Dog Warrior (5 page)

Ukiah grinned in response to the affectionate teasing. “Bowwow.”

“I could never say no.” Ru studied the contents of the dark refrigerator. “How about a steak?”

“Oh, yes! Please,” Ukiah said. Whoever raised Atticus's brother had at least taught him manners, despite all the feral appearances. “The power's out?”

“Yes,” Atticus said, and then, sensing the coming question, added, “The phone is still dead.”

“I did manage to charge up my phone before the
electricity went out.” Ru slid his phone across the counter. “You can make a call while I get this started. Try to keep it short—it's the only working phone we have.”

Ukiah took it and wobbled off across the open downstairs to the farthest corner for privacy.

Ru wore a slight puzzled look on his face as he did a quick wash on a skillet.

“What?” Atticus asked.

“Just thinking on differences.”

“Like what?”

“It was weeks before you'd let me touch you that casually.” Ru dried the skillet. “You hated it anytime I'd breach your personal space. You still don't like strangers touching you.” With a glance toward the roiling surf, Ru added, “And I've never seen you space out like he just did with the ocean.”

“I was over the worst of it by the time we met,” Atticus said. “I would lose it like that every time they'd move me to a new foster home. It always made a wonderful first impression on foster parents.”

The quiet conversation across the room had a familiar cadence—a peppering of questions with lots of silences that indicated listening. Atticus had made many such calls—
What happened while I was dead
?

Ukiah came back, silent and sullen. The feral look was back in his eyes. What triggered the sudden change? He put the phone down beside him on the counter, not offering to return it.

“How do you like your steak? Bloody?” Ru guessed, probably because it was how Atticus liked his steak.

“Yes.”

“Then this is done.” Ru gave Ukiah a sincere smile, one of the ones that went soul deep, the kind he usually gave only to people he loved.

The feral look gave way before Ru's smile. “Thank you.”

Still, he ate with wolflike ferocity.

It was good Ukiah would be sleeping soon, Atticus decided. He found that the boy absorbed all his attention. Surely some of it was that Ukiah was new and unknown—Atticus's own personal ocean to be lost in. He could ill afford the distraction.

Ukiah lifted his head and went still.

“What is it?” Ru asked.

“Harleys. Ten of them.”

Atticus listened and heard them now, a rumble of multiple motorcycle engines growing closer. He couldn't tell the make or the exact number, although he could pick out six or seven distinct engines.

The Dog Warriors! Did he call them
?

Ukiah glanced at him. “No, they're not Pack.”

Atticus frowned. “How do you know?”

“Pack knows Pack.”

“What does that mean?”

“Shut your eyes,” Ukiah commanded.

Atticus hesitated. He knew how fast he could move—even wounded, Ukiah could probably strike as quickly. He checked to see if Ru was in position and ready before closing his eyes.

“Keep your eyes shut.” Ukiah's voice came out of the darkness. “Focus on me.”

He could feel Ukiah's presence beside him like an electric ghost. His brother moved, a rustle of blanket, and Atticus sensed that Ukiah had stretched out a hand to nearly touch him, fingers splayed close but not pressing against the fabric of his shirt. Atticus reached without opening his eyes and found Ukiah's hand with his own. Traces of steak. Road dirt. His own saliva. His own flesh. His own blood.

This is right. This is good.

“Looks like we have company,” Ru remarked dryly, breaking the spell.

Atticus dropped his brother's hand and stood. The
motorcycles had rounded the sharp bend in the road and come into view.

Ukiah grunted. “Iron Horses.”

“You know them?” Atticus asked.

“I know of them,” Ukiah said. “They're Pack wanna-bes; the biggest one is John Daggit. He's the New England chapter president. Rebar is his sergeant at arms.” Which meant Rebar would be the club enforcer. “Smithy and Draconis are both local members, but Animal is a nomad. I don't know the rest. They could be prospects or maybe another club.”

The motorcycles roared up to the driveway of the house, sat a moment, scanning the land, gunning their engines, and then silenced ominously.

Who were they? Friends of Lasker? The killers from Buffalo? Or, despite what Ukiah claimed, part of the Pack?

The house felt like a trap, but at least it offered some protection. The treeless sand dunes were entirely too exposed. Atticus went to the door, opened it, and stood waiting for the bikers to come to him.

Atticus had originally thought that “biggest one” meant “the most desirous wannabe” but apparently Ukiah had just meant “huge all over,” and the monster of a man on the lead bike was John Daggit.

“You Steele?” Daggit dismounted to swagger toward the house. He topped Atticus by another head with huge, beefy hands. His stock of gray-salted brown hair was shaggy, framing a face that might have been handsome except for the dark inset of his eyes, which made him look not totally sane.

“What do you want?” Atticus kept the door blocked even though Daggit loomed over him. Obviously the big man was used to his size intimidating people.

“Look, asshole . . .” Daggit put out a hand to brush him aside. Atticus caught the hand and used it to bring the big man down to his knees, eliminating the leverage that Daggit's size might have given him.

“What do you want?” Atticus repeated calmly, pushing the hold almost to the point of breaking the arm.

“I'm a friend of Jay Lasker's.” Daggit hissed in pain. “If you're Steele, then I've got business with you.”

Perfect. The sellers—twelve hours early. Atticus released Daggit, stepping back to let him up.

“Yeah, I'm Atticus Steele.”

Daggit got up, wincing at his arm. “I'm John Daggit.”

Great. Well, things were so amazingly screwed, but they had no choice but to act as if it were business as usual. “Come in.”

“I figured the deal would be off once Lasker died.” Daggit ducked into the house, six of his men following. They stank of unwashed hair, old sweat, hot oil, engine exhaust, cigarette smoke, and spilled beer. Atticus scanned them discreetly for weapons. Something crystalline glittered on their hands, clothes, and faces. Pixie Dust? “All I got off him was a name and time.”

