Chicks Kick Butt - Rachel Caine, Kerrie Hughes (ed)

by Chicks Kick Butt (mobi)

  Maybe they’d already gone back for me. They’d never expect me to find them—or even to know who they were—and they probably wouldn’t expect Robyn to escape, considering that her ankles were taped together. But I could fix that.

  I pulled my knife from the loop on my pants, and crouch-walked to the front door. The knob didn’t move, but it was secured with only a twist lock. I turned it hard to the right. The lock snapped, and then the door creaked open several inches. I froze. It was louder than I’d expected, even with the generator’s constant grumbling. But when Robyn didn’t wake up and no one stormed into the room, I took a deep breath and stepped into the cabin, then closed the door softly at my back so I could listen.

  The generator was quieter inside the cabin but still covered both my heartbeat and Robyn’s. My cat’s pupils narrowed, adjusting quickly to the influx of light. And there she was, only fifteen feet away. She was unconscious—obvious, now that the generator and my B and E had failed to wake her—but with any luck, I could haul her far enough away to risk trying to wake her up. Werecat strength was the only advantage that translated fully into human form. Thank goodness.

  Eager now, and more than a little nervous, I raced across the room toward Robyn—then fell flat on my face when my feet slipped out from under me.

  What the hell?

  Stunned, I lay on the floor on my stomach, still gripping the knife in one hand. I was too surprised to think, my mouth open, trying to drag in the breath I’d lost. My empty hand curled in the carpet, and I froze.

  It wasn’t carpet; it was a rug. A very familiar-feeling rug, which had slid out from under my feet as I ran.

  No …

  Horror filled me like darkness leaking into my soul. I closed my mouth and drew in a deep breath through my nose

  Nonononono! The rug was fur. Smooth, soft, solid black fur.

  Werecat fur.

  I shoved myself to my knees and scrambled away from the morbid accent piece until my back hit the wall. I inhaled again, my hands shaking, my knife clattering into the hardwood over and over again.

  I didn’t recognize the individual scent. If I had—if I’d known the tom who died to make that rug—I might have lost it right then. As it was, I was still shaking in Dani’s boots when the front door opened a second later, and Steve walked in, carrying my hiking pack.

  “Hello, Abby.” His knife glinted in the overhead light as he dropped my pack at his feet and closed the door. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  My fist clenched around my own knife, but I was no longer sure it would do any good. The truth tapped at the back of my brain like a woodpecker on a really tough trunk, but I couldn’t let it in. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible.

  The door on my left creaked open, and Billy stepped out of a darker room, bringing with him the scents of blood, and fur, and some harsh, acrid chemical. Did they stuff the deer heads here? In the cabin? “For now, we just want your company. But soon, we’re gonna need you to Shift. That’s what you call it, right?”

  He raised his knife, still stained with Dani’s blood, and pointed to the far end of the room. My gaze followed reluctantly, and that’s when I saw what hadn’t been visible through the small front window.

  I gasped, then choked on my next breath. I blinked, but the horrible images didn’t go away. They wouldn’t even blur mercifully, as Mitch’s body had. Instead, they stared down at me, through eyes too much like my own. Four werecat heads, mounted in a row on the far wall, on identical wooden plaques. They had their mouths open, lips curled back as if they were hissing, but the pose was artificial. Arranged postmortem. I could see that, even if they couldn’t.

  Three of them were strangers. Probably strays, based on the fact that I hadn’t heard of that many missing Pride cats. But the fourth, the last one on the right, was Leo Brown, one of Jace’s enforcers. He’d gone missing during his vacation a few months earlier, and no one had ever found a single sign of him. Until now.

  “I…” I closed my eyes, then forced my gaze back to Steve. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Denial. It was instinct, if not exactly flawless logic.

  “Oh?” Steve raised one brow, glancing at my bloody sleeve, then back to my face. “How’s your arm?”

  And that’s when the truth became too much to deny. They knew what I was. They’d known all along. They’d followed me into the woods, and my friends had paid the price.

