I eased slowly toward the ladder, and after a few tense minutes found myself sitting on the edge of the deer stand. Marc stood in front of the ladder, with Jace at his side on all four paws. I could see them clearly thanks to my cat’s eyes, and the slight lightening of the sky as dawn approached.
Damn it! We needed to be halfway back to the car already.
I pushed that thought away and took another deep breath through my mouth. Then I twisted to lie on my stomach and put one foot on the third rung from the top. The next step was a bitch, even once I was sure the rung would hold me, because I couldn’t grip the ladder well enough with my casted right hand, and moving my fingers made my left arm explode in agony.
A whimper of pain escaped before I could lock it down, and Jace echoed the sound from below.
I stepped down again, and again gripped the bar, this time biting my still-bleeding lip to keep from crying out. So far, so good.
The next rung snapped beneath my foot.
Marc gasped. I screamed as my feet fell out from under me, and almost passed out from the agony in my left arm. I hung from it, my life dependent on a grip weakened by my shredded flesh.
“Let go,” Marc said. “Let go and I’ll catch you.”
“No.” I was too high. My body twisted, and my feet scrambled for the nearest rung, but it had been broken before we arrived, and the next hung a full foot below my feet.
“Faythe. Let go.”
I glanced down at Marc, and if I’d seen fear in his eyes, I couldn’t have done it. But I saw only confidence. If he said he could catch me, he could catch me. It was as simple as that.
So I closed my eyes and let go.
My hair blew back from my face as I fell. My cast broke through two more rungs, each impact reverberating in my broken wrist. My right foot slammed into the side of the ladder, and the blow radiated up my leg. Then I landed hard in Marc’s arms.
He staggered beneath the impact, but didn’t fall.
I clung to him and didn’t even try to stop the tears. Screw being strong. I could be strong and hurt at the same time, right?
Because daaamn, I hurt.
Marc set me on the ground, and I caught his quick glance to the east. The sun would be up in an hour, and if anyone had gone for an early morning run, my screams had probably been heard.
He met Jace’s gaze and tossed his head toward Malone’s property. Jace nodded as his ears swiveled in that direction, on alert for any suspicious sounds.
“Let me see your arm.” Marc knelt next to me, and I was glad all over again that he’d already mastered the partial Shift. Without it, he couldn’t have gotten much of a look, because without our usual emergency trunk kit, we didn’t have a flashlight.
I held my arm out straight, sniffing back more sobs as he carefully pulled my jacket off. I got my first look the same time he did.
“Oh, fuck,” Marc whispered, and Jace turned to look. He whined in either sympathy or horror, but I was speechless. That couldn’t be my arm. That piece of raw meat hanging from my elbow bore no resemblance to the forearm I’d had minutes earlier. Broken wood couldn’t do that much damage. It wasn’t possible.
A jagged section of the broken deer stand floor had ripped the side of my left forearm open from wrist to elbow, where my coat sleeve had bunched up, protecting the rest of my flesh. The muscle was exposed, and the whole thing was slick with blood.
If the wood had caught the underside instead, I’d probably already have bled to death.
Marc stood, and his jacket hit the ground. He ripped a sleeve from his long-sleeved tee, then knelt again and stared into my eyes. “This is going to hurt, but I need you to keep quiet, okay?”
I nodded, and Jace nudged my shoulder with the top of his head for comfort, then went back on alert.
Marc wrapped my arm quickly and tightly, while I held back a scream with nothing but willpower. The pain was unlike anything I’d ever felt, and I couldn’t stop silent tears. When he was done, Marc wiped my face with his remaining sleeve. Then he helped me get my jacket back on.
“Can you walk?”
“My legs are fine.”
He pulled me up, and I let him, because I couldn’t put weight on either of my arms. “If you start feeling light-headed at all, tell me. Don’t let yourself pass out just because you’re stubborn.”
He got no argument from me.
