The rifle went off, but the bullet destroyed the driver’s-side window, having barely missed Sonia’s covered head.
Peter shoved me away, but I was desperate. I would not—could not—let anyone hurt this bird. I’d been searching for it for years. Cursing me, Peter swung the gun like a baseball bat, whacking me in the face.
Stars and canaries and every cartoon-clichéd-image possible danced across my vision from the stunning impact. My vision wavered as pain bloomed along my cheek. I slumped against the armrest on my side of the car, waiting for either my sight to clear or to pass out.
The bird dove again. Though things were a little hazy, I could see Sonia and Matthew searching for something. Weapons, maybe. Or the seat belt release so they could haul ass. Either way.
The black body and vast wingspan covered the SUV. I gasped when something pierced the roof with a metallic tear. Matte black talons protruded behind me in the space above the cargo area of the car. Eyes crossed, I watched a second set of talons punch through above Peter. Then, with the ease of someone popping the tab on a can of cola, the roof was pulled up and off.
My guts shriveled, and it had nothing to do with the frigid air suddenly surrounding me. The giant black bird—a thunderbird—was strong enough to pull the roof off a car. And it looked pissed. There was nothing to stop it from destroying us with the same ease. I was pretty sure I was about to pee my pants, especially when those talons plucked Peter up like he was a bug, then tossed him into a nearby snowbank.
Two quick pops echoed in the strange silence that surrounded us. Thunder still shook the ground and lightning flashed in the distance, but the immediate area was quiet as though all sound was muffled by the huge black wings. The thunderbird shuddered and jerked at the popping noise, and I realized Sonia had pulled a handgun out from somewhere and had gotten off two shots.
The noise the thunderbird made was like the sharp whistle of an eagle, only louder. Like the whistle of an eagle would be if the eagle were the size of a fricking truck.
The animal reared back, and currents of electricity sparked and jumped over its breast. In the flickering light, something wet glinted along the axilla. Blood. It had to be blood that shone in what some would call the bird’s armpit.
Shit. The crazy bitch had actually shot my thunderbird.
I didn’t have to worry, though. She didn’t get off a third shot. The thunderbird pulled Sonia and a babbling Matthew out of their seats, practically ripping the seat belts off at the same time, and threw them into the same snowbank Peter’s prone body lay in.
Then it was just me and the thunderbird—the creature that was the equivalent of my family’s Holy Grail and the albatross around our necks.
I prepared myself for what I was sure would be my own flight into a pile of snow. Or as well as I could. Mostly I mentally girded my loins and sucked in a breath.
That breath caught in my throat when dark clouds formed and the bird settled onto the hood of the SUV. The whole vehicle jostled at the weight. Before the rocking motions ceased, the bird was gone. In its place was a very human, very naked Ford.
“Holy fucking shit.”
Chapter Fourteen
I BLINKED. Maybe I’d gotten a concussion when Peter hit me with the gun? No way was I seeing what I thought I saw. Delusions. Illusions. Whatever they were, there had to be a good explanation.
I scrubbed my hands over my eyes and looked again.
Yep. Still Ford. Still naked. Still glaring at me with the heat of a thousand suns.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I stood on the back seat, something I could do now that the roof was gone. The roof that Ford had pulled off like it was made of aluminum foil.
Ford.
Thunderbird.
Shape-shifter.
Ford knelt on the hood. Still human. Still naked. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked stupidly.
He shook his head, raising an arm to push away the hair hanging in his face. “Are you okay?”
At first I thought the little white flecks that danced in front of my eyes were snowflakes, but when I grew light-headed, I realized I hadn’t been breathing. Not that I could blame myself. It wasn’t every day you saw your boyfriend—or whatever he was to me—turn from a mythological creature/exotic bird into a man. What was breathing compared to that? I sucked in a breath, my stupefaction receding with the influx of oxygen.
The lightning and thunder were gone. The weird pressure in the air was absent. Three black SUVs were demolished, and at least seven bad guys were out of commission. And Ford was still naked.
