Shift

by Rachel Vincent

  He waved one thick hand toward his desk in a be-my-guest motion, and I marched across the room. Jace stopped in the doorway, and an intimately familiar breathing pattern told me Marc had joined him.

  Eager now, I upended the marble jar on one corner of the desk. Pens and mechanical pencils tumbled onto the spotless blotter like pick-up sticks, and I pawed through them until I found a small, thin key ring, holding two identical shiny keys.

  My father stood when I dropped into a squat behind his desk. “Faythe…” he warned, but I already had the bottom drawer open. And there it was: a blocky black pistol. Handheld death. According to the box of bullets next to it, the gun was a 9 mm, which was more than I’d known about it a second before.

  I held it flat in my palm, getting a feel for the weight. It was heavier than I’d expected.

  Across the room, Jace flinched, and I caught the motion in my peripheral vision. Manx had accidentally shot him with that gun five months earlier, and his recovery had been less than pleasant. And more than memorable. “Faythe…” he began, and I was surprised to realize that his tone almost exactly matched my father’s.

  My dad cleared his throat, and I looked up to see that all the Alphas were standing now. My uncle watched me in equal parts caution and curiosity. Taylor looked like he thought I’d lost my mind. And if I wasn’t mistaken, Bert Di Carlo looked…almost impressed. “You don’t know how to use that,” my father said.

  “They don’t know that.”

  Jace flinched again when I flipped the gun over, looking for the safety. Most cats I knew had an innate fear of guns, which went hand in hand with our fear of hunters. Thanks to our fantastic hearing and reflexes, there really wasn’t much danger of us getting shot, but the chances of dying from a bullet wound were greater than the chances of dying from the average mauling. To which our scar-riddled bodies could attest.

  Thus, no one looked particularly comfortable with me waving a gun around the room.

  “What are you doing?” Marc started across the floor toward me—brave tom—but my father reached me first.

  “I’m checking for bullets. To see how many are in there.”

  “What are you going to do, stand on the porch and hold a turkey shoot?” Taylor asked, running one hand over his close-cropped hair.

  “I’m hoping it won’t come to that.” I frowned and turned the pistol over again. “How do you open this thing?”

  My father calmly plucked the gun from my hand, then pulled back a lever at the top of the grip with his thumb. Something clicked, and the clip slid into his waiting palm. He held it up for me to see, then slid it back into the grip of the gun until it clicked again. “One in the chamber, fifteen in the clip. Safety’s on.”

  He gave me back the pistol, and I gaped at my Alpha like I’d never met him. “How did you…?”

  My dad lifted both graying brows. “When are you going to stop being surprised by what I know?”

  “Where did you learn about guns?”

  He sighed but looked pleased by my interest. “Facing your fears is the best way to overcome them. But that’s a story for another day. And Ed’s right. You can’t just walk out there and start shooting.”

  “I know.” Even if I wanted to kill one of the thunderbirds—and I wasn’t willing to kill in anything other than immediate self-or friend-defense—if our gunman shot and missed, they’d know we were bluffing. “I was hoping to scare them off long enough for us to…come up with a better plan. Learn how to fight them, or work on finding more proof. Or at least get the power back on.”

  Without it, we couldn’t access the Internet, charge our phones, or even cook. Much less heat the house. Heat wasn’t an immediate concern, with all the bodies keeping things warm, but we would get cold eventually. And we would definitely run out of food. We’d stocked up the day before, but two dozen full-grown werecats go through food very, very quickly. We’d eaten fifteen pounds of beef in the chili alone.

  “Okay, that’s a solid, attainable goal.” Uncle Rick nodded sagely.

  Taylor frowned. “No, it’s spinning our wheels. Even if we get the power back on without any trouble—and for the record, this smells like a setup to me—they’ll just knock it out again. We need a permanent solution.”

  “We’re not going to get rid of them without killing them,” Marc said. “And that’ll just bring more of them on the fly. Pun intended.”

  No one laughed.

  “They’ll lay off if we can come up with proof that we’re not involved,” I repeated. That was our only hope for a peaceful resolution.

  “Yeah, and they’d disappear into a wormhole, if we knew how to open one,” Michael said from the doorway, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Why are you holding a gun?”

  “I think we should try threatening them. Maybe clip a couple of wings in the process. We have to show them we’re willing to fight back.”

  “Even if it brings more birds down on us?” My father eyed me with an odd intensity, as if he were looking for something in particular from my answer.

  “Yes.” I nodded definitively to punctuate. “We can’t just cower here, waiting to be picked off one by one. They’re birds of prey, and we’re acting like a bunch of mice trembling in a field. We all need to remember that in the natural order of things, cats hunt birds, not the other way around.”

  “Agreed…” my Alpha began. But he looked less than convinced by my proposition, so I sucked in a deep breath and tried again.

  “Look, even if they leave long enough to bring reinforcements, that’ll give us time to arm ourselves and get the power back on.”

  “Arm ourselves?” Ed Taylor asked, and I turned to see him holding a fresh bottle of Scotch. I’d never seen Taylor drink, but with his eyes still red from crying over Jake, I could hardly blame him. “With guns?”

  “Yes.”

  Taylor set his glass on the bar and poured an inch from the bottle. “We’ve never resorted to such crude measures before, and frankly, I’m afraid to think where a step like that might lead.”

  I met his gaze steadily, trying to strike a balance between confidence and criticism. “We’ve never been held prisoner in our own home before, either. And I’m afraid to think where that might lead.”

  “A valid point,” Di Carlo declared, and I could have hugged Vic’s dad.

  My uncle Rick reached for the bottle of Scotch. “So, does anyone know how to fire that thing?” He looked pointedly at his brother-in-law.

  My father rubbed his forehead. “I was a decent shot in college, but I haven’t fired a gun in nearly a quarter of a century.”

  I shrugged. “Has anyone else ever shot a gun?”

  No one spoke, so I held the pistol out to my dad. He sighed but took it and turned to his fellow Alphas. “Are we in agreement over this course of action? Should I call for a vote?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Uncle Rick said, and Bert Di Carlo nodded in agreement. Then, to my surprise, Ed Taylor nodded, too.

  “We can’t just sit here and take it,” he said, and a swell of pride blossomed in my chest. They were actually listening to me! Not just my father, but the other Alphas, too. I couldn’t resist a grin, but my smile faltered slightly when I saw it returned by both Marc and Jace. Neither noticed the other beaming at me.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Di Carlo sank onto the arm of the couch with the short glass my uncle handed him.

  Uncle Rick screwed the lid back on the bottle. “I suggest an ultimatum. Call one of them out for a parlay and explain that if they don’t flock on back home, we’re gonna hold a turkey shoot.” He winked at me, and I couldn’t resist a grin.

  “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 l
ooking 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.

  Twelve

  Kaci 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.