I made it about half a mile on my own before the hill we were descending began to tilt on its own. “Marc…” My voice was barely a whisper, but he heard me. An instant later, the whole forest swam as he picked me up, cradling me in his arms like a baby.
He took two steps forward. Then everything went black.
Twenty-One
A familiar hum, the sounds of traffic, and the scent of leather told me I was in a car. The rental. We were in Kentucky, trespassing in Malone’s territory. Sitting ducks, with both my arms messed up. I had no words strong enough to describe the pain. I’d literally been ripped open, and there must have been muscle damage, because my fingers didn’t respond properly when I tried to curl them.
I opened my eyes, and the roof of the car came into focus. Next came Marc’s face, peering down at me, lined in concern. Had my eyes Shifted back in my sleep? Marc repositioned himself, and I realized I was lying across the backseat with my head in his lap. “Hey. How does your arm feel?”
“Like I got it caught in the tractor.” My left arm lay across my stomach, stinging, throbbing, burning endlessly, the pain spiking with each beat of my heart.
“Yeah, that’s about what it looks like.”
Great. At least he wasn’t prone to sugarcoating. “My fingers don’t work right. I can’t fight.” My eyes watered at that realization, and his face blurred.
“We’ll worry about that later.”
The car turned right—with Jace presumably behind the wheel—and we passed a broad brick building, sunlight glaring in the windows. “How long was I out?”
“About forty minutes.”
“You carried me the whole way?” I asked, and Marc only smiled. Of course he had. “Where are we going?”
“We’re getting a room. You need to rest.”
“No.” I tried to sit up, but the world swam, so I lowered my head onto Marc’s lap again. “We have to go get Kaci.”
“We will,” Jace said from the front seat, beyond my line of sight. “But we can’t fly until we get you cleaned up, and we need somewhere private for that.” He turned right again, and the car bumped over rough pavement. “It’s nothing fancy, but they won’t ask questions.” He turned again and pressed the brake gently, then shifted into Park. “I’ll get a key.”
“They’ll smell my blood,” I said after Jace closed the car door. “They probably heard me scream. They’ll be looking for us. I messed this up, Marc.”
“No.” He stroked my hair back from my face and let it trail over his leg. “They didn’t hear you. We’d have heard them coming for us if they had. We were at least two miles from the main house. And they won’t smell your blood unless they get close to the deer stand.”
Or anywhere I’d dripped on the way back to the car. But neither of us said that. Just knowing it was scary enough.
Marc stroked my hair and I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the pain in my arm, which refused to settle into a quiet throb.
Jace came back minutes later with an old-fashioned metal doorknob key. He drove us to the back of the motel and parked in front of our first-floor room. I could have walked, but Marc insisted on carrying me, and I let him, because it made us both feel better. Jace hovered as Marc carefully unwrapped my arm while I sat on the edge of the first bed, then bundled his bloody, detached shirt sleeve in the plastic liner from the trash can in the bathroom.
I stared at the wall. I didn’t want to see my arm in daylight. Or even in the murky glow from the bedside lamp.
Jace whistled, and still I didn’t look.
“Well, at least it’s mostly stopped bleeding,” Marc said. And
then I had to look.
I regretted it immediately. My forearm was one big scab. The gash was easily five inches long, and ragged, and now crusted with dried blood. It hurt to look at. It was unbearable to move.
“She can’t travel like this,” Jace said.
“She can if we wrap it well. But she needs antibiotics. And stitches—lots of stitches.” Marc stood, and Jace shot to his feet, already pulling the car keys from his pocket.
“I’ll go. Faythe, you want something to eat while I’m out? And you’ll need some new clothes.”
Marc growled and stepped between Jace and the door. “I’ll go. I know her size.”
I was beyond caring who went. I wanted nothing but an end to the pain. An end to this whole mess, so we could hand over the feathers and take Kaci home.
Marc grabbed the room key from the nightstand and knelt by the bed, looking up at me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we’ll get you fixed up. Faythe?”
