Shift (32 page)

Several of the thunderbirds glanced at me, presumably to substantiate or refute his claim, and I could only nod. Cat reflexes are phenomenal, and Lance’s were likely a little better than most, considering that he’d killed an adult thunderbird on his own, with only a scratch to show for it.

The birds shuffled forward as one, bobbing their heads, clucking and snapping aggressively, but no one came too close to him.

“Lance?” I said, announcing my presence as I approached him cautiously, Kaci still clinging to my left hand. “What are you doing? You can’t get down. You have nowhere to go.”

He didn’t answer, nor did he turn, and I was virtually certain he had no idea what his next move would be. He was flying by the seat of his proverbial pants, and since he couldn’t literally fly, there was no good way for this standoff to end.

Lance was five feet from the porch now, and Wren struggled in earnest. Her face was scarlet, her cries punctuated with the occasional squawk and high-pitched avian cry.

“Lance, put her down. You wouldn’t hurt a child. What happened with Finn was…like an accident.” I chose my words carefully, afraid that if I took his side to talk him into letting the girl go, the fifty thunderbirds at my back would take me at my word. They didn’t seem to understand the art of manipulation. “But you’re not a baby-killer. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do this.”

He stiffened, and the child squealed when his arm tightened around her waist. “I’m not going to live at all.”

“She’s just a baby!” Kaci cried, and I glanced at her in surprise. “How can you kill her? No matter what else you’ve done, you don’t hurt babies. Only monsters kill kids.”

I squeezed her hand, as horrified as she was. What had happened to Parker’s little brother? Did Malone corrupt everyone he came into contact with? Or could Lance truly be scared out of his mind? Could mere fear turn an ordinary—if spineless—man into a monster?

Lance stepped through the open doorway and onto the ledge. Kaci and I followed, and she let go of my hand to press her back to the front wall, unwilling to go near the edge.

Four thunderbirds followed us out—including Brynn, Cade and Coyt—and dozens more peered through the doorway and the huge windows, their talons scratching against the floor.

I held my breath as Lance stepped toward the edge, and finally, a foot from the end of the porch, he turned and addressed the three male thunderbirds who’d come out with us. “Take me down. Take me down and swear to let me go, and I’ll give back the baby. I swear.”

That time the birds didn’t have to confer. It was Brynn who answered, reaching toward her child with now-human arms. “You will not leave our territory alive, and if you kill my daughter, you will watch us eat parts of your body for days. Your death will be so slow and painful you will beg for the end long before it comes.”

Lance gaped at her, eyes glazing over in shock, shoulders slumped beneath the weight of the inevitable. Then, before I could process the sudden, insane upturn of the corners of his mouth, he stepped backward and off the porch, still holding the child.

“N
o!” Brynn launched herself off the porch, sprouting wings in midair. An instant later, a violent gust blew my hair into my face and feathered flesh hit my arm so hard I was pushed forward two steps. Cade—or maybe Coyt—dove off the edge of the porch.

I grabbed the porch support post and looked down. Cade—in his mad nosedive—overtook the flapping Brynn quickly. He was bearing down on Lance and Wren before I’d blinked twice. Talons extended, he grabbed Lance by both shoulders and threw out his wings to slow their descent.

But he was too late, and Lance was too heavy.

Cade was thrown off balance by the sudden weight he carried and veered to the left, struggling to rise with his burden. Then he overcorrected and careened madly toward the tree line. Another sudden twist kept Cade and his cargo from smashing into the trees, but halted his awkward upward progress. Mere feet from the ground, he managed one last powerful beat of his wings, and he and his cargo bobbed upward. Then, when they started to fall, he rolled them all to the side, using one massive wing to shield Lance—thus Wren—from the ground as it rushed up to meet them.

The trio landed hard, and even from two hundred feet above, I heard the muted crash-thud of the impact, and Cade’s awful screech of agony. He was hurt—badly—but thanks to his sacrifice, his unwitting passengers were fine.

Lance stood and shoved the bird’s body over, earning another terrible squawk from Cade. Then, as Brynn thumped to a landing thirty feet away, Lance stepped over the huge, broken wing and took off for the woods, Wren still in hand and screaming her half-human head off.

Shit!
The forest was our home turf, and my guess was that since thunderbirds couldn’t fly in such confined quarters, they spent very little time in the woods, even in human form. Brynn would never catch Lance, and neither would any of the half-dozen other birds who rushed past me and off the edge of the porch.

Below, Marc and Jace alternately stared up at us and watched the procession of birds dropping from the overhead dwelling, but I couldn’t see their expressions in the fading light from such a distance. However, neither seemed eager to take off into the woods with the first few birds who Shifted, then ran naked into the forest. Not that I could blame my guys. They had no idea what had happened.

“Hey!” I grabbed the wing of the nearest bird before he could leap from the porch and almost got my hand bitten off when he whirled and snapped at me. Then he dove off the porch, soaring toward the tree line on huge, spread wings.

