Читать книгу Shift - Rachel Vincent - Страница 9

“Kaci!” I screamed as I ran, adrenaline scorching a path through my body so hot and fast I could feel nothing else. Not the biting February cold, not the ground beneath my feet, and not the bare branches slapping my face and neck when I broke into the woods behind the house.

Overhead, Kaci screamed and thrashed, skimming mere feet from the naked treetops. If it had been summer, I could never have seen her through the foliage.

The thunderbird dipped and wobbled wildly as Kaci threw her legs to one side, then he straightened and pushed off against the air with another powerful stroke of both wings. In seconds, he was ten feet higher up, and still Kaci fought him, shrieking in wordless terror.

“Hold still!” I shouted as loud as I could, hoping she could hear me over the wind and her own screams. If she fell from that height, she’d be seriously injured, even if the limbs broke her fall. And if they didn’t, she’d be dead.

Beyond Kaci and her abductor, the second thunderbird flew in a wide arc, rounding toward us again. I had a moment of panic, assuming he’d dive-bomb me, until I realized he couldn’t while I was shielded by the forest; there wasn’t enough room between the trees to accommodate his impressive wingspan—twelve feet, easy. Maybe more.

Instead of diving, the second bird simply turned a broad circle around his cohort, playing lookout and probably backup.

If the thunderbirds hadn’t been slowed by Kaci’s weight, I would have lost them entirely. Even with their top speed dampened considerably, they flew much, much faster than I could dodge trees and stomp tangles of undergrowth on two human legs. Especially considering that my focus was on the sky, rather than on my earthbound obstacles.

Within minutes, they were a quarter mile ahead, at least, though they never rose more than about forty feet over the skeletal forest canopy.

How long can he carry her? I shoved aside a long, bare branch just in time to avoid a broken nose. But then I glanced up again and tripped over an exposed root, and tumbled forward like a felled tree.

My hands broke my fall, but the impact radiated up both arms, shooting agony through the still-broken one. I barely paused for a breath before shoving myself back to my feet, brushing my scraped and bleeding hands on my jeans. But before I’d made it back to full speed, my tender, broken arm now clutched to my chest, a black blur shot past on my right, leaping easily over a tangled evergreen shrub I would have had to circumvent.

Backup. Thank goodness someone had Shifted. If I’d taken the time, we’d have lost sight of Kaci.

The tom moved too fast for me to identify by sight, but a quick whiff as I dodged a reed-thin sapling and skirted a rotting stump gave me his identity. Owen. And surely more were on the way.

Not that there was anything any of us could do from the ground…

My brother sprinted ahead of me and out of sight, but I could still hear him huffing and lightly breaking twigs, since speed was more important than stealth at the moment. And I pressed on at my infuriatingly human pace, my throat stinging from the cold air, my hands burning with various cuts and scrapes.

After about a mile, I was blindly following both Owen and Kaci, and had completely lost track of what heading we were facing. I was pretty sure we’d changed directions at least once, and I could see no logic in the birds’ flight path, other than trying to lose us. And staying over the trees, presumably so that cars couldn’t follow.

So when the birds—and Kaci—suddenly dipped out of sight, I totally panicked. My heart tripped so fast I thought it would explode, yet I couldn’t urge my feet into motion fast enough. I lunged ahead, slapping aside branches with both arms now, heedless of my cast, barreling through the woods in the direction I’d last seen Kaci. I could no longer hear Owen over the whoosh of my own pulse in my ears.

Until he roared, up ahead and to my right.

I put everything I had left into one more sprint, and seconds later, I burst through the tree line onto the side of a country road less than two miles from the ranch.

And froze, staring at the spectacle laid out before me.

Owen raced down the deserted street, already ten yards ahead, heading straight for a car parked on the shoulder a good three hundred feet in front of him. Over his head, both birds soared swiftly toward the car, descending as they came, Kaci still clutched—now struggling anew—in the talons of the nearest bird.

I ran after Owen as the driver’s side door opened and a man stepped out of the car. Owen huffed with exertion. My quads burned. The man pulled open the car’s rear door. The first thunderbird swooped gracefully toward the earth—and shock slammed into me so hard it almost knocked me off balance.

