If one did not count honey badgers, apparently.
Dez wasn’t surprised to find that honey badgers were somehow a part of the disaster. Of all the problems she had to deal with as head of the NYPD’s Shifter Only Unit, the badgers were always the worst to deal with. A few years ago, she would have said it was grizzly bears hopped up on cocaine-infused honey that were her biggest problem. But she’d quickly learned that particular issue was easily rectified with a tranq gun normally used on elephants and a media report about meth-head body builders.
Honey badgers, though . . . they were a nightmare. Because they didn’t act like other shifters. They were nothing like Mace, Dez’s husband, or their son—both very moody lion males who took lots of naps and ate a lot of food. She loved them both, but she fought hard to manage them. Especially with each other. But she was from the Bronx. Managing two males with machismo issues was something she was used to after years as a cop and former Marine MP.
The badgers, however, didn’t have machismo issues. They didn’t think because they had a lot of hair and a big attitude, the world should automatically back away and let them roam free. Instead, badgers insinuated themselves into the full-human world and then started shit. Whether it was the young badgers who nearly burned down a school so they could get out early and go to a concert at Madison Square Garden, or adult badgers who somehow managed to start a fistfight between diplomats at the UN. Diplomats! Their whole business was not to fight. But, as Dez had been saying since she found out that actual honey badger shifters existed, “Leave it to a badger.”
Leave it to a badger to steal Romanian royal jewels on loan to MOMA.
Leave it to a badger to get moms to literally spit at each other during a parent-teacher conference when all Dez wanted to know was how to help her son pass his English course because he found it “soooo boring!”
And leave it to a badger to shut down the Eastern Seaboard because someone wanted to kill a whole bunch of them.
She examined the shipping container that her former partner told her some of the badgers had been stuffed in. There were bullet holes and blood everywhere. Plus, dead lions on the outside and dead bears on the inside.
That was concerning. Especially the lions. The New York Lion prides could be an issue, sure. But always easily managed. They, like everyone else, just wanted to live their lives. Some were really rich. Some less so. But their goal was always to protect the pride. Nothing else mattered.
But the lions she saw scattered around the shipping container and in the white van that had done the drive-by . . .
First off, they weren’t American. The few IDs that had been found on them said they were from Italy. Again, Dez was always a little surprised when she discovered something new. Like Italian lions. It made sense, of course. But still . . . she was just a full-human cop from the Bronx who happened to fall in love with a lion. Stuff that her husband had grown up knowing, she was still discovering almost each and every day.
It was fun and interesting, but definitely terrifying. How could it not be? A human being able to shift into an apex predator! One just had to hope and pray those unusual beings didn’t get bitchy about how full-humans were fucking up the planet and each other. Dez knew if those shifters ever decided to turn on the rest of them . . . they would all be screwed.
But for eons, shifters had made one thing their focus: protecting their kind. Not just from one another—bears hated wolves; lions hated hyenas; tigers hated everybody—but from the dirty shit full-humans so often got up to with anything they considered “other.” Shifters kept their kind secret because they didn’t want to end up strapped to a lab table, about to be dissected. That was one of the reasons Dez had taken the job she currently had, because she wanted to help protect the most important things in her life: her husband and her son. Big-headed lazy bastards that she adored like the moon and stars.
And if protecting them meant closing down the entire Eastern Seaboard until the shifter-run federal agencies fixed the problem, she was okay with that.
“Are they all dead?” she asked her old partner, Lou “Crush” Crushek. A polar bear who looked like a giant old biker but who was really just an undercover cop who managed to terrify everyone around him simply by standing up. The man was nearly seven feet tall, with long white hair and muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. He was one of Dez’s best friends.
“The lions? Yeah,” he said. “They’re all dead.”
“No.” She motioned around the shipping container with a wave of her hand. “The badgers.”
Crush sort of snorted. “No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’？ I’ve seen the casings. They used. 50-caliber ammo. Hollow points. And I’ve seen what the Desert Eagle can do. Are you telling me those badgers aren’t dead somewhere?”
“We don’t know where they are, but they definitely walked out of this shipping container.”
“And that’s not weird to you?”
“MacDermot, my wife is a tiger. I walk in sometimes and find her on our couch, in her cat form, with her legs up in all directions while she licks her own ass and watches a Rangers game on the TV. So what I consider weird may be vastly different from what you do.”
“Yeah.” Dez nodded. “I can see how it would be.”
*
The van didn’t go far before it stopped again and the doors opened. They’d reached a private airport; four running helicopters waited for them.
“Let’s go,” an older Latina badger ordered, her sleeveless T-shirt showing off powerful, tattooed shoulders and arms. “Head to the copters.”
Only Nelle moved forward, stepping down from the van in those ridiculous shoes she insisted on wearing. Who walked around a dock in six-inch designer heels except Nelle?
Towering over the Latina, Nelle said, “We’re not going anywhere until you tell us who you are and what you want.”
The She-badger stepped back, looking past the van.
“They’re being assholes!” she called out to someone.
“Maybe they’re just being cautious!”
“Okay. They’re being cautious assholes.”
Tock glanced at Shay and he muttered, “I’m not going anywhere without my kid.”
“What was that?” the Latina demanded, badger gaze locking on Shay.
“I’m not going anywhere without my daughter,” Shay announced, louder.
“Doesn’t she have a mother who can deal with her?”
Nelle quickly put her hand on Keane’s chest before he could launch himself at the badger.
“Her mother’s at football camp,” Shay said.
The Latina frowned. “On purpose?”
“I have to get my kid,” Shay insisted.
“You’re all covered in blood, the badgers have bullet holes all over, and you three cats are naked,” she added, pointing at Shay and his brothers.
“They didn’t have time to go back and get their clothes,” Nelle explained.
“So . . . what? You want us to run them home first to get their clothes and then get them out? We don’t have time for this.”
“Make time.”
“You don’t seem to understand the situation all of you are currently in.” An S-class Mercedes pulled in near the van and the Latina glanced at it before finishing with, “A situation that could get all of you put down like dogs with rabies.”