My fist hit Colin’s chin. His head snapped to the side with a grunt of pain and surprise. He stumbled backward several steps, then tripped over his own foot. Colin’s skull hit the countertop, then his back hit the linoleum. His eyes fluttered, then closed. He was out cold.
Shit! I needed his help. Good going, Faythe!
Flustered and out of time, I waited a second to make sure he was breathing, then shoved my way through the back door before I had a chance to consider my odds and chicken out. I raced across the grass toward the cat, now less than twenty feet from the tree line. A shriek of fury split my skull as I ran, and it took me a moment to realize it was coming from me.
When I reached Brett’s feet, the stray dropped his prey and bared his canines at me. His fur stood on end, gleaming in the midafternoon sun. His tail swished back and forth in equal parts fear and aggression. He was going to attack.
So was I.
I planted one foot on the ground and knelt as I swung the mallet. The stray hunched, preparing to pounce. My scream became a cry of triumph even before the hammer made contact. And it did make contact.
The mallet slammed into the left side of his skull.
A sickening thud-crunch raised goose bumps all over my skin. Blood and fur flew from the point of contact. The impact traveled up the handle to vibrate in my arm. The cat fell over sideways. Then there was silence. And stillness. Nothing moved, other than the rise and fall of my chest on the bottom edge of my vision as I sucked in air and spit it back out, over and over again.
Sound came back slowly, and the first thing I heard was my own rasping breath. The cat didn’t breathe. I knew he was dead without checking for a pulse. I’d caved in his skull. Ripped flesh and fur from bone. Whoever the bastard was, he’d never bother Elias Keller again. Or anyone else.
After several seconds of shock, my senses came back enough that I knew I should check on Brett. At first I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. Blood had soaked through his shirt, drenching his torso and crotch so badly that I couldn’t find the wound. I saw no movement from him at all. No breathing. No pulse jiggling in his throat.
Then, suddenly, he seemed to be moving everywhere all at once. Shaking.
No, wait. He wasn’t shaking. I was shaking. I was shivering all over.
I dropped to the ground on my knees, and my left hand landed on Brett’s chest. And that’s when I realized he was moving after all. Breathing shallowly, but steadily. Thank goodness.
My fingers uncurled, and the mallet fell onto the grass. I explored his stomach with both hands, and found several deep gashes across his abdomen. They were bad, and he’d bled a lot, but he was still alive. And so was I.
My eyes closed, and I sat still next to Brett, my hands covered in his blood. And that’s how my father and the other Alphas found us, minutes later.
Four
“Here. This will warm you up.” Something soft and heavy slid between my back and the spine of the kitchen chair, and Jace leaned over me from behind to drape the material over my shoulders.
“I’m not cold.” Yet I clutched the blanket anyway, because it was chenille, and it felt good, while I felt like shit.Jace stepped around my seat and pulled an empty chair closer, and when he sat, his knees brushed mine. “You’re shivering.”
“No I’m n-n…” But I was. My hair was still damp from my shower. That was it.
“It’s okay.” His cobalt eyes met my yellow-green ones. “You saved his life.”
I shook my head, thinking of the Alphas gathered in the dining room to discuss my latest mishap. “They won’t believe that.”
“Screw ’em.” Jace scowled, and I knew what he really meant was, “Screw Calvin.” “They’ll figure it out. And if they don’t, Colin will tell them what happened when he wakes up.”
“Sure.” Assuming he does wake up. He’d hit the countertop pretty hard.
The Alphas had put Colin and Brett in one of the downstairs bedrooms of the main lodge so they could be cared for more easily. Neither tom had opened his eyes in the hour since, which was starting to seriously worry everyone.
And frankly, the outcome wasn’t looking good for me either—apparently being found with two unconscious guards and one dead stray did not cast a favorable light upon my innocence.
The kitchen screen door squealed open behind me. “What happened?” Marc demanded as it thumped shut.
My eyes closed, and my pulse jumped. I inhaled deeply to get a whiff of his scent, which made my blood rush even faster.
