Defender Cave Bear (Protection, Inc: Defenders Book 1) Read online

“Batcat?” Tirzah called, venturing further into the kitchen. “Spike?”

  Tentacles brushed against the back of her neck.

  “Augh!” She recoiled, shoving herself backward and looking around wildly.

  A cactus in a hanging basket lurked before her, with a cascade of spiny tendrils trailing down to the exact nape-of-neck level of a seated Tirzah.

  “You all right?” Pete called from the bathroom.

  “Fine, fine!” Tirzah called back.

  After checking very carefully for 1) cacti, 2) rugs, 3) things shaped like cacti, 4) flying kittens, Tirzah retrieved the first aid kit. She’d expected a tiny thing bought in a supermarket with a few Band-Aids and bee sting tweezers, totally inadequate for her task, but what she found was a large military surplus kit. Which was unsurprising upon reflection, as it had no doubt been bought by Pete.

  Since she’d already used up the washcloths in the bathroom, she filled a bowl with warm water, rummaged around until she found some clean folded washcloths, dipped and wrung them out, and draped them atop the first aid kit.

  Taking a final incredulous look at the sink cacti, she piled everything in her lap and started to turn around to go back. Then she remembered something odd. Hadn’t there been one cactus to the right of the sink and one to the left when she’d come into the kitchen? Now there was one to the right and two to the left…

  The second cactus on the left leaped into the air with a hiss.

  “Augh!” Tirzah jerked back, then had to snatch at the kit and washcloths before they fell off her lap.

  “Everything okay?” Pete called.

  “Fine, fine!” Tirzah yelled back.

  Spike, who had been curled up in a ball beside the left-hand sink cactus, was now flying around the kitchen hissing at Batcat, who had been lurking behind the coffee canisters. Batcat also took to the air. Before Tirzah could even try to coax them to come to her, the kittens flapped out of the kitchen and were lost from view. An angry yowl sounded from an indeterminate direction, and then there was silence.

  Once again, Pete’s voice rose up. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes!”

  Clutching the kit and washcloths, she made her way back through the hallway and bedroom.

  “Tirzah?” Pete called from the bathroom. “I have pajamas in the bottom shelf of my dresser drawer.”

  She half-expected them to be printed with cacti, but they were all plain, navy blue or black. Impersonal, like the rest of his room. Unlike the rest of the house, it contained no cacti or even excessive furniture. Though she was glad to not have to maneuver through an obstacle course, the room felt oddly sterile: a hotel room rather than a home.

  In the bathroom, she found Pete was still sitting on the floor, but his color was better and he seemed more alert. He’d taken the washcloths and used them to scrub the bloodstains off the floor and bathtub, and was stuffing them, along with their discarded clothes, into the cabinet under the sink.

  Tirzah slid out of her chair, sat on the floor beside him, and began cleaning his cuts. He didn’t wince at the sting of the antiseptic.

  “What was going on out there?” he asked.

  “Got attacked by a cactus,” she said. “That weird tentacle thing in the kitchen.”

  “It’s a rat tail cactus. I keep thinking it’s a fly on my back and slapping it.”

  “Your mom is sure into cactuses.”

  Pete chuckled. “She and my dad had their honeymoon in Arizona. He bought her a cactus, and she liked it so much that he bought her another one for her anniversary. And her birthday. And Christmas. It got to be a tradition. And then other people in the family decided she collected cacti, so they started giving them to her. Dad died ten years ago, but everyone else kept it up. This house is basically the display case for forty years of gift cacti.”

  “Does she even like cacti anymore?”

  “We’re all afraid to ask.”

  “From the striking lack of cacti in your bedroom, I’m guessing you’re not a fan.”

  “Not especially,” Pete admitted. “I stick myself on Mom’s all the time. It gets a bit old.”

  “You need to get out your own tchotchkes.”

  “My own what?”

  “Tchotchkes,” Tirzah repeated. “It’s Yiddish for knick-knacks. Like your action figures.”

  “You speak Yiddish?” Pete asked.

