In Shifting, one rule holds true: the more anxious you get, the more pain you experience. But I’d learned quickly, following my first Shift at the onset of puberty, to relax and go with the pain. And eventually I came to welcome it. My mind was never so clear as when pain forced me to concentrate and internalize my focus. Each searing, stabbing sensation sharpened my thoughts, and each agonizing ache lubricated the grinding gears in my brain. My learned ability to think through pain had come in handy on more than one occasion, and had saved my life at least twice. That made pain my friend. A very good, love-to-hate kind of friend.
As my back bowed and my joints popped in and out of their sockets, movement to my right caught my eyes through lids squeezed almost shut in concentration. Marc had finished his Shift. He stood before me on four powerful feline legs, long muscles bulging beneath a gorgeous coat of glossy, solid-black fur. He stared back at me through eyes the same gold-flecked brown they were in human form, though the shape was entirely different.
Unlike lions, tigers, and the other breeds of large cat, which have round pupils similar to that of a human, in cat form, we have the distinctive oval pupils of a house cat—vertically oriented black slits. And because it was daytime, Marc’s pupils had narrowed almost completely out of existence to protect his sensitive feline retinas.
I blinked at him, and he licked his muzzle in return, flashing a mouthful of pointed, slightly curved teeth. He was mocking me. He could already have been halfway to the stream, but he’d stuck around to watch my Shift because he knew he could afford to. Marc was flaunting his anticipated victory, and in that moment, my new goal in life became making him pay for his arrogance with a mouthful of bitter dust raised by my paws as they flew past him.
Marc watched me carefully, waiting for the onset of the final phase of my Shift, which would be his signal to leave. If he hung around until I finished, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
Fresh pain lanced through my face as it began to ripple over a sickening current of elongating bones and protruding teeth. Marc huffed through his nose and slunk gracefully toward the far edge of the clearing. Toe pads nestled on a soft bed of ivy, he turned back for one more glance, just as the first undulating wave of fur sprouted on my back, flowing down from my spine to cover my torso.
With a silent, powerful shove against the earth, Marc was gone, soaring over a three-foot-high clump of undergrowth to land soundlessly on the other side. By the time sharp, curved claws erupted from the ends of my new cat toes, I could no longer hear him running through the forest. But that didn’t mean much. Cats can be absolutely silent when they want to. And Marc wanted to.
His nose still dribbling blood, Vic shoved aside a low-hanging branch and ducked into the woods. I paused long enough to give him an apologetic glance, then followed Marc through the forest toward the stream.
Trees flew past as I ran, launching my newly lithe form over moss-covered logs and around bushes. My body resisted such strenuous exercise at first, because I hadn’t taken the time to properly stretch my new configuration of muscles. But soon the act of running eased my residual stiffness and alleviated that I-don’t-fit-into-my-own-skin feeling that followed a Shift. With those kinks worked out, I was free to enjoy the exhilaration of racing through the forest at a speed no human could possibly experience without the benefit of an engine and at least two tires.
From all around me came the sounds of the forest: nature’s residents, busy even in the midday heat. My practiced ears had little trouble weeding through the myriad croaks, squeaks, chirps, hisses, and the rhythmic rustle of leaves as I searched for any sign of Marc.
Marc had truly disappeared, but I’d only been running a few minutes when the gurgle of running water met my ears. Even if I hadn’t known the way by heart, I could have followed the sound to its source. Rather than tracking by smell like dogs, cats use their sensitive hearing to locate prey, one another, and anything else that makes noise.
I turned toward the sound, and a couple of minutes later I could smell the water. Or rather, I smelled the minerals, plants, and creatures in the water. And suddenly I could smell Marc. We may not use our noses to track, but we use them regularly to identify one another, and my nose was telling me Marc was somewhere just ahead.
The race wasn’t over yet.
