Prey

by Rachel Vincent

  Yarnell came into focus before me, the browns and blues of his clothes oddly muted. But I only had eyes for his face, that leering grin, those smug eyes fueling my rush of rage.

  A feline growl tore free from my throat and I rushed him, fists flying. His hands shot up in defense, but mine landed first. My right fist hit his chin, followed by a left to the ribs. Then another right, and another left.

  He swung at me, but he was hurt and I was too fast, and it took most of his energy to block my fists. Only one of his blows landed, on my left side.

  I roared in fury and slammed my knee into his groin. Yarnell hit the carpet, one hand clutching his crotch, the other protecting his head, and still I swung at him.

  Hands grabbed my upper arms from behind, lifting me off him. So I kicked instead. My right foot hit his left side, then my left slammed into his thigh, and his whole leg spasmed.

  “Faythe!” Ethan dragged me backward, wrapping his arms around me from behind, pinning me to him as I struggled wildly. Tears poured down my face, though I had no memory of crying. “Faythe, stop kicking!”

  I went still—limp in my brother’s arms. He set me on the floor, then turned me to face him, wiping my cheeks with his bare palms. His eyes searched mine, then widened in surprise, and that’s when I realized mine had Shifted. “You okay?”

  “No.” I wiped the damp spots he’d missed, and vaguely noted that my voice was oddly deep and rumbly. My throat had Shifted, too, at least in part. “But thanks.” He nodded, and I turned back to Yarnell, who lay on the floor with blood dripping from his nose and smeared across a cut on his cheek. “Pick him up.”

  Parker glanced at me in surprise over the sound of my voice, then leaned down to oblige me. But Dan hesitated. “Faythe, I think he’s had enough.”

  “I’m not going to hit him.” Yet. My jaws ached from being clenched, and my knuckles were bruised. “Just pick him up.”

  Dan and Parker lifted Yarnell and set him on his feet. He stood hunched over in pain, but his eyes were clear, focused on me in rage rivaling my own. Though he didn’t seem to have noticed my subtle demonstration of the partial Shift the stray community had surely heard about, he was conscious and coherent. Good. Because I had something to say.

  I stepped forward until my face was inches from his, his blood tainting every breath I took. And when I growled, his eyes widened, flickering with the first sign of fear, and of comprehension of my partial Shift. “Marc is not dead,” I whispered, fury echoing in each soft syllable. “I’d know if he were dead, because a part of me would have died with him. So you tell me where the hell he is, or I’ll break every fucking bone in your body.”

  Thirteen

  Parker gaped at me, and Dan looked…scared. Any other time, that might have amused me, but at the moment I had neither the time nor the patience for anything but finding Marc, even if I had to stomp Pete Yarnell into the ground to do it.

  And hopefully, I’d made that crystal clear.

  “You ready to play nice?” I stood my ground, well within Yarnell’s personal space, and for a moment, I thought he’d clam up again—thought he’d actually rather die than tell me what I wanted to know. But then he spoke, eyes flashing in fury, face tensed against pain. His every movement spoke of injury, and I’d never in my life faced anyone who truly hated me until that moment.

  Don’t get me wrong. I piss a lot of people off. But beneath the anger, everyone else I’d ever met had wanted me for something. Even Andrew, the human I’d accidentally infected. Beneath the murderous fury I’d witnessed in the last moments of his life, there was a heartbreaking familiarity in his eyes, a sense of my betrayal, which had fractured some crucial part of his humanity. Part of him—most of him, probably—had wanted me dead. But there was still that small kernel of hope deep inside him, hopelessly smothered by devastating rage, that wanted me to save him. To take it all back and give him peace.

  I saw none of that in Peter Yarnell. He harbored only hatred for me, and would have tried to kill me that very moment, if not for the three other toms in the room.

  “Well?” I asked, and finally Yarnell opened his mouth.

  “Fuck you.”

  “You’ll have to stand in line for that one, and frankly, you don’t look up to the challenge.” I launched my left fist into his chest as hard as I could—an opportunity I rarely allowed myself—and was rewarded with a soft snap as a third rib broke. That southpaw practice was really paying off.

