Werewolves: The Enemy: Werewolves of Washington, #6

By Angela Beegle

Mitch Phillips disappeared after his devastating attack on Amandine, Deputy Jack Herschel's wife. You know the saying 'You can't keep a good man down'? You can't keep a bad man down, either, especially if he's not a man at all.

Amandine isn't going to just roll over: she's investigating something that will take out the troublemaker once and for all, even if she has to test it on herself, first.

In Missoula, Creede's pack is coming together into a comfortable family. Some of them are even dating each other. But why shouldn't they? After all, when your partner is also a wolf, there's one secret you don't have to keep. Meanwhile, Brant is one paycheck away from being homeless, and he doesn't have a job anymore. This bodes very badly for him. Fortunately, Skyhawk is there to help. Or is he?

Will there be justice in the end? Or will it merely be revenge?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Beegle
• Release date: Feb 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301492114

Angela Beegle

Angela lives in the Pacific Northwest, where (according to her coffee cup) the average temperature in July is 65F, and the average in January is 40F. She feels this very comfortable range, plus the distinct lack of poisonous snakes, spiders, fire ants, Africanized bees, hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts, more than makes up for the lack of sunlight nine months out of the year. She and her husband (who doesn't care about werewolves in the least) have been married since 1992, and have four delightful homeschooled children, a shelter-rescue dog, and three urban chickens. Her birthday is at Christmas time. What she really likes for her birthday is fuzzy sweaters. J/K.

Book preview

Werewolves: The Enemy

By Angela Beegle

Smashwords Edition

License notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright Angela Beegle, 2013. All rights reserved.

To my family, who have been putting up with this whole werewolf thing for a long time, now.

* * * * *

You have plenty of time to get there, silly! Rosemary said. Finish your breakfast. You won’t be able to learn on an empty stomach.

Creede laughed, Geez, when did you get so bossy? I don’t want to have to rush to get there. You remember what happened the last time I rushed to get to a class, right?

"I know what happened one time, yes. You got in a wreck, and as a result you’re now the most handsome werewolf this side of the Continental Divide."

When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.

"Saying it at all is absurd, but here we are. It is going to be okay for you to start in January, isn’t it?"

I was worried about that too, but they’re letting me do it. I guess as long as I don’t care if I graduate with the big bunch in June—whichever June I get done, I mean—then it isn’t going to matter. We’re lucky so many of my credits transferred over, because otherwise I’d be stuck doing a bunch of classes over again. Creede gulped the last of his coffee and took the mug to the sink. I should go, though. He went to her and gave her a kiss. I hereby apologize in advance for any crankiness the extra studying causes.

If you get too crabby, I’ll go hang out with Sylvie and Zoe. That’s a good idea at any rate—I don’t want them to get the idea I think I’m too important to spend time with them just because I’m the Alpha female.

"That’s what status is, though."

"That’s what status meant in their home packs, but look what they were like when they came to us? Both of them were all beat up. Sylvie was cringing and Zoe was sullen. We still don’t know anything about Zoe’s story beyond that. I may be Alpha female, but nobody died and made me Queen."

That’s true. Creede glanced at the clock. Frowning, he grabbed his coat and pulled it on. I know you don’t want to be stand-offish, but please just be aware if someone tries to take advantage of you. That’s all I have to say. I think we’re too small a pack for a lot of politicking yet, but we may still get a few new wolves.

All right. Go on. Don’t speed, even if you have to be late. I know you can heal from almost anything, but what you said about the pack getting bigger? Let’s don’t grow it via contaminated hospital equipment. Also, we can’t afford a speeding ticket.

Har har. Okay. I’m off. I’ll call before I come home, in case we need anything from town.

Rosemary leaned and kissed his cheek. Okay.

Creede went out to his little car, unplugged the block heater, and headed for town, driving cautiously into the local pack neutral zone.

The city nexus of Missoula itself—everything contained within the rough square formed by I-90, Reserve Street, 39th, and Higgins, plus the University—had been designated as neutral territory, because every werewolf in the area needed to be able to work, go shopping, and in some cases go to school. Creede’s house—and all the land north of I-90, for a distance no one had bothered to quantify—was the territory of the Bitterroot Pack. Everything similarly south of I-90 and not in the neutral zone belonged to Brant Durrell, an outcast from the Spokane Pack. The borders seemed a little blurred ever since Creede had rescued Brant from a bear trap, but they were still official—and Brant was still an outcast.

Creede pulled into the parking lot off Van Buren, gathered up his backpack, and headed across campus to his first class of the quarter. When he finished this year, he’d be qualified to apply for the University of Montana law school. He’d settled on law as a career in part because the Bitterroot pack didn’t have a lawyer, but also because he wanted to be able to set his own hours and not have to worry about getting the night of the full moon off like the Colville Alpha, who was a Deputy Sheriff. The money would be good, too.

Arriving at class a few minutes early, he settled into a chair near the front, returned a crooked smile and a wave to the young man who sat down next to him, and waited for the professor to arrive.

More people filed in. Because it was a morning class, most of the people smelled of shampoo and sleep. One or two smelled distinctly of sex, however, which Creede wished very fervently he were unable to smell, as it sent his thoughts spinning in non-useful directions. More people arrived, bringing more scents with them. He detected perfume, sweat, unwashed clothes, and even horse—or was that cow?—manure. Oh, this was going to be a fabulously odiferous next couple of years, he could tell. Yay. Trapped in closed rooms with this. He pressed a finger and thumb into his eyes.

Tired? asked the young man next to him, who sported a sweatshirt with the words, ‘SO SUE ME’ emblazoned across the front.

