Lion's Share

by Rachel Vincent

  “No arguments here. I’ll keep you updated.”

  “Good.” I hung up the phone as Teo stomped up the stairs, carrying a manila envelope stuffed with pictures from the basement. “Did you hear that? This is officially a need-to-know situation, and no one but you, me, Warner and Lucas needs to know.”

  “But Jace—”

  “I’d do the same for any of you. We protect our own.”

  “She’s not yours anymore,” he pointed out gently as I reached for the backdoor knob. “You kicked her out of the Pride, remember?”

  “That does not mean she isn’t mine.”

  SIXTEEN

  Abby

  The only unlit entrance to the dorm had an actual knob rather than a lever or a push bar, and my paws couldn’t operate it. Cursing silently, I huddled in the bushes next to the entrance, in the rain, and shifted back into human form. If anyone had been walking by¸ they would have heard a strange series of gristly pops and animalistic moans as my body rearranged itself, sucking fur back into my pores and spitting red curls out of my scalp. Shortening my feet and retracting my claws.

  Though it took more effort than simply letting the process happen, I kept my feline eyes, as well as some small internal bit of cat hearing, because those would give me most of a cat’s sensory advantages in my human body. The best of both worlds. And I was going to need every advantage I could get.

  Naked, shivering, and instantly soaked again, as soon as I stepped out of the building’s shelter, I jogged up the narrow steps and through the back door into the laundry room, hoping someone my size had left something—anything—in one of the dryers. In what was likely the only stroke of luck I’d ever have again, I found a load of Robyn’s workout clothes in the last dryer on the left. Her yoga pants and sports bra were only a size too large.

  The minute I spent pulling them over wet skin covered in chill bumps was well worth it.

  Barefoot and still shivering, I jogged past the lobby, the main desk, and the administrative office, headed toward the stairs at the end of the hall. My stomach was cramping with hunger and my head swam as I fought disorientation from shifting twice—one hell of a metabolic workout—without eating. And I couldn’t make my teeth stop chattering, no matter how hard I clenched my jaw.

  I flinched when the door to the third floor landing squealed, even though I’d known it would. Darren would probably be able to hear that squeal from inside my dorm room, but he’d have no idea I wasn’t just another student staying on campus for the holiday.

  I jogged silently down the hall, slowing as I approached my door, and only then realized that if the door was locked, I’d actually have to knock to be let in. I’d left my keys in my bag, back at the lodge.

  Holding my breath, I pressed my internally shifted ear to the door and mentally catalogued the sounds from inside. Bedsprings groaned. The bathroom door squealed open, then partially shut, and water ran in the sink.

  I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer that I wasn’t too late. That Darren wasn’t cleaning himself up after having slaughtered my best friend and roommate. Then I turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  Robyn lay on her back on her unmade bed with her arms at her sides. Her eyes were closed. Blood was smeared across her lips and dripping down one cheek toward the pillow. She wasn’t moving.

  Grief and denial slammed into me like a blow straight to my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I was too late. Darren had killed her, and if I left her body there, he would dismember it and hang her head from…

  Wait, why would he kill her in human form? According to Hargrove, unless her teeth had been shifted when she died, her human head would be worthless to mount, and presumably horrifically incriminating, should it ever be seen by the police. But Robyn hadn’t yet mastered any form of partial-shift. She’d hardly been able to control the normal full-body shift until recently.

  Either way, dead or alive, I couldn’t leave her.

  A glance at the bathroom showed that the door was only open a crack, and though I could see Darren’s shadow moving inside, I couldn’t see the psycho himself. Which meant he probably couldn’t see me.

  Heart pounding, I crept silently across the room, listening for any sign that he might emerge. I was two feet from the bed when I realized Robyn’s chest was rising and falling in tiny but steady increments.

  She was still alive.

  My pulse rushed with sudden hope—and desperate urgency—and my head swam. I glanced at the bathroom door again and saw a sliver of Darren’s arm bleeding into the sink as he ran water over an open wound. If he leaned back, he’d see me. But I was out of options and out of time.

