Stray

by Rachel Vincent

  Curious, I hung up my robe and dressed in a hurry, then had to stop and turn my shirt around because I’d put it on backward. I opened the door and scanned my bedroom. Marc was gone. Something was wrong. What now?

  Dread flooded my body, settling into my feet like lead and weighing them down. I could barely lift them, and I didn’t really want to. I didn’t want to know what was wrong, or who else had gone missing. There were only five tabbies left to choose from, unless the kidnapper had changed his pattern and gone after one of the dams, the Alphas’ wives.

  We were all in trouble if he had.

  There wasn’t an Alpha in the world who wouldn’t shred anything and anyone standing between him and his wife. Marc’s attachment to me paled in comparison with what most Alphas felt for their wives, which was probably why Daddy hadn’t punished him for what he’d done to Jace; Daddy understood. There was nothing my father wouldn’t do for my mother. Nothing at all.

  I crossed my bedroom slowly, reluctantly, and was reaching for the doorknob when it began to turn on its own. The door swung open. I stepped back, expecting to see Marc. It was Michael, looking just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

  “Marc said you locked yourself in the bathroom.”

  I stared up at him, trying with no luck to read his expression. “I’m out now.”

  “I see that. Can I come in?”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Sit down,” he said, coming in without permission. I stepped back to make room for him, but remained standing. He closed the door, and my heart began to pound.

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I took another step back, rubbing my elbows to have something to do with my hands. “Did Daddy send you?”

  Sympathy leaked into his eyes. “You know he did.”

  I nodded. Marc wouldn’t have left without my father’s permission and a really good reason. Something was wrong, and it had to do with the whispers coming from the living room and the woman crying in the kitchen. “What happened?”

  “Are you going to sit?”

  “No. Just tell me.” I was already tired of begging for answers. Why was everyone always beating around the proverbial bush, as if I were too delicate a flower to withstand whatever had gone wrong this time?

  Michael leaned against the door and took off his glasses. He exhaled softly as he inspected the lenses of his useless spectacles. “Vic just called. They found Sara.”

  They found her? That was good news, so why wouldn’t he put down the damn glasses and look at me?

  A chill raced through me, leaving my hands cold. I crossed the room to my dresser and grabbed a bottle of lotion. My hands shook as I squeezed a dollop onto my palm. I used the back of my wrist to flip the lid closed and tried to set the bottle down gently, but it fell over on its side. “Where?” I concentrated on smearing the lotion all over my arms, working it in especially well on my elbows.

  Michael settled his glasses onto his nose. “At home. The bastards propped her up against a tree in her own backyard, like a life-size doll.”

  My eyes darted to his face as I tried to make sense out of what he’d said. Propped her up? I could think of several reasons Sara might need to be propped up, but there was only one reason to bring her home, and it wasn’t because she’d said “pretty please.”

  Michael’s lips were still moving, but I couldn’t hear him. I glanced down at my arms, rubbing at the lotion in quick, spastic motions.

  “Are you listening to me, Faythe?” he asked, concern narrowing his eyes. He took three steps away from the door, then hesitated.

  “No, I’m not.” I reached across my dresser for more lotion and knocked over an unopened bottle of perfume my mother had given me for Christmas three years earlier. The glass didn’t break, which was fortunate, because I knew without ever having smelled it that the scent would give me a migraine. Nearly everything my mother picked out for me gave me a migraine. Or maybe they were tension headaches.

  “You okay?”

  I glanced at Michael, almost surprised to realize he was still there. “No. Are you?”

  He shook his head. “I guess no one’s okay right now.”

  Squeezing my eyes shut against tears, I turned the lotion over my palm and squeezed, but nothing came out. I shook it and squeezed again with the same result. Irritated, I turned the bottle right side up and glanced at the lid. Damn. Forgot to open it. “Do her parents know?”

  “Dad told them in private.” Michael shuffled his feet on the carpet, head bent to watch them. “Mom’s helping with Donna. They had to sedate her.”

  “What about Kyle?” I set the lotion back on my dresser, still unopened. I was moisturized enough.

