Pride (32 page)

My dad chose Jace and Ethan, even though Parker was older and more experienced, because they’d been best friends since childhood and work partners for the last seven years. They worked very well as a team.

Malone chose a tom named Reid Something-or-other—or maybe Something-or-other Reid—probably to avoid shoving another of his own sons into the danger zone. Reid was a senior enforcer in his early thirties, whose typically muscular body and nondescript face were crowned by a completely bald head.
Shiny
bald. In fact, I was already calling him Cue Ball in my mind.

We headed out minutes after the escorts were chosen, with Jace in the lead because he was the only one who knew how to get to Elias Keller’s cabin, which was where we’d decided to start, since Kaci remembered being there. Jace carried an LED flashlight, and my uncle’s handheld GPS unit because none of the rest of us were confident enough in his human-form memory to risk wandering for hours in the woods.

Bundled against the cold in her new coat, Kaci walked several steps behind Jace, and Ethan and I followed her, chatting as we picked our way up the side of the dark mountain through fall foliage and sometimes thick undergrowth. The exercise kept us relatively warm in spite of the near-freezing temperature, and I was oddly at ease, considering our mission, because of the folding knife in my jeans pocket, already warm from my body heat. This one was Michael’s, and I’d promised not to lose it.

Cue Ball brought up the rear, armed with a backpack full of bottled water and snack bars, and a second flashlight.

“Cute kid,” Ethan whispered, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch. Kaci heard him; I could tell from her suddenly tense, self-conscious gait, but like most men, my brother was completely clueless. “A little thin, but definitely a looker.” Yet he sounded worried, rather than pleased or surprised. “Have they decided what to do with her yet?”

“Not officially. Though Malone apparently has several ideas…” I left the thought hanging in the air between us, and Ethan’s scowl said he knew exactly what I was getting at.

“How old is she?”

“Thirteen.”

His scowl deepened. “Damn. How is that even possible?” I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “Don’t say it. We all know what
you
think.”

Evidently my female-stray theory had traveled beyond the Rockies via the miracle of cell-phone technology. Or maybe e-mail. There was no telling what Michael had told everyone at the ranch.

“None of the other ideas makes sense,” I said for at least the thousandth time, grabbing a thick branch overhead for balance as I followed Kaci around a sharp curve in the barely visible path ahead.

“Neither does this one,” Ethan retorted, but before I could argue otherwise, Kaci slipped going up a steep incline and Ethan lunged to catch her. He lifted her easily and set her on level ground then scurried up after her.

I followed him, then shoved my brother playfully. “Thanks for the help, ass wipe.”

“You didn’t need any.” He shoved me back and was already dancing away from my slightly-less-teasing blow when Reid hissed sharply behind us.

I turned to ask what was wrong, but he shook his head
curtly and made a show of sniffing the air to his right—north of our current position.

Adrenaline spiked through me and my body went on instant alert. I grabbed Ethan’s arm and he froze, glancing at me with both brows raised in question. I nodded at Cue Ball, now standing on my right, between two huge, moss-covered tree roots.

Ethan jogged on to stop Jace and Kaci without making any obvious noise while I sniffed the air in the direction Reid was facing. At first I smelled nothing but the normal medley of woodland scents. But then the wind shifted and I caught something else. Something out of place and so close that I should have noticed it earlier and probably
would
have if I hadn’t been playing around with Ethan.

Stray. And blood. Lots and lots of blood.

Anticipation made my heart race, and my hands curled into fists in my jacket pockets. Nervous sweat broke out on my forehead and I shoved loose strands of hair back from my face, my eyes scanning the surrounding trees for any sign of the cat we smelled.

Somewhere nearby was a stray, likely standing over a recent kill. I’d already faced two stray werecats while in human form, and I had no urge to do it again, even armed, and with three toms at my side.

On my left, Jace stood protectively in front of Kaci, and Ethan was working his way quietly back to my side. Reid lowered his backpack silently to the forest floor, his eyes alert for movement. He took the lead, drawing a pocket knife from a pouch on the side of his pants and flipping it open in one sharp, practiced motion.

The leaf-shaped serrated blade was barely two inches long and would only be good up close, but the same was true of werecat claws, not to mention canines. Of course, werecats came equipped with
eight
front claws and
four
canines, to Cue
Ball’s one little blade. Still, his knife was badass compared to the one I’d borrowed from Michael, and I was kind of hoping to see it in action.

Ethan and I followed Reid, and Jace came behind us. I glanced back to find Kaci clinging to his arm, her eyes wide with terror, her hairline damp with sweat in spite of the cold. She’d survived on her own in cat form for more than ten weeks, but in human form, she looked small, scared, and defenseless, all of which were probably accurate.

