Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,180

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.

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