История кривого билда: Баф-машина. Сергей Вишневский

crossed her gaze as if sun flashing on metal. Pretty eyes that looked half gold and half violet and were framed by thick lashes. Her hair matched her plump lips, sort of a bleached raspberry shade. He liked it. Looked like some kind of dessert.

      “Yes,” she finally said. “I’m headed home. I’ve got a friend waiting in the car.”

      Beck glanced over a shoulder. He didn’t recall seeing a car parked along the country road that was closest to where they stood. No vehicles out here for miles. Then he guessed she was leery, didn’t want him to think she was out here alone. Yet he scented not so much caution as challenge from her. Interesting.

      “I’m not going to hurt you,” he felt compelled to say.

      “Says the pervert before he kidnaps the girl and shoves her in his trunk.” She pushed past him and walked quickly out of the forest and into the wheat field that boasted ankle-high dried stalks jutting up from the foot-deep snowpack. “Don’t follow me!”

      Beck couldn’t not follow her. The road edging the field led to town. And it had started to snow in tiny skin-pinging pellets. He wasn’t going to wait for her to disappear from sight before he could take off.

      He paralleled her rapid footsteps.

      “Seriously, dude, would you stay away from me?”

      “You think I’m going to shove you in my trunk? I think you’d scratch and give a good fight if I even looked at you the wrong way.”

      He noticed the curling corner of her smirk, though she maintained her speedy gait. She liked him; he knew it. But it didn’t matter much. It was a rare pack female who would give a lone wolf like him the time of day.

      “Do I know you?” he asked. “I’m not trying to be a creep. I promise. I just— I’m familiar with most of the wolves in the area packs. I think I’d remember a pink-haired wolf. Unless this is a new color for you? I like it, by the way. The cat ears, too.”

      She huffed and picked up into a jog. He was tired out from his run, but Beck could keep up with her if he had to. And he wanted to. But—hell, he was winded. What was up with that? Normally shifting invigorated him.

      “Who are you?” she blurted angrily.

      “I’m Beckett Severo.”

      The pretty pink wolf stopped abruptly, dropping her hands to her sides. Flipping back her hair with a jerk of her head, she eyed him up and down more carefully than he’d taken when looking her over. “Oh.”

      “Oh?” Beck slapped a palm to his chest, feeling as though she’d just seen parts of him he’d never reveal upon initially meeting someone. “That oh sounded like you must have heard of me?”

      “Uh, yeah. Something about your father?”

      “Right.” Beck looked away. Shoved his hands in his back pockets. He didn’t need this conversation. It was still too raw in his heart. He hadn’t spoken to anyone about it yet. Not even his mother.

      Didn’t matter who this pretty wolf was. If she knew about his father, he didn’t want to listen to the pity.

      The walk into the closest town was fifteen minutes. His town was ten miles north by car. And the small bits of sleet were starting to stick to the back of his head and shoulders.

      “You shouldn’t run around in the forest by yourself,” he said, changing the subject and keeping his back toward the brunt of the sleet. “The local hunters have developed a bloodlust for wolf pelts.”

      She shrugged and turned to walk, but slower now, unmindful of the icy pellets. Tugging a pair of black mittens out from a jeans pocket, she pulled them on. “I trust this neck of the woods.”

      “You shouldn’t,” he said with more authority than he wanted on the subject.

      Beck was a werewolf. Like it or not, he made it a point to know what the hunters were up to. Because even though they didn’t believe in his kind, and they hunted the mortal realm breed of canis lupis—the gray wolf—when in wolf form, his breed could easily be mistaken for the gray wolf. And thanks to the DNR delisting the wolf from the endangered species list, the hunt had become a free-for-all.

      A fact he knew too painfully well.

      “Didn’t you hear the gunshots earlier?”

      She shook her head.

      “There are hunters in the vicinity.”

      “Maybe the ghost wolf warned them away from me?”

      Beck chuckled. The ghost wolf was what the media had taken to calling the recent sightings of a tall, wolflike creature that seemed to glow white. Scared the shit out of hunters.

      “You shouldn’t put your faith in a story,” he said to her. “You’re not safe in the woods, plain and simple.”

      “Well, you were out alone.”

      “Yes, but I’m a guy.”

      “Do not play the guy card with me. You think I can’t handle myself?”

      “No, I just said you could probably scratch—”

      The petite wolf turned and, without warning, punched him in the gut. It was a good, solid hit that forced out Beck’s breath and jarred his lower ribs. Picking up her dropped mitten, she turned and walked off while he clutched at his stomach, fighting his rising bile.

      “Thanks for the chat!” she called. With that, she picked up into a run.

      Beck was perfectly fine with letting her run off and leave him behind. He swallowed and winced as he fell to his knees amidst the wheat and snow.

      “The guy card?” Swearing, he leaned back, stretching at his aching abdomen. “She’s got a great right hook, I’ll say that much.”

      And he was getting weaker with every shift he made to werewolf. That was not good.

      * * *

      Daisy Blu Saint-Pierre landed at the edge of town just as the headlights of a city snowplow barreled past her on the salt-whitened tarmac. She’d left her winter coat at home, not expecting it to snow tonight. She never took along more clothing than necessary when going out for a run. Chilled, but still riding the high from the shift that kept her muscles warm and flexible, she picked up into a run.

      Her teeth were chattering by the time she reached her loft in the Tangle Lake city center. There were three other occupants in this remodeled warehouse that featured lofts on the second and third floors. She wandered up the inner iron staircase, cursing her need to not drive unless absolutely necessary. Blame it on her parents, who were uber-environmental-save-the-planet types. Her dad drove an old pickup that must have been manufactured in the Reagan era. She suspected it would be more environmentally friendly to put that rust heap out of its misery and off the road, but her father, an imposing werewolf who could silence any man with but a growl, wouldn’t have it.

      Once inside the loft, she stripped away her clothes, which were coated on the back with melting sleet. Leaving them in a trail of puddles behind her, she beelined toward the shower and turned it on as hot as she could stand.

      The last thing she had expected while out on a run was to literally collide into another werewolf. Though, why not? should be the obvious question. The wolves in the Northern and Saint-Pierre packs used that forest all the time. Yet lately, with the hunters spreading out and some accidentally trespassing onto private land, even that forest had grown less safe.

      She never ventured too near the forest’s borders, and always kept an ear and nose out for mortal scent and tracks. The gunshot had been distant. She’d not smelled the hunter, and usually, when out in nature, she could sniff out a mortal scent two or three miles away.

      Beckett Severo, eh? She’d heard about his father’s tragic death not long ago. Killed by a hunter who must have assumed he was just another gray wolf. Must be awful for Beckett. She had also heard he had been