Rogue (33 page)

I
had only a second to process what I saw before Luiz closed the door softly, cutting off the light from the kitchen. But that was time enough to see the small pistol in his left hand.

Damn, is everyone walking around armed now?

My mouth opened, and I sucked in a breath in preparation to scream, but Luiz’s hoarse whisper—startling as a clap of thunder in the silence of the basement—made me reconsider. “
Sim.
Yell for help.” I recognized his voice, though I’d only heard it once before, three months earlier. “Yell for
mãe.
I take her, too.”

I’d intended to warn them to run, not yell for help, but his comment made me realize that would never happen. They would never run. Manx was dying to put Luiz in his grave, but with a broken arm and no gun, she didn’t stand a chance. And even if my mother was willing to leave me to fight on my own, she would never abandon Jace, who couldn’t run, no matter what the danger.

My teeth snapped together as I closed my mouth, my
decision made. I would fight him alone. Or, rather, I’d dodge his bullets until he ran out. No problem.
Riiight.

“Good,” Luiz said, and I couldn’t help but notice how similar in timbre his voice was to Miguel’s, though his English was choppy at best. “Only us.” He clomped down one step and his gun made an odd slide-click sound. “You kill my brother. Miguel. I make you pay.” I wasn’t sure what he was doing until his shadow shifted in what little light from the bathroom reached the stairs. He was aiming.

My heart slammed against my rib cage, and I dove to the right. I heard an air-sucking sound and a hollow pop, then something flew past on my left. The bullet thunked into the wall behind me as I hit the floor. My torso landed on the mat, in a broad rectangle of dull light from the bathroom. My right hip smashed into the concrete.

I hadn’t killed Miguel. And I certainly hadn’t known he and Luiz were brothers. But something told me Luiz was much less interested in facts than he was in revenge.

I hauled my rump onto the mat, and more clicking sounds came from the stairs.
Reloading after one shot?
I didn’t know much about guns, but in the movies the bad guys always got five or six shots before their guns clicked empty. So what kind of pistol was Luiz packing?

The next sound—something sliding into position with a decisive clack—came from farther down the steps. I glanced up. He was aiming at me over the iron-pipe stair rail.

I rolled forward, toward the stairs. The gun popped. The next shot went over my back. On my ass again, I spun to look, expecting a huge hole in the exercise mat. There was no hole. There was only a small dart. A tiny hypodermic needle with a feather where the plunger should be.

A tranquilizer gun.
That’s what happened to Ryan. Luiz hadn’t been able to get to my brother through the bars, so he’d shot him with a dart.

Luiz wasn’t trying to kill me, at least not yet. He was trying to
take
me. To reclaim me in the name of his twisted project and avenge his brother’s death on me every day for the rest of my life, however long that might be.

A shoe shuffled on the steps. I whirled around and looked up. Luiz towered over me, rushing to reload. He kicked, aiming for my head. I lunged to the right and his foot sailed past me. I grabbed his boot in midair. Grunting, I twisted his foot to the left. Hard.

Luiz spun in midfall. His hands flew into the air, reaching for something to grab on to. The tranquilizer gun clattered to the floor.

Bolstered by his loss of the gun, I jerked back on his foot. Luiz fell onto one knee on the step. Only his hands on the concrete saved him from a broken nose.

“Bitch!” he muttered, tugging on his captured leg. I held on tight, pulling in return. He kicked, trying to dislodge my grip. I tucked his calf beneath my right armpit and wrapped both hands around his leather-clad ankle. One bare foot braced against the wall beneath the stairs, I shoved myself backward, dragging him with me. Luiz’s knee slid off the step, banging into the wall. From the stomach up, he now lay facedown on the stair riser, growling viciously.

I braced my feet on the ground and pulled again. Luiz turned onto his side and grabbed the rail with one hand. His foot rotated in my grasp. I leaned forward, trying to pull him off the steps.

His boot came off in my hand. I fell on my ass on the mat. Again.

As I scooted backward, my hand brushed something hard, and I glanced down to see the embedded dart.