  “Bitch!” Yarnell wheezed, hunching over violently before forcing himself upright. “I told you, he’s dead.”

  Fresh rage shot up my spine, but I tamped it down, focusing on the immediate goal. “I’ll believe that when I see his body. Where did they bury him?”

  “I don’t know.” Yarnell gave me a bloody grin, arms crossed protectively over his battered chest, and I knew from his bearing that he was telling the truth. But I also knew that he was pleased to have no information to give me. The bastard.

  “Did you see him?” I demanded, ducking to recapture his gaze when too deep a breath made him flinch in pain.

  “Didn’t need to,” he gasped, then licked a drop of blood from his lip.

  My pulse spiked, sending a painful jolt of adrenaline through my heart. “Wait, you didn’t see the body?” I glanced at Dan to see surprise plain on his features. “Then how do you know he’s dead?”

  “Because that idiot Eckard accidentally killed him.” Yarnell was talking willingly enough now that he thought his information would hurt me. But in truth, he’d just gifted me with more hope than I’d ever thought to feel again.

  “Accidentally?” Ethan asked from behind me, and Yarnell’s gaze flicked his way. But the bloodied stray refused to answer. He wasn’t going to give us anything that might help us. Not on purpose, anyway.

  “Where did Eckard take him?” I repeated, recapturing Yarnell’s attention.

  “I told you—I don’t know.”

  “Think harder.” I lurched into motion again, and this time my foot hit his upper rib cage, snapping two fingers on the hand that shielded it.

  “Fuck!” Yarnell clenched his broken hand to his chest and glared at me, wiping blood from his nose with the sleeve of his opposite arm.

  “Did Kevin tell Eckard where to take Marc?” I demanded. Yarnell shrugged, examining the last two digits on his right hand, which were already swelling and turning blue. “Is there somewhere you guys usually bury bodies? A regular dumping ground?”

  Yarnell shook his head, but his posture stiffened, and he avoided my eyes. He was lying.

  “Where do you take them?” I repeated, ducking again to draw his eyes, as Parker stepped closer on the stray’s right. I growled, an impressive sound with my partially Shifted voice box. “Tell me, or I’ll break your other hand. Gonna be kind of hard to wrap your ribs with two broken hands.”

  Yarnell’s teeth ground in fury. “You bitch. The next time I see you, I’ll kill you….”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a date,” I said, almost amused now by the gruff quality of my voice. “Now, your answer, or your hand?” I crossed my arms over my chest, holding his gaze. “Where do you bury your bodies?” And the thought of how many there might be was enough to make me shudder.

  “Two places,” Yarnell spat. “In the woods north of Highway 563, south of Rosetta.”

  I glanced at Ethan, to see if he’d caught that, and he nodded, scribbling on the notebook he kept in his back pocket. Then I turned back to Yarnell. “Where else?”

  “Why does it matter?” he demanded, obviously riding a new surge of rebellion. “He’s dead. You need to dig him up to believe it?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t hesitate. He could say it once every second for a year, but I wouldn’t believe Marc was dead until I’d touched his lifeless body with my own hands. I needed to see their burial site so I could prove to the others that Marc wasn’t in it. “Where’s the second site?”

  “In the woods east of White Apple.”

  Ethan’s penc
il scratched on paper behind me, and Yarnell’s eyes flicked his way. “But you’ll never find either of them. The roads are pissy little dirt paths, and the woods are dense. You won’t find his grave, but you’ll never find him, either.” The stray’s eyes flashed with renewed, vigorous anger, and he lunged at me. Parker and Dan caught him by both arms, but still he strained forward. “You’ll live the rest of your life never knowing what happened to him. You’ll wake up crying, empty inside from not knowing. From never knowing…”

  I threw one last punch, and it landed squarely on the left side of his chin. Yarnell’s head rocked back, and he let it hang there for a moment before meeting my gaze. “Maybe,” I had to admit, though the very thought killed some small, vulnerable part of me. “But if you ever come near me or Marc again, we’ll all know exactly what happened to you.”

  We left Yarnell bleeding in his living room, and on the way across his front lawn, Ethan threw one arm over my shoulder. “Damn, boys, my sister is badass!”

