Wren fussed—an inarticulate stream of nonsense words and squawks—and waved her mismatched arms in the air.
“Lance, what do you plan to accomplish with this?” I kept my voice calm, hoping to talk him down rationally.
“Survival,” Lance spat, glancing at me briefly. Then his focus flitted from thunderbird to thunderbird, though he still spoke to me. “You said they’d honor their word, so I’ll let her go if they promise to let me go.”
I started to tell him it didn’t work like that. That they’d feel no obligation to stand by a promise made to someone who’d already proved himself dishonorable. They’d broken their promise to Malone for that very reason. But then I realized that explaining that would only make things worse. Make Lance more desperate. Instead I turned to Brynn. Or, to the bird I thought was Brynn. It was hard to tell when no one had a human face.
“Brynn, promise him,” I said, but the bird only snapped her sharp beak, frighteningly close to my arm. I’m guessing that’s a no. “Just promise him you’ll let him go, and he’ll put your daughter down.” Then you can kill him at your leisure. I didn’t think even Kaci would object to that now, after watching him threaten to kill a toddler.
“No,” a voice said from several feet to my right, and I whirled to find Brynn’s face peeking out at me from an otherwise avian body, her stance aggressive and angry. Damn. Wrong bird. I shrugged in apology to the woman I’d mistakenly addressed, then turned to Brynn, trying to communicate the importance of what I was saying with intense eye contact. But if she got my message, I saw no sign. “We will not give our word to a man with so little honor. That would disgrace us all. What good are our lives if our word holds no value?”Damn it! Was she serious? She would let her child die rather than besmirch her reputation?
Lance turned toward the door so that I saw him in profile, and his fingers twitched around the child’s throat. Wren squawked and reached for her mother, but Lance’s arm was locked around her middle. “Let me through, or I’ll kill her,” he said to the birds now blocking his path. “I have nothing to lose if I’m going to die, anyway, right?” His eyes blazed with panic, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he had scratch-fever. He’d truly lost it.
The three birds directly in front of him glanced around at their Flight mates for a consensus, and though I couldn’t read the subtle body language and silent looks, their decision was clear. The two male birds went left, and the female went right. The path to the front door was now clear, and about ten feet long.
“You should know that as a species, we’re very fast.” Lance shuffled forward slowly, his gaze tripping from one avian face to the next. When talons tapped on the floor behind him, he glanced over his shoulder without loosening his grip on the chicklet. “You can jump me, and probably kill me, but not before I break her neck.”
Several of the thunderbirds glanced at me, presumably to substantiate or refute his claim, and I could only nod. Cat reflexes are phenomenal, and Lance’s were likely a little better than most, considering that he’d killed an adult thunderbird on his own, with only a scratch to show for it.
The birds shuffled forward as one, bobbing their heads, clucking and snapping aggressively, but no one came too close to him.
“Lance?” I said, announcing my presence as I approached him cautiously, Kaci still clinging to my left hand. “What are you doing? You can’t get down. You have nowhere to go.”
He didn’t answer, nor did he turn, and I was virtually certain he had no idea what his next move would be. He was flying by the seat of his proverbial pants, and since he couldn’t literally fly, there was no good way for this standoff to end.
Lance was five feet from the porch now, and Wren struggled in earnest. Her face was scarlet, her cries punctuated with the occasional squawk and highpitched avian cry.
“Lance, put her down. You wouldn’t hurt a child. What happened with Finn was…like an accident.” I chose my words carefully, afraid that if I took his side to talk him into letting the girl go, the fifty thunderbirds at my back would take me at my word. They didn’t seem to understand the art of manipulation. “But you’re not a baby-killer. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do this.”
He stiffened, and the child squealed when his arm tightened around her waist. “I’m not going to live at all.”
“She’s just a baby!” Kaci cried, and I glanced at her in surprise. “How can you kill her? No matter what else you’ve done, you don’t hurt babies. Only monsters kill kids.”
