Read the book: «Prey»

PREY

Someone was blinking and, whoever it was, he wasn’t alone. Several more sets of eyes appeared in the trees, each pair at least ten feet from the next.

We hadn’t just been sabotaged. We’d been ambushed.

Straightening slowly, I sniffed, wincing when the frigid air pierced my nose, throat and lungs with a thousand microscopic shards of ice. Fortunately, one good whiff was enough.

Strays.

“Three strays at your six o’clock, Faythe,” Vic said, anger threading a cord of danger through his voice as he stared over my shoulder. “No, make that four.” At my back, too? Damn it! “Five more straight ahead.”

I arched one eyebrow at him in question, and he gave me a grim smile. “We don’t stand a chance unarmed.” And there was clearly no time to Shift.

Two serpentine puffs of air floated from one of the stray’s nostrils with each breath. Moonlight shone on his glossy fur. Rage glinted in the reflective surface of his eyes.

Marc stepped closer to the hood and tossed his head, telling me to scoot towards the rear door. “Keep your backs to the vehicle and make them come to you.”

And that’s when the first cat pounced.

Find out more about Rachel Vincent

by visiting mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent and read Rachel’s blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com

Prey
Rachel Vincent

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Matrice, my editor, without whose amazing suggestion this story would not exist in its current form. Thanks for your patience, and for nudging my creative compass back to true north.

Acknowledgements

Thanks first of all to No.1, who handled almost every single detail of our recent move, so I could finish the rough draft I was working on, as well as the line edits for Prey. Without you to keep track of the details, I would live in utter chaos.

Thanks to Elizabeth Mazer for all her hard work behind the scenes, to the MIRA art department for the amazing cover (my favourite so far!) and to the entire production staff, for turning my little story into an actual book.

Thanks to Miriam Kriss, who handles all the business so I can bury myself in other worlds. To Vicki Pettersson, who kept me accountable during the revisions. And to Jocelynn Drake, who lets me complain.

And thanks most of all to my critique partner, Rinda Elliot, for all the hours spent helping me sort this one out. You keep me working. You keep me writing. You keep me sane.

One

“You planning to get there sometime this century, Vic?” I glanced at my watch, my foot tapping an anxious beat on the floorboard.

Victor Di Carlo shot me a long-suffering smile, then turned back to the road. “Speed limit’s seventy-five, Faythe. I’m doing eighty. But if you think you can get there faster on foot, be my guest.”

But of course, I couldn’t. Not even on four paws. A cheetah can run sixty-five miles an hour, but can’t sustain that speed for long. And I’m no cheetah. So I was stuck drumming my stubby nails on the passenger-seat armrest in Vic’s Suburban as it stubbornly maintained a speed I considered unacceptable.

“Relax.” Vic flicked on the left blinker, then moved the SUV smoothly out of the right lane to pass a lumbering semi. “We’ll get there on schedule, and Marc will be waiting.”

I nodded, locking and unlocking the passenger-side door until he glared at me. “Sorry.”

“Jeez, Faythe, you act like you haven’t seen him in weeks,” Ethan said, and I twisted in my seat to see him roll his eyes from the back row, his usual good-humored grin firmly in place. He was the youngest of my four brothers—only two years my elder—and the one most likely to beat me up in training, then bring ice for my bruises. “How long has it been?”

I stared out my window at empty fields and winter-bare trees growing dim in the late-afternoon light. “Nine weeks, tomorrow.” A lot had happened since Marc had been exiled, and the most notable example lay sleeping in the seat behind me.

Manx’s baby. Des. The two-week-old was fastened into a reclined, backward-facing car seat on the bench next to his mother. Who somehow managed to look disarmingly beautiful, even with drool trailing from her open mouth. Since the baby came, she caught her z’s when she could. Whenever he was quiet. As did the rest of us.

It turns out sensitive cat hearing comes with a serious downside.

In the past two months, Manx had given birth, and Kaci—the wild teenage tabby we’d taken in—had mostly settled into life at the ranch, though so far she’d refused to Shift. November had blown leaves from the trees, December had brought a rare Texas snowstorm, and the eighth day of January had crowned it all with an even less common and more beautiful layer of thick ice, which had yet to fully melt.

But I had not seen Marc. Not even once, in all those weeks.

Vic grinned at me for a moment before turning back to the traffic. “And I suppose it’s the stimulating conversation you miss, right?”

“La-la-la!” Ethan sang. He slouched in his seat and stuffed earbuds into his ears to block out the response he might not want to hear from his sister.

“Right now, I’d listen to anything he has to say, so long as I get to hear it in person.” Sighing, I snatched a paper cup from the drink holder and downed the last of my 7-Eleven coffee. It was cold. As I dropped the cup into the trash can wedged between the seats, Vic’s cell phone rang. He leaned to the right and dug it from his left hip pocket, then flipped it open without swerving an inch. I probably would have put us in the ditch.

“Hello?”

“Vic.” It was my dad. We could all hear him perfectly well, except for Manx, who was now snoring delicately, if such a thing was possible. “Your father came through for me. I wanted you to be the first to know.”

Vic’s sigh was audible, and his face suddenly drained of tension I hadn’t even realized it held. He smiled as the Suburban soared past another eighteen-wheeler. “I never doubted it.” But the relief in his eyes said otherwise. He’d been worried. We all had.

Springs squealed over the line—Greg Sanders leaning back in his desk chair. He’d probably called as soon as he got the news. “Remind Faythe to deliver my message to your family, please,” he said, and I rolled my eyes.

“I know, Daddy.”

My father chuckled. “Drive carefully, and let me know when you get there.”

“Will do.” Vic was still grinning like a clown when he hung up, and I doubted he’d even heard what he was agreeing to. Fortunately, I had.

“So, that’s three now, right?” I twisted in my seat to look at Ethan, who’d turned off the music and was no longer feigning sleep.

The backseat groaned as he searched for a more comfortable position. “Yeah. Uncle Rick and Ed Taylor.” Whose daughters both owed their lives to our Pride. I’d freed my cousin Abby after we were both kidnapped by a jungle stray intending to sell us as breeders, then we’d caught and killed that same stray before he could snatch Carissa Taylor. Their fathers were understandably loyal to mine. “And now Bert.”

Umberto Di Carlo—Vic’s dad—was one of my father’s oldest friends. We’d been counting on his support, but were far from sure we’d get it. After all, politics could uproot entire family trees, to say nothing of friendships.

