“We can’t bring them both,” he said. “Do her.”
“No!” Dani shouted, and her shuffling grew frantic. She understood before I did.
I whirled to see him haul Dani up by one arm. She dug her heels into the dirt, trying to pull free. I stepped toward them, and my leg folded again. Billy shoved his knife into her stomach and dragged it up through her flesh. Dani’s eyes went wide, and her mouth fell open. I roared in grief and outrage. He let go, and she collapsed onto the dirt, blood pouring from the gaping hole in her torso.
“Stay, kitty…,” Steve said, slowly pulling Robyn toward the woods. Robyn glanced from me to Dani, then to Billy, whose bloody knife glinted in the firelight. But she didn’t make a sound this time, nor did she fight his grip.
Billy circled me slowly, leaving plenty of room between us. He held his knife ready, and though I growled the whole time, I didn’t pounce again. And he didn’t expect me to. A natural-born cat—they probably thought I was a melanistic jaguar—would never chase three healthy humans into the woods on an injured leg, when there were three fresh bodies to eat right there in the clearing. And there would soon be a fourth.
Dani was still breathing, but it wouldn’t be long, and I couldn’t let her die alone. Especially since I couldn’t reasonably rescue Robyn. Not in cat form, anyway. Not when I couldn’t put weight on my injured front leg.
Steve backed into the trees, pulling a shocked-silent Robyn with him, her face streaked with tears, her shirt streaked with blood. Billy stepped slowly out of the clearing on his side of the fire, and moments later, I heard him clomping through the underbrush toward Steve and Robyn. Then they headed through the woods together.
The last thing I heard before their footsteps faded from even my sensitive cat hearing was Billy’s whispered question, and Steve’s even softer reply.
“So, we’re giving up on Abby?”
“No way. We’ll regroup at the cabin.”
I huffed softly through my nose as I limped toward Dani. There was a cabin. And they were obviously expecting me—the human me, the only one they knew—to come back to the campsite. If they were planning to come back for me, the cabin must be close. I could track them. I could get Robyn back. But not until Dani was gone. And not until I’d made a phone call.
Triple homicide in a werecat territory, involving a werecat tabby, was definitely a notify-your-local-Alpha situation.
Even mortally wounded, Dani tried to scoot away from me as I approached. She was dying, and she knew it—I could see mortality gleaming in her eyes, along with reflected flames from the campfire—but she wasn’t eager to speed up the process by being eaten alive. And she had no reason to think I wouldn’t do just that.
I dropped my head as I limped forward, whining softly, trying everything I knew to look unthreatening. To show submissiveness and concern. But she didn’t stop struggling until I dropped onto the cold ground beside her and laid my chin on her leg.
“Wha—?” she began, but lacked the strength to finish even that one word. Her heartbeat had already begun to slow, and her chest was rattling. I didn’t want to leave her, but I couldn’t afford to let Robyn get too far away. And I still had to make that call. So I licked the back of her left hand—still bound to its mate—then scooted away from her to begin my Shift. And for the first time in my life, it didn’t matter that a human was about to witness the entire process.
My injured leg bent to spare it, I stood three feet from the fire, and its warmth was my only comfort in the face of exhaustion, grief, fear, and ever-deepening rage. The last time my life had been in danger, I’d been too scared to Shift, even for my own safety. Even with Faythe there to talk me through it.
Not this time. This time, the changes came almost too quickly to bear, my Shift fueled by an intense need to save Robyn and avenge my other friends. To unleash justice on men so like the ones who’d brought a violent end to my adolescence, robbing me of peace and security, along with my virginity.
My muscles tensed, bunching and stretching as they took on new shapes. My joints popped in and out of their sockets as, in my memory, I screamed “No!” over and over, until the weight pinning me to the ground stole my breath.
My paws flexed uncontrollably, aching as they stretched and reformed. My claws retracted into the tips of my fingers as, in my head, I clutched at my clothes, at the bars, at the edge of the bare mattress, desperate to make it stop. To hold myself together as long as possible.
