How To Kill A Badger Excerpt
Unedited/Unproofed
“How do you not have a plan?” Keane exploded.
“It’s surprisingly easy,” the badger replied. Despite the man on the floor who’d attempted to kidnap her and in the face of Keane’s anger, Nelle Zhao appeared completely unfazed. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t amused. She wasn’t anything but calm. And maybe a little curious. Which Keane found completely disconcerting!
At the very least she should be reacting to his rage. He would have eleven-hundred-pound polars quaking in the middle of games when they blew a play because they knew it would bring his wrath, so he didn’t understand how this tiny badger didn’t seem to even notice his wrath.
How could she not notice his wrath?
Quickly realizing yelling wasn’t going to get him much from this weirdly unemotional badger, Keane attempted to calm down and instead asked a simple question.
“What exactly did you do in Italy?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“Why?” he asked.
She stepped onto the man’s hip, ignoring his grunt of discomfort, to give herself some much-needed height. She raised her arm and stroked Malone’s forehead.
“I’m concerned about this triple line in the middle of your head. It suggests stress. Have you thought about Botox?”
“I also do that here,” the wolf suddenly piped in. “I’ll give you a discount.”
“Shut up!” Keane snapped at the wolf.
“You’re going to give yourself hypertension,” Nelle went on. “Is that what you want? To be a cat with hypertension?”
Keane carefully took hold of the female’s wrist—he’d seen what a startled badger could do to an innocent face with their claws—and pushed her hand away.
“Just tell me what you did,” he ordered, expecting her to immediately comply like everyone else when he added his signature glower.
Again, she did that casual shrug of hers. “We gave them back their father.”
That sounded strange to Keane. What did she mean “gave them back their father”? The last he’d heard, the head of the de Medici coalition had been—
“You gave them back the corpse?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you have the corpse?”
“Oh, that I don’t know. That was between Charlie and Max. Zhaos usually bury our…inconveniences.”
“Is that what you call those you murder?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“Yes,” she replied, simply. Calmly. He did not understand this woman.
“Let me see if I understand what you’re telling me—”
“This should be good,” the wolf said to the She-fox.
“—at this moment, we are in the middle of a brutal fight with a gang of vicious Italian lions and instead of calming that down, you guys up the ante by taking the corpse of their patriarch and, I don’t know…throwing it at them?”
“Putting it at their dinner table for them all to see before having their family home violently breeched by Italian law enforcement,” Nelle clarified.
Keane gawked at Nelle Zhao for what felt like hours. Because he didn’t know what to say or do until the wolf suddenly said, “Wow.” Because even the canine thought what had just been said was insane.
Because it was.
“Okay, ya know what?” Keane took in and let out another breath. “We need to have a meeting.”
“A meeting?” she repeated back. “What kind of meeting? You mean a meeting-meeting?”
“Okay.”
“We don’t really do that unless it pertains to basketball. We mostly do more informal get-togethers.”
When he simply continued to gawk at her, she said, “Okay. I guess I can text everyone to meet us here in about four hours.”
“No. Tell them to meet at Charlie’s as soon as possible.”
“Everyone is still at practice.”
“I don’t care.”
“Okay, but you should be aware Mads isn’t going to like it.”
“Just do it.”
She walked over to the waiting area and picked up her phone. As she tapped away on the screen, she glanced over. Keane didn’t know what she was thinking until she walked back, still typing. When she’d sent the text, she took a step back and, with her gaze still locked on her phone, waiting a response he assumed, she picked up the gun she’d been using earlier off the floor and aimed it at the man under his feet.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, we can’t go until we eliminate our problem.”
“That’s not eliminating our problem. That’s making more problems.” He held his hand out. “Give me the gun.”
“My brother bought me this gun as a Christmas gift.”
“Give it to me.”
She turned over the weapon and Keane was about to tuck it into the waistband of his jeans but…
“Is the safety on?”
She frowned. “You don’t know how to use a gun?”
“Why would I need to know how to use a gun? I’m a giant man who can become a nearly thousand pound Amur tiger with giant fangs and claws. I don’t need a gun.”
She did something to the weapon that he assumed meant the safety was now on. With that, he tucked the gun away from the crazed female ready to use it in any situation, and proceeded to deal with the man struggling beneath him.
*****
Malone stepped back from the man he’d managed not to crush under his enormous foot, which impressed Nelle. He seemed like the kind of cat that would walk around crushing things under his big paws simply for the pleasure of it.
Crouching, he grabbed the now fist-swinging man by his shirt. Despite many of those punches making direct contact, the cat showed no reaction. He simply lifted the man up a few inches then slammed him back down a few times until the man stopped struggling.
“Hey,” he quietly ordered his prey. “Look at me.”
Blinking, trying to focus his gaze after all that head trauma, the man gazed up at Malone and immediately his confused eyes grew wide. Because he could see fangs now.
“The two outside,” Malone said, “call ’em in.” He looked at Nelle. “Open the door a bit so they can hear him.
She wasn’t used to anyone giving her orders except during a firefight, but sure. She’d play along. She wanted to see how the cat would handle this since he wasn’t a fan of straight up “murder” as he insisted on calling what she’d planned to do, which seemed a little unfair. Nelle preferred the terms “self-preservation” or “self-defense.” Although, at the end of the day it was all semantics, wasn’t it?
Of course, now that Nelle had time to think about all this, she was guessing that she’d been wrong about this latest issue. No way the Vatican had anything to do with any of this. They would have never sent someone so inept.
Then who had sent this man, Nelle didn’t know. She’d have to find out so she could put a stop to it.
Nelle quickly walked to the door, stood behind it, and pulled it open just enough.