Nine weeks ago I’d been acquitted—barely—of infecting my college boyfriend and then killing him in self-defense. On the last day of my trial—the day after Marc was exiled—Calvin Malone had made a formal challenge to my father’s leadership, petitioning to have him removed as head of the Territorial Council. Though he remained our Alpha, my dad had been temporarily suspended from his position of authority over the other council members, pending an official vote by all ten Alphas. That vote was scheduled for the first of February—two weeks away.

Since his suspension, my father and Malone had been fighting—figuratively—for a commitment of support from each of their peers.

My uncle had thrown his weight behind us immediately, and Edward Taylor had followed suit a week later. But our Pride’s other allies had asked for time to consider. To weigh their options. Their hesitance stung, but it made sense. However they voted, their decisions would have an irreversible effect on the council, and on the werecat community at large. After all, most of them had sons serving in Prides on both sides of the conflict. Brothers living in territories loyal to Malone. Daughters or sisters married to toms participating in the coup. I was lucky that three of my brothers—Michael, Owen, and Ethan—had no loyalties to anyone else. As for my brother Ryan, well, the less said about him the better.

The waiting was hard on Vic, but it was nothing compared to the effect the whole thing was having on our fellow enforcer Jace, whose stepfather had organized the attempt to unseat my dad. Jace felt personally responsible for Calvin Malone’s betrayal, though he could have done nothing to stop it.

“What about Malone?” I asked, doing a mental tally of the other Alphas.

Ethan pulled his earphones from his ears and wound them around one hand. “Last I heard, he has three votes, too. Milo Mitchell, Wes Gardner, and Paul Blackwell.”

Mitchell’s son, Kevin, had been kicked out of our Pride four months earlier for repeatedly helping a stray sneak into the south-central territory. Gardner was irate over our “failure” to avenge his brother Jamey’s death at Manx’s hands. And as far as we could tell, Paul Blackwell was siding against us because he legitimately objected to my father’s equal-opportunity approach to leadership. Apparently the saying about an old dog’s inability to learn new tricks held true for old cats, as well, and though Blackwell—unlike Malone—didn’t seem to hate women and strays, neither did he envision a place for them among the community’s leaders.

That left only two undecided Alphas: Nick Davidson and Jerald Pierce—another fellow enforcer’s father. And with both sides now scrambling to claim those votes, one thing was clear: the fight was about to get ugly.

“Parker’s dad will come through.” Vic sounded much more confident than I felt. “That’ll give us four.” But we needed Davidson’s vote, too. Four votes would only lock the proceedings in a tie, and we needed a clear victory. Otherwise, even if my father managed to hold on to his position, the peace would never last.

“How much longer?” I asked, my hand clenched around the car door handle.

“Our exit’s up next.” Vic nodded at the sign ahead, advertising food and gas in one mile.

About time! After hours on the road and too many cups of coffee to count…

I turned in my seat to see Ethan sitting up straight now and shrugging into his jacket. Manx was still asleep, her long black ringlets draping the back of the seat and the front of her blouse. She was the very picture of peace and happiness, of maternal bliss, in spite of very little rest and the unpleasant reason for our trip.

Des was born on the last day of 2008, which would have given Manx an extra tax deduction for the year—if she were a U.S. citizen or a legal immigrant. But she was neither, which also meant she couldn’t board a plane. Which is how Vic, Ethan, and I wound up driving her from our ranch in eastern Texas to the outskirts of Atlanta, where Vic’s dad—and my father’s newest ally—was hosting Manx’s hearing.

I’d volunteered for the transport—normally a very dull assignment—because we had to drive through the free territory to get to Atlanta. Marc was in the free territory.

And in minutes, he’d be in my arms.

“Manx, wake up!” Leaning over the armrest, I shoved the bottom of the center bench seat hard enough to jostle the tabby, but careful not to brush her leg. She didn’t like to be touched. Considering the abuse she’d suffered, I couldn’t blame her.

Her eyes fluttered open, and in a single blink she banished the sleep stupor from her expression, replacing it with an instant alertness I envied. Followed by an initial, panicked search for her child, as if someone had stolen him while she slept. And that’s exactly what she was afraid of.

When she was still pregnant, we’d all heard her scream at night, crying in her sleep. The first few times, my mother had tried to wake her, but my father insisted she stop before she got a broken nose for her efforts. Fortunately, the dreams had ended when the baby came, and Manx insisted he stay in the bed with her. She said he slept better like that, but I couldn’t help thinking she was the one who really benefited. As did the rest of us, from the peaceful silence.

Manx relaxed when her eyes found Des, still asleep in his car seat. She pushed hair back from her face and looked up. “This is Mississippi?”

“Yup.” Vic flicked the right blinker on and veered onto the off-ramp as I settled back into my seat. I ignored the restaurants we passed, focusing on the Conoco station at the end of a strip of convenience stores.

By all accounts, Marc had settled into his new life as well as could be expected. He’d found a job and an isolated rental house, and was slowly carving out an existence for himself in the human world—a world that no longer included me. At least in person. But we spoke on the phone almost daily, and I’d even talked him through a partial Shift a month earlier. Though I’d only been ordered to teach my fellow Pride cats the partial shift, I was proud to say that Marc Ramos, my favorite stray, was the first tom to accomplish it.

Evidently he held more than enough suppressed anger to trigger the facial transformation. Not a surprise.

My eyes scanned the crowded lot. We’d scheduled a rest stop at Natchez, just beyond the Mississippi border, where Marc was supposed to join us and escort us across the entire free territory, including an overnight stay in the middle of Mississippi. But I didn’t see his car. Disappointed, I clenched my hands in my lap until my fingers ached.

Vic turned right into the parking lot, then pulled into an empty space at the rear. I started to get out and look for Marc inside the store, but Vic laid one hand on my arm as soon as I got the door open. “Can you stay with them for a minute? I have to pee.”

I glanced at Vic, then back at Ethan. Normally, my youngest brother would have been enough security for one postpartum tabby and an infant. But the free zone was unregulated, and Manx was skittish at best, even when she wasn’t about to be tried for murder, so we were trying to give her double coverage at all times. “Yeah, I’ll stay. But hurry up.” He smiled in thanks as I closed my door, then shut his own and made his way to the front of the building.

Des made a mewling noise behind me, and I twisted in my seat to see Manx bring the baby up to one exposed breast, where he latched on eagerly. The mewling became a soft sucking sound as he began to nurse. Again. Did that kid ever do anything but eat? Even with his androgynous baby face, I could tell the little monster was a boy by his appetite alone.

