3. Leo St. George

Chapter 3

Leo St. George

S tale beer, sweat, and old grease filled the stagnant air of the tiny bar. The lights were dim, creating deep shadows in the corners and around the edges. But this was the type of place people came to, hoping to fall into those shadows, never to be seen again.

Leo sat on a stool with worn-out padding and a wobble. He leaned on the damp bar top, glaring at the nearly empty glass caged in by his limp hands as if he were expecting it to make a break for it. Leo planned to spend the next couple of nights here hiding out. He was afraid that if he left, his wandering feet might carry him to those Chinese vampires. He didn’t trust himself.

The door opened, sending bright early-morning sunshine spilling through the room. A series of grunts and grumbles traveled through the room until the door closed, allowing the darkness to wash over the surly occupants.

A familiar scent made Leo’s nose twitch, but it was more than enough warning that he was about to receive a visitor.

“Whiskey, neat. And put it on his tab,” Sage ordered from the bartender, getting the large round man with the balding head moving from where he’d been propped up against the side of the bar, watching the news on the small TV hanging from the ceiling in the far corner.

“Not on my tab,” Leo growled. “Pay with your own money.”

The tall, thin woman plopped onto the stool beside him and poked his arm with her pointy elbow. “Stingy.”

“Whatever.” Leo picked up his glass and drained the last of the cheap whiskey he’d been nursing. As the bartender brought over the glass he’d poured for Sage, Leo held up his empty glass and gave it a shake, ordering yet another. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? I was looking for you. Why else would I come in here?”

“Searching for a date,” he sneered, lifting his eyes to take in her shorts and black tank top. Her hair was a strange gray-brown and very thin. She kept it cut short, but no matter the season, it stood up around her head as if it possessed a static charge or she were a human dandelion.

A loud cackle erupted from her, and she rocked on her stool. “Here? I don’t think so.”

Despite her loud words, no one present bothered to argue with her. They all knew they weren’t receiving any roses on The Bachelorette . In fact, everyone seemed to be rather diligently ignoring them.

“What do you want?” he demanded as the bartender replenished his glass and picked up the card Sage had slapped on the counter.

Sage dropped her jovial attitude and hunched on her stool, matching his demeanor as she leaned closer. “Did the vamps take the bait?”

Leo rolled his eyes and snatched up his own glass. “The kid wasn’t bait, but yes, they took him to their place. He’s their problem now.”

“Then what’s with your sour mood? Are you afraid they’re going to snack on him? He’s such a tiny thing. He couldn’t be a full meal for even one of them, and you said there’s an entire clan hiding out.”

For a second, all Leo could do was stare openmouthed at her. There was a reason cat shifters were solitary creatures, and it started with the fact that every last one of them rubbed him the wrong way. The sad part was that Sage was the most tolerable of the ones he knew, and right now, he itched to smash his glass against the side of her skull.

“I wouldn’t have handed the boy over to them if I thought they’d use him as food,” he snarled.

“So, the kid got a new home. At the very least, a decent temporary one.”

More than decent. Leo had spent several months with the Zhang clan, wandering through winding halls and watching their interactions. They bickered, teased, and fought as much as the average family, but there was no missing that they were also very close. They watched out for each other. Protected one another.

The dynamic didn’t change when new mates joined them. Moon, Rei, and Kai were folded into the clan as if they were meant to be there. One big happy family.

And now the kid was included. Leo knew it without needing to see it. Junjie had the biggest, softest heart. The vampire might be cold and dead, but there was no one warmer in all the world. He was going to wrap that little boy up in so much love and happiness that he’d forget all about how he’d lost his birth parents.

No, he wasn’t envious.

Not even a tiny fucking bit.

“I’m sure the kid is going to be fine,” Leo murmured, talking mostly to himself. “It’s a shame we couldn’t find another cat to take him in. There’s no one to teach him the things he’s going to need to know about himself when the time comes. Bastet? 1 knows the vampires can’t explain shifting to him.”

A harsh noise left the back of Sage’s throat, almost as if she were hacking up a hairball. “Another cat? Really? You thought that was even possible?” She laughed while Leo finished the last of his drink. It was tempting to order yet another, but he wanted to be able to walk out of here when he was done with this annoying conversation. The alcohol was already going to his head, smoothing the harsh edges of the world and mellowing out the ache in his chest he refused to examine too closely.

“Idiot,” Sage muttered as her laughter died off. She finished her drink and waved for the bartender to pour her another. “Even if you could find a cat who wasn’t utterly useless and irresponsible, it’s likely they want kids of their own. You can’t bring someone else’s kitten into your litter. That’s bad fucking luck. You’re asking for one of your own to be killed off.”

That was the old superstition that preyed on the minds of every cat who’d looked at the orphan after they’d found him. Despite cat shifters being insanely rare, they refused to raise another’s kitten. It was thought that if you took in another cat’s offspring, you doomed your own. Cats were independent by nature. If a parent died, shifters believed the kitten should survive on its own.

