Page 37 of Last But Not Leashed

“I think Dale’s going to use us all as mops if we’re not careful. Please tell me you’re not using the living room as a gun showroom again.”

“Nah. It’s tack day. We’re doing general cleaning and repair of the leather. Already recruited your brothers and sisters to help. Your boy know his way around a horse?”

“Dale?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Pity. I trust you’ll be fixing that, baby girl?”

“Dad, he doesn’t need to wrangle horses.”

“Does. What’s his height and weight when he isn’t sporting a fur coat?”

“Too tall, sexy, and muscular to be a jockey. Forget it. Anyway, we’re going to be too busy to run him to the farm for riding lessons. We have to hunt for the lycanthrope who attacked a security guard and started this mess in the first place. We have no hits on the bounty markets the CDC has access to so far.”

“He? I thought a hybrid bitch tried to take your boy.”

“Damn it. Why couldn’t Ma pass along the whole story right? No. A lycanthrope, a male from what we can tell, attacked a security guard at a mall. I assigned Dale to cover the next day. Dale was attacked the first night he worked the mall. The bitch was wanting to establish a mating bond with the vic and thought it was a good idea to use Dale as leverage against the CDC so she could see him.”

“Dumbass. She just had to ask to see him. The CDC ain’t stupid. They know separating a bitch from the subject of her interest can be a lethal mistake.” Ethel’s father snorted. “The guard survive?”

“He did, but he got a blood transfusion from the bitch who attacked Dale because the CDC determined his infection probability to be over ninety percent.”

“Tough luck for that guy, but that bitch should relax. You should take a page out of her book, baby girl. You even managed to lure him here. Good work.”

“Dad!”

“So, what have you got on the attacker?”

“Not much. Our best lead is someone who works in mall security, wanting to get a lycanthrope to test on shifts, but that’d make it a case of dumbfuck criminal.”

Ethel’s father sighed. “Right. The one who requested Dale after the attack?”

“Not Dale specifically, but a lycanthrope. I sent Dale because he’s the best peacekeeper type we’ve got.”

“What, you a submissive, boy?”

“He’s one of the Baltimore pack’s betas, Dad.”

“Boy’s still got his tongue, let him do his own talking. Damn, you’re just like your ma, doing all the talking for us.”

“But she’s right, sir,” I replied.

“Don’t you go encouraging her, boy!”

I needed to have a long talk with my virus about what it had gotten me into.

“Leave him alone, Dad. Anyway, this is stupid. It’ll be years before Mr. Jones is useful because of his virus. I hate dumbfuck criminals!”

Ethel’s father sighed. “I know you hate willful ignorance, baby girl, but that’s what this is. Same shit, different day. But there’s a bright side. You’ll get your boy safely mated to you as a result. And don’t you go knocking my bright sides like your ma.”

“Your bright side doesn’t find the culprit.”

Shaking his head, Ethel’s father replied, “A cash-strapped lycanthrope with a common virus would do a hit like that for a grand. I can check with my contacts, and you can spread word around at work. The CDC will take steps if any more security personnel are attacked. If there aren’t any more attacks, it’s no longer an issue. Problem solved. Also, I’ll toss in a ten grand bounty on the name of the one who put out the hit for this Mr. Jones. You said he was mall security?”

“Yes. Odds you can catch the lycanthrope?”

“Nil at best unless you got a good blood or fur sample.”