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WHEN WE’D ALL SHOWERED, we gathered in the living room. Kala had made coffee and mugs were waiting for us on the coffee table. We took a seat on the bland couches. Mark was the only one missing. The kitchen door opened a few minutes later and he stepped inside. He was clean and was wearing a fresh suit. A flamethrower was slung over his shoulder. He smelled strongly of smoke, charred fabric and melted rubber from his shoes.
“I thought you were joking when you said you were going to burn your clothes,” Flynn said.
Mark shrugged unashamedly. “Not at all. It was actually quite therapeutic.” Maybe he’d helped to purge some of the horror of the mission from his psyche by torching his clothes.
“Reece told me about the huge tarantula that you kicked to death,” Kala said. “Have you conquered your fear of spiders now?”
“Not entirely. But I don’t think I’ll run screaming when I see one now.” He smiled and headed to the armory to return the flamethrower.
“Has he ever actually run screaming from a spider?” I asked when the door to the main hallway closed behind him.
“Nah,” Flynn replied. “He’d never let himself lose his cool like that.”
“Was the spider really the size of a Chihuahua?” Kala asked me.
I nodded and shuddered. The spider golem had been far larger, but it had been made by magic. The fact that nature could create an arachnid that huge was frightening. “It was so big that I heard it splatter when Mark kicked it.”
“Ugh!” Her whole body shivered in disgust. “I’m kind of glad I missed the battle now.” She grinned in an abrupt change of mood. “Plus, Mitchell was pretty fantastic in bed.”
Flynn held up his hand. “Please, spare us the details.”
“You’re such a prude,” she accused.
“I am not!”
“Now, now, children,” Mark said as he opened the door. “No fighting, or I’ll send you both to bed without your supper.”
Kala sullenly slumped back against the couch and her bottom lip pooched out in a pout.
“She started it,” Flynn muttered.
Mark rolled his eyes, then rounded the couch and sat down between them. Kala sidled over and he slid his arm around her shoulders. He pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead. She shot a triumphant look at Flynn, who flipped her the bird. “I saw that,” Mark said without turning his head.
“Sorry, boss,” Flynn mumbled contritely. He didn’t protest when Mark pulled him in for a quick hug as well. As a reptile, Flynn wasn’t as prone to showing his emotions as Kala was, but even he needed affection sometimes.
Reece watched their interaction with a small smile. He’d always felt separate from them and, in a way, he had been. He’d kept himself aloof because, deep down, he’d believed he didn’t deserve their love. His own parents had treated him horribly. He’d grown up with a wall around his heart. The wall was gone now and he was finally letting himself be a part of the mixed pack who had been his family for the past eighteen years.
Kala reached forward and picked up the mug of coffee that she’d made for Mark. She handed it to him and he took it with a nod of thanks. She might be a terrible cook, but she made the best coffee I’d ever tasted. We discussed our options as we drank our beverages.
“Each time we take one of the golems down, the Web Master will just teleport them away and reconstruct them again,” Reece said. “We’re trapped in a cycle that we can’t escape from.”
“Why doesn’t he just send them all after us at once?” Kala asked.
“According to what the zombie said, he doesn’t have enough power yet,” Flynn said.
“We need to infiltrate the EERI compounds in Idaho,” Mark decided. “It’s highly suspicious that six of them are in such close proximity.”
“Do you think the Web Master is using one of them as his base?” I asked.
He shrugged a shoulder, being careful not to spill coffee on himself. “We won’t know until we get there. From the way they’re positioned, the central base is probably the most important one. We should concentrate on it first.”
“How are we going to spy on them without them knowing about it?” Flynn queried. “If we send in a drone, they’ll just shoot it down and then they’ll know we’re investigating them.”
“Lexi could send in a dog to be her eyes and ears,” Reece suggested.
Mark looked hopeful for a second, then shook his head. “EERI probably knows that she can control dogs by now. They’ll probably shoot it on sight.”
I involuntarily tightened my grip on Reece’s hand. He winced when his bones creaked. I wasn’t thinking of using Zeus, he told me.
I know, I thought sheepishly. The thought of something bad happening to him scares me.
He squeezed my hand in return. I know it does. We won’t let anyone hurt him.
“It’s a pity I’m not an alpha,” Kala said. “If I was, I might have been able to control cats like that crazy werebird in Texas can control birds. They probably wouldn’t be expecting us to use a cat as a spy.”
The shifter she was talking about was an alpha were-eagle who had lost her sight a long time ago. She’d taught herself to be able to link with birds so she could see through their eyes. The talent that had come to me so easily had taken her years to master.
Mark seized the idea and turned to me. “You can control other shifters,” he reminded me, as if I could ever forget. “Is it possible for you to control a cat through Kala?”
