Shift

by Rachel Vincent

  “They flock together.…” I eyed the sky, trying not to panic over the sheer number.

  “How many?” My dad didn’t bother to whisper; they couldn’t hear us over the sound of their own wings.

  I glanced down the line of huge bird-creatures, doing a quick estimate. “Fifteen, not counting Neve, Beck, or the one who took Lucas.”

  “That’s too many,” Bert Di Carlo said, having assumed a backup stance in Marc’s stead.

  “Without more guns?” My dad nodded firmly. “Yes, it is.”

  We stared in silence, and I grasped mentally for a plan, sure my father and the other Alphas were doing the same thing. Seconds later, the entire flock landed behind Beck in one eerie, graceful touchdown after another. They stood a good fifteen feet apart, on human legs. Most also had human heads and torsos, but they’d all kept their wings intact, for a quick takeoff.

  At least five were women, long, dark hair trailing behind heavily toned, nude torsos. They looked like harpies, flexing wickedly sharp wing-claws, snapping strong, curved beaks.

  Beck stalked forward slowly on thin human legs, disproportionate to his massively muscled upper body. He knelt behind Neve without taking his gaze from us, then stood and pulled her up with him, cradling her with obvious familiarity and affection.

  “If you are any wiser than the base creatures you lead, I advise you to surrender now.” Beck’s voice was only marginally lower and more tolerable than his girlfriend’s. Or wife’s. Or whatever. “Your men will die quickly—you have my word.”

  Was that supposed to be a mercy?

  My father bristled, and fury emanated from him in waves I could almost feel. He shifted his aim to the new threat. “Leave now, or I will start shooting.”

  “So be it.” Beck let go of Neve and Shifted so fast my eyes couldn’t make sense of what I saw. My father raised the gun slightly, ready to defend us. But Beck only flapped his powerful wings twice, rising several feet into the air with each stroke, and clasped Neve’s shoulders in his newly formed claws.

  She screamed when he lifted her, and more blood poured from the wounds on her arms. Then the birds lifted off as one and flew into the night.

  But instead of fading gradually into silence, the thunder of their exit ended almost all at once. They hadn’t flown off. They’d landed, likely in the front field, just out of range of my cat eyes.

  Grass crunched to my left, and I turned to see Marc and my uncle Rick headed our way, each half supporting Lucas, who favored his right leg. We stood back to let them pass, and Marc gave me a bleak grin. “Your cousin’s good with a crowbar.” Then he saluted me with the bloody steel and continued into the house with the injured cat.

  The rest of us followed them, and my father bolted the front door. He hadn’t locked up the house since the night Luiz roamed free on our property. And even then, he’d only locked up the women—leaving me to protect Manx and my mother—while the rest of the enforcers went out to hunt him down.

  But this was different. This was cowering. It felt wrong.

  “What are we going to do next, nail plywood over the windows?” I whispered, following my father down the long main hallway to the back door. “Do you really think they’ll try to come inside?”

  “No.” The dead bolt scraped wood, then slid into place. “With a twelve-foot wingspan, they’d be too confined in here to take advantage of their assets. And they couldn’t fly away, which would practically cripple them. But I’m not taking any chances.”

  “In that case, maybe we should invite them in!” I trailed him into the kitchen, where my mother smiled wearily and slid the side door lock home.

  Dad nodded to thank her, then glanced at Kaci—she sat at the peninsula in front of a vanilla scented votive, staring at a brownie—before heading into his office.

  I wanted to follow him. I wanted to be a part of whatever critical decisions he and the other Alphas would make in the next few minutes. But Kaci needed me more than I needed to have my say.

  “Hey.” I pulled out a stool and sat, smiling in thanks when my mother set a glass of milk in front of me. “How you holdin’ up?”

  “Fine.” Kaci broke the brownie in half but made no move to eat either piece. “You?”

  “Honestly?” I shrugged. “I’m kind of scared. And pretty sad. And really pissed.”

  Kaci stared at me for several seconds, then nodded solemnly. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “So, what do you think we should do?”

  “About the thunderbirds?”

