Lover Beware

handle this,” she said quickly, her voice low. “We don’t need a massacre here.”
    There was no more time to argue, to reason. Fear coated her mouth as she sighted on the chest of the nearest man, a blond guy with a droopy mustache. He held a knife in his right hand, point up like he knew how to use it.
    “Police!” she shouted. “Stop right there!”
    He did. The man beside him—tall, skinny, with dirty black hair to his shoulders—didn’t stop until she swung the gun barrel toward him.
    “Dammit, Biff, you didn’t say she had a gun!”
    “She’s a cop, asshole!”
    That was Biff’s voice, from her right. He and two more men emerged at a run from the veils of rain. Biff had a metal baseball bat. One of the others held the ragged top of a beer bottle. Lily swung her gun that way. They stopped—and the two on the left surged forward.
    Rule made a sound low in his throat. “Stay back.”
    His voice sounded funny—soft and growly. Lily wanted to look, to see what was happening with him. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the men. Very low, she said, “You watch the ones on your side, let me know if they budge.”
    His whisper barely reached her. “They aren’t moving. Yet.”
    She recognized the ones with Biff. They’d been at the bar. The other two hadn’t. Where had they come from so fast? “Any of you idiots done time before? Assaulting an officer, that will get you three to five years’ hard time. That’s if I don’t shoot you,” she added casually.
    It almost worked. One of them muttered, another took a step back.
    Then two more men came running up from the right—a Hispanic man with a knife, and a second Biff. Same little head, bland features, and outsized body. Except this one’s cap was blue, and he was holding a tire iron instead of a baseball bat.
    Twin Biffs? Sometimes, Lily thought, God had a lousy sense of humor.
    The first Biff grinned a mean, gloating grin. “Hey, bro. Knew you wouldn’t want to miss the fun.”
    “Sent Pete and Baker to flank them, didn’t I? Needed to get my iron.” The second Biff slapped it against his palm. “Gonna see if a were’s brains look all pink and gray like a real person’s.”
    “Were bitch,” one of them spat.
    Lily was intensely aware of Rule beside her, fairly vibrating with needs she didn’t understand but could feel shimmering out from him the way heat radiates from hot concrete. He was very, very angry.
    She reached out without looking and touched him lightly, hoping he could hold on a little longer. Wondering just how stupid you had to be to push a lupus prince to the edge of control. “If all of you scatter real quick, I won’t charge you with assaulting an officer. Or shoot you. Lots of paperwork for me either way.”
    “Hell, we aren’t going to mess with you,” Biff said, that mean grin fixed tight to his face. He swung the bat back and forth. “All you have to do is walk away.”
    Oh, yeah, they’d like it fine if she and Rule separated. She shook her head. “You don’t understand about the paperwork. If you make a move, Turner here is going to smear pieces of the lot of you all over the street. You would not believe how many reports I have to fill out about that sort of thing.”
    The second Biff gave an ugly laugh. “Seven of us, two of you. The odds work for me.” Some of the others yelled agreement or insults involving weres, were-lovers, and how they ought to all be exterminated.
    They were working themselves up. They were almost ready to move. She could see it in the way they stood, the restless movements of their feet and hands. If they attacked, there would be a bloodbath. “Well, now, I guess you don’t read the papers? Or maybe you don’t have a good picture of what a lupus can do. Me, I’ve seen what’s left afterwards. This one guy had a knife. The lupus bit his hand off, knife and all, and spat it out. Then he took off the guy’s face. Then he killed him.”
    “We’ve read about the killings!” one of the men on Rule’s side shouted. “Lousy, filthy weres. We take this one out, we ought to get a medal.”
    “That’s right,” her second admirer from the bar said loudly. “And taking out a were’s whore, that ought to be worth a couple of beers.”
    “I’m a cop,” she said patiently over the jeering laughter while her stomach tied itself in queasy knots. “You really think you can beat me up, maybe kill me, and the other cops are going to say, ‘Oh, well, I guess she had it