Except the little boy couldn’t have been more than two years old!

How could he be left on his own? He would have died.

Yet, after he’d been discovered and brought to that house in the woods, more than one cat had whispered to him in passing that they should leave him. Some bad karma had found the parents, and it was only a matter of time before the same fate befell the kid and anyone who helped him.

Fuck that shit.

It wasn’t karma that had killed the boy’s parents. It was the damn fae.

“You did the right thing. You’re the one who said that these vampires were like a real family. I bet they’re going to feed him and teach him things. You know, other than how to bite people.”

Leo lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d had about enough of this conversation.

“Besides, what were you going to do? Keep him and raise him yourself?” Sage cackled so hard she almost fell off her stool. “You can barely keep yourself alive. What do you know about caring for a kid?”

“Nothing,” Leo mumbled. “He’s just a cute kid.”

“Absolutely adorable.” The eye roll was evident in her words, and Leo ignored it. “That still doesn’t mean he isn’t better off with bloodsuckers.”

“Don’t call them that.”

“What? Bloodsuckers? That’s what they are.”

Leo bit off the rest of his argument. Yeah, Junjie and the rest of the Zhang clan might be vampires, but they were way more than that. However, his words were wasted on Sage, and he didn’t want to bother anymore.

“Okay. Fine. You found me. Was there something else you wanted?” He lifted a hand to the bartender to get his attention and made a motion in the air as if he were signing the bill. It was time to close his tab and get the hell out of there.

“Are you worried about them coming to find you?” Sage asked.

“No. If they wanted to catch me, they could have before I got away from the house.”

When he’d formulated this plan to lead Junjie to the child, he’d been only twenty percent positive he’d be able to sneak away from the vampire if he tried to pursue him. That number had dropped to zero the second Junjie had invited Xiang and Kai along for the ride. Xiang was a daywalker and had no problem chasing him after the sun rose.

And then there was the fucking dragon. Nothing stopped Kai when he wanted something. The only snag he’d run across was dealing with the fae, and the Zhang clan had largely fixed that problem.

Leo knew he’d escaped the house and the woods thanks to Junjie. The vampire had to have told his clan mates not to pursue him, which was totally what he’d wanted.

It didn’t matter that maybe there was a part of him that had secretly hoped Junjie would stop him and force him to return to the Zhang manor with them.

But Junjie had let him go, and Leo had walked away from the kid. There was no returning to the manor grounds, and that sucked.

The bartender ambled over with a receipt and a pen. Leo spared it a glance to make sure the guy wasn’t trying to scam him, added a respectable tip, and scratched out his name. If he left now, maybe he could escape Sage while she waited for her bill.

He was not that lucky.

The door to the tiny hole-in-the-wall bar opened, sending a bright slash of light through the place. All the occupants squinted and cringed from the glare, trying to shrink into the retreating shadows. With the light came a gust of wind that carried the rich scent of flowers and petrichor after a summer storm.

Leo’s heart leaped into his throat, and he whipped around. His brain had expected to find Rei standing in the doorway, sent by Junjie to drag him to the manor so he could answer questions about the kid.

It wasn’t Rei but five other elves he’d never seen before. And judging by the weapons in their hands, they hadn’t stopped by for a drink.

For a heartbeat, the world froze as the occupants eyed the elves standing in the open doorway. Tension thickened in the air until there was no oxygen to suck in at all. The fine hairs on the back of Leo’s neck stood on end and every muscle in his body tightened, preparing to either fight or flee from the building. In an instant, the pleasant haze created by the alcohol evaporated out of his pores, leaving his brain on high alert.

Someone moved, and a wooden chair clattered to the old tile floor. It was like the firing of a starter pistol. The elves hovering in the doorway surged forward with crossbows in hand. Tiny but lethal arrows sliced through the air.

A rumbling growl filled the room like rolling thunder pouring across the sky as a storm crashed into a city. The handful of people who had crowded the small round tables began shifting one after another into large, angry wolves.

“Holy shit!” The bartender dropped behind the bar, and Leo’s heart went out to the human. Leo had been coming to this bar for months now, and he’d had the chance to watch it steadily grow more popular among the shifters as a place where they could get a drink and not have to talk to anyone. After the recent displacement of the local wolf pack, more than a few wolves were simmering balls of anger and frustration.

For now, hiding behind the bar was the bartender’s safest decision.

But the man didn’t stay there. He popped up, holding a shotgun with the butt against his shoulder. The loud chunk of his cocking the weapon did little to capture the attention of the wolves and elves as they fought at the entrance of the bar, but the boom of the first shot did wonders drawing eyes to him.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Leo was not sticking around to see who’d win this fight. Let the humans, wolves, and elves kill each other.

