They mostly trashed stuff that was five or six generations out of date. A few times, someone decided certain elements were unhealthy or immoral and dumped new-ish equipment. Her coils and particle accelerators came from those, and she held onto them for dear life.

  Anything else she found had to be sorted through, picked apart, and reassembled before it could be used. She was the best at that. Better than anyone in New Houston, anyway, and certainly better than anyone in the pack.

  She dropped into her hammock. It was best to take the particle gun apart and inspect the pieces to see what went wrong, but the sounds of the pack returning from their hunt for the day interrupted her.

  Not many were brave enough to head out of the city, but weres were about as dangerous as anything else out there. They lost a few members here and there, but they held the advantage. They hunted in packs.

  Curtis looked like he’d been put through a wringer. His clothes were torn, and bright red welts showed where wounds had already healed over but would be sore for a few days longer. Helena would tell him to take it easy for those few days. Curtis would probably ignore her.

  He zeroed in on Clare. After he finished handing over the day’s catch, he marched across the compound with a glare in his eyes. She didn’t think it was directed at her, but he was in a bad mood. Nobody liked being around him when he was like this. Even if he was the leader of their pack.

  “Clare, you got a minute?” His tone of voice said he knew she did, and he demanded she used that minute to chat with him and the pack’s three other heavy hitters.

  “Sure.” She awkwardly climbed out of the hammock and joined them as they marched into her workshop.

  They wanted privacy, which was fine, but they went around touching shit. Clare never had time to label anything in here, which meant they ran the risk of killing themselves or suffering a serious injury. She pulled a dead battery from Dennis’ hands and a live one from Marcus’. Her glare told them to keep their hands to themselves.

  “What can I help you with, Curt? Finally thinking about body armor for when you head out there again?”

  He glowered at her hard enough to make her gulp and look away.

  “Got word from Rory when we were on the way back to the compound. Said you had trouble from Mez’s pack while you were down at Max’s. Got anything you want to add?”

  Clare narrowed her eyes. “Hold on a minute. You think I antagonized them?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Kev pointed out.

  “Shut it.” Clare pointed a finger at him and felt a hint of gratification when he inched away. “It was Cray and two weres. I can’t remember their names. Said Mez got kicked out, and Rich claimed his place. They were trying to shake Max down. When they saw me, they got it in their heads that they were supposed to take me. Not sure where that came from.”

  Curtis shook his head. “Doesn’t fucking matter.”

  “I came away all right.” Clare shrugged. “One of the weres didn’t. Well, both of them, but one survived.”

  “Okay. Maybe it matters, then. If the were you killed has family who’ll come after you.” The pack leader rubbed his eyes. “Shit, we’ll have to work you up a protective detail.”

  “Hello?” Clare popped her boot coils to launch herself to the second level of her workshop. “I can take care of myself. Ask any one of these numbnuts.”

  “It’s not only about your safety.” Curtis leaped up to join her. “People seem to have forgotten how seriously they need to take this pack. That they would dare to attack a member is insulting enough. And yes, I know we’ve been over this already, but circumstances have changed. You have to come to terms with that.”

  “I’m going—” Clare paused and drew in a deep breath. The pack knew not to take it personally when she let her mouth write the proverbial checks, but it was another thing to antagonize Curtis. He had limits to his tolerance. “I worked hard for this.”

  “This conversation is over. The pack will decide what happens next. I’m only giving you a heads-up that things might be changing.”

  Curtis climbed down and motioned for the others to join him as they exited.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t appreciate them looking out for her. Regular old humans needed to be on their toes in New Houston. It was technically a neutral city, but plenty of packs laid claim to its corners as their home bases, where they denned up between hunting trips.

  Usually, as a means of keeping their aggressive ways from those they’d made deals to protect.

  Clare shook her head and scampered down. She wasn’t in the mood to tinker anymore. If the pack decided this was the last time in a long while she could move around without her packmates shadowing every step, she’d make the most of it.

  Oddly enough, her personal spot in the pack’s “den” was one of the larger buildings. Most of her packmates required less space, despite being generally larger. They needed to be close to each other. As much as she loved them, she needed room. She’d determined the building had once been a fire station, back when people needed those. A pole led from the top floor to the ground floor, which had enough space to test her devices without destroying her living quarters.

  She checked the traps she’d left around the building, mostly at the eastern corner, where she spent most of her time. Pockmarks from her weapon and device tests covered the building, but the eastern corner was relatively intact. A few scorch marks revealed where she’d gotten out of control from time to time.

  A handful of throw rugs covered those and left her with a halfway decent living space.

  After ensuring the traps were intact, she set them again. She’d gone through the motions of switching them on and off every day. Every movement was automatic at this point, but she wanted to double-check them now more than ever. While she put on a strong face and acted like what happened hadn’t affected her, the fact remained that someone had tried to abduct her.

  She couldn’t shrug that off.

  Clare dropped onto her bed and stared at her small library. Folks up top liked to hoard technological guides and manuals under the guise of preservation, but she’d managed to get her hands on a sizable collection.

