Stray

by Rachel Vincent

  Careful not to use my injured left arm, I stood and stepped up to the bars. “I thought you were useful,” I said, glancing at Abby. She was watching my brother through red-rimmed eyes, as if her life depended on his answer. Maybe it did. Maybe mine did, too.

  Ryan stood up in front of me, his shoulders slumped in resignation. “Once he’s out of the council’s reach, he won’t need me, and I’m sure I won’t live an hour past that point.” He ran a hand through sandy hair and met my eyes. “See, you’re not the only one with problems.”

  Biting my lip, I declined to point out that he could always run. He could leave while Miguel was gone, and be out of the country before they even realized he’d left the house.

  I didn’t say it because I was afraid he’d take my suggestion if he thought it was possible. I was afraid he’d leave us, and as furious as I was at him, he was better company than Miguel. And Eric. And Sean, if I wanted to be honest. Sean sounded like he might crack up at any moment, and the only thing more dangerous than an angry cat was a crazy one.

  “Why would he be out of the council’s reach, Ryan?” My voice was low and dangerous. I heard it but I couldn’t help it.

  His face filled with scorn, and I blinked. That was new. “Oh, come on, Faythe. Did you really think he was going to keep you here forever? You’re smart. Surely you knew this was only temporary.” In fact, I had, but I bit my tongue and stared at him, hoping for more information. “He has a buyer, Faythe. Some Amazon Alpha who wants a mate and is willing to pay big.”

  My hands fell into my lap, ice cold, while my brain raced fast enough to give me an instant headache. Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. It was my worst nightmare. Literally. And in that moment I realized something important: I knew more about Miguel’s plans than Ryan did.

  My brother was right about one thing: he really had been forced into working for Miguel, at least according to his own skewed perspective. Ryan didn’t have the mind of a criminal. A lazy, naive coward, yes. But not a criminal. That bad-guy handicap had kept him from seeing the truth about Miguel’s scheme.

  Miguel didn’t just have one buyer waiting in South America. Catching us was too much trouble for anything on that small a scale. He had to have at least two buyers, and maybe three or four. He’d used Sean to go after Sara, not because he wanted Sara in particular, but because Sean did, and Miguel needed help. But he never planned to let Sean keep her. Sara had been bought and paid for before Miguel ever crossed the U.S. border. So had Abby, and the third girl. And so had I.

  If I was right, Miguel would use Ryan, Eric and Sean to get us to Brazil. Then he would kill them, probably with the aid of the buyers and their loyal tomcats, assuming they had any. And I was inclined to assume they did, because they would have to be pretty powerful to convince Miguel to kidnap several American tabbies. Either that, or Miguel was stupid. And I already knew he wasn’t stupid.

  So, what did it say about me that I understood the way Miguel’s mind worked? Nothing I wanted to think about, not that I could keep from it. The obvious possibility was that I shared some kind of depraved thought process with him. But more frightening for me was the probability that Marc and my father had been right: without even realizing it, I had been trained to lead the Pride. Somehow I’d developed the ability to think like the enemy, a definite advantage for any leader to have. The only problem? I didn’t want to be a leader. I just wanted to be a survivor.

  But both of those roles were out of the question, if I couldn’t get out of this damn cage.

  In one corner of the basement, water dripped from a leaky pipe, dropping into a growing puddle on the ground. The drips seemed to count the seconds of anxious silence as they passed, urging me to say something. To find out the rest of what I needed to know.

  “When is he leaving, Ryan?” I asked, trying not to frighten him with the strength of my stare and the intensity of my voice. I gripped the bars so tight I could almost hear them groan, although realistically my fingers would snap long before solid metal bars would. I stared at Ryan, trying to slow my pulse and keep panic out of my eyes. Of course, he chose that moment to clam up completely. But who could blame him?

  “When?” I shouted, and he jumped, eyes wide. I hadn’t meant to scream at him, but I couldn’t help it. If I could have reached him in that moment, I’d have squeezed his throat until his eyes popped out of his head, for being such an idiot.

