Owen’s car pulled out of the driveway as I led the parade of tomcats out the back door and toward the woods. Because of our various daytime obligations, we rarely got the chance to hunt during the day. Under other circumstances, ours might have been a jubilant excursion, but we didn’t race this time, in spite of the unseasonably cool breeze and the sunlight glinting off our skin. Morning dew lingered in the shaded sections of the yard, but not one eager foot ran to trail through it. We weren’t in a playful mood, and there were no jokes or good-natured boasts about speed and agility, or even the comparative length of anyone’s canines. Michael was right, we were blowing off steam.
The guys emanated anger, like lightbulbs lit up with rage. They were worried about Sara and Abby, but they were also nursing injured pride. As enforcers, they were insulted that someone feared the council little enough to invade our territory and steal one full quarter of our eligible women. They were eager for the chance to avenge the insult and rip the offender to shreds in the process. And until then, they had some destructive energy to burn.
I wasn’t insulted. I didn’t really care whether or not anyone feared me, because no one ever had. But I was scared, really frightened, for the first time in my life. I was afraid for Sara and Abby because no matter how hard my mother tried to delude herself, I knew the chances of us finding them uninjured were slim. They were strong, and I couldn’t imagine them cooperating with their captors if they thought there was any chance of escape.
In spite of Marc’s transparent assurances, I couldn’t believe the human murders and the tabby disappearances were unrelated. I didn’t believe in coincidence, but I certainly believed in justice. And in revenge. If either girl was hurt, the council wouldn’t stop hunting the responsible party until they found him and took him out, not with a vet’s peaceful never-wake-up serum, but in a manner so violent, painful and drawn-out that the mere rumor of what happened would be enough to prevent such occurrences in the future.
The thought of someone hurting Sara and Abby fueled my Shift, propelling it at a rate I’d never before experienced and dulling the pain somewhat because my brain was too busy to acknowledge discomfort. I came into my fur bursting with a furious energy and the uncontrollable urge to maul something. Or someone.
Bloodlust. My tail twitched nervously at the thought, trying to deny what my brain knew for a fact. I recognized the symptoms, though I’d never personally experienced them. I had the urge, a true physical need, as well as a psychological one, to sink my teeth into skin and shred flesh with my claws. I could already taste the blood, like a flashback for my taste buds. Only it wasn’t just that I remembered what blood tasted like, but that I could actually feel it in my mouth, a shadow-taste, like a blood phantom haunting my tongue.
Standing with my front paws nestled in a tangled patch of ivy, I roared, which I hardly ever do. Roaring is really more of a tomcat kind of thing, but at that moment I could find no more appropriate expression for my outrage. And it felt damn good to be heard for once.
I glanced around, seeing the world in the dull greens and blues of my feline vision. Scattered throughout the undergrowth around me, the guys were still in various stages of Shifting, unable to respond to my roar. I left them behind without a second thought. My anger was different than theirs and would have to be spent differently. And alone.
When I’d gone a few hundred feet, I heard Marc’s roar and knew it was meant for me. He was normally the fastest of the tomcats, but with his limp, he would never catch me, and with my head start, neither would any of the others. Thinking of Sara and Abby, I ran as far and as fast as I could, not stopping even when my lungs heaved and my pulse raced.
With my thoughts on my missing friend and cousin, and on their unidentified kidnapper, the forest took on an entirely new feel. Every whisper of wind through the leaves sounded like someone hissing, “Sara.” Every bird trilling above brought to mind Abby’s clear, ringing soprano. Each shadow held the threat of the unknown, where before they’d held only curiosity and adventure.
The sounds of the woods mocked my fright, turning my lifelong refuge into a waking nightmare in which every dry crack was a stranger’s footstep, and each new turn took me farther from everything safe and familiar. Dread and fear were ruining my run. I was handing over control of my emotions to some sadistic stray I’d already kicked around once, and that simply wouldn’t do. I had to get ahold of myself. Fast.
Bloodlust seemed to be the solution to distracting me from my fear.
