But his meaning was clear.
I leaped into the living room and was on the porch two bounds later. I hit the grass running, frozen blades crunching beneath my paws, frigid air burning in my lungs. Marc was on my tail, and I could hear two others behind us.
My pulse raced as I ran. Each breath was a deep huffing pant, powerful in its own right, without the accompanying soft thuds of my paws on the ground.
Three men ran in front of me, clearly visible in the sad light of a cloud-covered quarter moon. One man half turned, gun haphazardly aimed. The barrel flashed. For an instant the world was too bright to bear. The bullet whizzed by several feet over my head and thunked into the frozen earth behind me.
He aimed again, and I zigged while Marc zagged. The next bullet split the air between us. Too close for comfort.
He turned to run again and I pounced. My paws slammed into his back. He screamed and fell beneath me. My muzzle closed over the back of his neck. My teeth pierced tender flesh, just enough to threaten. Blood ran into my mouth. It tasted like fear. He waved the gun at his side. I swatted it away before he could fire, dislocating his elbow. He thrashed beneath me.
A dark blur flew past us. Another thud. The second tom hit the grass with Marc on top of him. He screamed when Marc performed the same maneuver with unsheathed claws.
Wish I’d thought of that…
The third tom still pounded toward the main lodge, unarmed. Another dark blur raced past us on Marc’s right—one of Di Carlo’s men still in pursuit. He slammed into the last tom’s back and they both hit the ground.
All three toms were down, but their screams and gunfire would surely draw more.
Teo Di Carlo slunk past me in cat form, huffing in approval of my takedown. More footsteps pounded behind us—my father, Bert Di Carlo, and at least one other tom in human form.
“You are so screwed,” the man beneath me gasped. I increased the pressure on his neck and more blood trickled across my tongue and down my chin. “You’re outnumbered. Malone called in a dozen extra enforcers and they’re just waiting for you assholes to start some shit. Looks like they’re going to get their wish.”
That time my jaw clenched involuntarily. An extra dozen men? He’s right. Even without guns, we were seriously outnumbered. They’d known we’d fight, rather than submit to an unfair trial. Or at least that there was a good possibility.
The footsteps slowed to a stop behind me. “Good work.” My father knelt beside me with a roll of duct tape, and I stepped off my prisoner, but didn’t release his neck until his wrists were taped.
Several feet away, other toms in human form were doing the same with the other two downed enemies—Aaron Taylor and my uncle Rick had sent their men to join the effort.
But our early victory was about to be trumped. From the other end of the complex came the unmistakable whisper-thud of cats running in feline form, sacrificing stealth for speed. Those in human form couldn’t hear it yet, but when Marc and the other cat both whined, I knew they’d heard.
My father hauled my prisoner to his feet and followed my gaze into the darkness ahead. “They’re coming?”
I nodded, then nudged the taped tom with the top of my head, ordering him to tell my Alpha what he’d told me. But he refused to speak, and there was no time for me to Shift and warn them.
The footsteps grew louder, and my father froze. “There are too many,” he said, loud enough for the others to hear. “But on the bright side, relatively speaking, they can’t carry guns in cat form.” Which meant that Alex had been telling the truth about how many pistols they’d brought. By my count, we’d confiscated all but one. Colin Dean was still armed.
I tugged my father’s sleeve. We should retreat. We couldn’t fight that many of them, even without guns. But my dad jerked his arm free.
“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “If they want into the cabin, they’ll get in. It’s better to fight here, where there’s room to maneuver.”
I started to argue, then realized that would be futile. We were outnumbered, but we’d been outnumbered before. And if we didn’t take this moment to stand up for ourselves, we might never get a second chance.
“Are you ready?” my father asked, while the last of our allies came to a stop in our midst, slick black chests heaving from their sprint, eyes flashing in the little available light.
I nodded, as the first of our enemies came into sight, a long line of snarling muzzles and fur gleaming beneath the quarter moon.
And when the first cat lunged, I leaped up to meet him.
