Cake And Arse Party
Rowan
As one, we stride across the parking lot toward the Target. In practiced synchronicity, Guardian opens the door for Thriller, who breaches because his reaction times are unparalleled. I follow behind as point, and Bear and Guardian enter when clear.
The lights are off inside, but enough sun still makes it through the newspapers plastered to the windows to cast everything in a strange yellow hue.
In keeping with the facade of an empty retail unit, there’s nothing here besides the counter that would host the cash register, a few towers of cardboard boxes, and a solitary human who rigidly stands by a doorway.
Her dyed black hair has a solid two inches of root regrowth, and her silver jewellery flickers in the dim light whenever she wrings her fingers. My gaze flits to the doorway beside her, likely the access point to the basement coven, but my wolf can’t hear anything from the other side.
“Good morning, Miss,” Guardian begins. “We’re from the International Archive for the Collective History of Witchcraft, and are here to discuss a missing artifact. The unit looked closed, but I tried the handle and—”
Georgie, I presume, giggles a nervous laugh. Her eyes dart to the door, and I scan the room for any cameras. “Hi, yeah, it’s me. Who you’re meeting. About the artefact. I have it.”
That’s when I notice the small cross-body bag she’s wearing, the strap buried under layers of dangling silver necklaces.
Thriller steps to the right under the pretence of perusing a stack of boxes there, but he’s positioning himself strategically between us and that door.
Guardian steps into his space to provide an assist, and I strafe the other way to offer cover.
“Scusi,” Bear interrupts. “You say you have it, but you mean the information? What can you tell me about the artefact? I need to verify that it matches what we’re looking for.”
She fumbles with the fastening on her purse and then shoves her hand deep inside. I tense, Bear doesn’t blink, Guardian shifts the set of his shoulders to make more space in case he needs his wings, and Thriller’s hands form fists by his sides.
“No, I mean that I have it. Here.” Georgie produces a small box with the Raleigh Coven’s wax seal on it.
About the size of her palm, she holds it out and removes the lid to reveal a silver hairpin.
It’s old; a few sections of the delicate metalwork are missing, and the large mother-of-pearl inlay, set to symbolise a moon, is cracked.
“It was stored in the ancients section, above the label Lunae.”
She closes her fingers around it, and I clench my jaw.
Georgie, it seems, is the type of human who snoops on her wife, snoops on witch business, and is bold enough to try and extort money from werewolves.
She doesn’t have permission to offer this to us, and if we take it, then we’ve stolen from the witches.
It’s not that witches and werewolves are enemies, it’s just that all us paranormals keep to our own kind as much as possible.
Mixing, historically, never works out too great for either side.
Operation Magpie is an intel-ratifying mission only.
Yes, the Dogs of War are cleared to act independently to get the job done, but there’s no way we can verify this hairpin is the artefact the General needs without taking possession of both it and her.
Grand theft larceny and kidnapping were not in the mission brief.
Neither was a possible war with the witches. This changes everything.
Georgie gives another one of those nervous giggles, her eyes darting back to the door, and my wolf pushes forward.
Threat. Pack. Protect.
She takes a step forward, closer to Guardian, and nudges the box toward him. “Look, I have the Luna trinket. It’s old. Roman old. And I was promised a cash reward. I can’t take it back down there because they’ll know what I did. So we need to hurry. Where’s my money I was promised?”
Guardian holds his hands up, palms facing out. “Miss…” he begins, but he doesn’t say anything further because my wolf detects the sound of footsteps approaching from the other side of the door only seconds before it opens. They soundproofed it.
Another female, maybe a few years older than Georgie, comes to a dead stop with her hand still on the door. Mouth ajar, she glances between us all, then rushes to wrap her long fingers around Georgie’s wrist before she notices the box in her palm.
She freezes then. “Georgie? What’s going on?”
“Oh, erm. I’m just… I thought you were helping set up for breathworks because Ray is with the Coven Leader.”
Confirmed: at least two more witches downstairs.
The new witch risks taking her eyes off us to look at Georgie. “I was, then I thought we could get a tea before it starts.” Then her gaze lands on the hairpin. “Why do you have one of our historical vault pieces? And why are there werewolves here?”
“What? No. These aren’t…” Georgie’s brown eyes flick between us all in turn. “Werewolves.”
Two things happen at once. The new witch presses a button on an alert pendant that triggers an alarm to blare, and Thriller leaps past both witches to slam that internal door shut and prevent any others from joining us.
Heavy metal shutters roll down over the retail unit, plunging it into darkness. Bear snatches for the box in Georgie’s hand, but the witch who still has hold of her activates some kind of hidden warding and he’s flung violently backward.
Guardian’s purple eyes provide the only light in the unit, and Thriller’s growl announces his partial transformation to wolf form as he snarls and snaps his teeth at the pair.
“Do you realise what you’ve done?” hisses the witch.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding…” I aim to defuse the situation before someone gets hurt, but the door to the rest of the coven suddenly explodes off its hinges, and splintered fragments blast through the air.
“Shit,” I mutter, instinctively putting an arm over Bear’s head.
Sheltering him from the explosion, I drop to the floor and command my unit. “Clear out!”
“Bummed you didn’t invite me to your cake and arse party, Ranger.” Tuesday, with his bright and breezy Australian accent in my ear, can fuck off.
I growl down the line. With those shutters down, and the door to the coven proper unsecured, there’s only one remaining extraction route. “Delilah?”
“Yes, sir?”
“What’s this roof made of?”
Thriller’s low warning growl is swallowed by the heavy buzz of defensive magic. A bright flash of red precedes a flurry of white sparks.
“Resin tile. Did you know they can withstand wind speeds of up to one hundred miles per hour?”
