Prey

by Rachel Vincent

  Even worse, Manx wouldn’t be able to go out in public again without wearing gloves. Ever. In order to keep the claws from growing back, the surgical procedure actually snips off the very tip of a cat’s toes. Shifting a couple of times will accelerate healing the wounds, but will not make the claws—or those lost bits of nail bed—grow back.

  Being declawed in cat form was one thing. Aside from the obvious inconvenience, the deformity would hardly show beneath the fur on her paws. But in human form, the mutilation would be conspicuous, and as difficult to explain as it was to hide. She’d be missing her fingernails and cuticles. All ten of them. And the flesh they’d once covered would be puckered and scarred.

  When I was in junior high, my father ordered a stray—a three-time offender—to be declawed. Dr. Carver performed the procedure at our ranch, and before the stray left, I caught a glimpse of the result. I’ve long since forgotten what his offense was, but I’ll never forget the sight of that tom’s malformed hands, which established my own deep-rooted fear of losing my claws.

  “Faythe?” Michael said into my ear, drawing me out of my thoughts. “You okay?”

  I laughed bitterly. “Not really? You?”

  For a moment he was silent, too, and I wondered how similar his thoughts were to mine. “I…well, I can’t say I agree with the sentence, but neither can I justify them letting her off entirely. She committed three very serious crimes, and if they let that go unpunished, they’re setting a very dangerous precedent.”

  But I could have cut my finger on the cold, sharp edge of politics in his voice. He was trying to emotionally divorce himself from the issue and view it with no bias. It was a skill I envied, and sometimes I was certain I’d never be able to pull off. I couldn’t even emotionally divorce myself from the boxers versus briefs debate, much less Manx’s cruel verdict.

  “I know, but her claws? How’s she supposed to hunt? How can she possibly defend herself or Des?” But I answered my own question before he had a chance to. “She’s not supposed to, is she? That’s the whole point, right?”

  In cat form, her ability to hunt would be severely compromised. She could still pounce on and suffocate prey with her strong, feline jaws. But she’d no longer be able to grip with her claws. Or to climb in search of upwardly mobile prey. Or defend herself, should the need arise.

  She’d be dependent on others—likely men—to provide and care for her. And that blow was even more devastating for Manx than it would have been for anyone else, because her independence was all she had left. That, and her baby. For years she’d been dependent on the meager mercy of the men who’d abused her and held her prisoner. Now, she’d be at the mercy of every tom she met.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s what all of the Alphas had in mind,” Michael hedged. “But I have no doubt Calvin Malone holds significant influence over Milo Mitchell—” Kevin Mitchell’s father, who’d headed up the tribunal “—and I would not be surprised to hear that the sentence was actually his idea. Or something cooked up between them.”

  I had a strong suspicion my brother was right; declawing a tabby was exactly the kind of thing Malone would suggest. It was an irreversible indignity to Manx. A blow to her self-worth. And an obvious political maneuver from two Alphas who were probably patting themselves on their collective back for putting one more tabby in her place. The bastards.

  My pulse spiked just thinking about it, and if I’d had claws of my own in that moment, they’d have ripped right through the faded upholstery of Marc’s used sofa. Though what they really wanted was to sink into Calvin Malone’s flesh.

  That rotten bastard wouldn’t rest until he had every eligible tabby in the country barefoot and pregnant, married off to one of his easily manipulated sons, making him the most powerful Alpha on the Territorial Council.

  “Damn it!” I snapped as Parker joined Ethan in the doorway, probably drawn by the sharp tone of my voice. “If someone doesn’t stand up to him, we’re gonna wake up one day and discover that we need Calvin Malone’s permission to take a piss in our own territory.” Michael sighed over my crude phrasing, but I ignored him. “How long is he going to get away with this?”

  “As long as he’s able to retain the appearance of the moral high ground. He couches everything he does in the letter of the law, so we can’t even argue about his less-than-honorable intentions.”