The thought had never occurred to me. “I have no idea.”
“Would you be willing to try it?”
I looked at Kala for her reaction to becoming a guinea pig. She shrugged. “I’m up for it if you are.” She must trust me implicitly if she was willing to let me take control of her without question. If our situations had been reversed, I wasn’t sure if I’d have been as accommodating.
That’s because you’re an alpha, Reece explained. We’d never willingly let anyone else take over our minds. He wasn’t talking about our ability to control each other. Neither of us would ever purposefully hurt our other half. I doubted it was even possible for us to put each other in harm’s way now.
“Where are we going to find a cat way out here?” I asked. We were miles away from the closest town.
“There are bound to be feral cats in the area,” Mark replied. Excited, he quickly finished off his coffee. “There’s no time like the present,” he urged us and stood. Learning about the abilities of supernatural creatures was one of the perks of the job for him. In another life, he would probably have been a scientist.
We gulped down our coffee as well and took turns rinsing our mugs in the kitchen. Not even the prospect of discovering a new talent could shake Mark from his insistence on cleanliness.
Zeus followed us for the mile long walk down the driveway, but he remained inside the gates. I didn’t want him to accidentally scare the cat away once we found one. He watched us dejectedly as we entered a thin stand of trees. Our bases were all in remote locations with enough animals for us to hunt during a full moon. This place was no exception. A hungry shifter would go to great lengths to feed when we were in our beast forms. Anything that walked, crawled, or flew was food to us.
“Okay,” Kala said and rubbed her hands together. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just stand there and look pretty,” I said.
That made her grin. “That’s not going to be much of a challenge. That’s my natural state of being.”
Her amusement faded when I touched her mind. We hadn’t bitten each other to renew our link in a long time. It suddenly occurred to her that she could feel us far more strongly than usual. She hadn’t been here when we’d discussed this previously. She picked up from me that it might be because of Laurylayne’s blessing.
Slipping inside her mind, I found the part of her brain that I used to communicate with dogs and took control. Werecats were different from werewolves, but we were similar enough for me to be able to reach out with her senses. Dimly, I sensed a feral cat some distance away. Reece slid his hand into mine and my power was suddenly boosted.
“Whoa!” Kala said when we felt tens of thousands of felines all across the state. Sensing us as well, they turned in our direction. A mixture of feral and domestic, all were poised on the edge of coming to us. If she’d been an alpha, we probably could have made contact with every werefeline in the state as well. Our power wasn’t as strong this time, probably because we didn’t have any cats nearby to help enhance us.
“It’s just like what happened with the dogs,” Flynn said. With our boost of power, his link to us was strong enough to pick up on what was happening. I was glad that we wouldn’t have to renew our bond. When Reece and I had become part-vampire, it had made us far more dangerous. Our bites were deadly to other shifters now. Our venom would kill our friends quickly and horribly. After watching Gareth Carter die from my bite, I couldn’t stand the thought of my friends’ organs failing like that.
Pulling my power back in, I focused on the nearest cat. I called to her and she obediently sprinted through the woods towards us. Completely wild, the tabby had never been in contact with humans before. Despite this, she trotted over to Kala and rubbed against her legs as if she was a family pet. Kala bent to pick her up and the cat began to purr. She had matted hair and was riddled with fleas, but she allowed herself to be stroked as if she was tame.
“Now we’re going to have to call you fleabag,” Flynn said to Kala. She made a sour face and hastily put the cat down.
“See if you can use Kala to see through the cat,” Mark instructed me.
Closing my eyes, I delved into Kala’s senses. Images of Mitchell flooded into my mind. “Eww,” I complained. “Can you please concentrate?”
“Sorry,” she said with a grin and made an effort to focus. Using my strange power, I sensed the cat’s mind. Without my link to Kala, I wouldn’t have been able to manage it. I had nothing in common with felines at all. While I could control other species of shifters, I couldn’t control their counterparts without assistance.
Just as I did with dogs, I used her to link with the cat. A moment later, we were seeing through her eyes. Taking over the feline’s mind completely, I made her walk to the closest tree and climb halfway up it. Looking around, I saw us and then our compound in the distance. The cat’s vision wasn’t as sharp as mine, but it would do the job.
When I released the cat’s mind, she started and looked around warily. Realizing she was being watched, she hissed at us in warning, then slid to the ground and slunk away. She disappeared into the grass without a trace, following her own trail back to her home.
“It worked,” I confirmed and extricated myself from Kala’s mind, much to our mutual relief. I didn’t mind being permanently linked to Reece and always knowing what he was thinking and feeling, but I could definitely do without seeing Kala’s sex life in such explicit detail.