Encouraged, I scrounged up a fresh burst of energy. Small animals darted out of my path. Thorns tugged at the fur on my legs and stomach. With each bounding step, my paws sank into a soft layer of ivy, moss, and last year’s leaves. I ran directly into the breeze, stirring the branches over my head, and only the occasional twig cracking beneath my paws betrayed my presence. And as I drew closer to the stream, I heard a faint huffing noise.
Marc. And he was close.
I sprinted around a thick patch of raspberry briars to find him directly in front of me, headed straight for the stream. He was almost there. But so was I.
A growl rumbled from deep in my throat. Instead of stopping at my warning, Marc sped up. I did the same, my muscles burning in protest. Cats are sprinters, not long-distance runners. But I was so close!
The distance between us narrowed. My claws gripped the earth as I ran, providing traction on a slick bed of moss that grew thicker the closer I got to the water. My lungs burned from exertion, demanding that I win, that I not put my body through such torment in the heat of the day for nothing.
But I couldn’t win. Marc’s tail was only inches from my nose, but I had no more speed to offer, no more energy to spend. Marc had cheated, and he was going to win.
Unless I cheated, too.
After an instant’s hesitation, I sank my teeth into the tip of Marc’s tail.
He yelped and tried to stop instantly. Instead of the graceful halt he’d no doubt intended, he tumbled forward, stumbling over his own front paws. His muzzle hit the ground, buried in a patch of moss, while his hind legs kept going, propelling the rest of him forward. He looked like a pig rooting in the mud.
I dropped his tail without slowing, and huffed in Marc’s ear as I passed him. It was the closest I could come to laughing in his face.
He recovered quickly. I glanced back to see him running after me, moss stuck in his front teeth. He was too late. I splashed into the stream up to my shoulders, snorting and tossing my head as I inhaled too much water.
Before I could clear my nasal passages, Marc bounded into the water after me. He hissed and slapped the surface with one front paw, spraying me with a backlash of water.
I’m sure you are pissed, you cheating son of a bitch, I thought. But all I could do was grunt at him. And splash him back.
For the most part, stories about cats hating water are exaggerated. About us, they’re an outright fabrication. Like most large cats, we love water. The guys and I had been known to waste entire summer afternoons splashing around in the stream, treading water at the deepest parts. We’d catch fish when we got hungry, and when we grew tired, we’d stretch out on the banks to dry in the sun before bounding off into the woods for more recreation. And with the national preserve bordering our land, we had plenty of forest in which to play.
While the woods were usually thick with humans during the tourist season, none of the backpacking trails or campgrounds were anywhere near our private wilderness. We’d seen very few hikers, and on those rare occasions when we had, the noise of their approach gave us plenty of time to hide in the trees before the two-legged wanderer came into view.
Marc and I played in the water for several minutes before Vic, now in cat form, padded to the edge of the stream, announcing his presence with a low-pitched yowl. His nose looked better, from what I could tell. It was swollen, but straight, and the bleeding had stopped.
Though it hurts like hell, Shifting shortly after receiving an injury can reduce healing time by as much as half. The best explanation I’d heard for the phenomenon was that since muscles, ligaments, and bones are torn apart and rearranged during a Shift anyway, injuries begin to heal automatically as our parts are reattach
ed in new positions.
I’d experienced this personally twice, and had welcomed the accelerated recovery time in spite of the extra pain.
Vic growled at us from the bank, clearly chewing us both out. Though I couldn’t understand his exact phrasing, the gist was clear enough: we’d both cheated, and he had no intention of cooking either of us dinner. Ever.
That said, or growled, in this case, he jumped into the water between us, draping one heavy black paw over Marc’s shoulders and hauling him beneath the surface. They both came up sputtering, each batting playfully at the other’s muzzle as they tried to dunk each other.
I backed away to watch from the edge of the stream, and to slake the thirst I’d worked up during my long sprint. But even sloshing with water, my stomach wasn’t satisfied. Hunger gnawed at me, my belly demanding compensation for the calories burned during my Shift.