  Wood creaked on my left as Billy squatted next to me, evidently unfazed by my knife. Or maybe he couldn’t see it, held so close to my opposite thigh. “You’re the first girl Shifter we’ve ever found. Been watching you for weeks now.”

  “Psych 204?” I whispered, glancing up at Steve, who now leaned against the front door.

  “A stroke of genius, if I say so myself. That’s also how I met your girl Robyn, and good ol’ Mitch. When he mentioned you all were going camping, I was happy to suggest a good, private campsite. Not many people know about this place.”

  Which was why it had seemed perfect for my solitary run.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t push beyond the fact that they knew. That they’d lured me there to be butchered, stuffed, and mounted. And I’d fallen for it. “You’re hunters?”

  “Of the highest caliber,” Steve said, one side of his mouth turning up into a creepy grin. “You didn’t really think no one knew your little secret, did you?”

  Actually, I had. I’d always assumed that if anyone knew we existed, everyone would know. But exposing our existence would have put an end to their private safari, and they were obviously unwilling to risk that. Sick bastards.

  “Damn, Steve, look at this!” Billy grabbed my chin, and I gasped as he turned my face toward the light. My fist tightened around the knife handle, but I was biding my time. I couldn’t afford to miss. “She’s got cat eyes. Never seen that before. Maybe we should just cut her head off and mount it like this.”

  “Hmmm. Dramatic…” Steve ambled closer for a better look. I jerked my chin from Billy’s grasp, seething on the inside. Waiting for the perfect moment. It would come. Please let it come.… “Especially with all those pretty red curls.”

  When he was close enough, I closed my eyes and sent up a silent prayer. Then I dropped from my heels onto my rump and shoved my left leg out, grunting as I swept both of Steve’s out from under him.

  Steve shouted as he went down. Billy blinked, surprised, and reached for Steve, but my arm was already in motion. I swung Mitch’s knife underhanded, as hard as I could. It slid into his stomach, up to the hilt. Warm blood poured over my hand. I pulled up, and the knife ripped through flesh toward his sternum.

  Billy grunted, but never screamed. Steve scrambled backward and leapt to his feet. Billy fell over. His skull smacked the floorboards. Steve pulled his own knife from the sheath snapped onto his belt. And finally, I stood.

  We faced off, circling slowly, as I tried to edge him away from Robyn, who still breathed shallowly on the floor. Now I could see the lump on the side of her head. She was bait, good for nothing more to them.

  “You should probably know, guns are the most effective way to hunt a cat,” I said, wishing I could wipe blood from the hilt of my knife. It was getting slippery.

  “Didn’t think we’d need them for a little girl. You’re more trophy than challenge.”

  “And you’re all monster.” I circled toward the couch and a rickety-looking end table.

  He rolled his eyes, sidestepping toward me. “Says the girl with fur and claws.”

  “Says the woman who’s gonna spit on your corpse in about three minutes.”

  “Yeah, I’m scared of a five-foot-nothin’ scrap of meat in borrowed boots. Your luck has run out, and in a couple of days, your pretty little head’s gonna be mounted on a plaque in a cabin in Mississippi, where the next cat monster will get one fleeting glimpse of pointed pupils and red hair before we nail him up right next to you.”

  Mississippi was free territory, crawl
ing with strays, most of whom wouldn’t be missed. He obviously knew at least a little about our culture. Had he questioned his other victims before killing them?

  I edged to the right, glaring at him with all the force of my hatred. My right foot hit the leg of the end table. I tripped and went down on my ass. Hard. I dropped the knife, and let it slide across the floor.

  Steve dropped on top of me, blade ready. I shoved my right hand into the jacket pocket. He grabbed a handful of my curls and pulled my head back, exposing my throat. I grinned up at him and pulled Robyn’s folding knife from her pocket. Steve’s eyes widened. I pressed the button, and the blade popped out even as I shoved it forward.

  The three-inch blade slid between his ribs.

  Steve grunted. I shoved him off and stood, Robyn’s knife sticky in my hand. He lay on the floor, blood pouring from his chest. I’d hit the heart, and his eyes were already glazing over. “But girl cats don’t fight,” he whispered, as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  I arched both brows and pulled my phone from my pocket. “Welcome to the new regime.”

