The Mane Event (20 page)

Sissy frowned. “She never came back from the bathroom.”

“How long has she been gone?”

Sissy thought for a moment. “A while.”

Not the answer he wanted.

Of all Dez’s experiences, flung down a flight of stairs by a small child had never been one of them.

She hit the ground, and pain shot through her left arm.

She tried to get up, but the giggling little bastards kicked her back to the ground. They wrapped a rough, heavy cord rope around her throat and proceeded to drag her across a concrete floor.

Dez fought to breathe, desperately pulling on the rope, trying to loosen it before it choked her out or snapped her neck. But she couldn’t get her fingers under the rope. As she started to black out, they stopped. Dez shook her head to snap herself out of whatever abyss she’d been about to fall into. Then she pulled herself to her knees. She had her hands on the knot at her neck when another hand grabbed the rope and yanked it taut. She grabbed at the hand holding the rope and looked up into the viciously torn face of Anne Marie Brutale.

The woman sneered at her. “I’m going to have such fun with you, human.”

Mace picked up Dez’s phone. Her last attempted call still blinking, waiting for her to hit Send. 911. “You smell ’em?” he asked Smitty.

Sissy Mae stood next to her brother. “They smell young.”

Mace closed his eyes. Not good. Anything but that. Anything but hyena children. He could see it now. They lured Dez out here by pretending to be innocent kids. As a cop, no way in hell would Dez ignore them.

Smitty cast around until he locked onto the scent. He followed it to an unlocked metal door. He walked over to it and threw the door open. The scent of hyena sucker punched Mace and made him want to retch. Nothing smelled as bad as their markings. He glanced down. The stairs seemed to go on forever. But he could smell Dez. This is where they’d taken her. He had to go after her, no matter what the cost.

“I don’t have to look to know there is at least one Clan of hyenas down here. Maybe two. I can’t ask you guys to go with me. But—”

Mace turned around and found the entire Pack had already shifted. Their clothes tossed all over the alley floor. They were just waiting for him. He would have smiled if he wasn’t terrified for Dez.

He didn’t waste another second. He shifted, shook off his clothes, and bounded down the stairs—his Pack following him.

“I was so excited when I heard you and your cat were walking around the Village like you owned it. I sent my cousin’s children to go get your dumb human ass.”

Dez pushed herself into a sitting position, the wall against her back. She was in a long hallway, but she didn’t know where. A healthy guess would say she was under the Chapel Club. If she hadn’t been fighting for her life, she’d marvel on the hyenas’ use of underground tunnels.

Dez glanced up and saw exposed plumbing, sturdy and within reach. Plus, there were doors all along the hallway, including a janitor’s closet.

Anne Marie held up Dez’s gun still in its holder. “Nice weapon, Detective. You ever been shot with it?” Dez didn’t answer. “But where would the fun be in that, right? I wanna feel your flesh rip under my hands. Taste your blood on my tongue. We’re going to have such a party, you and me.”

Dez loosened up the rope on her throat with one hand while gathering the rest in the other. “Sorry about your face. Did Gina find out about what you and Doogan did to Petrov? Or was that cause of me?”

“Do you have sisters, Detective?” Dez nodded. “Then you understand. At least a little. I was trying to protect the family. First she brings in that idiot Petrov, then she lets you into our club, reeking of lion, and she thinks I’m going to let that go? Because she wants to find out who whacked her fuckin’ cat boyfriend?” Anne Marie stood in front of her. Dez pushed herself to her feet and stared the crazy bitch in the eye.

“But I’ll deal with her later. Because first…” Anne Marie whispered, “first I’m going to hurt you.”

Dez knew she had only one chance, so she might as well make the best of it. She headbutted her. Anne Marie stumbled back, caught off guard by Dez’s sudden attack. Dez pulled the noose over her head while she advanced on Anne Marie. Once close enough, she punched her. A right cross to the jaw. Anne Marie stumbled back several more steps, then Dez grabbed the brutalized side of the woman’s face, digging her fingers into the torn flesh. She got a good grip on her cheek and spun the howling, screaming woman around, slamming her face-first into the wall.

