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  One day I was a prince and the next I was less than garbage.

  There was abuse, mistreatment that left scars inside and out. And my mother couldn’t stop it, any more than she’d been able to fight back when Oleg mistreated her.

  And that’s when Tomas Etebari had stepped in.

  In the 80s, Los Angeles was an open city with all kinds of paranormals vying for dominance. The vampires had claimed Griffith Park and from there controlled much of the real estate downtown and in the San Fernando Valley. They were so powerful that the other families of freaks and creatures had built a loose alliance to keep the bloodsuckers in check and the twin pillars of that alliance were my father and Thomas Etebari, alpha of the city’s largest and most powerful werewolf pack.

  Tomas’ crew had long hired out as mercenaries, and back then, his pack had veterans of conflicts from the Eritrean Civil War to the Romanian Revolution. They were tough guys you didn’t fuck around with. Tomas had always regarded Oleg as an ally of convenience but after he attacked Alice, and started in on me, he couldn’t stomach Oleg anymore.

  So, while Oleg was out one night attending to some business, Tomas and some of his men got us out of L.A. and back to the little town in Washington state my mother had fled in her teens. Wolf blood was shed, but blood-money was paid and for whatever reason, my father had not pursued Alice back to her hometown.

  The local werewolf clan checked in on us occasionally, as a favor to Tomas, but mostly we just lived our lives.

  We were happy. We didn’t socialize much—I wasn’t encouraged to invite friends back to the house to play—but I didn’t miss the company. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather who stepped in to fill the fatherly role Oleg had refused.

  Rance was a melancholy man but a kind one. He taught me how to play poker and checkers and chess. He took me camping in the woods where he taught me the names of plants and trees and how to track animals without scaring them away.

  When he was younger, he’d hunted for the table but after he served in Vietnam, he no longer had a taste for killing anything. There was a rack of hunting rifles in his bedroom, but he kept it locked and never offered to teach me to shoot. Instead, he taught me how to work with my hands, and gave me projects to help around the house my mother had painted robin’s egg blue. She had bought the decrepit Craftsman when we first returned to Washington, and over time, my grandfather and I renovated it. At first, I just got to hammer nails and knock out drywall with a sledgehammer, but as time went on, I got more and more skilled. YouTube hadn’t been invented yet, but I pored over Rance’s collection of The Family Handyman magazine and I figured things out as I went along.

  Rance gave me a tool belt just like his for my ninth birthday and I loved it so much I slept in it. He also gave me a wood-burning kit so I could sign my name to my work. My mother was alarmed by the wood-burning kit. I’m sure she had visions of me setting the house on fire accidentally, but Rance made certain I understood the risks of the tools I was given.

  He’d have had no patience with what are now called “helicopter parents.” He believed that giving a kid responsibility and letting them make their own choices made them better people. When I was ten, Rance gave me a folding knife that his father had given him. It had mother-of-pearl inlay and an engraved blade. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  I loved the weight of it in my pocket.

  I loved my grandfather more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life. When he died of a heart attack when I was twelve, I almost went crazy with grief.

  I got into a lot of trouble that summer. Picking fights with bigger boys just to get a chance to beat someone up.

  I was only twelve, but I was already big. People began to steer clear of me. I didn’t go to many birthday parties. But I wasn’t the only one grieving. My grandmother stopped bathing and spent most of her time in the bedroom she’d shared with Rance, chain-smoking and watching game shows for hours.

  Sometimes I would watch the shows with her and amuse her by answering all the Jeopardy questions before the contestants.

  “Such a smart boy,” she’d say to me and pat my cheeks with fingers stained yellow from her smokes. I always left when she changed the channel to what she called “her stories.” My own life felt like a soap opera. I didn’t need to watch anyone else’s problems.

  I’m sure my mother felt trapped—she was a painted bunting in a town filled with gray wrens and finches—and even as a little kid, I could feel her sadness.