  Michael was right, of course, and that was the whole problem. Malone hadn’t actually broken any rules—not that we had proof of, anyway—so there was nothing we could do to stop him until he messed up. In the meantime, we seemed to be handing him screwup after screwup, and an uncomfortable number of those instances could be laid at my paws.

  “Well, that’s gonna change. He’s going to make a mistake sooner or later, and we’re gonna hang him with it.” Assuming he didn’t get his hands on our noose first.

  I sighed, and stood when the oven timer went off. “When are they taking Manx’s claws?”

  Parker scowled as I passed him. He must not have heard that part of the call.

  “Tonight,” Michael said, as I slipped a thick mitt over my free hand and pulled open the oven door, flooding the room with the scents of butter and garlic. “Bert’s doctor is coming to do it, and we’re leaving for the ranch in the morning. Dr. Carver will follow up with Manx there.”

  I pulled an aluminum baking sheet from the top rack and set it on a towel I’d spread over on the countertop.

  “If you haven’t found Marc by then, Vic and I will join the search.”

  “Thanks.” I wanted to insist we wouldn’t need them by then, but I didn’t want to jinx our efforts.

  I hung up as Parker scooped huge piles of pasta onto paper plates, but when I sat down in front of my dinner, I couldn’t help wondering when Marc had last eaten. And as I picked at my noodles, aimlessly twirling a bite around my fork, one thought kept chasing itself through my head.

  “We can’t kill Kevin. We have to find him and turn him over to the council.” Chewing ceased around the table as the guys’ attention shifted from their food to me, surprise clear in each expression. “We have evidence against him.” The tape we’d taken from Eckard’s ancient answering machine. “And there’s no way the council can refuse to convict him once they hear that.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Ethan muttered, and I frowned at him. But he had a point. “If you hand him over to the council while Malone has so much pull, they’ll find a way to let him go. Especially if Malone’s the one he’s working with. He and his allies will be thrilled if Marc shows up dead, and they’d rather reward Kevin than punish him. And Kevin has to pay for this.”

  “I know, and personally, I’m ready and willing to pull his heart right out of his chest, Temple of Doom style.” My brother nodded eagerly, but I pressed on. “But, Ethan, Michael’s right. If we kill Kevin in anything other than self-defense, we’ll be hammering another nail in Daddy’s political coffin.” And that might happen even if it was self-defense, because lately, we never knew who the council would agree to hear testimony from. Or whether they’d believe what they heard.

  Because Kevin was now a wildcat, jurisdiction for his crimes technically belonged to the council at large, and if our Pride, or any faction of it—namely me and Ethan—acted without the council’s permission, my father would pay the price. Probably with his position on the council.

  “We have to let the council handle this. But I don’t see any reason we can’t be the ones to turn Kevin over to them. And if he resists capture and must be beaten into submission, so much the better.” I lifted my brows at Ethan, and he answered with an eager grin.

  Unfortunately, the larger issue would be much harder to prove: that Kevin was working for one of those very council members who’d be sitting in judgment of him. Assuming we were right about that, surely the Alpha responsible wouldn’t have left evidence of his own connection to the crime. That way he could let Kevin take the entire fall, if necessary. And while I was more than willi
ng to give Kevin that last big push, I wanted his coconspirator to go over the edge with him.

  “Any idea how to find him?” Parker asked, a forkful of spaghetti near his mouth.

  I glanced at my watch. “We still have at least a couple of hours until we can head back into the woods. Why don’t we go utilize our resources?” My focus shifted to Dan, who’d listened in silence up to that point. “Didn’t you say Ben Feldman was trustworthy?”

  He nodded, and speared a slice of bell pepper on his plate. “Some. But that doesn’t mean he’ll help you.”

  I shrugged. “It can’t hurt to try.”

  We devoured the rest of our dinner, me included, because I knew I’d need the energy if we spent the entire night hiking through the woods in search of Marc. Then we piled into Parker’s car and made our second trip to Feldman’s house in less than twenty-four hours.

  This time he was home.

