A Twisted Rejection Read online

  Lochy sits on one of the stools, the furthest from the body, and rests his elbows on the bar. I slide a bowl of pistachio nuts across to him, weird choice for a bar but Lochy doesn’t care — he just starts peeling the shells off loudly. Which actually has the effect of pissing Sharon off more.

  “Then how come there’s ten abandoned seats?” Puss asks.

  “The dead guy,” Sharon says, waving a hand down at the body.

  “He was eating for two?” Puss asks.

  For a cop, she can be pretty useless. Her only reason for existing in our lives is that she maintains our cover. She’s a legitimate local cop, whereas we’re the Winchesters of shapeshifters. She’s our access to the crime scenes and reports, and probably only because she doesn’t actually want to be the one facing off against wolf shifters when the police finally do catch up to them.

  If they do.

  “Bartender was out the back, the other eight were sitting in pairs. This is where the dead guy was sitting,” Puss says, tapping the tabletop. “His jacket’s on the seat, and it matches his pants.”

  “Douche,” Lochy mutters.

  I agree, matching track pants and jacket went out of fashion two decades ago — at least.

  Sharon joins Puss, resting her hand on his shoulder as she steps in close. He folds his arms over his chest and lets her leave it there — which pisses me the fuck off.

  I move to jump the bar and pull her back, but Lochy thumps his hand down — hard – and catches my attention. His eyes are wide, stern, almost commanding. And to follow him up Flynn drops onto one of the bar stools, almost blocking my view.

  I scowl at the bunyip shifter – I could take him on. Take them all on. We’ve been through this before.

  Flynn shakes his head, then says, “Wolves first.”

  Right, he wants me to deal with the wolves first before killing Sharon. Or setting her straight — but killing her is preferable. Shifters don’t go hitting on other shifters’ men. It’s just not acceptable in any way.

  And I know his position on this whole matter is going to be about as short-lived as mine.

  Steve steps between the two, it’s become a little thing we have to do to give each other a break from her far-too-close-contact. Sharon’s attention quickly moves to the croc shifter. Resting one hand at his elbow and another on his chest. It’s fucking unprofessional and rude, and the kind of shit she’s doing more and more. Steve doesn’t look impressed. Not that he doesn’t like being touched, I’ve seen him with women, and the rare occasions he’s joined Tas and I were fucking delicious, but he sure doesn’t like Sharon touching him.

  Puss turns and links his arm through Sharon’s, dragging her away from Steve. I don’t care that she’s a woman, shifters live in a kill or be killed kind of world. And she better start watching out for the things that can kill her.

  Flynn’s tense now, too. Can this rabbit not sense that half the room is ready to tear her to pieces?

  “The fact that our victim coordinated his wardrobe is unlikely to have lead to his death,” she says.

  “Maybe the guy was hitting on the wrong kind of shifter. Like his date was already someone else's date,” I rumble, but on the inside, I’m plotting Sharon’s death.

  Sharon meets my gaze, takes a second, then clears her throat as she steps away from my men.

  I mean, Steve’s not really mine, but at the same time, he is — because he’s my mob and that gives me every right to claim his ass. Plus, relationships are tricky when taking a step too far in the heat of the moment can create an unbreakable bond between two shifters. You only get to make that bond once in your lifetime, and it’s not going to happen with Sharon.

  “He was alone,” she declares. I step forward to slap her, then she waves down at the body and I realize the he she’s talking about is the dead guy. “A person can have a glass of water and a beer. He’s in track pants, maybe he jogged here and needed the water first.”

  Lochy laughs at her, and I manage to step back to where I left my Johnnie Walker bottle.

  “Not likely,” Lochy says.

  Sharon shrugs. “Then he had company — but whoever it was is long gone now. I’ll run prints on the glass, forensics should be here soon, but I’m not confident we’ll find anyone.”

  She’s right about that one. If the person belonged to wolves or was in any way mixed up with them, they’re likely dead by now. Wolves aren’t native to Australia, even in the shifter category.

