Shift (12 page)

“Then wound one of them,” Taylor suggested, and I glanced at him in surprise—I hadn’t thought they’d agree with that part of my plan. “As a warning. We have to prove we’re serious, and it’s best to do that without risking injury to one of our own.”

My father nodded. “Better sooner than later.” He glanced around like he was looking for something, but I got the impression that he was seeing something other than his office. “We’ll have to do it from the steps—they won’t be able to see us under the porch roof. And we’ll need light. I’m assuming they don’t see very well in the dark, because most birds are diurnal.”

Heads around the room were nodding now, and we’d picked up several more observers in the hall, where toms had gathered to listen.

“I want two enforcers at my back.” He looked up, and both Marc and Jace stepped forward immediately, and my cousin Lucas pushed his way in from the hall.

“Good.” Our Alpha nodded. “Marc, get the tranquilizer gun from the basement, and grab both darts. If one veers too close, shoot it.”

Marc took off immediately toward the kitchen.

“Lucas, get whatever you’re most confident wielding.” Because Lucas was the more physically powerful of the pair, and would be more effective with brute strength. In fact, he was the biggest tom I’d ever personally met. More than six and a half feet tall, and three hundred pounds—I wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley.

Jace looked disappointed but didn’t argue. He might have been chafing under Marc’s authority, but he still held our Alpha in total respect.

Ten minutes later, we gathered in the front hall, my father facing the door with Marc a step behind on his left, my cousin mirroring him on the other side, each holding both a weapon and a candle in a jar. My uncle and I peered out the tall window to the left of the door. Taylor and Di Carlo watched from the opposite side.

In the living room, several toms had gathered to witness the action from the front window. My mother, Kaci, and Manx watched from the dining room across the hall, flanked by more enforcers, just in case.

My father took a deep breath, then opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, the gun in his right hand. Marc and Lucas followed him, then fanned out on the porch and set their candles down carefully out of the walkway. They took the steps together, the enforcers one tread behind my dad.

“Send someone to represent your Flight,” my father ordered, in a strong, clear voice. “I demand a word.”

There was a moment of near silence, then the whoosh of huge wings beating the air. An instant later, a single thunderbird swooped from our own roofline and landed ten feet in front of the porch on human legs. Its head and most of its torso were human, too, which is how I knew, to my complete surprise, that this thunderbird was a girl.

Or, more appropriately, a naked, winged woman.

“I will speak for the Flight,” she announced, in a voice that almost hurt to hear. Her dual tones were both high and screechy, as if her throat hadn’t fully Shifted. Which was a distinct possibility.

“What is your name?”

“Neve,” she announced, and offered no further title or rank.

“I am Greg Sanders, Alpha of the south-central Pride.” My father cleared his throat and made his formal pronouncement. “Hear this and consider yourselves warned. We did not kill your Flight member, nor do we bear any responsibility for his death, and we will not pay the price for a crime we did not commit. The next thunderbird who shows him or herself on this property will be shot on sight.”

He raised the gun, and even from inside the house I heard Neve gasp.

A thrill of satisfaction raced through me. She hadn’t seen
that
coming!

“You have to the count of three to leave, or I
will
make an example of you.”

I glanced at Jace in surprise. I’d wondered, when the female bird had appeared, if my father would actually shoot her. Most toms would rather die than hurt a woman of any species. Protectiveness was ingrained in them from birth.

“One.” My father aimed the pistol in a two-handed grip and flipped off the safety.

Neve made no move, so Marc raised the tranquilizer gun.

“Two.”

She still stood frozen, so Lucas slapped his crowbar into his opposite palm.

“Three.”

My dad fired the gun.

Neve tried to lift off. The bullet slammed into her left wing. She screeched and staggered backward. A powerful roar thundered from above. The next instant was a blur of wings, talons, and pale flesh against the dark night.

A tom screamed.

Lucas was gone.

K
aci screamed and pounded on the window from the dining room, to my right. On the front steps, Marc spun to his left, tranquilizer gun raised and ready. But he had no clear shot. My father kept his pistol trained on Neve. His back and shoulders were so tense I was afraid his muscles would snap like stressed ropes.

