Hot and Badgered (Honey Badger Chronicles, #1)

by Shelly Laurenston

“Can I come out now?” Coop asked from the bathroom. But before Berg could tell him no the jackal was already standing behind him. “Well . . .” Coop said, “that was interesting.” “You could say that.” “You’re bleeding.” “Yes. And please stop playing with the knife.” Coop pulled his hand away from the blade handle and attempted to look contrite. “Sorry. Does it hurt?” Berg frowned at him and Coop nodded. “I’ll take that glare as a yes. Maybe I should call the front desk.” He started toward the phone on the side table by the bed. “Think we’ll make our train?” the jackal asked. Slowly, Berg faced Coop and noted, “You’re not used to real life, are you?”

“Can you just drive?” Charlie got into the passenger seat. “But be careful. You still have human stuck to the grill.” “I should let him shoot you? What kind of sister would I be?” “One I don’t have to visit in an Italian prison.” Chuckling, Max put the car in reverse and Charlie worked hard to ignore the short-lived begging and too-long crunching sounds coming from under the car as she pulled out. Charlie knew her sister was taking her time driving back over the gunman. Max “Kill It Again” MacKilligan was known for being vengeful.

“Uh-huh. Then what did happen?” “Why do we have to discuss that? Our lives are in danger.” Charlie gazed at her sister for a few moments before guessing, “Squirrels again?” “They started it!”

Maxie’s phone rang and she insisted on taking one hand off the wheel to answer it. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, sir.” She disconnected the call and glanced at Charlie. “What?” Charlie pushed when her sister didn’t say anything. “She needed a break.” “A break? She needed a break? What does that mean?” “You know what that means, Charlie.” “I do?” Charlie thought a moment, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on! Again?” “You know how she is. But hey! At least she’s still in Switzerland. We’ll get there in no time.” “But it’s a mental hospital! Not a resort!” “To her, all mental hospitals are resorts. Besides, it could be worse,” Max said happily. “This could all be so much worse!” Charlie shook her head. “Dude, I seriously don’t know how.”

“I heard she’ll be the one ‘handling’”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“Toni when she gets here.” “Well, Dag and I weren’t going to do it.” “Nope,” Dag muttered. “I don’t blame you. She wanted to fire you guys, by the way. But I said, ‘Absolutely not. They’re my friends. And so what if they put me in grave danger and put my life and, more importantly, my God-given gifts at risk? A loss that would deprive the entire world, maybe even the universe, of something truly amazing. They’re still my friends.’” Berg gazed down at Coop. “How big of you.” “I thought so.” “We’re friends?” Dag asked.

“It’s Dad . . .” Charlie briefly closed her eyes. “Let me guess. He’s in jail. He wants bail. Well, fuck him! I’m a thousand percent positive that we’re on the run because of him. So he can stay in jail until he rots.” “He’s dead,” Maxie abruptly announced. “They need someone to identify the body.” Stevie put her hand to her chest and turned away from them, her head bowed, shoulders beginning to shake, her pain and grief clear to anyone who might be near. Charlie and Max, however, didn’t hesitate to silently bop around each other, performing dance moves they really shouldn’t because they just didn’t have the talent for it. However, it wasn’t a dance of skill, but of excitement. Of relief. Of downright giddiness. Neither sister spoke as they boogied around each other because words weren’t necessary. But despite their silence . . . Stevie slapped her hand against the Range Rover and snarled, “I know what you two are doing back there and stop it! He’s still our father!”

Max was so tempted to fuck with her sister, but Charlie’s warning had been very clear. Charlie was all about being clear. She didn’t like vague. She didn’t like subtle. She didn’t like when people weren’t direct. Why? Because Charlie was always direct. When Charlie had told her once, “If you bother Stevie while she’s taking that test, I’m going to break your arm,” she’d meant it. Max had been forced to wear that cast for, like, two days, the break was so bad. But she’d learned her lesson. A Charlie warning was serious stuff, and you ignored it at your own peril.

“Where’s Stevie?” she asked. Grinning, blood covering her teeth, Max pointed. Charlie looked up and sighed. “Could you please come down from there? Now?” “I’m quite comfortable right here, thanks.” “Stevie MacKilligan!” Claws were retracted and Stevie landed back on the couch. “No need to yell,” she mumbled.

“Wait a minute.” He held up his hand, palm out, his head cocking to the side before he asked, “Your father’s dead?” Crossing the middle and forefingers on both hands, Charlie raised them and said with a big smile she truly felt, “Here’s hoping!”

“No one is angry at you, Stevie,” Charlie stated, still mixing. “I don’t blame you for how you feel about that idiot.” “I call him Dad,” Stevie said to the others.

You’re the only person I’ve ever met who didn’t have time to notice the Eiffel Tower while in Paris.” “I was busy! And I’ll have you know I’ve seen it since.”

Her baby sister shrugged. “He ruined my credit by the time I was six.”

“When my mom died,” Charlie explained, “she left each of us some insurance money. Mine was for college. Dad asked to borrow

“He used my baby picture,” Max announced, “to sell nonexistent Asian babies to infertile couples desperate to adopt.”

“He’s the reason Max’s mom is in prison,” Charlie tossed in.

Stevie took another sip of water. “As my legal guardian—” “Which he wasn’t,” Charlie added. “—he sold all the rights to my early music. Music that is now worth millions and millions of dollars. I haven’t seen a cent from any of it.”

“And remember that time he ‘accidentally’”—Max asked her sisters, making air quotes with her fingers—“sold me into domestic slavery?”