  “What about you?” I ask Flynn. “You getting anything?”

  He shakes his head. “Just blood.”

  Yep, there’s plenty of that in the room. It’s nothing new to us. I don’t think we’ve gone more than a week without seeing blood since we met. Suits our Halloween-anniversary theme. Anyway, this is the longest hunt we’ve ever been on, but we’ve detoured a few times to deal with kangaroo and dingo shifters.

  “So, Flynn has nothing, Steve has nothing, the witnesses have nothing useful, and there are no cameras?” Lochy asks.

  “In a nutshell,” Sharon confirms.

  “Officer Darling, the press is here,” someone calls from the doorway.

  Sharon curses under her breath, steps carefully around the body, and leaves the room.

  Chapter Three

  Sharon

  “At this point, I have no further information for you,” I say, managing to puncture the reporters’ enthusiasm.

  I nod to the uniformed cops nearby and they clear the press back from the police tape.

  An inner city murder in broad daylight has drawn a lot of attention. Whatever sparked the wolves into attacking today was worth killing for and worth being caught.

  Not much of that in the world. The infection has to be the number one instigator, followed by territory and mate bonds. But these wolves aren’t infected, and this isn’t their territory. Leaves the whole mate issue.

  Seems everyone has mate issues.

  Why is everyone getting their hands on lovers, and mates, but me?

  “Anything you need, Officer Darling?” a uniform asks.

  I shake my head at him — not unless the lean middle-aged balding man has a mate in his back pocket? The idea makes me smile.

  “Okay then, let me know if there is,” he says, then wanders back to the perimeter.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, but this time I’m smart enough to check the caller before answering. Benny.

  There was nothing but this shit after he left, but he’s been quiet for five months. Why is he throwing this at me today?

  I send the call to voicemail and watch it vanish.

  Problem is, I liked Benny.

  A lot.

  He has great hair, pull-during-sex hair, that I used to play with while we snuggled and watched reality tv shows that usually involved dating or planes crashing. We were the kind of couple that stayed up all night talking and drinking wine. To hell with sleep, because we had each other.

  Until my dad found out, and Benny moved somewhere beyond the outer suburbs without saying goodbye. Just these weak-ass phone calls that highlight his complete lack of balls.

  A text message pops up.

  Benny – I know being apart feels wrong, but we have no choice.

  I can hear his deep Australian accent as I read the words. My fingers are almost shaking with rage. I’m at work, Benny, could you have worse timing?

  Me – Fuck you.

  Benny – I want you too.

  I literally growl under my breath.

  Me – Do you think this is a piece of piss for me? YOU LEFT ME!

  The all capitals make me feel only mildly better.

  No one pays me any attention as I move to the edge of the cordoned off zone and stand out of the way. Officers, spectators, and the normal city traffic all exist around me, but none of it catches my attention as I wait for Benny to reply.

  Even though I don’t want to and I hate myself for letting him manipulate me like this. Fuck, I need a durry — but it’d cost me my job if I lit a c
igarette on the job, especially at a crime scene.

  Benny – It’s our anniversary.

  For half a second I feel triumphant that I managed to forget since he forgot every other anniversary we had together, and we had three years of dating. Granted, two and a half of them were online and long distance.

  Me – exes don’t have anniversaries, and if you’re going to start counting them, your exes you’ll be celebrating one every day. How many women have you fucked recently?

  I type, hit send, then regret it, because I really don’t want to know.

  The pause is excruciating.

  Benny – none.

  The relief is just as bitter.

  I swear under my breath, punch in a discussion-ending text, hit send, and put my phone on silent before shoving it deep in my pocket.

  Me – you’re the mate that never was. I don’t need you anymore. I’ve moved on to bigger and better men.

  I drag my attention back to the real world and realize a truck has pulled up beside me.

  “Mate, you can’t park your truck there. We need to be able to get our van out,” I say, stepping under the tape and up to where the delivery driver has double parked next to us.