Reid led us around a broad, tall clump of evergreen shrubs. He stopped in a small, pine-carpeted clearing, going still as he sniffed and glanced around. I did the same. We couldn’t pinpoint a prey’s location by scent, but we
could
tell whether the scent was growing or fading. And this particular scent was growing stronger with each step I took. So strong, in fact, that we should have been right on top of the stray, threatening his possession of his meal and setting off his every violent, protective instinct. Yet I saw no sign of him or his prey.

Where the
hell
is that stray?

Frustrated, I turned to look at Ethan, and a warm, wet drop hit my forehead.
Rain?
But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, as evidenced by generous pools of moonlight aiding the flashlights.

I wiped the drop from my face and my finger came away smeared with something dark and sticky. And fragrant.

Blood.

Dread tightening my stomach, I looked up slowly, and my fists clenched around air, my nails cutting into my palms. My breath caught in my throat and made a soft strangling sound. Ethan followed my gaze, and Reid followed his. I couldn’t see Jace, but when Kaci gasped, I knew that they’d seen it too.

Our mystery stray was enjoying a leisurely, treetop dinner—but neither predator nor prey had fur.

“O
h,
fuck
…” Jace whispered, and I could
not
have agreed more. In my entire twenty-three years, I’d never seen
anything
as gruesome or completely
fucked up
as the tom staring down at us from his elevated perch, possessive instinct clear in his posture, insanity shining in his eyes.

On a broad, bare branch about eight feet off the ground, a stray perched in the sturdy nook where the limb met the trunk. He was nude and in human form, his face and hands so
completely
coated in blood that at first glance I thought he wore a pair of skintight formal gloves—until I noticed them glistening dark and wet in the soft glow from above.

Wedged into a fork in the thick branch he sat on was another tomcat—based on his smell—also naked and covered in blood. But this tom stared at the moonlit trees with unblinking eyes, his arms hanging limply, his stomach ripped wide open. As I watched, frozen in shock and desperate denial, a thick, blood-slick loop of intestines slid from his gaping abdomen to dangle at least a foot below his body.

My hand slid slowly into my pocket and wrapped around Michael’s knife.

Behind me Kaci gagged, then staggered into sight on my left to vomit at the base of another tree. Jace was at her side immediately, holding her hair up and rubbing her back. But his eyes never left the sight that had made her sick.

Overhead, the stray hissed, and my eyes found him again. His lips parted, blunt, human teeth gleamed wetly in the available moonlight, and a thin line of blood-tinted drool dripped from his stained chin, disappearing into the shadows long before it hit the ground. But I staggered back just in case, scrubbing the smear of blood from my forehead with the palm of my free hand. I had to forcibly swallow back bile as it rose to burn deep in my throat.

“Faythe, you okay?” Ethan whispered. He hadn’t moved since discovering the grisly stray, and neither had Reid, though the fingers gripping his knife were now white with tension.

“Fine,” I whispered back, though that was far from the truth.

Wood creaked overhead, and the startled stray leaned forward. The limb bobbed beneath his shifting weight. He thumped to the ground in front of us, knees bent, gory arms out for balance.

Reid jumped back and Ethan did the same, tugging me with him. I stood with my feet spread and pulled the knife from my pocket, pressing a button to release the blade. Ethan mirrored me in the ready-stance our father had taught us back in junior high. The stray was alone and unarmed, but he was also nude, covered in blood, and apparently full of his fellow tom’s organ meat—a definite no-no in every werecat society I’d ever heard of.

“Mine.” The stray sprayed bloody spittle across the dead leaves at our feet, and to my utter humiliation, I jerked in response. But no one was watching me. We were all watching Hannibal Lecter, whose eyes darted among us like a junkie fighting off paranoia. It took me a moment to realize what he meant, but his next words made it clear. “Go find your own.”

On my left, Kaci stood from her crouch and swiped one
forearm slowly across her mouth. The stray’s agitated gaze flicked past me to land on her. “You smell good,” he purred, his expression taking on a new hunger without losing the eerie
wrongness
setting off every inner alarm I had.

Kaci whimpered, and both Reid and Jace moved forward to block her from view.

He’s sick
. Understanding settled into place in my mind. The stray was recently infected and likely still raging with scratch fever. In daylight, we’d see the flush on his skin, though in the dark, with him covered in blood, it was hard to tell at a glance.

“He’s mad,” Ethan said, confirming my own thoughts. I nodded, and Jace murmured his assent, but Reid only motioned us back with a subtle wave of his left hand.

