Were-Geeks Save Wisconsin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  By Kathy Lyons

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Were-Geeks Save Wisconsin

  By Kathy Lyons

  Were-Geeks Save the World: Book One

  When badass werewolves battling supernatural evil realize they need tech support, they recruit a group of geeks with hilarious—and romantic—results.

  Chemist Josh Collier is having a blast at a comic book convention when he gets the shock of his life—he’s a werewolf! WTF? Before he can howl, he’s whisked away to a secret lair by Nero, a hot guy dressed as a Roman centurion. Josh’s former life is over, and his genius is needed at Wulf, Inc.

  Nero has no interest in babysitting a trainee were-geek when he’d rather be killing the demon that wiped out his entire pack. While Josh analyzes the monster’s weapon, wild passion ignites between him and Nero.

  With destiny and their pack in the balance, can they survive the demon out to destroy Wisconsin?

  There are so many people to thank for this book. I’d love to say it was all my inspiration and talent, but it turns out a project like this comes together because of many people. Damon Suede pushed me to go for it, and Lynn West was right there making me feel comfortable, which ultimately swung the balance. In fact, all the folks at Dreamspinner have been a dream to work with (pun intended). Elizabeth North (brilliant publisher) gave me amazing support, Nicole Resciniti (brilliant agent) held my hand, Brenda Chin (brilliant editor) kept me on track, and even my husband kept the chocolate well stocked. (Nothing happens in my life without chocolate.) But this book owes its existence to Cindy Dees, who said, “You love geeks. Write geeks!”

  I do, so I did.

  Thank you, Cindy, for being with me every step of the way.

  Chapter 1

  “I AM not going to wear that to a demon slaying.” Nero Bramson stood naked to the waist in the Wisconsin snow. He was surrounded by his werewolf team, and they were headed into serious business. But apparently Pauly’s brain was still on last night’s Trivial Pursuit game.

  “You lost, so you have to wear this,” he said as he held up a pink tee. It read Crazy Cat Lady and was covered in stupidly cute kittens.

  “We’re here to do a job—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” His friend rolled his eyes as he waved toward the lake. “We’re here to kill a basic demon who’s been eating ice fishermen for who knows how long. Human body, big teeth. We can take care of one of those in our sleep.” He shifted the tee in the predawn light enough to show off the glitter on the kitten collars. “You lost, you have to wear this today.”

  Nero bared his teeth, not surprised when it had no effect on his team. Pauly’s partner, Mother, actually snorted as she started to strip out of her clothing. “You shouldn’t bet on trivia when you suck at it.”

  “I grew up in Florida. What do I care about Big Ten football?” He’d lost the game—and the bet—on some obscure Michigan versus Ohio State statistic. “But I’m not going to wear something stupid and endanger this mission.” He looked to the other two members of his team for help, but Cream and Coffee had already shifted into their animal forms. They were timber wolves and were prancing about in the snow, oblivious to Pauly’s attempt to humiliate their leader.

  “The fabric’s so thin it’ll rip in a stiff breeze,” Pauly said. “It’s not going to endanger anything.”

  Just his pride. Bad enough to wear pink, but the cat lady moniker was going to stick. And for a werewolf, that was adding insult to injury.

  But Pauly was grinning as he tried to hide his cell phone, no doubt ready to snap pictures the moment Nero put on the garment. Mother was chuckling as she shucked the last of her clothing. And even Cream and Coffee had laid off rolling around in the snow to watch him with expectant expressions.

  It was what he’d wanted for his team. They’d been going full-out for the past few months, and everyone was starting to feel the strain. They’d taken out a banshee, two sewer demons, and his personal favorite: a zombie wizard on a bad acid trip. When Pauly had suggested a night of trivia and shots, Nero had thought it was the perfect stress relief. Who knew the guy had an encyclopedia of sports facts in his brain? Or that they’d finally get a location on the demon chomping on unwary Wisconsinites next to Lake Wacka Wacka? That wasn’t its real name, but it was all he could remember.

  He fingered the garment. It really was paper thin, and though the pink would stand out against the snow, his team was the best. They’d have no trouble taking out the demon, even if it spotted them a few seconds early. Maybe he could manage to rip the shirt on one of the evergreens.

  “Come on,” Pauly wheedled. “A gentleman always honors his debts.”

  “Now you’re just being rude.” He was not a gentleman by any stretch of the imagination, but damn it, he’d fake it if it meant keeping those smiles on his team’s faces. “Fine,” he said as he pulled the shirt over his head. “But you’re paying for breakfast.” It was his favorite part of every mission—the celebratory meal afterward. He had the perfect pancake house in mind, and it would cost Pauly a pretty penny since they’d all be starving after a demon killing followed by a glorious romp through the snow.

  “Totally worth it,” Pauly said as he snapped pictures rapid-fire.

  “Get into position,” Nero grumbled, and then he stripped out of his pants.

  Damn, it was cold. He waited until everyone had gone full furry to slam and lock the van door. He put the keys in a box hidden inside the driver’s side wheel well, then gratefully sprouted fur as he turned into the big, bad wolf of all those childhood fairy tales. Only this wolf was going to kill a demon before breakfast.