Uncle Rick ran through the open front door onto the porch steps and I went after him, peering into the night for his son. My heart raced, demanding action. Instead, I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to think.

A crescent moon shone through the cloud cover, too weak to illuminate much and the candles’ light only penetrated a few feet into the dark. Lucas’s enraged shouts echoed from somewhere to our left, and not too high up, giving us his general direction. But we couldn’t help him if we couldn’t see him.

I stepped to the back of the covered porch, out of immediate danger, and closed my eyes, already working on a partial Shift. Just my eyes. The bird was obviously having trouble with Lucas—no surprise, considering my cousin had to be nearly double his weight. If I could find them before they got too far away—or too high for Lucas to survive a fall—we could still save him.

I both heard and felt my fellow enforcers file onto the porch, and I smelled Jace at my side. But I blocked it all out as the first bolt of pain speared my eyes.

“Bring him back, now, or I’ll shoot her other wing,” my father warned, and distantly I realized Neve couldn’t fly away with a hole in her arm. She was almost literally a sitting duck.

Fresh agony licked at the backs of my eyelids, and my eyes felt like they would explode. I gritted my teeth and rode the pain, focusing on what I could hear in the absence of sight.

Another set of wings beat the air in the distance, but it wasn’t Lucas’s captor. I could still hear my cousin shouting—slowly drifting farther away—from my left.

“Stay back, or we’ll hobble you, too!” Marc shouted at whoever now approached, and I wondered if the birds could even hear him over the din of their own flight.

The pain began to ease behind my eyes, and I spared a moment of thankfulness that they were one of the fastest parts of the body to Shift—no bones, no large muscles, and no sprouting fur. Then I opened my cat eyes. My newly vertical pupils dilated instantly, letting in every bit of the little available light. And suddenly I could see in the dark.

In the arch of grass defined by our half-circle drive, a naked, fully human woman sat on the frigid ground, shivering miserably. Neve held her left arm close to her chest, folded like a wing and dripping blood. She eyed my father in abject hatred, her jaw clenched.

At her back, another bird coasted straight for the confrontation, moonlight glinting off dark, glossy feathers. Neve glanced back and up, and relief washed over her. He was coming to get her, but not at top speed—not with the continued threat of gunfire.

My father watched the new bird’s slow approach, tense with controlled fury. Marc stared after Lucas, tranq gun aimed in his general direction, judging by my cousin’s screams. I wound my way around half a dozen enforcers and peered over the left railing. Lucas and his captor were almost to the apple tree, flying very low. The bird pitched and dipped as Lucas fought him, swinging his crowbar and kicking furiously.

When his feet skimmed the top branches, my cousin stopped fighting. He bellowed an impressive roar and rammed the end of the crowbar up through the bird’s torso. The thunderbird screeched, and his next flap faltered. Lucas shoved the crowbar deeper. The bird screamed, sounding almost human. His talons opened. Lucas fell into the bare limbs of the apple tree.

Yes!
Marc and my uncle peered over the rail with me, but they couldn’t see far in the dark. Not with human eyes. “Lucas impaled the bird,” I whispered urgently. “He fell in the apple tree, alive, but probably hurt. The bird fell somewhere past the tree.”

“Come on,” Uncle Rick whispered to Marc. Then he jumped the porch rail in one smooth, lithe motion. Marc landed beside him, still carrying the tranquilizer gun, and they ran off into the night.

I scanned the darkness, looking for other birds, or any sign that this was a setup, but I saw nothing. With any luck, my father was right—their eyes were no better in the dark than a human’s.

“Stay back!” my Alpha roared, and I turned to see that the approaching bird had almost reached Neve.

I jogged down the steps to my dad’s side. “He can’t hear you over the wind he’s stirring up. Fire a warning shot.”

My dad’s mouth formed a thin, angry line. “I can’t see him well enough.”

“Then shoot her again.” The girl bird sat in a pool of light from two different enforcers’ flashlights. “Disable her other wing, so he gets the picture.”