Three feet from the ground, the bird had feet. Bare, pale human feet, where there had been sharp, hooked talons a moment before. Then his head was human, but for the wicked, curved beak jutting in place of both his mouth and nose.

Surprised to the point of incomprehension, I slowed to a jog, my gaze glued to the most bizarre Shift I’d ever seen in my life. I could perform a very limited partial Shift. A hand, or my eyes, or even most of my face. But this was beyond anything I’d ever even considered. No cat could Shift so quickly, and what the thunderbird had just done was tantamount to a werecat Shifting in midleap!

This scary between-creature thumped gracefully to the ground several feet from the car, naked legs half-formed, torso mostly feathered, wings still completely intact. An instant later, Owen pounced on him.

Powerful wings beat the air—and my brother. Long brown feathers folded around Owen, stealing him from sight for an instant before they spread wide again, and the fight began for real.

Claws slashed. A beak snapped closed. Blood flowed. Owen hissed. The bird squawked, a horrible, screeching sound encompassing both pain and fear, and other things I couldn’t begin to understand. And a set of thin, gruesomely curved wing-claws arched high in the air, then raked across my brother’s flank.

Owen howled, and his own unsheathed paws flew. The car’s driver—a short, bulging man with a sharply hooked nose—stood carefully back from the melee, unwilling to intercede on either side in his current, defenseless state. Then his head shot up, and I followed his gaze to see the second bird swooping for a landing, twenty feet from the car, Kaci dangling from his talons.

I was running again in an instant.

The second bird dove lower and spread his huge wings to coast on a cushion of air. Then he opened his talons and unceremoniously dropped Kaci three feet from the ground.

The tabby landed hard on her left foot, then fell onto her hip with a dull thud. Her mouth snapped shut, cutting off a scream that had already gone hoarse. A heartbeat later, her captor simply stepped out of the air and onto the ground a yard away, on two human feet, his feathers already receding into his body, wings shrinking with eerie speed into long, pale arms.

He lunged for Kaci before his hands were even fully formed, but on the ground, she was faster. The tabby rolled out of reach, then shoved herself to her feet and raced across the road toward me. She had a slight limp in her left leg and her eyes were wide in terror, cheeks still dry. Though she’d been screaming for ten straight minutes, the tears hadn’t come yet. They wouldn’t until the shock faded.

The now fully human—and naked—thunderbird started after the tabby, but I was already there. Kaci collided with me so hard we almost went over sideways. Her forehead slammed into my collarbone, and her shoulder nearly caved in my sternum. I spun her around in my arms, putting my body between her and the would-be kidnapper. He’d have to go through me to get to her, and claws or not—hell, cast or not—I’d go down fighting.

At the car, Owen had the first bird pinned, muzzle clamped around his human-looking throat. At some unintelligible shout from the driver, the naked thunderbird glanced back, then turned and raced toward the car, having evidently given up on Kaci.

The driver slid into his seat and slammed the door, and the car’s engine growled to life. The last thunderbird glanced at his wounded cohort, hesitated, then dove into the backseat through the open door. An instant later, the car lurched onto the gravel road, showering Owen with rocks, and the vehicle raced around a corner and out of sight.

As soon as it was gone, Kaci seemed to melt in my arms, and it took me a moment to realize she’d just eased the death grip she had around my ribs. I stepped back and lifted her chin until I could see her face, then spit out the only coherent thought I could form. “You okay?”

“I think so.” Color was coming to her face, and her teeth started to chatter.

“What about your arms?” I held her coat while she carefully pulled one arm free. Then winced when she pushed up the baggy sleeve. Just below her shoulder were three thick welts, two on the front and one on the back, already darkening into ugly blue bruises. Her other arm no doubt held a matching set. “And your leg? You were limping.”

“I was?” Kaci frowned and took a careful step forward, then winced. “I think I twisted it when I…landed.”

“A quick Shift should fix that.” Kaci nodded, and I led her back across the street slowly, already pulling my cell from my pocket.

“Faythe?”

“Hmm?” I glanced down to find the tabby staring up at me, the shocked glaze in her eyes finally fading.

“I think I’m afraid of heights.”

I laughed. “I would be, too, after a ride like that.” I autodialed Marc while we walked, and he answered on the first ring, as I stepped onto the shoulder a good ten feet from Owen, who still had the bird—now unconscious—pinned to the ground.