Frantic, I turned, still clinging to the post, and spied Kaci pressed against the front of the building, her eyes wide in terror as bird after bird rushed by her. At her side stood a familiar male bird, naked and almost fully human in form. “Coyt!” I had to shout to be heard over the thunderous beat of wings, but the bird looked up. I had no idea why he hadn’t already joined the procession, and there was no time to ask. “Take me down. Please!”

He shook his head, and I realized he was guarding us. And suddenly it occurred to me that we might not be allowed to leave if Lance wasn’t caught. Somehow I was sure that having my evidence abscond with a baby thunderbird would not fulfill my part of the bargain.

I shoved my way through the birds still waiting to take to the air and laid one hand on Kaci’s shoulder to comfort her, while I stared up at Coyt. “Take me down. You guys will never find Lance in the woods, but I can. I can get Wren back.”

Coyt hesitated, glancing around as if looking for a consensus before making a decision on his own. But there were fewer than a dozen adult birds left on the porch—and even fewer still inside—and none of them paid us any mind.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed his arm to seize his attention. “You want her back? Take me down.”

And finally he nodded. Without a word, Coyt grabbed me by my left arm and pulled me roughly toward the edge of the porch. “Wait!” I shouted as his hand became a claw and feathers sprouted from his arms. “Her, too! Have someone take her to…my men.”

Coyt glanced back at Kaci, who now stared at us both in horror, frozen in shock and fear. No doubt she’d hoped for a calmer, more peaceful rescue, but I wasn’t going to leave her in the nest waiting for a more considerate ferry.

Coyt grabbed the nearest bird, and his voice was screechy when he spoke, pointing at Kaci. “Take the kitten down.”

The other bird nodded curtly and stomped to the far end of the long porch, where there was room to literally spread his wings. Then he took to the air, right there on the porch, rising almost to the ceiling in three powerful beats of his wings.

He dove and reached for Kaci, but she cowered away from his talons, edging toward the door.

“Kaci! He’s going to take you to Marc and Jace. Come on!”

She took a deep breath, then nodded and stepped forward, her hedging confidence based on nothing other than the fact that I’d asked her to do something. On her belief that I would never let her get hurt.

The bird seized Kaci by her arms and launched them both from the porch. Kaci screamed the whole way down.

I didn’t wait to see them land. Instead, I turned to Coyt. “There’s one more thing. Cats hunt mostly with their ears, and I won’t be able to find them with your entire Flight stomping through the woods. I need you to call them off so I can hear Lance and Wren.”

He frowned. “We will not stop looking for Brynn’s daughter.”

I shrugged and stared up at him, trying to convey competence and confidence in my gaze. “Well, you won’t find her, either. I’m your best bet at getting Wren back alive, so you either call your people off or get ready for another funeral. Which will it be?”

Coyt’s frown spread into a hard scowl as he considered. It took him three long seconds—more wasted time—to make up his mind. “I will call them back.”

“Good.” I raised my arms, ready to be flown. “Can you carry me on your own?” I asked, remembering that it had taken two birds to safely balance my weight before.

Coyt shrugged and spread his wings. “Down is easier than up.”

Not exactly confidence-inspiring…

But before I could protest, he lifted himself into the air and grabbed my arms in both talons. An instant later we were in the air, my hair whipping around my face and neck, my arms bruised by his fierce grip.

We fell more than we flew, and Coyt used his massive wings like a glider, slowing our descent and directing us toward the tree line. Several terrifying seconds later, he dropped me two feet from the ground, then thumped to the earth behind me, already half-human.

I glanced back to see Kaci clinging to Jace in the middle of the road, and Marc racing toward me in the last rays of the scarlet sun. He may have been pissed, but he wouldn’t let me hunt alone.

I ducked into the trees and veered sharply to the left of the path the human-form birds were stomping, to keep from getting trampled. My clothes hit the ground, and I shivered—nudity in February is rarely fun—then dropped to the ground on all fours, glad I’d taken the time to fully heal my right arm. I was halfway through my Shift—groaning over the popping in my joints—when Marc dropped to the ground next to me, already nude.

I’m a faster Shifter than he is, and I already had a head start, so when I rose in my newly feline form, I rubbed my cheek against his flank in greeting, then bounded off into the woods, on alert for the sound of rushed footsteps, or Wren crying.

Unfortunately, the woods were
alive
with footsteps. Human-form birds crashed through the forest all around me, and I couldn’t distinguish one loud, ungainly set of feet from another. And if Wren was crying or calling for her mother, I couldn’t hear her over the stampede in progress.

Damn it, Coyt!

I sat back on my haunches and was about to give as loud a roar as I could manage, when an unearthly screech ripped through the night. My feline ears were much more sensitive than the human version, so Coyt’s appeal to his fellow birds was like fingernails raked down the chalkboard of my sanity.

Whining, I lowered my head to the earth and covered it with my paws until the sound stopped. When I rose, the footsteps were still there, but now they were crashing in the opposite direction: toward the road where Jace waited with Kaci.