“We don’t want your kill,” he said, drawing the stray’s gaze from what little he could see of Kaci. “We’re looking for something else entirely.”

The stray’s fever-glazed eyes brightened, seeming to glow with their own light in the darkness. “I can help! I know where everything is. This is my territory!”

Reid’s shoulders tensed. “
You
own this property?”

“Yeah!” His gaze flicked back and forth between us, clearly searching for approval or acceptance. “Well, my Pride does. The Rocky Mountain Pride.” Hannibal straightened as he spoke, squaring his shoulders in obvious satisfaction.

Ethan snorted. “There
is
no Rocky Mountain Pride.”

Reid gestured angrily to silence my brother with the hand behind his back. “We’re here on behalf of the Territorial Council…”

On a diplomatic mission to Alderan
… I thought half hysterically.

“…to greet your Alpha formally. The council would like to meet him. Can you tell us who he is, and where we can find him?”

“Zeke?” The stray’s eyes widened. “You want to talk to Zeke?”

I’ll be damned!
Zeke Radley. A little thrill of discovery tingled up my spine, raising tiny hairs all over my body, and suddenly I had a great deal of respect for Reid. Whom I silently vowed to stop calling Cue Ball.

“Where can we find your Alpha?” I asked, following Reid’s lead.

“That’s a secret,” the stray said in a stage whisper, one hand cupped to the side of his mouth. “I can’t tell you, because Zeke doesn’t want any more men. Calls us toms. But we don’t really have anyone named Tom.”

Zeke obviously understood Pride social structure and politics to some degree, which surely indicated that he’d had contact with Pride cats before. But I was betting he had just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

But Hannibal wasn’t finished. “You and her—” his gaze flicked from me to Kaci, as his index finger swirled a pattern in the blood on his chest “—can come with me. Whoever brings her in gets to be second in command.”

What? “Wait, you
know
her?” I asked, unbothered when Reid shot me a shut-the-hell-up look.

The stray nodded, smearing the blood across his cheek now. “Mission impossible. Top priority.”

Oh, that’s just fucking fantastic
. If I understood correctly—and that was a big if—Zeke Radley had caught a whiff of Kaci at some point and decided he needed her to complete his little farce of a Pride.

Reid shifted his weight from one foot to the other, subtly drawing attention his way. “How many toms do you have?”

The stray started to answer, then hesitated with his mouth already open. Suddenly unsure, he let his gaze travel over us all, as if he was considering his next words carefully. “Enough. Zeke says we have enough.”

“Where does your Pride live?” Reid asked, repeating my earlier question.

The stray frowned and glanced up at his kill, then back at us in silence. He grinned broadly, again flashing bloody teeth, and licked his lips.

A shudder of revulsion slithered through me.

Reid turned to raise his eyebrows at Ethan in question, keeping the stray in one corner of his vision. Ethan nodded silently. They’d agreed on something, and though I hadn’t caught the question, I knew better than to ask aloud.

Ethan blurred into motion at my side, and an instant later, he’d pinned the stray to the trunk of the tree he’d dropped out of. My brother had one forearm pressed into Hannibal’s bloody throat, the rest of his body held carefully away from the blood-covered werecat. “Last chance.
Where…is…your…Alpha?
”

But obviously Radley had managed to impart loyalty to his troops, if not sanity. Instead of answering, the stray snarled and snapped his teeth at Ethan, in spite of the pressure on his neck. Ethan’s fist flew, and a muted crack fractured the air. It was over in less than a second. Ethan stepped back and the stray slid to the ground, his head lolling limply to one side.

For a moment I thought Ethan had killed him with one shot, and while that would have been impressive, it also would have been disturbing.

But then Hannibal’s chest rose. And it fell. Then it rose again. He was breathing.

Velcro ripped behind me, and I turned to find Reid pulling a roll of duct tape from his backpack. “Here.” He tossed it to me and pointed at the stray slumped against the tree. “Get his mouth.”

I ripped a section of tape from the roll, then knelt beside the unconscious tom and pulled his head back with a handful of sticky hair. Covering his mouth without actually touching his flesh was tricky, but it was worth the effort, because I
didn’t want any more blood on me than necessary. Not with the majority of our hike still ahead of us.

Reid knelt at my side and I held the tape out to him, but he shook his head. “Tear me off a long piece for his hands. Two feet, at least.”

As I stood to keep the length of tape off the ground, something electronic beeped on my left. Jace was dialing on his cell phone. While I ripped off the tape and helped Reid bind the cat’s wrists at his back, Jace called the lodge to have a cleanup team sent to dispose of the corpse and pick up the prisoner—immediately, since they were both in human form.