  I sipped from my glass, then set it on the countertop watching deep shadows sputter on the front of the fridge. “Yeah.”

  She blinked in surprise, then seemed to consider, and I realized no one had ever asked her that before. At least, not about anything more important than what she wanted for dinner. “I think we should talk to them,” she said at last. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  “Even one of them?”

  She nodded slowly, then more confidently. “It’s all a misunderstanding, right? They think we did something we didn’t do, and they’re trying to punish us for hurting someone. Like we’re going to do for Ethan.” Her eyes watered as she said his name, and I fought back tears of my own. “Right?”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s like a misunderstanding.” A huge, gory case of mistaken identity. “And I agree with you. I’d rather talk this whole thing out.” We’d dealt and been dealt more than enough death over the past few months, and yet more was on the horizon. “But that’s hard to do, considering that they don’t have a leader and we can’t get in touch with the majority of their Flight.”

  Kaci started to say something, but stopped when Michael’s voice reached us from the hallway.

  “No. Holly, do not drive out here.” He paused, but I couldn’t hear how she replied over the raised voices now coming from the office. “Yes, another family emergency. I’m sorry, but I have to stay overnight. Owen…fell off the back of the tractor.” Another pause. “Yes, he’ll be fine, but there’s nothing you can do for him.”

  Michael crossed in front of the wide doorway, carrying a red taper in a crystal holder, then reappeared almost instantly. He put his thumb over the receiver of his cell and met my gaze while Holly listed her objections in his ear. “Faythe, can I use your room? I need a little privacy.”

  Before I could answer, my mother spoke up. “Manx is using Faythe’s shower. Take the master suite.”

  My brother shot her a grateful look, then disappeared down the hall.

  “Poor Michael.” Kaci frowned after him. “I don’t know how he keeps her from figuring stuff out.”

  Michael was the only werecat I knew who’d married a human. Since there weren’t enough tabbies to go around, most toms settled for endlessly playing the field with human women. But my oldest brother wanted something more—someone to love for more than a few months at a time—and Holly had seemed the perfect choice. She loved Michael, and thanks to her job—she was an actual runway model—she spent almost as much time on the road as she did at home. Which was good, because when Michael wasn’t practicing law, he was at the ranch.

  But when she was home, Holly wanted to be with her husband, and he’d been largely unavailable for most of the past few months, helping us deal with one disaster after another.

  “Beats me. But she’s more likely to think he’s cheating on her than that he turns into a giant black cat in his spare time.” I took another sip from my glass, and as my parents’ door closed, my father’s voice carried to me from the open office door across the hall.

  “What we’ve done is show both them and ourselves that we can fight them—if only by nontraditional means.”

  “Yeah, that’d be great—” Taylor started, and in his pause, I heard the distinctive clink of glass on glass “—if we had more than half a box of ammunition and one gun.”

  At least they’re taking us seriously now, I thought, then turned my attention back to Kaci.

  “…think she’s going to die?
” she was saying when I brought her back into focus. “That girl bird?”

  “No.” I shook my head decisively as she bit into her brownie. “I bet the bullets went in one side and out the other. And considering how fast thunderbirds Shift, she probably heals even more quickly than we can.”

  Which was a problem I hadn’t considered before. It would suck to come face-to-face with a healthy and once-again flying and newly pissed off Neve in a few hours.

  “…couldn’t carry Lucas very far, or very high…” Di Carlo said from across the hall.

  “Yeah, but Luke weighs nearly three hundred pounds,” my uncle replied. “That’s a good fifty pounds over the largest man here, and closer to seventy more than most of us.”

  Yeah, and if they hadn’t been distracted by the gun, the birds would have double-teamed him, like they did with Charlie…

  “…did he get the gun, anyway?” Kaci asked, and I was getting dizzy from trying to keep up with two conversations at once. “I thought Shifters don’t use guns.”

  “It’s the one Manx shot Jace with.” But I didn’t truly realize what I’d said until my mother scowled at me from across the counter, frozen in the act of wiping down the countertop.