  It was twenty minutes after nine when we pulled to a stop in front of Ben Feldman’s house, two small towns and nearly forty-five minutes from Marc’s driveway. A well-kept ten-year-old Toyota sat in front of the single-car garage, and the minute Parker cut his engine, the silhouette of a head appeared in the front window of the house.

  Feldman knew we were there.

  “Okay, I know I’m one to talk in this regard, but we can’t let this one go down like it did with Yarnell,” I said from the backseat, unbuckling my seat belt. “Another incident like that won’t do much to convince the stray population that we’re not out to get them.”

  Parker nodded in agreement. “We play nice this time.”

  Dan looked relieved, and I could tell he really respected Feldman—a rarity among strays, who typically spent very little time in one another’s company. Though Dan was shaping up to be an exception to that rule.

  When we stepped out of the car, the head disappeared from Feldman’s window. We crossed the tiny brown lawn with me and Dan in front, Parker and Ethan close at our backs.

  The front door opened before we could knock, and Ben Feldman appeared behind the storm door, backlit so that his face was a shadowy compilation of wide planes and rugged angles. Feldman was so broad he took up the entire glass panel, and so tall I couldn’t see the top of his head. He wasn’t quite as big as my cousin Lucas, but was easily the largest stray I’d ever seen.

  And he did not look friendly.

  “Painter? What the hell are you doing here?” Feldman’s voice was like granite—smooth, hard, and beautiful. A pleasant surprise in all three respects.

  Before Dan could answer, I stepped forward and smiled my brightest, friendliest smile, determined to win Feldman over, rather than fighting him. We couldn’t afford to make an enemy of every stray we met, and based as much on his confident stance as on his size, this tom would be a formidable opponent. “I asked him to introduce us. I’d really like to talk to you, Mr. Feldman, if you have a few minutes.”

  “And you are…?”

  More smiling. My jaw was starting to ache. “I’m Faythe Sanders.” I paused to see if he would react to my name.

  Feldman’s dark eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but the flaring of his nostrils was much more noticeable, as he verified from my scent that I was indeed who I said I was. Or at least that I was a tabbycat.

  But rather than returning my smile, or ushering me inside, both of which I’d expected from a tom who’d probably never met a female of his species, he pressed his lips together in a frown. “What can I do for you, Miss Sanders?”

  “May we come in? I have a few questions, and it’s pretty cold out tonight.” I rubbed my arms through my jacket for emphasis.

  Feldman’s frown deepened, and he crossed bare, dark arms over a pale button-down shirt. His eyes focused over my head on Parker and Ethan, then he scanned the yard slowly, inhaling deeply.

  “It’s just the four of us,” I assured him, impressed that he’d thought to check for backup. I used to forget that one a lot myself.

  After another moment’s hesitation, he pulled the screen door open for us.

  I stepped inside with the guys at my heels, all of us relieved by the warmth of the small room, but before he closed the door, Feldman took one last glance and sniff outside, to verify that we were alone. “Sit.” He waved one arm at a tan couch. The sofa was by no means new, but it was cleaner than anything in the guesthouse back home, and it matched the armchair in one corner, against which Feldman leaned, facing both us and the front door.

  “Thank you.” I sank onto the cushion farthest from our host, and all three guys squeezed in with me, intentionally avoiding the aggressive backup stance. On the coffee table, a fat, hardbound book lay open next to a spiral notebook covered in neat, slanted writing. One glance at the book, and I nearly choked on my own surprise. It was a textbook anthology, open to Antigone.

  “Are you in college, Mr. Feldman?” I asked, eyeing him in interest as I flashed back to my own days as an English major. Feldman looked to be in his midthirties—a little old for an undergrad, but not unheard-of.

  His dark eyes hardened, and thick, brown hands smoothed his shirt as he settled into the armchair. “Is that what you came to ask me?”

  Okay, he wasn’t exactly approachable, but at least he hadn’t kicked us out. Or tried to kill us. Yet. “Um, no. I was just curious.”

  “Then no, I’m not in school. I teach Classical Humanities at the junior college in Natchez. Mostly night classes.”