“Faythe?”

“We’re on county road three, less than two miles from the ranch,” I said, and he exhaled heavily in relief. “I have Kaci and Owen has a prisoner, unconscious and bleeding. Owen’s bleeding, too.” From several obvious gashes on both flanks and across the left half of his torso.

“We’re on the way. How’s Whiskers?”

“Stunned, but okay. Her arms are bruised and she twisted one ankle, but it’s nothing a Shift and some hot chocolate won’t fix.”

Another relieved sigh, echoed by a satisfied noise from Jace. They were together?

“We’re on the way.”

I hung up and slid my phone into my pocket, then extracted myself from Kaci so I could inspect the prisoner without dragging her any closer to potential danger. “Wow. Good work, Owen.”

My brother huffed in response, and whined as I knelt and ran one hand gently over his flank, angling my body away from the bird, just in case he woke up. Owen’s injuries weren’t life-threatening, but they weren’t comfortable, either. If the bird had gotten near his stomach, he’d have been disemboweled.

“Thunderbirds…” I whispered, standing to inspect the bizarre half-bird at my feet. What the hell did they want with Kaci?

Jace pulled up three minutes later, with Marc in his passenger seat—Marc’s car had been left at his house in Mississippi—and they were both out of the vehicle before the engine even stopped rumbling.

“What the hell happened?” Marc demanded, running his hands along my arms, as if I were the one hurt. Jace paused almost imperceptibly beside me, and his heavy gaze met mine. Then he stepped past us to kneel by Kaci, inspecting her shoulders, gently prodding her ankle, and generally fussing over her as if she were the only tabby on earth. In spite of her shock, pain, and lingering grief, she blushed beneath his innocent attention and held herself straighter than in the moments preceding his arrival.

I almost felt sorry for Owen, all by himself and bleeding, still standing with his front paws on the unconscious bird-monster.

“They just swooped out of nowhere and snatched her from the front yard.” I gestured toward my brother, and Marc turned with me. “We need to get Owen back to the house.”

Marc followed me to the downed bird, as my brother moved away to give us a better view. “Is that what I think it is?”

“If you think it’s a thunderbird, then, yeah, I think so.”

Marc prodded one feathered half-arm with the toe of his boot and whistled. “Look how big his wings are.”

“They were longer than that in flight,” I said. He started to kneel, but I pulled him up by one arm. “Trust me, if he wakes up, you don’t want to be anywhere near those talons.” I pointed at the curved two-inch claws, the points of which were finer and sharper than any knife I’d ever seen.

“Okay, let’s tie him up and haul him in,” he said as I knelt next to Owen, gently stroking the fur on his good side. He whined again and laid his head on my shoulder as Marc looked over my head. “Jace, get some rope.” Because handcuffs designed for humans would never restrain those narrow bird wrists.

Of course, if the bastard woke up, he could slice right through rope, or even duct tape.

But on the edge of my vision, Jace stiffened and made no move to follow Marc’s order.

Well, shit. That was new.

Technically, Marc hadn’t been accepted back into the Pride or formally reinstated as an enforcer, in large part because we were busy with other things, and Marc’s return to the fold felt normal without official proclamations. None of the other enforcers would have hesitated to follow an order from him. Except maybe me.

Yet there Jace stood, arms stiff at his sides, jaw clenched and bulging. And he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the ground, as if trying to control his temper.

But Jace didn’t have a temper. Marc had a temper.

I stood, shooting Jace a silent warning, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. Kaci stared up at him in confusion, and a moment later Marc noticed that his order had not been followed. He glanced from the bird that had thus far held his fascination and raised a brow at Jace. “What, you don’t have rope?”

And finally, Jace looked up. He glanced briefly, boldly, at Marc, then turned toward his car without a word.

“What’s with him?” Marc brushed a comforting hand over the top of Owen’s head, where my brother stood ready to chew the bird’s throat again, should he wake up.

I shrugged, hoping my casual gesture looked authentic. “He’s probably freaked out by the giant bird attack. What is this, Hitchcock?”