  I forced a small smile, knowing he was trying to cheer me up. But I couldn’t forget the fact that, though I was sure he wouldn’t be there, we were about to embark upon a search for Marc’s body. There was no good cheer in me to be found.

  I slid into the front seat of the car again and concentrated on reversing my accidental partial Shift. Then, as Parker drove off, I grabbed the atlas from the pocket on the back of my seat and twisted in my seat so I could see everyone. After flipping a few pages, I found a map of Mississippi. Unfortunately, there was no close-up of the Rosetta area, so I couldn’t see the smaller roads. “Okay, White Apple is ten or twelve miles north of Rosetta, off of State Highway 33. We’ll go back to Marc’s and split up. Parker, you and Dan head toward White Apple, and Ethan and I will go south on 563. Keep your eyes open. There will probably be a break in the woods wherever they usually enter, but it’ll likely be faint.”

  I paused, and closed my eyes while I uttered a silent prayer for Marc. Then I looked up to find Parker alternately staring at me and the road. “What?”

  He hesitated. “Do you really think we’ll find him either of those places?”

  “I certainly hope not.” I spent most of the rest of the drive giving my dad another, somber update, pretending I didn’t hear hopelessness in his every exhale.

  At Marc’s house, I used the restroom and traded my leather jacket for a heavier coat I found in his closet, then grabbed a box of protein bars and several bottles of water from the fridge. As I split the supplies among two backpacks, I heard voices speaking softly from the front yard.

  Through the front window, I saw Ethan and Parker standing side by side, each stuffing something into the backs of their respective vehicles. Rolls of black plastic. Ethan held an unopened roll of duct tape, and the handle of a shovel stuck up over the backseat of Parker’s car when he closed the back hatch.

  I was hoping for the best, and they were preparing for the worst.

  Sighing, I blinked unshed tears from my eyes and kicked the kitchen cabinet closed, then joined them outside, where Dan stood on the porch, both hands stuffed into the pockets of his own light coat.

  “I think you’re right,” he said, steadily holding my gaze. “I think Marc’s still out there somewhere, alive. But you can’t blame them for bein’ ready, in case we’re wrong.”

  “I don’t blame them.” I handed one of the loaded packs to him. “But we’re not wrong.”

  I waved goodbye to Parker and Dan as we pulled out of Marc’s driveway, a better map of Mississippi on my lap, the heater blowing full blast into my face.

  “You okay?” Ethan glanced at me briefly, then back at the road.

  “No.”

  He sighed, lips pressed together, hands gripping the wheel so hard his fingers had gone white with tension. “Faythe, I know you want to believe Marc’s still alive. And I hope to hell you’re right. None of us can handle losing him. But you need to be prepared for the possibility that he’s really gone. Or that Yarnell’s right, and we may never find him.”

  “That won’t happen.” I clenched my hands in my lap to keep from putting a fist-shaped indentation in his glove compartment. “I’d know if he were dead, Ethan.”

  “How?”

  I closed my eyes and ground my teeth together. Damned logic… “I just would. Wouldn’t you know if something were wrong with Angela?”

  Ethan chuckled. “Yeah. She’d call every five minutes, like she’s done all day long.”

  “Your phone’s on silent?” I couldn’t resist a grin.

  “Vibrate. Twenty-two missed calls.”

  I raised one brow in amusement. “Maybe you should call her back.”

  “I will. Once all this is over.” Ethan frowned. “She’s so…normal, I can’t talk to her about relationship stuff while I’m on Pride business. It feels too strange. Does that sound weird?”

  “Yes, but I know what you mean.” That whole worlds colliding thing…

  Ethan glanced my way again, bright green eyes shining with insufferable sympathy, and I realized I hadn’t gotten away with changing the subject. “I just want you to be prepared for the worst, Faythe.”

  Clearly we were done talking about Angela.

  “Fine. I’m prepared.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared out the window. “End of subject.” My brother frowned again but didn’t push the matter.

  I loved him for that, almost as much as I loved him for being there with me, considering what he thought we’d find.

  Dense forest raced past in a blur, casting long shadows on the highway. The clock on the dashboard read four-thirty. The sun would set in less than an hour, and we’d be hiking through the woods in the dark, in below-freezing temperatures.