My muzzle began to shorten, my gums throbbing as my teeth broadened, the feline points smoothing into rounded human edges. My jaws ached, as they’d once ached from screaming, then from trying not to scream, desperate not to give him the satisfaction.
My flesh began to itch as my fur receded, and in my mind, my skin burned—scalding water from the shower. I’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but couldn’t wash them off. Couldn’t clean down to the real me. The me I’d lost. The me they’d killed in that basement, in the shadow of the bars I still saw sometimes when I closed my eyes.
When my Shift was over, I sat on my bare knees on the frigid ground, panting from exertion, crying over old ghosts. If I didn’t hurry, it would happen to Robyn too. These men didn’t have bars and a basement, but they had knives, and no reason to let her live.
As soon as I could move again, I crawled over to Dani. Danielle Martin, with her big mouth and her kind eyes, who’d invited me to come on their couples’ weekend. Who’d insisted I wouldn’t be a fifth wheel. But Dani’s kind eyes were open and empty now, staring into the woods. Her bound hands still lay over her stomach, like she’d tried to hold the blood in until the last second. And I’d missed it. She’d died alone, and scared, and in pain.
Steve and Billy—whoever the hell they both really were—would pay for that. They would pay, and pay, and pay.…
Tears ran down my face, scalding my frozen cheeks as I pushed myself to my feet and jogged across the clearing. The fire was hot, but not hot enough for me to preserve my body heat without clothes. Yet I went for my purse first, dropping to my knees beside the pile of brush it had landed in when Steve kicked it.
My teeth chattering, I pulled back the zipper, praying my phone hadn’t broken. When I flipped it open, the screen was bright in the flickering firelight, the battery charged and ready for use. I shivered as I stood and scrolled through the contacts for my Alpha’s number, then pressed CALL as I dropped to the ground again next to the careless pile of our belongings. I’d just spotted my hiking pack beneath the portable charcoal grill when he answered the phone.
“Abby? What’s wrong?”
“Jace, I need help. Fast.” My teeth were chattering, and I sniffed back a choked sob. “How soon can you get here?”
Springs creaked as he stood, and I heard him walking. “Where are you? What happened?”
I hauled my pack from the pile and peeled back the flap, already digging for my change of clothes. “I went camping with some friends, and now they’re all dead. All except Robyn, my roommate.”
“Wait, first of all, are you safe where you are?” His voice was solid and steady, a vocal cornerstone for me to build on.
“For the moment. But I don’t have much time.” I stood with the phone pinned between my ear and my shoulder and stepped into my underwear, my teeth chattering so hard I could barely talk.
“Okay, start from the beginning. You went camping…?”
“Yeah. Just a sec.” My shirt was next, and I had to set the phone on the ground to pull the material over my head. “We’re in Cherokee National Forest, just south of the Tennessee border.” I gave him the coordinates we’d used to find the campsite, forever grateful for GPS technology. “I went for a run—the private kind—and while I was hunting, my friends started screaming. When I got back, there were three men at our campsite, carrying big hunting knives. They’d gutted Mitch and Olsen and tied up the girls.”
“Wait, you walked in on a murder? In cat form?”
“They didn’t see me. I was in the bushes.�
� Like a coward.
“Good. They’re human?”
“Everyone but me.” I stood and shook out my insulated cargo pants, phone pinned to my shoulder again while I stepped into the fuzzy inner lining. “It doesn’t make any sense, Jace. I know one of them. He sits behind me in psych. He’s always so friendly, but now he’s … crazy.”
I sank onto the cold ground and swallowed another sob, trying to speak slowly and clearly, and to give him just the facts. Anything else would only slow me down and put Robyn in more danger. But Jace saw through my false calm.
“Abby, are you okay?”
“No! They know I’m out here too. I don’t know if they followed us or what, but while they were waiting for me to come back, they tried to…”
The words froze in my throat, the edges sharp, like I’d swallowed glass. I coughed, then started over. “They had knives, Jace, and the girls were so scared. Robyn was screaming, and she couldn’t stop him. The other one held his knife to Dani’s throat. I couldn’t just watch, and I couldn’t leave them there.…” My explanation trailed into fragile silence, but for the crackle of the fire.
