by P. N. Elrod
“Oh come on, this is a party!” Steve glanced at his friends with a look of anticipation that chilled my blood. “But we’re one girl shy. You have her number?” Robyn nodded slowly, and Steve glanced at the third man. “Tim, give her a call.”
I’d circled to within feet of my roommate by the time Tim—shorter and thicker than Steve—hauled Robyn to her feet. She whimpered when his hand slid into the front pocket of her jeans, and fresh tears rolled down her face. My claws curled into the underbrush, itching to rip through his flesh instead.
I watched Robyn and Tim, waiting for my opportunity to pounce, but in my head, I saw something else. Another man. Another place. A bruising grip on my own arm. A cruel, unwelcome hand, followed by pain, and screaming, and humiliation.
The bastard leered at Robyn until she closed her eyes; then he shoved her down again and flipped open her phone. He was already scrolling through the contacts list by the time she hit the ground. He pressed a couple of buttons, then held the phone to his ear, and they all waited.
But I already knew what would happen, and sure enough, a couple of seconds later, my phone rang out from inside my purse, on the edge of the pile of sleeping bags and hiking packs.
“Damn it, she didn’t take her phone!” Steve kicked my purse across the clearing without bothering to open it, as his dark-haired accomplice hung up Robyn’s phone.
Of course I hadn’t. My cat skin suffered an obvious and bothersome lack of pockets.
“Fine,” Steve said at last, having resigned himself to some inconvenient conclusion. “She’ll come back—where else could she go?” He shrugged. “We’ll just start the party without her.”
No … I recognized that tone. That slimy, hungry grin. I knew what would happen next, if I didn’t stop it.
Tim dragged Robyn away from Dani and closer to me. Robyn screamed and kicked, trying to twist free, but none of it fazed him. He dropped her on the ground and her head hit a fallen tree branch. Robyn moaned, dazed, and I could practically see the fight drain out of her.
“Get off her!” Dani shouted, struggling to get to her feet without the use of her hands. Her cheeks were dry and scarlet, fury eclipsing her fear, at least for the moment. She would fight them. And it would get her killed.
The third man glanced at Steve, brows raised, silently asking for permission. He hadn’t said a word so far, but his clenched fists spoke volumes.
Steve nodded and gestured toward Dani with one open hand. “She’s all yours, Billy. I’m holdin’ out for the little redhead.”
Me of course. Boy, wouldn’t he be surprised to see me sporting black fur and claws instead? One hundred and four pounds was only a scrap of a woman but added up to one hell of a cat. Not that he’d ever know it was me.
Billy shoved Dani down, then kicked her in the ribs before she could roll away. Bones cracked. Her shout ended in a grunt of pain, and then he dropped on top of her, his huge, bloody hunting knife pressed into her throat. “One more word, and I’ll cut your fucking head off.”
Silent tears rolled down Dani’s face, and each breath was a pained gasp. Her eyes closed and her head rolled to one side as he fumbled at the waistband of her jeans, and suddenly I couldn’t move.
Bars. Tears. Pain. Blood. Terror.
No, that was all over. All but the terror. It had been two and a half years, yet the terror came back like a fucking razor-tipped boomerang. My heart beat too hard. The whole world began to go gray beneath memories of my own helplessness and humiliation.
No! This can’t be happening. … Not again. Not in the human world. Not while I cower in the bushes.
Run! the voice inside my head shouted, as each breath slipped from my throat faster than the last. They’ll do the same thing to you if they find you. And you can’t survive it again.
But that was a lie told by the scared little girl still huddling in a dark corner of my mind. I’d grown up. I’d moved on. I’d learned to fight. True, my skills were unproven, but they were there, and they were a game changer. And beyond all of that, I was in cat form. They’d never recognize the Abby they were looking for in my current configuration of flesh and bone—and fur.
I could survive this. I could prevent this. I could end it.
“No!” Robyn screamed, trying to shove Tim off with her bound hands. “Stop, please!”
And that was all I could take.
I leapt out of the bushes, fury now pulsing through my veins, hotter than blood. A growl rumbled from my throat and rolled across the clearing. I slammed into Tim’s side, knocking him off Robyn and onto the ground. My front paws pinned him to the dirt.
