The plot thickens

Before I get to posting this week's protion of "Fat Aussie Bastard," I have a couple anouncements. We--or rather I--am running an impromptu contest over on the Shapeshifter Seductions FB page. I posted a rather unusual picture and the person to come up with the best explination for it wins a $5 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

Second bit of news is that as soon as I can come up with a better title for this story, I'll be submitting it to Smashwords for publication. It'sll be the full version, including the naughty bits, but I'll keep posting the clean bits here as a count down to it being on Smashwords.

Without further ado, here's this week's snippet!

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“I thought you’d met Dugger,” Bambi replied off-handedly. Tom looked up from the pool table, shook his head at the mule deer buck, then looked back at the table, trying to find a shot. He’d dropped by his favorite pub after his meeting with Jenna at the city park. He couldn’t tell anyone his real reason for having met her, but Bambi could always be counted on to have picked up something interesting and useful in his own line of work. Bambi was one of the three full time game wardens in this county and in a place so very full of shifters, a game warden was every bit as in-the-loop as any cop.


“I’ve heard a lot about that bounty hunter Dante brought in a while back, but I had no reason, or inclination, to seek him out. Why?”

“Because he’s a dingo,” Bambi said with a chuckle as Tom sunk the que ball in the right far pocket. “An you are shooting pool like a noob. I take it this female dingo’s on more than your mind right now?”

“Go eat a salad, herbie,” Tom shot back snidely.

Most folks might have expected a German Shepard and a mule deer to spit and argue with each other, even over a friendly game of pool. What most of them would not be aware of, was that they were step brothers and actually quite good friends. Tom had not one single idea why his mom had taken up with Bambi’s dad twenty years ago. The scandal that mating had caused had rocked Talbot’s Peak spectacularly. It had also laid the groundwork for the kind of town the Peak and grown into—a town where herbies and carnies could play a friendly game of pool over a pint of beer at Flanigan’s Pub. Bambi—whose name was not really Bambi but rather something much more emasculating—and Tom always snipped and sniped and each other. That’s what brothers do, even when there was no blood tie between them. Gods help the fool who tried to step between them, though.

“So what’d Dante bring in a dingo bounty hunter for?” Tom asked as he put away his que.

“I don’t know that he did bring in Dugger to hunt for him, exactly. There is something very wrong going on in town and I’m not entirely sure what it is. Could be Dugger came here on his own following the trail of someone or could be he just happened to be passing through when he found something. But why would you want to talk to a dingo bounty hunter? Because they are the best of the best. Period. They won’t work for just anyone and they won’t stop if they take on a job, even if you don’t pay them.” Tom stopped and stared blankly at his step brother.

“No on works for free,” he said with disbelief.

“They don’t work for free, exactly,” Bambi said with a shrug. “But they are born and bred to be protectors. They are the bloody white knights of the animal kingdom, Tom. If they see a wrong, they are hell-bound determined to right it. So long as they get enough money coming in to keep themselves and their family fed, they really don’t care how much they get paid. It’s not about the money for them.”

“But why bounty hunters?” Tom asked. Bambi chuckled.

“I said they feel the need to right every wrong, not the need to uphold every law. I guess I should have compared them to a whole species of Robin Hoods.”

“Except they aren’t in it for the money,” Tom added sarcastically.

“According to the Disney channel, Robin Hood wasn’t in it for the money, either. He was in it to stick it ol’ King Jon the Usurper. “

Tom shook his head, bewildered. A lot of little pieces had clicked into place about his Washington State PI. But the whole picture was even more confusing than the disjointed pieces had been. The most confusing piece, of course, was why finding out she wasn’t above playing vigilante to stop the bad guys made him even hotter for her…