Jace came back with a coil of nylon rope and a pocketknife, and in minutes we had the thunderbird’s human feet bound, and his wing-claws awkwardly tied in front of his half-feathered stomach. Even with his wingspan shortened to less than nine feet in mid-Shift, I didn’t think we’d ever get him wedged into the cargo space without further injuring him or waking him up, but Marc finally got his wings/arms bent toward his face and the hatchback closed. Barely.

Still, since we were far from sure the ropes would hold him if he woke up during the five-minute drive, Kaci rode up front with Jace, and Marc and I took the backseat, with Owen stretched over the floorboard at our feet.

Alphas and enforcers poured out of the house when we pulled into the driveway, and my father actually had to bellow for quiet to be heard. After that, my mother helped Owen into the house, and everyone else watched in silence as Marc and Jace carefully pulled the thunderbird from the back of the Pathfinder and lowered him to the dead grass in the arc of the half-circle drive.

Then the whispers began.

The Alphas made their way to the front of the crowd and my father stepped forward, pausing first to put a broad, gentle hand on Kaci’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked, and she nodded, her eyes huge. “Manx, can you take her inside and get her cleaned up?”

“Of course.” Manx wrapped one arm around Kaci’s shoulders as she escorted the limping tabby toward the front door. For the first time since the allies had descended upon the ranch, Kaci wasn’t the center of attention. And she seemed just fine with that.

Jace closed the hatchback and stepped aside to make room for his Alpha. My father knelt next to the bound, unconscious creature and began a slow, thorough visual examination, no doubt cataloging every detail in his head. If the council weren’t fractured—possibly beyond repair—he would make a formal report of the incident as soon as possible. And though that would almost certainly not happen under the current circumstances, I had no doubt that he would record his observations.

Sightings of thunderbirds were rare enough to be historic, and I’d never heard of a werecat making actual physical contact with one. Much less being snatched and carried off like a giant worm for a nest of monstrous chicks. A kicking, screaming worm.

“What is that?” Ed Taylor, Alpha of the Midwest territory, eased forward slowly, as if his curiosity barely trumped his caution and blatant disgust.

My Alpha stood but didn’t take his gaze from the spectacle. “I believe this is a thunderbird.”

“Greg, it has feet,” Blackwell pointed out evenly, leaning on his cane from several feet away.

“As do you,” my dad said. Several toms chuckled then, and I couldn’t disguise a smile. “He’s obviously partially Shifted.”

“And they’re much better at it than I am. Than we are,” I corrected, glancing around to see several of the toms who had already mastered the partial Shift. “They can Shift in the middle of a landing. Rapidly. That’s why he has feet and wings at the same time. And they have these wicked wing-claws.” I pointed to where his nonhands were tied, and several toms edged closer for a better look. “Owen could tell you all about those.”

“What on earth do they want with Kaci?” Uncle Rick knelt at my father’s side for a closer look. “They aren’t known to attack people. If they were, we’d know more about them. As would humans.”

But no one had an answer to that, so I shrugged as Marc’s arm slid around my waist. “Maybe they didn’t want her in particular. Maybe she was just the first one they saw.” Because the rest of us had been under the porch roof. “Or maybe she’s the only one light enough to carry.”

My father gave me a vague nod. But the truth was that we had no idea.

Marc started to say something, but Jace beat him to the punch, stepping up to my other side. “What do you want us to do with him?”

Marc scowled, but looked to our Alpha for an answer, as did everyone else.

For a moment, we got only thoughtful silence, as my father stroked the slight, graying stubble on his chin. “For now, we’ll put him in the cage, and when he wakes up, we’ll question him. In the meantime, let’s see what we can find out about thunderbirds.”

It took some careful maneuvering, but finally Marc and Jace were able to carry the bird down the narrow concrete steps into the basement, then into the cage. They left him tied, because as easily as he Shifted, we had no doubt he could get out of his bonds as soon as he woke.

On my way to my room to shower after my race through the woods, I passed the room Owen had shared with Ethan. At first I couldn’t make myself go inside. Ethan’s death was still too fresh. His memory too immediate. His room still smelled like him, and entering it felt like walking through his ghost.

But then Kaci beckoned me with a wave, and I steeled my spine and stepped through the doorway, pausing to smile to Mateo Di Carlo, my fellow enforcer Vic’s older brother. Teo hardly noticed me, and he didn’t seem particularly interested in Owen, either. However, he watched Manx tend to her patient as if her every motion fueled a single beat of his own heart.