Around me, everyone froze. For one long second, they didn’t even breath, and several hearts actually skipped beats. Then Robyn took a single, shallow breath, and began edging away from us slowly, pushing herself with her feet because her hands were still tied. She was as scared of me as she was of him, and terror had now driven comprehension from her eyes. For the moment at least, Robyn had checked out.
Tim was sweating in spite of the cold, and the scent was part fear, part adrenaline. But not enough fear. I leaned in closer, and the huff of breath from my nose blew his dark hair back. I sank my claws through his thick camo jacket and into flesh. He flinched, and when his mouth dropped open in surprise, I saw blood staining his teeth.
I sniffed while he shook in terror beneath me. The blood was Robyn’s. The bastard had bitten her.
The entire world bled to red. I lunged, and the next few seconds were a series of unfocused, disconnected sensations. My teeth sank through something firm and warm. Tim jerked beneath me. I tossed my head, and flesh tore with a satisfying ripping sensation. Warm, fragrant blood sprayed my face, my shoulders. The form beneath me jerked one last time, then lay still.
Someone screamed.
I backed off the body, cleaning my muzzle out of long-term hunting habit, and looked up to find Robyn staring at me, huddled against the side of the nearest tent, shrieking uncontrollably. Her jacket lay on the ground to her left and she clutched the remains of her torn shirt to her chest, but the bloody bite mark on her right shoulder was exposed.
Without thinking, I stepped toward her, confused by my simultaneous human need to comfort her and my cat’s inclination to first clean the fresh blood from my fur.
Robyn screamed harder at my approach, going hoarse now, so I stopped, physically shaking myself to clear my head. To fend off encroaching bloodlust and cling to my ill-fitting human logic. She was bitten, but otherwise unharmed. She’d be fine, physically.
I turned away from Robyn, forcing myself to ignore that small part of me that wanted to chase her, just because she wanted to run. My roommate wasn’t prey. But the men who’d hurt her were.
Steve stood where I’d left him, his back to the fire, his white-knuckled fist still clenching a bloody knife. He watched me carefully, steadily, blade held ready, and again I saw too little fear to suit me. He’d have to be either stupid or insane to openly challenge a giant cat, and frankly, I was hoping he was both.
I growled, and for one surreal moment, I wondered if he could see the other me peeking through my greenish cat eyes. The human me, who’d once suffered what he and his friends had tried to deal out. That Abby couldn’t fight back, but this Abby could and would.
Steve’s blood whooshed rapidly through his veins. His eyes were bright and glossy with exhilaration. His arm tensed. He raised the knife for a strike, but I saw it coming.
I swatted the blade from his hand with my front paw, and my blow swung him around. He went down a foot from the campfire, but was up in an instant.
“Good kitty…,” he whispered, his voice low and steady, both hands spread in a defensive posture as I growled. He glanced over me, and a sudden scuffle at my back made my fur stand on end. I leapt to the side, but was too late to completely avoid the blow. Billy’s huge knife slashed across my front right leg, several inches from my shoulder.
I hissed, and suddenly the blood-scent on the air had a new flavo
r. My flavor.
Dani scooted away from Billy. I took a step forward, trying to drive the men closer together, where I could see them both, but my injured leg half collapsed beneath me. I couldn’t walk on it. Not for long anyway.
Steve noticed the limp, and I could see him assessing his chances. He had a real shot at survival now, and he knew it. He backed slowly toward the tent and hauled Robyn up by one arm. She screamed again. I limped forward, hissing, but before I could attempt another pounce, he glanced behind me, at Billy.
“We can’t bring them both,” he said. “Do her.”
“No!” Dani shouted, and her shuffling grew frantic. She understood before I did.
I whirled to see him haul Dani up by one arm. She dug her heels into the dirt, trying to pull free. I stepped toward them, and my leg folded again. Billy shoved his knife into her stomach and dragged it up through her flesh. Dani’s eyes went wide, and her mouth fell open. I roared in grief and outrage. He let go, and she collapsed onto the dirt, blood pouring from the gaping hole in her torso.