“All right, you,” she said, pointing a finger at her sister. “You get down here right now. Right now, Stevie MacKilligan. This instant!” Stevie lowered her eyes and made a little mewling sound. She took a step back—still on the ceiling—not wanting to give up her prize. “Don’t you dare run away from me, Stevie! You come down here right now! This minute!” Stevie released her grip on the ceiling and came crashing to the floor. “Spit it,” Charlie ordered her baby sister. “Spit it!” Annoyed, Stevie spit the torso out of her mouth.

“I’m a bear.” “Uh-huh.” “Which means a .45 isn’t going to do anything to me except piss me off.” “What about bear spray? Does bear spray work?” “Why are you asking?” “Why aren’t you telling?”

The women walked out of the kitchen and Berg scratched his head. That’s when he saw his brother staring at him. “What?” “What the fuck have you gotten us into?” Dag asked. “What are you talking about?” “There has to be an easier way to get a date.” “That’s not what this is about. We’re being helpful.” “Do they need help? Because they don’t really seem like they do.”

Once, Charlie and her sisters had been separated at a peace rally in England that turned violent. When the three sisters met again, Max had a bruised face and swollen knuckles. Charlie had a bruised throat and broken ribs. And Stevie was singing “Give peace a chance” with a bunch of hippies. Untouched. Unbruised. Happy as hell. But one bear in the yard and Stevie was up a tree, screaming, and unable to breathe. Weird.

Then add in that Stevie was also half honey badger. Medications and poisons were easily absorbed and then pissed out by honey badger shifters. Sixteen-year-old Max had once tried vodka infused with the venom of the black mamba snake. She was in a coma for an entire day before she snapped awake, hungry and smiling. Smiling until a livid Charlie punched Max in the face, breaking their sister’s nose and cheekbone as she screamed, “Never do anything that goddamn stupid again!”

“I thought we talked about this, Max. No killing other shifters with a knife or a gun, in front of witnesses. You know that.” Standing outside the practice ice rink, Charlie grabbed Max’s hand and held it up. “Next time use your claws.”

“So, let me sum up—we’ve got one vote for total annihilation and one vote for forcing them to join the hockey team. Am I correct?” “Yes,” both females replied.

“How the fuck do you steal over a hundred million and still have no goddamn money?”

“Your daughter wants you out, so you’re out,” Britta said to him calmly. “And if you come back, we’ll rip the skin from your bones.” She led him out of the house, and her friends disappeared with her. The door slammed shut and Max let out a sigh. She didn’t know how Charlie did this on a daily basis. Maintain order. Honestly, it would have been easier just to make a run for it or lay waste to everyone in a five-mile radius. Illegal but easier. Oh, and . . . yeah . . . morally wrong.

“Are they all on meds?” Britta asked, staring at the empty hallway. “I’m not,” Max said from behind them. Berg and Britta turned to face Charlie’s middle sister and, together, brother and sister screamed and stepped away from her. “Dear God, Max! What happened to your face?” Berg hysterically asked. She shrugged, the quills in her face wiggling when she did. “A porcupine attacked me. Flung its quills at me.” She glanced around, seemingly not bothered by the many—many—quills hanging from her face like some weird, horrifying mask. “Charlie around?” “She’s meditating.” “Oh. I’ll wait. She knows how to get these out.”

Dag was standing on a tree limb, reaching to get the bee hive high up among the leaves. Normally, he would have left the bees alone much longer so that the hive could be even bigger, but he was worried about Max MacKilligan. She’d already raided the hives of three different bear homes. Just that morning, Mr. Walton had found her hanging from one of his trees. He’d actually thought she was dead, because she was draped stomach down over a low limb under the hives, arms hanging listlessly, porcupine quills covering her face, angry African bees attacking the back of her head. But when he got closer, he heard the snoring. She’d just been sleeping. Happily.

“I’ll give you fifty thousand.” Max blinked. “Dollars? American dollars?” Charlie raised her forefinger. “I already told you, I’m not doing anything illegal. And I’m not killing anybody for you.” “If I wanted someone dead, I’d hire Max.” “Awww,” Max said, gently touching Bernice’s forearm. “That’s sweet.”

“This doesn’t mean we’re married,” she felt the need to amend. “It just means I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl. We just do what normal people do.” Berg looked off, thinking. And she knew he was trying to figure out what “normal people do.” “Date, dumb ass,” she explained. “Get to know each other better. Keep having sex.” “Oh!” His smile returned. “Yeah, I can do that.” Charlie grabbed another strip of bacon and sighed out, “Bears.”

“Hi, uh . . . Daaaaa”—he frowned and she quickly changed it to—“aaaaBerg?” “Da-Berg? Really?” “I knew it was one of you.”

One of the tailors, a tough Serbian fox with no patience for what she called, “the idiocy of the badger,” suddenly stood straight and yelled at Charlie, “I cannot work with this girl! She is crazy!” “I don’t like to be touched!” Stevie yelled from under a table. “Can’t I just give you my size? I don’t want your hands on my breasts!” The fox flung her arms out in frustration, her cold blue gaze on Charlie. “How about,” Max suggested, “we get that giant panda to touch your breasts?” “I wouldn’t mind that.” Eyes wide, Charlie and Max looked at each other, then began laughing.

“I still make you nervous, Stevie?” she asked as she slid on her sunglasses. “Everything makes me nervous.” Stevie thought a moment. “Well . . . not everything. But man-eaters definitely make me nervous.” “But tigers are man-eaters . . . and you’re half tiger.” Stevie stared out the front window for several seconds ruminating on that bit of information before admitting, “Dear God. I’m terrified of myself.”