“What did you do, Abby?” Jace still sounded calm, but now his voice held a dark note of dread.
“I killed one of them. The one who was on Robyn. I just wanted to get him off her, so I pounced on him, and he smelled like her, and he’d bitten her, and everything just went red after that. But then Steve slashed my front leg, and the other one stabbed Dani. Then they took off into the woods.” My tears were a mercy, smearing the carnage all around me. But they couldn’t blur the overwhelming scent of blood. “I couldn’t chase them. Not with my front leg sliced up and Dani dying.”
“Of course not. You shouldn’t have shown yourself. You could have been killed.” Jace sighed, the sound a mixture of worry for me and rage on my behalf. “Just stay there. We’re coming to get you. We’ll call the cops on the way back.” I heard voices in the background, as other toms volunteered for the emergency mission. Save the damsel in distress—one of those moments every enforcer lives for.
Only I didn’t have time to be rescued. “I can’t stay here, Jace. They’re coming back for me. And they have Robyn. I have to get her back before they hurt her.”
“No!” A car door slammed and Jace’s engine roared to life. He was already on the go, no doubt with his three best enforcers. “Abby, do not go after them. That’s an order.”
“Jace, they’re gonna kill her!” And by the time they got around to that, she’d be begging for it.
“And if you go after them, they’ll kill you too.”
“I can handle myself. I’ve been training with Faythe.”
“Sounds like you picked up more than just her left hook,” he muttered, and in the background, another tom chuckled. “Faythe’s an Alpha, and before that, she was an enforcer. You’re an elementary-ed major with two summers’ worth of self-defense. Sit tight. We’ll be there in an hour.”
“She’ll be dead by then!”
“But you won’t.”
I hesitated. I honestly did, because disobeying an Alpha was serious shit. Even a young, hot Alpha I’d known my whole life. But Robyn was the priority. “I’m sorry, Jace,” I whispered, digging through my pack again for an extra set of thick socks. “You can kick me out of the Pride if you want, but I have to help Robyn. I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Abby, no—!” he started, while his enforcers went apeshit in the background. I flipped the phone closed, put it on silent, then slid it into my pocket.
The phone buzzed as I pulled my socks on, then again while I dug Olsen’s pack from the pile. He had a hunting knife. I’d seen it. And in human form, I would need it.
I slid the knife into a loop on the right leg of my pants, then crossed the clearing and grabbed the insulated jacket they must have made Robyn take off before they tied her up. Her small folding knife was in the right pocket, and the material was still warm from her body heat. I couldn’t believe how fast everything had happened.
Armed, dressed, and now fairly warm, I knelt next to Dani, avoiding looking at the guys. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, as I unlaced her hiking boots. Mine were a quarter mile away, in the opposite direction. “I hate to leave you like this, but I have to help Robyn. I swear they’ll pay for what they did to you.”
Fortunately, she had small feet, so the boots were only half a size too big, and with an extra pair of socks, I could barely tell.
Finally as ready as I was gonna get, I put on my hiking pack and stepped into the woods with only a single glance back and a fleeting bolt of sympathy for the forensics team which would soon be confused over her bare feet, the paw prints, and the drops of blood from the cut on my arm.
I headed in the direction I’d last heard Steve’s, Billy’s, and Robyn’s footsteps, mentally crossing my fingers that they would stick to that heading—that they’d actually known where they were going from the moment they’d left the campsite. My human form kept weight off my injured arm, but for that advantage—that necessity—I’d sacrificed most of my enhanced feline senses. My nose and ears were still more sensitive than a human’s, but they were nowhere near the advantage they would have been in cat form. And the flashlight I carried was no substitute for feline vision, a huge benefit in the dark.
After a quarter mile, I was freezing, exhausted from Shifting without eating, and reeling from the trauma of what I’d seen. Reality had finally hit me, and shock was like a cold blanket wrapped around me so tight I could hardly breathe, let alone think.
