That was the scent she should be locked on now, but all she could smell was full-humans, gun oil, and . . . nothing. No honey badger scent or the scent of an unleashed anal sack. If one of her young cousins was trapped in a room with a bunch of full-human agents and, for some reason, she couldn’t fight her way out, she would definitely unleash her anal sack. It was what her kind did when they had no choice. Or when they were just being dicks. But either way . . . it should have filled this floor with its horrific odor. Bodies should be lying around, dead or choking to death.
Now, her cousin could already be dead, but then Tock would smell dead honey badger. But she didn’t smell honey badger at all.
Tock shook her head. Nope. She didn’t like this. Something wasn’t right.
She started to take a step back when she caught the scent of full-human male coming up behind her.
Her weapon raised, she turned just as a metal pipe slammed against her head with such force, all she could do was fall to the floor and hope that she hadn’t lost an eye where the side of her head had been caved in.
*
“Where’d he go?” one of his men asked. But he didn’t have an answer. He knew what he’d seen. A man standing with his back against the wall, staring at his phone. He’d come with the woman, and the plan was to knock out all stragglers. Or, if said stragglers put up any kind of fight, kill them and dump the body in a lake about ten minutes away.
He checked the SUV, but the man wasn’t in there. It wasn’t like the guy could hide behind the seats either. Dude was massive. At first, he’d thought the guy was part of the wall. He was that wide. Not fat. It was his shoulders and chest that were wide. And layered in muscle. He wondered what the guy’s workout was. Steroids, maybe. Couldn’t be the regular steroids that illegally floated around his gym. They all used those, but none of those drugs could make anyone that big. Must be something new on the black market. Once this job was done, he’d have to find them for himself.
Of course, a guy that size, they would definitely have to kill him once they found him. No way that whatever ’roids this guy was on would make him calm and rational. Or easy to put down. They’d have to be ready.
“He’s not over there either,” one of his men said, gesturing around the building with his elbow while gripping his automatic rifle in his hands.
He nodded. “We need to find—”
The screaming startled him. And by the time he turned around, all he saw was the feet of one of his men disappearing into the shadows of the upper building. As if something had dragged him up the building wall.
But . . . that was impossible . . . right?
No, no. The big guy probably had rope or whatever. Climbing gear. A guy like that probably climbed mountains for fun.
He took a step forward but immediately stopped when his teammate’s body hit the ground . . . everything from his nose up was gone.
He and his men took a step back and began firing into the darkness. They couldn’t see anything but that didn’t matter.
Until another one of his men was suddenly yanked back into the darkness of the right side of the building. They heard their teammate’s screams but before any of them could attempt to help, his body was tossed out into the small bit of light that came from the building.
He gawked down at the body. It had been torn apart in less than ten seconds. He and his men passed silent glances before they all backed away, turned, and took off toward their van.
There was no amount of money worth this kind of crazy.
*
Shay stayed feline and ran around the building, tracking Tock’s scent. He found where it stopped on the ground and quickly realized it went up.
So that’s what he did. He launched his eight-hundred-pound body vertically, using his claws to grab the wall long enough to launch his body up again until he reached a window with an opening cut into it. He tried to fit through it but his cat head was too big. He briefly shifted back to human but . . . again . . . his head couldn’t quite get completely through without wiggling, and forget about his shoulders. Those were a definite no-go.
Instead, he just shifted back to tiger and shoved his massive body inside; glass broke all around him. He knew the advantage of surprise was blown, but he didn’t care. As a natural ambush hunter, he knew a friggin’ ambush when he saw one.
And Tock was in the middle of an ambush without her usual backup of psychotic honey badgers.
He shook the glass off his fur and headed toward the door. He briefly paused, though, when he heard grunting and thuds.
Now running, he hit the closed door with all his weight and took it down. He stood on the splintered wood and watched while Tock repeatedly stabbed a man in the neck, her entire body on top of his shoulders, legs around his neck.
Another man came toward her and she stopped stabbing long enough to slash the second man’s throat, then slash again. This time straight across his face, ripping him open from forehead to underneath the jaw before burying her knife into the throat of the victim she was currently riding like a horse.
Both men dropped and she expertly landed on her feet.
Shay shifted back to human. “Outside—”
She held up her gloved hand. “I know. Ambush. They’re here for me.”
He thought about asking her why, but he probably didn’t want to know. Something else was wrong. He could feel it.
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head and he reared back a bit when her left eye wobbled, meaning it was not firmly in its socket. He wanted to scream and cover her face with his hand, race her to the hospital. But a honey badger wouldn’t appreciate any of that. And honey badgers were weird anyway when it came to healing. Few even got the fever that helped all other shifters heal naturally. Instead . . . they just sort of pulled themselves back together. Or, even stranger, didn’t seem to notice any damage. He clearly remembered watching Max MacKilligan dig a bullet out of her shoulder with her claws. There was blood and some grunting, but within a few hours, she was completely healed and her arm worked fine. She wasn’t even affected by blood loss.
See? Weird.
Still . . . Tock didn’t look right even for a honey badger.
Shay heard cracking sounds and he watched in horror as the broken bones around her eye snapped into place, securing the eyeball. He thought she was out of trouble until Tock gestured with her right hand to a spot over her shoulder. “Get this out for me, would you?”
She turned and he saw a big syringe hanging from her spine. He cringed and quickly grabbed it, but a simple tug didn’t pull it from her back. He pulled hard again and again until it finally came out, leaving a small hole in the skin and a milky white substance leaking down onto the floor.
“Uh . . . Tock?”
“Yeah.” She turned and faced him, gazing at the syringe in his hand. “I know.”
“You know what?”
She didn’t answer right away, still staring at the syringe. But finally she looked up at him and said, “This doesn’t feel right.”
“Of course not. Someone shoved something into your spine.”
“Yeah, but poisons. I’m a badger. But . . . this is different. Something’s different.”
He didn’t understand what she was trying to say. Tock wasn’t a big talker but she was always clear in her communication.