A shudder of revulsion slithered through me.
Reid turned to raise his eyebrows at Ethan in question, keeping the stray in one corner of his vision. Ethan nodded silently. They’d agreed on something, and though I hadn’t caught the question, I knew better than to ask aloud.
Ethan blurred into motion at my side, and an instant later, he’d pinned the stray to the trunk of the tree he’d dropped out of. My brother had one forearm pressed into Hannibal’s bloody throat, the rest of his body held carefully away from the blood-covered werecat. “Last chance. Where…is…your…Alpha?”
But obviously Radley had managed to impart loyalty to his troops, if not sanity. Instead of answering, the stray snarled and snapped his teeth at Ethan, in spite of the pressure on his neck. Ethan’s fist flew, and a muted crack fractured the air. It was over in less than a second. Ethan stepped back and the stray slid to the ground, his head lolling limply to one side.
For a moment I thought Ethan had killed him with one shot, and while that would have been impressive, it also would have been disturbing.
But then Hannibal’s chest rose. And it fell. Then it rose again. He was breathing.
Velcro ripped behind me, and I turned to find Reid pulling a roll of duct tape from his backpack. “Here.” He tossed it to me and pointed at the stray slumped against the tree. “Get his mouth.”
I ripped a section of tape from the roll, then knelt beside the unconscious tom and pulled his head back with a handful of sticky hair. Covering his mouth without actually touching his flesh was tricky, but it was worth the effort, because I didn’t want any more blood on me than necessary. Not with the majority of our hike still ahead of us.
Reid knelt at my side and I held the tape out to him, but he shook his head. “Tear me off a long piece for his hands. Two feet, at least.”
As I stood to keep the length of tape off the ground, something electronic beeped on my left. Jace was dialing on his cell phone. While I ripped off the tape and helped Reid bind the cat’s wrists at his back, Jace called the lodge to have a cleanup team sent to dispose of the corpse and pick up the prisoner—immediately, since they were both in human form.
Then Ethan and Reid taped the unconscious stray to the tree. They actually wrapped the tape around both Hannibal and the tree trunk over and over again, heedless of the blood now smeared on their hands.
And for just a moment, I wished I could be there when they ripped all that duct tape off his bare chest. That’ll wake the fucker up…
When they were finished, Reid dug in his bag once again, this time coming out with a packet of antibacterial hand wipes and a clear plastic sandwich bag. To my amusement, he handed a wipe to Ethan, then used another one to clean every single spot of blood from his hands, double-checking with his flashlight before finally tucking the used wipes into the Baggie, and the bag into the front pocket of his backpack.
I liked him more with each passing minute.
After that, we pressed on, Jace in the lead again, this time with Kaci at his side, rather than behind him. She didn’t speak, nor did she look around at the beautiful moonlit night. She walked with her head down, her gaze on the ground at her feet.
Half an hour later, Elias Keller’s cabin rose in front of us, smoke trailing toward the moonlit sky from a picturesque stone chimney he’d probably built himself. Light flickered in the front window—an honest-to-goodness oil lamp, if I had my guess—and the scent of venison stew made my mouth water in anticipation of a meal I had no time to eat. Even if we were invited.
Keller’s yard was nonexistent, trees towering over his cabin so close that the roots disappeared beneath the small building itself. The front steps were made of four huge log halves set into the earth flat-side up. They were unsanded, and a distinct, sunken wear pattern marred the center of each one, the obvious result of a certain pair of huge boots hitting them in the same place day after day for years. Many, many years, apparently.
As is considered courteous when approaching another territory unannounced—which hardly ever happens because most of us have telephones—we made plenty of conspicuous noise to announce our arrival and our intent to do no harm.
We were still a good fifty feet from the cabin when the door flew open and Keller appeared on the top step, his scraggly face screwed up in a snarl, his huge right fist curled around a five-foot-long club apparently made of an entire small tree, stripped of its branches. Moonlight gleamed on the smooth, broad knob at the top of the club, no doubt polished by several years’ accumulation of oil from his own hands.
