The vast majority of strays are created by other strays, then abandoned before the attacker knows his victim will not only survive but become a werecat. These attackers are perpetuating a cycle that began when they were abandoned in the same fashion, before they had a chance to learn about the werecat way of life.
Many werecat victims don’t survive their initial attack, and others die soon afterward. And while some strays do live and learn to survive on their own, many of them never learn to hide their existence from humans or to control their feline impulses, which makes it very important for us to get to them before their actions expose us all to humanity. Unfortunately, by the time we find them, few strays are happy to see us. They blame us for the destruction of their lives, and they have no interest in being “ruled” by an Alpha they don’t know from Adam. It doesn’t help that instincts they can’t possibly understand yet tell them to be wary of and hostile toward strange cats.
As recently as a century ago, an enforcer’s job consisted mainly of defending territorial borders, not from humans, who don’t yet know we exist, but from other Prides intent on expanding their own boundaries. But recent history has seen an important shift. Just as the various Prides learned to get along—for the most part—in the interest of secrecy, the population of strays exploded. Pride enforcers are now mostly used to deal with these new members of our society.
My father’s men track newly infected werecats as they come to our attention and administer a crash-course on werecat history, biology and law. They also monitor and control those strays who become violent and volatile. But an ever-increasing amount of their time is spent trying to keep strays out of our territory, cleaning up after them, and dealing out justice as necessary for those who refuse to follow the rules.
Even those few strays we manage to form a cordial relationship with typically have no interest in joining a Pride. Which is just as well, because most council members have no interest in letting them in. For them, it’s an issue of class. Strays are considered second-class citizens. In fact, my father dealt with a lot of criticism for taking Marc in, but he never once faltered in his decision, even though the beginning was really hard on all of us, particularly Marc.
Watching him, I remembered how confused he’d been and how much he’d missed his mother. Why would Daddy send him to investigate a case like that? I thought, furious with my father all over again.
“I wanted to go,” Marc said.
“Stop reading my mind,” I snapped, pulling my feet out from under me to sit cross-legged at the edge of the area rug.
“I’m reading your expression.” His lips curled up into a tight, smug smile. “It’s not my fault you can’t keep every fleeting thought from showing on your face.” He made it sound so easy, so logical, but it was just another reminder that he knew me better than anyone else in the world. Whether I liked it or not.
Marc plucked the queen from my palm, returning her to her rightful place at her husband’s side. Most of the chess pieces had landed on the rug, which kept them from breaking. But not the queen. She’d taken the full impact of her fall on the hardwood, yet remained stubbornly whole and unscathed. She was one tough bitch. My kind of gal.
I glanced at her and thought I saw the tiniest hint of a smirk among the vague features of her face. The queen was my favorite chess piece. Unlike the women I knew in real life, she was powerful. Her job was to defend her husband at all costs, because while he was weak and practically defenseless—only allowed to move one square at a time—she was the strongest player on the board, hindered by no restrictions at all.If real life were a game of chess, I’d be calling the shots, dragging Marc’s helpless ass home for his own protection.
Marc frowned at me, as if to let me know he’d read that thought on my face too. I cleared my throat and leaned back against the love seat, determined to bring the discussion back on track. “I assume Dr. Carver could smell the bastard on her body?”
“Yeah.”
When he volunteered no more information, I asked the obvious question. “Well? Did he recognize the scent?”
Marc shook his head, and I wasn’t really surprised. If they’d identified the killer, he would already have told me. “But Danny said it was definitely a stray. We’ve had two other reports of a stray from Oklahoma in the last week and a half. My guess is that they were all the same cat.”
I frowned. Both wildcats and strays were forbidden to enter our territory without permission for a very good reason: they were usually unpredictable, uncontrollable and often violent. There were no exceptions to that rule, even for Ryan, in self-imposed exile.