“Stay, kitty…,” Steve said, slowly pulling Robyn toward the woods. Robyn glanced from me to Dani, then to Billy, whose bloody knife glinted in the firelight. But she didn’t make a sound this time, nor did she fight his grip.
Billy circled me slowly, leaving plenty of room between us. He held his knife ready, and though I growled the whole time, I didn’t pounce again. And he didn’t expect me to. A natural-born cat—they probably thought I was a melanistic jaguar—would never chase three healthy humans into the woods on an injured leg, when there were three fresh bodies to eat right there in the clearing. And there would soon be a fourth.
Dani was still breathing, but it wouldn’t be long, and I couldn’t let her die alone. Especially since I couldn’t reasonably rescue Robyn. Not in cat form, anyway. Not when I couldn’t put weight on my injured front leg.
Steve backed into the trees, pulling a shocked-silent Robyn with him, her face streaked with tears, her shirt streaked with blood. Billy stepped slowly out of the clearing on his side of the fire, and moments later, I heard him clomping through the underbrush toward Steve and Robyn. Then they headed through the woods together.
The last thing I heard before their footsteps faded from even my sensitive cat hearing was Billy’s whispered question, and Steve’s even softer reply.
“So, we’re giving up on Abby?”
“No way. We’ll regroup at the cabin.”
I huffed softly through my nose as I limped toward Dani. There was a cabin. And they were obviously expecting me—the human me, the only one they knew—to come back to the campsite. If they were planning to come back for me, the cabin must be close. I could track them. I could get Robyn back. But not until Dani was gone. And not until I’d made a phone call.
Triple homicide in a werecat territory, involving a werecat tabby, was definitely a notify-your-local-Alpha situation.
Even mortally wounded, Dani tried to scoot away from me as I approached. She was dying, and she knew it—I could see mortality gleaming in her eyes, along with reflected flames from the campfire—but she wasn’t eager to speed up the process by being eaten alive. And she had no reason to think I wouldn’t do just that.
I dropped my head as I limped forward, whining softly, trying everything I knew to look unthreatening. To show submissiveness and concern. But she didn’t stop struggling until I dropped onto the cold ground beside her and laid my chin on her leg.
“Wha—?” she began, but lacked the strength to finish even that one word. Her heartbeat had already begun to slow, and her chest was rattling. I didn’t want to leave her, but I couldn’t afford to let Robyn get too far away. And I still had to make that call. So I licked the back of her left hand—still bound to its mate—then scooted away from her to begin my Shift. And for the first time in my life, it didn’t matter that a human was about to witness the entire process.
My injured leg bent to spare it, I stood three feet from the fire, and its warmth was my only comfort in the face of exhaustion, grief, fear, and ever-deepening rage. The last time my life had been in danger, I’d been too scared to Shift, even for my own safety. Even with Faythe there to talk me through it.
Not this time. This time, the changes came almost too quickly to bear, my Shift fueled by an intense need to save Robyn and avenge my other friends. To unleash justice on men so like the ones who’d brought a violent end to my adolescence, robbing me of peace and security, along with my virginity.
My muscles tensed, bunching and stretching as they took on new shapes. My joints popped in and out of their sockets as, in my memory, I screamed “No!” over and over, until the weight pinning me to the ground stole my breath.
My paws flexed uncontrollably, aching as they stretched and reformed. My claws retracted into the tips of my fingers as, in my head, I clutched at my clothes, at the bars, at the edge of the bare mattress, desperate to make it stop. To hold myself together as long as possible.
My muzzle began to shorten, my gums throbbing as my teeth broadened, the feline points smoothing into rounded human edges. My jaws ached, as they’d once ached from screaming, then from trying not to scream, desperate not to give him the satisfaction.
My flesh began to itch as my fur receded, and in my mind, my skin burned—scalding water from the shower. I’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but couldn’t wash them off. Couldn’t clean down to the real me. The me I’d lost. The me they’d killed in that basement, in the shadow of the bars I still saw sometimes when I closed my eyes.