  But at least I had a coat. In the twenty-eight hours Marc had been missing, the temperature hadn’t yet risen above freezing, and he didn’t even have that much. I knew that for a fact because his coat was draped across the backseat behind me. I’d been hauling it around all day, along with his own ironically unused first-aid kit, just in case we found him.

  I sat in silence until Ethan turned from Highway 33 onto 563, headed south toward Wilkinson, at which point my heart started thumping in my chest and I sat straight in my seat, scanning both sides of the highway. We’d find a break in the trees soon. We had to.

  In a three-mile length of two-lane highway, we came across two cars abandoned on the side of the road, where they’d slid off the pavement during the ice storm several days earlier. Wrecking crews had been working overtime for days to haul off all the deserted vehicles, but they obviously hadn’t made it this far out of town yet.

  But other than the roadside wreckages and turnoffs onto several small roads, I saw nothing of note in the tree line. I’d just decided to have Ethan turn around when we got to the next town, so I could scan the other side of the road, when my gaze caught on another stranded vehicle and my heart jumped so hard it lodged in my throat.

  “Stop!” I shouted, startling Ethan so badly he jerked, twisting the wheel toward me. The car lurched to the right, but he corrected quickly, stomping on the brake in the process.

  “What?!”

  “What did Dad say Adam Eckard drives?”

  “A black Explorer.”

  “Like that one?” I pointed out the windshield toward the vehicle stopped on our side of the road, about two hundred feet ahead.

  Ethan squinted. “Are you sure that’s an Explorer?”

  “An older one, but yes.” My eyes are better than his. That’s been well established.

  “Eckard’s is a 2001.” Ethan drove us slowly past the SUV, and I noticed two things immediately. First, it was empty—no sign of either Marc or Eckard. And second, when the Explorer had slid off the road—which it had clearly done—it had smashed head-on into a trunk on the edge of the tree line.

  “He went off the road!” I shouted, too excited to manage a calm volume. “Marc’s not dead, he’s just lost in the woods.” And bleeding. And freezing.

  But what
had happened to Eckard? Neither his boss nor Kevin had seen him, and we’d found his wrecked car abandoned on the side of the road. Could he and Marc both be lost in the woods?

  “Faythe, don’t get your hopes up….” Ethan warned. “Marc lost a lot of blood, and it’s twenty-eight degrees outside. If he’s still…out there, why didn’t he come back to the car for shelter? Or call someone?” He made a sharp U-turn, drove us back past the Explorer, then turned again and brought us to a stop on the narrow shoulder, behind the Explorer.

  “Because he knows that if he got away, they’d send someone else after him. It’s not safe in Eckard’s Explorer.” I was out of the car before he’d even turned off the engine. “And he didn’t call because he doesn’t have his phone. Dan called me from it, remember?”

  “Faythe, wait!” Ethan’s door slammed shut, but I was already at the Explorer, peering through the back hatch. “Best-case scenario, he’s out there somewhere, injured and freezing, and probably still bleeding. And for all we know, Eckard could be chasing him. We should Shift—”

  “No.” Since cats can’t track by smell, there wasn’t much point in Shifting. Though we could hear much better with cat ears…But in the end, I shook my head. “I can’t help him without hands, Ethan.”

  “Fine. But the worst-case scenario isn’t—”

  “Nooo!” I moaned, my face pressed into one of the rear windows, one hand up to shield my eyes from the crimson glare of the setting sun. The cargo area was too shadowed for me to see much of, but the backseat was well lit. And draped across it was a ratty blanket, covered in blood. “No!”

  Ethan pulled me back and glanced through the window. He sucked in a sharp breath, then regained control and turned toward me, taking me by both arms. “It might not all be his,” he insisted, peering into my eyes. “If Marc fought him, some of that could be Eckard’s.”

  Please, please let some of that be Adam Eckard’s blood. Most of it. Because there was surely too much for one man to survive losing. There was so much blood soaked into that blanket and the cloth-covered seats that if we’d been in cat form, we would have smelled it, even with the car doors shut and the windows rolled up.