Then, once we had our answers, the guys had my permission to pound him to death with as much gusto as they liked.
Lucas and Vic had made a deal. Vic would take charge if Sean showed up alone, since he was the reason Sara had been targeted. But if Miguel attacked me by himself, Lucas would have free rein. He was confident that he could take the jungle cat all on his own, but if there was any doubt about that when the time came, the other two had my permission to jump in.
Marc, Ethan and Anthony would take off in cat form in search of whichever one hadn’t shown up.
If both rogues were stupid enough to show themselves at once, everyone would get in on the action. Oh, happy day.
As Marc recited his part in the plan, the importance of what we were about to do hit me with the force of a heavyweight’s right hook. This was our shot. Our only shot. The whole thing was my idea, but I couldn’t summon even a spark of pride for having thought up the plan we’d agreed on. I was terrified.
What if it didn’t work? Or worse, what if someone got hurt? It would be my fault. If anything went wrong, I would be to blame because I was in charge, at least nominally. This was exactly the kind of responsibility I’d gone to school to avoid, yet there I was, buried in it up to my neck. But at least it was a figurative burial. I’d be pretty satisfied if I could end the night without requiring a literal one.
Ethan elbowed me in the ribs, and I glanced up to see that the powwow was over. It was go time.
We left the van in the garage on the assumption that Miguel would never see it unless he broke in, in which case we hoped to have him breathing through his neck before he had a chance to sniff around. At eight forty-five, Anthony, Ethan and Marc put their clothes in the van, along with mine, and went into the woods to Shift and find good hiding places.
Parker, Vic and Lucas double-checked their phones, then went to pick out trees they could climb easily on two legs. I watched them through the window in the back door until they disappeared down the path. The only one whose hiding spot was visible from the main house was Parker.
When the guys were in position, I sat on the tiled kitchen floor, my back against the dishwasher and Eric’s phone in my lap. Brian paced in front of the dining-room table. He was too wound up to sit. Just watching him made me nervous.
For the first fifteen minutes, I was fine. Almost excited. My body was a treasury of bruises, in all shapes, sizes and colors, and I was eager to share the wealth with Miguel. But as the minutes stretched into a half hour, my palms grew damp and Carissa’s pants started to cling to my legs. I tried to relax, aware that every drop of sweat soaking into the borrowed clothes made me smell less like Carissa and more like myself.
Every minute or so, I glanced at the digital clock on the cell-phone display. I was sure each time I looked that another quarter of an hour must have passed, but it never did. The clock was wrong. It had to be.
“Hey, Brian, what time do you have?” I whispered. I’m not sure why I whispered, except that it felt wrong to make noise in the dark. Irreverent, almost, like screaming in church. I’d turned on several lights upstairs and a lamp in the front of the living room so Miguel would think someone was home. But with only a single lamp lit, across the room and around a corner, the kitchen was a lair of shadows, hiding my worst fears among the dark, irregular shapes.
“Nine thirty-five,” Brian said. He’d whispered, too.
I glanced at the phone again. Damn. It was right.
My heart beat against my rib cage, as if demanding to be let out. I took a deep breath, trying to slow my racing pulse. Why am I so nervous? I’d begged Daddy for a chance to catch Miguel. I’d given away the next two and a half years of my life. But now that the time had almost come, I was petrified.
I glanced at the phone again, checking the battery. It was fully charged when I found it and had only lost half of the available power in the hours since. So nothing was wrong with the phone. But what if one of the other phones had died? What if I went out to check and Miguel saw me? I’d ruin the entire setup. Better to sit still and wait. I hate waiting. I’m not very good at being still, either. Not while I’m conscious, anyway.
Brian glanced at me in sympathy. I knew he could hear my heartbeat, and maybe even smell my fear. I smiled back, trying to pretend nothing was wrong, that I wasn’t about to take a leisurely stroll down the footpath and into the claws of death.
Melodramatic? Me? Surely not.
The air conditioner clicked off, leaving us in total silence. I hadn’t even realized it was running until it stopped, and suddenly I heard nothing but my own pulse.
As I lifted the phone to check the time again, a single warbling yowl of pain pierced the stillness, only to be cut off a second later. It came from the north.