  “Nah. I know a couple words, but they’re all words people use who don’t really speak it. I don’t think anyone’s actually spoken it in my family since maybe my great-great grandparents. Sometimes I think about learning it—there’s a woman in my apartment building who’s offered to teach me—but, well, time flies.”

  “Yeah, I keep meaning to brush up on my Spanish, and Mom would teach me, but like you said…” With pride, he added, “Caro’s nearly fluent, though.”

  “Did the three of you always live together? I mean, when you were in the US.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Here, in the cactus house?”

  He chuckled. “Nah. Different cactus house. Mom bought this one when she retired, so I never really lived in it. I thought me and Caro would get our own place when I was done with the Marines, but…”

  “But what?” Tirzah asked when he didn’t finish the sentence.

  “But I got a lot going on.” And that was clearly all he was going to say about that.

  She tried not to grind her teeth with frustrated curiosity. Did he mean the cave bear? His bodyguard job? The fact that his team were a bunch of magical shapeshifters? All of the above?

  Well, she’d at least get to meet his mother and daughter. She was dying to see him as a dad. She had the feeling he was a good one. It must drive him nuts that he couldn’t talk about his own daughter in order to keep her safe. All the parents she knew would whip out photos of their kids at the slightest provocation.

  “So, Caro’s mother,” Tirzah ventured. “Are you divorced? A widower?”

  Pete gave her a long look, allowing plenty of time for her to take back the question, but she just stared right back. If he was going to stonewall her on that one, at least he could own it. At last, he said, “We never married. Ana’s never been in the picture.”

  “She got pregnant, and you kept the kid?” Then she calculated Pete’s probable age against Caro’s age, and said, “Oh, wait. You both must’ve been in high school.”

  “Yeah. We were madly in love for about three months. You know how it goes at that age. By the time she realized she’d gotten pregnant, we’d already broken up. She was headed for college and she wasn’t ready to be a parent. I wasn’t either, or at least I thought I wasn’t. We agreed to give the baby up for adoption. Then I went to see Ana in the hospital, and I held our daughter. She was so small, I could cup her in my hands.” His face softened as he re-lived that moment of joyous, unexpected love. “And that was that,” he concluded. “I was a teenage idiot, so my mom and dad did most of the parenting at first. But I grew up fast.”

  “I bet. That must’ve been hard.”

  “It was hard.” He smiled. “It was wonderful.”

  Tirzah felt oddly jealous. She still didn’t want a baby, but if she’d gotten pregnant at 18, she too would have a 13-year-old now. “And, um, your girlfriend…?”

  “What girlfriend?”

  “The one you talk to on the phone every day?”

  Pete’s eyebrows flew up, then he chuckled. “That was Caro. And my mom, sometimes.”

  “Oh.” Tirzah lowered her face to hide any pleasure that might have shown at that revelation. No wife, no girlfriend. Well, well, well.

  “When he’s bleeding on the bathroom floor” was probably number one on the list of “when to not hit on a man.” But maybe later…

  Pete pulled on his pajamas, buttoning up the top to make sure the bandages were concealed. “Thanks. That’s better. I’ll help you catch the kittens now.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good—”

  Pete stood up, swayed, and clutc
hed at the sink for support.

  Tirzah scrambled into her chair and backed it up to the sink. “Hang on to the back.”

  Pete gingerly transferred his hold on the sink to the chair handles, and leaned heavily on it as she steered him to his bed. He collapsed as much as lay down on it.

  She pulled the covers over him. “And stay in!”

  “I will. And thanks.” Pete’s dark gaze caught and held her. “I know I backed you into this. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate it.”

  His intensity caught her like a butterfly in amber. Her earlier thought about “when not to hit on a man” came back to her. “When he’s telling you how much he appreciates you” was probably not on that list.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it, suddenly unsure of what she wanted to say. They’d gone through so much already, she was afraid to ruin it by coming on too strong. Wouldn’t Pete have asked her himself if he was into her?

  That extremely important issue aside, what did she want from him? He obviously was a serious relationship kind of guy. He had a family already. If she asked him on a date, it wouldn’t be a simple date, it would be the start of something big. She hadn’t even met his daughter yet. There was so much she didn’t know about him. There was so much he didn’t know about her…

  She was rescued from her indecision by the sight of the clock by his bed. “I have to go. I have fourteen minutes to clean your blood off the garage floor and catch two flying kittens.”