In front of me, Kaci froze, and I almost walked right into her.
“What—” Keller growled, his low voice rumbling through me physically even across such a distance. Then he squinted into the dark and sniffed the air. His body tensed and the club rose into the air. “Cats. You’d best state your business before I decide the whole lot of you need to be skinned to save the Pride cats the trouble.”
Pride cats? He thought we were the strays? Apparently a bear’s nose was less capable of identifying individual cats by scent than ours were. At least when we were in a group including two cats he’d never met.
But then, having never smelled another bruin, I couldn’t swear I could tell the difference between Keller and his own father if I had to.
“Mr. Keller, it’s us,” I called.
“Faythe?” He clomped down two more steps to stand on the last inverted split log. “Who’s that you got with you?”
I exhaled in relief when the tension left his voice and the end of his club settled onto the step by his boots. “This is Ethan, my youngest-older brother.” I pulled Ethan forward by one arm and caught just a glimpse of the amazement he was trying to hide. He’d been told about Elias Keller, but because they were rare almost to the point of legend, seeing a bruin for the first time wasn’t something you could ever really be prepared for. I knew that from experience.
“And this is Reid…” Damn, it would be nice to know his last name. Or his first name. Whichever I was missing.
Reid stepped forward, rubbing one large hand over the shiny expanse of his bald head. He was either much less impressed with the bruin than my brother was, or he was in much better control of his expression. I was guessing both.
“Brother, huh?” Keller laughed, a deep, rough sound like the rumble of a plane overhead. “How many of those do you have?”
“Four.” I had a relatively small family for a werecat, but Keller was an only child. My father was virtually certain of it. Bruins were so uncommon that it was rare for two members of the species to ever meet, much less breed. Fortunately, they lived a very long time—about twice the human lifespan.
Keller seemed to think about my answer, then dismissed it with a shake of his head, thick, grizzly beard swinging. “Well, come on in and have some dinner. I’ve got stew on the fire…” He turned toward the cabin, already clomping up the steps.
“Thank you, Mr. Keller, but we don’t have time right now. We have to find one of the missing hikers before the human searchers show up at dawn.
“What do you need from me?” Keller asked, and I couldn’t help but admire his frank mannerisms. I’d love to be able to say whatever I meant without worrying about the political fallout of my uncensored mouth. Apparently that was one of the advantages of living by oneself. I hoped to have the chance to try it someday.
“Nothing,” Jace said. “We just need a chance to sniff around your backyard so Kaci can find her bearings.” He chuckled, and whispered beneath his breath, “No pun intended.”
“Kaci?” The bruin squinted into the dark. “Is that the kitten’s name? Come on up, child, and let me get a look at you.”
But Kaci wouldn’t go, and I couldn’t really blame her. She clearly remembered Keller—at least to some degree—and I would certainly hesitate to approach the giant who’d hit me on the back of the skull with a piece of firewood.
“It’s okay.” Jace put one arm around her shoulders and urged her forward. Kaci
shrugged out from under his arm and clung to me, her wide eyes staring at me in desperation. I couldn’t help being pleased that she still thought of me as her protector, even though we were surrounded by large men.
“She’s a little shy,” I said, running one hand over the thick length of her hair.
Keller nodded. “I imagine she doesn’t hold any fondness for me, either.” His frank gaze shifted from me to Kaci as he thumped down from the steps and clomped across the yard toward us, staff in hand. “Sorry ’bout that bump on the head, Miss Kaci. I mistook you for some other girl cat rifling through my garbage.”
To my surprise, Kaci smiled just a bit, though I doubt Keller could see it in the deep shadows.
“Come on up and take a look around, and we’ll see if we can’t get you headed off in the right direction.” He stopped halfway across the wooded yard and motioned us forward with one heavy, flannel-clad arm. And this time when we went, Kaci came with us, albeit reluctantly.
“Does any of this look familiar?” He flung both arms wide, the club hanging from his right fist like a broken branch dangling from a huge limb.
