“Did you let Deputy Jana rejoin the police pack?” Yuri asked.

“She brought good meat as an apology,” Virgil growled.

Yuri grinned, showing his fangs. “And by letting her rejoin the pack, you get to play with the puppy again.”

Virgil bared his teeth and showed his fangs.

Scythe tensed.

Yuri looked at her hair and said, “This is banter, teasing. Showing fangs is not always a threat.”

Scythe looked in the mirror behind the bar. Blue hair with broad streaks of red, starting to curl. So many things she struggled to understand. But the Harvester who lived in the Lakeside Courtyard had had to learn these things too.

“Showing fangs when someone is … teasing … is not a threat?” she asked, wanting clarification.

“Not between us.” Yuri made a circle with one hand that included her as well as Virgil. “If those words were said by someone who was not considered a friend …”

“My teeth would have been on his throat,” Virgil finished.

“Ah.” Scythe relaxed.

“The wolverine did wrong and needed to learn,” Virgil said.

“Being excluded from her pack was gentle punishment,” Yuri added.

“Being excluded does not always feel gentle,” Scythe said quietly.

They looked at her; then they looked at each other.

“I guess it doesn’t when it goes on too long.” Yuri looked toward the door. “We have customers.”

“I’m not dressed for work.” Scythe took a step back, intending to go up to her suite and change into one of her costumes. Then she saw their customers and stayed behind the bar.

* * *

* * *

Virgil didn’t recognize the two men who came in with Parlan Blackstone and couldn’t catch their scent. Not that it mattered. They moved like predators.

<Morgan?> he called.

<What?>

<Where are you?> He knew Morgan wasn’t in town to challenge him, so why did the other Wolf sound uneasy?

<I am at the bookstore. Tobias Walker is helping me buy a book for Rachel.>

Huh. Well, bringing a gift to a potential mate made sense. But why did Morgan sound uneasy? John wasn’t dominant enough to be a rival, and he … No, he wouldn’t consider having another mate while he lived so close to humans. Never again. <Did you sniff around Jesse Walker’s store after the bad humans killed the Eagle?>

<Yes.>

<Come to the saloon. See if you recognize the scent of the human males who just came in.>

<Where is this place?>

<Tobias Walker will know.>

Parlan Blackstone approached the bar and nodded at Yuri. “Barkeep.”

“Mr. Blackstone,” Yuri replied. “What would you like?” He smiled, deliberately showing a hint of fang.

“Whiskeys all round from your best bottle,” Blackstone said. He looked at Virgil. “Buy you a drink, Sheriff?”

“I’ll have my usual,” Virgil said.

Yuri poured three whiskeys before setting a shot glass with a golden liquid in front of Virgil.

“What is that?” Parlan asked.

“My usual.” He saw no reason to tell a potential enemy that he liked apple juice. Humans were too fond of poisons.

“Nice place,” Taller Stranger said as he looked around.

“My place,” Scythe said.

She sounded mildly territorial, and anyone who didn’t know the warning signs—the curling hair now equally divided between broad red and blue streaks with a few threads of black—wouldn’t realize she was a long way from calm.

She, too, recognized other predators, regardless of species.

“I was telling Frank and Eli how I’m looking to open one of the neighborhood bars and hope to fix it up even half as nice as this saloon.” Parlan looked at Scythe but didn’t look her in the eyes. “You must have put a fair piece of work into this place when you acquired it.”

“Yes.” She offered nothing more. She looked past all of them.

Tobias Walker entered with Truman Skye, followed by Morgan.

Tobias glanced toward the men at the bar, then put an arm around Truman’s shoulders and tried to hustle the other human to a table near the back of the saloon.

“Couldn’t sleep last night,” Truman said. “I kept seeing that car, kept thinking about—”

“Nothing you could have done,” Tobias said loudly, his hand tightening on Truman’s shoulder so hard the man whimpered.

<I’ll keep him quiet.> Scythe grabbed a bottle and glasses and strode over to the table.

<If you harvest a little too much, I can put him in the Me Time cell,> Virgil said. <I don’t think any of the females will annoy me enough today to need it.>

“What’s this about a car?” Parlan Blackstone asked, looking concerned.

“Car went off the road near the Skye Ranch,” Yuri replied. “Caught on fire. Some of the ranch hands rushed to the site to try to help, but they were too late.”

“What about the people in the car?” the taller one, Frank, asked.

“They died.”

Virgil watched Morgan brush by the two strangers, taking a sniff as he passed. The humans looked like they’d been kicked in the head and didn’t even notice the other Wolf.

<Their scent was around Jesse Walker’s store,> Morgan said. <They killed the Eagle.>

<Scent isn’t enough to satisfy human law,> Yuri reminded them.