Luiz dropped onto the floor in front of me. I threw the boot at his head. He batted it away one-handed. I crawled across the mat, headed toward the bathroom. Luiz lunged for his gun at the foot of the stairs.

I scrambled to my feet, glancing around for something to use as a weapon. There was nothing but the folding metal chair and Marc’s cassette tapes.

Luiz turned on me, pistol in hand. He dug a third dart from his pocket and bit off the cap.

I backed up, my hand skimming the stack of cassettes to rest on the back of the metal chair.

Luiz popped the gun apart and shoved the dart into place. Sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes. He snapped the pistol back together and spit the dart cap out. I grabbed the folded chair and swung it up. He pulled the trigger.

The dart clanged into the metal bottom of the seat and fell to the concrete at my feet. If I’d been wearing shoes, I’d have stomped it to pieces. Instead, I stepped over it onto the mat.

Luiz tried to shove another dart into the disassembled gun. It wouldn’t fit. He’d forgotten to uncap it, and I wasn’t about to point out his mistake. I lunged forward, brandishing the folded chair. Luiz backed up until he hit the side of the staircase. I swung the chair. He ducked. The gun hit the floor an instant before his fist hit my stomach.

I sucked in a painful breath and swung the chair at Luiz again. The plastic-capped foot slammed into his head. He landed draped over me like a blanket, his weight pinning me to the mat. His fingers wrapped around my throat. I clutched at his thumb to keep his fist from closing.

The basement door opened and my mother appeared on the top step. “Faythe? What’s going on down there?”

Luiz let go of my neck and leaned to the left for the dart still stuck in the mat. I rolled out from under him, in the other direction. “Mom! Get help! Now!”

“Wha—”

“Go!” I leapt to my feet as Luiz’s arm arced toward me. Something sharp grazed my bare calf. I jumped backward. Several drops of my blood dripped onto the mat.

Luiz vaulted to his feet. I backpedaled, glancing at the stairs as I went. My mother was gone, but she’d left the door open. I could have kissed her, thankful for the light.

“Your
mãe?
” Luiz breathed hard as we faced off.

I nodded, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm.

He licked his lips, circling to my right. “No babies, but much fun.”

“You
touch
my mother and you’ll never touch anything ever again!” I dodged his lunge, and my hip hit the corner of the card table. My hand fell on a cassette tape in a plastic case. I threw it at him as hard as I could. It hit his nose and, to my surprise, left a tiny cut and a single drop of blood.

Luiz stomped toward me and crushed the tape beneath his boot. I grabbed another. Aerosmith.
Nope, can’t throw classic Aerosmith.
I snatched a copy of the Thompson Twins’ greatest hits and chucked it at him. One corner of the case hit his forehead. He blinked, and another drop of blood appeared above his left eyebrow.

Fists clenched at his sides, Luiz growled and lunged forward. I hopped back and found myself against the wall. He caught my wrist and jerked me forward. My shoulder popped,
and an echo of pain flared to life from the injury I’d sustained at his brother’s hands in June.

Twisting, I let my right leg fly, aiming for his side. He turned and shoved me. Hard. I hit the floor again, and his remaining boot slammed into the left side of my rib cage.

I felt several tiny pops. Pain ripped through my side. A scream tore from my throat. Every breath sent fire blazing through my chest.

Luiz pulled his foot back to take another shot. A feline growl rippled through the air behind him. He dropped my hand and froze. Then he turned slowly, backing away from us both as he went.

Smart tomcat.
He wasn’t going to leave either of us at his back.

I looked at the cat he’d just exposed, fully expecting to see Marc.

It was my mother, her black coat gleaming in the light from the bathroom. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. Her claws were unsheathed, the points pressing little dimples into the exercise mat. She was one mad mother.

My dam padded slowly toward Luiz, and he took another step back. “Good kitty,” he said, fear thickening his accent. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped into his eyes. He blinked it away but made no move to wipe his forehead. Sudden movements triggered a cat’s pouncing instinct, and he knew much better than to risk it.

I scooted sideways, watching my mother advance on her prey. Left hand pressed to my injured ribs, I used my right arm to push myself toward the weight bench.