I sighed and turned to my brother. Owen lay on his bed in human form now, naked but for his green-striped boxers. The gashes across his ribs looked horrible, and the one bisecting his left thigh looked even worse.

“You okay?” I asked, as Manx knelt to gently blot his leg with a sterile cloth.

“I’ve had worse,” he said, and forced his smile. That was the standard enforcer reply, but in his case, it wasn’t true. Owen had seen less action than Ethan or our oldest brother, Michael, or even me. Not because he couldn’t fight, but because he was just as happy tending the farm while the others patrolled and went on assignment. Only Ryan, the second born, had done less fighting, and we all considered that a very good thing; he was still officially on the run after having broken out of the cage two weeks earlier.

But I nodded. Owen had stepped up in Ethan’s absence and likely saved Kaci’s life. He’d earned his scars, and like the rest of us, he would wear them with pride.

When I bowed out of the room several minutes later, I found Jace waiting for me in the hall. Suddenly irritated, I glanced around to make sure no one was watching. Fortunately, most of the toms were in the kitchen devouring leftovers from my mother’s Mexican lunch buffet, and Marc, Vic, and the Alphas had disappeared into the office, already looking for information on thunderbirds. So I grabbed Jace by the arm and hauled him into my room without a word.

“Wow, I haven’t been in here in a while.” He grinned the moment the door closed behind us. “But I feel at home already.”

Anger flooded me, tingling in my nerves as if my whole body was losing circulation. “This isn’t funny!” I hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”

Jace’s flirtatious facade crumbled to reveal the weathered pain, anger, and grief that had fueled his every action since the day Ethan died. “I don’t know.” He pulled out my desk chair and sat backward in it, crossing his arms over the top. “I just…for a minute out there, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bend to him.”

“It’s not bending, Jace. It’s working. Marc gives the orders in Dad’s absence, and we follow them.”

“I know,” he said, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief that he hadn’t called me on Marc’s lack of an official position. I couldn’t have handled that without losing my temper. “But it felt different this time, and I couldn’t do it.”

“Jace…” I sank onto the end of my bed wearily, brushing long black hair from my forehead. I didn’t want to get into this so soon. I wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened between us. Not so soon after Ethan’s death. Not with everything else going on.

“It has nothing to do with you,” he said before I could find a good finish to my hasty start. “I can’t explain it. But I’m over it. I can play my part until you’re ready to tell him.”

But what the hell would I tell him? That I’d slept with Jace? That was true, but incredibly—miserably—that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I desperately didn’t want to hurt Marc, and I couldn’t stand it if I lost him. I wasn’t sure I could actually force another breath out of my body if I thought I’d ever lost him for good. But I didn’t want to lose Jace, either.

And I wasn’t even sure what that meant.

I didn’t have Jace. But we’d connected after Ethan’s death, and it hadn’t been a simple grief-stricken moment of comfort. Though, it was certainly that, too. But the truth was that grief had crumbled my resistance to a bond we’d formed earlier. One I’d been denying, because of what I had with Marc.

But I wasn’t ready to understand what that meant. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to try to explain it to Marc. So Jace and I had agreed to stay…apart. Completely hands-off. But if he wasn’t more careful than he’d been today, we’d soon be explaining ourselves to more than just Marc.

“You have to watch yourself,” I whispered, glancing at my hands in my lap.

“I know.” He stood, heading for the door, but I shot up and jogged ahead of him.

“Wait, let me check.” I grabbed the knob, but before I could turn it, Jace was in front of me, so close I could feel the heat of his cheek on mine. But he wasn’t touching me. He held his body so close, a sheet of paper would have wrinkled between us, but he didn’t make contact.

“Jace…”

“I know,” he whispered again, this time against my cheek. “It’s not the time. But that time will come, Faythe. I’m not asking you to choose. You know that. But I am asking you to be honest with yourself. You owe us both that.”

With that, while I stood breathing so hard my vision started to darken, he pulled the door open a crack—pushing me forward a step—and peered around me into the hall. When he was sure it was clear, he stepped out and closed the door.

Leaving me alone in my room, haunted by possibilities too dangerous to even contemplate.