My father considered for less than a second. Then he fired again.

The bullet grazed the she-bird’s right arm. Neve screamed. Blood ran from the new wound, fragrant in the night air. At my back, toms shuffled their feet as the scent fueled their rage, threatening to turn it to bloodlust. On a very large scale.

But the second shot accomplished its goal.

“Neve!” The bird in flight thumped to the ground in the darkness a good hundred feet behind her, now fully human but for his wings.

“I’m okay, Beck!” she yelled, without taking her glittering, black-eyed gaze from my Alpha.

“I don’t want to kill her,” my father shouted to Beck. “But if you come any closer, I’ll have…” His voice faded into an uneasy silence as the background whisper of wings beating the air grew to a thundering crescendo. I looked up. My cat gaze narrowed. My breath caught in my throat.

“What’s that they say about birds of a feather?” Jace murmured from close behind me.

“They flock together….” I eyed the sky, trying not to panic over the sheer number.

“How many?” My dad didn’t bother to whisper; they couldn’t hear us over the sound of their own wings.

I glanced down the line of huge bird-creatures, doing a quick estimate. “Fifteen, not counting Neve, Beck, or the one who took Lucas.”

“That’s too many,” Bert Di Carlo said, having assumed a backup stance in Marc’s stead.

“Without more guns?” My dad nodded firmly. “Yes, it is.”

We stared in silence, and I grasped mentally for a plan, sure my father and the other Alphas were doing the same thing. Seconds later, the entire flock landed behind Beck in one eerie, graceful touchdown after another. They stood a good fifteen feet apart, on human legs. Most also had human heads and torsos, but they’d all kept their wings intact, for a quick takeoff.

At least five were women, long, dark hair trailing behind heavily toned, nude torsos. They looked like harpies, flexing wickedly sharp wing-claws, snapping strong, curved beaks.

Beck stalked forward slowly on thin human legs, disproportionate to his massively muscled upper body. He knelt behind Neve without taking his gaze from us, then stood and pulled her up with him, cradling her with obvious familiarity and affection.

“If you are any wiser than the base creatures you lead, I advise you to surrender now.” Beck’s voice was only marginally lower and more tolerable than his girlfriend’s. Or wife’s. Or whatever. “Your men will die quickly—you have my word.”

Was that supposed to be a mercy?

My father bristled, and fury emanated from him in waves I could almost feel. He shifted his aim to the new threat. “Leave now, or I will start shooting.”

“So be it.” Beck let go of Neve and Shifted so fast my eyes couldn’t make sense of what I saw. My father raised the gun slightly, ready to defend us. But Beck only flapped his powerful wings twice, rising several feet into the air with each stroke, and clasped Neve’s shoulders in his newly formed claws.

She screamed when he lifted her, and more blood poured from the wounds on her arms. Then the birds lifted off as one and flew into the night.

But instead of fading gradually into silence, the thunder of their exit ended almost all at once. They hadn’t flown off. They’d landed, likely in the front field, just out of range of my cat eyes.

Grass crunched to my left, and I turned to see Marc and my uncle Rick headed our way, each half supporting Lucas, who favored his right leg. We stood back to let them pass, and Marc gave me a bleak grin. “Your cousin’s good with a crowbar.” Then he saluted me with the bloody steel and continued into the house with the injured cat.

The rest of us followed them, and my father bolted the front door. He hadn’t locked up the house since the night Luiz roamed free on our property. And even then, he’d only locked up the women—leaving me to protect Manx and my mother—while the rest of the enforcers went out to hunt him down.

But this was different. This was cowering. It felt wrong.

“What are we going to do next, nail plywood over the windows?” I whispered, following my father down the long main hallway to the back door. “Do you really think they’ll try to come inside?”

“No.” The dead bolt scraped wood, then slid into place. “With a twelve-foot wingspan, they’d be too confined in here to take advantage of their assets. And they couldn’t fly away, which would practically cripple them. But I’m not taking any chances.”

“In that case, maybe we should
invite
them in!” I trailed him into the kitchen, where my mother smiled wearily and slid the side door lock home.