  He glanced at the stairs, obviously listening for footsteps. “They’re leaving in the morning, and plan to make the grab sometime after dark. They’ll be back the next morning, and we’re all leaving that night.”

  I did the math in my head. Two days. I had approximately forty-eight hours to get us out of there, or make contact with the council. But how? I needed Miguel to take another shot at me. I needed to get him to open my cage, or at least come near me with the key. But according to Ryan, he wouldn’t come back downstairs until he had the new girl. I couldn’t afford to wait that long.

  “You can stop him, Ryan,” I said, dipping my head to catch his eyes. I tried to project confidence in my voice, rather than desperation. “Call Mom. You can stop him and save your own life.” I already knew he didn’t give a damn about mine.

  “No.” He shook his head like a toddler denying he’d made the puddle on the floor. “He’ll kill me.”

  I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about Miguel or Daddy, since either could have been true, so I went with what I hoped was a safe answer. “No, he won’t. I won’t let him. Just call Mom and tell her you saw something, or smelled something. Tell her you think we’re here, and have her send someone to check it out. That’s all it would take, and you’d be a hero.” Another positive spin. I was on a roll!

  Ryan shook his head again, as if denying the existence of voices in his head. Or maybe his conscience. He shuffled backward toward the stairs. “I’m sorry, Faythe. I can’t do it. Miguel said they’d go after Mom if I help you.”

  Mom? They’d take Mom just to get back at Ryan? Boy, they knew where his loyalties lay. But surely it was an empty threat. Going after Sean’s sister was horrible, but it made sense. Snatching Mom didn’t. What would they want with a tabby who was past childbearing age?

  “Ryan, they won’t take Mom. They’re not going to waste that much time and energy on revenge. Besides, they’d never be able to get near her.”

  Ryan bumped into the hand rail and glanced around as if surprised to see the stairs behind him. “They got you,” he said, backing onto the first step. “Do you really want me to take that chance on Mom?”

  How the hell was I supposed to answer that? I knew deep down that they’d never get close enough to snatch her, but Ryan had thought the same about me, and we all knew how that theory had panned out.

  He read my answer on my face, and turned his back on both me and Abby, taking the steps two at a time.

  Frantic now, I appealed to his sense of self-preservation. “So you’re just going to let Miguel kill you, and leave your corpse for the jungle cats to snack on?”

  He stiffened, and his hand shook on the doorknob. Without turning, Ryan squared his shoulders, then opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, leaving us alone again.

  He’ll change his mind, I thought. He has to.

  The door closed with a final-sounding click, and I dropped onto the edge of the mattress, glancing in disinterest at the remains of my meal. I looked over at Abby, barely registering the raw terror on her face. But I did notice that I could still see her pretty well. Overhead, a single seventy-five-watt bulb illuminated our basement cells with depressing clarity, in spite of the darkness outside.

  At least this time he left the light on, I thought. Sometimes, you thank God for the small things, especially when they’re all you have.

  Twenty-Four

  After Ryan left, I hit a new low, lying on my back on the mattress because that was the only comfortable position I could find. My stomach was threatening to return my latest meal, largely unused. I was sticky with sweat an
d I ached all over.

  Two days. I had two days to break out of a welded aluminum cage before Miguel sold me as a combination sex toy/baby factory to a Brazilian jungle cat. And the only member of my family who knew about it was helping my captors instead of me. It was enough to make me wonder what kind of monster I’d been in my previous life. Really, it had to be karma. There was no other explanation for my horrible luck.

  But if I was dispirited, Abby was truly despondent. She lay on the edge of her mattress, staring at nothing, her sweat-damp curls spread out behind her. She’d been like that ever since Ryan left, taking any hope of a rescue with him.

  I felt as if I should comfort her, but I had no idea what to say. I wanted to believe my brother would change his mind. I was desperate to believe it. Surely even he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hand over his life to Miguel without a fight. Or maybe he would. Ryan had never been much of a fighter.

