Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(8)

Tracey frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“You really should be worrying about yourself right now.”

“Because of you?” Tracey snorted. “Oh, please.”

Freja sneered. “I should have taken you out a long time ago.”

“So you’re a bounty hunter now?”

“As much money as they’re offering for you?”

“Is this bounty out of Germany?” Tracey asked. The Romanian female was out of Germany.

“No.”

“Rome?” She lowered her voice. “The Pope?”

“What?” the hyena snapped, surprised at her question. “No.”

“Sierra Leone?”

“Would you stop? You’re pissing me off!”

“From what my brother says, that’s not hard.”

The hyena pulled a gun from the back of her jeans waistband, pointing it directly at Tracey’s head.

“A gun?” Tracey said, smiling. “How edgy.”

“I know all about you. I’m not taking any chances.”

“You? You know about me?”

“Yeah. I know. Badgers. Tough to kill.”

“No. Not about the honey badgers. I mean about me. Maybe my brother told you? About my past.”

“You were a whore?” Freja asked drily.

“Besides that . . .” Tracey lowered her voice. “About my involvement with different governments? About the accidental military coup in Mexico?” She gave a little grimace. “That unfortunate thing with Margaret Thatcher?” She lowered her voice even more. “About Gorbachev?”

“What? What are you talking about? You sound insane.”

“So . . . my brother never told you anything. About me. Huh.”

*

Pete didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to have this crowbar in his hand. He didn’t want to be in a foreign country! But he didn’t have much choice. It sucked to be a hyena male. Especially if you were born into a clan that had such mean females running it.

He was only sixteen. Too young to set off on his own. At least that’s what his mother had said before telling him she and his sisters were leaving to join another clan and he might as well stay part of Freja’s. She’d dumped him like so much trash and now here he was. About to see a middle-aged woman shot to death for . . . what? Existing? And was the gun necessary? He’d been raised to believe that his kind didn’t need weapons. They didn’t need to fight. But now his aunt was about to kill a middle-aged lady with gray in the roots of her black-and-white hair and lines around her eyes. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to hurt anyone! He just wanted to go. Anywhere.

But before he could scream that out, he heard something pop and the uncle standing next to him went down screaming. He saw that his uncle’s leg didn’t look right seconds before a baseball bat slammed into the back of his uncle’s shoulders. He crashed to the ground, sobbing in pain.

Pete looked at the woman now standing beside him. She was a short, brown-skinned Latina with thick, black hair that was a messy mix of braids dyed purple and curls. There was a tiny heart tattoo under her right eye, a bigger tattoo on her right hand that said something in Spanish. She had on loose, worn blue jeans, splattered with blood . . . and some paint, he guessed, since blood wasn’t usually blue, green, and purple; a black tank top with the Mot?rhead logo on the front; and a double silver chain necklace with an eagle charm and a feather charm.

She barely glanced at him, but then he heard her ask, “How old are you?”

“Si-si-si . . .” He swallowed, tried again. “Sixteen.”

She motioned behind her with a jerk of her head. “Get over there,” she ordered. “Stay out of the way. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered before quickly moving to the far wall. When he turned back, he saw a cousin’s head snap around from the swing of that bat. A different woman had struck the blow that sent his cousin reeling, though. This lady didn’t have dark hair with white streaks. She was blond, her hair in a thick braid down her back. And she wore more expensive-looking clothes than the other ladies: a tight black skirt, white silk blouse, and very high heels that she twisted and turned around in without ever slipping or falling on her butt. She simply ducked another cousin’s punches before slamming the front of the bat into his gut and then pulled back and swung, cracking his cousin in the head. He went down hard and didn’t move, but he was still breathing.

Done, the woman tossed the bat to yet another middle-aged lady, who easily caught it. She flipped the bat in her hands, spun her body around for momentum and swung, sending an uncle flying across the empty store. Swung again, and a cousin crashed into a nearby pillar.

This woman had on a white sleeveless T-shirt, a sleeveless denim jacket, gray jeans, and work boots with big heels. Her hair was chin length on one side and shaved down to the skull on the other. The remaining hair barely covered an old tattoo that Pete couldn’t quite make out.

As all these new women attacked and battered his cousins and uncles, they moved forward until they’d knocked out or so damaged the male members of his family that none of them could move from the floor they were lying on.

Finally, the women stood beside the first woman he’d seen, but his aunt still had her gun pointed at that woman’s head. Yet that woman hadn’t moved. She hadn’t looked away. She’d done nothing but stand there and stare down his Aunt Freja.