Who, me? Creede glanced over. No, it’s not that. Hi. He extended a hand awkwardly to the side. Creede, hopefully a law student next year. Who are you?

Tom, and ditto. If you’re not sleepy, is something else wrong?

Oh— Creede flailed around for an answer. Somebody walked past me who smelled like she put on half a bottle of perfume this morning. I have a really good sense of smell. It’ll be giving me a headache soon. I’ll ask the professor to make a public service announcement.

Out in the real world, Tom said, lots of workplaces are perfume-free now, you know, because people have allergies.

Sounds like lawsuit fodder to me, Creede said, chuckling. "Don’t wear your perfume around my super nose, or I’ll sue you."

Tom snickered. You could try. There’s probably a precedent somewhere. So, why do you want to put yourself through the law school ordeal?

Would you believe I want to make enough money to buy a big chunk of land around here?

Tom wagged his head. Sure, why not. Me, I’m here to, quote, ‘learn critical, objective thinking. The words argument and quarrel should not be considered synonyms, and it's a shame that people use them that way,’ unquote. That’s what my dad says, and I guess he’d know. He’s a lawyer. He rolled his eyes. Got to keep up the family tradition, you know.

Oh, my wife is going to love this, Creede said. I’ll have an excuse to argue with her, huh?

You’re married?

As good as, anyway. Creede glanced toward the door. Here he comes. Guess it’s time to get serious here, huh?

Guess so. Tom straightened in his seat, stretched out his long legs, and flipped a spiral-bound notebook open to take notes.

Creede followed his example.

Good morning, I’m Professor Davis, the lecturer began, and with only a minimum of shuffling and whispering, the class settled. The subject was fascinating; for an hour, Creede forgot almost entirely about the world outside.

* * * * *

Brant Durrell sat in his chilly apartment, wearing his coat and a wool watch cap and contemplating a peanut butter sandwich. Every so often he reached out his left hand and rotated the plate on which it sat, the better to see it from all sides. He didn’t want to eat peanut butter again. He wanted meat. Unfortunately, the moon was too small to permit him to shift into his fur, and until he could—or unless he chanced upon a ten dollar bill on the ground to pay for gas to go cruising for roadkill—he was unlikely to have a better choice of dinner than the sandwich in front of him.

He wasn’t sure what to do. He no longer had a job. He’d called in the day after his accident with the trap and told them that he was sorry, but due to unexpected circumstances, he wouldn’t be able to come in to work anymore. The last thing he heard his manager say as he hung up the phone was, Brant, you’re on the schedule for tomorrow, what am I supposed to do on this short notice? So, he had no job and surely no good reference for a new employer. Sadly, he had no idea what kind of job amputees usually took anyway, especially if it were the dominant hand they lost. Especially if there were any chance of running into a recent former co-worker who might suddenly exclaim something loudly about ‘when the heck did THAT happen?’ and draw attention not only to his loss but also to the impossible circumstances surrounding it. He could come up with some fabulous lies—and tell them consistently—but even he had limits.

He was back to ‘no job’. No job meant no paycheck, and that meant no apartment, no heat, and no light, although he was already sitting in the cold dark to conserve energy, so his next—last?—power bill would be as small as possible. Much more urgent was the fact that no job also meant no food, and he required vast amounts to fuel his frequent shifts from man to wolf and back again. Not for the first time, he wished he could stay in his wolf form forever, and that he and his wild friend Whiff could make their own pack. She accepted him. She didn’t mind that he had only three legs, and she would hunt for him, too. But he could not stay wolf in daylight or any time the moon was less than half full no matter how hard he tried, so that idea was out.

He went over his other options, and they all looked ugly. One: he could become homeless in western Montana in mid-winter. One glance outside the window at the whirling snow scratched that off his list. Two: he could move back to Spokane and stay with his mother, although he had never lived peacefully with her even when he was younger, and his current status as exile from the Spokane pack would ensure that his residency consisted entirely of hiding in her basement. That idea had two strikes against it all by itself. Three: he could move somewhere else, preferably somewhere no other werewolf pack claimed a territory, which would mean leaving Whiff behind and probably never seeing her again. That one was simply unacceptable. She was the only friend he had. Four: he could try to wheedle his way into Creede’s pack, despite the sentence laid on him by the Spokane Alpha forbidding him pack membership anywhere for five years. He didn’t think Creede would accept him, though, given their past history. Or—five: there was another possibility.

He picked up his peanut butter sandwich and had a bite. The food was cold, the plate was cold, and he was shivering despite the coat and hat. He contemplated his other option. The day after he lost part of his right arm—then his foreleg—in a trap because he had scavenged from the wrong rancher’s dead cow, he had been given a ride home by the Beta wolf of Creede’s pack, a guy by the dubious nickname of Skyhawk. Skyhawk had seemed decent. More important, he had offered to help him financially if things got really, really bad.

Brant finished his cold sandwich and licked his cold fingers. It was already bad, he thought. He’d get his last paycheck in the mail soon, but his hours between Christmas and New Year had been thin on the ground. If he was very careful and stockpiled meat caught when he could turn into a wolf, he might be able to keep his apartment for another two months. He doubted he could stretch his money that far, but he certainly had one full month, even if it were going to be a very cold one with a very limited diet.

He didn’t want to call Skyhawk yet. He didn’t believe for a second that the offered help would come ‘no strings attached’. The question was: what kind of strings would they be, and to what would they be tied?

* * * * *

Mitch Phillips lay on the bed where his camper’s table should have been, quite literally on the verge of starvation. It was early afternoon, and he lay bundled in every blanket he owned because