I squeezed her hand, as horrified as she was. What had happened to Parker’s little brother? Did Malone corrupt everyone he came into contact with? Or could Lance truly be scared out of his mind? Could mere fear turn an ordinary—if spineless—man into a monster?
Lance stepped through the open doorway and onto the ledge. Kaci and I followed, and she let go of my hand to press her back to the front wall, unwilling to go near the edge.
Four thunderbirds followed us out—including Brynn, Cade and Coyt—and dozens more peered through the doorway and the huge windows, their talons scratching against the floor.
I held my breath as Lance stepped toward the edge, and finally, a foot from the end of the porch, he turned and addressed the three male thunderbirds who’d come out with us. “Take me down. Take me down and swear to let me go, and I’ll give back the baby. I swear.”
That time the birds didn’t have to confer. It was Brynn who answered, reaching toward her child with now-human arms. “You will not leave our territory alive, and if you kill my daughter, you will watch us eat parts of your body for days. Your death will be so slow and painful you will beg for the end long before it comes.”
Lance gaped at her, eyes glazing over in shock, shoulders slumped beneath the weight of the inevitable. Then, before I could process the sudden, insane upturn of the corners of his mouth, he stepped backward and off the porch, still holding the child.
Thirty-Two
“No!” Brynn launched herself off the porch, sprouting wings in midair. An instant later, a violent gust blew my hair into my face and feathered flesh hit my arm so hard I was pushed forward two steps. Cade—or maybe Coyt—dove off the edge of the porch.
I grabbed the porch support post and looked down. Cade—in his mad nosedive—overtook the flapping Brynn quickly. He was bearing down on Lance and Wren before I’d blinked twice. Talons extended, he grabbed Lance by both shoulders and threw out his wings to slow their descent.
But he was too late, and Lance was too heavy.
Cade was thrown off balance by the sudden weight he carried and veered to the left, struggling to rise with his burden. Then he overcorrected and careened madly toward the tree line. Another sudden twist kept Cade and his cargo from smashing into the trees, but halted his awkward upward progress. Mere feet from the ground, he managed one last powerful beat of his wings, and he and his cargo bobbed upward. Then, when they started to fall, he rolled them all to the side, using one massive wing to shield Lance—thus Wren—from the ground as it rushed up to meet them.
The trio landed hard, and even from two hundred feet above, I heard the muted crash-thud of the impact, and Cade’s awful screech of agony. He was hurt—badly—but thanks to his sacrifice, his unwitting passengers were fine.
Lance stood and shoved the bird’s body over, earning another terrible squawk from Cade. Then, as Brynn thumped to a landing thirty feet away, Lance stepped over the huge, broken wing and took off for the woods, Wren still in hand and screaming her half-human head off.
Shit! The forest was our home turf, and my guess was that since thunderbirds couldn’t fly in such confined quarters, they spent very little time in the woods, even in human form. Brynn would never catch Lance, and neither would any of the half-dozen other birds who rushed past me and off the edge of the porch.
Below, Marc and Jace alternately stared up at us and watched the procession of birds dropping from the overhead dwelling, but I couldn’t see their expressions in the fading light from such a distance. However, neither seemed eager to take off into the woods with the first few birds who Shifted, then ran naked into the forest. Not that I could blame my guys. They had no idea what had happened.“Hey!” I grabbed the wing of the nearest bird before he could leap from the porch and almost got my hand bitten off when he whirled and snapped at me. Then he dove off the porch, soaring toward the tree line on huge, spread wings.
Frantic, I turned, still clinging to the post, and spied Kaci pressed against the front of the building, her eyes wide in terror as bird after bird rushed by her. At her side stood a familiar male bird, naked and almost fully human in form. “Coyt!” I had to shout to be heard over the thunderous beat of wings, but the bird looked up. I had no idea why he hadn’t already joined the procession, and there was no time to ask. “Take me down. Please!”
He shook his head, and I realized he was guarding us. And suddenly it occurred to me that we might not be allowed to leave if Lance wasn’t caught. Somehow I was sure that having my evidence abscond with a baby thunderbird would not fulfill my part of the bargain.