He wouldn’t have clothes, though, would he? I remembered Donnie disrobing in my bathroom and the abandoned pile of clothes left behind when Bethany shifted. There was probably a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a forest-green apron decorating the sidewalk in front of Buddy’s.
“You were tranq’d. Oh my goodness. You were shot.” I clambered over the front seat as best I could with my hands zip-tied in front of me. I climbed the dash until I stood next to Ford. Before I could examine Ford for injury, he hooked both forefingers beneath the rigid plastic of the zip tie and snapped it apart. I knelt next to him, grabbed his right arm, and pulled it out. I didn’t see a bullet wound, but I didn’t trust my eyes. I trailed my fingers around his shoulder and armpit, seeking blood and trauma. He squirmed. Great, my boyfriend, the thunderbird shape-shifter, was ticklish. “Where’s the gunshot wound?”
Ford pulled away from my hold, letting his arm fall to his side. “Healed.”
“But you said—”
“I’m a little different than the average shape-shifter.”
I punched him. I’d never punched anyone in my life, and I never thought I’d break that trend. But one second I was worried about bullet wounds and frostbite, the next I swung back my fist and plowed it into his face.
He toppled backward, covering his nose. “Damn it, Simon. What was that for?”
I shook out my hand, knuckles throbbing. “I’m not altogether sure,” I admitted.
“Excuse me?” He glared up at me through the curtain of hair that had fallen back into his face.
“You’re a thunderbird shape-shifter.”
“Look—”
I poked his surprisingly uninjured shoulder. “No, you look. You knew I was looking for thunderbirds. You knew why I was searching. And even after I found out about shifters, you still lied to me.”
“I never lied. Not once did I deny what I was or claim to be something I wasn’t. I wasn’t in a position to share that information. In fact, I’m still not—”
I punched him again.
His head rocked back, but that was it. He did gape at me, though, so at least I wasn’t a total wuss. “Will you knock it off?”
“Don’t prevaricate. Omission. Lies. In this, it means the same thing.”
“Trust you to use big words after being kidnapped by a serpent-worshipping cult.”
I slid off the hood of the vehicle. It was either that or punch him again. “You knew? You knew who they were all along?”
He pushed himself off too. “Not all along. I found out today.”
I narrowed my eyes.
He rolled his. “That’s the information I was waiting for. That’s what my contacts—who are my cousins, by the way—brought in to Buddy’s tonight.”
“And the cash?”
“It’s used to bribe people when necessary. For the info they got, it was necessary. I was paying them back.”
Damn. What a cluster. “We have so much to talk about.” I started searching the wreckage for a coat or a blanket, or hell, even a napkin. Ford needed to cover up. It would be a shame for frostbite to kick in and cause him to lose any of his appendages. I was tempted to glance at his groin to see how things there were holding up but decided I was too pissed to worry about shrinkage. “How are we going to get back to town? It’s twenty-five degrees outside, the cars are totaled, and you’re naked.”
Ford tilted his head to the SUV that was buried nos
e-first in the snowbank. “That one should run. But we can’t go anywhere until I take care of the assholes who took you.”
My heart stuttered in my chest. “Um… take care of? You mean call an ambulance and the sheriff, right? Not as in cement shoes?”
“No. And no.”
I shook my head. “Okay, I admit it. I have no idea where to go with that.”
Ford propped his fists on his hips, elbows out. The same pose I’d thought made him look like a raven totem. Things made so much more sense now.
“No one’s going to be killed. But we can’t go anywhere until the cleanup crew arrives.” He walked to the closest body, which happened to be Matthew. Ford sneered and dragged him next to the SUV he’d opened up like a can of sardines.
“Cleanup crew?”
“My cousins. They followed in my truck. They should be here any minute now. They’ll help me handle these guys.” His second trip to the snowbank resulted in Sonia under one arm and Peter under the other. He dropped them next to Matthew.