Fourteen
We collided in midair and crashed to the ground together, the tom half crushing me. His jaw snapped shut inches from my neck. Either he didn’t know who he was fighting, or he didn’t care. Or Malone had finally decided I’d be easier to kill than to deal with.
I slashed with my rear feet. My claws sank into flesh and fur, then ripped through both. The tom screeched and tumbled off me. Blood poured from his thigh. I scrambled to my feet and lunged for him, jaw open and ready.
And was knocked off course in midair by another flying body.
My side hit the ground. Air whooshed from my lungs in a raspy feline grunt. I sucked in a deep breath and snorted out steam. The new tom straddled me, growling. Hesitating. He’d noticed I was female and was reluctant to kill me.
His mistake.
I lunged for his front right forepaw and crunched through bone. The tom howled and fell over. I rolled onto my feet and had only an instant to absorb what I saw.
Fighting. Brawling. Everywhere. At least three dozen toms, most in cat form, swiping, hissing, slashing, and ripping. Two of Malone’s to one of ours, in most cases.
On my left, someone snarled. I turned and raised one unsheathed claw as he pounced. I slashed. My claws snagged in muscle. The tom screeched. Blood flowed, fragrant and invigorating.
Pain bit into my left rear thigh, and I inhaled the scent of my own blood. I swiped blindly and ripped through more flesh. Fresh pain tore through me as teeth sank into my right foreleg. I snapped my own muzzle around the back of the tom’s neck and tasted more blood.
I clenched my jaw as hard as I could. His neck broke with a crunch I felt in my own bones. His teeth fell away from my leg. He went limp beneath me.
I stood, licking blood from my muzzle, and found myself on the edge of the fight, near the tree line. My gaze roamed the crowd, sorting through lunging bodies, bleeding appendages, and snarling faces for a familiar muzzle, the unmistakable arch of a well-known spine.
Marc. He was about fifty feet to my left, backing slowly away from two toms in cat form. He had a pronounced limp and gashes across both of his left limbs, but he was alive and still moving.
Jace was on the other side of the melee, wielding a huge hammer against a much larger tom in cat form. Brian Taylor fought near him, having returned after his unsuccessful hunt for the remaining guns.
Colin Dean and his pistol had yet to make an appearance.
I jumped back into the brawl and pounced on the back of an enemy tom before he could attack Marc. My claws raked deep ruts down his sides before he tossed me off. As I fell, I aimed one last powerful blow at his skull. He went down like a cheerleader after prom.
“Faythe, look out!”
I whirled toward my father’s voice to see him pointing across the chaos at something to my left. I turned and my heart jumped into my throat. A large black blur slammed into me. I landed on my right side. Air burst from my lungs. Weight restricted my chest, and I could only suck in short, shallow pants.
An open jaw dropped toward my throat. Warm, sour blood-breath washed over my face. My pulse raced so fast I thought it would burst through my skin and into his mouth, no teeth required.
I kicked with my rear paws. One caught on his foot and pulled him off balance. The tom half fell, but recovered quickly. I swiped one forepaw over his muzzle. Blood welled in a line across his nose. He hissed. I stood. We faced off, both bleeding. Snarling.
&n
bsp; He pounced. I dropped into a roll. A huge shadow soared between us and the little available moonlight. Something whooshed past my head. The thud of impact was almost tangible. When I stood, my foe lay on the ground, one side of his skull caved in. Liquefied brains seeped through the new cracks in his head.
“Faythe, is that you? Why can’t you cats ever visit without bringin’ trouble into my neck of the woods?”
Surprised beyond the capacity for rational thought, I looked up. And up. And up. There stood Elias Keller—all seven and a half feet of him. All three hundred fifty-plus pounds of him. Carrying a homemade club as big around as my waist. With his grizzled beard and incredible bulk, he even resembled a bear on two legs.
For a moment, I could only bathe in thankfulness that he recognized me on four paws. There was a time when he hadn’t been able to. Fortunately, I was the only girl-cat in the Montana woods at the moment.
But then, that’s what we’d thought last time—until Kaci showed up.
