I would have traded almost anyone’s life for Kaci’s. Even my own. And Lance was guilty.
“It was Lance Pierce,” I said finally, watching Councilman Pierce in my peripheral vision.
Sure enough, he leaped to his feet, eyes red and damp, face flaming with fury. “You have no proof of that! None!”
That part was unscripted, obviously, but not unanticipated, and it played right into our hands.
“Councilman Pierce, I’m truly sorry to have to tell you this, but we do have proof.” With that, I pulled the clear plastic bag from my inner jacket pocket and stepped forward to set it on the table, where Pierce stared at it like it was a grenade I’d just pulled the pin from. “This is the evidence Brett offered in exchange for sanctuary. Unfortunately, he died less than an hour after we spoke to him, before he had a chance to retrieve it or leave the territory. So we had to go in and get it ourselves.”
There. I’d just admitted to trespassing, but that was a calculated risk we’d already decided on. There was no way around admitting where we got the feather, and if our plan worked, Malone would never be in the position to do anything about it.
Pierce stared at the bag and reached out for it twice. Yet both times, he pulled his hand back as if the plastic had shocked him. He couldn’t do it. But Nick Davidson could. He picked up the bag and opened it, then sniffed carefully at the contents.
His eyes widened, and he glanced solemnly at Pierce. Then he nodded, and Pierce’s face crumbled. “No…”
Having presented my testimony and evidence, I went back to my seat, sparing a single raised eyebrow at Colin Dean, who looked like he wanted to rip my head from my shoulders.
Davidson passed the bag down, and one by one, the Alphas smelled the feather. All of them, including Malone, who already knew what he’d find, and my father and Di Carlo, who’d already smelled it.
“Calvin, this is pretty convincing evidence,” Blackwell said, when the feather landed on the table in front of him after making a complete circuit. “More than enough to warrant a trial. I’m afraid we’re going to have to postpone the vote….”
“No.” Malone stood again, jawline firm, hands steady on the surface of the table. “This is completely circumstantial. It proves nothing. We don’t know how or when Lance’s blood got on this feather, or even whose feather this is. For all we know, the thunderbirds could have dipped it in Lance’s blood after they killed him. We have a responsibility to uphold justice, and this is not justice. My word holds just as much weight as hers.”
Malone paused to shoot me a calm, cold glance. “More, considering that I represent an entire Pride and I’ve never been convicted of a crime, neither of which can be said about Faythe Sanders. And my sworn word is that none of this is true. I never met with a thunderbird, nor did I sell out one of my fellow Alphas and his men. I don’t know where they really got this feather, but I suspect it was soaked in Lance Pierce’s blood when a Flight of thunderbirds slaughtered him for a crime he didn’t commit, which they could never have done if she—” the look he shot at me that time could have burned right through me “—hadn’t handed him over as a scapegoat. But regardless, we can’t in good conscience accuse an upstanding enforcer—a dead enforcer, who can’t be here to defend himself—of murder. I won’t do it, and I’ll be sorely disappointed in any of you who fall for such an obvious attempt to railroad this council and postpone the vote we all came here for.”
Blackwell stood, leaning on his cane. “Calvin, you can’t deny that this evidence carries some weight.”
“Some, yes,” Malone nodded gravely. “But not enough. It’s circumstantial evidence at best, presented by a girl of questionable morals who’s already been convicted of a capital crime. We cannot afford to take her word at face value, and the only way to verify it is with testimony from the thunderbird I supposedly dealt with.”
My temper flared over the “questionable morals” dig, but I couldn’t fight that one without making a fool of myself and further humiliating Marc. And there was a bigger issue at stake.
The thunderbirds could only be contacted in person, and even if we had that kind of time to spare, I had no reason to believe the birds would actually testify. They didn’t give a damn about our political turmoil, or any werecat injustices that didn’t directly affect them.