“What do you mean by ‘handle’?” Despite his assurances no one would be killed, I was a little worried. These guys had held me at gunpoint, but outside the gunstock to my face, they hadn’t hurt me. I didn’t really want Ford—or his cousins—to do anything irreversible to them.
His voice rose as he crossed the two-lane highway to the SUV lying upside down in the ditch. He yanked open the doors, bent in a way that showcased his excellent ass, and dragged a black-clad form out of the passenger’s seat. He repeated this for the person in the driver’s seat. “My cousins make sure that anyone who gets too close, or who discovers anything that might lead to revealing the existence of my family, have no proof.”
My blood chilled, owing nothing to the February temperatures. No proof.
“Tonight they’ll clean up my mess. We need to come up with a plausible reason for the results of tonight’s activities. Something that will account for the two destroyed vehicles, and for the—” He paused to count the still forms he’d continued to pile up as he talked. “—seven unconscious people in combat gear. Maybe some kind of car accident involving slick roads and militiamen.”
“What do you mean, no proof?” My voice rasped. “For how long?”
He squatted next to Matthew and began to pat the body down. “How long?” Most of his attention was on Matthew. He pulled a combat knife out of a waist sheath, tossed it to the other side of the SUV, and continued his search. “Pretty much always. Mostly they just go in and get rid of any photographs, videos, letters, whatever. We’ve got a couple of guys who are expert hackers who take care of any social media, internet posting, discussions, what have you.”
“Let me guess. If someone has a picture in a newspaper, for example, they go find and destroy any copies of the newspaper, steal the photographic evidence, the whole lot.”
Ford had moved his pat-down to Sonia’s still body. “Sure. Nowadays, it’s mostly computers and the like, but decades ago, we’d have….” His voice trailed off, and his body stiffened. He looked up from what he was doing to meet my gaze; then he stood. “Simon.”
Betrayal, worse than him not sharing the specifics of his dual nature, was a physical ache in my gut. I felt the blood drain from my face. In fact, I would have sworn I could follow the direct descent from head to toes. “All this time. My family. The notoriety. The shame. It was your fault.”
“Not mine,” he said, but it was clear that he knew what this revelation meant to me.
“Don’t give me that.” I was so hoarse, the words sounded as though they were dragged through gravel. “Why? Why would you do that? Do you have any idea what my family has gone through? The ridicule? The lack of respect? The academic world thinks my whole family is full of quacks because my relatives were so convinced they’d seen this great new bird. The mysterious disappearance of the evidence only strengthened their belief that they really had seen something. And you’re telling me that your family, or species, or whatever you want to call it, deliberately set out to make fools of them.”
“My family was dying out. Freaks like the Followers of the Eternal Serpent have been systematically killing my ancestors for the last two hundred years. If we were natural animals, we’d be on the endangered species list. That’s how few of us remain.”
I didn’t want to hear it. Nothing he said could excuse what had been done to my family. To my grandfather.
I didn’t have to formulate a response through the bubbling fury and shock. The rumble of tires on asphalt and the glow of headlights crested the hill behind us. Ford didn’t dive for cover or even cover his junk, so the incoming vehicle must have been his cleanup-crew cousins. Or Ford had zero modesty. I recognized Ford’s black truck, so it really was his cousins.
The pickup pulled in next to us, and the two men I’d seen at Buddy’s immediately jumped out. One stalked to investigate the overturned SUV. The other strode over to us, a parcel in his hand. He passed the stack to Ford, and I saw it was made up of the clothes Ford had worn earlier, minus the forest-green apron.
“Situation?” his cousin asked.
I stepped away to let Ford share the details with his cousin. I couldn’t believe all this time, my grandfather and great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather had all been right. They really had found a new species of bird. They’d called it “thunderbird” because they theorized ancient Native American images of Thunderbird were influenced by the sighting of the huge bird. But the whole time they were sure it was a mundane, if rare, animal. Having seen the display of light and shadows surrounding Ford in his shifted form, I suspected there was more to the thunderbird than basic wildlife. As a rule, feathered animals did not create their own aura of storm clouds, thunder, and lighting. So was there a nonshifter version of a thunderbird? One that was just a bird, albeit an odd one?