  All in all, today would be a great day… even if he was going to be staring at pictures of himself in a pink tee for a long time. It stretched tight across his wolf chest, and though he tried to rip it as he breathed deeply, the fabric strained but didn’t tear.

  Pauly’s gray muzzle pulled wide in a wolfish grin, and even Mother yipped quietly in laughter. He growled to silence them, but that only made Cream and Coffee snort. Nero then let out a stern bark and everyone settled. It was time to get down to business.

  After five years of working together—three with him as alpha—they knew his moves as well as he did. They peeled out in formation, ranging wide as they searched for the demon. Cream scented it first, but the stench soon enveloped them all—brine badly covered by Axe Body Spray. Gah. Even a human nose would notice that. They picked up speed, and Nero quickly forgot the embarrassment of his attire. They were all caught up in the chase.

  They found the demon squatting behind some young evergreens near an iced-over lake. It looked to Nero like a maraschino cherry: all its colors were off. Sure, it was shaped like a normal human male, but the skin looked pinker than flesh, the hair had green undertones, and the eyes seemed flat and creepy. Like glass eyes because—according to the
fairy who had put them onto this thing—the demon didn’t use its eyes to see. Those empty baby blues were for appearance only, since its whole body pulsed with paranormal radar and its receptors were on its skin. The only part of it that seemed normal was the mouth, though it was too wide and the teeth were sharp.

  He went in first. It was his right as alpha. Plus, it was just plain fun to get in the first swipe.

  The creature was focused on the lake, probably waiting for careless ice fishers, since there were some winter cabins nearby. It had been chomping on them, as well as cross-country skiers, for at least a decade before it had caught the Paranormal Alliance’s attention. Thanks to the internet and cell phone cameras, it was getting easier to find the silent munchers. And now that it had been located, Nero’s strike team would end it forever.

  Seeing that the others were in place, he bolted forward through the snow. God, he loved this part—the sheer joy of his body moving like black lightning through the white landscape. Something about his wolf body erased his human aches. Bum knee, stubbed toe, achy shoulder—it all disappeared when he was a wolf.

  He took a wide arc around the creature’s hiding place, then dashed in to hamstring it.

  The thing was prepared. Whatever radar it had had alerted it to the danger, but it was hemmed in by evergreens and too slow to leap away. It was faster than a human but not than a werewolf, and Nero dodged the swipe with ease. Better yet, he timed it just right, swerving around, then ducking under the swing, taking a bite of demon calf.

  Score! He ripped out a solid chunk of the demon’s leg. He was grinning around demon flesh.

  Then the taste hit. Gah. Brine. It tasted like shit, but he’d done his job. Blood spurted from the creature’s leg. Like everything else about this thing, the color was off. Orangey-pink like shrimp. He darted away before he could get covered in the crap.

  He spit the mouthful out as soon as he could, his momentum taking him well out of the reach of the demon’s hands. Mother and Pauly went in second. She’d go for the throat or crotch—she was vicious that way. Pauly would take out the other leg. Then it would all be over and they could go for a real run in the woods.

  He kept his tail high as a message that said, All’s good. He was spinning around when the first gunshot rang out.

  It was the demon. Clearly it had been in this world long enough to learn about firearms, and it was getting off rounds with a surprisingly steady hand, given that Mother and Pauly had done their jobs. Both its legs were torn to hell and back. Some of its crotch too.

  That was the thing with demons. They could section off parts of their bodies like a starfish. Its entire lower half could be torn away, and the upper body would still work. Good thing they’d trained for this possibility.

  Cream and Coffee were already on it. Cream would take out the gun arm; Coffee would go for the throat. Some demons had to be dismembered. Mother and Pauly were rounding the trees, cutting closer and obviously anxious to take the bastard down. Nero tensed, ready for his pass as soon as Cream and Coffee delivered their strikes.

  Bingo! Coffee got it across the neck, and weird blood sprayed. Cream had the gun arm clamped between his teeth and was ripping it off the bastard’s body, but the thing was way more dexterous than they expected. The demon managed to toss the gun from one hand to the other—while being dismembered—and got off a shot.

  Cream yelped in pain and dropped the arm. He still tried to run, but his back leg was fucked-up, and he tumbled nose over tail. Coffee’s momentum had already taken him past Cream, but that was okay because Nero had already started his pass. He’d forgo the demon in favor of pulling Cream’s ass out of the way while Mother and Pauly followed up with the killing blows. But he couldn’t carry Cream as a wolf. It was way easier to scoop up a lupine with human arms, though the wolf weighed a freaking ton. He needed to get the guy out of the line of fire long enough to dig out the bullet. It was much too dangerous to attempt a shift back to human with a bullet in the body. There were too many bad places for the metal to lodge.

  Not many shifters could make the change while moving, but fighters didn’t often have the luxury of a quiet place to shift. He had been a year into training with Wulf, Inc. when he’d perfected the moving shift. It was one of the reasons he’d become a team alpha so young. He did it now, slipping into an energy place before resolving into a human still on the run. He even knew how to time his balance so that he could keep running while scooping up Cream’s back end. The wolf would then run on his front legs while Nero managed the back.