“What the hell are you all playin’ at?” His deep voice resonated in my bones. Of course, I couldn’t actually answer him, so I simply stared across the yard full of brawling cats, hoping the evidence spoke for itself.
Someone had freed the toms we’d captured, and they now fought hand to hand against our men still in human form. Jace punched one of Malone’s men in the face, then followed up with a devastating blow to the kidney. He barely paused to wipe the blood dripping into his own eyes before unleashing his bloodlust on another human-form tom.
I swam in a sea of grunts, hisses, and growls. All around me, bodies thunked into the ground, then got up for more. Toms bled, and screamed, and clawed, rarely pausing over their own injuries.
I crouched to jump back into the action, but Keller grabbed a hunk of skin at the back of my neck, holding me still as no other creature on the face of the planet would have dared. But Keller had little to fear from werecats. He could easily take on several toms at once—I’d seen him do it.
I growled and tugged against him, not willing to actually hurt him, for both of our sakes.
“Hold up there, little girl. This’s gotta stop.” He stood, and I noticed several things at once as he dragged a gigantic breath into his titanic lungs.
My father threw a bone-crunching punch at one of the toms who’d come to arrest us—he’d reclaimed a gun from somewhere. The tom brought his pistol up. My father knocked it away with a more nimble kick than I’d seen from him in years.
Movement on the left drew my gaze. Colin Dean stepped out of the woods holding his gun, flanked by two unarmed toms in human form.
Elias Keller roared, a deep bellow that sang in every cell in my body. I could practically see the shockwave flow over the crowd as his sound reached us.
Everyone froze, midblow. Heads swiveled his way. Obviously we weren’t the only ones who could Shift one part at a time—if that sound had come from a human throat, I was a werewolf bitch in heat.
“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doin’, but this is my land. My home. Now you retract your claws and back down, or I’m gonna start a cat graveyard on the side of my mountain.”
Jaws dropped. Fists lowered slowly. Heads—both human and feline—turned, searching out Alphas who had the authority to make the final call on a cease-fire.
Something clicked on my left, as loud as thunder against the new silence. I turned toward the sound to see Dean staring across the paused chaos, his weapon raised. I followed his line of sight to see my father standing over the tom he’d taken down, holding the repossessed gun.
I screeched.
Keller roared.
Dean’s gun flashed in the dark.
I tore free from Keller’s grasp and shot across the grass, leaping over prone bodies, dodging those still in motion.
I was too late.
My father lurched to one side. He staggered backward. A dark red bloom unfurled across his white shirt. My dad hit the ground. I screamed as I leaped, a horrible yowling that echoed in the shocked silence. My paws hit the grass and I collapsed next to him, nudging his head with my muzzle.
He was breathing, but the sound was wet. Labored.
Toms dropped to the ground at my side, nudging him with cat noses or asking questions he seemed unable to answer. No one seemed to know what to do.
Finally someone pushed me out of the way to tear my father’s shirt open, and I looked up to find Keller holding Dean’s gun. Dean lay on the ground at his feet, unmoving. When everyone not gathered around my dad warily watched the bruin instead of dispersing from the fight, he roared again. Cats scattered in all directions. As they fled, Keller stomped toward us. His huge fist clenched around the pistol and it shattered like plastic. Bits of gun fell on the grass behind him like a bread-crumb trail.
“Oh…Greg, can you talk?” Bert Di Carlo asked, leaning over my father. His hands hovered over the blood rose still blooming, and suddenly I wished I couldn’t see quite so well in the dark.
Uncle Rick shook his head. “Don’t make him talk.”
“We have to get him inside,” Jace said, while Marc rubbed his cheek along my flank, his feline gaze glued to my father. He whined in harmony with me, sharing my distress the only way he could in cat form.
“What the hell happened?” Aaron Taylor demanded. He’d been fighting on the fringes when I’d last seen him.