What was it Ford had said? He wasn’t like the other shifters? When Donnie had changed from human to coyote, there hadn’t been anything remotely supernatural about his coyote form—well, except for the fact that he’d been human the moment previous. So were the thunderbirds that had been observed and talked about for generations, both by my family members and others, like Ford? Or were they regular—for lack of a better word—thunderbirds, and Ford was a regular shifter who just happened to turn into a thunderbird?
Shit. This whole thing was giving me a headache. Jesus, what had my life come to that I was knee-deep in a generations-long battle between thunderbird shape-shifters and a freaking snake cult?
“How should we handle this?” Ford’s cousin asked. The cousin checking out the cars was shorter and stockier than Ford, with close-cropped dark hair. The one standing with Ford was just as tall, but skinny. Once I’d seen what Ford could do, I assumed his wide shoulders and long arms were aspects of his animal form showing up on the human side. But presumably, these cousins were thunderbird shifters too, and they didn’t have Ford’s same proportions.
“Shit, Nicky, I haven’t seen this many Eternal Serpents in one place before. Maybe we could choreograph some kind of car accident? Otherwise, I’m open to suggestions.”
The cousin across the highway—the one not called Nicky—made his way from the overturned car to the topless one. He winged his brows up, and I immediately saw the resemblance between him and Ford. “There are easier ways to get a convertible. More expensive, sure, but more aesthetically appealing.”
Nicky snorted. At Ford’s arched look, he said, “Well, he’s got a point. But I don’t think the accident scenario is going to work. It won’t be enough.”
“Shit.” The curse was muffled behind the long-sleeved black T-shirt Ford was pulling on. “I was afraid of that.”
“You’ll have to do it.”
Ford glared at the ground, then at his cousin.
“Don’t give me that look,” Nicky said. “You’re the only one of us powerful enough to do the mind wipe.”
“Excuse me?” I held up a finger to pause the conversation. “Did you say ‘mind wipe’?”
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“Damn, cuz, this is good work,” the other cousin—the Not-Nicky one—said, ignoring me. “I’m not sure even your dad could have done seven like this. To be fair, one looks like he actually hit his head, so you may not have knocked him out. But the others…. I’m assuming it was a pressure strike?”
“Enough.” Just like it had for Sonia and the snake-worshipping assassins, the word silenced Not-Nicky and had Nicky and Ford looking at me. “Pressure strike?”
“A pressure strike is, well, it’s like Ford hit them over the head with a hammer made of air pressure.”
I didn’t have time to investigate the physics of it. I had more important things to panic about. “And Ford’s going to mind wipe these guys?”
“Well, yeah.” Not-Nicky seemed to be a chatty guy. And while he was blithely providing answers to my questions—as crazy as those answers might be—Ford and Nicky watched. When neither of them stopped him, Not-Nicky continued his explanation. “I mean, it’s one thing if we have one accident victim claiming to see something he shouldn’t have. People will chalk it up to crazy talk due to trauma. But when there are seven of them all saying they saw something impossible, people will take a second look.”
I was starting to hyperventilate. “So, mind wipe.”
Not-Nicky started tucking the random weapons Ford had pulled from the snake-cult people into his own clothes. “It’s kind of like electroshock therapy. Ford here will send a little bolt of electricity into them. It’ll scramble their brains—”
I stumbled back, horrified and nauseated. “And this is something you—” I choked, then swallowed back the bile creeping up my throat. I braced my hands on my knees and sucked in great, gulping breaths. Ford was going to use electricity to scramble someone’s brains? That was barbaric. Cruel.
“Damn it, Derrick. What the fuck, man? Did you have to put it that way?” Ford knelt at my side and ran his hand along my spine.
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