Shifting takes a lot of energy, which must be replaced quickly with both food and water. Water, I had plenty of. Food was another story.
My stomach growling, I turned to recruit Marc and Vic for the hunt I was already planning. But again, Marc was gone. Vic paddled alone in the middle of the stream, beckoning me forward with a playful splash and a toss of his head. Wondering vaguely where Marc had wandered off to, I pushed off from the bank and swam toward Vic, intending to dunk him as he’d dunked Marc. But as I extended one paw beneath the surface, my sheathed claws only inches from his head, something heavy dropped onto my back. I plunged to the bottom of the stream, my limbs flailing in the weak current.
For a long moment, I panicked, sucking water in through my nose in bewilderment. My paws scraped uselessly at loose, smooth stones, scrambling for purchase. My tail stirred the water fast enough to create a light foam. Then the weight was gone, and I floated to the surface, sputtering and hissing with my first gulp of air.
Marc bobbed in front of me, treading water. The gold specks in his eyes sparkled in delight. He seemed to be laughing at me around a muzzle full of sharp, pointed cat teeth. The bastard.
I growled at him in mock anger, swatting his ear with my paw, claws unsheathed. But I didn’t hit him hard enough to hurt him, or even to break his skin, because we were just playing. And because I’d get him back later, when the time was right. When I had the advantage of surprise. When he’d completely forgotten I still owed him…
After Marc’s champion pounce, we played in the stream, swimming and splashing each other, until my stomach renewed its demand for food with cramps instead of gurgling chatter. But by then I was too tired, from our play and from hunger, to even think about hunting. I jumped up onto the bank, signaling to the guys that I wanted to Shift back by tossing my head in the direction of the ranch.
Marc climbed the northern bank of the stream and took off through the woods with Vic trailing close behind. Evidently they still had far more energy left than I did. But then, they hadn’t spent all afternoon sparring with Ethan.
I trudged after them, not bothering to keep up. Surely by the time I made it home and Shifted back, someone would have started cooking. Or at least ordered a few pizzas. But as I made my way through the forest, plodding around tree stumps instead of leaping over them, something raced across the left edge of my vision. My head turned instinctively to follow the movement, ears arching forward as the rest of my body froze.
At first, I saw nothing but the great outdoors: trees, dead leaves, underbrush, and fallen twigs and branches. But then something moved again, and my focus shifted. And that’s when I saw the other cat.
My pulse spiked, and my jaws clenched. My paws flexed, claws digging into the dirt out of instinct. It was just a brief glimpse, a flash of slick black fur between two trees at least forty feet away. But it was enough to put me instantly on alert.
I’d made no effort to be quiet on my trek back from the stream, and neither had Marc or Vic, so any other cat in the woods would certainly know we were there. If he were one of ours—even my one nonresident brother, Michael, who came over a couple of times a month to make use of our excess of wilderness—he would have made his presence known out of courtesy. With the exception of Ryan, who wasn’t allowed out anyway, we were all very close, and none of us would have snubbed the others by walking by without a greeting.
The mystery cat wasn’t one of ours.
On alert now, I tensed, going completely still in a tangle of honeysuckle. I had to call for help. I had no delusions about my ability to take on a trespasser in cat form alone. Not with my energy reserve tapped by an afternoon of sparring and an un-fueled Shift.
But what if I was wrong? What if the cat was one of ours, just out for an odd solitary stroll? If I bellowed a roar of alarm and everyone came running to find me stalking one of our own cats, the guys would never let me live it down. I had to be sure.
I took off after the other cat, my steps silent and confident, my ears alert for any sound to tell me which way he’d gone. Unfortunately, the short glimpse I’d gotten of black fur did nothing to help me narrow down the list of possible suspects. All werecats are solid black in feline form, regardless of their hair color and skin tone on two legs. Black fur is part of our heritage, even for newly initiated strays. To identify the unknown cat, I’d need either a good whiff of him or a much closer look.
