“Some are too scared to resist at all, but those are mostly the human girls. I think that’s why Luiz likes them. Then others—like little Abby—make a lot of noise at first, hissing, and crying and trying to crawl away. But once you get in one good thrust—” he rammed his hips into me, and I would have lost my balance if he hadn’t been holding me up “—they kind of give up, like there’s nothing left worth fighting for. And Abby was fresh. Untouched. Muy dulce.” Very sweet.
Lucas’s arms bulged as his huge hands curled into fists. His cheeks flushed in outrage.
Marc slipped silently forward while Miguel was focused on Lucas, but Miguel caught the movement, even on the edge of his vision. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Don’t come too close. I don’t want to have to break your tabby’s neck. At least not before I’m done with her.” He slid his free hand down my stomach and beneath the low waistband of my borrowed pants, careful with his injured wrist. His fingers hovered just above my pubic bone.
My hands clenched around material from the sides of Carissa’s pants, and I took shallow breaths, afraid the slightest movement of my stomach would nudge his hand farther down. Only the memory of fighting to breathe kept me from removing his hand myself.
“She and I have unfinished business. Don’t we, mi amor?”
Yeah, I thought. Your death.
His grip forced my chin even higher as his lips brushed my ear. “But I tell you what,” he said, now speaking to Marc. “If I don’t like my free sample, I’ll return her. Used, of course. But then, we strays are accustomed to secondhand goods, aren’t we?”
If Miguel thought he could bait Marc with jabs at his heritage, he was wrong. Marc had long since developed emotional calluses, and remarks like that didn’t even faze him. But sticking a hand down my pants did.
Marc hissed, arching his back as his tail swished furiously. He took several gliding steps toward us, his fur glistening in a beam of moonlight shining through a hole in the clouds. He leapt to one side and landed gracefully on all four paws, several feet from the guys on the path.
Miguel turned toward Marc, now keeping all five of them easily in view.
I stared at Marc, confused because his movements seemed pointless and panicked, like a hostage dancing during a bank robbery. But his eyes never left mine. He was up to something. We had come to a standstill. Miguel wasn’t going to let me go, and they weren’t going to let him take me. So something had to change.
“Skittish, kitty?” Miguel asked, chuckling at what he mistook for nervous indecision on Marc’s part. But Marc never did anything without a reason, even if no one else understood his motive. What the hell was he doing?
Marc hissed again, showing off long white canines, both top and bottom. His ears flattened against his head as his whiskers arced forward. Leaves crackled as he pierced them beneath his claws. He was posturing, doing everything he could to keep my attention.
No, wait. Not my attention. Miguel’s. He was trying to distract Miguel, but from what?
“One move and she’s dead,” Miguel said, finished playing now that Marc clearly meant business. He pulled his hand from my pants and wrapped it around my upper arm, just beneath my shoulder, squeezing hard enough to bruise, in spite of the pain it must have caused him.
Marc hunkered against the ground. He grew absolutely still, moving nothing but his eyes. He was watching, waiting for the opportunity to pounce.
Marc’s tail twitched. Miguel’s right hand clenched around my throat. His fingernails sank into my skin with an eerie popping sensation, followed immediately by sharp pain and darkness on the edges of my vision.
But his grip loosened almost immediately, and I could breathe again. It had been a spasm, I was almost sure of it. Marc had spooked Miguel, whose hand inadvertently clenched around my throat. It was good to know Miguel wasn’t impervious to fear, and that he wasn’t ready to kill me yet. But if Marc pushed him too far, he might do it anyway, by accident.
And dead by accident isn’t much different than dead on purpose. They both look pretty much the same in the end.
Blood trickled down my neck, pooling in the hollow above my collarbone. The smell was sharp and immediate. Marc’s whiskers wiggled as he sniffed. He smelled my blood.
A moment of stillness enveloped us as Marc and Miguel faced off, neither moving or making a sound.
Leaves crunched behind me. At first I thought Miguel was shuffling his feet, but then someone panted. Someone close to the ground. Marc’s distraction had worked.
Miguel froze. His head moved away from mine as he turned, trying to look over his left shoulder. He couldn’t do it without turning his back on everyone else, but that didn’t matter anymore, because he was surrounded.