  “Oh.” Ohhh. I felt my face flame, and I glared at Dan, irritated by the lack of background information on our host. He only shrugged and, to my further embarrassment, I thought I saw amusement flit across Feldman’s face, softening it for just an instant.

  “It’s late, Miss Sanders, and I take it this isn’t a social call, so why don’t you get to the point?”

  “Of course.” I crossed my legs at the knee, hoping to look competent and official. “This is Parker Pierce and my brother Ethan.” I gestured at each tom in turn, without taking my eyes from our host. “We’re enforcers for the south-central Pride, and personal friends of Marc Ramos—”

  Feldman’s thick eyebrows arched. “The way I hear it, regarding your relationship with Ramos, that’s a bit of an understatement, Ms. Sanders.”

  I blinked in surprise, and when I met Feldman’s gaze again, I saw challenge in his eyes. He knew exactly who I was and what I wanted, and he was daring me to drop the pretense and stop wasting everyone’s time.

  So I did.

  “Yes.” I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward with both elbows propped on my knees. “Mr. Feldman, Marc is more than a friend to me. More than a boyfriend. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to find him.”

  He nodded, acknowledging that I’d met his challenge, though his stony expression did not soften.

  “Yesterday, three tomcats broke into Marc’s house and attacked him. Two of the toms died, but injured Marc severely in the process. The third hauled Marc off.” I was not going to reveal that we’d found Eckard, and that Marc had escaped, because if the strays didn’t yet know he’d survived, I wasn’t going to tip them off. “We know Kevin Mitchell is in on this somehow. I’m here because rumor has it you have your ear to the ground and might be able to tell me where to find Kevin.”

  Feldman simply watched me for several seconds, letting me stew. Or maybe trying to judge my sincerity. He had the upper hand, and he damn well knew it. Then, finally, he blinked, and leaned back in his chair, digging something from his right hip pocket.

  “Yes, I can tell you were to find Kevin Mitchell. Or at least where he lives. But I’m not going to do that. Not now, and not ever. Because of this.”

  Feldman’s thick fist swung forward, and I jerked back from the blow to come, as the guys shot to their feet, ready to defend me. But Feldman’s blow never landed. Instead, he slammed his hand palm down on the battered coffee table, and when he withdrew it an instant later, he left something on the laminated wood surface.

  A clear, rounded cylinder, half
the diameter of my smallest finger and no longer than the first joint. Inside the cylinder was another cylinder made up of tiny green and black parts I couldn’t focus on without a microscope.

  “What is that?” I asked, leaning forward to squint at it, as the guys mimicked my motion.

  “That,” Feldman spat, glaring across the coffee table, “is the microchip I dug out of my own back last week.”

  Fifteen

  “A microchip?” Parker reached for the tiny cylinder, but Feldman snatched it back, holding the object up where we could still see it between his thick fingers. But we couldn’t touch it without taking it from him. Which would not fit into our playing-nice approach.

  “Yes.” Feldman eyed us closely, each in turn, obviously studying our reactions.

  “That was in your back?” An image of Eckard’s corpse flashed behind my eyes, complete with the precisely slit skin between his shoulder blades.

  Feldman nodded, frowning at my obvious surprise as I made the connection.

  “Your upper back? Just to the left of your spine?”

  “Yeah.” Feldman lowered his hand into his lap, fist wrapped around the tiny device again as excitement made my heart beat faster. Eckard had had one, too—until Marc had cut it out of him. But how had he known it was there? If Marc knew about the microchips before he was attacked, he would have told me.

  “First of all, that’s weird,” Ethan said as he caught my gaze, silently telling me he’d made the connection, too. Parker and Dan nodded; we were all on the same page. “And it doesn’t look like any microchip I ever saw.”

  “Me, either.” I smiled to thank him for keeping the tone light. Whatever these microchips were, we’d stumbled onto something big, and we couldn’t afford to piss Feldman off before he told us what he knew. I met the stray’s gaze. “Though admittedly, my familiarity with chips is limited to the guts of my cell phone. So enlighten me, please. What does it do?”