After less than a minute of careful stalking, keeping my eyes, ears, and nose on alert, I heard leaves crunch to the west and adjusted my direction accordingly. Minutes later, I heard the crack of wood splintering. The sound was much closer that time, and just to my left, on the other side of a thick clump of briars.
I padded silently to the edge of the brush and peeked around it. At first I saw nothing but more trees and bushes. But then I heard him breathing, slowly and evenly, and near the ground. The suspicious werecat lay stretched out peacefully beneath a cedar tree with his eyes closed, almost asleep. Except he wasn’t a he. He was a she.
It was my mother.
I huffed sharply in surprise and stepped back from the edge of the briar patch, hoping she hadn’t heard me. In my entire twenty-three years, I’d only seen my mother in cat form twice, because since she became a mother, she only Shifted when she was really upset. The first time I’d seen her with claws and a tail was the day her mother died, when I was ten years old. The second time was the night Ryan left the Pride to live as a wildcat, breaking her heart. That time, she’d stayed alone in the woods for three days, and my father had forbidden any of us to go after her. Brow creased in worry, he’d said she needed time to mourn her loss, and that we should be willing to give our mother whatever she needed. So we had.
Ryan, I thought, trying to jerk my left rear paw free from a tangle of ivy without making any noise. This is about Ryan. My mother had been spending large blocks of time alone all summer, even during Abby’s stay, which just wasn’t like her. Normally, she’d have used a fellow tabby’s visit as an opportunity to show me how I should be living my life. But this time, she’d turned my teenage cousin over to me several times a week, claiming Abby needed plenty of distractions to help her recover from her ordeal at Miguel’s hands.
I happened to agree, and since she let me teach Abby the basics of self-defense during her stay—after all, nothing puts repressed rage to better use than kicking the shit out of a big punching bag with a scary face drawn on it—I didn’t think to question what my mother was doing during our “therapy” sessions. I’d assumed she was in her room, knitting something for one charity auction or another. Evidently I’d been wrong.
It started the day we’d returned from Missouri with the body of Vic’s younger brother, Anthony, along with the remains of Miguel and Sean, his accomplice. I’d assumed my mother was trying to deal with what had happened, with the loss of one tabby and the near loss of two more, including me. After all, our very existence had been threatened, our collective vulnerability exposed. But I should have known better. My mother was stronger than that. She was the silent backbone of our family and a former power on the Territorial Council. As such, s
he could deal with threats and disasters on a large scale, because they weren’t aimed at her personally.
But she couldn’t deal with Ryan.
Ryan was her Achilles’ heel. He had wounded her twice now, the first time when he left us, and the second when he teamed up with Miguel to save his own fur. But there was more to my mother’s personal crisis, to the guilt that drove her into isolation in the woods, than everyone else knew.
My mother had a secret, and it was eating her alive.
Seven
I snuck back through the woods as soon as I was sure my mother was asleep, and during the entire twenty-minute walk back to the ranch, I debated whether or not to tell her I knew her secret. And that I wasn’t the only one.
To my knowledge, only two others knew, and I was sure neither of them would ever tell. Ryan’s motivation for keeping his mouth shut was the same as always: to save his own hide. Our father had agreed to let him live against the wishes of most of the rest of the Territorial Council. In fact, our father was the only thing standing between Ryan and a very slow, very painful death. Ryan would never do anything to piss off the one man keeping him alive, and nothing would put his existence in greater peril than telling our father that he’d used our mother to spy on the Territorial Council.
The only other person who knew that my mother had unwittingly fed our abductors privileged information was Abby. She’d been locked up in the basement cell across from mine when we found out about Ryan betraying his family to save his own life, and she’d been just as disgusted with him as I was. But she’d promised me never to breathe a word about it to anyone. For my mother’s sake, not for Ryan’s.
In the clearing just inside the edge of the forest, I stopped to Shift back, my mind still on my mother.