Then Ethan and Reid taped the unconscious stray to the tree. They actually wrapped the tape around both Hannibal and the tree trunk over and over again, heedless of the blood now smeared on their hands.

And for just a moment, I wished I could be there when they ripped all that duct tape off his bare chest. That’ll
wake the fucker up
…

When they were finished, Reid dug in his bag once again, this time coming out with a packet of antibacterial hand wipes and a clear plastic sandwich bag. To my amusement, he handed a wipe to Ethan, then used another one to clean every single spot of blood from his hands, double-checking with his flashlight before finally tucking the used wipes into the Baggie, and the bag into the front pocket of his backpack.

I liked him more with each passing minute.

After that, we pressed on, Jace in the lead again, this time with Kaci at his side, rather than behind him. She didn’t speak, nor did she look around at the beautiful moonlit night. She walked with her head down, her gaze on the ground at her feet.

Half an hour later, Elias Keller’s cabin rose in front of us, smoke trailing toward the moonlit sky from a picturesque stone chimney he’d probably built himself. Light flickered in the front window—an honest-to-goodness oil lamp, if I had my guess—
and the scent of venison stew made my mouth water in anticipation of a meal I had no time to eat. Even if we were invited.

Keller’s yard was nonexistent, trees towering over his cabin so close that the roots disappeared beneath the small building itself. The front steps were made of four huge log halves set into the earth flat-side up. They were unsanded, and a distinct, sunken wear pattern marred the center of each one, the obvious result of a certain pair of huge boots hitting them in the same place day after day for years. Many, many years, apparently.

As is considered courteous when approaching another territory unannounced—which hardly ever happens because most of us have telephones—we made plenty of conspicuous noise to announce our arrival and our intent to do no harm.

We were still a good fifty feet from the cabin when the door flew open and Keller appeared on the top step, his scraggly face screwed up in a snarl, his huge right fist curled around a five-foot-long club apparently made of an entire small tree, stripped of its branches. Moonlight gleamed on the smooth, broad knob at the top of the club, no doubt polished by several years’ accumulation of oil from his own hands.

In front of me, Kaci froze, and I almost walked right into her.

“What—” Keller growled, his low voice rumbling through me physically even across such a distance. Then he squinted into the dark and sniffed the air. His body tensed and the club rose into the air. “Cats. You’d best state your business before I decide the whole lot of you need to be skinned to save the Pride cats the trouble.”

Pride cats?
He thought we were the strays? Apparently a bear’s nose was less capable of identifying individual cats by scent than ours were. At least when we were in a group including two cats he’d never met.

But then, having never smelled another bruin, I couldn’t swear I could tell the difference between Keller and his own father if I had to.

“Mr. Keller, it’s us,” I called.

“Faythe?” He clomped down two more steps to stand on the last inverted split log. “Who’s that you got with you?”

I exhaled in relief when the tension left his voice and the end of his club settled onto the step by his boots. “This is Ethan, my youngest-older brother.” I pulled Ethan forward by one arm and caught just a glimpse of the amazement he was trying to hide. He’d been told about Elias Keller, but because they were rare almost to the point of legend, seeing a bruin for the first time wasn’t something you could ever really be prepared for. I knew that from experience.

“And this is Reid…” Damn, it would be nice to know his last name. Or his first name. Whichever I was missing.

Reid stepped forward, rubbing one large hand over the shiny expanse of his bald head. He was either much less impressed with the bruin than my brother was, or he was in much better control of his expression. I was guessing both.

“Brother, huh?” Keller laughed, a deep, rough sound like the rumble of a plane overhead. “How many of those do you have?”

“Four.” I had a relatively small family for a werecat, but Keller was an only child. My father was virtually certain of it. Bruins were so uncommon that it was rare for two members of the species to ever meet, much less breed. Fortunately, they lived a very long time—about twice the human lifespan.

Keller seemed to think about my answer, then dismissed it with a shake of his head, thick, grizzly beard swinging. “Well, come on in and have some dinner. I’ve got stew on the fire…” He turned toward the cabin, already clomping up the steps.

“Thank you, Mr. Keller, but we don’t have time right now. We have to find one of the missing hikers before the human searchers show up at dawn.

“What do you need from me?” Keller asked, and I couldn’t help but admire his frank mannerisms. I’d love to be able to say whatever I meant without worrying about the political
fallout of my uncensored mouth. Apparently that was one of the advantages of living by oneself. I hoped to have the chance to try it someday.