Deric Mendelsohn skipped through the Fountain of Rings in Centennial Olympic Park. Five females, his current harem, chased after him. Except for the two who were pregnant. They waddled with determined grunts. Twelve females sat in puddles, some of their own making, laughing hysterically.
They were all nude as the day they were born.
Except for the one wearing a black thong as an eyepatch. She kept yelling arrr while slashing her hooked finger through the air.
“Mr. Mendelsohn.” I kept a safe distance from the action. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to exit the fountain and put on some clothes.”
“You’ll have to catch me first.” His untamed laughter filled the night. “Better hurry.”
No one who had spent five seconds with Mendelsohn would accuse him of being the sharpest tool in the shed. Even if the shed caught fire with him in it and burned to the ground, reducing everything to ashes.
No, wait.
That last part was wishful thinking.
Ambrose cocked his head, his attention focused behind me, alerting me to an approaching presence.
“He’s been like this for an hour,” rasped a voice raw from yelling. “They’ve all been like this.”
Happy for any excuse to look away before the exhibition caused permanent blindness, I cut my eyes and angled my chin toward her in acknowledgment. The others I kept in my periphery, wary of their wild abandon in a public space.
Dim recognition sparked from the late stages of the Bonnie Diaz case as I took in the details of the woman’s outfit. She had been wearing a sundress the last time we met too. “Gayle, right?”
“That’s me.” She worried her top dress button until its fraying thread snapped, and the disc fell into her hand. “I’m the one who called.”
The start of a headache throbbed behind my right eye. “Who did you call?”
“The OPA.” She produced a creased business card with my information. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Yet somehow, instead of Bishop, she had gotten ahold of Remy. No other explanation came to mind for the tip from my employee that would explain why the team at the OPA had yet to update me. Remy had hacked the Swyft database for her own purposes. She might have jacked our forwarding service too.
If that was the case, when Bishop found out—if he didn’t already know—he would be pissed.
“You did right.” I folded her hand over the card, urging her to keep it. A contact inside their pack would be worth cultivating. “We’re happy to help in whatever way we can within city limits.”
Wargs policed their own. I got the call because this was a situation involving an incapacitated alpha. I was Gayle’s best hope for a peaceful resolution, and I had to act fast, before other packs in the area got any ideas. A vulnerable alpha was a dead alpha, and Mendelsohn was out of his gourd. Well, more than usual.
“You were the designated driver?” I noted her clear eyes. “Any idea what they’re on?”
Thanks to wargs’ higher metabolism, alcohol gave them a buzz, but only if they worked hard for it. Most street drugs fell into the same low-risk category with almost zero addiction rates. That said, there was always something new on the horizon.
“Deric isn’t a user, but he’ll take favors at parties.”
That fit with his anything goes outlook on life. “What about his girlfriends?”
“The pregnant ones,” she said, taking my meaning, “would never endanger their babies.”
Thank the goddess for that. “How about the unpregnant ones?”
Lips tight, she watched her alpha frolic. “They would follow Deric’s lead.”
“You never said if you drove them here.”
“Oh, sorry. No. I wasn’t there.” She tore her gaze away from him. “I got a call from a girlfriend who works the club district. Jemima tipped me off about the pack. I picked up their trail and followed them here on foot.”
“Your friend…” I cast around for anyone else coherent but came up empty, “…she’s pack too?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Vampire.”
“So, they hit a club?” I made a vague gesture toward the gathering. “All of them? Except you?”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her thumb in the shallow divot of the button like a worry stone. “I tend to stick close to home, keep an eye on the elders and the kids.”
And if that was longing in her voice for it to be otherwise, it was none of my business.
Gwyllgi protocols stumped me on the regular. I wasn’t wading into warg politics uninvited.
“Did your friend name the club?”
“Greenleaf.” A shudder twitched her shoulders. “That themed bar on Crescent Avenue Northeast.”
Clubs weren’t my scene, but I was familiar with most by name if not location from my homework.
“Last week, Deric got an invite to an exclusive party. Heavy paper, calligraphy, the works. That’s not uncommon, everyone knows he loves to party, but this must have been a special case. He’s been pumped for days.” Her voice softened. “I didn’t recognize the sender’s name or the address.”
“Do you know if he kept the invitation?”
Gayle worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “He doesn’t usually, but if he did, it would be in his tent.”
“Check for me when you get home.” I tapped the card she had yet to put away. “Call me if you find it.”
Her slow, tight nod conveyed her struggle with the request she invade her alpha’s private quarters, even for his own good.
“What are you going to do?” Gayle rubbed a pink splotch I hadn’t noticed on her forearm. “I tried to get him out of the fountain when I arrived, and he bit me.”
Having met Mendelsohn a time or two, that pulled me up short. “He’s aggressive?”
All I had witnessed from him so far was a very tra-la-la attitude, but I hadn’t cornered him either.
“Very.” She kept rubbing, but the mark didn’t fade. “It’s not like him.”
Mendelsohn had challenged and killed his father to take over the pack, and he had done the enforcer gig for his old man before that. Rumor had it he executed the coup for the right to knock up every fertile female in the pack. The end result was he tended to choose mating over brawling.
Lashing out at a female, let alone a member of his pack, was out of character for him.
“We need to contain the situation.” I woke my phone. “Do you mind if I call for backup?”
Panic brightened her eyes, and her body trembled with the need to shift and defend her packmates.
The spark of magic she exuded barely rated a glance from Ambrose, but the promise of violence set him quivering.
“No…” she gritted out from behind elongating teeth, “…wargs.”
“I won’t allow any non-Mendelsohn wargs near Deric until he’s detoxed,” I promised. “Your alpha is safe.”
Sweat beaded and rolled down her brow, salting her too-bright eyes. The fine bones in her face shifted and popped. Skin stretched, elastic. Her jaw yawned wide in the beginnings of a horror-movie-style transformation before she regained control of her protective instincts.
“Yeth,” she rasped through a misshapen maw. “Do it.”