The air changed around them—Anne Marie’s scent becoming stronger, her body shifting. Dez looped the rope around Anne Marie’s throat and tightened it at the moment the woman’s body began to change. Dez knocked her to the ground, one foot flat against her back to hold her in place. She lifted her other foot and brought it down hard against Anne Marie’s hand, breaking all her long nails. She did the same to the other hand.

Anne Marie howled in rage, completing her shift so she could tear Dez apart. But as hyena, her body would be no bigger than either of Dez’s dogs. Dez had never done to one of her dogs what she needed to do now, but it was time for her to try it.

Yeah. It was time to take Anne Marie Brutale on a Nature Walk.

Mace stopped at the bottom of the stairs, the Pack surrounding him. Why the hell did he smell lion? He glanced at Smitty and realized he smelled it too. After another moment, he realized he smelled Shaw as well as Doogan and his brothers. Like he had time to deal with that little problem. This was starting to get freakin’ complicated.

He glanced down the long dark hallway and realized they were in one of the infamous hyena tunnels. He knew if he followed this tunnel, it would take him back to the Chapel Club. Growling, he sprinted into the darkness, Smitty and his Pack behind him.

Thankfully her left wrist wasn’t broken. It hurt like a bitch, but if it had been broken, she would never have been able to swing Brutale around like one of her dogs.

As soon as Anne Marie finished shifting, Dez gripped the rope tight and swung Brutale up and into one wall. Her hyena body bounced off, but Dez used the momentum to hammer her into the opposite wall. This time she stunned the beast. Heard the air “woosh” from Anne Marie’s lungs.

Using the few precious seconds she now had, Dez tossed the end of the rope over one of the exposed pipes above her head, right by the janitor’s closet. She grabbed the end and yanked down.

She pulled until Brutale hung there. A good four feet off the ground. Satisfied Anne Marie wasn’t going anywhere, Dez tried the door of the janitor’s closet. Locked. So she kicked it in. The door, not particularly strong, splintered and burst open. She walked in and spotted what she needed immediately. A large, heavy shelf case stood on one side of the room. Dez reached down and tied the end of the rope around one of the shelf legs. She made sure it was tight, and the bottom shelf prevented the rope from sliding up. With the rope taut, Brutale would continue to hang until someone let her loose.

Dez grabbed her gun and ran down the hall, forcing herself to remember that Brutale would never have let her live either.

Mace stopped beside the hung body of a hyena. He rose up on his hind legs and sniffed her. He smelled Dez faintly and knew she’d done this.

He followed behind Smitty and the Pack, but stopped when he saw what they were looking at.

The hallway split off into four directions. And they smelled Dez all over.

Sissy Mae sent several of her females down one tunnel. Smitty sent a few females, including his sister, and a few males down two other tunnels.

Mace took a step toward the last tunnel but stopped when he knew someone watched him. He saw a pretty little girl, no more than eight or so, staring at him. She looked up at the hyena hanging from the pipes; back at Mace; and, with a heart-stopping smile only hyena children seemed to possess, suddenly turned and screamed, “
Giiinnnnaaa!”

Shit!
Mace and Smitty exchanged a glance, then charged down the fourth tunnel.

One hyena alone could cause enough damage. But a Clan of forty or even eighty? He had to get to Dez before she fell into the middle of them or they found her. Otherwise they’d all be dead.

She turned the corner and faced another set of long hallways. What a freakin’ maze. A well-lit, confusing maze. Every corner she turned introduced her to another row of long hallways. Choosing one led her to another corner with another set of hallways and on and on.

Christ, what did she get herself into?

She stopped and took a breath. Yup. She was lost. She would have gone for her cell phone, but she’d dropped that in the alley behind the coffeehouse.

She took another breath. She would not panic. She’d get out of here. For the thousandth time she shook out her left hand. Her wrist had subsided into a dull blinding pain.

Dez moved down another hallway. She marveled at the silence. If she didn’t know a club stood right above her…hell, she couldn’t even make out the bass from the speakers. It seemed like all the walls were soundproofed.

Of course, that didn’t make her feel any better. Because no one would hear her screams.

She came to another corner and stopped. Down one of the long hallways, she heard men arguing.