  Kaci’s hazel eyes widened in horror. “Manx shot Jace?”

  I cursed myself silently for not giving her my full attention. That was probably one of those things a thirteen-year-old didn’t need to hear. At least, not without the full story. “It was an accident. She was aiming at…the bad guy behind me, but Jace thought she was aiming at me. So he jumped in front of me and got shot.”

  Though it hardly seemed possible, her eyes went even wider and glazed over with what could only have been total adoration. “Jace took a bullet for you?”

  “Um, yeah.” Actually, he’d taken a bullet for Luiz, but I wasn’t going to downplay his heroics—he’d been willing to take the bullet for me. And he still was. Jace would have done anything for me, and everyone in the house knew it.

  But so would Marc.

  I’d been staring at her brownie when I got lost in my own thoughts, and Kaci mistook my emotional turmoil for hunger. “Here.” She pushed the saucer and half her snack toward me. “It’s the last one. Take it.”

  I forced a grin. “Thanks.” But as I chewed, Marc’s voice floated my way from the office.

  “…she’s not going to go for that.”

  “It’s not up to her,” my father replied, and I dropped the remainder of the brownie on the little plate.

  “Just a minute…” I mumbled, then slid off my stool and raced across the dark hall and into the candlelit office. They’re talking about Manx or Kaci, I thought as I stepped past Jace and into the room. But that wasn’t true. I could tell from the way they all stared at me, their eyes identically shadowed in the gloom.

  “What’s not up to me?” I demanded, in as respectful a tone as I could manage.

  My father sighed and stood from his armchair. “We can fight them, but it isn’t going to be pretty. So I want you to take Kaci, Manx, and Des somewhere safe until this is over.”

  No! But shouting at my Alpha—especially in front of his peers—would only make things worse. So I sucked in a deep breath and regrouped as everyone watched me, waiting for the fireworks. “I’d really rather stay and fight. Can’t someone else take them?”

  “Teo’s volunteered to go with you,” Di Carlo said. “But we’re going to need everyone else here to fight.”

  I glanced at Mateo, but he was ostensibly absorbed in cleaning beneath his fingernails. I’d never known Mateo Di Carlo to back down from a fight; Vic and his brother were very much alike in that respect. But he might never have another chance to spend so much time almost-alone with Manx. He was willing to miss the action for a chance to convince her that she’d be better off with him than with Owen.

  Most toms never got a chance to learn to be subtle in their affections.

  “Dad…” I began, but stopped when his eyes pleaded with me silently.

  “Faythe, in all honesty, you can’t fight with a broken arm, and we want to send someone the tabbies trust with them. That’s you. We’re not trying to get rid of you, or even protect you. We’re depending on you to protect them.”

  That was the truth; I could see that much. But it was only half the truth. He was trying to protect me.

  “They won’t be in any danger,” I insisted. “The birds are supposed to get us out of the way, anyway, so they’ll probably let us drive right off the ranch, completely unmolested.”

  My father nodded slowly. “That’s what we’re hoping. But just in case, we feel that you and Teo are best prepared to defend them.”

  Okay, he had a point there. Mateo was in love with Manx—at least, he thought he was—and I’d give my own life to keep Kaci safe. “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t try,” my father said evenly. So I nodded once. Decisively.

  “Fine. I’ll go.” I swear every eyebrow in the room shot up and a couple of jaws dropped. They didn’t have to look so surprised. I wasn’t such a shrew, was I? “Where are we going?”

  “If it wasn’t such a long drive—and through the free zone—we’d send you to Bert’s place.” Umberto Di Carlo ran his territory from a suburb north of Atlanta. But since Manx wasn’t a legal citizen, and had no ID, we couldn’t fly. “For now, head north to Henderson and get a room. We’ll be in touch with more concrete plans soon.” Fortunately, we all kept fully charged backup batteries for our cell phones, just in case. A lesson we’d learned the hard way.

  “Okay,” I said, and my father sighed in relief. I turned toward the hall to see Kaci standing in the doorway, clutching her votive. “Get packed, Whiskers. We’re going on a road trip.”

