“What’s that they say about birds of a feather?” Jace murmured from close behind me.
“They flock together.…” I eyed the sky, trying not to panic over the sheer number.
“How many?” My dad didn’t bother to whisper; they couldn’t hear us over the sound of their own wings.
I glanced down the line of huge bird-creatures, doing a quick estimate. “Fifteen, not counting Neve, Beck, or the one who took Lucas.”
“That’s too many,” Bert Di Carlo said, having assumed a backup stance in Marc’s stead.
“Without more guns?” My dad nodded firmly. “Yes, it is.”We stared in silence, and I grasped mentally for a plan, sure my father and the other Alphas were doing the same thing. Seconds later, the entire flock landed behind Beck in one eerie, graceful touchdown after another. They stood a good fifteen feet apart, on human legs. Most also had human heads and torsos, but they’d all kept their wings intact, for a quick takeoff.
At least five were women, long, dark hair trailing behind heavily toned, nude torsos. They looked like harpies, flexing wickedly sharp wing-claws, snapping strong, curved beaks.
Beck stalked forward slowly on thin human legs, disproportionate to his massively muscled upper body. He knelt behind Neve without taking his gaze from us, then stood and pulled her up with him, cradling her with obvious familiarity and affection.
“If you are any wiser than the base creatures you lead, I advise you to surrender now.” Beck’s voice was only marginally lower and more tolerable than his girlfriend’s. Or wife’s. Or whatever. “Your men will die quickly—you have my word.”
Was that supposed to be a mercy?
My father bristled, and fury emanated from him in waves I could almost feel. He shifted his aim to the new threat. “Leave now, or I will start shooting.”
“So be it.” Beck let go of Neve and Shifted so fast my eyes couldn’t make sense of what I saw. My father raised the gun slightly, ready to defend us. But Beck only flapped his powerful wings twice, rising several feet into the air with each stroke, and clasped Neve’s shoulders in his newly formed claws.
She screamed when he lifted her, and more blood poured from the wounds on her arms. Then the birds lifted off as one and flew into the night.
But instead of fading gradually into silence, the thunder of their exit ended almost all at once. They hadn’t flown off. They’d landed, likely in the front field, just out of range of my cat eyes.
Grass crunched to my left, and I turned to see Marc and my uncle Rick headed our way, each half supporting Lucas, who favored his right leg. We stood back to let them pass, and Marc gave me a bleak grin. “Your cousin’s good with a crowbar.” Then he saluted me with the bloody steel and continued into the house with the injured cat.
The rest of us followed them, and my father bolted the front door. He hadn’t locked up the house since the night Luiz roamed free on our property. And even then, he’d only locked up the women—leaving me to protect Manx and my mother—while the rest of the enforcers went out to hunt him down.
But this was different. This was cowering. It felt wrong.
“What are we going to do next, nail plywood over the windows?” I whispered, following my father down the long main hallway to the back door. “Do you really think they’ll try to come inside?”
“No.” The dead bolt scraped wood, then slid into place. “With a twelve-foot wingspan, they’d be too confined in here to take advantage of their assets. And they couldn’t fly away, which would practically cripple them. But I’m not taking any chances.”
“In that case, maybe we should invite them in!” I trailed him into the kitchen, where my mother smiled wearily and slid the side door lock home.
Dad nodded to thank her, then glanced at Kaci—she sat at the peninsula in front of a vanilla scented votive, staring at a brownie—before heading into his office.
I wanted to follow him. I wanted to be a part of whatever critical decisions he and the other Alphas would make in the next few minutes. But Kaci needed me more than I needed to have my say.
“Hey.” I pulled out a stool and sat, smiling in thanks when my mother set a glass of milk in front of me. “How you holdin’ up?”
“Fine.” Kaci broke the brownie in half but made no move to eat either piece. “You?”
“Honestly?” I shrugged. “I’m kind of scared. And pretty sad. And really pissed.”