The growl began behind me, deep and soft. It rose in a rapid crescendo, ending in a roar of fury that was both familiar and terrifying. It was familiar because it was Ethan, and terrifying because he was enraged.
Miguel whirled us both around, heedless of the un-Shifted cats now that they were clearly the lesser threat. He stiffened against my back and I heard his heart race. He was finally scared. And as his confidence faded, his concentration began to slip, just as it had in the basement cage.
My own pulse sped up. I was going to get a shot at him. I could feel it.
“Nice kitty,” Miguel whispered, backing us slowly away from Ethan. His head whipped to the right, then back to the left. He was dividing his attention between Marc, Brian, and Ethan, which left little to focus on me. Perfect.
I glanced at Marc, trying to communicate with him through my eyes. His ears perked up. He knew I was trying to tell him something, but that was as good as it was going to get. As long as I’d known Marc, I’d known Ethan longer.
My fists clenched and unclenched at my sides as I shifted my focus to my brother. I blinked at him twice, resurrecting a signal we’d established as children. He blinked back once. He understood. Just to be safe, I did it again. Again he returned the signal. He would wait for my move. He was ready.“Open the gate,” Miguel said.
What gate? I thought, searching behind Ethan for something I’d missed.
“Open it now, or I’ll bite off her ear.” Miguel’s teeth sank into the top of my left ear and I flinched as he tugged.
Marc nodded to Vic, who took off down the path at a jog, moving quickly out of my sight. Metal screeched behind me, and I understood Miguel’s demand. The fence had a gate. Why on earth had I jumped over the fence if there was a gate?
Miguel let go of my ear. “Now go stand by your cat. The stray.”
Marc nodded at the edge of my vision, and Vic’s footsteps drew closer until he walked into sight and past us. Without taking his eyes from Miguel, he stopped beside Marc, fists clenched, arms bulging, and teeth grinding.
“We’re going to back slowly toward the house, and if any one of you gets heroic, I’ll tear her head off,” Miguel said. I didn’t think he could actually carry out such a threat in human form, but even a good attempt would be enough to finish me off, so I kept my opinion to myself.
Miguel tightened his already bruising grip on my throat. I sucked in short, desperate puffs of air. He took a step back, dragging me with him. Gasping, I stumbled. He pulled me up by my neck, completely closing my throat for one terrifying moment.
Adrenaline scorched through my veins, urging me into action. I couldn’t let him get me into the house; I knew what would happen then. He’d lock the door, knock me out, drag me to the van, and take off.
I was not leaving with Miguel. Not again.
He took another step, and another. The guys watched us go, inching forward with us but not daring to charge while Miguel had me by the throat. Ethan drifted slowly to one side, his fur blending with the darkness of the encroaching forest. Several torturous minutes later, Miguel and I were only feet from the fence. I could see it in Vic’s face. In moments, I’d be out of reach. I had to do something, and I had to do it now.
The slant of Miguel’s head told me he was watching Marc and the guys instead of Ethan. I gave my brother a short nod. He nodded back.
Seize the day, I thought. But what I actually seized was much more painful—for Miguel.
I grabbed one of the fingers around my throat with my right hand and his crotch with my left. I jerked back with my right hand and squeezed with my left. Miguel howled into my ear an instant before I felt, rather than heard, his finger snap.
Ethan raced toward us, pausing several feet away.
Miguel’s still-functioning digits dug into my throat. They reopened the wounds on my neck, cutting off what little air I was receiving.
Desperate to breathe, I broke two more fingers. Miguel’s howl rose in pitch, sounding remarkably like a cat’s screech. I squeezed his crotch tighter, and felt something pop. His shriek rose into tones beyond the human range of hearing. And finally he let me go.
I threw myself onto the dirt path, gasping for air. Ethan pounced, his fur indistinguishable from the night as he leapt over me. Moonlight flashed in his eyes. Miguel’s keening ended in a wet gurgle. Metal crunched and squealed as Ethan drove him to the ground, flattening a lengthy section of the chain-link fence.
For a long moment, I lay still on my stomach. I gulped air through my mouth, gorging like a half-starved child at a banquet. Every breath hurt, like swallowing fire. My neck felt thick and slippery, and I kept touching it to find out what was wrong. It was slick with blood. My blood. Other than that, it felt okay from the outside. On the inside, my throat hurt like hell.