  Thirteen

  Manx was getting out of the shower when I got to my room, so I filled her in while she stood in the middle of my floor, her hair dripping on her robe as ever-leaping shadows moved over her face. She listened with her dark brows drawn low, her mouth a grim, straight line. The spark of irritation in her eyes said she’d rather stay and fight, but the twitch in her arm—as if she wished she were holding her baby—said she knew she could no longer protect her son on her own.

  I couldn’t stand to see her so…powerless. Dependent. And I knew well how close I’d come to sharing her fate. Or worse.

  Manx cleared her throat, and I made myself face her silent suffering. “Twenty minutes. I will pack.” Then she was gone.

  I shoved the essentials into my bag, then grabbed my candle and headed for our former guest room to check on Kaci. On the way, I stopped in the doorway to the guest bathroom, where Lucas sat on a bar stool brought in from the kitchen. My mother was wrapping the ankle he had propped on the closed toilet seat by the light of several candles, while Brian Taylor applied a clear, goopy ointment to my cousin’s shoulders.

  Which looked like they’d almost been ripped from his body.

  Three deep punctures pierced his skin below each collarbone where the talons had gripped him, and a fourth had apparently been driven through both his shoulder blades, completing the bird’s grip in the back.

  “Shit, Lucas!” I set my bag down in the hall and stepped into the bathroom for a closer look. My mother frowned over my profanity, but didn’t look up from her work.

  “Yeah.” Lucas glanced at his reflection, then down at me. Even seated on the stool, he was a good six inches taller than I was. “Looks nasty, huh?” He flinched as Brian worked on his left shoulder.

  “They carried Kaci a lot higher and farther than they did you. How come she doesn’t look like this?” Brian asked, dabbing more ointment on the torn skin with a cotton ball.

  “Because Kaci weighs about a third what Lucas weighs.” My mother finished the wrap and secured it with a metal butterfly-shaped clip. “So she had a lot less weight pulling against their talons.”

  “That, and they had her by the arms, instead of the shoulders,” I added. “And they were trying not to h
urt her, whereas their plans for Lucas likely included a forty-foot drop.”

  My mom stood and carefully lowered his foot to the floor. “You’ll have to Shift a couple of times before you…head outside.” Her face went white at the thought of the fight to come, but her expression remained resolved. Strong. “But clear that with the doc, first. Those shoulders may not want to support your weight for a while.”

  I shot my cousin a sympathetic look, then continued down the hall.

  But I only made it ten feet before Mateo’s voice caught my attention and I stopped outside Manx’s bedroom. I shouldn’t have listened. The closed door said they wanted privacy, and the anxious whispers only underlined that fact. But across the hall, Owen was sleeping off his latest dose of pain pills, and while Manx and Teo weren’t my business, they were my brother’s business. So I told myself I was listening for him.

  “…not safe here anymore, and our door is always open to you. You have choices, Mercedes. You don’t have to stay here just because this is where you landed, or because you feel obligated to them.”

  A dresser drawer slid shut. “I like it here,” Manx said, in her firm, lilted speech.

  “I know. I just want you to know that we’d be happy to have you. I’d be happy to have you. I can take care of you, Manx. You and Des.”

  Her footsteps paused, and I pictured her staring at the ground, clothes in hand as she weighed what was best for her son against what was best for her heart. “Yes,” she said finally. “I believe that you can.”

  That was all I could take.

  Yes, Manx had choices, but sometimes choosing for yourself is just as hard as accepting someone else’s choice for you.

  Twenty-four minutes later, we stood by the back door, the women at center stage. Kaci wore a stuffed backpack and cradled a sleeping Des, who was blissfully unaware of the danger we were about to carry him into. I had my old college book bag, and just behind us, Mateo Di Carlo carried Manx’s duffel over one shoulder, and his own smaller bag over the other.

  My heart ached as I hugged my mother. We weren’t sure whether or not she fell under Malone’s orders to spare the women, since she was beyond childbearing age and long-since married. My father had tried to talk her into going with us, just in case, but she’d stubbornly refused.