  I lunged across the last two feet of carpet and almost tripped over a strange black bag near the foot of the bed. It had to belong to Darren, but there was no time to investigate, so I stepped over the bag and slid one arm beneath Robyn’s neck and one beneath her knees, praying she wouldn’t suddenly wake up and start screaming. But she was out cold.

  The room spun around me when I lifted her, and though that should have been an effortless task for a shifter, it nearly cost me my consciousness. I was only operating at about half of my potential strength and speed, thanks to hunger and exhaustion. If I didn’t find food soon, Darren would gain a second unconscious shifter through no effort of his own.

  Blinking to keep the world in focus, I carried Robyn to the ajar door and pushed it open with my foot. My vision began to darken in the hall, and one knee tried to fold beneath me. Even if I made it to the stairwell, I’d never make it down the steps without passing out, and the subsequent fall could kill us both.

  I would have to hide.

  Instead of turning right, toward the stairs, I turned left and headed down the empty hall as quickly as I could, counting the doors as I went. When Darren discovered her missing, if he didn’t assume we’d gone down the steps, he’d start checking dorm rooms, beginning with the closest. I would walk until I couldn’t walk any farther. Or until he came out of the bathroom.

  I’d passed seven doors—three on the right, four on the left—when the bathroom faucet stopped running. Shit! I froze, eyes wide, heart slamming against my sternum. Then I set Robyn on the floor next to the nearest room.

  Down the hall, the bathroom door squealed open as I grabbed the doorknob in front of me and twisted with both hands. The lock snapped, and the door swung open almost silently. I pulled Robyn inside by both arms, then glanced around. The room Julie Cass had shared with a girl from Montana was empty now, and her closet door stood open. I hauled Robyn inside and propped her against the back wall, then tucked her legs inside, knees bent. As I was backing out of the closet, I noticed something sticking out from under her thigh. Her cell had fallen out of her pocket!

  I grabbed her phone and stood, and the room blurred across my vision as I closed the closet door. I leaned with one hand against the wall until my focus steadied, and I knew that hiding Robyn had been the right thing to do. But if I hid with her, Darren would find us, eventually. The only way to stop him from finding and killing Robyn would be to lead him away from her.

  And call for backup.

  If I called Jace, I’d have to tell him about Robyn. If I didn’t, she and I would almost certainly wind up stuffed and mounted wherever Officer Darren kept his grisly keepsakes, now that his lake house had been discovered. But would calling him do me any good?

  Lucas had no doubt reported me missing, and Jace was probably already on his way to Lexington. He wouldn’t know I was on campus, but he might be close enough to show up soon.

  Though maybe only soon enough to stop Darren from carting off our corpses.

  From down the hall came the familiar squeal of my bathroom door, followed by sudden silence. “Robyn!” Darren roared, and I cringed. “How the hell…”

  I sank into a squat behind one of the beds, my arm resting on the bare mattress, and ran one finger over the cell screen to wake it up. Fortunately, the phone wasn’t locked. Even more fortunately, Jace’s was o
ne of only two numbers I had memorized other than my own, because every Pride member was required to know the Alpha’s number.

  I dialed, and while the phone rang, I listened to Darren’s footsteps as he stomped into the hall. When they got noticeably softer, I realized he’d headed for the stairs. Please go downstairs… Please go downstairs…

  “Hello?” Jace said into my ear, and I exhaled with relief. “Abby?” He’d recognized me based on nothing more than the sound of my breath.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I need help,” I whispered.

  “You’re at your dorm?”

  “Not in my room, but on the third floor.” Had he figured it out, or did he just think I’d come for my stuff? “Darren’s here. I can’t explain everything now, but Robyn’s unconscious. She doesn’t have any head wounds, so I think he gave her—”

  “Robyn!” Darren roared again, and I squeezed my eyes closed. His voice was louder. He hadn’t taken the stairs.