Exhausted, I stopped to rest and to drink from the creek. Shiny fish scales flashed beneath the surface of the water, and though I was hungry, I barely glanced at them. I was aiming for something bigger, something I could chase, then rip apart before devouring.
I heard just the thing.
To the south, only a few yards away, a single twig cracked, accompanied by the rustle of leaves signaling the approach of something large. I froze, listening, my nose wiggling almost imperceptibly as I sniffed the air.
Deer. Two of them. A male and a female, based on their scents. I was upwind for the moment, and they obviously hadn’t smelled me yet. A dense tangle of briars separated me from the deer, blocking us each from the other’s sight. They had no idea they were in danger. Perfect.
Adrenaline surged through me with the power of a hundred cups of coffee. The chemical jolt of caffeine couldn’t compare to the natural high of the hunt. I looked up and around, searching for exactly the right branch. I found one with little trouble. It was low enough to jump onto without climbing, thick enough to hold my weight for at least half of its length, and close enough to others that I could effectively walk on a path of tree limbs until I was ready to pounce. Assuming the deer didn’t hear me and bolt.
I hunkered on my back legs, wiggling my hindquarters to find just the right position. My eyes focused on the low branch. I jumped. My front paws hit first, in silence, followed an instant later by my hind paws. I fought panic as my left hind leg slipped from the branch, threatening to upset my balance. I clenched the branch with my hind claws, freezing in place until I regained my equilibrium. Huffing in relief, I repositioned myself slightly for a better view. From my new height, I could see the deer in a small clearing ahead: a light brown doe and her fawn, his back sprinkled with white spots.
For a moment, I felt a twinge of guilt over my intent to kill Bambi’s mother, but such was the way of life in the forest, and it didn’t bother me for long. Especially when I saw the fawn tugging on a low leaf. If he was old enough to eat greens, he was at least partially weaned and probably old enough to survive on his own.
Heart pounding, I tensed, getting my balance just right. I jumped up onto the next branch, pausing briefly to steady myself before taking the next leap. I approached my prey from behind as the wind carried her scent to me, like a preview of coming attractions. Ahead, the doe leaned down to nibble at a blade of grass, blissfully unaware of what the next few minutes would bring. Her ignorance excited me, bringing my breath in fast, quiet pants. Her life depended entirely on my whim, and I loved the feeling of power that knowledge brought. For the first time since I’d come home, I was in control, with no one to answer to and nothing to fear.
Anticipation surged through me. I leapt onto the next limb, then the next, and the next after that. I aimed for the thickest part next to the trunk to minimize the noise and the chance that I would shake loose a leaf to drop on the deer. Close enough, I crept silently out onto a sturdy limb, watching my prey from above. I was salivating, my heart beating fiercely. Its rhythm was accompanied by the rush of anger through my veins like a second pulse, feeding my heart as surely as my blood did.
The doe was below and to my left. I pounced, angling my fall so I would land on the mother’s hindquarters. As my paws left the branch, she froze, alerted to danger. She started to bolt, but it was too late; I was airborne and closing fast. Claws unsheathed, I was ready to slash.
The impact knocked us both to the ground. I lunged forward to clamp my teeth on her throat, pinning her. Blood rushed into my mouth in spurts as her heart pumped her life into me until my teeth pinched her throat closed, suffocating her.
It was over in minutes. Standing, I shook the deer by the throat, just in case. She was dead, and her fawn was gone. Good. I lapped at the blood still dribbling from her neck, then ripped open her stomach with my claws and began to eat. As the carcass slowly cooled in the shadow of a broad red oak, I concentrated on the meal at hand, shoving my lingering bloodlust to the back of my mind. Surely it would be satisfied long before my stomach was.
My appetite satiated at last, I lay down next to the still-warm carcass to clean my face and paws. It had been a messy meal, and I didn’t like messes. Not the figurative ones, and certainly not the literal ones.
