Rogue (Shifters #2)(33)

Another series of bangs, and this time the beating sound—obviously some kind of aircraft—faded off into the distance over the line. Whatever those sounds were, Andrew was much closer to the action than Painter had been.
“—can’t wait to show off my new look. I think you’re really going to like it. How could you not, right?”
The message ended with a short buzz of static, a muted click, then silence. Then a soft female voice came on the line, asking if I’d like to save the message. I pressed the yes key and flipped the phone closed, my hands still shaking.
My breath came in quick, panicked bursts, and I leaned against the wall to keep from falling. The fingers of my left hand traced the rough lines of mortar behind me. I focused on the harsh, gritty feel, using it to assure myself that I was awake. That I wasn’t in the middle of some terrible nightmare. That I hadn’t dreamed the horrible voice mail.
And I hadn’t.
Somehow, though he’d been human when I left him, tucked safe and sound among his textbooks, tennis courts, and completely nonlethal lattes, Andrew was now a tomcat. An honest-to-goodness, motherfucking, scratch-fevered stray.
And he was headed my way.
Chapter Seventeen
No. I shook my head in denial, though no one was there to see it. That’s not possible. Yet it was true, nonetheless.
They don’t even know about me, do they? You never told them. The words from my last conversation with Andrew played though my head, and they made so much more sense in retrospect. He wasn’t talking about our relationship. He was talking about his new species. He seemed to think I knew what he’d become, and had been keeping it from my family. But I hadn’t known. How the hell could I have known?
Chill bumps popped up all over my arms and legs, in spite of the hot Texas night. This couldn’t be happening. Andrew was human when I left campus. Absolutely, positively one hundred percent human. No fur. No claws. No canines.
So when had that changed? And who changed it? I rubbed both my arms at once, trying to offset the chill spreading over me from the inside out.
Andrew’s family was from Tennessee, which belonged to the Midwest Pride, and he went to school in Texas, which was in our territory. So unless he’d been to one of the free zones lately, he was pretty unlikely to have ever met a stray.
That left only one other possibility. As badly as I hated to admit it, he could have been scratched by a Pride cat. But the chances were slim. Creating a stray carried an automatic death sentence, and very few Pride cats were willing to take that kind of risk. Very, very few.
And it’s not like strays could be created by accident. An infectious scratch or bite could only be delivered in cat form, so casual physical contact with humans—such as a rough round of sex or even a fistfight—couldn’t possibly result in the creation of a stray.
So where could Andrew have come into contact with a werecat in cat form? Any werecat?
I refused to believe that my ex-boyfriend had been targeted by chance; that was like saying Lincoln was just in the wrong theater at the wrong time. Someone had intentionally dragged Andrew into werecat business, and whoever the bastard was, his fate would be sealed once we got one good whiff of Andrew. The infector’s base scent would be forever threaded through that of his victim—however lightly—just as Marc’s scent carried a permanent reminder of the stray who’d killed his mother and infected him.It was a bitch of a double whammy, and the reason more than a few strays never came to terms with their new identity. But in this case, the scent trail would help us catch the slimy prick who’d put an end to Andrew’s human existence. At which point we’d end his own. An eye for an eye.
Tell Marc I’ll see him, too. I think he and I have a lot to talk about.
Shit. The very thought of that conversation introduced me to all new levels of stress. And humiliation. And…
An ache began behind my eyes and quickly grew into a searing, throbbing pain and pressure. My right hand clenched my phone, and my left flew up to feel my eyes, which seemed unchanged. For several moments I was blind, dependent on the rustle of leaves in the wind to assure me I still stood in my own yard. Panic set in and I almost screamed, terrified by the claustrophobic sensation of the sudden, nearly complete darkness.
But then the pain subsided, and my vision improved dramatically. Light flowed back into existence rapidly, but gently. I eyed the trees beyond the guesthouse, and saw each leaf in eerily crisp focus, from the thin green veins to the spiked, serrated edges. Cracks in the tree bark seemed surreal in their rough, ragged detail. Every blade of grass at my feet stood out in vivid contrast to those around it, each rendered in a different shade of green as the available light struck them at slightly different angles.
