Stray

by Rachel Vincent

  I did know, but knowing something isn’t always the same as understanding it. I’d always known that being an enforcer sometimes meant getting your hands dirty, but I’d never thought about what that meant for Marc and the guys. Now I was seeing firsthand what all was involved in dealing with a rogue.

  A rogue was any cat guilty of breaking Pride law, be he wild, stray, or Pride. Those terms denoted social status, but said nothing about the cats they labeled. There were honorable strays, like Marc. And there were criminals among the natural-born cats, like Eric. Miguel, Luiz, Eric and Sean were rogues because they’d kidnapped, raped, and killed. Ryan was a rogue too, strictly speaking, because he’d helped.

  By necessity, rogues were dealt with quickly, in a manner harsh enough to discourage potential copycats. In our territory, and in some of the free zones, Marc was the one who dealt with rogues, though rarely alone.

  Unless the offense was serious, like murder or Shifting in front of a human, Daddy usually settled for a warning: a deforming scar or handicap. But no one got more than one warning. If a rogue was stupid enough to mess up twice, Marc would take him out of the game. If he was lucky, it would be a snapped neck. However, if the crime was especially brutal, Marc might make an example of the doomed cat. That usually took a while. And it was usually messy.

  “Yeah, I guess you probably know what you’re doing,” I conceded.

  “Yeah, we do.” His smile faded into a serious look I didn’t quite care for. “Besides, you shouldn’t have to mess with this after what you’ve been through.” Marc stopped talking abruptly, but I knew he wasn’t done. He glanced down at the blood on my chest. “And you should probably take a shower. I guess I can forget about getting my shirt back, huh?”

  “Sorry.”

  He shrugged, handing me a trash bag from the pile on the table. “It was old anyway. Put your clothes in here when you take them off, and we’ll get rid of them with everything else.”

  “Thanks.” I took the bag and turned toward the living room. Then, on second thought, I spun back to face him. “Hey, Marc?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t forget Daddy made a deal with Ryan.” He nodded, but I wasn’t convinced. “That means you can’t touch him. Promise me.”

  “I swear on all nine of my lives.”

  I laughed. No, we don’t really have nine lives. That would be cool, though. Especially in Miguel’s case. If he had nine lives, we could each take a turn killing him. Oh, well. We’d just have to settle for doing it right the first time.

  Twenty-Eight

  Parker and Abby weren’t back with the clothes yet when I got out of the shower, so I wrapped myself in a big white towel secured with a safety pin I found in the bathroom. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, my hair twisted up in a second towel. I’d avoided looking at myself so far, but finally had to admit that I was being a coward. After all, I’d earned my battle scars, and I might as well know what they looked like.

  It wasn’t pretty. Beneath the towel, a carnation bloomed on the left side of my stomach, dark purple, with pink, knuckle-shaped petals. It was too tender to touch, as were the ribs on that side of my body. My left shoulder throbbed dully along with my pulse, and a chain of bruises adorned my wrist like a bracelet, the latest in fine jewelry for battered women.

  But the worst by far was my face. In fact, if my recent Shift had helped heal my cheek as well as my shoulder, I couldn’t imagine how bad I must have looked before. Now the entire left side of my face was swollen and bruised, an ugly bluish-purple, darkest on my cheekbone. Damn Miguel.

  My eyes watered, and I squeezed them shut, trying to deny the tears an outlet, as if they didn’t really exist if I could keep them from falling. Being manhandled by Miguel hadn’t made me cry. Hearing that Marc had nearly beaten Jace to death hadn’t made me cry. Killing Eric hadn’t made me cry. But staring into the mirror at the love child of Smurfette and Rocky Balboa was more than enough to bring me to tears.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how to make you cry for more than twenty years,” Ethan said. I opened my eyes and met his in the mirror. He stood behind me, a half-full garbage bag in one hand.

  “All you had to do was aim for my face.”

  “Makes sense, but Mom would have killed me.” He dropped the bag and turned me around by my shoulders. I put my head on his shoulder and let him hold me while I cried. I felt like an idiot, crying over a few bruises, but I couldn’t help it.