I made my eyes focus, and he squeezed the fingers sticking out of my cast. Then he stood and took the car keys Jace held out. “Call Greg and give him an update. And don’t let her move her arm.”
“I’m on it.”
Surprised into awareness by Jace’s easy compliance, I glanced up to see him watching Marc with an obedient, I’m-on-the-job expression. Marc hesitated, frowning, then reached for the doorknob.
“Hey, she’s probably gonna need something stronger than Tylenol for the pain. Tequila?” Jace grinned suggestively at me with his back to Marc, and my pulse tripped at the memory of what happened the last time I drank with Jace.
I flushed. “No tequila!” Marc’s brows shot up, and I stumbled over my own words. “Motrin’s fine. I need to be thinking clearly.”
Marc nodded, then slipped out the door, and Jace locked it behind him as the car engine hummed to life outside.
“You did that on purpose!” I eyed Jace, and he shot me an innocent grin, blue eyes flashing mischievously.
“I like what tequila does to you. And what it does for me…”
“Not that.” I shook my head, and the pain-fog cleared a little more. “You volunteered to go for supplies because you knew that’d push Marc into going.” Into leaving me alone with Jace…
Jace shrugged, and his grin grew as he sauntered toward me. “You seem to be thinking clearer. Must be feeling better.”
“Hardly…”
“Anyway, he is better qualified for a supply run. Since he knows your sizes, and everything.”
“When did you get so…” Smart? “Manipulative?”
“Proper motivation works wonders.” Jace kicked his shoes off and sank on to the opposite side of the bed, leaning against the pillows with his arms crossed behind his head.
I turned to face him—an awkward movement without full use of either of my hands. “I wanna fight.”
He shrugged. “Okay, but the first time you pin me, I’m staying pinned.”
“I’m serious.” I frowned and held both arms out, flinching at the spike in pain from my left arm. “I can’t fight like this. Hell, I can’t even brush my own hair.”
Jace sat up and scooted closer, all humor gone from his expression. “Marc’s right—we can worry about that later. We’ll get you all fixed up for now, and Doc can do a better job when we get home. With Kaci. The important thing to remember right now is that we got what we came for, and Kaci’s gonna be fine.”
“I know.” Though, I’d feel a lot better about that once we got her away from the birds.
“And frankly, considering how pissed off they are, we’re just lucky thunderbirds’ bloodlust isn’t triggered by the scent of blood.” He gestured toward my ravaged arm for emphasis.
Jace was still talking, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar of alarm ringing in my ears.
“Damn it!” I started to slam my fists into the mattress, and stopped myself just in time, pissed off even more because I had no outlet for my anger.
“What?” Jace’s brows lowered over cobalt eyes, and his gaze flew instinctively toward the door, no doubt listening for intruders. But there were none. We were the intruders.
“The feathers aren’t enough. They never were.” All that work—and my arm completely fucked up—for nothing. Well, for very little, anyway.
I scooted to the edge of the bed without the use of my hands and stood to pace. “Brett was the real evidence. His testimony.” I passed the cheap, two-person table and turned in front of the plain white wall. “Thunderbirds can’t distinguish between individual werecats by scent. The feathers will help our council nail Malone into his coffin, but they won’t do a damn thing for the birds. We were depending on testimony against Malone from his own son, and we don’t have that anymore.”
Jace’s expression crashed through confusion to absolute rage in a fraction of a second. “Motherfucker!”
I stopped pacing and closed my eyes. “We have to go back in.”
“What? In where?”
“Back in, Jace.” I opened my eyes to see him watching me in conflicting dread and anticipation. “We have to convince Lance Pierce to testify.”
“Wait, you think Lance is just going to give himself up? You think he’ll tell the thunderbirds the truth out of the goodness of his heart?”
I shrugged and resumed pacing. “He might—when he hears they’re gonna kill Kaci. What kind of enforcer would let a thirteen-year-old tabby die for something he did?”
Jace pulled a chair out from the table and sank into it. “The kind who would let thunderbirds decimate an entire Pride for the same reason. A coward.”