  She tried to hide her depression from me, doing her best to make adventures out of our mundane daily lives. She would cook exotic dishes and insist we dress up to eat them. We’d have weekend-long movie marathons when we ate nothing but popcorn and packaged candy. She’d drink wine and I’d drink soda and looking back on that nutritional disaster makes me shudder, but when I was a kid, it was great.

  On Halloween, my mother would take me out trick or treating dressed like a little Ozzy Osbourne—sunglasses perched on my nose, cheap rings on every finger—while she strutted behind me in a punky black wig as Sharon. The moms thought we were adorable.

  The dads admired her figure in the size 4 leather pants she could still squeeze into even in her forties. When she got sick, mom horrified my grandmother by asking to be laid out for her final viewing in one of her favorite club outfits—complete with shoulder pads that made her look like a really tiny football player on a team with uniforms designed by RuPaul. Her friends loved it, though, and threw her a party that shut down the funeral home and lasted three days. That would have been epic even for L.A., but for the small Pacific Northwest town she’d returned to after leaving my father, it was a sign of the approaching apocalypse. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

  Afterwards, she was buried on some farmland my grandparents owned. Green burials weren’t a “thing” yet, but she’d wanted to be planted out in the apple orchard and grandma had the permits. She’d also taken the precaution of having the orchard blessed and then fenced with cold iron stakes so that my father could never, ever bother her there.

  The only one from her L.A. life to attend the funeral had been Tomas Etebari.

  He’d stood in the back of the funeral home in a black cashmere topcoat thrown over a thousand-dollar suit, and when my mother was safely in the ground, he’d brought me back to Los Angeles and raised me as his own along with Mickey and Jon. My grandmother, who was slipping into the early stages of dementia, barely noticed I was gone. Tomas arranged for her to get full-time care and paid for it out of his own pocket.

  “I know you love her,” Tomas had said to me, “but she can’t protect you if Oleg’s people come. If you stay with her, you’ll only make her a target.”

  He left the final choice to me, as Rance would have, and I appreciated that.

  Three of Oleg’s men had been waiting at Van Nuys Airport when Tomas’ private Gulfstream landed with me on board. All of them had died at the hands of Etebari clan wolves who had been waiting as well.

  Tomas had sent the henchmen’s heads to my father, and a tape-recorded message letting him know that if he or any of his people, so much as looked at me sideways, he’d protect me.

  That had backed Oleg off for a while, but nothing lasts forever.

  When I was fifteen years old, Tomas had died fulfilling his promise to keep me safe. When Mickey took his place as alpha, he could have sent me back to Washington and let me take my chances. Instead, he’d made the unpopular decision to offer me his protection same as his father had.

  I’d grown up idolizing Mickey.

  Jon and I had lived with him until he joined the army. By then, I had learned he was about half as crazy as my father.

  “My wolf knows how to kill,” he’d told me before he left for the Middle East. “I need to hone my human skills.”

  When he came home, he and Jon rebranded their father’s mercenary business, going into personal security and executive protection.

  They’d landed a lucrative contract
with Lawrence Benbow, the head of the city’s largest vampire family and opened branches worldwide and operation that rivaled Academi for its reach.

  Jon went off to Fuqua School of Business, and I went to Los Angeles City College but dropped out to work as a stuntman. Stunt coordinators loved me. I could break a bone and be back in action the next day. They never questioned how I managed to heal so fast. I’m sure they thought I was juicing. You normally don’t get as big as I am without steroids.

  And then there was my temper. Lots of people chalked it up to ‘roid rage.

  But it isn’t.

  It’s just me.

  My thoughts were starting to drift into a dark place when a passenger headed to the bathroom jostled my foot and shook me out of my reverie.

  He took one look at me and said, “Sorry,” in a way that let me know he was really sorry.

  “No worries,” I said, which is something no one but an Aussie can say without sounding like a total douche, but the passenger was too scared to even process that I wasn’t a threat.