  * * *

  Jace got there twenty minutes later, armed with three enforcers and everything necessary to clean up my mess. Robyn was still unconscious, but breathing, and with any luck, she’d sleep through everything she shouldn’t see.

  When the cabin was clean, I would “find” Robyn and call the police, while Jace and his men watched from the treetops. Robyn would tell them what she remembered, but the cops would find no sign of the murderers, or of their morbid hobby. Jace and his men had already reclaimed all the cat trophies and would give our dead brothers a proper burial. And even if a forensics team found my blood at the campsite, they’d never piece together what had really happened. They’d think their samples were contaminated.

  But for now, I sat with Robyn, watching the enforcers work, wearing clothes one of the toms had retrieved from where I’d left them. Jace knelt next to me on his way across the cabin, bulging trash bag in hand. “You okay?” he asked, for the fourth time in an hour.

  “Yeah.” Better than I’d expected, considering I’d just killed three men and seen three friends murdered.

  “Good.” He nodded, but his blue-eyed scowl was dark and angry. “You ever disobey an order again, and I’ll send you straight back to your father. Understood?”

  “Yeah.” I stared at the floor, feeling guilty, but not guilty enough to apologize. I’d done the right thing. The only thing I could do. The thing he would have done, in my position.

  “Now that that’s over…” Jace lifted my chin by one finger, so that I had to look at him, and this time, he was grinning. “Good work. If teaching kindergartners doesn’t hold the same appeal after this, let me know. I’ll have a job waiting for you, if you ever want it.”

  My brows arched in surprise. “For real?”

  Jace nodded, eyeing me carefully. Admiringly. “It’s in you now. I can see it.”

  I smiled slowly. Because it was. It was deep inside me, like it had been inside Steve, until I’d cut it out of him. “It’s all about the hunt.”

  MONSTERS

  by Lilith Saintcrow

  Leonidas held court in a nightclub, a cliché come to life. I do not ever make the mistake of thinking such bad taste makes him any less lethal. The place was full of walking victims, predators, and the Kin. The guards at the door barely nodded as I stepped past, wild-haired and in a bedraggled blue velvet that was last fashionable when Her Majesty reigned. And the boots, heavy-soled and more expensive than a human life in this day and age.

  Though mortal life has ever been cheap.

  An assault of screaming and pounding noise met me. It was what they call music nowadays. No doubt there are Preservers who will cherish it as I cherished the liquid streams of beauty from my Virginia’s piano.

  But I doubt they will be half as enchanted as I was. And Virginia’s song was gone forever. Even her recordings were lost in last night’s fire.

  More smoke, of cigarettes. The taint of burning on my clothes and hair went unnoticed. Fragile warm bodies bumping against me on every side, islands of hard brightness that were Kin, the swelling nasty cacophony pumped through electronic throats buffeting the crowd. The bar was a monstrosity of amber glass, dark iron, and mahogany, the mortals behind it scrambling to slake various thirsts.

  And there, across the wide choked space, red velvet ropes holding the crowd back. The baroque horsehair couches arranged in intimate little groups were exactly what they appeared to be—emblems of a king’s receiving room. Leonidas lounged on the largest, draped across it like a boneless toy. White-blond hair, the left half of his face a river of scarring, he watched his little sovereignty avidly. Behind him, a shadow moved.

  Sallow, unsmiling Quinn. Tarquin. The only ugly thing Leonidas allows in his presence. The White King does not even allow a mirror in his domicile, lest it somehow show him his own shattered face.

  The ropes parted. I do not stand on ceremony, even among Kin. Nevertheless, I inclined my head to Leonidas as I stepped onto the dusty red rug.

  “Eleni.” His lips shaped my name, pleated ridges of scar tissue twitching. The noise swallowed us whole, like a whale.

  And Leonidas looked surprised. It is not often a Preserver seeks out a Promethean in his place of power.

  “I seek vengeance.” My tone cut through the wall of noise. “You will provide it.”

