“She sets one foot out the door, you’re fired,” he said flatly.
“Got it.”
“Anything happens, you call me.”
He threw fencing posts, shovel, stretcher, sleeves and crimping tool into the back of the pickup and headed north to act normally until three thirty just in case anyone was watching. Mending fences was the kind of mechanical, repetitive work that didn’t require thought. One checked for defective posts, replaced them if necessary, used a stretcher to pull any snapped wires together until they could be fitted into a sleeve, then crimped the sleeve to permanently clamp the wires together. It was soothing if one concentrated on the job at hand and didn’t think about anything else.
Three thirty came around, he tossed his tools back into the pickup and called Taylor. “I’m packing it in now.”
“Right,” said Taylor curtly and broke the connection, his disapproval showing.
He was going to have to do a different kind of fence mending with Taylor later. But that wouldn’t be until this whole thing was over.
The Strebor mine was some fifty miles north. He drove there without haste to maintain the impression this was something he’d been talked into and didn’t want to do.
There wasn’t much to see when he got there, but he supposed it was possible an artist might call it picturesque. It was a wide, irregular bowl of hard-packed ground with not even weeds growing on it. A few tumbledown, weather-beaten shacks still survived, their crumbling walls silvery with age and striped with empty black gaps where planks were missing or broken. A rusty but solid metal grill covered the hole of the mine shaft so no curious tourist or teenager nosing around would accidentally fall in.
It must have been tricky for Sierra to come up with a location she would have a reason to visit that was deserted yet still enough of a landmark that people would be able to tell strangers how to get there. She hadn’t done that badly with her choice. The two of them being in each other’s company would have set tongues wagging, the convenient isolation of the mine should attract Arrhan’s attention and directions here would be easy to follow. With any luck, Arrhan would buy it.
He was careful to park well away from the shacks, out in the open where he wouldn’t get jumped. Hopefully, it would look as though it was a casual instead of a purposeful choice.
“Sierra!” he called, climbing out of the pickup. “Sierra, you there?”
Of course, only silence answered him. He made a show of looking at the clock on the dashboard, then walked away from the pickup, shaking his head. His aimless stroll moved him away both from the shacks, where enemies could be concealed, and from the pickup, which might give attackers cover. He eased even farther out into the open on the pretext of looking back up the road down which Sierra could be expected to arrive.
There was a metallic thump behind him and he spun. A lion had landed on the roof of the pickup and was crouched there ready to spring, its lips twisting back from its fangs as it snarled. It wasn’t Arrhan. It was an adolescent male, close to maturity but not quite there yet.
“You waiting for your human pet?” a sneering voice asked behind him. “We’ll wait too. Arrhan wants both of you.”
Three more Shifters had appeared, sliding out of the shacks to surround him, still in human form, but fast and silent as all Shifters were. They were all males, an adult and two more adolescents, dressed in leather vests, pants and boots. Disappointingly, the adult wasn’t Arrhan.
Ian stood lightly poised on the balls of his feet, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice, while they closed in on him. They were looking triumphant, obviously thinking he was at their mercy.
“So where’s Arrhan?” he mocked. “You’re just his flunkies. What’s he doing? Hiding in one of those shacks, waiting for you punks to take me down? Too scared to face me himself like a true Shifter would?”
“Arrhan is the true Shifter!” one of the adolescents said angrily. “You are the corrupted ones. Refusing the challenge is not honorable! It is the Lowe pride-lord who has no courage. Let him come out to meet Arrhan in fair contest. Then this will stop.”
“Kurt Lowe is twice Arrhan’s age. That’s no contest, that’s a massacre.”
“If he does not wish to die, then let him relinquish the pride to the challenger and depart. That is the Way!”
“It is not our way.”
“Don’t waste words on this one, Kihain,” said the adult. “He’s leopard. What does he know of the ways of the prides? Leopards have no honor.”