Kaci shook her head, staring at the tangle of forest shadows surrounding us. “I know I’ve been here, though. I’ve smelled…all this before.”
“I found her out back.” Keller took off toward the side of the cabin, moving so fast on his long, thick legs that we had to jog to keep up. He came to a stop in a surprisingly normal-looking backyard littered with thick tree stumps, the largest of which was three feet tall and nearly as wide. From its center ring protruded the blade of a single-sided ax with a three-foot handle. Keller’s monster of an ax made the one Marc kept in the back of his car look like dollhouse furniture, yet I knew the bruin’s hatchet would look small and delicate in his huge hands.
“Do you recognize any of this?” Jace asked, and Kaci nodded, moonlit hazel eyes wide as she scanned the yard. Her gaze settled on the woodpile between two twenty-foot oaks, then the large metal trash can by the farthest tree.
“I came in over there.” She pointed toward the tree line to the southwest. “I followed the stream, and it ended…back there a little way. I stopped for a drink and I smelled food. Meat.”
“Venison.” Keller scratched at the tangled mass of his thick brown beard. “There’s plenty more, if you’re hungry.”
I smiled in thanks, but shook my head regrettably. Kaci looked as if she hadn’t even heard him.
“So do you think you can take us from here?” Ethan asked, and Kaci’s gaze settled on him, her eyes seeming to clear. She nodded mutely. “Mr. Keller, do you know where this stream is?”
“Yup. S’where I get my water. I’ve stomped a pretty clear trail ’tween here and there, which is probably how the kitten found me.”
Keller was true to his word. The path between his cabin and the stream was narrow—at least for a bruin—but clear. We walked mostly in silence now, and Kaci seemed to grow quieter and more withdrawn with each step. Ten minutes after we left Keller’s, a soft rippling sound met my eager ears. A quick sniff revealed the scent of mineral-rich water, and a couple of minutes later the stream itself came into view.
I knelt at the edge of the bank and cupped handfuls of the frigid, unpurified water into my mouth, mentally turning my nose up at the bottled springwater in Reid’s backpack. And to my amusement, Kaci dropped to her knees and joined me.
When we stood, the guys stared expectantly at Kaci. Water dripped from her chin, reminding me how cold my own face was, and I swiped one sleeve across my mouth. Kaci let hers drip in spite of the temperature, and I had no doubt that though she still walked upright and clenched tiny human fists beside slim, denim-clad thighs, she was thinking very much like a cat at the moment. Perhaps because she was intentionally trying to retrace her steps. Or maybe she was lost in memories of the last time she’d drunk from that stream.
Either way, she turned away from us without a word and started down the stream bank, stopping every now and then to sniff the air and look around. Kaci made eye contact with no one and walked with her shoulders hunched, her arms wrapped around herself as if for comfort. She was clearly reluctant to revisit this portion of her past and was obviously trying to detach herself from both the emotional ordeal and from us. Or rather, any comfort we might offer. And I chose to let her, at least until something changed.
After about twenty minutes and countless pauses to sniff the air or stare into the dark, Kaci stopped. She wandered off to the right, obviously looking for something, then headed straight for a narrow, immature oak with a distinctive sharp curve in its trunk. Her hand trailed over the bark and she sniffed the steep crook, then plucked a tiny tuft of black fur from the surface. Her eyes went unfocused briefly and the clump of fur fell from her hand. Then her focus sharpened and she took off into the woods, breaking away from the stream without hesitation now that she’d found whatever she was looking for.
Jace hurried after her, and Reid followed him. I bent to pluck the tuft of fur from the nest of thorns it had snagged on and brought it to my nose. A single sniff told me it was Kaci’s. She was following her own trail, and based on the rapid, almost desperate pace she’d set, we were getting close.
Suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to get there after all.
Ethan and I jogged after the others, and in a few minutes Kaci adopted an all-out trot, stepping over exposed roots and trampling tangles of thorns and bunches of ivy. Her head whipped back and forth as she scanned the trees around her, and my blood raced in anticipation. Could we be that close already? We were only half an hour’s hike from Elias Keller’s backyard. Could the body have been so close to his cabin the whole time without us knowing?