  “Not yet. His flight lands in about half an hour, and Dad doesn’t want him to know until he gets here.”

  That was probably wise. Kyle would need privacy to voice his grief, and an airport was hardly private.

  “How…?” I closed my eyes, and tried again. “What did they do to her?”

  “No, Faythe,” Michael said, and I opened my eyes to see him frowning firmly. “You don’t need to hear the specifics. It won’t help.”

  “She was my friend, and I need to know.”

  He shook his head, slowly, and not unsympathetically. But he didn’t speak.

  “Please, Michael.” That worked. Or maybe he just finally understood that her death wouldn’t really sink in until I heard it out loud.

  “I don’t have many details,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of yet another dark suit.

  “Just tell me what you know.”

  He nodded, shuffling back to lean against the wall by the door, as if he needed support. “They beat the shit out of her. Hit her in the head with something hard. The whole back of her skull was smashed in.”

  My fists clenched around air, and his face blurred as tears distorted my vision. “You said ‘bastards.’ Plural. How do they know there was more than one?”

  Michael dropped his eyes and felt around for the doorknob, as if he’d rather leave than say anything more.

  “Please, Michael. I need to know.”

  Frown lines appeared around his mouth. “Vic said he could smell them on her. Three of them. All over her, Faythe. One was a stray, but the only scent he recognized was Sean’s.”

  Sean. I’d been right, for once. At least in part. But being right didn’t feel good. It felt like shit.

  “Her clothes,” I whispered, fingering the hem of my own green halter top. “Vic smelled them on her clothes, right?”

  He shook his head slowly, and this time his hand found the doorknob. “They didn’t find any clothes.”

  I couldn’t catch my breath. Air was there, but it wouldn’t fill my lungs. I opened my mouth, and that solved the problem. I’d forgotten to breathe.

  They’d raped her and beaten in the back of her skull. Then they’d taken her home for her brothers to find. It was just like the human girls, only worse. They’d gone through special efforts for Sara because she was one of them. One of us. She was one of ours, and they’d killed her. Then put her on display.

  Nausea gripped my stomach with an iron fist. My knees buckled. The room lurched, walls flying past my eyes. As I fell, Michael lunged for me. He got one arm beneath my shoulders before I hit the ground and gently eased me the rest of the way to the floor.

  My vision grayed, and I fought to remain conscious. Somehow I won. I was on the floor, but not by choice, and all I could see was my ceiling. Michael was right; I should have sat down.

  “Is she okay?” Marc asked from somewhere outside my field of vision. I hadn’t even heard him come in.

  “Stay with her,” Michael said, and his arms were gone. My door latch clicked softly and his footsteps faded as Marc’s face appeared over mine, eyebrows furrowed in concern.

  “Can you sit up?”

  I nodded and shoved away the hand he offered, pushing myself up to lean against the dresser. I hadn’t passed out, but I might as well have. Falling on th
e floor still made me look the part of the delicate woman they were always trying to protect. Why don’t you just buy a corset and a parasol while you’re at it, Faythe?

  “You heard about Sara?” I asked, rubbing the sore spot on the back of my head.

  “Yeah. Your dad told me.” He swiveled to join me against the dresser, scooting several inches away to avoid the handle poking into his back. “We’ll get them,” he said. “I promise you we’ll get Abby back.” His jaw tensed, the muscles clenching and releasing rhythmically.

  I trailed my finger along the pattern in the carpet, avoiding looking at him. “We may not have to. It looks like they’ll bring her home in a couple of days.”

  “Stop it, Faythe,” he snapped. Then his voice softened. “We’ll find her, and she’ll be fine.” He seemed to need me to believe it, so I nodded. But I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe in anything at all at that moment, except my own need for revenge, convulsing through me like an emotional seizure.

  “What are we going to do, Marc?”