<They killed one of the Eaglegard, not another human,> Morgan snarled. Then he hesitated. <But there were the scents of more than these two strangers in the store.>

<If we kill the wrong pair of humans, we might start a stampede,> Virgil said.

Something felt wrong about these humans—more wrong than the other strangers who had come into town. He wanted to tear out their throats and be done with it. Unfortunately, he knew how the wolverine would react to that. She’d say something snippy like “Nobody makes ‘Sorry I Killed You By Mistake’ sympathy cards,” and then he’d have to bite her. And then she wouldn’t let him play with the puppy. And he couldn’t blame Cowboy Bob for the bite because Cowboy Bob didn’t have any teeth.

Reaching that conclusion made him feel sufficiently hostile to humans in general and these males in particular, so he focused on the problem. <We wait. As soon as other humans see them breaking the rules, we kill them.>

<Tobias Walker says that humans who break rules are called outlaws and are supposed to be captured and put in jail,> Morgan said.

Why? There wasn’t any mess to clean up if you killed them outside, and a cell wasn’t large enough for all the predators who would want to feed on the available meat.

To the men, he said, “You finish your drinks, then come across to the sheriff’s office to turn in your weapons.”

“Give up our guns?” the smaller one, Eli, said. “Fuck you.”

Frank clamped a hand on Eli’s right arm. “Why?” he asked Virgil.

“No firearms are allowed within the town’s limits,” Virgil replied. “Turn them in or get out.”

Parlan Blackstone looked pointedly at Tobias Walker. “I don’t see you telling him about that rule.”

“He has special permission to carry a gun.” Virgil didn’t offer an explanation.

Blackstone put money on the bar. “I guess we should go over now, if someone is in the office.”

“I’ll take you over.”

“All by yourself?” Eli shook off Frank’s restraining hand. “Three against one? Those odds don’t worry you?”

Before Virgil could decide how to answer, since humans with guns were a reason to worry, Yuri laughed and said, “Virgil might be the only one you see, but he won’t be the only one escorting you.” Any pretense of humor left the Sanguinati’s face. “If something should happen to Virgil and one of them took offense …” He reached under the bar, then held up a book of matches. With deliberate movements, his dark eyes fixed on the humans, he lit one match and used it to light the rest of the matches in the book.

Burning. Burning. Burning.

Looking at the men, Yuri smiled.

* * *

* * *

It took all the subtle intimidation Parlan could bring to bear and not so subtle manhandling by Frank to keep Eli in check long enough for them to hand over the guns and get away from the part of town that had too damn many things watching them.

They returned to the neighborhood bar where they’d met up. Parlan would have preferred going to the hotel but realized that anything Eli said that was overheard could end his bid to take over leadership of the town and establish the clan in Bennett.

“They killed Ma and Daddy,” Eli shouted. “That fanged bastard all but said that the car had been torched deliberately and they died.”

But the Others didn’t say the two people had been killed in the fire, Parlan thought. He had a feeling that Frank had heard what hadn’t been said, but Eli was too shocked to understand that he and Frank had been at least partly to blame. They had swapped cars with their parents. The Others had traced the car and didn’t know or didn’t care that it was being driven by different humans.

He didn’t believe for a moment that the car had been torched because the boys had robbed a store. But killing the Eagle?

Which one had pulled the trigger? And what would the other one do once he understood that killing the Eagle was the reason the elder Bonneys had died?

He had no illusions that the guns they handed over to Wolfgard were the only ones they had with them. He had to make his move soon and challenge Tolya Sanguinati before the men who were gathering to fight the Others began turning on each other.

CHAPTER 32

Firesday, Messis 31

Dina drove beyond the town’s new boundaries to a street that wasn’t marked for salvage. Zeke had a feeling they needed to stay inside the town for a while, ignoring the fact that a lot of those houses had already been picked over by new residents or squatters who pocketed any cash they could find, and that included raiding the piggy banks in children’s rooms. Not that she blamed them, exactly, but she’d gotten in the habit of supplementing her pay by stuffing a few large bills in the back pocket of her jeans when she was going through a house.

Was that why Zeke had been so mean, so insulting, this morning? Because he was pissed that she took a tiny cut off the top? As if they didn’t all do that!

“What the fuck are you doing, Dina?” Zeke had said. “You got your man, lured him away from his wife.”

“Didn’t take much luring.” She’d taken a deep breath so that her quite impressive breasts became even more impressive. Not that it had any effect on Zeke. He’d taken her on as part of his crew because she had a knack for finding secret stashes as well as the gold jewelry, and at first she’d thought of him as more than a job opportunity, but his initial interest had faded, all because she’d flirted one evening with Fagen just to test the waters.