Still, I couldn’t help but smile as I turned to scan the parking lot out the driver-side window. The little guy was a true survivor. Just like his mother.

“Looking for me?” Something tapped on the glass behind me, and I jumped, then whirled fast enough to hit my head on the sun visor. Marc stood outside the window, looking warm and welcoming in a worn brown leather jacket and an old pair of jeans. His smile widened as I fumbled for the door handle. But in my excitement I couldn’t find it, so he opened it for me, nearly ripping the door from its hinges.

My feet never hit the ground. One moment I was in the front seat, the next I was in his arms, my legs wrapped around his waist, his mouth soft but insistent beneath mine. People stared—I saw them over Marc’s shoulder— but then they smiled and went about their business, except for a few kids, who giggled at our display.

Evidently reunions look much the same in any species.

“Your hair grew,” Marc whispered, and the warmth of his breath against my ear gave me chills that had nothing to do with the ice half coating the parking lot.

“You cut yours.” I ran my hand through cold, short curls.

He put me down, but still held me close. “Yeah, I figured with the new life, why not try a new look? What do you think?”

Grinning, I stepped back for a better look. “Not bad.” Marc would look good in an orange clown wig, if he decided to wear one. Still, though he’d only lost two inches, I couldn’t help missing the rest of his hair. But nowhere near as badly as I’d missed him.

I was threading my arm through his when a familiar scent caught my attention. A stray scent, and—oddly enough—one I knew.

Daniel Painter.

I froze, and my grip tightened around Marc’s arm as my pulse raced. I scanned the parking lot for the stray who’d ratted Manx out in exchange for a chance to join our Pride. If he could keep his nose clean in the free zone for a year.

Keeping his nose clean did not include picking a fight with a delegation of Pride cats as soon as we crossed the border. And there was no way in hell that his presence in that particular parking lot was a coincidence…

Two

“What’s wrong?” Marc’s gold-flecked brown eyes darkened as he frowned, glancing around in search of whatever had set me on edge.

“Dan Painter’s here.” My fingers brushed his leather-clad arm as I turned, trying to glance around the parking lot inconspicuously.

A flicker of annoyance flashed across Marc’s expression. “I know. I can’t shake him.”

I felt my eyes go wide and gave up the search for Painter to stare at Marc. “He’s tailing you?”

“Sort of.” Marc flushed, and I knew there was more to the story than he wanted to tell me.

“And you’re just…letting him?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “He’s not actually causing any trouble, so I don’t feel justified pounding on him. He just hangs around and asks questions about the Pride, and the way we—you guys—do things. Where we come from, how we control bloodlust, why there are so few tabbies, why there aren’t any strays in the Pride. Well, not anymore, anyway.”

Marc was a stray—a werecat born human, and later infected through a bite or scratch from a werecat in feline form—and he remained the only stray ever admitted into a Pride. Even if he was no longer officially a part of that Pride.

“The guy never shuts up. Seriously, he talks all day long.”

I smiled. Kaci had a very similar habit, and as much as I liked her, I’d started to value long-distance assignments simply for the peace and quiet. Surely his job provided the same relief. “At least he can’t bug you at work, right?”

Marc’s flush deepened. “He joined my crew last month. We frame houses together now. Every day.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “That’s so cute! You have a sidekick. A little mini-me.” Though if memory served, Painter wasn’t much smaller than Marc.

“Whatever. Forget about Painter.” His gaze flicked behind me to the back passenger-side door, which my brother had just opened and stepped through. “Hey, Ethan, how’s monogamy treating you?”

For the first time in his life, the family Casanova had been dating the same girl for four straight months. Our mother was thrilled, and for once she was fantasizing about a wedding that wouldn’t involve me in a veil.

“It’s like eating white rice for every meal,” Ethan said, right on cue.

Marc grinned. “Hey, if you’re eating every day, I’d say you’re a lucky man.” His words were for Ethan, but his eyes were on me. Apparently he missed my…rice.

Ethan shrugged, unmoved. “I guess. How’s the construction business treating you?”

Marc scruffed one hand through his newly shorn curls. “It’s like swinging a hammer eight hours a day for minimum wage.” And just like that, they were all caught up.

Still in the SUV, the baby hiccuped, and I glanced over my brother’s shoulder to see Manx buttoning her blouse. Then she climbed out of the car and lifted Des from his seat, wrapping him gently in a blue knit blanket.

“How are you, Manx?” Marc stuffed his hands into his pockets to show the tabby he had no intention of touching her. We’d discovered that approach—especially coming from the toms—kept her fairly relaxed.

“Good, thank you.” Her exotic accent—she was Venezuelan by birth—made her statement sound striking, rather than common. She beamed a brilliant smile at him and held the baby slightly away from her body, wordlessly inviting him to peek.

“Wow.” Marc’s eyes went softer than I’d ever seen them as he stared at Des, and I wasn’t sure whether I should be amused or worried. “Do I get an introduction?” he finally asked.

Manx’s smile widened. “This is Desiderio. He is my heart’s desire.”

“We call him Des,” I added, ever helpful.

“He’s beautiful. May I?” Marc pulled one hand from his pocket and mimed stroking the baby’s cheek.

Manx hesitated, and her smile froze for an instant. Then she took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Of course.”

Marc ran the back of one rough finger down the child’s face. When he reached the corner of Des’s mouth, the baby turned toward his touch, lips pursed and ready to suckle. Marc laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“I see you’ve met our latest addition,” Vic said, and I looked up to see him walking toward us from the convenience store, a white plastic sack in one hand.

“He’s amazing,” Marc said, and on the edge of my vision, Manx’s posture relaxed a little more.

“Yeah, he is.” Vic set his bag on the front passenger seat and glanced at the baby with that gaga look most toms assumed when confronted with members of the next generation. Yet more proof that propagation of the species was indeed their biggest goal in life.

Vic shut the car door and embraced his former field partner in a masculine, back-thumping greeting. Then he stepped away and glanced from me to Marc as Ethan settled a long coat over Manx’s shoulders, careful not to touch her. “You’re not going to believe who I ran into inside.” He tossed his head toward the building.

“Dan Painter.” I grinned.

Vic huffed. “You smelled him?”

I nodded. “He and Marc have…bonded.”

Vic’s brow rose in amusement, but a dark look from Marc kept him from pressing for details. “This cold can’t be good for the baby,” he said instead, still grinning at Marc. “Let’s get done here and get on the road.”