Malone leaned in close to his prey. “Call them,” he ordered in a growl that could barely be heard but it could definitely be felt.
Eyes now wide in panic, the man called out, “Get in here!”
The two men keeping watch outside the clinic immediately came in. They had their weapons drawn—a handgun for one, a sub-machine gun for another, which seemed excessive—but that didn’t stop Malone. As soon as the first man had entered the clinic, Malone dropped the old prey and went after the new, moving across the room in seconds. He grabbed the first man by the back of the neck and yanked him close, holding him so the gun was caught between the two. The other followed close behind, so Malone used his free hand to grab that man’s throat. He yanked both inside, Nelle quickly closing the door, and rammed both males into the wall so hard that it left indents in the plaster and knocked both of them out completely.
“Well, that’ll need repair,” Dr. Weng-Lee blandly noted.
By then, the man that Malone had held captive beneath his foot earlier was scrambling to get up, but before he could make it to the door—not that Nelle was going to let him out—he was hit with the two bodies of his compatriots. They weren’t thrown. Instead, Malone had slammed them on top of Nelle’s would-be abductor, knocking him out as well.
“Open the door,” Malone ordered Nelle.
She did and he walked outside, holding all three grown, very large men—in full-human terms—in his two hands with incredible ease.
As he stepped off the curb with his prey, the van door slid open and two men leaned out with automatic weapons. Malone threw one of the prey he held at them, knocking them back inside. Before the two others could replace them, Malone was at the van. Grabbing hold of the sliding door with his now-free hand, Malone yanked it off the vehicle. Pulling it back, he shoved it forward and inside the van. He slammed it from one side of the vehicle to the other, battering the men now trapped inside. When he was done, he tossed the last of his prey in with their comrades before throwing the door in after them.
Once all the prey was inside and unmoving, the tiger stepped back and the van abruptly pulled off, forcing its way into traffic, proving Malone had left the driver alive and well.
Despite all the locals and tourists staring at him, Malone continued to gaze across the street until he yelled out, “I thought you were security!”
“Well—”
“Get the fucking car!”
Nelle realized that Malone was yelling at Charles and she had to bite back a laugh. She called Charles her “security,” but they both knew why he was there. To report back to her mother.
Returning to the clinic, Malone marched inside and up to the counter. “How much do I owe you?” he asked Dr. Weng-Lee.
“You can’t put a price on entertainment.”
“I don’t need handouts,” Malone sneered back.
“So you want to pay fifteen-hundred after all—”
“You said discount.”
The doctor grinned. “Oh, look. A haggling kitty.”
Nelle saw the cat’s eyes glow gold-green again. Quickly, she put her hands on Malone’s arm and pushed him toward the door.
“Put it and the wall damage on my tab, Layla,” Nelle said.
“I don’t need your handouts either,” the cat complained.
“Stop bitching.” She reached around Malone and opened the clinic door, but he stopped and faced Weng-Lee again.
“Wait,” the cat said. “I need to know…what’s in that tiger dong tea?”
“Mystical elements from deep in the tropical rainforests of Xishuangbanna—”
“Cut the shit.”
Weng-Lee unleashed that dazzling smile. “It’s basically chai tea with some cinnamon.”
“That’s what I thought.”
*****
Keane didn’t appreciate being shoved into a fancy car by a small badger, but he decided to let it go.
Once Nelle got in beside him, the useless idiot driver asked, “Where to?”
“Charlie’s house.”
“I’ve gotta go to Queens?” he whined, which almost had Keane’s hands around the snow cat’s neck, but Nelle pulled him back in time. But if the cat couldn’t be useful as security, the least he could do was drive where she told him to go.
“Just fucking drive,” Keane snarled; his fangs out.
“I don’t work for you,” the house cat snapped back.
This time Keane had his hands around the alley cat’s throat and was strangling the impertinent bastard when Nelle patted his arm and motioned to the car door.
“Look,” she said, pointing, “the water bottles. Why don’t you play with them for a while? You seemed to enjoy that earlier.”
Keane unhanded the house cat, ignoring his dramatic coughing, and looked at the plastic bottles in the side pocket. He took one, and immediately flung it at the snow cat’s head.
“You mother—”
“That’s enough!” Nelle yelled; arms spread out to keep them apart. “From both of you!” She cleared her throat and took a more measured tone. “Charles, just drive. And you,” she said, turning to Keane, “just calm down.”
Folding his arms over his chest, Keane sat there, pissed. Luckily the windows were dark, because he might frighten any small children that might look into the car.
“He has one fucking job,” he finally told her.
“Let it go. You always get so upset over everything. You’re going to give yourself an untimely heart attack.”
“Can’t come soon enough.”
“Quiet, Charles,” she said before relaxing into the leather seat. “Everyone just be quiet and relax. You males. Always so ridiculously angry over nothing.”
That’s when Nelle’s phone suddenly started repeating, “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off” over and over again until she answered.
“What do you want now?” she asked without even a “hello.” “You want me to what? Fuck no!” She sat up straight. “I don’t care what they promised you.”
Keane could hear hysterical screaming coming from the other end. But it sounded like an Asian language and he didn’t really know any. He just knew someone was screaming.
And always-casual Nelle was screaming back.
“I don’t give a fuck about your dress! Burn the fucking thing with you inside it and then, maybe I’ll come to your fucking wedding!” A little more yelling from the other side and then, even louder than before, “Go to hell!”
Nelle disconnected the call and slammed the phone down on the space between them. Arms now folded over her chest, her entire body tight with rage, she angrily stared out the car window.
After a few seconds of silence, Charles asked from the front seat, “So how’s your sister?”
“You can go to hell, too!” Nelle lashed back.
After that, there wasn’t another word until they arrived at Charlie’s house.