There had to be someone else who could back me up. Someone whose word the council would have to accept. But my father hadn’t actually heard what Brett said over the phone. The only ones who had were Marc and Jace, and Malone would no more accept their testimony than mine. He’d remind everyone that the council had yet to recognize Marc as a Pride cat since his return, and if I brought Jace before them, Malone would call him biased and have the perfect excuse to call me a whore in front of the entire assemblage.
“If what Ms. Sanders says is true, surely she can present this thunderbird for us to question. Right?” Malone looked at me expectantly, and to my complete outrage, I realized that people were listening to him. A couple of the Alphas—Davidson and Gardner—seemed unsure of what to believe, but Mitchell and Pierce aimed incensed glares my way.
I was at a complete loss for words. If I admitted that the thunderbirds probably wouldn’t testify, we could kiss the case against Malone goodbye. But if I promised them something I couldn’t deliver, I’d be blowing another huge hole in my own credibility. So I said the only thing that felt true beneath so many restrictions. “I can try.”
“Good.” Malone gave a perfunctory nod. “We look forward to that testimony, at the earliest possibly occasion. But in the meantime, I see no reason to put off the vote based on unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, circumstantial evidence against an Alpha who doesn’t have a single blemish on his record.”
“But…” I stammered, my hands already going cold from shock. In all our strategizing, we’d never thought Malone would be able to just ignore our charges and carry on. And our evidence wasn’t uncorroborated. But Marc and Jace weren’t suitable witnesses, and no one else had heard Brett’s phone call, or Lance’s confession.
Except Kaci…
No. I couldn’t drag her into this. She was already terrified of the council in general, and Malone in particular, and there was no way they’d let me sit with her while she testified. They probably wouldn’t even let me be in the same room. And on her own, she was too easy to intimidate.
I couldn’t sacrifice her mental and emotional health, even for this.
I shot a frustrated, helpless glance at my father, wondering if he knew what I was thinking, and he turned to Blackwell.
“Paul, I can personally testify that our prisoner told us that a member of our own species blamed the thunderbird death on our Pride.”
“Yes, but did he actually name this informant?” Blackwell asked, looking both hopeful and grim.
“No, but the Flight later confirmed Malone’s identity to Faythe.”
Blackwell frowned, and his forehead crinkled. And I knew what was coming before his mouth even opened. “I’m sorry, but he’s right. If you’re basing your charges on circumstantial evidence and uncorroborated secondhand information, we need to have this evidence and hearsay authenticated before it can be accepted.” Blackwell’s scowl deepened, as if the words tasted bad in his mouth. However, he would follow the letter of the law. It was his crutch in the face of uncertain moral terrain, but it crippled him in the field of justice. “We have no choice but to proceed with the vote as scheduled.”
Seven
I stood slowly, fear and anger warring inside me. I couldn’t make my hands unclench at my sides, but my voice and my face were under control. Even-tempered and respectful, at least from the outside. “Councilman Blackwell, please reconsider.”
“You no longer have the floor!” Mitchell snapped, glaring at me from across the room.
“Neither do you.” When the first unruly tendril of my temper began to uncoil, I grasped at it desperately, trying to keep it in check. To keep my mouth from digging a hole my father couldn’t c
limb out of. I turned back to Blackwell, ignoring the complete outrage written in every line on Mitchell’s face. “Councilman, you know these charges have merit. You were there when the thunderbirds attacked. You know we’re telling the truth.”
Blackwell’s gaze hardened beneath wiry gray eyebrows, and I realized I’d made a mistake, reasonable though my presentation was. I’d questioned his judgment in front of the entire council.
“What I know,” Blackwell said, his creaky voice steadier than I’d heard it in years, “is that you’ve had your say and I’ve made my decision. This council is not unmoved by impassioned pleas, but neither is it governed by them. If we don’t abide by our own rules, we will fall into chaos. Little better than the lawless warlords to our south. When you bring eyewitness testimony, we will hear it, and we’ll decide then whether or not to try Councilman Malone on the charges your Pride has brought forth. Do you understand?”
