Chicks Kick Butt (8 page)

“Abby, are you okay?”

“No! They know I’m out here too. I don’t know if they followed us or what, but while they were waiting for me to come back, they tried to…”

The words froze in my throat, the edges sharp, like I’d swallowed glass. I coughed, then started over. “They had knives, Jace, and the girls were so scared. Robyn was screaming, and she couldn’t stop him. The other one held his knife to Dani’s throat. I couldn’t just watch, and I couldn’t leave them there.…” My explanation trailed into fragile silence, but for the crackle of the fire.

“What did you do, Abby?” Jace still sounded calm, but now his voice held a dark note of dread.

“I killed one of them. The one who was on Robyn. I just wanted to get him off her, so I pounced on him, and he smelled like her, and he’d bitten her, and everything just went red after that. But then Steve slashed my front leg, and the other one stabbed Dani. Then they took off into the woods.” My tears were a mercy, smearing the carnage all around me. But they couldn’t blur the overwhelming scent of blood. “I couldn’t chase them. Not with my front leg sliced up and Dani dying.”

“Of course not. You shouldn’t have shown yourself. You could have been killed.” Jace sighed, the sound a mixture of worry for me and rage on my behalf. “Just stay there. We’re coming to get you. We’ll call the cops on the way back.” I heard voices in the background, as other toms volunteered for the emergency mission. Save the damsel in distress—one of those moments every enforcer lives for.

Only I didn’t have time to be rescued. “I can’t stay here, Jace. They’re coming back for me. And they have Robyn. I have to get her back before they hurt her.”

“No!” A car door slammed and Jace’s engine roared to life. He was already on the go, no doubt with his three best enforcers. “Abby, do
not
go after them. That’s an order.”

“Jace, they’re gonna kill her!” And by the time they got around to that, she’d be begging for it.

“And if you go after them, they’ll kill you too.”

“I can handle myself. I’ve been training with Faythe.”

“Sounds like you picked up more than just her left hook,” he muttered, and in the background, another tom chuckled. “Faythe’s an Alpha, and before that, she was an enforcer. You’re an elementary-ed major with two summers’ worth of self-defense. Sit tight. We’ll be there in an hour.”

“She’ll be dead by then!”

“But you won’t.”

I hesitated. I honestly did, because disobeying an Alpha was serious shit. Even a young, hot Alpha I’d known my whole life. But Robyn was the priority. “I’m sorry, Jace,” I whispered, digging through my pack again for an extra set of thick socks. “You can kick me out of the Pride if you want, but I have to help Robyn. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Abby, no—!” he started, while his enforcers went apeshit in the background. I flipped the phone closed, put it on silent, then slid it into my pocket.

The phone buzzed as I pulled my socks on, then again while I dug Olsen’s pack from the pile. He had a hunting knife. I’d seen it. And in human form, I would need it.

I slid the knife into a loop on the right leg of my pants, then crossed the clearing and grabbed the insulated jacket they must have made Robyn take off before they tied her up. Her small folding knife was in the right pocket, and the material was still warm from her body heat. I couldn’t believe how fast everything had happened.

Armed, dressed, and now fairly warm, I knelt next to Dani, avoiding looking at the guys. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, as I unlaced her hiking boots. Mine were a quarter mile away, in the opposite direction. “I hate to leave you like this, but I have to help Robyn. I swear they’ll pay for what they did to you.”

Fortunately, she had small feet, so the boots were only half a size too big, and with an extra pair of socks, I could barely tell.

Finally as ready as I was gonna get, I put on my hiking pack and stepped into the woods with only a single glance back and a fleeting bolt of sympathy for the forensics team which would soon be confused over her bare feet, the paw prints, and the drops of blood from the cut on my arm.

I headed in the direction I’d last heard Steve’s, Billy’s, and Robyn’s footsteps, mentally crossing my fingers that they would stick to that heading—that they’d actually known where they were going from the moment they’d left the campsite. My human form kept weight off my injured arm, but for that advantage—that necessity—I’d sacrificed most of my enhanced feline senses. My nose and ears were still more sensitive than a human’s, but they were nowhere near the advantage they would have been in cat form. And the flashlight I carried was no substitute for feline vision, a huge benefit in the dark.