Simply put, yes, it could. We hadn’t searched very close to Keller’s property, assuming that if she was there, he’d know it. But if Keller hadn’t been looking—and really, why should he?—there was no reason for him to have found her.
Several minutes later Kaci came to another stop, this time in the center of a tight clump of four or five trees, each no more than a couple of feet apart. Most of them were young and relatively thin; they probably didn’t get much sunlight in the shade of the other trees. However, two of the bur oaks were older and larger, their branches sprawling in every direction, crisscrossing each other in multiple places, creating a loosely woven canopy of limbs above, from which the thick bed of crunchy leaves beneath our feet no doubt fell.
I glanced around anxiously, carefully scanning a thick undergrowth of brush and several deep drifts of dead leaves. I saw no human body, nor any hole or pile of leaves big enough to conceal one.
“Kaci?” Twigs cracked beneath my boots as I crossed the three feet of ground between us, yet when I put one hand on her shoulder, she jumped, as if she hadn’t heard me coming. “Kaci?” I repeated, lowering my voice to an intimate pitch I hoped she’d find comforting. “Where is she, hon?”
Instead of answering, Kaci let her head fall back until she was staring at the sky overhead. Or rather, at the branches between us and the heavens.
My gaze followed Kaci’s, trailing over the broad, twisted oak trunk and scanning the branches as they dipped and curved, weaving in and out of the arms from the other trees. At first, I saw nothing but the usual bare branches intertwined with heavily laden red-cedar bows, all of which was virtually impenetrable by the moonlight we’d grown accustomed to. But then something clicked, and jarring artificial light sliced through the night.
And there she was—a single pale hand dangling from the spiky foliage of the red cedar.
Shit, no wonder we hadn’t found her yet. She was very well concealed in her perch, and the human searchers would never have thought to look for her over their own heads until the body began to smell, which wouldn’t be anytime soon, considering the ambient temperature.
Hell, most werecats wouldn’t have thought to look up either, because murderers typically bury their kills to cover their own crimes. In fact, the only bodies I’d seen werecats drag into trees wer
e those of their prey, which they intended to…
Eat.
Oh, shit. I glanced at Kaci and found tears sliding down her cheeks as she stared into the branches, and somehow I knew without asking that I was right. There was more to our little lost tabby than any of us had expected.
Kaci Dillon was a man-eater.
Twenty-Nine
“How the hell are we going to get her out of there?” Ethan demanded, and Kaci flinched at the edge of anger in his voice.
I rubbed her back as she crossed both arms over her chest and hunched into herself. There was one obvious solution, but somehow I didn’t think anyone would be willing to simply shove poor Amanda Tindale out of the tree, no matter how much easier that would have made things for us.
Reid dropped his backpack on a thick clump of ivy. “Take her over there.” He pointed to a fallen log several feet from the tree cluster we stood in. “Hopefully this won’t take long.”
As I ushered the frighteningly unresponsive tabby toward the makeshift bench, Reid pulled a roll of black sheet plastic from his bag, and Jace helped him spread it to cover most of the available ground space within the cluster of trees. They would wrap the dead woman in the plastic, tape up the human burrito, then carry it back to the lodge by hand, a prospect I couldn’t even bear to contemplate at the moment.
By the time Jace and Reid finished with the plastic, a straight razor, and a half-used roll of duct tape, Ethan had scaled the red cedar and was completely hidden from view among its branches. “Oh, shit.” A branch creaked and swayed, as if he’d sat down too hard on it, and several thin, oblong cones thunked onto the plastic.
“You okay?” Jace paused with one hand around the smooth, bare branch of a cottonwood grown several inches thick against all odds in its current environment.
“No. She’s been…um…eaten.”
Vomit rose in the back of my throat and I clenched my jaws to keep it down. Having my hunch confirmed was not a triumph this time. It was a tragedy.