  That was the plan, and it started with flawless precision. He went from running on all fours to a dissolving flow of energy. His awareness took in the stupid T-shirt he wore, the ground and the air, the pulse of the demon’s radar, and something more. There was a buildup of power from the demon’s head. Coffee hadn’t fully decapitated the thing, and there was growing magic centered at the spine, right behind the jaw.

  That couldn’t be good, but in this state, he didn’t have the ability to broadcast a warning. It happened so fast. He’d barely sensed the power when it detonated.

  The bastard demon exploded in a fireball that could be seen from a satellite. Fortunately Nero didn’t have a body to burn. He didn’t even feel pain—just a surge that tried to disrupt his energetic state. It was a mental scramble for him to ride the wave without disintegrating, but he managed, and then he resolved himself into his human body. He needed to scream a warning to his team. He needed….

  The smell hit first. Even in a human body, he relied on his sense of smell.

  Burnt flesh and smoke.

  His bare feet registered blistering heat next. It burned his soles, even as he kept running.

  Vision came next, and he saw a landscape that was no longer a winter wonderland. He was running through the center of a blast zone, and when he bent to scoop up Cream, all he got was charcoal.

  He couldn’t breathe. Everything felt choked off, even as it burned through to the bottom of his lungs. And all he heard was absolute silence.

  He stumbled, falling to his knees but unable to release the charred bones of his friend. He looked down, his hands tightened, and the fragments slid between his fingers. He turned, frantically searching for his teammates, someone to share the shock with, but all he could see was burnt bodies and the melted ice of the water.

  He saw the demon then, and shit, how could that thing be still alive? Sure, there were demons that could shoot fireballs, but he’d never heard of one that could create an explosion on such a massive scale. But the evidence was clear, as was the pink blob of partially dismembered demon body. It was beside the lake, rolling to the edge before it fell in. It wasn’t going to drown. It would sink to the depths of the lake, where it would reform into a smaller, simpler body. Nero wanted to chase it. He could dive into the water and tear it apart with his bare hands.

  But he couldn’t leave Cream.

  Or Pauly. Or….

  He scanned the area, identifying the bodies, not from anything recognizable but from their locations on the blackened ground. Cream at his feet, Pauly just a few feet away. Mother beside her partner. And Coffee farthest away but facing toward him, because he’d been running back to help.

  Four bodies. And a half-mile radius of scorched earth.

  He started to shake, and his knees blistered. The heat from the ground was intense, and he was naked except for the tee. He stripped out of it and put it under his feet as he stood. He’d have to walk back to the van, thankfully out of the kill zone. His phone was there too. For some reason he thought he could call for help. Maybe someone could do… something.

  It took another moment of staring before he realized he didn’t need his phone. He had someone to call on for help: a fairy prince who owed him a favor. He’d saved the guy’s life in a bar fight, of all things. He’d been at the right place at the right time, and by fairy rules, that meant Bitterroot owed him. The bastard also owed Nero an explanation as to why he’d sent them after this demon with
out telling them the thing could blast fire.

  Clutching his hands into fists, he called out Bitterroot’s full name three times. The condescending prick appeared instantly, almost as if he’d been waiting. He was a short guy or a tall elf, standing about two foot four, with bright eyes and a collection of butterflies attached to his body. The fairy was a collector of sorts.

  Bitterroot appeared wearing his usual smug expression, but his eyes widened in shock as he took in the surroundings, including the charred remains at their feet.

  Nero didn’t let him get his bearings. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded. “You didn’t say it could blast fire.”

  “You didn’t ask,” Bitterroot rasped, his expression still shocked. “There are rules.”

  Fucking asshole fairies, always with an excuse. But it didn’t matter. They needed to handle the problem now. “Can you fix this? Can you help me?”

  Bitterroot shook his head slowly, his gaze landing with horror on the ash outline of Mother’s body. “I can’t—”

  “You can.” Nero swallowed, the solution sitting heavy in his mind. The brass at Wulf, Inc. didn’t have a lot of rules. The main precept was “complete the mission and don’t die.” But there was another: Never negotiate with the fae. Wolves always lose. But Nero didn’t care—he did it anyway. “Give me a mulligan.”

  The fairy’s gaze snapped back to Nero’s. “That’s not an easy thing.” He took a deep breath. “It’s an expensive thing.”

  “You owe me. I saved your life.”

  “Which gives you one wish.” The fae rubbed his hand over his face in a weirdly human gesture. “A mulligan is complicated.” Then he waved at the center of the blast zone. “What would you do different? How could they survive that?”

  Nero didn’t have an answer. He’d been lucky to have been in an energy state when the boom hit, and he’d barely survived it. The others might not be able to ride the wave like he had, and Coffee was a traditional werewolf. He never fully dissolved into energy but sprouted his snout and tail in an excruciating agony that took time. Coffee definitely wouldn’t survive, but Nero had faith in his team to figure it out.