  “I’m hiding, but he’s getting closer, Jace, and she’s helpless. I can’t carry her anymore, so I’m going to draw him away from her, but if you could—”

  “Don’t move. We’re already on the way,” he said into the phone, then something scratched against the receiver and his voice was muffled. “Faster, Teo, she’s—”

  “You don’t want to hide from me, pussycat!” Darren shouted. Wood splintered and something thunked against a wall.

  “He’s kicking in doors. I have to go. But—”

  “Abby, do not use yourself as bait. Just stay put, and we’ll—”

  “Jace, I’m so sorry. I know I screwed everything up. In case I never get another chance to say it…I love you too.”

  “No!” he shouted into the phone, and the first tear ran down my face. “Wait and tell me in person.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Abby!” he yelled. “Do not hang up the phone. That’s an order!”

  “I don’t work for you anymore. I love you, Jace.”

  “Ab—”

  I hung up the phone, but I could still hear his voice in my head, until Darren grunted from down the hall and kicked in another door.

  Trembling, I stood and shoved Robyn’s phone into my back pocket. Darren was a cop. He had a gun and some kind of drug. That’s what I’d smelled in my dorm room. That’s what was in the black bag. My human corpse would do him no good, so he would probably shoot to wound, until he could try to make me shift.

  Shifters are strong and fast, but we can’t outrun bullets. Yet I had to try.

  I crossed the room and pressed my ear against the door, listening as Darren kicked his way into another room. He was at least three doors down. Five, if he was hitting the rooms across the hall as well. When I heard the soft squeal of another door being opened, I realized he was checking the closets. Which meant he was no longer in the hall.

  I quietly opened Julie Cass’s door and glanced into the hall. Four rooms were open, and by my best guess, Darren was in the closest of them. I sucked in a deep breath and closed the door softly behind me, then headed toward the stairwell in the opposite direction. I ran as hard as I could, gripping the slick floor with my toes, my legs pushing me faster than any human could have run, my arms pumping at my sides for balance.

  The hall swam around me and my vision began to darken, but I kept running, blinking tears from my eyes, wiping sweat from my forehead.

  Hinges squealed, and boots clomped into the hall behind me. “Hey!” Darren shouted. “Abby!” His footsteps stopped and that scared me worse than being chased, because that meant he was aiming.

  The stairwell was fifteen feet away. Then ten. I heard an odd click, like plastic being broken, then a metallic scraping sound. Five feet from the stairwell, I heard a soft thwup, and pain bit into my left thigh. Three steps after that, I grabbed the doorknob and twisted. I pulled the dart from my leg as the stairwell door swung closed behind me, then I was running again, up the steps instead of down, because I was less likely to fall that way.

  Heart racing, I gripped the rail. Two steps later, I stumbled and bruised my shin on a metal-edged tread.

  “You may as well give up, pussycat!” Darren called through the door as his boots stomped closer. “You’ve only got minutes at that dosage. Maybe less, since you’re a tiny thing.”

  I ran faster, my pulse racing, my head spinning, and by some miracle I reached the fourth-floor landing before he burst into the stairwell below me. But I couldn’t climb any longer without passing out.

  “Where’d you stash her?” Darren clomped up the stairs as I threw open the door to the fourth floor. That was as high as I could get, without heading to the roof. “You know I’ll find her.”

  The hallway warped and stretched in front of me, like a carnival mirror maze, and I wasn’t sure whether that was from the tranquilizer or exhaustion.

  “Not long now!” Darren pushed open the door behind me, but he wasn’t running anymore, and he wasn’t shooting either. He knew he didn’t have to.

  When I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the stairs at the other end of the long hallway, I stopped and grabbed the nearest doorknob. Twisting it took too much effort, and the click of the broken lock sounded distant, as if I were hearing it through a tunnel. I pushed the door open, listening to the steady rhythm of Darren’s footsteps at my back. My legs folded beneath me just inside the room.

  Gravity ripped the doorknob from my grip as the floor flew up to meet me, and the side of my skull hit the linoleum with a sickening thud.