Okay, I couldn’t argue with that. “So we’ll make him testify. What other choice do we have?”
“Faythe.” He blinked at me, as if I weren’t making sense. “The birds’ll kill him.”
“I know.” My pacing picked up speed. “I haven’t figured that part out yet. Maybe we can renegotiate. His testimony, in exchange for immunity.”
“Yeah.” Jace rolled his eyes as I stalked past him. “They’ll go for that. You know, since they’re so cooperative and forgiving.” I turned at the wall to cross the room again, but Jace caught the fingers of my right hand and tugged me gently toward him. “Faythe, you don’t want to do this.” He pulled me between his knees and held me with both hands at my waist as I cradled my gored arm. “This isn’t self-defense, and you’re not a killer.”
“This is Kaci-defense. They’re either going to kill Lance or Kaci. Are you really willing to let her die to save the tom who started this whole mess?”
“Of course not.” He ran his hands slowly over my upper arms through my sleeves, careful of my many deep bruises. “But there has to be another way.”
I shook my head and ground my teeth, my squeamish conscience at war with the cold, logical part of me, which understood exactly what had to be done. “There’s no other way. If we don’t come up with proof the thunderbirds can understand and get it back to the nest in the next thirty-four hours, they’re going to kill Kaci. Then they’re going to come after the rest of us.”
I took a deep breath, then stared straight down into his eyes. “The rest of you. They’ll hand me over to Malone, who’ll whore me out to one of your brothers.” His hands fell from my arms and he leaned back in his chair, anger curling his lips at the very thought. “And you know I won’t let that happen. I’ll have to kill every bastard who lays a hand on me, then they’ll have to kill me. So…it’s Lance or us. And keep in mind that he’s guilty, and we haven’t done anything wrong.” To the thunderbirds, anyway.
Jace sighed and opened his mouth, but I went on before he could speak.
“Besides, we don’t know for sure that they’ll kill him. We have another day and a half to figure a way out of that. But regardless, we need Lance.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “And how do you expect us to get him?”
I shrugged. “We go in after him. Tonight. After dark.”
“Faythe, that’s suicide.”
I kn
ow. “Only if we get caught.”
He shook his head, unconvinced. “There are only three of us, and even when we get you sewn up, you can’t fight with one arm shredded and the other in a cast.”
“I know.” Unless… Excitement tingled in my fingers and toes—I was suddenly high on possibility. “I think I need a bath. A long, hot bath.”
Jace’s grin was back, and his gaze strayed south of my face. “Now you’re talkin’…”
I hurried into the bathroom and started to unbutton my shirt—until the first movement of my left arm sent fresh pain lancing through it. “Hey, can you give me a hand with my clothes?” Damn it, that didn’t come out right!
Too late… He was in the doorway before I could think of a way to take it back gracefully.
“Jace, I know this is weird, but…”
“It’s not weird, Faythe.” He sat on the side of the tub in front of me and his grin was gone, replaced by a heat in his eyes so intense I caught my breath, smoldering on the inside.
I swallowed and forced the right words out. “I mean…I’m not trying to get your pants off.”
“You don’t have to try.…” His hands rose slowly toward the buttons on my blouse, and his next inhalation was ragged. His gaze followed his fingers as they worked their way down the front of my shirt. His hand brushed my bare stomach, and I held my breath. He eased my shirt off my shoulders and over my cast, then ripped the left sleeve and let the material fall away from my latest injury.
Then he reached for the front clasp of my bra. In spite of my constant pain, my pulse spiked, and his answered.
This isn’t going to work.
“Jace.” I lifted his chin with my casted right hand until his gaze burned into mine and his hands fell away. “It hurts to move my arm and my fingers aren’t working very well. I just need help. That’s it. Okay?”
“Yeah. No problem.” But he shifted uncomfortably, and I glanced down to find a prominent bulge in the front of his jeans.
Uh-oh. “You sure?”
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