Max watched as he lifted one paw after another, his now gold gaze studying each in turn.
The two cheetahs shifted and playfully attacked him, knocking him down, leaping over him. Zé rolled to his back, stretched his legs and studied them. Fascinated by his new form. Fascinated with his new power.
He scrambled back to his feet and faced the cheering players. Then he was charging toward them at full power. Max smiled, but unlike the dogs on her team, she didn’t duck. None of the badgers did.
Zé sailed over her with ease, dashing up the seats to the highest row.
That’s when Max and her teammates began the chant.
“Zé! Zé! Zé! Zé! Zé!”
And even in his cat form, she could tell he was taking a bow.
chapter TEN
The trunk opened and, for the first time in hours, Devon Martin could see something other than utter darkness.
“Come on, Dev,” that familiar voice said, although more than one set of strong hands grabbed him and hauled him out.
He was mercilessly tossed to the ground. Then there was a series of brutal kicks to his gut, legs, chest, and back. Almost everywhere but his head.
When he was sure he couldn’t take any more, he heard that voice again.
“All right. That’s enough.”
The kicking stopped and Dev was able to pull himself up onto his hands and knees. He lifted his head.
“Hi, Dev.”
She sat on the trunk of the car with another Asian woman, both of them eating carrots.
Holding up the vegetable, Renny Yang said, “You know, I really thought that when I got out of prison, I would be dying for a burger and fries. And that was the first thing I ate. But you know what else they don’t have in a Bulgarian prison? Vegetables. And fruit. Something this omnivore has missed greatly.”
“I want my shit, woman.”
Renny smiled and Dev remembered how he used to love that smile. Now he just wanted to shoot it off.
“You and that idiot double-crossed me,” he reminded her. “What did you expect me to do?”
“Not mess with my daughter.”
Dev gazed at her. “Your daughter . . . or our daughter?”
Renny frowned and eventually looked at the woman next to her. Then they burst into laughter. They were joined by the other Asian females who came out of the darkness and surrounded the car.
“You think I would have had a child with you? Some”—her mouth curled in disgust—“ full-human with absolutely nothing to offer my bloodline? Oh, puhleeze!”
“I don’t know which is worse,” the woman beside Renny said to him. “That you think she’d have a child with . . . you. Or that you think Max might be your child and yet you attempted to kill her several times.”
“I never tried to kill her. She just . . . just . . .”
“Just, just, just . . . what?” Renny asked. “Didn’t stand for being a tool for you to use against me? You know, actually”—she slid off the trunk but didn’t come closer to Dev—“it’s a real shame that my girl didn’t find you first. She’s much nicer than I am. Quicker . . . from what I’ve heard.”
“If you’re going to kill me, bitch, then kill me!”
“I’m not going to kill you.” She held up her hand. “I just got my nails done. Gotta look nice when I see my daughter again. But I want to be able to tell her she has nothing to worry about anymore.”
Dev heard them first. A weird, whooping noise that came from the forest surrounding the clearing. He looked around, trying to figure out what was happening. What that sound was. What was coming through the trees toward him.
He forced himself to stand, expecting Renny to immediately knock him back down. But she had her back to him, was adjusting her jeans—on the much-wider ass she’d grown since going to prison—and chatting with the other Asian women. She was ignoring him.
Dev’s first thought was to run up and kill her. Just snap her neck. He’d still die but so would she. The bitch who had taken what he’d earned.
But those sounds. That loud, long whooping call. He kept hearing it, coming from all directions. Long whooping, then short. Like barks. Whatever it was . . . it just kept coming. And sometimes . . . sometimes there’d be what sounded like laughing.
Whatever the fuck it was, it was too much for Dev. It terrified him more than the thought of Renny Yang getting away with his money.
Maybe she was just faking him out. Maybe she was just using a sound system to get him to panic. He didn’t know. He just knew he didn’t want to stick around to find out what that noise was. He couldn’t.
Dev turned away from Renny and started running. He glanced back but Renny and the women weren’t chasing him. That didn’t make him feel better. It made him feel worse. Renny wasn’t stupid. She knew that if he got away, he’d be coming for her again. She knew it. So then why was she letting him—
It slammed into him from his right, grabbing hold of his arm between powerful jaws. He turned, trying to get the thing off, but it spun with him. Dev punched at it, but the creature only made that whooping sound again, even with its jaws closed around his arm.
A dog? They were going to use a dog to kill him?
But this “dog” didn’t feel right. He used to breed fighting dogs and they didn’t feel like this. They didn’t make these kinds of sounds.
Headlights came on from behind him and now Dev saw. Now he understood those sounds. Like any kid growing up, he’d loved watching documentaries on predators. Lions, tigers . . . hyenas.
The hyena flipped him over and forced Dev to the ground.
Dev tried to get up but it wasn’t one hyena that Renny had sicced on him. There was a whole bunch and they surrounded him, one climbing onto his chest and leaning over him.
He knew, knew this was it and bared his throat, wanting it to be over quick.
The hyenas made that sound again—a whooping combined with that short laugh. And that’s when the one on his chest turned its head one way, then the other. Suddenly . . . it was human.
A woman staring down at him.
“Did you really think this was going to be easy?” she asked, her voice husky, almost male. “That you wouldn’t suffer? Oh, my friend . . . you will suffer.”
* * *
Renny heard Dev screaming as the spotted hyena clan devoured him while he was still alive.
Her cousin handed over a wad of cash and Renny handed it to the matriarch of the Clan. Giggling, the hyena walked off, apparently not in the mood to dine this evening.
“You didn’t short her, did you?” Renny asked once the hyena was far enough away.
“No, no. Promise.”
“Good. I don’t need Dev’s literal ass suddenly popping up in a river somewhere.” Renny held out her hand and accepted the keys dropped in her palm.
“You’re going now?”
“I haven’t seen my daughter. I need to.”
“Maybe you should wait,” another cousin suggested and Renny finally noticed that her cousins were looking everywhere but at her. “Max isn’t the Yang you left behind.”
“She’s my girl.”
That’s when several of the cousins laid into her. One after the other.
“The aunts won’t accept her.”