  “Greg wants you to stay in your room until things calm down a little.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” I didn’t know how to explain it, and for the first time I viewed my lack of enforcer experience as a true drawback. I didn’t want to know what to do with my hands, or how to keep my mind occupied. I wanted to know what we were going to do. How were we going to find the monsters who killed Sara? And how were we going to make sure they didn’t kill Abby, too? I wanted practical information, a plan of action. I wanted him to tell me how I could make those sons of bitches pay for what they’d done. I wanted them to pay with their lives, but not before someone had a chance to slice them each open and—

  My face throbbed, the sudden pain breaking into my thoughts. Something sharp pricked my lip, and I tasted blood.

  Marc stiffened beside me, inhaling deeply. “Are you bleeding?”

  I touched my mouth with one finger. It came away bloody. “I think I bit my lip,” I said, but the words didn’t come out right. I ran my tongue carefully over my upper teeth, gasping to feel sharp, not quite unfamiliar points. “What the hell?” My hands hovered around my mouth, shaking, as I tried to figure out what to do with them.

  Marc sat up on his knees and took my chin in one hand, turning me to face him. I opened my mouth obligingly, in a grotesque imitation of a smile. His eyes widened, and he touched the point of one tooth gently.

  “Holy shit, Faythe. Your teeth Shifted. Just your teeth. No, wait.” He took my head in both hands and turned it toward the light. I winced, slamming my eyelids shut against the piercing glare, but he’d already seen what he wanted. “Your eyes Shifted, too.”

  “That’s impossible.” My mouth butchered the words. “My teeth feel different, but my vision hasn’t changed. I still see like a human.” I could barely understand what I’d said, so I expected Marc to look confused, but he didn’t. He just gestured toward the mirror.

  “See for yourself.”

  I stood in front of the dresser, staring at my face in the mirror. My mouth looked strange. My jaw was elongated, but only slightly. It might not even have been noticeable if not for the full-size canines growing down from my upper jaw and up from my lower one. I couldn’t even close my mouth.

  The effect was bizarre, and less than attractive. And pretty damn scary. I shivered, frightened by my own appearance.

  I glanced at Marc in the mirror, bracing for the disgust I was sure I’d see on his face, but it wasn’t there. He looked fascinated. He leaned forward to see the changes up close. Again. “How the hell did you do that?”

  “Don’t know.” Donno.

  “Look at your eyes.”

  I leaned toward the mirror until my nose almost touched the glass. He was right. They were different. But as with my jaw, the Shift was incomplete. The shape of my actual eyeballs hadn’t changed, but my pupils and irises had. Rather than the normal round shape of a human’s pupils, mine were vertically oriented ovals, with pointed edges at the top and bottom, instead of gentle curves. They were a cat’s pupils, and even as I watched, pulling back slightly from the mirror, they narrowed to slits, constricting the flow of light into my eyes.

  But my pupils weren’t the most amazing part. My irises were extraordinary. I’d always thought the color remained the same in either form, but I’d been wrong. I’d only seen my cat eyes two or three times, since a cat had few reasons to look at its own reflection. As a cat, I hadn’t been able to see the tiny yellow specks, or the subtle color variances in every shade of green. And I had certainly never noticed the dizzying pattern of striations echoing the shape of my iris.

  Yet for all that my eyes had changed, brightening the room almost unbearably, my vision stayed the same. I still saw the full spectrum of colors visible to the human eye, and objects were clear even at a distance. The odd combination of human and cat characteristics was disorienting, and brought to my mind images of the Egyptian goddess Bast, though I didn’t really resemble her with my human ears and nose. I had an urge to laugh at the absurdity of my own appearance.

  Marc didn’t find it the least bit funny. “Here. Try this.” He flipped the wall switch, and the light went out. It wasn’t a very good test of my night vision because the sun was still up, and light filtered into the room through the cracks in my blinds. But it was enough. In the pale evening shadows, I saw like a cat, in muted hues of blue and green, and a dozen shades of black, white and brown.

  “Cat vision,” I said, and again he understood me.

  “How did you do that?” he asked again.

  I shrugged, looking around my room in awe. “I was thinking about what I’d like to do to Sean and his accomplices, then my face ached and I tasted blood.”

  “I’ve never heard of a partial Shift.”