  She found Spike happily splashing around in the bowl of water she’d left in the kitchen sink, his green fur as sleek as the succulents lining the window. She scooped him up and took him to Pete’s bedroom, where he flew from her hands to Pete’s pillow and started licking his face with a startlingly pink tongue.

  Tirzah shut the door behind her, figuring she could lure both kittens into a closet once she had them in the same room, collected a wad of damp paper towels, and made her way to the garage. There she was once again confronted by the step. Trying to get over it in her chair was liable to dump her out, and there was nothing she could hang on to between the step and car.

  “So much for dignity,” she muttered. Tirzah slid out of the chair and slithered on her belly to the bloodstained floor, which she scrubbed maniacally. She wiped down the car seats and handle, assured herself that the garage no longer looked like a murder scene, crawled to a trash can and buried the paper towels beneath the rest of the trash, then slithered back to her chair and clambered in.

  Now for Batcat. Where was she? It wasn’t like the winged terror to be this quiet.

  “Batcat? Heeeeere kitty kitty kitty!” Tirzah called.

  No one came, but she heard a faint flapping sound. She followed it down the hall until she reached a closed door. Puzzled, she leaned over and put her ear to the door. Yep. Flapping.

  Well, she definitely wouldn’t put it past Batcat to figure out how to open a door and then close it behind her. Tirzah opened the door and looked in.

  It was Caro’s room; Tirzah realized that at once. For one thing, it was completely and utterly cactus-free. For another, it was unmistakably the room of a teenage girl, split between remnants of childhood and new interests. The bed piled with homework pages and bottles of nail polish and video games and a few much-loved stuffed animals, all atop a faded patchwork quilt. Posters of horses and kittens adorned the walls, interspersed with the occasional rock star. A beautifully made pegasus figurine stood on the bedside table beside a teetering stack of library books.

  The furniture was sturdily constructed out of unpainted, honey-colored wood. The posts of the bunk bed were carved into the heads and tossing manes of horses, each with individual personality, and engraved horses galloped and pranced and reared across the table and desk and chairs. It was beautiful and constructed with love, but was just a little bit small for a teenager. Pete must have made it for her when she was younger.

  Tirzah still hadn’t met Caro, but seeing the room made her feel like she knew the girl a little already. Like Tirzah, she had her own tastes and hobbies… and she loved animals.

  Unfortunately, there were no visible animals in the suddenly-silent room, unless you counted the stuffed ones and the pegasus figurine. “Batcat? Here kitty kitty kitty.”

  She waited, listening, but there was no response. Tirzah hated to further intrude into Caro’s private space, but she had to get the kitten—and soon. She decided to split the difference. Tirzah stood up, bracing herself with both hands on the doorframe, and leaned in, trying to spot the kitten.

  “HEY!”

  The yell behind her made her jump. Tirzah’s left hand slipped off the doorframe, and she grabbed out wildly for support. She caught the edge of the carved table, which tipped over. Tirzah fell headlong into the room. The WORLD’S BEST DAD shirt flew upward, and something small and light fell on her head and cracked open, showering her with what looked and smelled like lawn clippings.

  “ABUELA!” a girl’s voice yelled behind her. “I CAUGHT A BURGLAR! CALL THE POLICE AND TELL THEM I CAUGHT A NAKED WHEELCHAIR BURGLAR!”

  Tirzah, horrified, levered herself to a sitting position and yanked down Pete’s shirt. “No, no, I—”

  The teenage girl in the hallway, who had to be Pete’s daughter Caro, yelled, “A HALF-NAKED WHEELCHAIR BURGLAR WEARING DAD’S SHIRT!”

  “She’s not a burglar!” Pete shouted from the bedroom. “She’s my client!”

