November 2023 Newsletter
BORN TO BE BADGER
Coming November 28, 2023!
Unedited/Unproofed
She didn’t speak to him. Not during the drive to the airport. Not when they were getting on the private jet. Not when they took off and headed . . . somewhere. She didn’t say anything. But she did keep checking two things: her phone and her watch. He didn’t understand why she needed to check her watch when she could easily see the time on her phone. Then again, her nickname was Tock. From things Mads and the other badgers had said, the woman was big on keeping time. Maybe looking at her watch was just a habit. Habits were hard to break.
About an hour into the flight, she disappeared into the bathroom, and when she returned, she was dressed in a tight black T-shirt and leggings and thick black boots. She put on a black tactical vest and began loading several weapons: four guns with what he could only describe as a shitload of extra magazines; and six knives of varying sizes that she slipped into sheathes cleverly sewn into her clothes.
“That’s a lot of weaponry,” he noted.
“Is it?”
“Well . . . for me, it’s a lot. I don’t really know anything about guns or knives.” He lifted his hands. “I just use my claws.” He unleashed them, watching his fingers change so that the short human nails instantly disappeared and the tiger claws exploded from the tips. His claws were over four inches. Longer than those of full-blood Amur tigers, but that was typical of shifter cats as they tended to have longer claws and fangs than their full-blooded cousins, and were often larger and weighed more. It made sense. Big shifters breeding with other big shifters often led to even bigger cubs and pups.
“See?” Shay asked, holding his claws up for her.
She glanced up, frowned, and went back to loading her weapons.
Realizing she had no interest in holding a conversation with him, Shay looked around for something else to do. He noticed a stray looped thread coming from the fancy leather seat next to his fancy leather seat. Curious whether he could catch the tiny loop, he reached one of his claws out toward it . . .
***
Once Tock finished loading her guns and putting them away in the appropriate holsters, she glanced at her watch. The current time matched her estimates, which always made her more relaxed; allowing her to finally lean back in her seat and take a few minutes to mentally prepare for—
“What did you do?” she demanded, sitting up straight.
The cat looked at her; blinked. He didn’t try to untangle his claws from the threads he’d pulled out of the open seat beside him. Nor did he attempt to hide the strips of leather that had fallen to the jet floor, leaving nothing but a half-undone seat in the middle of the private jet that she did not own.
After examining his handy work, he shrugged. “I just wanted to see if—”
“Forget I asked,” she cut in. Tock was in no mood to hear cat logic. “Just untangle yourself and stop touching things.”
He retracted his claws and the giant, loose ball of thread dropped onto the seat. But as soon as he relaxed, she watched his gaze search for something new to tear apart. The cat was a menace!
Desperate, she reached into her travel bag and pulled out a magazine.
“Here,” she ordered, forcing the magazine into his hand. “Read this.”
“Mechanics?” he said out loud, reading the magazine title. “Like cars?” he asked, hopefully.
“No. Like physics.”
The hope drained from his face and he glanced at the cover. “I can’t think of anything more boring.”
“Physics is not boring.”
“Isn’t it, though?” He gazed at the cover for a long moment before unleashing one claw and slowly dragged it across the pristine cover. The magazine was three months old but it was still pristine because that’s how Tock kept her things. Pristine! Clean! Intact!
Annoyed and desperate, she reached over and snatched the magazine from his hands. But when she looked at it, she saw that his single claw had torn right through half the pages.
“Dammit!”
“You shouldn’t have snatched it!” he complained.
“What is wrong with you?” she wanted to know.
“Nothing, actually. Just sitting here. Enjoying life.”
“And making my life miserable.”
“That happens sometimes when you hang around cats.”
“I am only hanging around you because you insisted.”
“I just want to—”
“If you say ‘help’ one. More. Time.”
He blinked, then said, “Assist?”
Tock bared a fang, but before she could bite his claw off, a door at the back of the plane opened. She relaxed into her seat and prepared herself for the next annoyance in her life.
“Emmy.”
The cat’s eyebrows went up and Tock knew he was trying not to laugh.
“Do not call me Emmy,” Tock growled.
“We’re cousins. I can call you what I want.”
“Not if you want to keep your face—”
“Hi!” the cat loudly announced, making both badgers glare at him. Most badgers weren’t fans of loud, annoying noises. “I’m Shay Malone.”
Her cousin looked the cat over for a good ten seconds before turning back to Tock and asking, “What is that doing here?”
“I brought him.” She made it sound as if she’d done so willingly, but that was because she didn’t need to get into another fight with one of her cousins.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you bring your little friends instead?”
Tock’s left eye twitched a bit at her cousin’s tone. “Because my teammates were busy, and you know why I didn’t bring them.”
“Whatever.” She handed Tock a plain, gray folder with pockets. “Have this memorized by the time you leave the jet. At the appropriate time, a vehicle will be waiting for you outside the hanger. You know what to do.” She glanced at the cat again, sniffed, and returned to the back of the plane, shutting the door to the private cabin firmly behind her.
Letting out a long sigh, Tock opened the folder. That’s when she heard the cat say, “She seems fun.”
Smirking, she looked up, expecting to see the cat also smirking or outright laughing. But he wasn’t. And she realized he was serious.
“Maybe not friendly,” he added. “But . . . yeah . . . fun.”
“My cousin,” Tock slowly explained, “is third in command of the shifter division of a very dangerous organization. Trust me when I say, she’s not fun.”
“I bet she’s more fun than you.”
Pissed at the very idea he’d say such a thing out loud, Tock lifted her right hand and unleashed her claws. She was about to slash them across the cat’s stupid face when he suddenly pressed his giant cat paw against her much smaller badger one.
“Look at that!” he enthused. “The size difference. Fascinating, isn’t it? But look how long your claws are, considering the size and all. Do you ever paint them? I know a tigon that paints her claws the colors of her favorite football and hockey teams. Do you ever do that?”
It was in that moment Tock thought about putting a bullet in the cat’s head and ending this situation right here and now. She could easily dispose of the body and, after a shower with good soap and extra-strength shampoo for her hair, she was sure his brothers would never know that Tock had been with Shay Malone in the last few minutes of his life.
But no. She would not do that. Why? Because she wasn’t her grandmother. Either one of them. One was a descendent of Caribbean pirates who had quietly but firmly owned the seas, and the other was from a very long line of Polish Jews that were always on the side of any resistance. Both were from matriarchal families that had no patience for weakness. Tock, however, had promised herself she wouldn’t just remove people who got in her way or simply annoyed her. Life was too short to be that angry all the time.
So, after letting out a very long, slow breath, Tock refocused on the papers her cousin had handed her and began to read. Moments before she exited the jet, she would set these same papers on fire to get rid of evidence, and do her best not to do the same to the cat sitting across from her, who was busy focusing his attention on a new piece of thread he’d just found on his own seat.
