The Vampire Files Anthology

by P. N. Elrod

  “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 beneath 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 c
ompletely 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.

  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, crawling 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.