The smell of blood and fresh meat filled the clearing, reminding me of what still needed to be done. I stood, wondering what to do with my catch. When we hunted as a group, there was little left to worry about, and we donated the remains to the small scavengers present in any forest, nature’s own recyclers. But this time I was alone, with lots of leftovers and no Tupperware. I was full and certainly didn’t need the dead deer, but instinct told me to protect my meal. I paced in front of it for a couple of minutes, undecided, then froze, focusing my ears and attention on a dry rustle from some brush to the west. The guys had caught up with me, surely drawn by the smell of my kill.
The breeze had shifted, the wind now carrying my scent toward the tomcats. Though they could smell me, I couldn’t smell them. But it had to be them, because any other animal would run away from the scent of a large cat, not toward it.
Yet when the brush parted, I came face-to-face not with a group of agitated, hungry werecats, but with a single human. He wore a hunter’s vest, which I knew to be orange, though my cat’s eyes couldn’t identify the color, and carried a large hunting rifle propped across one arm. I had no idea what kind of gun it was. Few of us had any experience with firearms, and since we didn’t need them for hunting, we didn’t own any. But I had no doubt it would kill me at such close range.
At first the hunter didn’t notice me; he was too busy gaping at the slaughtered deer. Then something caught his attention. Probably my tail, which I couldn’t seem to keep still when I was nervous. His eyes widened in comprehension, and the skin pulsing over his jugular vein jiggled faster. He was as scared of me as I was of the gun, and maybe more so. Unless he’d been to Africa, he’d never seen a cat my size outside of a zoo, and he was clearly terrified.
I could smell his fear, sour like sweat, thick like smoke, and tangy like blood. The scent cried out to something exhilaratingly primal in me, something that answered to the proverbial call of the wild and was completely beyond my control.
All at once, I understood that stalking from the trees had been a mistake; it hadn’t satisfied the bloodlust. The deer hadn’t even had a chance to run from me. I’d wanted a chase, or at least a little excitement, and all I got was dead meat. But this man was alive, his pulse beating so invitingly in his throat. And I was confused and angry, which translates to the cat brain as something completely different. Something more like carnal aggression, intoxicating and irresistible.
I watched him carefully, wrestling with instincts I’d never been at odds with before. Excitement tingled through me. My fur stood on end and my eyes dilated. My tail whipped back and forth behind me, stirring an almost palpable cloud of danger in the air. And even as my body prepared to do what came naturally for a cat, some small human thought nagged at the back of my mind, warning me about capital crimes, of all things. I swatted it away, irritated. My feline brain was too narrowly focused to deal with more than one issue at a time. The most pressing issue at that moment was the hunter, simply because he was there. And because the bloodlust wanted him.
I took a single step forward. My whiskers arced forward as I sniffed in his direction, just to see how he would react. His eyes flicked to my tail. A bead of sweat trailed down his nose to dangle in the air above his considerable gut. His muscles tensed. He was preparing to run. Oh goodie.
My ears lay flat against my head. I hissed, showing off two-and-a-half-inch top canines. The pungent stench of human urine saturated the air. Some hunter, I thought. He’d probably been tracking my deer, thinking he was the only predator around. Oh, well, he shouldn’t have wandered onto private property. At least, I thought I was still on Daddy’s acreage. But maybe not. I hadn’t been paying that much attention.
I settled back onto my rear paws and lowered my chest to the ground, preparing to pounce, because that’s what cats did, and because I was long past the ability to think with human rationality. I wiggled my hindquarters, getting comfortable, and was seconds away from attacking when dead leaves crackled to my right, drawing my attention away from the hunter. Marc padded out of the undergrowth and growled, his eyes flashing at me in warning. He was growling at me, but the human didn’t know that.
After one look at Marc, who was half again my size, Mr. Fierce Hunter remembered he had a gun. He swung the barrel toward Marc’s head, in a movement much too slow to seem real. His finger wrapped around the trigger. From somewhere at my back, a dark shape flew past me. It landed on the hunter, knocking him to the ground. The gun went off. The cracking boom echoed in my head. The acrid stench of gunpowder burned my nose.
Movement on my left caught my eye and I turned to look. Leaves swung in the foliage inches above Marc’s shoulder.