I understood. I also understood what Blackwell was not saying—that he was sacrificing truth and justice to preserve order in a legal system he would no longer be in the position to enforce. For all his ideals, Blackwell was about to lose his position of authority, and if Malone was voted in with enough support, he would be able to completely restructure the council.
By the time we came back with a thunderbird to testify—assuming that ever happened—Malone might simply refuse to hear the testimony. If he retained the support of all of his current allies, his power would be virtually limitless. He’d be more of a dictator than a council chair.
Especially if Blackwell insisted on remaining neutral. By refusing to accept our evidence, he was creating the very monster he was trying to destroy. How could he not see that?
But for the moment, there was nothing I could do. Nothing any of us could do, without declaring war right then and there. And that would have been beyond foolish. We were outnumbered by our enemies, and most of our troops were hundreds of miles away, at the ranch.
My father watched me intently, but sent me no signal. No silent instructions for my next move. He was as frustrated as I was. Maybe more so. So I could only nod and return to my seat, in spite of every impulse urging me to keep talking until they all saw reason.
On my left, Colin Dean spread his legs to take up as much room as possible in his folding chair. His thigh met mine, and I wanted to reopen his newly healed scar with my bare fingernails.
I started to scoot away from him, then realized that would mean scooting closer to Alex Malone, who’d been directly involved in Ethan’s death, his own brother’s murder, and the new scar bisecting my cheek. So I could only sit there, fuming and grinding my teeth, trying to ignore the unwelcome warmth leaching into my leg from Dean’s as Councilman Blackwell called for the official vote.
It would be an open, vocal vote, for something this big. Each Alpha’s decision would go down on record. We might have actually pulled it off, if they’d used closed ballots. If the weaker of Malone’s allies—Nick Davidson seemed less than solidly on board—didn’t have to face him during the procedure, or admit that they’d switched sides.
Or if Blackwell had voted. But he stuck to his guns, shaky though his aim was.
One by one, they went around the table, and each Alpha said a name. My father and Malone were excluded, and Blackwell removed himself from the proceedings.
The vote started with Milo Mitchell, whose son Kevin had been exiled by my father, then killed by Marc. “My vote goes to Calvin Malone.” No surprise there.
Next came Umberto Di Carlo, across the table from Mitchell. “I support Greg Sanders.”
Then Jerald Pierce, who had two sons—Parker and Holden—in the south-central Pride, and had just lost his oldest, Lance, to the thunderbird justice system. “Malone.” I wanted to shake him and ask how he could side with one son over the others. Especially considering that Lance’s cowardice had cost two other lives, and almost cost many more.
After Pierce came my uncle Rick Wade, my mother’s brother. “Greg Sanders has my vote, and my unyielding support.” I wanted to cry.
Wes Gardner, whose brother Jamey had been killed in our territory by Manx, voted with a single word. “Malone.”
Aaron Taylor, whose daughter we’d saved from being kidnapped and sold in the Amazon, showed his loyalty by voting for my father.
And finally came Nick Davidson, and for a moment, I thought he’d falter. I thought he was seeing the light at the last minute. Then he closed his eyes and sighed. And said, “Calvin Malone.”
And just like that, justice died without so much as a whimper of pain. Four votes to three. If Blackwell had voted, he could have forced a tie and bought us time. But he went with his conscience, and as inconvenient as that turned out for the south-central Pride, a part of me respected him for sticking to his guns, regardless of the consequences.
Yet there was another part of me that wanted to choke him where he stood.
And suddenly I understood something my father had been trying to teach me for almost a year: sometimes you have to do the wrong thing for the right reason in order to truly make a difference.
I’d come close to understanding that with Lance Pierce, when we’d had to turn him over to save Kaci. But in a span of ten minutes, by simply refusing to act, Paul Blackwell had driven home a point my father hadn’t been able to make me see in all my time as an enforcer.
The world isn’t black and white, good or bad. The battles that make a real difference are fought in the murky area in between, where the greater good requires brutal sacrifice. Where both the means and the ends are just shadows in a featureless gray landscape.