  People thought she was a naturally gifted technician. There was some truth to that. As a youngster, she’d been interested in how things worked. The books were where her “breakthroughs” came from…or at least where they started.

  Besides, it was nice to read about what the world was like before the sky cities. Before the Curtain came down.

  She’d never hear the end of it if her packmates entered her little sanctum. The books were one part, but the rich blankets and soft pillows covering her bed were probably her most prized possessions. More crap she’d scavenged from the dumps. It had taken her months to put it all together, but it felt like home. Like hers. No one else was allowed in. Not if they were going to crap all over the frilliness of her bedding or the small decorations she’d made to brighten the place up.

  If she had visitors, she kept them up front in the living room space. Whenever anyone wanted to go in the back, she’d tell them she was working on something dangerous. She offered plenty of technical terms if they pried. They’d learned the hard way that she liked to mess around with dangerous shit requiring technical expertise.

  Clare rubbed her eyes the same way Curtis had as she dropped off her equipment. Tools and the like weren’t necessary. If she needed to break something out to fix shit, her pocket tools were more than capable of doing the job. She needed a drink, and that meant weapons only. Even better, bouncers would never think to look for these.

  She smiled and headed out before anyone else came looking for the exploding werewolf story. The only way she’d tell them was if they paid for her drinks.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He didn’t look local.

  Clare picked him out a few blocks from the pack compound.

  Residents of New Houston had a certain common look. Not necessarily dirty, but grubby. The grime stuck after they spent longer than a week breathing the thick smog and dust that coated the city and never dissipated.

  People talked about how various jury-rigged generators across the town were to blame for the smoke hanging over them like the Scourge, but the nuclear reactors intended to run the city weren’t exactly reliable. Blackouts came every other day. Some people chose to live without any tech for hours at a time, with no indication when it would come back.

  Most didn’t. Generators large enough to run a house for a few hours weren’t expensive. Others hoarded batteries and charged for them when the lights went out.

  People who lived outside the city had a whole different look. Eternally muddy if they came from the Glades. Covered in dust if they came from the desert.

  He didn’t look like he was from either of those places.

  His clothes were ragged enough to fit in. He didn’t raise many eyebrows, and anyone who did shook their heads and moved on. Clare might have done the same thing if she hadn’t spotted him following her. She confirmed it by taking a roundabout path to the Watering Hole. She thought she’d lost him a few times, but that trench coat was difficult to miss. No one wore anything that heavy in New Houston unless they wanted to cover whatever they carried.

  Packing heat, then. Clare paused at a shop window, inspecting one of the “new” processors they advertised. The man walked right past her without hesitation and turned the next corner. Likely waiting there for her to pass and resume following.

  He had an arrogance about him. He seemed to assume people would walk around him. The problem was he was right.

  Clare crossed her arms. Her annoyance was partly due to the processor pricing, which meant she’d have to go dump-diving again. Yet she focused on the thick black coat that disappeared around the corner. Military, maybe law enforcement background. She hadn’t marked him as one of the New Houston Guardians. When they were undercover, she could spot them a mile away. Their undercover vehicles, too.

  Neutral Zone Rangers made more of a stomp when they were in town. He didn’t have any of the usual identifiers, or it would have triggered one of her buzzers. Not one of their rank-and-filers, then.

  Clare scowled at the corner. If she bolted, he’d know she made him. He could access the city’s cams, and comms kept track of her without being in view. Best to have him close, where she could put him down if he was trouble.

  The Guardians passed for a police force in the city, but they were closer to mercenaries than anything else. Rich might have sent one of them to incarcerate her. Not so with the Nazers, who were more of a marshal service and militia. Their job was to keep things peaceful between the packs in the Neutral Zones. They wouldn’t stand for any inciting incidents and would clap her for killing one of the bastards.

  Assuming they knew. It was possible they only wanted to pick up an affiliated human for questioning. If that was the case, why didn’t he pick her up?

  She narrowed her eyes when she caught sight of the coat in the window’s reflection. He hadn’t gone around the corner like she thought but chose to head into the suckhole of fangs and fang posers that was the Necro.

  Nazers and NHGs wouldn’t go in there unless they were in force. Then again, weres didn’t go in there, either. She should avoid it, and him. She pulled away and headed in another direction. The Watering Hole was too far away, but the Foundry was close. That was Rich’s territory, but they made a point of not allowing law enforcement.

  For all she knew, Coat Man was another fang poser. It was close enough to their territory for that to be believable.

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at the Foundry. Food and drinks were served to a rambunctious crowd following a wrestling match on the link. She didn’t know the wrestlers but could tell they were werewolves from the way they threw each other around the ring. No claws or teeth allowed. They could make a fight interesting without them, though.

  A mug of cold beer slammed onto the counter in front of her when she arrived at the bar top. Clare reached for her knuckles when she saw the werewolf she’d run into earlier that day behind the bar. He raised his hands immediately.