It had happened too fast for me to react. Another second, and Marc would have been dead. Hell, another three inches, and Marc would have been dead. And it would have been my fault.
I blinked and shook my head, trying to shake some sense into myself. The bloodlust drained from my body like hot water from a bathtub, leaving me cold, exposed, and in shock. Shaking, I turned toward the hunter, stunned to realize that mere seconds had passed since the gun went off. It felt like much longer.
Parker stood on the man’s chest, and as I watched, he sat down, swatting the gun aside like a kitten with a ball of string. It landed with a metallic thunk in a nearby drift of leaves. Parker lowered his head slowly toward the hunter’s face, sniffing as if he smelled something interesting. It was probably fear, the same aroma that had sent my common sense fleeing in the face of instinct. But Parker still had his head on straight. He huffed, blowing the man’s hair back and making him blink. Then he stepped gracefully onto the ground, between the man and his gun.
Parker blinked deep hazel eyes at the hunter. When that had no effect, he roared, and Marc joined him. That got the man moving. He rolled over and jumped to his feet, tearing off through the bushes, screaming like a lunatic. You’d think he’d be grateful to be alive, but where’s the gratitude?
Marc’s angry growl claimed my attention from the witless hunter. He sounded pretty mad.
I whined and stared at the ground, trying to show remorse. The sound died in my throat when Marc hobbled over to me, still growling, and bit the back of my neck, forcing my head down in submission. He bit me hard enough to draw blood, which meant he was pretty pissed.
Yeah, I should’ve seen that coming.
With both the hunter and the bloodlust gone, I was horrified by what I’d almost done. Pride cats don’t attack humans. Not even strays attack humans, if they want to live. But I’d almost done just that. I’d been a breath away from committing the unforgivable sin, and Daddy was going to skin me alive. If Marc didn’t do it first.
And the worst part was the knowledge that they had every right to be furious with me. Hell, I was furious with me.
Marc let go of my neck and slapped my rump with his forepaw, urging me forward. I went without complaint, and he stayed close on my right, while Parker flanked me on the left. Jace and Ethan appeared out of nowhere, marching just behind me. I was surrounded, with only one way to go. So I went, my head hanging low in the proper posture of penitence.
They escorted me all the way to the tree line, where Marc signaled that he wanted me to Shift by swatting my rump again and tossing his head toward Parker, who had already begun the process.
Again, Shifting back was slow and painful. By the time I finished, the others were waiting for me, and no one looked sympathetic. Marc grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Not a word about this to anyone,” he said, staring at each of the others one at a time. “I’ll handle it.”
“But Dad—” Ethan started.
Marc cut him off with a snarl, sounding more canine than feline for a moment. “I said I’ll take care of it.” His eyes were fierce. “And if that isn’t enough for you, I’ll owe you. Each of you. Whatever you want, whenever you want it, so long as no one gets hurt.” He paused, still staring hard at Ethan. “Okay?”
Slowly, Ethan nodded, looking as if he wanted to throw up. He’d truly never been on my father’s bad side, which was exactly where he’d wind up if Marc’s little bribe ever came to light.
“Parker?” Marc asked. Parker nodded without hesitation, which made me wonder if he already had something in mind. Interesting…
“Jace?”
Jace shook his head, refusing. I stared at him in disappointment, hurt but not surprised. He was probably mad because Marc had interfered in our bet, and as pleased as I was with the outcome, I could hardly blame him.
“I don’t need a favor,” he said. “I’ll do it to prove I’m not all talk.” His eyes burned into me, though his statement was directed at Marc.
I rewarded him with a thankful nod and a hesitant smile, but it was gone in an instant when Marc nearly jerked me off my feet, backing toward the tree line with me in tow. “Whatever works,” he said, shrugging at Jace. But I’d never before seen anyone look so pissed off as the result of getting his own way.
Marc dragged me across the yard toward the house with his lips drawn tight in anger. Both of us still nude, he pulled me through the back door, down the hall, and into my bedroom. Again. I was starting to sense a pattern.