  A shadowy form appeared over me as I blinked sluggishly, struggling to stay conscious.

  “Hello, Abby. I’m officer Darren Park. What do you say we get to know each other?” He lifted me, and as my head fell back against his arm, the world went dark.

  “Aaaaabby… Wake up, now.” The voice was familiar, and just hearing it made my stomach churn, but at first, I couldn’t quite remember why. “We have a lot to talk about.” Something patted my cheek, and my eyes flew open. Darren’s face hovered over me, and the memories snapped back into place.

  Robyn.

  Dart gun.

  Hunters.

  Nonononono!

  I tried to push him away, but my arms wouldn’t move. Neither would my legs. I couldn’t sit up or roll over. I couldn’t move at all except to breathe and to blink. I was frozen. Paralyzed. At the mercy of a psychotic hunter with a badge.

  A cold draft stirred my hair from the gap at the bottom of the window. My bare feet were warm from the heating vent over the end of the bed. I couldn’t move, yet I could still feel everything.

  Terror surged through me, and my chest felt too tight. I couldn’t breathe. There was nothing covering me but borrowed clothes, yet I felt a brutal pressure crushing me with the weight of my own nightmares. My memories.

  I had to move.

  “Where’s Robyn?” Darren sat next to me, and when the mattress sank beneath his weight, panic shot up my spine like a flame fed with fuel. I recognized the creak of the springs. I knew every lump and crack in the plaster overhead. I knew that drafty window. He’d carried me back to my dorm room.

  I was going to die in my own bed.

  “I’ve checked every room on this floor,” he continued. “If I have to go look for her again, you’ll both die slowly and painfully.”

  Wait, he’d already looked for Robyn but hadn’t found her? Where the hell was she? Was this some kind of trick?

  My pulse thudded in my ears. How long had I been out?

  It would have taken several minutes to check every room on the third floor, and Jace had said he was on the way. Could I stall long enough for help to arrive?

  “You may not be able to move yet, but you’ll feel every slice.” Darren held up a knife, and fresh panic tangled my thoughts.

  “Some kind of miracle drug, huh?” he said. “You’d be surprised what can be removed from the evidence room without anyone noticing. After you and Robyn took out Steve and the others, I realized they’d underestimat
ed you. I won’t be making the same mistake.”

  My body was frozen, but my mind raced. Robyn must have crawled out of Julie’s closet while Darren was chasing me on the fourth floor. Which meant that her paralytic had at least partially worn off. Which made sense. Darren was a cop, not a doctor, but he’d know that an overdose could kill, and that it’d be safer to err on the side of caution. At least until he had whatever he wanted from his prey.

  He’d been washing a fresh bite wound when I’d found him, and if she’d just bitten him, she couldn’t have been paralyzed for long. If her paralytic had worn off that quickly, mine probably would too. If I could keep him talking until that happened, I might actually have a chance to escape.

  Darren stood and the mattress squealed again, but I breathed easier, thanks to the new distance between us. “Where is she, Abby? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

  How was I supposed to—

  But when my mouth opened, I understood that my tongue was as functional as my eyes. “Fuck you,” I croaked, thanks to my dry throat, and that’s when I realized that pissing off the guy with the knife might not be the best idea.

  Darren bent toward me, holding the knife up, and my heart thumped so hard the whole room seemed to shake with each beat.

  “Hargrove’s dead.”

  Darren blinked, and I relished his shock. The only way to ward off his slice-’n’-dice routine would be to keep him off balance.

  “I ripped his throat open and watched him bleed out on the floor.” I tried to move my right hand, but nothing happened. I’d never felt so helpless in my life. The only weapon available to me was my mouth, and I had no choice but to use it. “I hope you have another sick taxidermy station set up somewhere, because your lake cottage is crawling with shifters, and your expert is rotting in a black plastic bag like the human garbage he is.”

  “You’re lying.” His grip tightened on the handle of the knife. For a second, I was afraid he’d just stab me and be done with it.

  Dial it back, Abby.