Marc and I flanked Manx on the way into the building, where he waited outside the ladies’ room while she and I went inside. She changed the baby’s diaper on a fold-down table while I made use of one of the stalls. Then she asked if I could hold him while she relieved herself.

“Oh, I don’t know.” My heart thudded in panic. I’d literally never held a baby, and whatever idiot had said all women possessed some kind of maternal instinct was wrong. “Can’t you just…put him down for a couple of minutes?”

“On the ground?” Manx glared at me, and I shrugged helplessly. She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I will ask one of the men.”

I sighed heavily. “Give him here.” I could not let Marc know I was…hesitant to hold a baby. He’d never let me live it down. “What do I do with him?” I held my arms out football-style, as I’d seen my mother do often enough over the past two weeks.

Manx placed the baby gently in my arms, settling his little head securely into the crook of my elbow. “Nothing. He is sleeping. Hold him for just two minutes.”

I nodded, afraid to move anything but my head for risk of waking Des.

Manx hesitated, her hand on the swinging metal door. Then she shot me a smile that couldn’t quite relieve the nervous lines spanning her forehead and stepped into the stall.

I stared at the baby, taking in each detail up close for the first time. He was unbelievably small. Like a doll, but more fragile. His cheeks were round and red, his nose sprinkled with tiny, colorless bumps. His hands and feet were wrapped in the blanket, but a wisp of straight black hair showed above his forehead.

I saw no trace of Luiz in him, thank goodness.

But then, I saw no trace of Manx, either. I saw only a baby, cute in a red, squirmy kind of way, and perfectly tolerable when he was sleeping.

“Thank you.” The stall door swung open and Manx stepped out. She washed her hands, then took her baby back, and only then did the worry lines fade from around her mouth.

On our way through the store, we passed Dan Painter in line at the counter, holding a big bag of chips, a handful of Slim Jims, and a two-liter of Coke. I tapped him on the shoulder as I passed, and when his eyes met mine, he nearly choked on the chunk he’d already torn from one of the meat sticks.

I laughed. He obviously remembered our first meeting, when I’d knocked him unconscious with one swing. I like to leave a good first impression.

In the parking lot, Manx buckled Des into his car seat in the SUV, which Vic had already refueled and warmed up. Ethan had claimed the front passenger seat, which was fine with me. I was riding with Marc.

Squeezing into his tiny, low-slung car felt weird after weeks of riding in Vic’s Suburban, but it was a good kind of weird. Familiar and easy. And sorely missed.

We pulled from the lot first, and Vic followed as the last rays of daylight deepened to a dramatic red and orange. Then darkness descended, and Marc and I were together—and alone—for the first time in months.

Unfortunately, we were also on the road, which made anything more than conversation impossible. Or at least impractical.

“So, how’s your dad holding up?” Marc twined his hand around mine on the center console as outside, small buildings and restaurants gave way to open fields, then long stretches of woods.

“Okay, I guess.” I shrugged. “He’s pretty quiet lately. I don’t think he wants anyone to know how hard this whole sucker punch from Malone has been on him. The council’s completely fractured. Manx’s hearing should be interesting, considering the current coup-in-progress.” And though I would never admit it aloud for fear of sounding like a coward, I was greatly relieved that my responsibility to Kaci meant I couldn’t stay for the trial. Hanging out in a room full of angry Alphas did not appeal to my sense of adventure. Or my survival instinct.

Marc changed lanes, and I watched in the side-view mirror as Vic followed his lead. “Who’s on the tribunal this time?”

“Taylor, Mitchell, and Pierce.” Fortunately, that particular combination of Alphas gave Manx a decent shot at a fair trial. Taylor had thrown his weight behind my father, Mitchell was firmly in place behind Malone, and Parker’s dad was still sticking to his Switzerland routine. But on the downside, getting those three to agree on anything—much less a verdict—would not be easy.

“And Wes Gardner’s going to be there, of course.” Because his brother was one of Manx’s victims.

“I assume Michael’s going in a professional capacity.”

“Yeah.” While werecat law didn’t mirror human law exactly, as an attorney, my oldest brother was by far the most qualified to assist Manx in her defense. He’d be flying to Atlanta the following day, shortly after his wife—a human woman and honest-to-goodness runway model named Holly—left for a photo shoot in Italy. Michael was lucky his wife traveled so much, and that she stayed too busy to ask many questions. She knew nothing of our werecat existence. Theirs was definitely an odd marriage, but it seemed to fit them both well.

Marc glanced in the rearview mirror, then briefly at me before turning his eyes back toward the road. “How’s Kaci? Still refusing to Shift?”

“Yeah. I’m starting to really worry about her. She’s tired all the time, and listless, and she only perks up when I let her watch me spar. She seems to think if she learns to defend herself in human form, she’ll never have to Shift again.”

“What’s the doc say?”

I sighed. “Her symptoms are similar to chronic fatigue and depression. And if she doesn’t give in to her feline form soon, her body will start shutting down a little at a time, until she’s too weak to move. He says refusing to Shift will eventually kill her. And by ‘eventually,’ he means soon.”

“Damn.” Marc looked surprised for a moment, then concern dragged his mouth into a deep frown.

“I know. I feel like I’m failing her.” I loosened my seat belt and twisted in the bucket seat to face him. “I mean, I’m supposed to be taking care of her, and instead I’m letting her wither up and die. She deserves better than that, but I can’t convince her to Shift. She won’t even listen when I bring it up anymore.”

“So what are you going to do?”

I shrugged, scowling out the window at the ice-glazed power lines running along the highway. I couldn’t get used to that question; until recently, I was rarely allowed to make my own choices, much less someone else’s. But Kaci wasn’t old enough or mature enough to choose to suffer. She was my responsibility.

“I don’t know. But I’m not going to let her waste away. She’s fought too hard for survival to give up now. Especially over something as simple as this.”

Unfortunately, Shifting wasn’t simple for her. The last time she’d been in cat form, she’d killed four people, including her own mother and sister. But that kid was strong. And stubborn enough to make sure nothing like that ever happened again, even if she had to kill herself to prevent it.

The rest of the Pride was counting on my strength and stubbornness to override hers. In the beginning, I’d thought it would work. But after nine weeks with no success, I wasn’t so sure.

“Dr. Carver said to call him if she hasn’t done it by this time next week. He’s going to try to force her Shift.” With an intravenous cocktail of adrenaline and a couple of other drugs.

Marc’s head swiveled to face me, eyebrows high in surprise. “Into cat form? Is that possible?”