Luiz bent slowly. His eyes flicked toward the ground. I followed his gaze to the dart that had bounced off the metal chair.

My mother growled. Luiz froze in an uncomfortable-looking half squat. He glanced from my mother to the dart one more time. I pulled myself up using the leg press for balance. Luiz dropped to his ass on the concrete, his hand groping for the feathered needle.

My mother pounced, driving him to the ground. Her claws shredded his shoulders on contact.

He screamed and seized her neck in one hand. His fingers clenched her throat, bicep bulging as he tried to hold her at arm’s length. Too late, I saw his other arm swing up, the dart clenched in his fist.

He stabbed my mother in the side with the tranquilizer. She roared in pain, and in fury. Her left claw ripped deeper into his right shoulder. White bone flashed for an instant before blood filled the wound and poured onto the concrete.

Luiz wrapped his other hand around my mother’s throat, squeezing harder.

Her eyes rolled up into her head. Her paws went limp. Either the tranquilizer had kicked in already, or he’d actually choked her into unconsciousness. I couldn’t tell which, but I feared the worst.

I hobbled four steps to the dumbbell stand, pain shooting through my chest and side with each jarring step. Hissing in agony, I heaved a forty-pound free weight from its groove.

Four feet away, Luiz had my mother on her side. Her tail twitched, and he bled all over her from his shredded shoulders. His right arm hung limp at his side, but somehow his left one still worked in spite of the mauling.

Forcing my feet into motion, I pulled the dumbbell up as high as I could. Two feet away, I swung it forward. Luiz looked up just in time. His eyes widened in surprise, and in
sudden fear. The weight crashed down on him, crumpling his forehead with a horrific, wet, crunching sound.

I pulled the dumbbell from the gory wound and Luiz’s corpse fell on my mother’s torso. My fist opened, and the dumbbell dropped to the concrete. I sank onto the ground, still holding my left side, and used my right hand to shove him off my mother and onto the floor.

My gaze accidentally grazed Luiz, and I closed my eyes to block out what I’d seen. What I’d done to him. He no longer had a face. He had only a crater, with teeth embedded in mutilated, wet red flesh.

My eyes still closed, I ran one hand over my mother, feeling for her chest. I found it, and as my hand trailed higher through her fur, I opened my eyes. Her chest rose once beneath my hand, and air exploded from my lungs in relief. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath.

Fresh pain shot through my side from the forceful exhalation, but I didn’t care. My mother was alive. Sedated, but hopefully okay. I lay next to her on my good side and snuggled into her fur, my tears mingling with Luiz’s blood in a puddle on the floor.

That’s how Marc found us, bloody and bruised, but alive. Very much alive.

“T
here she goes! That woman never learns.” Ethan leaned half off of his chair in anticipation. On screen, Karen White stared into the dark forest, clad only in her nightclothes.

“Yeah, but you’d do the same thing,” Jace countered from the living-room couch. “You hear a howl in the woods, you gotta go investigate. It’s instinct.”

In the chair opposite Ethan, Marc snorted. He didn’t have much to say lately, and he seemed reluctant to be alone with me. So I stayed out of his way. For now.

“It’s not instinct for humans,” Vic insisted from the other end of the couch, twisting to snatch the popcorn bowl from Parker, who sat on the floor at his feet.

I sat curled up in an armchair near the door, watching the guys watch
The Howling
instead of reading the book open in front of me. I’d been on the same page for three days.

“She’ll get what’s coming to her in the end,” Ethan said, eyes glued to the screen. He’d barely left Jace’s side since he got home from Jamey’s memorial, almost a month earlier. He
teased his best friend mercilessly about being seriously injured twice in one season, but he cared for Jace just as diligently as our mother did, placing most of his faith in iPod therapy, rather than in pills and bandages.

Two weeks after Jace was shot, Dr. Carver pronounced him fit to Shift and accelerate his healing. Jace was thrilled. If the transformation was painful for him, he showed no sign of it, enduring the process in stoic silence, monitored closely by Dr. Carver and my mother. Then, two hours later, he Shifted back, apparently pleased with the results.