  “How many times have you seen me with a black eye or a broken nose?” Ethan asked, stroking my hair.

  Several times, but that was one area where women’s lib dared not tread. A mutilated face was always different for a woman than for a man, no matter how highly she valued her equality and asserted her independence. “Besides,” he said, “compared to Jace, you look great.”

  I groaned. How could I not have asked about Jace? “How’s he doing?” I pulled away from Ethan, wiping my face on a mostly clean bath rag.

  “He’s fine. It’s nothing a few months in traction won’t fix.”

  “Traction? Shit.” I frowned up at him. “No one said anything about traction.”

  Ethan smiled grimly, dropping a grimy razor from the countertop into the bag. “It was a joke, Faythe. His arms and legs are fine. And by some miracle, he didn’t lose any teeth.”

  That was the best news I’d heard yet, because while a dentist could replace a broken or missing human tooth, the artificial parts would have to come out before Shifting. There was nothing that could be done about broken teeth in cat form. At least, not for a cat that wasn’t supposed to exist.

  “I feel terrible. I shouldn’t have taken his keys.”

  Ethan shrugged. “I told him I’d hold you down once he’s back on his feet, so he can get in a good swing or two.”

  “Just not my face. Please.” I ran my fingers through damp hair, arranging and rearranging it, looking for a way to cover the left side of my face without compromising my vision. No luck. I could either satisfy my vanity or preserve my depth perception, but I couldn’t do both at once.

  “Okay, you’ve primped enough. Now go bug someone else,” Ethan said, shooing me out the door. “I have to clean the bathroom.”

  “That should be interesting,” I quipped. “Maybe I should stay and watch.”

  “Maybe you should stay and help.”

  Cupping one hand behind my ear, I grinned, pretending to listen. “I think I hear Marc calling.”

  Ethan grunted and opened his trash bag, and I left him to his work.

  I’d had serious doubts about the guys’ ability to clean, in spite of Marc’s reassurance, but never in my life had I been happier to be wrong. I’d spent less than half an hour in the bathroom, but when I came out, there wasn’t a soda can or pizza crust in sight. The floors and furniture were still dusty, downright filthy in places, since there wasn’t so much as a bottle of Windex in the entire house. Still, the transformation was unbelievable.

  Eight large black trash bags sat piled against one wall of the dining room, each bulging with irregular shapes and closed with a white wire tie. Against the opposite wall, three more bags stood, half-full and still open.

  “Those are for the burn pile,” Marc said from behind me, nodding at the row of open bags. “The rest we’ll drop into the nearest public Dumpster.”

  “What’s in the open ones?”

  “Anything that could expose us or identify them. Eric’s ID, his bloody clothes and shoes, all his personal possessions.”

  Nausea stirred the contents of my stomach. “Please tell me you didn’t put him in a bag, too.”

  Marc chuckled. “You’ve seen too many movies.”

  “You’ve buried too many bodies.”

  “I won’t argue with that.” He put one arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Eric’s still in the basement. We don’t have time to deal with that kind of cleanup. We’re just playing Merry Maids.” He paused, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “Haven’t you s
een Pulp Fiction?”

  I smiled. That was one of my favorite movies, and he knew it. “Let me guess, the Wolf is coming to tidy up my mess?”

  “More like the Pink Panther. Your dad’s sending Michael over tonight with another crew to deal with the big stuff. The body, the mattresses, dismantling and disposing of the cages.” Marc ticked off the details on his fingers like he might name items on a grocery list. A bag of sugar, a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, the corpse in the basement…

  He grinned. “Rule number one for closing the site of an incident—never dispose of a body in broad daylight.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” I said. “What about the furniture?”

  “They’ll burn all the mattresses, including the ones up here, and leave the rest of the furniture, what little there is. The landlord can do whatever he wants with it.”

  “So, you guys are almost done?”

  “Just about. But we’re still waiting on Parker and…” Listening, he turned toward the kitchen window, which I noticed they’d covered with a rough square of cardboard. “They’re back.”