Kaci stared at me for several seconds, then nodded solemnly. “Yeah, me, too.”
“So, what do you think we should do?”
“About the thunderbirds?”
I sipped from my glass, then set it on the countertop watching deep shadows sputter on the front of the fridge. “Yeah.”
She blinked in surprise, then seemed to consider, and I realized no one had ever asked her that before. At least, not about anything more important than what she wanted for dinner. “I think we should talk to them,” she said at last. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“Even one of them?”
She nodded slowly, then more confidently. “It’s all a misunderstanding, right? They think we did something we didn’t do, and they’re trying to punish us for hurting someone. Like we’re going to do for Ethan.” Her eyes watered as she said his name, and I fought back tears of my own. “Right?”
“Yeah, I guess it’s like a misunderstanding.” A huge, gory case of mistaken identity. “And I agree with you. I’d rather talk this whole thing out.” We’d dealt and been dealt more than enough death over the past few months, and yet more was on the horizon. “But that’s hard to do, considering that they don’t have a leader and we can’t get in touch with the majority of their Flight.”
Kaci started to say something, but stopped when Michael’s voice reached us from the hallway.
“No. Holly, do not drive out here.” He paused, but I couldn’t hear how she replied over the raised voices now coming from the office. “Yes, another family emergency. I’m sorry, but I have to stay overnight. Owen…fell off the back of the tractor.” Another pause. “Yes, he’ll be fine, but there’s nothing you can do for him.”
Michael crossed in front of the wide doorway, carrying a red taper in a crystal holder, then reappeared almost instantly. He put his thumb over the receiver of his cell and met my gaze while Holly listed her objections in his ear. “Faythe, can I use your room? I need a little privacy.”
Before I could answer, my mother spoke up. “Manx is using Faythe’s shower. Take the master suite.”
My brother shot her a grateful look, then disappeared down the hall.
“Poor Michael.” Kaci frowned after him. “I don’t know how he keeps her from figuring stuff out.”
Michael was the only werecat I knew who’d married a human. Since there weren’t enough tabbies to go around, most toms settled for endlessly playing the field with human women. But my oldest brother wanted something more—someone to love for more than a few months at a time—and Holly had seemed the perfect choice. She loved Michael, and thanks to her job—she was an actual runway model—she spent almost as much time on the road as she did at home. Which was good, because when Michael wasn’t practicing law, he was at the ranch.But when she was home, Holly wanted to be with her husband, and he’d been largely unavailable for most of the past few months, helping us deal with one disaster after another.
“Beats me. But she’s more likely to think he’s cheating on her than that he turns into a giant black cat in his spare time.” I took another sip from my glass, and as my parents’ door closed, my father’s voice carried to me from the open office door across the hall.
“What we’ve done is show both them and ourselves that we can fight them—if only by nontraditional means.”
“Yeah, that’d be great—” Taylor started, and in his pause, I heard the distinctive clink of glass on glass “—if we had more than half a box of ammunition and one gun.”
At least they’re taking us seriously now, I thought, then turned my attention back to Kaci.
“…think she’s going to die?” she was saying when I brought her back into focus. “That girl bird?”
“No.” I shook my head decisively as she bit into her brownie. “I bet the bullets went in one side and out the other. And considering how fast thunderbirds Shift, she probably heals even more quickly than we can.”
Which was a problem I hadn’t considered before. It would suck to come face-to-face with a healthy and once-again flying and newly pissed off Neve in a few hours.
“…couldn’t carry Lucas very far, or very high…” Di Carlo said from across the hall.
“Yeah, but Luke weighs nearly three hundred pounds,” my uncle replied. “That’s a good fifty pounds over the largest man here, and closer to seventy more than most of us.”
Yeah, and if they hadn’t been distracted by the gun, the birds would have double-teamed him, like they did with Charlie…
“…did he get the gun, anyway?” Kaci asked, and I was getting dizzy from trying to keep up with two conversations at once. “I thought Shifters don’t use guns.”