Rogue (Shifters #2)(62)

“Not one. Dos. Two.”
My mother made a strange strangling sound, likely choking on her own horror. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine how one woman could come out of so much tragedy with her mind intact. Just because I didn’t want my own children yet didn’t mean I couldn’t understand the loss of one. Or two.
“Luiz took two of your babies?” Mom fell into the bedside chair, meeting Manx’s deep gray eyes with emotion far beyond mere sympathy.
“He, and others. They pull my sons from my arms at birth and kill them. One—” her voice broke, her eyes filling with tears at the memory “—by one. But not this one. I will keep this one, and I will avenge the others.”
“Why kill the babies?” I couldn’t resist asking, my fingers playing along the seam in the arm of my chair. “I thought the whole point of taking women was to make more babies and increase the size of the Pride.”
“Girl babies,” Manx said, her eyes so full of pain that I could hardly stand to look at her. “They have many men. They want only girl babies.”
“Did they get one?”
My mother shot me another angry look, but Manx nodded gravely. “Last year. From Ana. She feed the baby for dieciséis months. But then they take the child away, because she not make more babies while she make milk. Ana went mad.”
“That’s unspeakable!” my mother cried. It was the worst word she knew. According to my mother, the list of unspeakable acts included everything from terrorism to genocide. And apparently any crime that separated a mother from her children. But in this case, I had to agree.
“Dan Painter said Luiz was calling you.” I stood and approached the bed hesitantly, tired of having to look around my mother to see the tabby. “Where did you get the phone, and how did he get your number?”
My mother scowled at me, but Manx set her glass carefully on the bedside table. The movement made her wince, and she stiffened her injured right arm. “I take phone from the man I kill to escape. Luiz’s number is in the phone. I hear men talking before, so I know where he goes. I call him. He tells me where he is, and tells me come get him.”
I sank onto the end of the bed, careful not to jar her. “Why the hell would he do that?”
“To take me back.”
Of course. Luiz was baiting her into coming after him. She was the “business” he and Andrew planned to take care of before coming for me. Manx knew what he was up to the whole time, and still came after him. That was one ballsy tabby cat, and as much as I wanted to hate her, I couldn’t help respecting her courage. 
“I try to take Ana with me, but she screams when she is touched. We would not have made it.”
“What about the others?” I asked, as my mother leaned down to pick up the knitting bag beneath her chair. “Did they escape, too?”
From Ethan’s bedroom, tires squealed, and canned gunshots rang out. I smiled. Jace had found an action movie.
“No.” Manx twisted the edge of the down comforter in her good hand, and I briefly considered offering her my punching pillow. “Rosa died in childbirth, two years ago. Another boy. Carmela kill herself when they take her son.”
“So now there’s only Ana,” I said, thinking aloud. And she’s mad.
“No, they still have Sonia.”
“Wait, who’s Sonia?” I sat up straight, closing my eyes as I did the mental math. My father’s contact had said four girls went missing. Manx was one of them. Then there were Ana, Carmela, and Rosa. “I thought they only took four tabbies,” I added, when my mother shot me a questioning look.
Manx blinked up at me, and her gray eyes seemed to see straight through me. “They bring Sonia later. Maybe…eight months ago. She was human. Scratched. What you call scratched cats?” Her forehead crinkled and her eyes closed in thought.
“Strays,” I whispered in incredulity. “We call them strays.”
“Yes. She was stray. Very scared. Very sick.” Manx tapped her left temple. “Like Ana.”
My mother’s clicking knitting needles paused, leaving a heavy, meaningful silence. Frowning, I scratched a mosquito bite on my foot. The implications of Manx’s claim swirled around in my head, making me dizzy. “How the hell did they—”
My mother stood suddenly and blinked, as if that’s all it took to clear her mind of unpleasant thoughts. She laid her latest project—a scarf, from the looks of it—on the seat of her chair. “Is anyone hungry? I don’t think I ate any lunch today. Faythe?”
I shook my head. Food was the last thing on my mind. We’d already had dinner, and I had more questions for Manx….
“Mercedes, you must be starving, especially with the little one on the way,” my mother said, and Manx nodded, caressing her stomach. “I feel like chicken and dumplings. I don’t usually make that during hot weather, but some broth would be good for Jace.”