  “Me neither.” Eee-er. Though surely I wasn’t the first to have such an experience. I made a mental note to ask around about it once everything was back to normal. Assuming that ever happened.

  “Can you Shift them back?” Marc asked, still eyeing me in amazed curiosity.

  I shrugged again and closed my eyes in concentration. After a moment, it worked. My face ached again, in my jaw and behind my eyes, like a sinus headache. I ran my tongue over my teeth. They were back to normal.

  My reflection confirmed it. I looked human again. Completely.

  “Your father’s not going to believe this.”

  I cringed, trying to imagine surviving two interrogations in one day. And what if I couldn’t perform on command? I’d look like a fool. Or worse, like a spoiled child trying to soak up all the attention on a day of mourning.

  “I don’t want to tell him. Not right now,” I said. “He has enough to deal with as it is.” And it just seemed wise for me to stay safely below his radar until his temper cooled a bit. Or until I had a chance to swipe his key to the cage and have a copy made.

  Marc opened his mouth to argue, but I held up my hand to shush him, turning toward my bedroom window. Tires crunched over gravel, and I recognized the low rumble of a van’s engine. “Parker’s back with Kyle.”

  Sixteen

  Two car doors slammed, and more gravel crunched as Parker and Kyle approached the house. Marc and I slipped into the living room in time to see my father usher a bewildered Kyle through the foyer and into his office. For once, I was thankful for the extra-thick concrete walls. I could imagine Kyle’s reaction well enough without having to hear it.

  A plaintive stillness descended in the house around us as Sara’s death began to sink in. Only her mother’s disconsolate sobs marred the uneasy silence.

  The Alphas appeared composed and sedate in their conservative suits, glancing at each other with grave, knowing expressions. But their calm was like the visible portion of an apparently tranquil sea, hiding a churning, agitated current beneath its glass-smooth surface.

  They had come together to combine forces and expand the search for our missing tabbies. Now they had my description and Sean’s scent as a solid sta
rting place, and Sara’s murder to fuel their fury. When they found the captors—and find them they would—the Alphas would strike with the full power of the council, making an example out of Sean and his accomplices, the memory of which would echo forever in werecat lore.

  As stunned as I was by Sara’s murder, dark anticipation thrilled through me at the prospect of a large-scale hunt, even though I knew better than to get my hopes up. My father would never let me help.

  Umberto Di Carlo left for the airport shortly after Kyle arrived, without having said a word to anyone that I heard. He was going home to arrange his daughter’s burial. Donna wanted to go with him, but she was in no shape to travel. I never found out what they used to sedate her, but half an hour after her husband left, she sat in the kitchen staring at my mother with unfocused eyes and a gaping mouth. Daddy promised to send her home the next day, under escort, but no one volunteered for the job. He chose Michael, who accepted the assignment with his usual stoic dignity.

  The rest of the evening passed in a blur of front-door chimes and hushed voices, with all the quiet dread of a wake, because that’s essentially what it was. A bitter, angry wake. The Alphas sipped Daddy’s brandy in small groups in the office and the living room, whispering to each other about the tragedy of a young life wasted. Sara’s mother and my aunt Melissa sobbed at the kitchen table, while my mother and two other dams kept their teacups full. And little Nikki Davidson, only eight years old, sat in one corner of the living room for hours, her face blank with shock. I was pretty sure she’d overheard more of the details than she should have, but I had no idea what to do about it. So, like everyone else, I did nothing.

  People shot me nervous glances every few minutes, but no one approached me. They were all thinking what I was trying hard not to admit to myself: that if tabbies were being targeted, I could be next. But I wasn’t worried. They’d have to get through a houseful of Alphas first, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

  When the whispers and stares grew old, I settled into an overstuffed armchair near the living-room window, turning my back to the crowd as I watched the sun set. I curled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, slumping my shoulders to look unapproachable, in case anyone got brave. It worked, and everyone left me alone. In fact, after a while, they seemed to forget I was even there, just like they’d forgotten about Nikki. Except for Marc. He was still on Faythe-sitting duty, and he kept one eye on me at all times. But at least he was courteous enough to do it from across the room.