  Just because I was big.

  I wondered if Jason Momoa ever had that problem.

  Probably not.

  2

  I had about an hour to kill before my flight landed, so I fired up my laptop and shot a few mutants roaming the streets of Boston while I waited.

  Killing mutants always relaxes me.

  But of course, I couldn’t just enjoy myself. Just as the plane was beginning its descent, Mickey emailed me a dossier on the job.

  I didn’t bother to read it. I figured Jon would give me a download in the car.

  I saw Jon waiting for me at the gate, wearing a suit that looked custom-tailored. He looked like he’d just come from a wedding or something. He smirked when he saw what I was wearing.

  “I see you’re still dressing for success,” he said, taking in my tank top and cargo pants.

  “Mickey didn’t tell me I’d need good clothes,” I said as I followed him out to the parking structure.

  “Do you even own a suit?” he asked me as he pulled out a fob and pressed it. The lights on a black Audi A4 blinked. The car’s immaculate paint glistened, even in the dim light.

  Jon always did like cars.

  “The Benz in the shop?” I asked.

  Jon gave me the finger.

  As he pulled out onto Century Boulevard, I could see the tension settle on Jon’s features as he visibly changed mental gears. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  I grunted. Jon knows how I feel about L.A.

  “Why am I here?” I finally asked, trying not to sound like an asshole.

  Jon gave me a sideways look.

  “Didn’t you read the dossier?”

  “Give me the condensed version.”

  Jon sighed. “There’s been a series of murders. Pretty sure it’s the same killer. All the targets have been women and all of them were witches.”

  “So Dannon’s crew is involved,” I said, naming the guy in charge of LAPD’s paranormal division.

  ‘Yeah,” he said. John Dannon is a touchy subject with Jon. His girl used to date Dannon and they’re still close. Werewolves don’t mate for life, contrary to myth, but they do get pretty territorial.

  “How many dead?” I asked, wondering why the news wasn’t all over the string of murders.

  “Four so far,” Jon said. “But the last one he attacked got lucky.”

  “She’s alive?”

  “Yes. And we’ve been hired to help keep her that way.”

  “So, it’s basically a babysitting job,” I said, not particularly happy about that.

  Jon gave me an apologetic look. “Yes. We’re shorthanded right now.”

  “I heard Kovak got married,” I said. “But what about Axl?”

  “He’s on it, but the client doesn’t like him,” Jon said.

  I laughed. Nobody likes Axl. His lack of social skills makes Mickey look like Mr. Rogers by comparison.

  But still, that excuse didn’t really pass the smell test with me.

  “You could have called Jodi or Brennan,” I said. “Why me?”

  Jon sighed. “We think the killer might be a byk.” He glanced over at me.

  Motherfuck.

  “Not cool Jon.”

  Jon shrugged. There wasn’t much else he could say after blindsiding me like that.

  Technically, I’m a byk. It’s the Russian word for “bull,” and in this case, Jon wasn’t just using gangster slang, he was literally describing a very particular shape-shifting monster straight out of Slavic folklore—think centaurs only with bull heads. Byk are smart, dangerous, antisocial, and fiercely tribal and in Los Angeles, they’re into everything from prostitution to crypto currency schemes to selling black market fuel. There are at least twenty gangs operating in the county, but my father, Oleg Rezansov, is the man in charge.

  And by “in charge,” I mean he controls everything with the single-minded ego-driven assurance of an autocrat who has gotten rid of anyone who might be a threat or a hindrance. I fall somewhere into a gray area and I am fully aware that I’m only alive because Oleg has more pressing items on his agenda than my murder.

  He killed my uncle Leo years ago, but he has named my cousin Grisha as his heir apparent, thus painting a target on Grisha’s broad back.