As the on-screen heroine fled back into her cabin, my mother appeared in the doorway, carrying a plate piled high with double-fudge brownies. She stopped by my chair and looked down at me, frowning in concern. She’d been doing that a lot lately. “I’m making some tea for your father,” she said, balancing flawlessly on two-inch heels. “Would you like some?”

“No, thanks. But I’ll take one of those.”

She smiled and held the plate out to me.

“Thanks.” I took several, and bit into the first, watching as my mother carried the plate into the center of the room, to pass out her treats. She and I were getting along better than ever. Fighting side by side had created a bond between us that two decades under the same roof had been unable to. But I’d gained the most from our shared encounter with Luiz. I’d learned that my mother was a badass in disguise. She was Van Helsing in an apron and heels, and—at least for the time being—I couldn’t think of a single thing cooler than that. Except having inherited it from her.

On her way out of the room with the nearly empty plate, my mother set another brownie on the end table next to me
and smiled. She hadn’t actually gotten a full dose of the sedative that day in the basement. Apparently stabbing someone with the needle didn’t provide the same force as shooting it from a pistol powered by pressurized air. And, anyway, Dr. Carver had assured me that even an entire dartful wouldn’t have been enough to completely immobilize a full-grown werecat. Luiz must have been counting on shooting me twice, as he had Ryan. Mom had actually passed out from being choked.

She dealt with it pretty well, I thought. She wore silk scarves until the bruises around her throat faded completely, and referred to the attack as a “little incident,” as if not calling a rose a rose made the fight any less real. It didn’t, but hey, whatever got her through the day….

My father couldn’t have been prouder of “his women.” He regaled his Alpha friends several times apiece with the story of how Mom and I had defeated the jungle stray who’d snuck past an army of enforcers to invade our lives and destroy the facade of security we’d previously enjoyed. Of course, he left out the part where, instead of locking Luiz out, I’d actually locked him
in
with us. I think he was finally starting to understand that there’s really something to be said for selective omission.

Unfortunately, that principle could not be applied where Manx was concerned. With Luiz dead, she agreed to a full disclosure, and finally told us her birth Pride and homeland. Mercedes Carreño was from one of the oldest Prides in Venezuela, and as soon as she said her surname, my father’s eyes closed in what could only be grief. Or frustration. He obviously already knew what she went on to tell us.

Two years after Manx’s disappearance, her father was killed by an ambitious neighboring Alpha, who then took
over the territory Manx was born into. Her brothers died in defense of their territory, and her mother died of heartbreak less than a year later. By the time she fought free from her captors, Manx had no home to return to and no family left to care for, other than the child in her womb. So she’d set her sights on revenge, convinced that she could never raise her son in peace while Luiz—the baby’s father—still breathed.

While the new Alpha of her old territory would no doubt have taken her in, Manx would no more turn to the man who’d killed her father than she would return to the men who’d killed her sons. So, with no Pride to defend her or demand her return, her fate was officially in the hands of our Territorial Council, which elected to try her on three counts of murder. However, for the safety of her unborn child, her hearing would be deferred until after the birth of her son.

The council was still arguing over what to do with me. My father’s allies wanted to let me go with a warning. His enemies wanted to make an example of me. And because of his relationship to the accused—me—my father was not privy to any of the discussions. So we lived in ignorance of the proceedings, waiting for the other Alphas to come to some sort of an agreement. And until that time, I’d been suspended from duty as an enforcer. The closest I could get to the action now was answering my father’s phone.

“It’s because she’s a reporter,” Owen said, still watching the movie from the floor at Ethan’s feet. “She’s naturally curious. She can’t help it.”

I laughed. It was just like Owen to make excuses for someone else’s shortcomings. Even fictional characters. Owen found my tendency to speak my mind “refreshingly honest,” and hailed Marc’s temper as “a deep protective instinct.” He
said Ethan “thoroughly enjoyed life,” and that Parker “really knew how to have a good time.” According to Owen, we were all doing just fine, and all was right with the world. I wanted to share his optimism, but try as I might, I couldn’t help seeing things through my smog-colored glasses.