When he’d first spotted the elves, he’d jumped from his stool and stopped in front of Sage. Without looking, he reached behind him to grab her arm and shove her toward the rear of the bar, hoping to escape the building. Only his hand hit empty air.

His brain locked up as he whirled to find Sage’s stool empty. He’d taken his eyes off the annoying cat for a second. Where the fuck could she have gone?

A low meow reached his ears above the gunshots, wolf growls, and elf grunts, thanks to his enhanced hearing. He twisted farther to find a slender calico with poofy fur standing on the end of the bar, staring at him like he was the idiot for lingering.

Maybe she was right, and he was the idiot.

With a growl, Leo lunged at her while shifting from his human form into his house cat form. Orange and white fur covered his lithe body. Deft cat paws landed on the sticky bar and he ran, not caring if the human saw him change. It was unlikely the bartender was going to come out of this fight alive. Hell, it would be a wonder if any of the wolves escaped with their lives intact.

This wasn’t the first so-called random fae attack of a human business. They were striking at odd times throughout the suburbs of Hartford, going into places where there were handfuls of people and slaughtering them all. Afterward, they’d burn the buildings to the ground. It wasn’t doing a lot to eliminate the humans, but it worked wonders at striking fear in them.

He was a step behind Sage as she leaped from the end of the bar and hit the handle for the rear door with her front paws. The door creaked open, and Leo slammed his larger girth into it, sending the door swinging open and slamming into the wall.

The scent of beer and liquor was even stronger in the storeroom. His nose burned and twitched, but he fought through it as his pupils expanded to soak in what little light permeated the area. He pushed forward on quick, quiet paws, searching for a door that had to lead to an alley or parking lot. There was no way in hell this place had just one door. Bars always had a back entrance for deliveries and provided an area for the employees to smoke on their break. Right?

Except this bar was the diviest of dive bars. The bartender was probably the owner and only employee. He didn’t look like the type to care if he smoked indoors.

Fuck!

Leo darted here and there, bumping into Sage and letting out a low growl when the cat hissed. He might have made a grab for her to help her out of the bar, but that was the end of his helpfulness. She was on her own now if she wanted to get out of there safely.

A hint of fresh air cut through the thick miasma of alcohol. Leo stiffened, tipping his nose up to get a better fix on the direction. The happy, clean smell sharpened, and he shot forward, winding between rotting boxes and awkwardly stacked crates. He didn’t know what was out there, and he didn’t care. The bartender could have doubled as a mortician with stacks of decaying bodies, so long as he had another door.

Sounds of fighting in the bar were dying off. The gunshots had stopped, and Leo had a sinking feeling in his stomach that it meant the bartender had either run out of ammo or luck. Growls and panicked cries of pain punctuated the scrabble of claws on tiles. The werewolves were still putting up a good fight.

At the end of the long room, a door appeared.

A door with a round goddamn knob. Cat paws were not great with those kinds of handles. Swearing in his thoughts, Leo shifted into his human form so he could grab the handle and twist it.

The door swung open with an ear-piercing shriek and afternoon light flooded in. He blinked rapidly, his eyes adjusting to take in the new brightness, but his nose shifted faster, picking up the scent of sweet flowers over the lingering smell of old garbage. They weren’t alone.

Leo opened his mouth to shout at Sage, but it was too late. The calico burst out of the building and a quick hand jumped out, snatching her up by the scuff of her fur. Sage yowled and hissed, spittle and claws flying in every direction as she fought to get free.

She was fucked. He could either leave her or try to save her.

Leo cursed himself as he threw his larger frame into the elf that held Sage away from his own body. They slammed into the brick wall on the other side of the alley. A grunt escaped the elf as all the air rushed from Leo’s lungs, but the surprise was enough to get the elf to loosen his hold on Sage. The cat sprung free and raced away, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

He shoved off the elf and shifted into his orange tabby form while his would-be attacker was still gathering his wits. His paws hit the broken concrete, and he ran with everything he had, ignoring the bits of glass and puddles of only Bastet knew what.

A shout came from the other end of the alley and a second later, pain exploded in his shoulder. The force of the impact knocked him off his feet, and he rolled. Leo kept rolling until his paws found the concrete again. As he got up, pain radiated down his right foreleg, but he didn’t let it stop him. He didn’t know if the damn elf had hit him with a rock or something else.

After the first block, there were no sounds of pursuit, but that didn’t keep him from running full tilt for at least another half mile. There was no sign of Sage, either. That cat was long gone.

When he was sure the fae had no interest in finding him, Leo crawled under a thick bush covered in leaves and thorns, and flopped on his stomach, trying to catch his breath. The pain in his shoulder would disappear soon enough thanks to his faster-than-human healing. For now, he just wanted to be grateful he was still alive.

This was definite proof that the kid was far better off in Junjie’s hands than his own.

1 ? Bastet – Egyptian goddess associated with cats, protection, fertility, pleasure, good health, and childbirth