  “Good. I need some clothes.”

  “Really? I heard terry cloth was in this year.” He grinned, hooking a finger beneath the top edge of my towel. I slapped his hand away, trying to maintain a stern face. It didn’t work. “Come on, you look good in Egyptian cotton.”

  “I look better out of it,” I teased.

  His mouth dropped open, and his moan followed me through the dining room and into the entryway, where I peeked out through the glass in the front door. Abby tripped going up the front steps, smiling at something Parker had said, and I opened the door in time to catch her before she flattened the bulging Wal-Mart bags dangling from each hand.

  “Thanks.” She brushed past me into the house, seemingly almost…normal. I glanced at Parker, one eyebrow raised.

  He shrugged. “She just needed to get out.”

  “I guess so.” But I credited her improvement to the houseful of familiar cats, rather than the fresh air. Smiling, I took the bag he offered. Clothes. Finally.

  Abby followed me to the bathroom, where Ethan was still busy. She dropped a bag of cleaning supplies on the counter and I led her to Sean’s room to change, on the assumption that his scent would bother her less than either Eric’s or Miguel’s.

  My cousin had decent taste. Either that, or she knew me better than I’d realized. For me, she’d picked out a pair of low-rise jeans and a dark red tank, with wide shoulder straps. Black hair looks good against red, so I was pretty happy. Until I looked in the mirror. I should have known better than to look in the damn mirror.

  Abby smiled sympathetically at me in the glass, and I immediately felt guilty for my self-pity, when she’d been through so much worse. “Here,” she said, handing me a shoe box. “We had to guess your size, but I thought you’d like the style.”

  I lifted the lid to find a pair of white Reeboks with red-and-black accents. “You guessed well.” They were only half a size too big. “Thanks. It’ll be good to wear shoes again.”

  “No problem.”

  We laced up our new shoes together. Hers had pink-and-purple accents.

  In the hall, whistling accompanied a set of heavy footsteps. “If you’re all dressed, make yourselves useful,” Lucas said, leaning against the door frame. “Catch.” He tossed a can of dust spray to Abby and a bottle of no-wax floor cleaner at me. I say at me because Abby caught hers with the ease of nine years as a softball catcher, but mine slipped right through my congenital butterfingers and burst open on the floor.

  Lucas laughed. “Well, that’s one way to do it. There’s a mop in the kitchen, by the fridge.”

  Abby and I got to work, and half an hour later Marc officially declared the house clean. “They’d even get their security deposit back, if not for the dent Faythe put in the wall,” he said.

  “Like you’re one to throw stones,” I retorted.

  Parker and Owen stuffed the trash bags into the back of Daddy’s twelve-passenger van, while Ethan gathered up the cleaning supplies and made a last-minute check to be sure we hadn’t overlooked anything.

  While everyone else piled into the van out front, Marc and I stood in the basement, watching Lucas prepare the prisoner for transfer. Ryan’s perpetual frown deepened as he stared at the transport restraints: solid steel wrist and ankle cuffs, each attached with little slack to a waist chain of the same material. The restraint system was one of a pair kept in the back of the van, for emergencies. I’d never seen them used before; we rarely had the opportunity to bring anyone back alive. Ryan didn’t seem particularly grateful to be the first.

  “Put both hands through the bars, wrists together,” Lucas ordered.

  Rubber soles shuffled on concrete as Ryan stepped forward to comply. He looked both scared and irritated, but was wisely exercising his right to remain silent. So far, at least. Handcuffs closed around my brother’s wrists with a metallic click-slide-catch. More clattering followed as Lucas opened the cage and cuffed his prisoner’s ankles together.

  “A cat’s body can sustain a lot of damage without actually dying,” Lucas said, his voice as deep as the rumble of the earth itself. “You just think about that before you so much as scratch yourself without permission.”

  Ryan gulped and nodded, still mute.

  Marc had chosen Lucas as the transport guard for two reasons, both of them obvious. As the biggest cat any of us had ever met, Lucas stood the best chance of intimidating Ryan into submission without having to lift a finger. And since every finger lifted against Ryan endangered our chances of catching Miguel, we needed him to remain conscious and cooperative.