When most of the birds had gone, I ventured forward silently, on alert for any movement around me. The sun had finally sunk below the horizon while I was Shifting, but the residual light reflected in the sky was more than enough for me to see by in feline form.

As I walked, I classified each sound as my ears picked it up. The scurry of some small animal through the underbrush. A rabbit? They don’t hibernate. Wind rattling the skeletal branches of the deciduous trees sprinkled among the pines. The distant chatter and screech of dozens of scared, angry thunderbirds.

Marc joined me several minutes into my search, his approach even closer to true silence than my own. Together we walked and listened.

I was just about to point him in another direction—we could cover more ground if we split up—when an avian screech speared my brain. I froze, and Marc went stiff at my side. The screech was too loud to have come from the birds presumably gathered in the road.

Wren. It had to be, unless one of the thunderbirds hadn’t heeded Coyt’s call.

I whined softly, then tossed my head in the direction the sound had come from. Marc nodded, and we took off together.

Two minutes later, a human child’s cry came from that same direction, followed by the distinctive snap of a twig beneath someone’s foot. Lance was too busy trying to keep Wren in hand to worry about moving silently. She was going to get him caught. If he had let her go, he might well have gotten away.

A quarter of a mile later, I glimpsed movement between two trees, and froze. Marc saw it, too. He tossed his head to the right, and I nodded. We would split up and approach them from two directions. He went left; I went right.

I picked my way silently around clumps of evergreen brush and tall, broad pine trees, avoiding the sparsely sprinkled deciduous trees both because the lack of foliage left me exposed and because the fallen twigs would snap beneath my paws.

Lance crashed through the undergrowth fifteen feet away, struggling to hold on to the squirming, crying toddler who twisted to peck at him with her beak one minute, then reached up in the next instant to tangle human fingers in his hair. Scared and angry, the toddler went stiff and let loose an eardrum-bursting screech without letting go of his hair. He jerked in surprise, and she came away with two great handfuls of dark waves.

Lance shouted in inarticulate pain and stopped to reposition the child. He crooned to her for almost a minute as he went, and when that didn’t pacify her, he started yelling. “Shut up! Just for one minute, shut the
fuck
up!”

A growl built in my throat, and I struggled to swallow it to keep from exposing myself, though I had serious doubts he could hear me over Wren’s cries and his own yelling.

I edged along with Lance, unseen, waiting for Marc to get into place; his had been the longer, more circuitous route. And finally I caught a glimpse of movement beyond Lance. Just a smear of shadow among heavily laden pine boughs, but that was enough. Marc was in position.

I was all ready to pounce when it occurred to me that in cat form, I’d have no way to hold the child, even if he handed her over voluntarily.
Damn it!

Beyond frustrated and out of options, I retreated as quietly as I could and squirmed beneath the drooping boughs of a pine tree to force one of the fastest Shifts I’d ever done, counting on Marc to keep up with Lance in my absence. They couldn’t have gone far in under two minutes. Not with a screaming, struggling toddler in tow.

Fully human, I cursed silently as I crawled out from under the tree on my hands and knees, scratching my undefended human skin on pinecones, twigs and thorns. My hair caught in the pine needles over my head, and my toes sank into brittle leaves.

When I stood, naked, I couldn’t stop shaking from the cold, and I had to grind my teeth together to keep them from chattering. Wincing each time a thorn dug into my foot or a branch slapped my bare torso, I picked my way quickly toward Lance, whom I could still hear struggling with Wren.

Minutes later, I had Lance back in sight, and after several seconds of searching, I pinpointed Marc in the foliage behind him. Thank goodness I’d left my eyes in cat form. The silent, curious angle of Marc’s head illustrated his confusion and frustration over my Shift, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Nothing except back me up.

Lance stopped again to hoist Wren higher on his hip, still facing away from his body. She clearly felt heavier after a half-mile trek through the woods than when he’d first picked her up. She struggled and managed to catch his index finger in her beak while he adjusted his grip.

“Damn it!” Lance shouted. Blood welled from his finger, fragrant among the more bland scents of the winter-dead forest. “Hold still!” he shouted, trying to transfer her from one arm to the next.

Time to move
. Very soon he’d either drop her, and she’d escape into the woods, or he’d lose his temper.

I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the tree shielding me from sight. “Give me the baby, Lance.”

He gasped and squinted at me in the dark, without the benefit of Shifted eyes. Movement behind Lance told me that Marc was there but would stay out of sight in case we needed the element of surprise. “Faythe?” Lance asked, still squinting.

“Who else?” I stepped closer, and his eyes only widened briefly when he realized I was naked. “Give her to me, so I can take her back to her mother. You don’t need her anymore. Why didn’t you let her go?”

“You don’t understand. They’ll hunt me, no matter where I go. This little shit machine is the only thing that will stop them from killing me when they find me.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “But they’re not even looking for you. I told them I’d bring her back, and they’re all waiting for us in the road. Give her to me, and you can run a lot faster.”