After a quarter mile, I was freezing, exhausted from Shifting without eating, and reeling from the trauma of what I’d seen. Reality had finally hit me, and shock was like a cold blanket wrapped around me so tight I could hardly breathe, let alone think.

My arm throbbed with each beat of my heart, and by the time I’d gone half a mile, blood had soaked through both my shirt and Robyn’s jacket. That one Shift hadn’t been enough to completely close the wound, and moving my arm had kept the blood flowing. Frustrated, I turned the flashlight off and shoved it into the side pocket of my pack, then used my free hand to apply pressure to my cut. But then I couldn’t see.

Damn it! How was I supposed to save Robyn when I couldn’t even find her?

You’re not cut out for this, Abby. Jace was right. You should just sit down and wait to be rescued. Again
.

But if I did that, Robyn would die, scared, alone, and in pain. Just like Dani. And I’d be the coward who’d damned her.

You’re not using your resources
 … a new voice in my head said, and she sounded for all the world like Faythe.
You’re not human, and you’re not helpless, so why pretend on either count?

I closed my eyes, and the memory came back in full. We were training in the barn, at night, with the lights off. I could hear her when she spoke, but the others were silent, and I couldn’t see any of them. Because then, like now, I wasn’t using my resources. My senses.

The partial Shift
. Standard procedure now, for all enforcers patrolling in human form, and one of the first things Faythe had taught me.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and forced everything else from my mind. The cold, the dark, the pain in my arm … None of that mattered. Robyn mattered. Finding her. Saving her.

Avenging the others.

Pain shot through my right eye, followed by an answering spear through my left. The pressure was enormous, like my eyeballs would pop right out of my head. But they didn’t, and when the pain faded, when I finally opened my eyes, I could see. The colors were muted, of course, as they were for me in cat form, but the woods were clear, each tree crisply outlined by the little available moonlight.

I grinned. This was going to work.

My ears were next, and they were a real bitch. Shifting them was more complicated, and the pain was like needles being jabbed through my eardrums and into my brain. But when it was over the difference was unbelievable. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing in human form until I could suddenly hear like a cat.

Rodent heartbeats. Wind rustling branches far over my head and half a mile away. An owl, halfway across the damn forest, swooping on its prey with a rush of air unique to that particular wing formation and dive pattern.

And beneath all that, the steady, low-pitched hum of machinery. A generator.

Steve’s cabin. It had to be.

I let go of my injured arm and took off through the woods, easily avoiding fallen logs and jutting branches now that I could see them. Cold air burned my lungs, but I barely felt it. I was buoyed by the hope blooming in my chest. I could save her. I could make up for failing to save Dani. And maybe in doing that, I could prove to myself for good that the cowering, helpless Abby was gone. The men in the cage had killed her, but from her ashes, this new phoenix was born, and she was ready to unleash justice on their brothers in crime.

Justice and pain. Lots of pain.

Half a mile later, the cabin came into view, its generator growling now, in my sensitive ears. It drowned out any sounds I might have been able to hear from inside, and it was almost too much for my pounding head to take, so I Shifted my ears back as I watched the cabin, crouched behind a shelter of tall, thick ferns. But I kept my cat eyes. Feline pupils would adjust to the light inside the cabin. Once I got in.

The cabin was small—why did they need such a big generator?—and I couldn’t see any movement through the windows. So after several minutes of nothing, I eased my pack off my shoulders and onto the ground, then ran hunched over to crouch beneath the uncovered front window, painting a square of untamed forest floor with light from within.

A couple of minutes later, when no one charged out of the cabin wielding a knife, I dared a careful glimpse through the glass—and nearly melted with relief.

Robyn lay on the floor against the back wall of what looked like some backwoods hunter’s private retreat, bound with duct tape now, but still fully clothed. And completely alone, except for the half dozen disembodied deer heads staring down at her from the rustic paneled walls.

The trophies were grotesque and gratuitous, a horror only humans would find tasteful. At least werecats ate what they hunted.