“Thank you.” Manx smiled. “That sounds wonderful.”
“Faythe? Come help me?”
I arched my eyebrows at my mother in surprise. She wanted my help? With dinner? I didn’t even know where she kept the Crock-Pot—or whatever she used to cook four whole chickens at a time.
Unfazed, she beckoned me with a wave, and I followed her into the kitchen. “That poor girl has been through hell,” she whispered fiercely, pulling a massive cutting board from the cupboard beneath the bar. Before I’d recovered from my mother’s use of profanity, she continued. “I want you to leave her alone and be nice to her. She’ll have to repeat everything for your father, anyway, and I see no reason to traumatize her twice. Hand me the meat cleaver.”
Huffing in frustration, I reached across the countertop and pulled the heavy nine-inch meat cleaver from a huge rack of knives, and hesitated only a moment before giving it to my mother. I was very reluctant to hand over such a big knife to someone so obviously irritated with me.
I gripped the countertop hard enough to make the wooden trim creak. “First of all, this is me being nice to Manx.” I hadn’t cuffed her. I hadn’t thrown her downstairs with Ryan. I hadn’t even really questioned her. “And the truth is that I feel damn sorry for her. She has been through hell. But she also has information we need about Luiz, and whoever’s running this whole operation in the jungle. Not to mention the fact that she’s murdered three innocent tomcats!”My mother pulled a whole, plastic-wrapped chicken from the fridge and dropped it on the cutting board, much harder than necessary. “Her experience with men has hardly been positive, Faythe. I can certainly understand how she might have felt threatened by a couple of strange tomcats putting their hands on her.”
“And the council may see things your way.” Though I had my doubts. “But the fact remains that you can’t pronounce her innocent just because you feel sorry for her. It’s the council’s place to try her, not ours.” Yet I had the distinct feeling I’d be supporting the other side of that argument when my own time came to face the council.
“I agree with you completely.” She lifted her meat clever into the air with both hands and brought it down with a mighty thud, slicing the first unfortunate chicken clean in half, plastic wrapping and all. “Her fate is up to the council. But until then, her well-being—and that of her child—is up to us, and I will not have you upsetting her with questions you have no business asking. Leave the interrogation to your father, and be nice to Mercedes. That’s the end of this discussion.”
Be nice? She wanted me to be nice to the serial killer in the guest room? My mother’s priorities were so screwed up.
“If you’re not going to make yourself helpful in here, do me a favor and take your brother something to eat. I don’t think he got any dinner, with all the excitement today. There’s some leftover stew on the bottom shelf of the fridge.”
By the time I’d warmed up what turned out to be a half gallon of very thick beef stew, my mother had all four chickens on the stove, in two huge stainless-steel pots. She washed her hands and left the kitchen, bound for company she obviously found more pleasant than mine.
Still irritated, I grabbed a spoon and slammed the drawer shut, not quite satisfied with the racket when the forks and spoons clanged together. My hand hesitated over a pitcher of tea in the fridge, but then I changed my mind. Ryan had plenty of water, and prisoners shouldn’t get sweet tea, anyway. Or silver trays and cloth napkins. So I crossed the kitchen holding only a plastic tub of stew, with a spoon handle sticking out. Just what Ryan deserved.
I smiled, truly pleased for the first time in hours.
Darkness greeted me when I opened the basement door. I flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. Damn it. The lightbulb had burned out again, and—naturally—we kept the extras in the basement.
Growling in frustration, I stomped down the stairs. “Ryan? You awake, you worthless lump of fur? I have your dinner, because everyone else has evidently forgotten you exist.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even move, that I could tell. 
The light pouring down the steps from the kitchen didn’t reach the cage, and I couldn’t see a damn thing beyond the bars. Wonderful.
I set the stew on the bottom step and made my way carefully toward the bathroom, arms out straight to feel for obstructions. But that precaution proved worthless when I tripped over the edge of the exercise mat and fell face-first onto the four-inch pad. After that, I whacked my elbow on the back of a folding metal chair and banged my left shin on what could only have been the leg-press machine. And, as my final feat of grace and balance, I knocked over a card table stacked shoulder-high with a collection of Marc’s old heavy-metal cassette tapes, which he listened to while he lifted, much to Ryan’s irritation.