Rogue (Shifters #2)(64)

I felt several tiny pops. Pain ripped through my side. A scream tore from my throat. Every breath sent fire blazing through my chest.Luiz pulled his foot back to take another shot. A feline growl rippled through the air behind him. He dropped my hand and froze. Then he turned slowly, backing away from us both as he went.
Smart tomcat. He wasn’t going to leave either of us at his back.
I looked at the cat he’d just exposed, fully expecting to see Marc.
It was my mother, her black coat gleaming in the light from the bathroom. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. Her claws were unsheathed, the points pressing little dimples into the exercise mat. She was one mad mother.
My dam padded slowly toward Luiz, and he took another step back. “Good kitty,” he said, fear thickening his accent. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped into his eyes. He blinked it away but made no move to wipe his forehead. Sudden movements triggered a cat’s pouncing instinct, and he knew much better than to risk it.
I scooted sideways, watching my mother advance on her prey. Left hand pressed to my injured ribs, I used my right arm to push myself toward the weight bench.
Luiz bent slowly. His eyes flicked toward the ground. I followed his gaze to the dart that had bounced off the metal chair.
My mother growled. Luiz froze in an uncomfortable-looking half squat. He glanced from my mother to the dart one more time. I pulled myself up using the leg press for balance. Luiz dropped to his ass on the concrete, his hand groping for the feathered needle.
My mother pounced, driving him to the ground. Her claws shredded his shoulders on contact.
He screamed and seized her neck in one hand. His fingers clenched her throat, bicep bulging as he tried to hold her at arm’s length. Too late, I saw his other arm swing up, the dart clenched in his fist.
He stabbed my mother in the side with the tranquilizer. She roared in pain, and in fury. Her left claw ripped deeper into his right shoulder. White bone flashed for an instant before blood filled the wound and poured onto the concrete.
Luiz wrapped his other hand around my mother’s throat, squeezing harder.
Her eyes rolled up into her head. Her paws went limp. Either the tranquilizer had kicked in already, or he’d actually choked her into unconsciousness. I couldn’t tell which, but I feared the worst.
I hobbled four steps to the dumbbell stand, pain shooting through my chest and side with each jarring step. Hissing in agony, I heaved a forty-pound free weight from its groove.
Four feet away, Luiz had my mother on her side. Her tail twitched, and he bled all over her from his shredded shoulders. His right arm hung limp at his side, but somehow his left one still worked in spite of the mauling.
Forcing my feet into motion, I pulled the dumbbell up as high as I could. Two feet away, I swung it forward. Luiz looked up just in time. His eyes widened in surprise, and in sudden fear. The weight crashed down on him, crumpling his forehead with a horrific, wet, crunching sound. 
I pulled the dumbbell from the gory wound and Luiz’s corpse fell on my mother’s torso. My fist opened, and the dumbbell dropped to the concrete. I sank onto the ground, still holding my left side, and used my right hand to shove him off my mother and onto the floor.
My gaze accidentally grazed Luiz, and I closed my eyes to block out what I’d seen. What I’d done to him. He no longer had a face. He had only a crater, with teeth embedded in mutilated, wet red flesh.
My eyes still closed, I ran one hand over my mother, feeling for her chest. I found it, and as my hand trailed higher through her fur, I opened my eyes. Her chest rose once beneath my hand, and air exploded from my lungs in relief. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath.
Fresh pain shot through my side from the forceful exhalation, but I didn’t care. My mother was alive. Sedated, but hopefully okay. I lay next to her on my good side and snuggled into her fur, my tears mingling with Luiz’s blood in a puddle on the floor.
That’s how Marc found us, bloody and bruised, but alive. Very much alive.
Chapter Thirty-two
“There she goes! That woman never learns.” Ethan leaned half off of his chair in anticipation. On screen, Karen White stared into the dark forest, clad only in her nightclothes.
“Yeah, but you’d do the same thing,” Jace countered from the living-room couch. “You hear a howl in the woods, you gotta go investigate. It’s instinct.”
In the chair opposite Ethan, Marc snorted. He didn’t have much to say lately, and he seemed reluctant to be alone with me. So I stayed out of his way. For now.