He said that last word with a sneering twist of the lips. The flick of his glance at Kihain was derisive. The adolescent had meant what he said, but Ian doubted honor had any real meaning to this man. He was a massive, hulking brute with an emptiness in the eyes that Ian had seen before in human thugs. He knew the type. These might be Shifters and they might be from the world beyond the Gates, but their real equivalents were the vicious human predators of the inner-city gangs.
“Cast-outs,” Ian said contemptuously. “Outlaws. The prides in the old world would have nothing to do with you, so you came here. Isn’t that the truth?”
“They will regret it,” snarled the third adolescent, at his back. He was another like the adult, empty-eyed and venomous. “They will learn their lesson when we—”
“Silence, Mahar!” the adult snapped. “Arrhan wishes these Corrupted to know nothing of us.”
“What does it matter, Grathen? He will tell no one. When we gift Arrhan with him, he will be nothing but food for the scavengers.”
“Arrhan commands. Do you challenge him?” Grathen smiled nastily as the adolescents cringed. “I thought not.”
“
I
challenge Arrhan,” said Ian softly.
“You are leopard and of no consequence. He will notice you only to kill you and you will be a long time dying.” Grathen’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a panting laugh. “It will be enjoyable to watch. But not as enjoyable as the death of the human female we await. That will take even longer and you too shall watch until she is finally in little, little shreds, strewn across Eliara’s grave.”
“That’s your honor? To kill a defenseless human female who can’t fight back?”
“She killed Eliara!” Mahar snarled. “With a distance weapon! She will pay!”
“What did Alison Lowe do to be shredded?”
Grathen frowned. “Who?”
“The little female Lowe who was killed yesterday. Not much more than a cub. She was tricked out of the pride and not even permitted a fair fight. She was just torn apart.”
The color rose in Kihain’s face and the adolescent turned his face away, refusing to meet his eyes, though the others laughed, even the lion on the pickup’s roof, huffing through his open jaws. But Kihain at least seemed to feel a decent shame.
“So much for honor,” said Ian scornfully.
“A message was needed.” Grathen shrugged. “We provided one.”
“So it was you four.”
“With Arrhan’s approval. It was you who breached custom first. Let Kurt Lowe meet Arrhan and the killings will stop. Should he not, they will continue. But worse.”
“
Dasari
, all of you.”
“We are not!” choked Kihain. “You are the ones who are mad, who have forgotten the Way!”
“Your Way seems to be to harm those who have not harmed you. To attack children or helpless humans. You don’t even have the guts to fight me fair. No, you have to gang up on me. No balls, the lot of you. Cowards!”
“I will fight you!”
Furious, Kihain swung at him. Ian ducked the blow smoothly.
“You’re nothing. Let Arrhan fight me and prove me wrong. But he won’t. He’ll find some reason not to fight.”
“He will fight you!” Kihain panted.
“Will he? I think not. Take me to him and you’ll see.”
“It’s a trick,” Grathen said suddenly. “He wasn’t surprised to see us and he doesn’t smell afraid. The human female isn’t coming, is she? He wants us to show him where Arrhan is. It is a trap of some kind. Kill him! The human is the one Arrhan wants. This one’s skin will be enough to please him.”
Ian leaped back as the lion on top of the pickup sprang at him. There was a flat crack of sound and a bullet hole bloomed in the center of the lion’s forehead. It fell to the ground, blood spraying from the substantially larger exit wound. In the confusion, Ian tore out of his clothes, shifted and flung himself on Grathen, who had reacted as quickly and turned to lion.
The rifle cracked two more times, but neither Ian nor Grathen paid it any heed, too busy trying to kill each other in a snarling, tearing whirl of fangs and claws. Ian’s rage put him on an even footing with a lion who should have outmatched him. His hind claws scored Grathen’s belly and his fangs closed on Grathen’s throat. The thick ruff of mane there prevented him from using the full force of his bone-crushing jaws for a second, and as he jockeyed for a better hold, Grathen tore free.