Dad nodded to thank her, then glanced at Kaci—she sat at the peninsula in front of a vanilla scented votive, staring at a brownie—before heading into his office.

I wanted to follow him. I wanted to be a part of whatever critical decisions he and the other Alphas would make in the next few minutes. But Kaci needed me more than I needed to have my say.

“Hey.” I pulled out a stool and sat, smiling in thanks when my mother set a glass of milk in front of me. “How you holdin’ up?”

“Fine.” Kaci broke the brownie in half but made no move to eat either piece. “You?”

“Honestly?” I shrugged. “I’m kind of scared. And pretty sad. And really pissed.”

Kaci stared at me for several seconds, then nodded solemnly. “Yeah, me, too.”

“So, what do you think we should do?”

“About the thunderbirds?”

I sipped from my glass, then set it on the countertop watching deep shadows sputter on the front of the fridge. “Yeah.”

She blinked in surprise, then seemed to consider, and I realized no one had ever asked her that before. At least, not about anything more important than what she wanted for dinner. “I think we should talk to them,” she said at last. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“Even one of them?”

She nodded slowly, then more confidently. “It’s all a misunderstanding, right? They think we did something we didn’t do, and they’re trying to punish us for hurting someone. Like we’re going to do for Ethan.” Her eyes watered as she said his name, and I fought back tears of my own. “Right?”

“Yeah, I guess it’s like a misunderstanding.” A huge, gory case of mistaken identity. “And I agree with you. I’d rather talk this whole thing out.” We’d dealt and been dealt more than enough death over the past few months, and yet more was on the horizon. “But that’s hard to do, considering that they don’t have a leader and we can’t get in touch with the majority of their Flight.”

Kaci started to say something, but stopped when Michael’s voice reached us from the hallway.

“No. Holly, do
not
drive out here.” He paused, but I couldn’t hear how she replied over the raised voices now coming from the office. “Yes, another family emergency. I’m sorry, but I have to stay overnight. Owen…fell off the back of the tractor.” Another pause. “Yes, he’ll be fine, but there’s nothing you can do for him.”

Michael crossed in front of the wide doorway, carrying a red taper in a crystal holder, then reappeared almost instantly. He put his thumb over the receiver of his cell and met my gaze while Holly listed her objections in his ear. “Faythe, can I use your room? I need a little privacy.”

Before I could answer, my mother spoke up. “Manx is using Faythe’s shower. Take the master suite.”

My brother shot her a grateful look, then disappeared down the hall.

“Poor Michael.” Kaci frowned after him. “I don’t know how he keeps her from figuring stuff out.”

Michael was the only werecat I knew who’d married a human. Since there weren’t enough tabbies to go around, most toms settled for endlessly playing the field with human women. But my oldest brother wanted something more—someone to love for more than a few months at a time—and Holly had seemed the perfect choice. She loved Michael, and thanks to her job—she was an actual runway model—she spent almost as much time on the road as she did at home. Which was good, because when Michael wasn’t practicing law, he was at the ranch.

But when she was home, Holly wanted to be with her husband, and he’d been largely unavailable for most of the past few months, helping us deal with one disaster after another.

“Beats me. But she’s more likely to think he’s cheating on her than that he turns into a giant black cat in his spare time.” I took another sip from my glass, and as my parents’ door closed, my father’s voice carried to me from the open office door across the hall.

“What we’ve done is show both them and ourselves that we can fight them—if only by nontraditional means.”

“Yeah, that’d be great—” Taylor started, and in his pause, I heard the distinctive clink of glass on glass “—if we had more than half a box of ammunition and one gun.”

At least they’re taking us seriously now
, I thought, then turned my attention back to Kaci.

“…think she’s going to die?” she was saying when I brought her back into focus. “That girl bird?”

“No.” I shook my head decisively as she bit into her brownie. “I bet the bullets went in one side and out the other. And considering how fast thunderbirds Shift, she probably heals even more quickly than we can.”

Which was a problem I hadn’t considered before. It would suck to come face-to-face with a healthy and once-again flying and newly pissed off Neve in a few hours.