Page 49 of Wild Wolf

“Only if you promise to use a wrench as a weapon if needed,” I replied, pointing at the battery. “Your first job is to get that ready to be removed. Have Richard do the heavy lifting, as I’d rather him hurt himself than you hurt yourself right now.”

“I would normally be offended by that, but you’re absolutely right, and I accept your offering of one slave named Richard to lift things for me while we work on this.”

“I’m buying some old beater we can fix up together in the United States, and once we’re done, if we don’t absolutely love the vehicle, we will destroy it with a tank before buying another beater and repeating the process.” I gave my dead truck a fond pat. “Putting them back together is most of the fun, and all I ask is that I get to use it for a week or two before we send it to its next life as scrap metal.”

“How could I possibly say no to that?”

As I’d figured out the whole lot of them lived to be sarcastic, I turned to her and said, “You absolutely can’t.”

Laughing, Richard poked around in my toolbox, armed himself with a wrench and some pliers, and began looking over my engine for something to assault or destroy. “You’re going to fit in just fine.”

Chapter Eleven

Within thirty minutes of working on the engine, which consisted of looking like we worked on it while discussing the probability of the singular wild wolf being a wild wolf pack, the first of the Chinese arrived. Desmond intercepted them while Richard stayed with my truck.

I understood the reason as to why; if Amber so much as grimaced, Richard tensed.

The visiting Chinese would have to come to us—or Amber would have to go to them. I understood Richard’s protectiveness. I often checked on Lane and Anthony, who kept the Anderson twins company and schemed something destined to make my life even more complicated.

Anthony would find a way to make me pay for dropping off the radar. He always did. By the time he got around to it, I hoped I could meet his general expectations on humor and tolerance. Lane kept an eye on me, and I caught him at it every time I checked over my shoulder.

Crossing Russia and dodging the local wolves had changed me, and I disliked some of those changes.

Before, I would have kept score. Before, I would have concocted some dated curse to keep Anthony on his toes or confuse those I wasn’t sure about. Before, I would have frequented museums, contemplated theft, and admired art for the joy of it.

All of those things had lost their shine in the days after I’d killed Julie in order to protect Anthony and Lane.

I had a lot of thinking to do, but first, I needed to get over the current obstacle blocking my way—and threatening to reveal the supernatural to the entire world.

The Chinese weren’t the only ones to pay us a visit, and I counted six distinct, overly large canine shapes ghosting through the woods surrounding the road. Amber, who hid a rather potent handgun among her tools of choice, rested her hand on the weapon. “See them, Richard?”

“I see them and smell them,” Richard replied. “At least six wilds, and there are a few who haven’t fallen that far yet, but they’re keeping their distance. It looks like their wild wolf problem is a bit more extensive than they made it out to be—or they were lying and putting the blame on someone else. Then again, from what I’ve heard about how they operate here, they have a bunch of wolves primed to blow. They may have been given the push over the edge by the ved’ma. Any idea how many of these bodark they have?”

I shrugged, and like Amber, I’d been given a gun. The Beretta would get the job done, but the silvered rounds loaded in the weapon gave me a serious case of the creeps. “I tried to stay away from the ved’ma and their wolves. The ved’ma run the show here, although the mayor is the one who decides who gets which brand. It’s a part of their monthly unveiling.”

Amber stiffened. “Do you think they’ve been forcing rituals, Richard?”

“They could be. If they are, we have a much bigger mess on our hands than we anticipated. Let’s pack this up and stick close together. This isn’t going to end well, but we’re going to make sure it doesn’t end well for them rather than us. Declan, do you smell that almost sour sickly stench?”

I took a few sniffs and identified the odor he described. “I do.”

“That’s the general marker of a wild wolf. I don’t know why it translates to smelling like a sickness, but it does. Any wolf that smells like that is going mad, and they’re likely to snap and start killing people. If it’s caught early, witches can help prevent it from progressing. I’m an oddity, as I can essentially run wild and have little trouble becoming human again afterwards. Most don’t. I also don’t tend to smell quite the same as they do, but it’s essentially the same thing.”

“It’s because he’s so submissive,” Amber explained, tossing my tools into my toolbox with no care of where they went. When I sighed, she shrugged. “You can hover and sigh in disappointment while I restore it to rights later, and if I damage any of your big, manly tools, I’ll take you to a hardware store and set you loose.”

“I don’t have a big enough toolbox for that.” I joined the packing fray, shaking my head over the amount of damage Nicolina had done to my engine. It hadn’t taken long to determine she’d somehow cracked every piece of metal in the engine, she’d completely shattered the head, and the fate of the cylinders would haunt me for years. “I’m going to need therapy to get over what she did to my truck.”

“I’m sure I can think of something to help you get over Nicolina’s cruel mistreatment of your truck,” Amber promised, tossing more of my tools into the box. I grabbed the rest and dumped them in, closed the box, and hauled it in the direction of the other vehicles. She laughed, followed, and said, “Would anyone have stolen them here?”

“I don’t know, but I bartered and bargained to gain ownership of every single one of these tools, and I will keep them.”

“I see. You’re one of those men.”

“One of what men?” I grunted and set the box beside the nearest SUV. “I’m a sensible man who knows how much good tools cost, you mean?”

“No. You’re a trophy hunter. Your tools are your trophies. You won them in bargains and barters, so they are now trophies.” Amber peeked into the vehicle, retrieved the keys from Desmond, and popped open the back. “There is no such thing as too many tools, so as far as trophies go, yours are good.”

I hauled the toolbox into the SUV and gave the old, metal box a fond pat. “That’s right. There is no such thing as too many tools.”