“Hello, Faythe,” Manx said, padding into the living room in her bare feet to stand by my chair. Her little baby bulge brushed the end table, and she reached down to caress her stomach through a loose peach maternity blouse. She was swelling every single day, and was more tickled with her expanding shape than I could imagine ever being.

Dr. Carver had removed her cast two days before, and declared her to be in perfect health. He’d reminded her to refrain from Shifting until after the baby was born and to take the prenatal vitamins he prescribed. And he’d promised to come back every month or so and check on her, if she promised to stay out of trouble, and not to leave the ranch. She’d been happy to accept the deal.

Everyone else had been pleased by it, too. Though some of the guys—namely Marc and Michael—were still wary of Manx, none of them would hear of her staying anywhere else until her trial. The company of a pregnant tabby was too special an opportunity to pass up.

“Shut up! This is my favorite part!” Vic cried, reaching for the remote as, on-screen, the camera zoomed in on the couple naked in front of the campfire. It wasn’t the sex he enjoyed. It was that first glimpse of Hollywood’s idea of Shifting—which just happened to
take place
during the movie’s only sex scene. The guys laughed and chewed their brownies, eyes glued to the spectacle of rubber, prosthetics, and what could only be stop-motion photography.

Manx’s eyebrows rose as she watched the screen, snacking on a brownie from my dwindling stack. “What is this,
Howling?
”

“It’s a movie,” I told her, proud of myself for not snatching my treat back from her. I was getting better at being nice to Manx; like everything else, it just took a little practice. And she wasn’t that bad once I got used to her. She was a bit of an attention hog, but I didn’t really mind, because she distracted a lot of notice from me, which left me free to live my life in relative privacy for the very first time. “They usually watch it with a drink in hand, taking shots every time one of the werewolves howls. If you’re not careful, you’ll be completely smashed by the end.”

“Hey, Manx, come sit!” Ethan called, twisting in his seat to smile at her.

“You don’t mind?” she asked, beaming her thousand-watt smile at them as she brushed a tumble of dark curls from one shoulder.

“Of course not.” Vic waved her over. “We’ll rewind it if you want to watch from the beginning.”

Shrugging, Manx walked around the couch into the center of the room. Several of the guys stood, stepping over one another to find a seat for her and make her comfortable. She wound up in the chair Ethan vacated, part of the crowd yet still removed from the pile of warm bodies.

In the month she’d been with us, no one had touched Manx at all, other than Dr. Carver and my mother. With every day that passed in peace, she seemed a little more willing to believe that no one at the Lazy S wanted to hurt her. And every day she smiled a little more.

“Oooh, look out!” Manx cried, in her exotic accent, biting her lower lip as the werewolf on screen lunged for his victim.

“Faythe,” my father called out from his office, just as I stuffed the last bite of brownie in my mouth. He hadn’t yelled, but the tone of his voice set me instantly on edge. Chewing furiously, I dropped my book in my seat and made my way down the hall to the office. Whatever he had to say would not be pleasant, and I wasn’t ready for more bad news.

“Sit down,” he ordered from his desk chair, as I padded silently into the room. Marc followed me, and we sat on opposite ends of the couch. My father nodded at Marc, then stood, carrying a plain white business envelope, beneath a sheet of typing paper folded into thirds.

“What’s that?” My heart thumped and my palms began to sweat. I was pretty sure I knew what he held, but I refused to believe it until he said it out loud.

“They’ve made a decision.” He dropped the paper on the end table next to me, then sank wearily into his chair. “They’re charging you with infecting Andrew, then killing him to cover it up. Two capital crimes. The hearing begins in eight weeks.”

Eight weeks?
My stomach constricted and I closed my eyes in dread. Manx got four months, and I got eight weeks?

So what? Screw ’em. Eight weeks was more than enough time to prepare my defense. After all, I was innocent—mostly.

I took a deep breath, then opened my eyes and saw pure terror in Marc’s. Then I met my father’s gaze, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t tell which of us looked more worried. Still watching me, he exhaled wearily, and I smiled.

Let the games begin….