“Him?” Shay yelled back. “You guys started this! Texting him about our dad!”
“No, we didn’t!”
“What?”
Georgie started to answer but stopped, staring off into the street, becoming so distracted he stopped trying to tear Keane’s jaw off with his bare hands. Shay turned to see exactly what his cousin was looking at.
It was a white van. And Shay had always believed that if it wasn’t a plumber’s or painter’s van, a white van was never good.
Shay stepped away from the scrum and watched as the van followed the curving path of the street. As it neared their battling group, the van’s side door slid open and the muzzles of automatic rifles slid out.
“Holy—”
“—shit!” Georgie finished before he and Shay tackled the fighting cousins and their uncle as bullets sprayed the area from at least four separate weapons.
*
Hands dug into her hair and threw Charlie through the plate glass window of a recently shutdown deli. Her body slammed against a table, bounced, and hit the floor. By the time she got up, the attackers had stepped through the destroyed window.
They were shifters, but to Charlie’s shock, they raised Desert Eagles. Charlie was shocked because they weren’t badgers. They were lions. Lions, tigers, and bears rarely used guns against other shifters. As apex predators, they felt it was beneath them. Guns were weapons only weak full-humans and tiny shifters needed to survive. That belief apparently hurt foxes’ feelings and they also rarely used weapons against fellow shifters. But badgers didn’t have feelings to hurt. So they did whatever they had to do to stop an enemy. But to see a bunch of lions pointing guns at her . . .
The cats didn’t even wait; they just pulled their triggers. The Desert Eagle was a gun with ammo powerful enough to go through metal or rock or honey badger.
Charlie grabbed the table she’d fallen on, lifted it, and flung it across the room. Then she charged forward, dodging to the right, then left, then straight at the last two lions still standing and shooting because the table had missed them completely.
*
The shooting stopped as the van careened off. The cousins focused on Georgie. He’d been shot through the leg and the lower back. But Shay hadn’t been hurt. Neither had his brothers. But they’d been shot at. And they were not happy.
Keane may have been the one known as the “mean” Malone Brother. But all three of them had an issue with rage. And vengeance.
Snarling, not caring they were shifting in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, the Malone brothers took off after the van, streaking past stunned full-humans who had managed to drop to the ground when the shooting started.
Shay didn’t care who saw him. He didn’t care what was caught on camera. He didn’t care what repercussions there might be from him showing the world what he was. He didn’t care and neither did his brothers. They cut across the street and leaped onto the roof of a small union building. They sped across the rooftop, well aware their speed would only last so long. Tigers were sprinters, not marathoners. That was wolves.
They jumped from the roof. Shay and Finn landed on the back of the speeding van, Finn gripping the back door with his claws, Shay holding onto the roof rack. Keane landed on the hood. Shay made it across the top toward the front just as Keane rammed his paw into the windshield. The force shattered the glass and Keane shoved his body inside. Not even a second later, the van took a hard turn, hit the curb and flipped, sending Shay and Finn spiraling along with it.
*
Charlie held one She-lion around the neck and shot the male through the head with the Desert Eagle she’d taken from one of the other females.
Brain and bone blew back on her before she put the gun to the She-lion’s head.
The She-lion clawed at her arm and yelped, “Aspetta—”
But she wouldn’t wait. Charlie pulled the trigger, blinking as more blood and bone hit her face. She released the body in her arms and was about to walk out of the store when a bullet slammed into her from behind, breaking her collar bone on its way out of her body.
Still standing, Charlie looked down at the wound. Her fangs slid from her gums and she slowly faced the lions who had come in the back door of the deli. The one who had pulled the trigger gazed at her with wide eyes.
“Cazzo,” he cursed, backing up and pulling the trigger of the weapon he held. But the kick from a Desert Eagle was brutal. He had to keep re-aiming the weapon before he could take his shot and Charlie just kept moving out of the way of each bullet. She was moving so fast, she knew the lions could barely see her.
Charlie jumped up on the deli counter, charged across it and over the lions. By the time they realized she was no longer in front of them, she’d buried her claws into the spine of a She-lion. While staring into the eyes of the male lion standing to the female’s right, Charlie yanked her claws up until she’d split the female’s spine into several pieces.
Holding up her blood-and-gore-covered hand, she moved to stand in front of the male lion.
“Ti prego.”
“Yeah,” she said, hearing the lion behind her running out the way he’d come. “It’s a little too late for begging.”
*
Tock reached the doors; there had to be a way to open them from the inside.
Shifting to human, she pushed at the right door, but it was securely locked. Even with her claws, she’d never get through that metal. She quickly moved to the left door, ducking as a bullet came dangerously close to her head. That one moved and she realized the person who’d shut them hadn’t thought it necessary to lock the other door. The one they’d unlocked but hadn’t bothered to open.
“Mads!”
Mads rushed to her side and shifted. While the others helped Streep, Tock and Mads pushed on the heavy door. They had gotten it halfway open when Tock heard squealing tires and a gunned engine. She grabbed Mads’s arm and yanked her back, expecting the truck to hit the doors.
The container moved a foot or two when the truck hit it, but that truck didn’t slam into the doors. It scraped against the side of the container as—based on the roars, snarling, screaming, and disturbing thuds—the truck mowed down whoever had been shooting at them.
Tock motioned for Mads to stay put and then slipped past the partially open door and went to the edge of the container. She peered around the corner. The truck’s brake lights were bright red and the attackers on the ground, at least two of them now shifted to lion, were starting to get up. But then the engine revved again, and the brake lights went off. The big blue van sped back and, again, slammed into the ones who had been shooting at Tock and her teammates.
The van kept going until it passed the container and stopped. An Asian woman with part of her thick hair shaved on one side leaned out the driver’s-side window and asked, “Tock?”
Stunned, because Tock didn’t recognize this woman at all, she nodded.
“Get your friends and get your asses in the van, kid. We’ve gotta move.”
*
Looking down at the carnage and using the butt of the gun she still had in her hand to rub her bloody brow, Charlie briefly wondered what prison would be like. That’s when she felt eyes on her. She turned, raising the weapon.