“Short version?” Jace headed for the coffeepot as Marc crossed the room toward me. “Brett got mauled by a stray. Colin wouldn’t help, so Faythe knocked him out and killed the stray. With a meat mallet.”
“You okay?” Marc knelt at my side, brow furrowed in concern.
“Fine.” I sat straighter and shrugged off the blanket to hide how shaken I really was. “He never laid a claw on me.”
“I didn’t mean physically.”
I blinked up at Marc, aching to touch him. To deserve his comfort. “I’m fine. I did what had to be done.”
“Spoken like a true enforcer,” he said, and I smiled. That was a very big compliment, coming from Marc.
Ceramic clinked against Formica, and Jace handed me a fresh mug of coffee as Marc slid into the chair on my left.
“Thanks.” I’d already had enough caffeine to kick-start Frankenstein’s monster, but I took the mug anyway, grateful that anyone was willing to speak to me—much less fix me coffee—in spite of the blood on my hands. Literally. I eyed the reddish crust dried beneath my right thumbnail. Apparently I’d missed a spot in the shower.
“How are Brett and Colin?” Marc asked.
Jace pulled out the chair on my right and sat. “They’re as comfortable as we can make them until the doc gets here.”
Dr. Carver. He was already on his way to testify about the condition of Andrew’s body when we’d brought it home for disposal, but he’d find his bedside manner more in demand than his testimony.
I stared into my mug, treasuring the warmth of my coffee even more than the scent. “What’d they do with the body?”
“It’s out back under a tarp,” Jace said. “We’ll bury him in the woods when they’re done examining him.”
“They find anything?”
Jace shrugged. “He’s newly infected. Less than a week, most likely, since his original scratches haven’t healed yet. They think he was still feverish, and that’s why he came so close to the complex. He was probably looking for food, and found Brett instead. Hell, he might’ve thought Brett was food.”
Still feverish. I sipped from my mug, thinking. Newly infected strays suffered from disorientation, high fever and intense hunger for several days after being scratched or bitten. Many strays did not survive the transitional illness—called scratch fever—and of those who did, many more died during or soon after their first Shift.
The stray in question had obviously survived both. But he hadn’t survived me. And as justified as I felt in killing the strange cat to save Brett, I couldn’t suppress a pang of sympathy for the stray, who was likely out of his mind with pain and hunger when he’d attacked.
“What can they tell about his infector?”
Marc leaned with one shoulder against the living-room doorway. “Only that it’s no one we know.” Which meant that the trace of his infector’s base scent, which ran through the stray’s blood, belonged to a stranger. Likely another stray. In theory, we could trace a stray’s lineage from his base scent back to his infector’s scent, and back even further if that cat were also a stray. But that ability would do us no good without a suspect with whom to compare scents.
“So whoever infected him is local.” Because no stray could have traveled far from wherever he was attacked while still in the grip of scratch fever. “But that could be anyone.” Since we were in a free zone, whatever local werecat population there was would be made up of strays and wildcats, who were not known for cooperating with Pride authority.
But before I could take that thought somewhere productive, the makeshift-infirmary door opened into the living room and the Alphas filed out, Malone going off at the mouth as usual. “…and I want her locked up, until we can figure out what really happened.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I snapped, both brows raised at the Appalachian Alpha. All heads turned my way, and my father shook his sharply, warning me to let him handle Malone. But it was too late for that.
Especially once Malone answered, glaring at me from across two rooms. “You’ll be interviewed soon. Don’t worry about that.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is hell freezing over before I get a chance to speak freely in my own defense,” I snapped, fury scalding my cheeks.
“Faythe, that’s enough!” My father was mad. Very, very mad. But beneath the rage turning his face a scary shade of crimson lurked an even more frightening fear. He was afraid for me. Afraid my own mouth would seal my fate. And he was probably right to worry.
I averted my eyes, submitting to my Alpha without actually apologizing—a face-saving technique I’d picked up from Marc.
“I think she deserves to be heard.” Marc’s voice was quiet, not quite a whisper, but perfectly audible.
Malone scowled. “The tribunal will question her when we reconvene.”