  After I’d indulged in at least an hour of bitter self-pity, brought on by fantasies of grape Popsicles and air-conditioning, Abby’s gentle snoring interrupted my reverie. I envied her the oblivion of sleep, but found it impossible to achieve for myself. I was too busy thinking. About everything. I thought about Marc, and about Jace. I thought about how worried and angry my father must be. I thought about my mother, wondering if she’d decided to reclaim her seat on the council now that their decisions once again directly affected her life and the future of her Pride. And I thought about Eric and Miguel, wondering which of my friends’ lives they were about to ruin.

  Eventually, I fell asleep, with visions of Miguel’s mutilated face dancing in my head like Tchaikovsky’s sugarplum fairies. But even after such sweet dreams, I woke to the same dismal basement I’d first seen nearly twenty-four hours earlier. Outside, the first rays of sunlight struggled to penetrate the filthy windows, but their efforts were as futile as my own quest for a key. If not for the overhead bulb, I’d have woken up to daylight too weak and murky to do anything more than outline vague shapes in the dark.

  Thank goodness for that lightbulb, I thought, determined to start off the new day with a dose of optimism. Without it, I’d have to Shift just to be able to see.

  Wait, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. Surely the sedative had cleared from my system.

  Excited now, I sat up and turned to face Abby, who was just waking. “Hey, Ab, you want to hear my brilliant new plan?” It wouldn’t get us out of our cages, but it just might throw a wrench in Miguel’s plans. If he couldn’t get close to us, he couldn’t sedate us. And they’d have to be crazy to try to load two fully conscious, pissed-off tabbies into the back of a van.

  Abby rubbed sleep from her eyes and pushed herself into a sitting position. “I guess.”

  “Shift.”

  “Shift?” Her forehead wrinkled in confusion.

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “Shift.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yup. That’s it. Brilliant in its simplicity, if I do say so myself. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.” I thought she’d laugh, or at least crack a smile. But instead, she burst into tears.

  I came as close to her as my cage would allow, wishing more than anything that I could give her a hug. “If we have claws and canines, I don’t think they’ll try anything. There’s no way Miguel can take my cat form in his human form. And if he Shifts first, he can’t get into the cage. If he’s stupid enough to come in as a human, then try to Shift, I’ll have plenty of time to take him out before he finishes.”

  Abby sobbed harder and threw herself facedown onto the mattress.

  I frowned. “Okay, maybe it’s not exactly a brilliant plan, but it’s no reason to cry.”

  She sat up, curls clinging to one damp, splotchy cheek. “I can’t do it.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, I can’t. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I tried to Shift, just to have something to do. But I couldn’t do it. I’m too upset, or tired, or something.” She glanced away in embarrassment. “It’s happened a couple of times before. I get nervous, or upset, and I can’t Shift.”

  Well, shit. She couldn’t Shift and I couldn’t snatch a key. Together we’d ruled out both of my escape plans. I closed my eyes, desperately searching my brain for a third brilliant idea. I came up blank. So much for the third time being charmed. So…back to plan number two. She’d just have to work through her problem.

  “Don’t worry about it, Abby. All you need to do is calm down and concentrate. Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded, but her face showed no conviction. Her forehead was lined in fear, her expression pure despair. She hadn’t smiled since recounting Sara’s murder, and I saw in her tear-damp eyes that she expected to die the same way.

  I took a deep breath, trying to relax in hopes that if I did, she would too. “Clear your mind completely, and try to think about nothing but the process of Shifting.”

  “Okay.” After a moment’s hesitation and a nervous glance at the stairs, she took off her clothes, carefully folding them on one corner of her mattress. On hands and knees, she glanced up at me, tension warping her features into a mask of fear and dread.

  I sighed. This wouldn’t work unless she could loosen up. “How ’bout if I do it with you?”

  “Thanks.” She nodded gratefully, obviously trying to relax.