  A white-haired woman hurried up behind Caro and peered down at Tirzah. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  And that had to be Pete’s mom. Great. Tirzah felt incredibly conscious of her sweaty, grubby, half-naked state. She had to be making the worst impression ever, even if you didn’t count the part where she’d just appeared in their house with neither invitation nor explanation. She had been so busy frantically cleaning up and searching for flying kittens that she had completely failed to come up with a cover story for why she was in the house, let alone why she was currently in—

  “What are you doing in my room?!” Caro demanded.

  Tirzah’s mind went utterly blank, at least as far as an explanation for that was concerned. There apparently wasn’t room for any thoughts other than help and also Batcat is somewhere in this room. She looked around frantically, as if she could find a plausible excuse somewhere inside Caro’s room, and spotted the lovely little pegasus figurine.

  “What a beautiful pegasus,” Tirzah said. “I can’t see from here—is it porcelain?”

  Caro lunged past her, nearly knocking her over, then whipped around and stood as if she was shielding the figurine with her body. “This is MY ROOM! What are you doing in MY ROOM?!”

  Tirzah could remember being a teenage girl who hated people intruding into her space and touching her things, so she was more sympathetic than defensive. On the other hand, there was Batcat to worry about. Maybe the best thing to do was to deflect suspicion and get all of them out of the room.

  “Sorry! Sorry! I was looking for… pants!” She scrambled back into her wheelchair, shedding bits of grass as she went, and backed it out of the room.

  The white-haired woman picked up a blade of grass. “Caro, why do you have a box of lawn clippings in your room?”

  Caro looked as furtive as Tirzah felt. “It’s for… school! For, um, an art project.”

  The white-haired woman split a skeptical glance between them both, then called out, “Pete? Mijo? Where are you?”

  “In my bedroom!” Pete called. “I’m sick!”

  Pete’s mom gave them a final dubious stare, then turned around and headed for his bedroom. Tirzah was torn between trying to get ahead of her to warn Pete to hide Spike, and staying to try to find Batcat. She fiddled with her wheelchair brakes, hoping Caro would go ahead, but the girl stayed where she was, eyeing Tirzah suspiciously.

  Tirzah gave up and followed Pete’s mom. Behind her, she heard Caro’s footsteps. At least Caro wasn’t staying in the room with Batcat. If Batcat was even in that room. F
or all Tirzah knew, the flapping had been some bird outside the window.

  Though if Batcat wasn’t in Caro’s room, where was she?

  CHAPTER 14

  Y ou didn’t get to be a wizard-scientist by giving up at the first sign of adversity. But that knowledge gave him little comfort as he stood in the alley and surveyed the black dust that was all that remained of his gargoyle minion.

  “That fool,” he muttered to himself.

  He should never have allowed the gargoyle a second chance after his failure to secure the computer file. Now the crippled hacker was still free, the file was still undeleted and may have even been shared, and his chosen Dark Knight had once again slipped from his grasp.

  He wished he could pursue at once, but using his power to enrage so many people and then make them all forget what had happened had left him drained. The wizard council had a strict policy of covering up their tracks, even at the price of letting their quarry escape for a while. Their plans were far too important to risk premature discovery.

  He gave the dust an irritated kick with the tip of a polished shoe, then stopped in surprise. Bending down, he plucked a green spine from the ground.

  “So that’s where the cactus cat went,” he said softly. “Well, well, well.”

  So many of the magical creatures had been lost to their enemies already, it would be quite a feather in his cap if he became not only the first of the wizard council to secure his Dark Knight, but the first to recapture one of the magical beasts.

  He smiled as he strode from the alley, black dust drifting in his wake. So the Dark Knight had fled with the hacker female. No matter. That would only make it more convenient for him to catch them both—and the cactus cat too!

  As he emerged from the alley, he had to step around a couple enthusiastically kissing as they leaned against the graffitied wall. How repulsive.

  Worse, the sight of them gave him a disquieting idea. At the laboratory and base the wizard council had taken over from Apex, they’d severed their prospective Dark Knights’ ability to recognize and bond with their mates. At least, they thought they had. But they hadn’t had the chance to test the severing. And the longer the Dark Knights were free, the greater the chance was that they would meet their mate. And if the severing had been incomplete, who knew what might happen?