When my Shift was over, I sat on my bare knees on the frigid ground, panting from exertion, crying over old ghosts. If I didn’t hurry, it would happen to Robyn too. These men didn’t have bars and a basement, but they had knives, and no reason to let her live.
As soon as I could move again, I crawled over to Dani. Danielle Martin, with her big mouth and her kind eyes, who’d invited me to come on their couples’ weekend. Who’d insisted I wouldn’t be a fifth wheel. But Dani’s kind eyes were open and empty now, staring into the woods. Her bound hands still lay over her stomach, like she’d tried to hold the blood in until the last second. And I’d missed it. She’d died alone, and scared, and in pain.
Steve and Billy—whoever the hell they both really were—would pay for that. They would pay, and pay, and pay.…
Tears ran down my face, scalding my frozen cheeks as I pushed myself to my feet and jogged across the clearing. The fire was hot, but not hot enough for me to preserve my body heat without clothes. Yet I went for my purse first, dropping to my knees beside the pile of brush it had landed in when Steve kicked it.
My teeth chattering, I pulled back the zipper, praying my phone hadn’t broken. When I flipped it open, the screen was bright in the flickering firelight, the battery charged and ready for use. I shivered as I stood and scrolled through the contacts for my Alpha’s number, then pressed CALL as I dropped to the ground again next to the careless pile of our belongings. I’d just spotted my hiking pack beneath the portable charcoal grill when he answered the phone.
“Abby? What’s wrong?”
“Jace, I need help. Fast.” My teeth were chattering, and I sniffed back a choked sob. “How soon can you get here?”
Springs creaked as he stood, and I heard him walking. “Where are you? What happened?”
I hauled my pack from the pile and peeled back the flap, already digging for my change of clothes. “I went camping with some friends, and now they’re all dead. All except Robyn, my roommate.”
“Wait, first of all, are you safe where you are?” His voice was solid and steady, a vocal cornerstone for me to build on.
“For the moment. But I don’t have much time.” I stood with the phone pinned between my ear and my shoulder and stepped into my underwear, my teeth chattering so hard I could barely talk.
“Okay, start from the beginning. You went camping…?”
“Yeah. Just a sec.” My shirt was next, and I had to set the phone on the ground to pull the mat
erial over my head. “We’re in Cherokee National Forest, just south of the Tennessee border.” I gave him the coordinates we’d used to find the campsite, forever grateful for GPS technology. “I went for a run—the private kind—and while I was hunting, my friends started screaming. When I got back, there were three men at our campsite, carrying big hunting knives. They’d gutted Mitch and Olsen and tied up the girls.”
“Wait, you walked in on a murder? In cat form?”
“They didn’t see me. I was in the bushes.” Like a coward.
“Good. They’re human?”
“Everyone but me.” I stood and shook out my insulated cargo pants, phone pinned to my shoulder again while I stepped into the fuzzy inner lining. “It doesn’t make any sense, Jace. I know one of them. He sits behind me in psych. He’s always so friendly, but now he’s … crazy .”
I sank onto the cold ground and swallowed another sob, trying to speak slowly and clearly, and to give him just the facts. Anything else would only slow me down and put Robyn in more danger. But Jace saw through my false calm.
“Abby, are you okay?”
“No! They know I’m out here too. I don’t know if they followed us or what, but while they were waiting for me to come back, they tried to…”
The words froze in my throat, the edges sharp, like I’d swallowed glass. I coughed, then started over. “They had knives, Jace, and the girls were so scared. Robyn was screaming, and she couldn’t stop him. The other one held his knife to Dani’s throat. I couldn’t just watch, and I couldn’t leave them there.…” My explanation trailed into fragile silence, but for the crackle of the fire.
“What did you do, Abby?” Jace still sounded calm, but now his voice held a dark note of dread.
“I killed one of them. The one who was on Robyn. I just wanted to get him off her, so I pounced on him, and he smelled like her, and he’d bitten her, and everything just went red after that. But then Steve slashed my front leg, and the other one stabbed Dani. Then they took off into the woods.” My tears were a mercy, smearing the carnage all around me. But they couldn’t blur the overwhelming scent of blood. “I couldn’t chase them. Not with my front leg sliced up and Dani dying.”