  “No problem.” I stripped and tossed my clothes aside, trying not to let pity show in my expression. The last thing she needed was a reason to be embarrassed, as well as tired, hungry, and scared. And probably dehydrated. I know my mouth was dry. “You ready?” I asked, lowering myself carefully onto all fours. My left shoulder screamed in protest, refusing to bear any of my weight. I winced, shifting to support myself with my right arm.

  Abby nodded, but I wasn’t convinced. She still looked pretty nervous.

  “Okay, now I want you to start at your toes and work your way up, relaxing each body part as you come to it. Okay?”

  She nodded again. “Relax your toes, then your ankles, and so on. Do your feet feel relaxed?”

  “I think so.”

  Shit. If she wasn’t sure, they weren’t relaxed.

  I smiled, trying to encourage her. “Now move onto your legs. Relax your calves and thighs.” I spoke slowly, keeping my voice even and smooth. “Can you feel your muscles loosening up?”

  “Yes,” she said, but her posture betrayed the lie. I considered stopping, since the exercise obviously wasn’t helping her, but I was afraid that admitting failure would upset her even more.

  “When your whole body is relaxed, start to visualize your Shift. Instead of dreading the pain, welcome it because it’s—” I couldn’t speak anymore. My Shift had begun. My routine was so ingrained, so automatic, that my body did what it was told, even though my brain hadn’t meant for it to. I could have stopped it, but that would hurt worse than just letting it happen. So I did my best to let go and let my body take over for a while.

  Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. I’d never Shifted with a serious injury and had no idea how badly it would hurt. The first stages were agony like I’d never experienced. My body was literally tearing itself apart, ligament by ligament and joint by joint. That was one thing for my healthy joints and ligaments, but something else entirely for my wounded shoulder. It was on fire, my injury inflamed by the physical changes forced on it.

  The pain eased as the last stages of my Shift came and went, the various parts of my body settling into place. By the time it was over, my shoulder throbbed with the dull pain of an old injury.

  I stretched, testing my new configuration of muscles and bones. To my amazement, my shoulder felt much better. It was far from healed, but I could now bear my own weight. Marc had mentioned something similar happening to him once, but I hadn’t thought about it much since. His theory was that since muscles and bones change during a Shift, they began to heal automatically as they were reattached in new positions.

  Cool, I thought pleas
ed by my discovery. I should have Shifted earlier.

  Now dressed, Abby watched me, her expression a mixture of envy and awe. “You make that look so easy, like it doesn’t even hurt.”

  I huffed air through my nose, knowing she would understand. It hurt plenty, no matter how it looked.

  Flexing my muzzle, I arched my whiskers forward, then back to lie flat against my face. Then I extended my forepaws as far out as they would go, my rump in the air. After my stretch, I glanced around at my surroundings, seeing the basement for the first time on four paws.

  I usually loved the first few minutes in cat form, because every sight and smell I knew by heart as a human felt so novel, so new and different to my cat’s senses. But this time my feline body felt awkward and out of place in the basement, where nothing stirred and nothing grew. No rodents scurried across my field of vision. No twigs or rocks poked at my paws, and no burrs caught in the soft fur over my belly. There was no breeze, not even the artificial cool of an air conditioner. And though I could hear sounds of civilization coming from the house above me, compared to Daddy’s woodland preserve, my underground prison was eerily quiet, and wrong, as only a man-made habitat could be.

  Experienced as a cat, the basement was a concrete-lined pit, fouled by everything human. It was an assault on my senses. The floor was harsh against my paws, like walking on rough-grit sandpaper. From overhead came the sound of canned laughter; someone was up, watching TV. The bars surrounding me stank of metal, and the personal scent of everyone who had recently touched them. But the predominant smell was blood.

  It was Sara’s, and it came from the empty cell to my right. No amount of scrubbing could disguise the scent of blood from a cat, and what frightened me most was knowing that the majority of what was spilled had been disposed of along with the mattress. What I smelled was only a fraction of what Sara had lost, along with her life.

  There were other smells, of course, like the disturbing combination of Marc and Miguel. I smelled them both, no matter which way I turned, because their personal scents were on me, and wouldn’t completely fade until my next shower.