Robyn didn’t see me—her eyes were closed—and I couldn’t hear anything over the growl of the generator, but there was only one door leading off the main room, and it was closed. Surely if Steve and Billy had still been there, they’d have been watching their prisoner—or worse.

Maybe they’d already gone back for me. They’d never expect me to find them—or even to know who they were—and they probably wouldn’t expect Robyn to escape, considering that her ankles were taped together. But I could fix that.

I pulled my knife from the loop on my pants, and crouch-walked to the front door. The knob didn’t move, but it was secured with only a twist lock. I turned it hard to the right. The lock snapped, and then the door creaked open several inches. I froze. It was louder than I’d expected, even with the generator’s constant grumbling. But when Robyn didn’t wake up and no one stormed into the room, I took a deep breath and stepped into the cabin, then closed the door softly at my back so I could listen.

The generator was quieter inside the cabin but still covered both my heartbeat and Robyn’s. My cat’s pupils narrowed, adjusting quickly to the influx of light. And there she was, only fifteen feet away. She was unconscious—obvious, now that the generator and my B and E had failed to wake her—but with any luck, I could haul her far enough away to risk trying to wake her up. Werecat strength was the only advantage that translated fully into human form. Thank goodness.

Eager now, and more than a little nervous, I raced across the room toward Robyn—then fell flat on my face when my feet slipped out from under me.

What the hell?

Stunned, I lay on the floor on my stomach, still gripping the knife in one hand. I was too surprised to think, my mouth open, trying to drag in the breath I’d lost. My empty hand curled in the carpet, and I froze.

It wasn’t carpet; it was a rug. A very
familiar
-feeling rug, which had slid out from under my feet as I ran.

No …

Horror filled me like darkness leaking into my soul. I closed my mouth and drew in a deep breath through my nose

Nonononono!
The rug was fur. Smooth, soft, solid black fur.

Werecat fur.

I shoved myself to my knees and scrambled away from the morbid accent piece until my back hit the wall. I inhaled again, my hands shaking, my knife clattering into the hardwood over and over again.

I didn’t recognize the individual scent. If I had—if I’d known the tom who died to make that rug—I might have lost it right then. As it was, I was still shaking in Dani’s boots when the front door opened a second later, and Steve walked in, carrying my hiking pack.

“Hello, Abby.” His knife glinted in the overhead light as he dropped my pack at his feet and closed the door. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

My fist clenched around my own knife, but I was no longer sure it would do any good. The truth tapped at the back of my brain like a woodpecker on a really tough trunk, but I couldn’t let it in. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible.

The door on my left creaked open, and Billy stepped out of a darker room, bringing with him the scents of blood, and fur, and some harsh, acrid chemical. Did they stuff the deer heads here? In the cabin? “For now, we just want your company. But soon, we’re gonna need you to Shift. That’s what you call it, right?”

He raised his knife, still stained with Dani’s blood, and pointed to the far end of the room. My gaze followed reluctantly, and that’s when I saw what hadn’t been visible through the small front window.

I gasped, then choked on my next breath. I blinked, but the horrible images didn’t go away. They wouldn’t even blur mercifully, as Mitch’s body had. Instead, they stared down at me, through eyes too much like my own. Four werecat heads, mounted in a row on the far wall, on identical wooden plaques. They had their mouths open, lips curled back as if they were hissing, but the pose was artificial. Arranged postmortem. I could see that, even if they couldn’t.

Three of them were strangers. Probably strays, based on the fact that I hadn’t heard of that many missing Pride cats. But the fourth, the last one on the right, was Leo Brown, one of Jace’s enforcers. He’d gone missing during his vacation a few months earlier, and no one had ever found a single sign of him. Until now.

“I…” I closed my eyes, then forced my gaze back to Steve. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Denial. It was instinct, if not exactly flawless logic.

“Oh?” Steve raised one brow, glancing at my bloody sleeve, then back to my face. “How’s your arm?”

And that’s when the truth became too much to deny. They knew what I was. They’d known all along. They’d followed me into the woods, and my friends had paid the price.