“We’re not sure. In theory, it shouldn’t be much different from forcing someone into human form.” Which we had to do occasionally, in order to question uncooperative strays, or stop them from shredding anyone who came near. “But in practice…well, no one’s ever tried it. I hate to experiment on a child, but she’s really leaving us no choice.”

“Have you told her?”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my forehead, fighting off frustration. I hadn’t seen Marc in months, and I wanted these few hours together to pass pleasantly. “But she doesn’t think we’ll do it. She says she’d rather be tired for the rest of her life than risk hurting someone in cat form.”

“Yeah, but would she rather be dead?”

I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the headrest. “Honestly, I think she would. She’s horrified by what happened last time, and we still can’t get her to talk about it. But I’m hoping that if I can—”

My eyes flew open as Marc’s car jerked beneath us and started to sputter.

“What’s that?” I sat straight in my seat, staring out the windshield at nothing but darkness, broken by two overlapping cones of light from the headlights.

He didn’t answer, but his hands tightened around the already misshapen wheel—a casualty of many past temper fits—and his frown deepened.

The car sputtered again, then began to shake, like it was trying to die. Steam rolled from beneath the hood, white as snow against the cold, black night.

Marc veered slowly onto the right shoulder, glancing back and forth between the windshield and the rearview mirror. I twisted to watch as Vic came to a stop behind us. We got out, crunching on a layer of ice, and Vic joined us at the front of the car, where Marc pulled a penlight from his pocket and popped the hood. He shined the light on parts I didn’t recognize, grunting in frustration. Then he knelt and shimmied under the car, in spite of the frigid concrete at his back.

Seconds later he emerged, scowling. “My radiator hose is slashed.”

“Son of a bitch!” Vic muttered, as Ethan stepped out of the SUV, followed by Manx, clutching the bundled baby to her chest. “You can’t drive long like that. No more than ten, fifteen miles. Had to’ve happened at the gas station.”

Marc nodded in agreement, then his eyes met mine, his face lit unevenly by the headlights. “We’ll pile into Vic’s SUV with everyone else, and I’ll have mine towed.”

Obviously, that wasn’t how I’d intended our reunion to go, but it could have been much worse, especially considering that some asshole had sabotaged Marc’s car. What if they’d cut the brake line instead?

Pissed now, I jerked open the passenger-side door and leaned in to grab the sodas Marc had bought at the Conoco. And that’s when I saw them. Two pinpoints of red light in the trees across the street. Those lights went out, then appeared again a second later.

Eyes. Cat eyes, reflecting the little available light. Someone was blinking, and whoever it was, he wasn’t alone. Several more sets of eyes appeared in the trees, each pair at least ten feet from the next.

My stomach twisted in on itself, churning around my road-trip munchies in fear. We hadn’t just been sabotaged. We’d been fucking ambushed.

Straightening slowly, I sniffed, wincing when the frigid air pierced my nose, throat, and lungs with a thousand microscopic shards of ice. Fortunately, one good whiff was enough.

Strays.

“Um…guys?” I hissed as the first dark form slunk out of the woods and into the moonlit night, uncommon confidence in each silent step.

“We see them,” Marc whispered, and I glanced over the roof to find him backing slowly toward the trunk of his car.

“Three strays at your six o’clock, Faythe,” Vic said, anger threading a cord of danger through his voice as he stared over my shoulder. “No, make that four.”

At my back, too? Damn it! “Five more straight ahead.” I nodded at the trees across the street and stepped to the side so I could close the car door.

Gravel crunched on my left, and my brother spoke from his position near the passenger side of the Suburban. “This makes no sense. Strays are loners.”

Yet several had united to fight us in Montana two months earlier. This new trend made me nervous. As did the cats creeping slowly toward us—from all directions. Each in cat form. At a glance I counted eleven of them now, and there were only five of us, even if Manx could fight holding a baby. Which she could not.

“Manx, get in the car with Des,” Marc ordered. Manx climbed through Vic’s rear driver-side door without a word and shoved it closed.

Okay, make that four of us.

“Faythe?” Marc had his trunk open now, and he held something out to me. I inched toward him with my arm extended, sliding for a moment before I could steady myself on the thin layer of ice beneath my boots. Something long, cold and hard hit my palm—a shovel, still caked with dried dirt.

I arched one eyebrow at him in question, and he gave me a grim smile. “We don’t stand a chance unarmed.” And there was clearly no time to Shift. I shivered from the cold, but knew I’d soon be sweating from exertion.

Marc tossed a second shovel to Vic, who caught it one-handed, then he pulled a small ax from the trunk and wrapped both hands around the twelve-inch rubber grip. He hefted it briefly, as if considering, then handed it to Ethan, who’d come to a stop on his left.

“You ready for this?” Marc asked, pulling a crowbar from the trunk for himself before slamming it shut.

“Looking forward to it.” Ethan removed his earphones from around his neck with his free hand. He wound them around his MP3 player and slid both into his front pocket, then gave the ax an experimental swing. “What, no samurai?” He swung the ax again, then shrugged, green eyes glinting in bleak humor. “I guess this’ll do.”

“Okay, let’s go.” Marc stalked toward the SUV and stopped at the driver-side door. “Manx?” He tapped on the window, and her head appeared between the seats. “Don’t come out, no matter what.”

She nodded.

Marc checked to make sure the keys were still in the ignition—they were—then turned to me, his features severe in the harsh, reddish glare of his own taillights. “If this goes bad, get them out of here. Don’t look back, just drive straight to the ranch.” I started to protest, but he ignored me. “I’m serious, Faythe. Get them back safely. I’ll haunt your ass till the day you die if you let something happen to that baby.”

I nodded, more alarmed by the tone of his voice than by the cats, the nearest of which was now only a couple of feet away, slinking across the near lane eight feet to my right. Two serpentine puffs of air floated from his nostrils with each breath. Moonlight shone on his glossy fur. Rage glinted in the reflective surface of his eyes.

Marc stepped closer to the hood and tossed his head, telling me to scoot toward the rear door. “Keep your backs to the vehicle and make them come to you.”

And that’s when the first cat pounced.

Three

The furry bastard flew at Marc, claws bared, hissing through a mouthful of pointy feline teeth. He ripped four jagged slashes in the sleeve of Marc’s jacket. Marc slammed the rounded corner of the crowbar into the side of the cat’s head on the upswing. I swung my shovel like a golf club and hit the stray’s right flank. A hideous yowl splintered the frigid night. An instant later, Marc buried the short end of the crowbar in the top of the cat’s skull.

