Shift. Rachel Vincent
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for help and rapid, heavy footsteps—then back at Kai. The thunderbird was grinning eagerly. His anticipation made my stomach churn.
Then Kaci’s panicked screeching joined the rest, and I raced up the concrete steps with Marc at my heels.
Five
I threw open the door and we burst into the kitchen in time to see my uncle Rick and Ed Taylor tear down the wide central hallway toward the back door, momentarily shocked out of fresh grief by whatever new horror had just ripped its way into our lives.
Marc passed me in the hall, and I was the last one out of the house—other than Owen, who looked frustrated and furious to be confined to his bed. By the time I made it onto the small, crowded back porch, the screaming had stopped, though I could still hear Kaci sobbing softly somewhere ahead. The only other sounds were the quiet murmurs of several Alphas trying to figure out what had happened and someone’s agonized, half-coherent moans.
My heart thumped as I made my way down three steps and onto the pale winter grass, politely nudging and tapping shoulders to make a path for myself. Fifty feet from the porch, the Alphas stood huddled around a masculine form whose face I couldn’t yet see. My mother knelt on the ground by the tom’s head, but she seemed to be talking to him rather than administering first aid.
At the edge of the surrounding crowd, Manx stood with Des cradled in one arm, the other wrapped around Kaci’s shoulders as tears streamed down the young tabby’s face.
A shallow breath slipped from me in relief when I saw that she was okay, if terrified. Until I realized Jace wasn’t with her.
No…
I edged toward the form on the ground, my pulse racing as I tried to remember whether or not he had a pair of brown hiking boots, which was all I could clearly see of the injured tom. But I didn’t know Jace like I knew Marc. I didn’t have his wardrobe memorized, nor could I predict what he would say or do in any given situation. Yet my relief was like aloe on a sunburn when Jace stepped up on my left, miraculously uninjured. His hand brushed mine, but he didn’t take it, well aware that Marc was on my other side. And that we were surrounded by people.
“It’s pretty bad,” Jace whispered.
“Who is it?” I made no move for a closer look.
“Charlie.” Charles Eames was my uncle’s senior enforcer. His older brother was John Eames, the geneticist who’d discovered the truth about how strays were infected, and about Kaci’s “double recessive” heritage. Their father had been an Alpha up north when I was little, but none of his sons married. When he retired, his territory went to his son-in-law, Wes Gardner. Who was now firmly allied with Calvin Malone.
That particular tangle of family ties was just one example of why civil war would devastate the U.S. Prides. There were only ten territories, and everyone I knew had friends and relatives in most of the other Prides. Drawing lines of allegiance was very delicate work, and keeping them in place would be nearly impossible.
Charlie groaned again, and I steeled my spine, then stepped forward for a closer look. Marc came with me, and we knelt opposite my mother beside the downed tom. It took most of my self-control to hold in my gasp of shock and horror at what I saw.
Charles Eames lay with his head turned toward my mother, staring at her as if she were a meditative focal point. Perhaps the only thing keeping him conscious. Both of his arms and one leg were crooked—obviously broken at multiple points—and the bone actually showed through the torn skin of his left arm, where someone had ripped his sleeve open to expose the injury. Blood pooled from his arm, still oozing from the open wound.
“Needed a cigarette,” Charlie whispered to my mom. “Was only a few feet from the porch.” His eyes closed and he flinched as he drew in a deep breath.
My mother frowned and began unbuttoning his shirt. Gently she pulled the material from the waistband of his jeans and laid his shirt open to expose his torso. The left side of his chest was already blue and purple; at the very least, he’d broken several ribs, on the same side as his broken leg and the arm with the open fracture. He’d landed on his left side.
“How many were there?” My father bent to help my mom pull the rest of the shirt loose, and Charlie started shivering.
“Two. From the roof.” He flinched over another short inhalation, as every single head swung toward the house, to make sure we hadn’t just walked into a trap. But the roof was clear now. The birds wouldn’t take on so many of us at once. Hopefully.
I crossed my arms against the cold as Charlie continued, and my father shifted into his line of sight so the injured tom wouldn’t have to strain to see him. “I heard this whoosh, and when I turned around, they were on me.” He coughed, then swallowed, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. “Then I was in the air. One had my arm, one my ankle.”
“I can’t believe they could carry you,” I said, thinking of how the first thunderbird had struggled with Kaci, as little as she weighed.
“Weren’t trying to.” Charlie closed his eyes again, and spoke without opening them. “They took me up about thirty feet, then let me go.”
My own eyes closed in horror. They’d dropped him on purpose. And if he’d weighed any less, they might have dropped him from higher up. They weren’t trying to take him. They were trying to kill him.
When I opened my eyes, I found my father watching me, and I saw the same bitter comprehension behind the bright green of his eyes. Thunderbirds were unlike any foe we’d ever faced. They swooped in out of nowhere, then flew off once they’d inflicted maximum damage. We couldn’t defend ourselves from their talons, nor could we Shift fast enough to truly fight them. And we certainly couldn’t chase them across the sky.
In the span of a single hour, they’d injured Owen, gravely injured Charlie Eames, and killed Jake Taylor. We were down three men, at the worst possible time.
The lump in my throat was too big to breathe around. How could we fight Malone if we didn’t survive the thunderbirds?
“Greg…” Vic emerged from the crowd and my dad stood to take the phone he held out. “I got him on the line.”
“Thank you.” My Alpha turned to pace as he spoke into the phone, while my mother did what she could for Charlie. “Danny? How close are you?” He paused as Dr. Carver said something I couldn’t quite make out over the static. “Can you get here any faster?”
I squeezed Marc’s hand when it slid into my good one, and we followed my father away from the crowd to listen in on his call. If he hadn’t wanted anyone to hear, he’d have gone inside.
“Depends. Do you want me in one piece?” Carver asked, and my father sighed.
“Just hurry. These damn birds dropped Charlie Eames from thirty feet up. At best guess, I’d say he’s got six or seven broken bones, and he’s not exactly breathing easy.”
“Thirty feet?” I heard astonishment and horror in Carver’s voice, and faintly I registered his blinker beeping, unacknowledged by the distracted driver. “It’s a wonder he survived a fall like that.”
“He wouldn’t have, if he’d landed on his head. Or on anything other than the grass.” Fortunately, last week’s ice storm had melted and dampened the ground so that it squished beneath our feet, no doubt softening Charlie’s landing somewhat. “I think he has a concussion and he’s in a lot of pain. What should we do for him?”
Marc and I headed toward the gathering as my father nodded and “uh-huh’d” the doctor’s directions on how best to get Charlie inside without damaging him further. Kaci caught my attention, still sobbing softly on the edge of the crowd. Manx had taken the baby inside—it was still cold out, and Owen was alone in the house—so Jace had moved in to comfort the poor tabby, but he could do little in that moment to truly calm her.
“You need your coat,” I said, rubbing her