But instead of flinging himself back into the fight, Grathen ran. It took Ian by surprise. A lion would not normally run from a leopard. But it seemed Grathen liked easy prey and a one-on-one fight with a justifiably vengeful adversary was not to his taste.
Ian raced after him. Leopards were faster than lions. He should be able to run Grathen down.
The rifle cracked once more. Grathen suddenly somersaulted head over heels like a rabbit and landed with a crash on his belly. Ian skidded to a halt, then stalked angrily forward and checked the body. It was stone dead. The bullet had got Grathen cleanly through the back of the head.
Engine noise abruptly broke the silence, then Nick Korda cruised to a stop beside him on the dirt bike he had used to get here ahead of them all.
“Dammit,” snarled Ian, shifting back into human. “I wanted to kill him! He’s the one responsible for Alison’s death.”
“Yeah, I got close enough to hear. Maybe you’d have liked to tear him apart, but trash like that isn’t worth anything but cold execution.” Nick’s face was grim and hard. “Like offing a rattlesnake.”
Ian made a frustrated gesture, then swung around to head back toward the pickup and his clothes.
“It didn’t work the way I wanted. I was hoping that they would take me to Arrhan’s hideout and you could track us there.”
“That was a long shot and you know it. I told you that when you called and said what Sierra had come up with. You don’t matter to them. Sierra is the one they would have taken to him.” Nick gave him a tight smile. “But somehow I don’t think you’d have risked her.”
“Got that right.” Ian reached the pickup and started searching for his clothes in the dust, ignoring the three lions sprawled limply on the ground. “He’ll change his location now. I would if I was him and any of my people didn’t come back. One of them might have talked. I wouldn’t take the chance.”
“Yeah, I’d move. But if we knew where he used to be, that might give us a handle on how he thinks. That boy might be able to tell us something.”
In the middle of buckling his belt, Ian looked up, surprised. “You mean you left one of them alive?”
“The one who seemed to have a sliver of conscience. He’s just creased, not dead.” Nick gave him an amused glance. “Once you realized tracking them wasn’t going to happen, you just wanted to rip that scum’s throat out. I’m with you there, but we need info and this way we might get it.”
Ian yanked his tee on. “I didn’t think we’d really be able to grab one of them.”
“I’m a damn fine shot. We’ll haul him over to the Lowes. They’ll get something out of him.” Nick grinned nastily. “Shouldn’t be hard since the kid’s gotta know he’ll be singing soprano if Kurt allows the Lowe females to get their hands on him.”
“True.” The Lowe females were in a killing mood after Allie’s death. Kurt would have a hard time keeping them off Kihain.
“The other three we’ll leave for the scavengers, the way they did our people.” Nick’s face went cold. “Our message to Arrhan if he finds them. If he doesn’t, they can rot for all I care.”
“They’re not a pride,” said Ian as they heaved Kihain’s limp body into the back of the pickup. The bullet that had struck the side of his head had knocked him out cold, but he was still breathing. “They’re a gang.”
“Got that. Unusual.”
A pride was a family group of related females with their cubs of both sexes, headed by a male pride-lord or coalitions of two or more males sharing lordship. Male cubs who reached maturity either accepted the pride-lord’s authority or were forced out to become nomads. In the other dimension, those young males might seize another pride by successful challenge. In this one, they were either taken in by a pride that needed new blood or formed a new family group with females willing to accept them.
Troublemakers or those showing vicious or unacceptable behavior were also cast out by the prides. But those didn’t tend to band together. They were usually loners. Sometimes cousins or brothers forced out of a pride would stick together for company, but large groups of unrelated males were unheard of.
“A charismatic leader with a grudge collecting the ones thrown out of the prides for cause. The ones that are not just nomads, but outcasts,” Nick said thoughtfully. “Did you catch that bit about teaching them a lesson?”
“Yeah. But it doesn’t make sense. To do that, Arrhan would have to get back through the Gate. How would he manage that?”