I glanced up, expecting to see the moon breaking free from its cloud cover. But it hadn’t. If anything, the clouds had thickened, as forecast by the local weatherman, who’d predicted an unseasonably strong storm overnight. Yet I could see almost as if the sun were up, though my vision was tinted in shades of blue and green.
My eyes had Shifted. I was sure of it, though I couldn’t tell any difference in my face without a mirror to stare into.
Though several of our oldest legends hinted at the possibility, there were no other partial Shifts on record, and as far as I knew, I was the only werecat to ever experience one. I’d done it twice before, both during times of extreme stress, yet in spite of several concentrated efforts since that last time, I’d been unable to repeat the feat.
Because of that, the Territorial Council had refused to believe my partial Shift was anything more than the delusion of a desperate tabby in a desperate situation, even with both Abby and Marc vouching for me.
If I go back in now, my father will see, and they’ll all have to believe me.
But then I’d have to explain the emotional stress that had triggered the partial Shift, and as badly as I wanted to prove I could do it, I wanted to keep my secret even more. At least until I could tell Marc about Andrew in private. That was the least he deserved.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I reversed the partial Shift. As soon as my vision was back to normal, I jogged across the yard to the guesthouse and through the door. Parker waved to me from the living-room computer as I headed straight for the kitchen. Then, six-pack of chilled Cokes in hand, I crossed the room again and onto the porch, just in time to hear the screen door to the main house squeal open. 
I looked up as Marc stepped onto the back porch. “Faythe?” he called, the concern in his tone contrasting sharply with the bitter anger Andrew’s voice had held. “Where’d you go?”
I held up the sodas, trying desperately to regulate my pulse before he heard it racing. “Right here. I’m coming.” I took a deep breath, then jogged down the steps and across the soft green grass.
“Is something wrong? You smell…anxious.”
“Nope. Just thirsty. What’s up?” I asked as I crossed the yard toward him before he could question me further.
“Michael found a pattern with the strippers.” I knew from the grim look on his face as I climbed the steps that I wasn’t going to like whatever my brother had found.
We entered the office just in time to hear Ethan tell my father that he and Jace hadn’t been able to find my mother. “…but she can’t have gone far. Her car’s still out front.”
“She’s in the woods,” I said, settling onto the arm of the leather couch as I pulled a soda from the bunch and tossed it to him.
My father nodded, his expression worried but not surprised. He’d known about her solitary treks in the forest. I should have guessed. “She’ll be back when she’s ready,” he said, clearly dismissing the subject. “Faythe, is everything okay?”
“Fine.” I popped the top on my own can and downed a quarter of it in one swallow, to keep from having to answer any more questions. For the moment, anyway.
“Good. Michael, repeat what you said about the missing girls, for those who missed it.”
“I didn’t find any pattern among their personal lives.” Michael pushed back from the desk and stood, pulling several sheets from the printer tray as he passed it on his way to our Alpha’s side. “They range in age from twenty-one to thirty-three. All of them are single except Melissa Vassey, who’s married with one child. There’s a record of one domestic disturbance at her address, but at this point, I’m thinking that has nothing to do with her disappearance.
“Their educational backgrounds run the gamut, too. One college grad, one still studying, and two with only high school diplomas. As far as I can tell, they’ve never met one another. So I was at a complete loss for things in common until I did a search for their pictures.”
Michael met my gaze, and my throat tried to close when I saw the dark dread in his eyes, completely unfiltered by his spectacle lenses. He held up the first picture—a black-and-white pixilated image printed on twenty-pound paper—and I frowned, squinting to see it better. I shook my head and held my hand out for the page. Michael handed the first one to me, and another to Marc.
The image was poor quality, but more than adequate to make my brother’s point. Melissa Vassey—based on the caption—had long dark hair, just like mine. As did Amber Cleary, whose picture Marc held.