The body hit the ground at Marc’s feet. He wrenched the crowbar free with a wet sucking sound and was already swinging again when the next cat approached, screeching in the back of his throat, fur standing on end.

Another stray leapt at me head-on. My shovel met him in midair. His skull rang the metal blade like a cymbal, and he scampered back to regroup, whimpering, claws scraping the ice-slick concrete with each step.

A series of grunts, growls, and hisses on my left told me Ethan was holding his own, and from the rear of the Suburban came the crunch of a shovel hitting pavement, as Vic kept two more strays occupied.

After the initial surge, none of us had a chance to help anyone else. The cats had us outnumbered three-to-one, and only the car at our backs kept us from being surrounded and dispatched in short order—right there on the side of the road, in plain sight, should anyone happen upon us.

And no sooner had that thought passed through my head than two broad beams of white light appeared on the road, in the direction we’d come from. Headlights. Humans were coming. The fight was about to get unbelievably, irreversibly bad.

But instead of racing past—which I assume most humans would do when confronted with a pack of big black cats attacking a group of stranded motorists—the car slowed as it approached, nearly blinding us with the glare from its headlights.

I blinked and swung wildly as my eyes watered, missing my target completely. Sharp teeth sank into my left arm, and I kicked out blindly. My steel-toed boots connected with an underbelly, bouncing off what could only have been a rib. I clenched my jaw to keep from screaming as the cat tried to back away without letting go of my arm.

Grunting with effort, I swung the shovel one-handed. It thunked into something hard, and the stray released my arm. A secondary dose of relief came when the car pulled forward, removing his high beams from my retinas. But he didn’t take off. Instead, the driver pulled onto the shoulder in front of Marc’s car and killed his engine.

What kind of dumbass human is this? I thought, batting at the next cat, though my hands were so cold I could barely grip the shovel. The stranger would either come out with a gun and start shooting, or he’d get himself killed. Maybe both. Either way, those of us who survived would have one hell of a mess to clean up.

A car door slammed, and footsteps crunched into ice and loose rocks on the side of the road. “What the fuck is this?” Dan Painter shouted over the cacophony of yowls, hisses, and snarls. He stomped toward us carrying the biggest hammer I’d ever seen, and suddenly I understood: Marc’s sidekick had followed us. And for once I didn’t mind being tracked.

“Where’s Manx and the kid?” Painter demanded as he passed the trunk of Marc’s car, thus far completely unmolested by the other strays.

“In the Suburban.” Marc grunted, swinging the crowbar hard enough to sink the business end into the side of an unfortunate stray, just below his rib cage. “You just gonna stand there?” He ripped the metal free and the cat snarled, lashing out with a paw full of unsheathed claws.

“Just figurin’ how best to jump in.” An instant later Painter exploded into motion, swinging the hammer like a baseball bat. His first blow hit the rump of the cat Marc was fighting, and sent him sprawling. His second shot knocked the legs out from under the cat who’d replaced the first one. Then two more strays jumped Painter, and he was fighting alongside us, full force.

“What the hell kind of hammer is that?” I asked, panting from exertion as I swung for another blow.

“FatMax Xtreme framing hammer,” Painter said, posing for a moment like a salesman in an infomercial, as the cat in front of him collapsed. “Precision balanced—feel the difference.” With that, he took aim at another stray’s leg. Bone crunched and the unfortunate knee bent backward. The cat collapsed, screeching nonstop on the slick pavement.

I swung my shovel again and again, but no sooner had I knocked one cat back than another stepped up, snarling and slashing at me. Three cats lay unmoving on the side of the road by then, but more had replaced them—there were at least fifteen strays still up and slashing. Where the hell were they coming from, and why were they working together? I’d never heard of such a large band of strays, and a unified attack against Pride cats was completely unprecedented.

Well, except for that time in the Montana mountains…

I braced my feet for another blow and sent one cat sprawling. Another pounced at me before I could reset my swing, and his claws tore through denim and into my thigh, just above my right knee.

Pain ripped through my leg, and I knew from the powerful scent and the disturbing warmth that my blood was flowing freely. I kicked instinctively with my left leg, and followed that with another blow from the shovel, this one powered by anger, as well as fear. And to my extreme satisfaction, that bastard hobbled away from me with a dislocated shoulder, mewling like a newborn kitten.

Meow, meow, motherfucker.

But then the previous cat was back. I swung my shovel. He ducked, plastering himself to the concrete. I heaved the shovel over my head, preparing to use the blade like a giant ice pick. But he lunged forward before I could bring it down. His jaw snapped closed over my right ankle, and he pulled. I fell on my ass, and my teeth clacked together. The cat tugged again, and I slid several inches across the icy asphalt. I screamed, shock and pain momentarily washing not only logic, but training from my mind.

Then Des screeched from inside the car, and my focus came roaring back. I sucked in a deep, painfully cold breath and fumbled over my head for the driver-side door handle with my empty fist, praying Manx had locked it. She had. My new grip halted my slide across the concrete.

Finally stable, I kicked the cat’s skull with my free foot. Then I smacked him with the shovel. The stray released my leg, and I scrambled to my feet using the shovel as a crutch. I kicked him again, this time in the jaw, already caked with my blood. Then I settled my weight onto my good leg and resumed fighting, ignoring the pain as best I could. On my left, Ethan dropped to one knee, swinging his ax up. The blade caught a stray beneath his jaw, and almost cleaved the cat’s head from his neck. The body hit the ground with a nauseating two-part thud—first the torso, then the nearly detached skull—and Ethan was in motion again. I would have been impressed, if I’d had time to think about it.

But I didn’t, because Vic screamed on my brother’s other side, near the end of the car. Then he stumbled into view and fell to the gravel on his rump. The cat he’d been fighting pounced, driving his shoulders to the ground.

“Ethan!” I shouted in midswing, because my brother was closest. He glanced at me, then followed my gaze to Vic.

“I’m on it.” He lunged to the left, swinging even as he dove for Vic’s shovel. His blow glanced off the nearest cat, but he came up with a weapon in each hand. Swinging wildly now, Ethan knocked the cat off Vic with the shovel, then threw the ax end over end so fast I could hardly trace it. The blade thunked into the side of another cat, who dropped to the ground, chest heaving and pouring blood.

Ethan picked Vic up and nearly tore open the rear door of the Suburban—that one was unlocked, thankfully. Then he shoved Vic into the cargo compartment and slammed the door. As soon as he turned, another stray was on him.