  But mostly, Marc chose Lucas because as Abby’s brother, he had more reason than anyone else present to want Ryan dead. And Ryan knew it. It was Marc’s way of scaring the living shit out of my brother. It was also the only revenge any of us would have until Ryan had worn out his usefulness.

  Twenty-Nine

  Owen drove us to Jackson International Airport, parking in a nearly empty pay-by-the-hour lot rather than in the crowded loading zone. We couldn’t risk a passerby noticing the thin and obviously exhausted man chained hand and foot inside a van registered to my father. Unless the officer called to investigate happened to believe we were into traveling orgies and bondage, we’d spend the rest of the night in jail, trying to come up with a suitable explanation before Daddy arrived to bail us out.

  Yeah, better to avoid humans altogether.

  Marc, Parker, Ethan, and I stood in the parking lot, while Lucas repositioned Ryan in the second row, where Abby could reach him from the front passenger seat. She had his cell phone, and would hold it up to his mouth if Miguel called.

  Lucas gave Ryan one final warning, involving how little room his shredded corpse would take up in a garbage bag if he so much as sneezed on Abby before they got to the ranch. Then he slammed the sliding door shut on Ryan’s protests that he wasn’t violent, for crying out loud. By then, we’d all heard enough of his sniveling about being forced into working for Miguel, and no one was happier than I was to be separated from his nasal whine by a sliding sheet of steel and tinted glass.

  Lucas said goodbye to his sister and warned Owen not to get pulled over. Then he slapped the hood of the van like the flank of a horse. Owen pulled out of the parking lot, his brake lights flashing at us, and Abby waved goodbye with her head hanging out the front window. Lucas waved back until Owen turned a corner and the van drove out of sight.

  We stood in line at the ticket counter to show our IDs to an over caffeinated clerk tapping away at a keyboard we couldn’t see. Our tickets were already reserved and paid for. Daddy had bought them over the phone as soon as he knew for sure who would be driving back with Abby and Ryan.

  Unfortunately, there were no direct flights from Jackson, Mississippi, to Saint Louis, and the forty-minute layover in Cincinnati, of all places, put our travel time with Delta Airlines at almost exactly four hours. The ninety-minute drive
from Saint Louis to Oak Hill meant we wouldn’t arrive in Carissa’s hometown until around eight in the evening.

  But Ryan had assured us, under penalty of a very uncomfortable ride home, that we would beat Sean and Miguel by at least an hour and a half. Probably more, since neither of them seemed to know how to read a map. That didn’t leave us much time to prepare, but we’d have to take what we could get, because our only shot at catching them lay in Oak Hill, Missouri.

  Since none of us had any luggage to check—or to carry on, for that matter—we went straight from the ticket counter to the terminal, where a line of impatient vacationers waited to walk through the metal detector. While we stood, shuffling forward one step at a time, I became the lucky object of several suspicious stares from the guards waiting on the other side of the security checkpoint. Normally, I would have ignored them, assuming they stared at most young women the same way. But this time it was different, and we all knew it. They were staring at my face.

  I was the first in line from our group, and when I walked through the metal detector with no problem, the nearest guard watched me, expecting me to continue to my gate. Instead, I stepped to the side to wait. The elderly guard gave me a sympathetic smile, as if to say he shared my pain. I smiled back and nodded, knowing that my particular brand of pain would likely give the poor old coot a heart attack.

  When Marc joined me on the other side, then Ethan, then Parker, the guard frowned and ambled closer. He smelled trouble, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. We were trouble—just not for him. But he had no reason to know that. Why would a young woman who’d obviously taken quite a beating travel alone with several large men and no luggage? Not even a purse.

  I desperately hoped he wouldn’t ask, because I couldn’t think of a good explanation, other than the truth, and I was sure he wouldn’t believe a word any of the guys said. So I did the only thing that came to mind: I took Marc’s hand in mine and snuggled closer to him, making it clear that I was with him by choice.