“Couldn’t Dr. Carver be wrong?” I asked. “Couldn’t it have been one of Daddy’s cats?” As horrifying as I found the idea of there being a murderer among us, it’s always easier to fight the evil you know than the one you don’t.
Marc shook his head. “Danny knows all the other south-central Pride cats, if not by name, then by scent. He said this one had a foreign smell to him. Central, or maybe South American.” His eyes held mine captive, waiting for his meaning to sink in.
My heart leapt from fear bordering on terror, as I thought of the stray on campus. He’s a jungle cat. And he’s collecting tabbies, but killing humans.
South American cats were an entirely different kind of animal. They formed no councils, acknowledged no political borders, and suffered no negotiations. With the Amazon rain forest at their disposal, the Prides in most of the southern hemisphere indulged their feline instinct at the expense of their humanity, meaning they lived more like actual jungle cats than like people, as if over the past few hundred years, the world had moved on without them. Their territorial boundaries were in a constant state of flux, swelling and shrinking with the slaughter of each Alpha and the rise of his successor.
The only rules jungle cats submitted to were the laws of nature, namely that you claim only that which you can defend. They fought to the death on a regular basis for the two things that mattered most to them: the right to control a territory and the right to sire another generation of savage monsters. It was a violent and chaotic existence, defined by a lack of stability and a short life expectancy.
Jungle cats were my secret fear, my version of the bogeyman in the closet. But unlike the bogeyman, they were very, very real.
“South American?” I breathed, running my fingers nervously along the fringe at the edge of the area rug. “Really?”
“He’s probably wrong.” Marc stared transfixed at the jade king where it sat on the far row of the chessboard. “It’s probably the same thing as always, some new stray accidentally crossed a boundary line and wound up on our land. But this time he lost control. It happens sometimes. You know that.”
I nodded. I did know that. But I also recognized Marc’s quickly reversed theory for the bullshit it was. Dr. Carver knew the difference in scent—likely genetic in origin—between an American-born cat and a jungle cat. And new strays were known for losing control of their feline impulses, not their human behavior. They stalk and hunt as cats, killing only because they’re hungry and have temporarily lost the control needed to Shift back and go grocery shopping. They don’t attack on two legs, then Shift into cat form to rip their victims apart.
The girl in Oklahoma was killed by a human monster, who just happened to have canines and claws at his disposal. It was the work of a jungle cat, not an American stray. And Marc knew it as well as I did.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Faythe.”
“Then why tell me?” I knew him way too well to fall for that.
He didn’t answer; he just stared at me with those deep brown eyes, shot through with specks of gold that were only visible up close. And in the moonlight.
“You think it’s related to Sara, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible, but no more possible than your theory that she ran away. I’m probably just being paranoid.”
“That’s what Daddy pays you for.”
He frowned, staring at his own hands. “Well, lately I don’t feel like he’s getting his money’s worth.”
“You’re a great enforcer, Marc.” I glanced away, because I couldn’t stand to look at him as I said the next part, even though it was true. Precisely because it was true. “You’re great at everything.”
“Not quite everything,” he said.
I breathed deeply, in and out, wishing once again that I’d slept through the entire conversation. When I looked up, Marc was gone.
Nine
I woke up in my own room for the first time in more than two years, groaning as highlights from the day before played in my mind like a silent film in fast-forward. Burying my head beneath my pillows, I willed the morning away, but it refused to go. Instead, it greeted my ill-humored grunt with bright, irritatingly cheerful sunlight and the incessant trilling of a bird from the branches of the stunted blackjack oak outside my window.
“I haven’t had breakfast yet, you know,” I grumbled in the general direction of the racket. You’d think birds would know better than to irritate a sleep-deprived cat.
Resigned to rising at last, I sat up in bed. My eyes roamed the walls, settling on the mirror over my dresser, where several photographs were wedged between the glass and the oak frame, climbing the edge of the reflective surface like a vine of memories. I glanced over them, experiencing my life as a series of moments frozen in time, neat and orderly in their full-color, glossy splendor.