  “Not here for a second round.” He nudged the mug toward her. “Burying this once and for all. Wasn’t very nice of you to break my brother’s heart like that. He was only hitting on you.”

  “Heart, liver, lungs, brain, and skeleton.” Clare maintained her grip on the knuckles.

  “Right. You didn’t need to tell your brother about it, though.”

  She supposed he meant Curtis. Her pack leader must’ve had words with Rich about the incident and demanded punishment for messing with her.

  “I didn’t tell him he hit on me. I told him what he said. I’m fine if someone takes the ‘no’ respectfully. If they don’t, I teach them to be more respectful in the future.”

  “He don’t have a future.”

  “Then he’ll be real respectful from this point forward.”

  A moment of silence surrounded them. The weres listened to their conversation, though their eyes were on the links. The only hint she needed was them not cheering when two fighters tossed each other around.

  The were finally grinned and laughed. “I guess you’re right. I got the message, and that beer is a goodwill gesture. Next time, be considerate. I think it took my balls an hour to heal after whatever you did to them.”

  “They’ll be sore for a few hours longer if my practice has been any indication.”

  “Your pack lets you test your weapons on them?”

  “Sure.” Clare used the moment of distraction to slip another one of her devices into the beer. Weres did tend to leave bygones by the wayside. They had bigger problems and usually didn’t bother picking up grudges. It wasn’t a guarantee, though.

  The device tested the beer and beeped to tell her it was free of poisons or drugs.

  “How would I know it works against weres, if weres weren’t there to test them? You think my pack wants to be there looking out for me every time Rich wants his hands on the best technician in the city?”

  “Fair enough.”

  Most werewolf dives were like that. Aggressive but not spiteful. Packs were assembled and maintained through violence, and injuries healed in a few hours. For a human like her, they could kill her without meaning to. It was easy to forget sometimes. The weapons she carried weren’t only for the people who wished her ill but also those who didn’t know their own strength.

  Then again, she was happy to surprise them with what she could do. It didn’t take long for the few fangs allowed in the Foundry to approach and ask if she wanted to enter a drinking contest. She’d been raised by werewolves who were lax with drinking restrictions, so she could drink anyone under the table. Even a few werewolves. She could easily take a young vampire.

  Of course, fangs didn’t drink alcohol. The fluid ratios in their bodies were different, so introducing a poison like alcohol to their systems would create disruptive toxicity, similar to what a human would experience if they drank contact solution. The results were usually messy and always painful. Most fangs older than a year knew better than to drink it.

  Besides, fangs had better ways than alcohol to get their kicks.

  This one hanging out in a bar and being pressured to drink whatever was poured indicated he was less than a year old. Probably only a few months and still working off old human habits. It didn’t take long for him to end up on the floor, clutching his stomach and groaning.

  The weres didn’t care. He would throw up soon, which was why the bouncers carried him out, but the rest hooted and hollered at the arrogant young vamp’s comeuppance. None of them went so far as to call him a fang, though. The slur would cause trouble, no matter which one heard. It wasn’t worth it.

  Clare couldn’t help feeling bad for the critter. A heady stream of hormones rushed through young vampires’ bodies, and they didn’t have much control over their actions. Then again, neither did werewolves. They’d had most of their lives to adapt to it, though.

  “Hold on.” She stepped between the vamp and the exit, stopping his escort from tossing him out. Clare gripped him by the chin and made sure he looked at her. “You’ll want to remember this for a while. Remember my face. Don’t fuck with me.”

  She gripped his chin tighter and slipped a small white tablet into the corner of his mouth. Her hand covered the action to keep the weres from spotting it.

  If they’d noticed, none of them mentioned it. The vamp was tossed out of the Foundry before he threw up all over the place. It wouldn’t be blood, at least. They needed that shit to live, and they had precious little of it. Clare wasn’t sure if the vamp would remember how she helped. Or if he would consider what she did as help.

  Didn’t matter. She didn’t do it to help the fang, anyway. It was to assuage her guilty conscience.

  “I saw that.”

  Her back straightened. The voice wasn’t a familiar one. It moved through the shouting weres who were drawn to the fight again, but none of them appeared to hear it. Weirder was how she seemed to feel the presence before the voice came.

  It wasn’t the Coat Man like she thought. Strange that the bastard managed to engrain himself in her mind for so long after the fact. Even when she was mostly drunk after five shots in a row.

  Instead, it was another vampire. Not a young one. The vamp on the stool behind her was a few decades removed from the youngster she’d seen out the door. A few orders of magnitude stronger, too.

  A young vampire was a powerful and dangerous predator if still a slave to the cocktail of hormones for the first few years after the transformation. Elder vampires made the younglings look like tabby cats in front of a tiger.

  She saw dozens of telltale signs. He’d been allowed to enter the Foundry with no hassle and without half the weres in the bar keeping an eye on them. He was tall and lithe, and he stared at her with black eyes pinpointed by a golden pupil. Vamps kept some of the white in their eyes for years, even decades.