Guardian’s wide, white and gold wingspan blocks the access to the coven. As an angel, he’s immune to most forms of human magic, but not when the bastards use it to blow stuff up. A steady flow of blood trickles from a wound on his right arm.
We need to get out of here without any more casualties. “Tuesday, we’re going out through the roof and need a distraction. Ye’ve got three minutes.”
“Roger that. Next door is a party decorations store, and their compressed gas tanks will malfunction in two.”
“Guardian, we need to get up there.” I point to the low ceiling, and he looks back over his shoulder. If he moves, whoever else is down there will be able to get through.
Thriller, in partial wolf form, widens his stance and squats, setting up a stirrup with clawed hands. Bear takes a running jump, foot landing in Thriller’s interlocked palms before he’s boosted up high. The lightest of us, he pushes through the false ceiling with ease.
I stare at the hairpin in the box in Georgie’s likely dead hand. Blood is splattered over the silver and pearl. My gut tells me this isn’t what we’re after, and I fold her fingers over it so the witches will know what she did.
“I’d get away from the joining wall if I were you.” Tuesday’s warning is gracious. Means we have less than ten seconds before shit hits the fan.
Wedged into the rafters, Bear leans down to take Thriller’s arm and hoist him up, where the pair combine their strength to punch through the boarding that supports the roof.
At the last second, Guardian charges toward me, and with a boost from his wings, lifts me up and through the opening right as Tuesday’s bomb detonates.
Scrambling down the backside of the roof, we drop to the ground and immediately separate. We know the drill: each wolf for himself, get back to the Nest.
I slow my stride and covertly keep tabs on all my pack members until I can no longer see them. Then I take a seat on a bench far enough away to be inconspicuous, and watch as passersby gather. Some try to help.
I’m still there when the first responders take over the parking lot, when the fire brigade storm the burning units with their hoses, and when the first of two gurneys are wheeled out with zipped black bags on top.
Removing my earpiece, I let my wolf forward to listen to all the conversations and gather more intel for the mission debrief.
The Coven Leader, and a couple of other witches who were downstairs with him, know we were here…
but they don’t know who we are. They know Guardian is an angel, but obviously they can’t tell the human services that.
Luckily, Guardian’s blocking of the doorway prevented them from seeing Thriller’s wolfish features, and thankfully the shop front doesn’t have working cameras.
Bear’s question from earlier repeats in my mind. “Why would the General withhold intel when the threat is against him? It doesn’t make sense.”
Heaving myself off the bench, I scrub my hand over my face. If the General had just said what this Luna del Lupo was from the beginning, an intelligence officer wouldn’t have decided to cast a baited trap, and a young woman desperate for cash wouldn’t have betrayed her coven—her wife’s coven.
I let out a heavy exhale, turn my back on the crime scene, and head down the main street that leads me away. I need to get back to the Nest, and my pack. One of us will get the truck later.
The buzzing of an incoming call is a welcome distraction. Ruben.
“Baby brother.” He adopts that fake stern tone that winds me up.
He knows I hate being reminded that I’m the youngest of the Rangecroft siblings.
“Ye were meant to check in over three hours ago. Ye know the rules Ro, we all do. Mum’s about pitching to call the General’s Office for failure to inform yer next of kin about a death in service. ”
“Ah, fuck. We didn’t make the Nest until late. I had to mission brief en route, and then we walked into a shitshow. Ye know how it goes. Is Mum there?”
It’s funny how, even at my age and halfway across the world, thinking I might be in trouble with Mum drags my shoulders higher.
“Naw, we distracted her with cross-checking yer flight number and suggesting she hack various American traffic reporting systems for any mention of car wrecks in your state last night. Raina and the girls have her out in the garden now. Yer Dogs okay, then?”
“Aye,” I push my wolf through to our family bond and send a gentle nudge Mum’s way. “Tell her I’m sorry, eh? It’s been nonstop, but I know the rules.”
Ben must move to an open window because the sound of my family filters through the background of the call, soothing me and my wolf.
Had it not been for this mission, though, I’d have still been there with them, avoiding having the twins paint my nails, stealing Raina’s cakes from the stand when she’s not looking, running with Ben’s wolf through our family’s estate. Home. I soak it all in.
“Yer not with Julien today, then?” I ask, changing the focus away from me.
“Och, that’s um… no. Not anymore.”
I’m not surprised to hear this, but I frown anyway.
Ben’s with a new person each week, feels like.
He’s searching for his mate but won’t admit it, pretends he’s young and not ready to settle down.
But he’s older than me, and I see how he is with Raina’s kids; he wants what she has.
I’m more like our sister Riley, the thought of having a mate and then doing what I do each day… I shudder.
“We’d only been on a few dates, nothing that I was attached to.”
Ben’s just hit the nail on the head. This life—being a Dog of War—it carries risks.
Today was close, but what if I had a mate to worry about as well as my pack?
I wouldn’t be able to make decisions the way I’d need to, that’s for sure.
The thought that I would ever lose a pack member because I prioritised a mate over them competes with the knowledge that, if I had a mate, they’d become my entire world, and I’d do whatever it took to make sure I came home to them. A headache blooms.
“Sorry yer search for a mate fell flat,” I goad.
“That’s not what I’m—”
“Yer breaking up.” I make crackling noises down the line. “Good luck with finding yer mate.”
“Ye cheeky shite. Ye know that I’m not—”
“Bye, Ben.” Smiling, I end the call.
At the far end of the street from our mission target, I turn back to look over my shoulder, but I can barely see the red and blue flashing lights and towering plume of smoke from Tuesday’s exit strategy.
Standing in front of a freshly painted French-style patisserie, I pull up the map feature on my phone and work out a route to the Nest. Full and golden-crowned croissants fill the window in front of me, and my stomach rumbles. After this morning, I think the Dogs of War have earned a treat.