“Marc!” I shouted, aiming my shovel at an anonymous feline torso. “Vic’s hurt.”

“I know.” He knocked his opponent out with a blow to the head, then kicked a cat about to charge me. There were only half a dozen strays left standing now, and most of those were hurt. We’d won, even outnumbered and in human form. Or so I thought.

A deep bleating roar from the woods across the road caught my attention. Reinforcements. We were exhausted, and the fucking strays had backup. From the sound of it, the troops were still a mile away or so, but when they arrived, we’d be screwed. Or worse—dead.

Determined to take my break while I could, I set my shovel on the ground and leaned against the side of the car, frigid against my back, even through my jacket. My sore arms hung at my sides and I took several deep breaths, letting the cold reinvigorate me. The air smelled like blood and pine, an oddly festive combination.

My arm throbbed where that bastard had bit me, and though frozen blood crusted the rip in my pants, my leg had stopped bleeding. But it hurt with every move I made.

Marc watched me inspect my wounds, his eyes shining in the glare from the Suburban’s headlights. He glanced from me to the woods, where the reinforcements presumably raced toward us. “Faythe, get in the car,” he said over the disharmonious yowls of the injured cats. His eyes never left the trees, though he was breathing hard and bleeding from countless gashes. “With you and Manx gone, they’ll have no reason to keep fighting. Ethan, get them out of here. Painter and I will clean up, and I’ll call you when we leave.”

“I’m not leaving you behind!” I shouted, and only when my breath puffed up in front of my eyes did I realize I could no longer feel my fingers. Or my nose. I’d cooled down too quickly after that first round and was now getting stiff.

Marc nodded to Ethan, who sidestepped an injured but still hissing cat and pulled open the driver-side door. He shoved me inside before I could protest, then climbed in after me.

“Buckle up,” he ordered, already sliding the gearshift into Drive. “If you go through the windshield, I’m not stopping for you.” He swerved around several motionless feline forms glinting with moonlight and blood. We slid for a moment on ice, and I whacked my head on the window, then gravel crunched when we pulled off the shoulder and back onto the road. As we drove away, I saw Marc and Painter walking backward toward the trees on our side of the road, each pulling two dead cats by the tails.

“We can’t just leave them,” I insisted, as Manx crouched over Des in the car seat behind me.

Ethan sighed, eyes on the rearview mirror. “They’re moving bodies, not storming the Bastille. They’ll be on the road in a couple of minutes.”

“We should have helped,” I snapped, turning to stare through the rear window as Marc went back for another corpse. How many had we killed? “And what the hell do you know about the Bastille?”

He shrugged, squinting into the patch of road illuminated by the headlights. “Angela wrote a paper on the French Revolution.”

“And you read it?” My tone conveyed more than adequate skepticism. Angela, his girlfriend, was a college senior. It was an odd pairing, to say the least, but their “relationship” had outlasted my most conservative estimate by nearly three months.

No one had won the office pool.

“I am literate. And no, we should not have helped Marc and Painter. We should get Manx and the baby to safety.” Ethan wiped a dark smear from his forehead with the back of one palm. “Not to mention Vic. He’s bleeding pretty badly.”

Oh yeah.

The crinkle of plastic drew my eyes to the third row, where Vic was spreading black plastic sheeting across the seat, to catch his own blood. Even injured, he was trying to protect his upholstery. Must have been a guy thing.

But my brother was right—a decidedly odd turn of events. So I took one last look at Marc and Painter and made my way to the back of the vehicle to see what I could do for Vic. Then we did what I couldn’t remember any Pride cat ever doing before: we ran from the strays.

We’d been driving for about ten minutes when Marc called my cell phone.

“You guys okay?” I asked by way of a greeting, as I fiddled with the vent above the rear bench seat. I’d bandaged Vic as well as I could, then stayed in the back to keep an eye on him.

Over the line, Painter’s crappy old engine protested as he accelerated. They were on the road, too. “All scratched up, but I’ve been worse,” Marc said.

“Me, too,” Painter spoke up, his voice slightly muffled from distance to the phone.

“What happened?” Des started to fuss behind me, and I looked up to see Manx dig a capped pacifier from a pale blue diaper bag.

Marc exhaled deeply over the phone. “After you guys left, their motivation faded. We dragged the dead ones into the trees. Same with the unconscious ones.”

“What about the rest?”

“The strays who could walk hobbled off on their own. We knocked the rest of them out and moved them into the trees with the others.”

“How many bodies?” Vic called from behind me, his excitement obvious, even through the pain in his voice. I’d never heard of Pride cats facing foes in such great numbers before, and we’d more than held our own. The news would travel fast, and surely even my father’s opponents would be impressed. How could they not be?

“Six dead,” Marc said. “Five unconscious. Seven more injured, but awake until we fixed that oversight. At least three got away.”

Ethan whistled as he changed lanes, and I did the math in my head, gasping at the total. “Twenty-one strays, all working together?”

My brother huffed. “Plus however many would have been in the second wave.” The very thought of which made me shudder.

“What do you think they wanted?” I said into the phone, staring out the window at the passing darkness. After the ambush, my imagination was working overtime, and I kept thinking I saw eyes staring out at me from the woods.

“Well, they weren’t dressed for conversation,” Marc said. In fact, they weren’t dressed for anything, which was his point. It was impossible to negotiate—or even make demands—without human vocal cords.

The strays had come to kill. But why?

“We need to call Dad.” Ethan flicked off the high beams when headlights appeared on the road in front of us.

“Already have.” Soda fizzed and Marc gulped in my ear, and I pictured him drinking directly from Painter’s two-liter of Coke. “He’s sending a crew to take care of the bodies.” He paused for another drink. “There’s a Holiday Inn just off the Meadville exit. Check in and get several adjoining rooms. Preferably on the back side. We’ll be there in half an hour.”

Adjoining rooms would make it easier to keep an eye on Manx and the baby, and parking in the back would help hide our vehicles, in case the second wave of strays came looking for us.

“Got it. See you in a few.” I hung up the phone and immediately wished I’d told him I loved him, especially considering how close we’d all just come to dying. “How you holding up, Vic?” I twisted again to look at him in the constant ebb and flow of the highway lights, now that we were on an actual highway, instead of some dark, two-lane back road.

“The bleeding’s slowed,” he said, accompanied by the crinkle of plastic. “But my arm stings like a bitch.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you all fixed up.”