“That flaxen-haired pip-squeak over there shot him.” Keller pointed to where Dean lay motionless on the edge of the tree line, surrounded by several of his own men. I hoped he was dead. I hoped Keller had popped his skull like a rotten pumpkin. If my father weren’t bleeding and struggling to breathe, I’d have gone over to desecrate Dean’s body myself, laughing hysterically at the thought of the Nordic giant being called a pip-squeak. No one but Keller could possibly consider him small.
“Let’s get him inside.” Keller wedged his way into the huddle and picked my father up like a baby, then followed as Di Carlo led the way to our cabin.
Marc and Jace flanked me all the way. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known where I was going. I couldn’t stop the whine leaking from my throat or the ache deep in my chest, as if I shared some echo of my father’s pain, eclipsing all of my own wounds.
My father was the single most powerful person in my life. Seeing him helpless was wrong. So fundamentally, earthshakingly wrong that I couldn’t even properly process the sight.
So I blocked it out. I busied the front of my mind with a running list of things that would need to be done—first aid, call my mom, eviscerate Colin Dean or desecrate his corpse, whichever proved necessary—while the back of my mind chanted a mantra over and over. He’ll be fine. He’s not gonna die. He’ll be fine. He’s not gonna die. He’llbefinehe’snotgonnadie…
He couldn’t die, because my world wouldn’t make sense without him. I was literally a part of my father. He’d shaped my entire life, even down to my rebellious youth, by giving me options. Challenges. Expectations. Standards. Honor. Respect. And I wasn’t done with that. He had more to give, and I was ready to receive it.
He couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let him.
In the cabin, Keller laid him on the couch in the midst of an agonizing, respectful silence. I checked to make sure he was still breathing, then Shifted right there in the living room, while Uncle Rick carefully cut my father’s shirt the rest of the way off, jaw clenched against his own pain and rage.
When I stood two minutes later, Marc was still Shifting, but Jace was there with my robe. He wrapped it around me and I tied the waist, barely noticing I was covered in goose bumps. Not to mention gashes, puncture wounds, and scratches.
“Someone call Dr. Carver.” I dropped onto my knees and applied pressure to the cloth over the hole in my father’s chest, taking over for my uncle, who moved to make room for me. Panic loomed within me, demanding attention, but I shoved it back and focused on the job at hand: fixing my father. Nothing else mattered.
My dad blinked up at me, and though his face was
lined in agony, his eyes were dry. Mine were not.
“The doc’s plane won’t land for another hour.” Di Carlo ran one hand through thick gray hair—no doubt what Vic’s would look like in a few years.
“Okay.” I blinked to clear more tears. “What can we do, then? Clean the wound? Give him something for the pain? There has to be something.” My dad’s breathing sounded funny. Wet, like he was sucking in each breath through a leaky straw. We had to fix that.
A hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me gently to my feet. When I turned I found myself in my uncle’s arms. He held me so tight I could hardly breathe, and I fought sobs with every bit of will I had left, to keep my father from hearing me cry. Uncle Rick led me into the kitchen, but I refused to leave the doorway. Whatever he wanted to say could be said within sight of my father. I would not leave him.
“Faythe, hon, there’s nothing we can do.”
“I know. But Dr. Carver will know what to do, and we need to have everything ready for him.” I scrubbed my face with my hands, trying desperately to get my thoughts together. “We brought a first aid kit. It’s not massive, but it has the basics. We can…we can at least stop the bleeding, right?”
My uncle closed his eyes, and when his gaze met mine again, I shook my head in denial of the inevitability I saw in his. Of the grief and the growing acceptance. “We can’t stop the internal bleeding. And it sounds like he has a punctured lung, Faythe, and there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“No…”
“Yes.” He put his hands on my shoulders and made me look at him. “Faythe, your father is dying. He only has a few minutes left. So you need to decide what you want those minutes to be like. If there’s anything you want him to know, you need to say it now. We’ll deal with everything else later.”
Tears came again. They poured down my face, and I nearly choked on sobs. I couldn’t stand it. The fear burning inside me consumed all logic, devoured all hope. This black terror threatened my faith in the very concept of justice—the idea that it was even possible. There wasn’t enough pain in all of existence to make Dean pay for what he’d done.