  His fingers flicked a little, dismissing me. “What nonsense are you speaking?”

  The noise was overwhelming. It sent glass spikes through my head. The smell of burning hanging on me spurred my fury.

  Virginia. Zhen. Peter. And Amelie, my own heart’s child. All mutilated and burned. “My house.” I could barely speak. My fangs were swollen with rage. “My house, burned to the ground last night. My charges murdered. We had a Compact, Leonidas!”

  “And we still do,” he murmured. The “music” came to a crashing halt, and static filled the entire building. My rage, Leonidas’s amused bafflement, and Quinn’s unblinking attention.

  I should have been pleased that Tarquin paid such attention to me. He must have considered me a threat. Me, a lowly Preserver.

  I did not begin as a Preserver. We all begin as something else, each and every one of the Kin.

  “Come,” Leonidas said in the almost-silence, before the music started again. “Let us solve this mystery.”

  * * *

  Upstairs in a private office, he arranged himself behind a mirror-polished desk. I stood before him like a supplicant, but I was past caring.

  “They killed Zhen on the stairs.” My throat was full. “My beautiful dancer. And Virginia in the library. She fought back. The young ones were in the cellar. Peter, and Amelie.” I swallowed grief like a stone. “They were burned. And mutilated. Stakes through their hearts.”

  “Ah,” Leonidas said, and nothing more.

  “What do you intend to do?” My hands were fists.

  He shrugged, a loose inhuman motion. “What can I do? I am no Preserver. And your charges are not the first to fall. The hunters are mortals, and they take only easy prey.”

  So he knew of this. Easy prey. I stared at him. What mortals could kill even the youngest and slowest of us? And yet.

  Tarquin, at his shoulder, looked steadily back. His shoulders were tense. Another indirect compliment.

  “Then I shall trouble you no further.” I turned on my heel. My boots left black streaks on the creamy carpet.

  “Eleni.” Tarquin’s voice, flat and heatless. “Try the Hephaestus, downtown.”

  I paused. Inclined my head slightly. Leonidas’s anger filled the room, but what was his anger to me?

  “I am in your debt, Tarquin,” I said softly, and stalked away.

  * * *

  I did not venture downtown often. For one thing, it was dangerous. For another, it was … confusing. The bright lights, the crowds, the cars … it was easier and safer to gather what I needed for my little family elsewh
ere. I am a Preserver, I preserve what would otherwise be lost in the deep waters of time. Each of my charges was a gem, skilled in an art that could reach its highest expression when freed from the chains of mortality.

  All that, gone. Lost in a nightmare of fire and screaming. Only I remained. And the thin bright trail of bloodscent—the weakest male attacker had been bleeding as he left my home. Without Tarquin’s hinting, I might have lost his scent.

  But no. At the corner of Bride Street I found the golden thread. It turned at corners, flared and faded, drifted with the wind. It is a predator’s instinct, to bring down the weakest in the pack first.

  Besides, the weakest break more easily.

  The Hephaestus was a slumped brownstone building, weary even though the night was young. It reeked of desperation. I passed through the foyer like a burning dream, the proprietor not even glancing away from his television screen. I expected the smell to take me up into a room, but it did not. A hall on the ground floor led to a fire door that did not make a sound as I pushed it open. I stepped out and halted for a moment. Greasy crud slid under my bootsoles.

  The blind alley was old, close, and dank. Refuse filled its corners. At its end, a single door. The blood trail led to it, but there was a heavier reek filling the air.

  I approached cautiously. There was no outlet, this was a remnant of an earlier time. I wondered if the bricks underfoot were as old as Amelie.

  My heart, that senseless beating thing, wrung in on itself. I ghosted to the door, every sense alert as if I were hunting for my family. My chest ran with pain at the thought.

  I laid a hand on the door. It was solid, vibrating slightly as all matter does. It was locked and barred, I sensed the iron of the bar, metallic against my palate.

  If I have learned one thing as a Preserver it is this: Strength does not matter. The will matters.

  I gathered myself, stepped back, and kicked the door in.