She moved quickly toward the sound as she pulled her Glock from her holster. She had no idea who she would find, but Dez prepared herself to be sweet as sugar or threaten to blow their heads off. Whatever got her the fuck out of here.

She followed the voices. Her body tense, her gun clasped in both hands and away from her body. She pushed her back against the wall as the arguing turned violent. Someone was getting the shit kicked out of him.

“Do it! Do it!” a deep voice snarled.

She turned the corner and raised her weapon. Dez took in the scene quickly. One man down, a large boot against his shoulders holding him in place. The boot belonged to Patrick Doogan. She recognized him immediately now. One of his idiot brothers held a .45 aimed at the back of the vic’s head. The third brother crouched beside him, the hand not in a cast buried in the vic’s gold hair, pulling his head back to spit into that beautiful face.

Damn, even her shotgun wouldn’t help her here. She needed her M-16. But she didn’t have that either.

As a cop, she needed to scream “Freeze! Put your hands above your head and step away from the gorgeous guy!”

Fuck that.
She remembered how fast Mace and Brutale moved. She didn’t stand a chance with these three.

So, without warning, Dez shot the one holding the gun. The bullet hit him in the shoulder, knocking him back, the gun flying out of his hand. The other two were so startled they jumped away from their target. They were armed, but they hadn’t gone for their weapons yet, mostly because they’d tucked them into the back of their tailored slacks.

“Get up!”

The vic looked at her, and immediately she recognized Brendon Shaw.

“Move!”

She wasn’t about to get any closer, but she wasn’t sure if she was asking the impossible as well. Severely beaten, he must have fought back. But he somehow managed to stand and stumble over to her.

“Keep going.”

He did as ordered. Dez backed away, her eyes locking with Patrick Doogan’s.

“I’ll find you, bitch. I’ll find you and fuck you and kill you.”

Dez didn’t bother answering him. Why? She knew he meant it. Instead, she kept backing up, until she got around the corner. She grabbed Shaw’s jacket and dragged him, but he wouldn’t move.

She turned around and immediately stopped breathing. They all watched her with those cold brown eyes.

A hyena suddenly appeared from the back. The others separated, giving her a path to walk through. She came up to Dez and stood before her. A dead hyena body in her mouth, the rope still around her throat.

She knew this was Gina. Especially when she spit the corpse out at Dez’s feet.

“Tell me you didn’t do that,” Shaw whispered, most likely because he’d lost so much blood.

“I really wish I could.”

“Damn.” He tried to push her back behind him. A surprisingly heroic gesture from someone she’d called “rich scumbag” in her head since he held that conversation with her tits the other evening.

She did appreciate his attempt at protecting her, but they were beyond that now. In fact, the phrase “completely fucked” kept rattling around in her head.

Dez grabbed Shaw’s jacket and took a step back, but the Doogan brothers came up behind her. She realized with what quickly became overwhelming despair that the two groups had her trapped between them. Both wanting to see her dead.

Of course…they were archenemies. And not just because they were lion and hyena. For another reason altogether.

Dez stepped in front of Shaw. “Gina.” The lead hyena watched her closely, waiting for her to make a run for it. Waiting for the hunt. “You wanted to know who killed your man.” Dez stepped back and motioned to the three men behind her. “It was them.”

Gina Brutale locked eyes with Patrick Doogan. He couldn’t hide the truth. Not from any of them. His fangs extended as he and his brothers backed away. Gina watched him for a moment, savoring their realization that they were horribly outnumbered. She opened her mouth and let out a sound that chilled Dez’s blood and made her want to start crying. It sounded almost like laughter, but it definitely wasn’t.

Doogan and his brothers ran as the hyenas rushed them.

The two groups disappeared around the corner, then she grabbed Shaw’s jacket and forced the man to start running in the opposite direction. Shaw had lost a lot of blood, but she didn’t care. He’d lose a lot more if those lions got away or the bloodlust overtook the hyenas and they came looking for more.

Dez could already hear the battle raging behind her. Three male lions against what she estimated to be about thirty or forty hyenas. Yeah. Good luck with that.

Of course, there
was
one little problem with her escape. She still had no idea how to get the hell out of here.