Marc. My head swung toward the backyard. My neck popped but I barely registered the sound. In an instant I was up, running for the back door.
“Faythe, wait!” Brian shouted, stealth all but forgotten. I ignored him. Footsteps pounded on the tile behind me. Plastic crunched as he stepped on Eric’s phone where I’d dropped it. I turned the doorknob but nothing happened. I howled in rage, panicked because I couldn’t disengage the lock. Why hadn’t we unlocked the doors?
Brian grabbed my shoulder. I turned on him, hissing. He let me go, palms raised in front of his chest. I shoved him with both hands. He stumbled backward, tripping down two carpeted steps to land on his ass in the sunken living room. He made no move to get up, and I turned back to the door.My heart hammering, I gripped the knob with both sweaty hands. I jerked it clockwise. Hard. Something snapped, and the door swung toward me. I shoved the storm door open. Its lock popped too, the sound faint beneath the roar of my pulse in my ears.
I jumped off the back porch and landed with my legs already pumping. My feet shoved against the earth, fighting gravity itself. All I could think about was that someone on the north side of the path had been hurt, badly. Marc was on the north side.
Thick clouds hid the moon, and I had only what light filtered through the upstairs windows with which to see. It was just enough for me to make out the top of the chain-link fence thirty feet ahead. I sprinted toward it, flying through the yard. As I neared the fence, I sped up. Grabbing the top of the metal frame, I launched myself over, shredding my palms in the process. I landed on my feet, both knees bent. Shock from the impact rippled its way up my legs. I straightened them slowly, my pain eclipsed by fear for Marc and dread of what I might find.
Before the tingle faded from my toes, I was running again, headed for the footpath. Fifteen feet from the fence, I tripped over my too-big shoes and fell face-first into the dirt. I stood quickly, brushing fragrant grass clippings from my forearms with palms caked with blood and dirt. But before I could take another step, a deep feline growl rumbled from the trees to my left. The sound rolled across my skin, raising the hairs on the backs of my arms. I froze.
He stood at the edge of the woods, ten feet down the path. His ears lay flat against his head, the tips pointing to either side. His tail swished slowly against the ground, stirring last years’ dead leaves. Reflective pupils flashed at me as he blinked. He growled again, low and threatening. He was growling at me.
I frowned at him in confusion. It was Marc. Even half blinded by the dark and with only a moderately enhanced sense of smell, I recognized him. I knew his voice, his purr, his roar, and even his growl. It was definitely Marc, and he was mercifully uninjured. So why was he growling at me?
Grass crunched behind me. Before I could turn, a hand wrapped around my neck, warm and damp, with a grip like iron. I yipped in surprise, my hands flying up automatically to try to pry it loose.
Miguel. I didn’t need to see or smell him to know who it was and to realize my mistake. I’d tripped over my own feet, landing within arm’s reach of the man I’d meant to catch. Brilliant, Faythe.
“Buenas noches, mi amor,” he said, using his free hand to pry my fingers from the hand around my neck. “Going incognito tonight?” Clearly uninterested in my answer, he squeezed my neck slowly, as if in warning.
I gasped. Panic flooded my bloodstream. A sharp fluttering sensation consumed my stomach, as if the butterflies in my belly had razor-edged wings. I could still breathe, which meant he didn’t mean to kill me. Not yet, anyway.
For a human, his grip might have been good enough to choke me. I could handle being choked. Choking was slow enough that a good elbow to his gut or stomp on his foot might throw him off balance, or at least give Marc a chance to pounce. But Miguel was a werecat, and his grip was good enough to snap my neck with a single sharp twist.
But I’d take a slashed throat over a broken neck any day. At least that way I’d get to bleed all over his shoes. One final fuck-you before I died.
Thirty-One
Marc’s tail twitched, a play of shadows in the night, and something heavy thumped to the ground on my right, just ahead of us and out of my view. Marc’s eyes slid to the side, peering past me at whoever had dropped from the trees.
Miguel grabbed my left arm with his free hand, tightening his grip on my neck at the same time. He twisted backward and to the side, dragging me with him into the center of the path. From my new position I could see Marc on the left edge of my vision, his tail swishing along the ground slowly, angrily. Parker now stood on the path in front of me.