My hands curled into fists at my sides. My nails bit into my palms. I was losing control, in spite of my determination to do whatever it took to keep Abby safe. I needed to concentrate, or I was going to make things worse for both of us.
A familiar jolt of pain shot through my jaw. My heart jumped, and I stiffened. I ground my teeth together against the pain, but my lips curved into a smile. It was happening. The partial Shift. I was going to have my moment after all, so long as he didn’t notice until it was finished.
“Relax,” Eric whispered into my neck. “You’re tensing up.”
You have no idea, I thought, privately tickled to have finally found the key to the partial Shift. Flaming anger and intense concentration. Good to know.
Eric pushed his briefs down with one hand. His fingers slid up my bare thigh. I clenched my fists again, drawing more blood from my palms. It took everything I had to keep from shoving him away and ruining my best shot yet at taking him out.
The pain was worse than it had been the first time; this Shift was more complete. The throbbing in my face grew to a screaming, blinding agony. I had to unclench my jaws, had to open my mouth. But I was grateful for the pain. It demanded attention. It kept my mind off Eric’s hands and mouth.
I felt several tiny cracks, as the bones of my face Shifted, and—from my perspective at least—gunfire couldn’t have been any louder. Another crack ripped its way through my jaw, and Abby stiffened where she sat. She started to turn toward us, then seemed to think better of looking and buried her face in her arms.
Oh, shit. What if Eric heard that? He was much closer to the source than Abby was.
And he must have heard it, because he started to glance up. I did the only thing I could think of to distract him. I shoved my chest forward. He purred and his mouth traveled down to engulf my nipple. I cringed, but he mistook my shudder for one of pleasure.
Boy, are you delusional, I thought, taking short, shallow breaths as the pain in my face reached its apex. Why are guys always so willing to believe in the power of their own sexual magnetism, even when all evidence points to there being none? I think some men are born with big egos, to make up for the lack of certain necessary equipment. Like a brain.
The aching subsided, and I ran my tongue over my teeth. I gasped, feeling full-length canines and an entire mouthful of pointed teeth, both top and bottom. Eric moaned around my nipple, mistaking my gasp just as he had my cringe. I resisted the urge to smack him. I didn’t need to hit him anymore. I knew just what to do with him.
Eric tucked one hand beneath my left knee. He lifted my leg, curling it around his waist as he pressed himself against me.
Now, I thought. My moment had finally come.
I growled in warning. Eric froze, my nipple still in his mouth. My leg slid back to the ground. He rose slowly. Our eyes met. I have no idea what mine looked like, but his would have comfortably seated several little green men apiece.
I took a millisecond to enjoy his shock and fear. Then I lunged for his throat.
Twenty-Five
Blood never tasted sweeter to me than Eric’s did at that moment, pouring into my mouth from his neck on its way down from his brain. Or maybe that was the taste of carnal justice. Whatever it was, it was wonderful.
Eric tried to scream but could only manage a bubbly gurgle. He floundered for several seconds, his arms waving wildly, bumping against my sides and hips ineffectively. Though I’d broken the skin, actually puncturing his jugular vein, I hadn’t ripped his throat out. That would have been an almost instant death, and he didn’t deserve my mercy. Instead, I crushed his windpipe with my jaws, slowly suffocating him as he bled.
During my first partial Shift two very long days earlier, my mouth wouldn’t have opened that wide. Luckily, this transformation was much more complete. I couldn’t see myself, but my best guess was that I had a hairless muzzle and cat’s nose, protruding from an otherwise human face. It couldn’t have been a pretty picture, combined with my already battered cheek. Fortunately, being pretty mattered even less to me then than it ever had. I was interested in efficiency, and my new monstrosity of a face was very efficient.
Eric spasmed one final time, and by then I was supporting his weight with my arms around his rib cage. When I was sure he was dead, I opened my mouth. His head flopped backward, bobbing for a moment under its own inertia. His limp weight was grotesque and faintly nauseating.
Heaving him up, I tossed him onto the mattress at my feet. I stared at him, listening to the sound of my own breathing. Shock hadn’t set in yet, but I was thinking clearly enough to know that it might at any second. I’d never killed anyone before. Deer, yes. Rabbits, yes. And once, a cow that somehow wandered onto my father’s property and into the trees. But I’d never taken the life of anything with the ability to reason, however poorly that ability was used, and I was not naive enough to think I would suffer no consequences from it.