  I have to admit the sigh of relief I have when the guy meets my gaze and is clearly Australian – we have all kinds of people in Melbourne but the ones who can speak English make my job so much easier. Australia is so multicultural you can walk a city block and pass every continent and likely a dozen different countries. Inner city seems to crawl with Asian and Indian nationalities – I’ve always thought it’s because the city life is nothing new to them. High-rises and apartment living. I have no idea how some people manage to get their licenses, when their ability to hold a conversation in English is non-existent.

  I need easy right now. My day is already right up the shitter without adding an argument and a language barrier.

  “Got a crime scene, hey?” the driver asks, spotting the police tape and obvious gathering of uniformed officers with sudden recognition. “Alright, how long will yous be?”

  “All day I suspect,” I say, with an impatient move-your-shit wave.

  “I don’t need to deliver to them then. No wucken furries,” he says, way too cheerfully, and pulls out in the gap in the traffic.

  The damn police van is in a stupid spot anyway. Just because they brought in half a dozen officers doesn’t mean they needed to do it in a van. Two patrol cars would have worked just fine.

  And the keys are still in the thing.

  Idiots. I’m surrounded by idiots!

  Chapter Four

  Tas

  “What now?” Lochy asks, racking another nut.

  “Now we drink,” I say, holding my bottle up to emphasize what we’re drinking.

  Lochy shrugs. “Okay.”

  Of course it’s okay, we’re in a bar — so we drink. The logic is really clean cut to me.

  Steve’s the one who gives me a skeptical eye, “Why?”

  “Because we saved their lives,” Flynn explains.

  “We were doing just fine without your help,” I say.

  “I heard they had a rope around your neck. I mean, that’s not a good sign,” Lochy argues.

  “We would have made it.”

  I pull shot glasses from under the bar and line them up side by side.

  “You know what, this calls for something special,” I decide, turning to grab down the bottles of Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.

  “Make it a hunt,” Lochy says, and I grab the Wild Turkey too.

  “Three wise men go hunting,” I approve swapping out the short shot glasses for spirits glasses then pouring the Jack, Jim, and Johnnie in, topped with Turkey.

  “But why are we drinking?” Steve asks.

  He sits on the barstool to Flynn’s left, and Puss takes the one between Flynn and Lochy.

  “It’s our anniversary,” I say.

  “Most of us,” Lochy mutters.

  “Nope, all of us. We met you on Halloween too,” Puss deadpans.

  It takes Lochy a second, his gaze rolling up towards the roof.

  “Did you wake up thinking about this, Tas, or just spontaneously decide to get us drunk at lunchtime?” Steve asks.

  “Beside a corpse?” Flynn adds.

  “Just realized it on the way here, and I have no idea why we haven’t done this already. Much better activity to engage in on Halloween.”

  I pass the drinks along the bar. One each. Lochy is the first to reach out and pick his up.

  “I still don’t believe that was Halloween. My only worldly possessions were a single bag and my favorite surfboard, sharing a room at a backpackers hostel. You four were doing your,” Lochy stops to wave in a vague indication of the exact same thing we’re doing now. Pretending to be police at a crime scene. “And you thought it was me who killed that backpacker. I still swear the thing that killed her had freaking wings and horns.”

  “Might have, there’s some weird shifter breeds out there,” Steve says softly.

  Talking under Lochy as the shark shifter continues, “So you guys shadowed me for a week.”

  “Until you climbed in our car and tried to murder us. Flynn almost killed you,” Puss points out.

  Would have, too, if Steve hadn’t stepped in. Things went bad after that.

  Lochy rolls his shoulders with a cringe, probably recalling the multiple bones Flynn broke.

  “Flynn only left us to burn off steam,” Steve says, sipping his drink. “He was coming back for me at least — eventually.”

  “He took his sweet-fucking-time. That farmer put three bullets in my back — fucking wombat shifters,” Lochy counters.