Forty-five minutes later, I sat in the center of the left-hand bed in the hotel room Vic and Ethan would share. Their room was connected by a currently open set of back-to-back doors to another room, where Manx sat in a wheeled desk chair, nursing Des. Again.

Marc and I had our own room, next to Manx’s, but not connecting. A little privacy was all we’d be able to salvage from the botched transport/reunion. That, and dinner together, if Ethan and Painter ever returned with food.

“Okay, let’s take a look at the damage,” Marc said from the end of the other bed. He clenched the shoulder of Vic’s T-shirt and pulled. Seams split with a rapid-fire popping sound, and the detached material slid fromVic’s arm to the floor. We’d learned through experience that the torn-sleeve approach was much easier than making the patient pull his shirt over his head with an injured arm.

I sucked in a deep breath at the sight of Vic’s gored arm, and my fist clenched around the hideous orange-and-yellow-print comforter. But Marc didn’t even blink. He’d seen worse. Hell, he’d been through worse.

So had I, come to think of it. I fingered the healed slash marks on the left side of my abdomen as I stared at Vic’s arm. My scars were ten weeks old, and still pink, a permanent reminder of Zeke Radley and his Montana band of loyal/crazy strays—which had just been dwarfed by the gang we’d faced an hour earlier.

“What do you want for the pain?” Marc asked, angling Vic’s arm into the glow from the lamp on the bedside table. Why don’t hotel rooms ever have overhead lights?

Vic grimaced. “Whiskey.”

“You’re in luck.” Marc smiled as he lifted a white plastic sack from the floor; he and Painter had made a supply run on the way. He pulled two bottles from the bag. One was Jack Daniel’s, the other hydrogen peroxide. But the clink from the sack as he set it down told me Marc was prepared for Vic’s second and third choices, too.

For the next twenty minutes, I watched Marc clean and stitch Vic’s wounds, grateful that they were shallow, if long and ugly.

I was next. We’d decided the bite marks on my arm could simply be bandaged, since they hadn’t torn. But my leg needed stitches, and apparently that fact was nonnegotiable.

Marc held my arm to stabilize me as I hobbled across the dingy carpet to the cheap dinette, wearing only the tank top and snug boy-shorts I usually slept in. My pants had gone the way of Vic’s shirt and the remains were now draped over the unused chair on the other side of the table.

Marc knelt next to me and ran one hand up my bare leg, ostensibly inspecting the gashes above my right knee, and neither of us even pretended I was shivering from cold, or from shock. He hadn’t touched me in months, and the pain of my injuries couldn’t trump the feel of his hand on my skin. Squeezing. Stroking. Lingering…

I clamped my jaws shut on a moan of both pain and pleasure, unwilling to embarrass either of us with my lack of control.

“You ready?” Marc asked, and I nodded hesitantly. In spite of many past injuries, I’d never had homemade sutures, and had certainly never surrendered to them with nothing more than Tylenol for pain. Well, Tylenol and whiskey—not my drink of choice, but apparently sitting for stitches wasn’t a margarita-sippin’ kind of event.

He smiled sympathetically and lifted my leg to slide a clean white towel from the bathroom beneath my thigh. “Take a couple of drinks while I get you cleaned up.”

For once, he didn’t have to tell me twice. On the table sat two glasses. One Manx had half filled with whiskey, the other with Coke and ice from the vending machine in the lobby. I picked up the first glass and made myself gulp twice before chasing the contents with half the cup of Coke. I barely felt the sting of peroxide on my thigh because of the flames of whiskey in my throat.

Marc laughed and poured more soda. Then he picked up the thin, curved suture needle.

The hardest part was holding still. The needle didn’t hurt much more than the gashes themselves. So as long as I didn’t look, I was mostly okay. Even so, within minutes I’d finished both glasses, and Vic crossed the room to refill them for me with his good arm.

We were both half-drunk, and probably looked pretty damn pathetic. The alcohol would wear off quickly, thanks to our enhanced metabolism, but I had a feeling the pathetic part would last a while. And leave scars.

Like I didn’t have enough of those already…

By the time Marc had sewed up my thigh, and cleaned and bandaged both my ankle and my arm, Ethan and Painter were back with dinner: five large pizzas, three more two-liters, and two dozen doughnuts.

Manx refused to leave Des, even with him asleep in the middle of the bed in the next room, with the connecting doors open. So she took a paper plate full of pizza back to her room. The rest of us spread out on the floor of Vic and Ethan’s room, pizza boxes open, plastic cups filled with one combination or another of soda, ice and alcohol. I had more Coke, with Absolut Vanilia, which Dan had picked up because he thought it might go down easier for me. He was right. If I held my nose while I swallowed, it tasted like Vanilla Coke.

Sort of.

“So, how is the kid?” Dan asked, a slice of pizza poised to enter his mouth, point first. “She any closer to Shifting?”

I shook my head. “She won’t even talk about it. And when you try to make her, she puts on her earphones and turns her music up loud enough to damage her own hearing.”

Vic grinned at Ethan, and spoke with his mouth full. “Michael says you should never have given her that damn thing.”

“Whatever.” Ethan tossed his crust into a half-empty pizza box and grabbed another slice. “She’s not turning up her music because she doesn’t want to Shift, or because she doesn’t want to talk about Shifting. She’s turning up her music ‘cause she’s a teenager. And because she doesn’t want to hear any more of that psychobabble bullshit you all spout at her 24/7.”

“We’re not spouting psychobabble, we’re trying to keep her healthy,” I insisted, sipping from my cup. “But you’re right. Michael’s full of shit.” My brother grinned, so I continued. “Listening to that MP3 player is the closest she’s ever going to get to a normal teenage activity. Well, that and ignoring the advice of her elders.”

“You’d know.”

“Bite me,” I snapped. But Ethan was right, of course. I’d recently begun seeing things from the far side of the generation gap, and the view from the adult side sucks.

“How long’s it been since she Shifted?” Dan asked, reaching for another piece of pizza.

“More than two months.”

He frowned. “Has anyone ever gone that long without Shifting?”

I searched my memory, but came up blank as Marc shook his head. “No one I can think of.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Ethan grinned. “I’m not one to deny my animalistic urges.”

I’d probably never heard a more truthful statement.

“Speaking of which, any idea what that whole ambush was about?” I asked, around a mouthful of Meat Lover’s. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Not even from Zeke Radley and his Pride.” I raised the cup again and drank deeply that time. I was more relaxed now that the alcohol had kicked in, and was determined to enjoy my buzz while it lasted. “I thought strays were mostly loners.”