And that was the death of my idealism.
Jace followed Marc out the front door by less than a second, and they glanced around in unison, both looking for me. Temporarily united in their common concern. They found me leaning against the wall to the left of the front porch, and their identical expressions of relief would have been funny, if we hadn’t just seen justice strangled by the steel-gloved fist of oppression.
Melodramatic? Maybe. But also accurate. Calvin Malone couldn’t even define integrity, much less uphold it.
“You okay?” Jace jogged down the steps first, but neither made any move to touch me, so we stood there like the first three kids at a junior high dance, unsure who should make the first move.
“No. That did not just happen.” I sniffled in the cold.
Jace shoved both hands into his pockets, probably to keep from reaching for me. We all needed someone to either hold or punch, but neither of them would cause any more trouble, after what we’d just witnessed. “No one’s less thrilled about seeing Calvin in charge than I am.”
“Don’t bet on that,” Marc mumbled, leaning against the cabin wall beside me, only a few inches away this time. “His first act as council chair will be finding a way to get rid of me.”
“That won’t be easy.” Jace sat on the top step, facing us. “This is a pretty damn hostile takeover, and he’s gonna have Faythe’s dad, her uncle, Bert Di Carlo, and Aaron Taylor fighting him every step of the way. Which means that for even a simple majority—that vital six out of ten votes—he’s gonna need Blackwell.”
Marc kicked a pinecone across the dead grass. “Paul Blackwell isn’t going to lift a finger to keep me here, even knowing what Malone tried to do to us.”
“Yes, he will,” I insisted, grasping for the silver lining surely edging the storm cloud that had just rolled over us. “Blackwell may not be openminded or progressive, but if Malone forgets to cross one single T, the old man will vote against him. In fact, I bet Blackwell will be looking for legitimate reasons to go anti-Malone.”
Marc shrugged. “So Malone will do what he always does—hide his personal agenda within some technically valid, if morally repugnant, new proposition. Either way, he’s going to make our lives hell.”
“I know.” There was no way around that. And I’d be next on his list of lives to ruin. Experience had already shown us that Malone was willing to do anything
to marry off as many of his sons as possible into Prides where they could later become Alphas, thus putting a considerable piece of the territorial pie under his own paw. He’d already mentally paired me with Alex, his oldest son, now that Brett was dead. And I had no doubt that he’d use our trespass onto his territory to get rid of Marc and try to blackmail me into a position that would better benefit him.
Jace would be harder to dispose of. He was neither a stray nor a shrew, and he wasn’t technically guilty of trespassing, because he’d been invited by his mother, to mourn his brother’s death with the rest of the family.
But we all knew Malone would kill Jace if the opportunity presented itself. After killing his own firstborn son, taking out the stepson he’d never liked in the first place wouldn’t even faze him. Especially if it could be written off as self-defense, or somehow otherwise justifiable.
Jace sighed, and his warm puff of breath was visible in the glow from the porch light. “There has to be a way around this. We’re screwed so long as Cal’s in charge.”
“So let’s get him fired,” I whispered, to guard against eavesdroppers. I pushed myself away from the wall, clinging to the only bit of hope I could see on the horizon, far-fetched though it was. “Let’s go back to the Flight and snag a witness. Now, before Malone has a chance to come up with some reason to outlaw thunderbird testimony. We already know Blackwell’s not going to support him on that one.”
“But do we really want to squander our best asset on testimony?” Marc asked, his voice as soft as mine.
The thunderbirds owed me a favor for saving the life of one of their young when Lance Pierce took her hostage in a last-ditch effort to save himself. And they were eager to remove themselves from my debt. But we’d been saving that favor, planning to ask for their services as air support in our inevitable, imminent war against Malone. The thunderbirds were ferocious adversaries, and we had yet to come up with a way to defend against attacks from on high, short of shooting them out of the sky. But if we called in my favor for testimony instead, we’d lose our only real advantage against the Appalachian Pride and its allies.
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