Yordan’s fingers tapped nervously on his thigh. He was either thinking hard or a nervous flyer. Or both.
“How good are the puppies?”
Kit shot a look of mea culpa at Yordan. “They’re new geeks. This was supposed to be their one and only mission before setting up in research and development.”
Yordan took a moment to absorb that, but far from the fury or condemnation Kit expected, he flashed an excited grin.
“I loved my Torch Lake mission. Glad I get to go back.”
And wasn’t that Yordan to a T? No condemnation. No worry. Simple process of the basics. Here’s the problem; let’s go fix it. If Kit weren’t already half in love with Yordan, this would have tipped him straight over the edge.
Kit might be a flexible thinker, but that meant he often got lost in the weeds. He might see all the possibilities, but he quickly got overwhelmed by the magnitude of all the variables. Then he castigated himself for not being able to focus.
Yordan didn’t waste time on blame. He attacked the problem head on without emotions, and that was a godsend right now. Kit wanted to say something mushy then. Something that was grateful and hinted at deeper feelings.
But now wasn’t the time. Especially since he had a confession to make and it was better done not watching Yordan’s reaction. So he focused on flying as he oh-so casually mentioned his personal problem.
“So, um, I’ve got to warn you. I’ll be using a gun in this fight. I’m a pretty good shot—”
“A gun?” Yordan snapped. “With puppies around? Unless you’re a dead shot, that’s fucking stupid.”
“I won’t be much use otherwise—”
“Bullshit. I don’t care if you’re frightened.
Don’t care if your blood runs cold at the sight of big fangs.
Whatever the problem is, these puppies are your responsibility.
What the hell happened to you? You used to be one of the badass fighters.
Whatever made you go bureaucrat, get over it. We don’t have the time for it.”
Kit felt his gut twist. He knew there were rumors about why he’d suddenly been thrown into a noncombat position.
Most people thought he’d gotten an injury—which was close to the truth—but without a visible limp or missing limb, people thought he was off in the head.
Apparently, Yordan thought he’d turned coward, and that hurt.
“Shut up and listen. I can’t shift like normal, so I’ll be using a gun.”
Yordan stared at him, and Kit returned the glare. A moment later, Yordan flushed and looked away. “Sorry. I shouldn’t judge. I don’t know—”
“You’re damn right you don’t know. You think I wanted to leave my pack?”
“I thought you asked for the transfer.”
“I did.” Damn the guy for being so well-informed, but not well-informed enough. “Because I wasn’t going to endanger anyone else.”
Yordan nodded. “So you’ll use a gun.”
“Yes.”
“It better be a goddamned missile launcher, then,” Yordan said as he pointed outside.
While they’d been talking, the campground had come into view.
Kit hadn’t seen it at first. He’d been busy flying the helo while trying not to throttle Yordan.
But now that he banked around, he finally got a good look at the campground.
Holy shit. They were so screwed.