My arm throbbed with each beat of my heart, and by the time I’d gone half a mile, blood had soaked through both my shirt and Robyn’s jacket. That one Shift hadn’t been enough to completely close the wound, and moving my arm had kept the blood flowing. Frustrated, I turned the flashlight off and shoved it into the side pocket of my pack, then used my free hand to apply pressure to my cut. But then I couldn’t see.
Damn it! How was I supposed to save Robyn when I couldn’t even find her?
You’re not cut out for this, Abby. Jace was right. You should just sit down and wait to be rescued. Again.
But if I did that, Robyn would die, scared, alone, and in pain. Just like Dani. And I’d be the coward who’d damned her.
You’re not using your resources … a new voice in my head said, and she sounded for all the world like Faythe. You’re not human, and you’re not helpless, so why pretend on either count?
I closed my eyes, and the memory came back in full. We were training in the barn, at night, with the lights off. I could hear her when she spoke, but the others were silent, and I couldn’t see any of them. Because then, like now, I wasn’t using my resources. My senses.
The partial Shift. Standard procedure now, for all enforcers patrolling in human form, and one of the first things Faythe had taught me.
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and forced everything else from my mind. The cold, the dark, the pain in my arm … None of that mattered. Robyn mattered. Finding her. Saving her.
Avenging the others.
Pain shot through my right eye, followed by an answering spear through my left. The pressure was enormous, like my eyeballs would pop right out of my head. But they didn’t, and when the pain faded, when I finally opened my eyes, I could see. The colors were muted, of course, as they were for me in cat form, but the woods were clear, each tree crisply outlined by the little available moonlight.
I grinned. This was going to work.
My ears were next, and they were a real bitch. Shifting them was more complicated, and the pain was like needles being jabbed through my eardrums and into my brain. But when it was over the difference was unbelievable. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing in human form until I could suddenly hear like a cat.
Rodent heartbeats. Wind rustling branches far over my head and half a mile away. An owl, halfway across the damn forest, swooping on its prey with a rush of air unique to that particular wing formation and dive pattern.
And b
eneath all that, the steady, low-pitched hum of machinery. A generator.
Steve’s cabin. It had to be.
I let go of my injured arm and took off through the woods, easily avoiding fallen logs and jutting branches now that I could see them. Cold air burned my lungs, but I barely felt it. I was buoyed by the hope blooming in my chest. I could save her. I could make up for failing to save Dani. And maybe in doing that, I could prove to myself for good that the cowering, helpless Abby was gone. The men in the cage had killed her, but from her ashes, this new phoenix was born, and she was ready to unleash justice on their brothers in crime.
Justice and pain. Lots of pain.
Half a mile later, the cabin came into view, its generator growling now, in my sensitive ears. It drowned out any sounds I might have been able to hear from inside, and it was almost too much for my pounding head to take, so I Shifted my ears back as I watched the cabin, crouched behind a shelter of tall, thick ferns. But I kept my cat eyes. Feline pupils would adjust to the light inside the cabin. Once I got in.
The cabin was small—why did they need such a big generator?—and I couldn’t see any movement through the windows. So after several minutes of nothing, I eased my pack off my shoulders and onto the ground, then ran hunched over to crouch beneath the uncovered front window, painting a square of untamed forest floor with light from within.
A couple of minutes later, when no one charged out of the cabin wielding a knife, I dared a careful glimpse through the glass—and nearly melted with relief.
Robyn lay on the floor against the back wall of what looked like some backwoods hunter’s private retreat, bound with duct tape now, but still fully clothed. And completely alone, except for the half dozen disembodied deer heads staring down at her from the rustic paneled walls.
The trophies were grotesque and gratuitous, a horror only humans would find tasteful. At least werecats ate what they hunted.
Robyn didn’t see me—her eyes were closed—and I couldn’t hear anything over the growl of the generator, but there was only one door leading off the main room, and it was closed. Surely if Steve and Billy had still been there, they’d have been watching their prisoner—or worse.
Chicks Kick Butt - Rachel Caine, Kerrie Hughes (ed) Page 7