  “Not every farmer is a shifter, but shifters have day jobs too. He didn’t know. We didn’t even know until we were close and we were on his land,” Steve says.

  “That’s very humble of you, considering you had six bullets in your back,” Lochy mutters.

  “It was worth it, Lochranza,” Steve says.

  Whatever went down in that shearing shed where they holed up cemented Lochy’s place in this mob. I set my gaze on Steve and wait for more details. At the time we were all pretty mad. Not talking about it was a survival instinct. But today’s a pretty good day to lay it all on the table.

  Steve sips his drink, slowly. He’s barely had any, but he’s not fond of drinking. “Flynn’s a sucker for saving people. We just had to give him a chance to see you were worth it.”

  “So you took on the wombats, with guns — which is pretty rare in Australia – and they pretty much kicked your asses,” I point out, rubbing as much salt in their wounds as I can. “Face it, you two were fucked.”

  “And kept fighting,” Flynn rumbles.

  “Steve went down first. But that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, put myself between someone and a gun and prayed I wasn’t alone,” Lochy admits.

  He wasn’t. By that point he had all of us. Puss and I found Flynn returning from his run, managed to get some details about what had happened and went to investigate. None of us expected to find wombat shifters.

  But at least ninety-percent of Flynn’s opinion on life is that a person has to be able to fight their own battles, and when they run out of options, that’s about when he steps in. Lochy was injured and yet still fighting beside Steve ‘til he was on his knees and out of options – and even then he put himself between Steve and the guns aimed at them. That was about the only way he could have won Flynn over.

  “Ten dead wombats,” Flynn rumbles.

  “Even with nine bullets between you, you claimed ten bodies before we arrived,” I add, extending on what Flynn might have been trying to say.

  “Then you saved our asses,” Steve admits, raising his glass and maybe even taking a tiny sip.

  “Yep, you accused me of murder, broke more bones than I care to remember, left me in the middle of freaking wombat territory, almost got me killed… Then I climbed back in your damn car,” Lochy says.

  “Stubborn f
ucker,” Flynn says, picking up his drink and taking a sip.

  Yep – that describes Lochy perfectly.

  Flynn makes a satisfied ‘this burns’ sound, setting the glass down before saying, “This needs ice.”

  I oblige the man, using the metal tongs to pick up two pieces from the bucket, then drop them into his glass. I pick up two more and run my gaze down the length of the bar, but the rest of the guys shake their heads.

  “I still don’t believe that was Halloween though,” Lochy says.

  “It was,” Steve, Puss, and I all say in unison.

  We give each other a knowing smile, but Lochy is sipping his drink and misses the moment. History has been re-written. From this day forth it was Halloween.

  “Flynn and I meeting you two was definitely Halloween,” Steve says, pointing between Puss and I.

  “And right around midnight,” I add.

  We weren’t hunters at that stage, just shifters running from our various problems — or trapped in them.

  I had a damn broken down car, which I was trying to fix outside a twenty-four hour truck stop on the edge of my hometown. I could have called my mum, or one of many family members, and had them pick me up. Then dealt with the car in the morning. With the addition of daylight and clear weather, the job would probably have taken a few minutes.

  But I didn’t.

  I sip my drink, enjoying the burn, as I meet Puss’ gaze. We all know he was trapped in the dog-box on the side of a semi-truck. The Nightingale Circus – full of shifters labeled freaks and used as sport and entertainment.

  Not the kind of show people take their children to see.

  He doesn’t need to retell that part. Even these side details are giving him an ever so slight tremor that twists my soul up.

  He downs the contents of his glass, four shots in just a few gulps, and holds it out for a refill.

  I take it, and a second later both Lochy and Flynn’s, and begin pouring another round. Steve doesn’t even need to ask – I grab a ginger beer from the fridge. Bunderburg ginger — a staple in every bar. I roll it on its side to mix the ginger in, crack the top with a little hiss from the gasses, and hand it over.