Short, gasping breaths caught my attention. I squinted at Eric’s chest, waiting to see it rise. It didn’t. I looked up gradually in the direction of the sounds. Abby stared at me through eyes wide with fright. When my eyes met hers, she gave a startled yip and jumped back from the bars, turning her head slowly from side to side, in denial of what she saw.
“Abby.” But I couldn’t enunciate with my cat’s jaws, so it came out as a short string of vowels, in-articulate nonsense that had little in common with her name. Ah, yes, now I remember the downside. Cat’s jaws isolated me from the more verbally gifted of Earth’s inhabitants.
Running my hands hesitantly over my face, I began to share her horror. I was grateful for my new ability, since it had saved me from what would surely have been the most humiliating, demeaning experience of my life. Even so, I had no desire to ever see my in-between face for myself.
I turned my back on Abby and concentrated, forcing my face to Shift back. The pain was worse without the rest of my body to sympathize with agony of its own, but it went quickly. When it was over, I verified the results with my hands and my tongue. Everything felt right. Sticky with blood but otherwise normal.Turning, I wiped blood from my mouth with my arm, which really wasn’t much of an improvement. “Abby, it’s me.”
She squinted at me in the dark and sighed in relief, as if she thought the shadows had been playing tricks on her eyes before. “Are you okay?” she asked, wrapping her hands around the bars again. It’s amazing how fast that becomes habitual.
“Yeah. Messy, but okay.” I glanced at my pile of clothing, then down at the blood drenching my chest. I’d have to clean up before I could get dressed.
“Eric?” Abby asked.
“Dead.”
She burst into tears for the second time in less than an hour, but these were tears of relief and I was glad to see them.
“Give me just a minute, and I’ll have you out of there,” I said. She nodded, and moved down to the door to wait.
I sat on the mattress by Eric’s corpse, doing my best to ignore the blood staining his shirt and my own bare flesh. I stuck my hand in his right pocket and came out with a key. But only one. Mine.
My key clasped in my left fist, I dove into his left pocket, searching frantically. I turned it inside out in my haste to find the other key, but the pocket was empty. No loose change, no lint, and definitely no key.
“There’s only one,” I whispered.
“Maybe it works on both locks,” Abby said, her voice shrill with desperation.
I thought back but couldn’t rule it out. The first time, Eric had unlocked her cage but not mine. Miguel had unlocked mine but not hers. Sean and Ryan claimed not to have keys. And this time Eric had only opened my cage, so maybe she was right.
Key in hand, I stuck my arms through the bars and opened the lock. I pulled it loose from the latch and clenched it in my fist. Holding my breath, I pushed the door open. Then I stepped across the threshold.
I felt like something should have happened, like an alarm blaring or fresh air blowing my sweaty, sticky hair back from my face. Or maybe theme music playing from some cheesy prison-escape movie. But nothing happened. What a letdown.
Abby’s eyes were glued to the key as I pulled it from my lock. I tried it on hers, but it wouldn’t even go all the way in. The light in her eyes died, replaced by a look of confusion. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Where’s the other key? He had to have it if he came down here for me.”
I understood all too well. “He didn’t come for you. Not this time.” Eric had set me up, and I’d fallen for it completely. Outsmarted by a Neanderthal. Faythe, you idiot! I wanted to smack my own forehead but settled for staring at my feet instead. Until the blood trailing down my torso caught my attention, and I had to close my eyes.
“What?” she asked. “What happened?”
“He used you to get to me. He didn’t bring your key because he wasn’t after you this time. He only acted like he was so I’d try to protect you and he could offer me his little trade.” Eric was a moron. A truly substandard intellect. So what did it say about me, that I’d fallen for his performance? Not as much as his death at my hands said about him.
Back in my cage, I glared at his body. I would have kicked him in the head, if I wasn’t completely creeped out by touching a corpse, even one I’d created. So, I walked around him on my way to examine my clothes. I’d blocked most of the splatter with my own body, so my shirt and shorts were pretty clean, other than the thin, dry trail of Miguel’s blood. Best of all, the shirt still smelled like Marc.