Which was more than Atticus had gotten. By all signs, Sumpter had focused on the logistics of arranging the buy without getting the intel on the seller, trusting that Lasker would cover those details later. Why was it that the idiots were never the ones that dropped dead?

“Everything is still go.” To force introductions and get names attached to the other men, Atticus waved toward Ru. “My partner, Hikaru Takahashi.” Then, because he didn't want to get Ukiah more involved than he had to, Atticus made a dismissive noise and added, “And my little brother.”

“This is Animal. He's a nomad for the Iron Horses.” Daggit named the others—confirming Ukiah's guesses—apparently working from level of importance instead of by whom was standing closest to him. Animal was a wiry man with flamboyant red hair and beard and a slightly manic smile. “Rebar here is my right-hand man.” The club enforcer was a bald man whose leather jacket and thick waist disguised a strongly built body. Daggit rattled off the names of the
others as if they were of no consequence. “Draconis. Smithy. Quasimodo. Mutt and Jeff.”

Draconis was a tall, lanky man with dark hair and beard. Smithy was short, pudgy, and sweating nervously. Quasimodo was as ugly as his namesake. Mutt and Jeff were brothers or cousins; both had the same broad face and sparse, sandy hair.

Atticus committed faces to memory as he kept between the bikers and Ru. He could hear a faint ongoing chiming sound but he couldn't tell the source. As he moved around the room, it stayed elusively faint and directionless. “You're here earlier than we expected. We said dusk, not first thing in the morning.”

“Are we screwing up some kind of schedule?” Daggit sneered.

“We were thinking about heading out.” Ru reached out and flicked the nearest light switch on and off. “The power is off here. The stove is gas, so we were able to make breakfast, but there's no coffee.”

“Yeah, well, it's off for most of the Cape.” Daggit meandered through the living room, pausing to open up a drawer and look into it. “A substation got taken out last night in the storm. You'll have to go pretty far out for that coffee.”

“Ah.” Ru drifted out of the tight corner of the kitchen. “Do you have what we're looking for?”

On the team, Ru was the voice, Atticus was the muscle, and Kyle was the backup—only Kyle was still off getting the generator, and Ukiah, a complete unknown, had been added into the equation. Who knew what direction the Dog Warrior would jump in a situation like this? His brother sat still, seemingly chewing his steak, but Atticus could feel his attention focused on the bikers as they moved around the room.

“Maybe.” Daggit had to duck to walk into the kitchen. There was a slight coving to delineate it from the open living room that Atticus hadn't noticed before.

“Nah.” Animal's red hair made a nimbus around his head as he shook it. “We just drove all the way out here for our health.”

“Do you have it or not?” Atticus snapped, irritated over how fucked-up the situation was. They didn't even know what form the drug came in—pill, brick, dust? They'd have to dance around the word “drug” until they knew.

“Perhaps.” Daggit opened the refrigerator, scanned the inside, and helped himself to one of the beers.

Atticus wished that for once a deal could go down without all the coy double talk. He supposed it would make life too simple. “We're not buying ‘perhaps' here. Do you have the shit or not?”

Ru gave Atticus a look that said,
What am I missing?

Daggit had found Ukiah's mice and crouched to stare into the plastic cage. The black mice lined up to stare back.

“What's up with the mice? They look like Pack . . .” Daggit reached out a hand for the cage, but froze when Ukiah growled.

“Don't touch my mice, Daggit,” Ukiah said through clenched teeth.

Daggit grunted, abandoning the mice to study the Dog Warrior. “What do we have here? You don't look like you've got bite behind that growl.”

On the other side of the room, providing cover for Ru, Atticus was in the wrong place to stop Daggit as he made a grab for Ukiah.

“Don't touch me!” Ukiah snarled, jerking back out of reach with surprising speed, but at a cost. Atticus felt the pain that flashed through his brother as one of the fragile knits splintered. “You've got Invisible Red on you!”

“I have what?” Daggit glanced at his hand, puzzled.

“Blissfire. Drugs.”

Daggit twisted open his beer, frowning at Ukiah. “How do you know that?”

“I can smell it.” Ukiah growled, hunching against the pain. “It's all over your skin and clothes.”

“No, you can't.” Daggit shook his head, took a sip, and explained: “It doesn't have a smell or a color. You can't see it.”

“You can't,” Ukiah said. “Pack can.”

Daggit cocked his head. “Who are you?”

“I'm the Pack's Cub,” Ukiah said.

“Aaaaah.” Daggit's interest sharpened. “So you're the Cub. Man of mystery. We've heard that you existed but not much more; the Pack won't say squat about you. What are you doing here?”

“I'm eating breakfast.” Ukiah tore another mouthful of meat off of the steak and made a show of chewing.

Well, that killed any doubt that Ukiah was one of the Dog Warriors.

Daggit flicked his gaze to Atticus and back. “I didn't know that Pack took brothers.”

“We're a special case,” Ukiah growled.

Daggit worked his jaw as if it were connected to a massive gear that needed to be turned in order for him to think. “This doesn't feel right. You”—he waggled a finger at Ukiah—“I can buy without a doubt. You've got that wolf feel. Him.” Daggit pointed to Atticus. “He's Pack. But this one”—the massive finger settled in Ru's direction—“he's all wrong.”

“He's not Pack,” Ukiah said before either Ru or Atticus could claim otherwise.

“So who is he?” Daggit asked. “What's he doing here with two Pack dogs?”

“That's Pack business,” Ukiah growled softly.

Atticus wondered why Daggit and Ukiah included him as part of the outlaw club.
Pack knows Pack.
Did that mean that the rest of the members were somehow like him? But how would Daggit know, since he wasn't Pack?