“It’s not instinct for humans,” Vic insisted from the other end of the couch, twisting to snatch the popcorn bowl from Parker, who sat on the floor at his feet.
I sat curled up in an armchair near the door, watching the guys watch The Howling instead of reading the book open in front of me. I’d been on the same page for three days.
“She’ll get what’s coming to her in the end,” Ethan said, eyes glued to the screen. He’d barely left Jace’s side since he got home from Jamey’s memorial, almost a month earlier. He teased his best friend mercilessly about being seriously injured twice in one season, but he cared for Jace just as diligently as our mother did, placing most of his faith in iPod therapy, rather than in pills and bandages.
Two weeks after Jace was shot, Dr. Carver pronounced him fit to Shift and accelerate his healing. Jace was thrilled. If the transformation was painful for him, he showed no sign of it, enduring the process in stoic silence, monitored closely by Dr. Carver and my mother. Then, two hours later, he Shifted back, apparently pleased with the results.
As the on-screen heroine fled back into her cabin, my mother appeared in the doorway, carrying a plate piled high with double-fudge brownies. She stopped by my chair and looked down at me, frowning in concern. She’d been doing that a lot lately. “I’m making some tea for your father,” she said, balancing flawlessly on two-inch heels. “Would you like some?”
“No, thanks. But I’ll take one of those.”
She smiled and held the plate out to me.
“Thanks.” I took several, and bit into the first, watching as my mother carried the plate into the center of the room, to pass out her treats. She and I were getting along better than ever. Fighting side by side had created a bond between us that two decades under the same roof had been unable to. But I’d gained the most from our shared encounter with Luiz. I’d learned that my mother was a badass in disguise. She was Van Helsing in an apron and heels, and—at least for the time being—I couldn’t think of a single thing cooler than that. Except having inherited it from her.On her way out of the room with the nearly empty plate, my mother set another brownie on the end table next to me and smiled. She hadn’t actually gotten a full dose of the sedative that day in the basement. Apparently stabbing someone with the needle didn’t provide the same force as shooting it from a pistol powered by pressurized air. And, anyway, Dr. Carver had assured me that even an entire dartful wouldn’t have been enough to completely immobilize a full-grown werecat. Luiz must have been counting on shooting me twice, as he had Ryan. Mom had actually passed out from being choked.
She dealt with it pretty well, I thought. She wore silk scarves until the bruises around her throat faded completely, and referred to the attack as a “little incident,” as if not calling a rose a rose made the fight any less real. It didn’t, but hey, whatever got her through the day….
My father couldn’t have been prouder of “his women.” He regaled his Alpha friends several times apiece with the story of how Mom and I had defeated the jungle stray who’d snuck past an army of enforcers to invade our lives and destroy the facade of security we’d previously enjoyed. Of course, he left out the part where, instead of locking Luiz out, I’d actually locked him in with us. I think he was finally starting to understand that there’s really something to be said for selective omission.
Unfortunately, that principle could not be applied where Manx was concerned. With Luiz dead, she agreed to a full disclosure, and finally told us her birth Pride and homeland. Mercedes Carreño was from one of the oldest Prides in Venezuela, and as soon as she said her surname, my father’s eyes closed in what could only be grief. Or frustration. He obviously already knew what she went on to tell us.
Two years after Manx’s disappearance, her father was killed by an ambitious neighboring Alpha, who then took over the territory Manx was born into. Her brothers died in defense of their territory, and her mother died of heartbreak less than a year later. By the time she fought free from her captors, Manx had no home to return to and no family left to care for, other than the child in her womb. So she’d set her sights on revenge, convinced that she could never raise her son in peace while Luiz—the baby’s father—still breathed.
While the new Alpha of her old territory would no doubt have taken her in, Manx would no more turn to the man who’d killed her father than she would return to the men who’d killed her sons. So, with no Pride to defend her or demand her return, her fate was officially in the hands of our Territorial Council, which elected to try her on three counts of murder. However, for the safety of her unborn child, her hearing would be deferred until after the birth of her son.