  And while my cousin waits to take over, he’s got his own rackets—credit card scams and identity theft, and trading in hacked data. Rumor is, Grisha also handles wetwork for Oleg as the need arises. Rumor also has it that Grisha likes the wetwork.

  I know from experience that the rumors are true.

  I’m big, but Grisha’s bigger. Crazy big, like the love child of a rhino and a monster truck. I suffer from the byk strain of mental illness, bouts of intermittent depression and rage, but Grisha is simply batshit crazy. If the byks were involved in the murders, Grisha would be up to his steroid-swollen abs in it.

  But I couldn’t figure out why.

  “What makes you think Oleg’s crew is involved,” I asked.

  “The murder weapon,” Jon said. “It’s all in the dossier.”

  I guess I’ll read the fucking dossier, then.

  It had gotten dark by the time we arrived in North Hollywood, welcomed by the creepy neon clown at Circus Liquors , but even under the streetlights I could see the uncharacteristically green lawns around the little stucco bungalows and the one-story ranchers. After years of drought, the city had been drenched in rain all through the fall and winter. There’d been a wildflower super bloom in the spring. Everything looked a little brighter than it usually did.

  I tensed as we turned onto Riverside Drive. If we’d turned the other direction, we’d have ended up in Toluca Lake, the upscale neighborhood where my father lives.

  I pushed my anxiety down, summoning my anger instead.

  “If you think the byks are involved, whose genius idea was it to stash your client right in the middle of their territory?” I asked.

  “Hide in plain sight,” Jon said, but I could hear Mickey’s voice behind the words. I didn’t bother to ask any questions after that. This was Mickey’s show and he’d do whatever the fuck he wanted and tell me what he thought I needed to know.

  The safe house was located on a side street in Valley Village, a sad-looking little cracker box on a street full of apartment buildings that overlooked the 134 freeway. The yard was overgrown with society garlic and ragweed, separated from the sidewalk by a low stone fence a child could step over.

  The stucco coating on the faux mission-style home was cracked and breaking off in places. Many of the tiles on the roof were missing or broken.

  The place looked like a crack den, which probably meant it was valued at three quarters of a million in the crazy L.A. real estate market.

  “this place looks about as defensible as the Alamo,” I said.

  “Alamo’s still there,” Jon said.

  “Yeah, but everybody in it died.”

  Jon gave me a look. “Appearances can be deceptive,” he
said as he hit the remote to raise the garage door.

  The garage opened right into the house, but the door looked like it was made out of titanium and was protected by a high-tech biometric lock. Jon stuck his index finger inside a little tube and a second later, the door opened.

  Axl stood right inside the hallway, armed with an MP5/10 submachine gun he looked more than ready to use. His pock-marked face creased into a frown when he saw me. “You,” he grunted. It was a reflexive challenge and not particularly hostile, so I ignored it, shouldering past him because I didn’t feel like engaging in his usual bullshit.

  Being back in Los Angeles was already affecting me.

  I could feel adrenaline and testosterone surging through my circulatory system like a king tide.

  I wanted to punch something. Hard. Instead I asked, “Where’s the client?”

  “Out back,” Axl said. “Tell her to come in. We’ve got food coming.”

  “You shouldn’t have let her go outside,” Jon said.

  No shit, I thought. That was Protection 101. There could be a sniper in any one of the million apartment windows that overlooked the yard.

  “You try telling her not to do anything,” Axl whined.

  I didn’t hear Jon’s response as I walked through the small living room and opened the sliding glass door into the backyard.

  A closer look at the door revealed it was not ordinary glass but glass-clad polycarbonate, which will stop pretty much anything short of a sustained attack by many people with assault rifles. I tried not to think about how easy it was for my father to get all the assault rifles he wanted.

  There’s so much light pollution in Southern California that it never gets truly dark at night, but the apartment buildings cast their shadows over everything. If it hadn’t been for the strings of fairy lights strung up everywhere in a feeble attempt at decorating the backyard, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything.