But I didnt, because Vic screamed on my brothers other side, near the end of the car. Then he stumbled into view and fell to the gravel on his rump. The cat hed been fighting pounced, driving his shoulders to the ground.
Ethan! I shouted in midswing, because my brother was closest. He glanced at me, then followed my gaze to Vic.
Im on it. He lunged to the left, swinging even as he dove for Vics shovel. His blow glanced off the nearest cat, but he came up with a weapon in each hand. Swinging wildly now, Ethan knocked the cat off Vic with the shovel, then threw the ax end over end so fast I could hardly trace it. The blade thunked into the side of another cat, who dropped to the ground, chest heaving and pouring blood.
Ethan picked Vic up and nearly tore open the rear door of the Suburbanthat one was unlocked, thankfully. Then he shoved Vic into the cargo compartment and slammed the door. As soon as he turned, another stray was on him.
Marc! I shouted, aiming my shovel at an anonymous feline torso. Vics hurt.
I know. He knocked his opponent out with a blow to the head, then kicked a cat about to charge me. There were only half a dozen strays left standing now, and most of those were hurt. Wed won, even outnumbered and in human form. Or so I thought.
A deep bleating roar from the woods across the road caught my attention. Reinforcements. We were exhausted, and the fucking strays had backup. From the sound of it, the troops were still a mile away or so, but when they arrived, wed be screwed. Or worsedead.
Determined to take my break while I could, I set my shovel on the ground and leaned against the side of the car, frigid against my back, even through my jacket. My sore arms hung at my sides and I took several deep breaths, letting the cold reinvigorate me. The air smelled like blood and pine, an oddly festive combination.
My arm throbbed where that bastard had bit me, and though frozen blood crusted the rip in my pants, my leg had stopped bleeding. But it hurt with every move I made.
Marc watched me inspect my wounds, his eyes shining in the glare from the Suburbans headlights. He glanced from me to the woods, where the reinforcements presumably raced toward us. Faythe, get in the car, he said over the disharmonious yowls of the injured cats. His eyes never left the trees, though he was breathing hard and bleeding from countless gashes. With you and Manx gone, theyll have no reason to keep fighting. Ethan, get them out of here. Painter and I will clean up, and Ill call you when we leave.
Im not leaving you behind! I shouted, and only when my breath puffed up in front of my eyes did I realize I could no longer feel my fingers. Or my nose. Id cooled down too quickly after that first round and was now getting stiff.
Marc nodded to Ethan, who sidestepped an injured but still hissing cat and pulled open the driver-side door. He shoved me inside before I could protest, then climbed in after me.
Buckle up, he ordered, already sliding the gearshift into Drive. If you go through the windshield, Im not stopping for you. He swerved around several motionless feline forms glinting with moonlight and blood. We slid for a moment on ice, and I whacked my head on the window, then gravel crunched when we pulled off the shoulder and back onto the road. As we drove away, I saw Marc and Painter walking backward toward the trees on our side of the road, each pulling two dead cats by the tails.
We cant just leave them, I insisted, as Manx crouched over Des in the car seat behind me.
Ethan sighed, eyes on the rearview mirror. Theyre moving bodies, not storming the Bastille. Theyll be on the road in a couple of minutes.
We should have helped, I snapped, turning to stare through the rear window as Marc went back for another corpse. How many had we killed? And what the hell do you know about the Bastille?
He shrugged, squinting into the patch of road illuminated by the headlights. Angela wrote a paper on the French Revolution.
And you read it? My tone conveyed more than adequate skepticism. Angela, his girlfriend, was a college senior. It was an odd pairing, to say the least, but their relationship had outlasted my most conservative estimate by nearly three months.
No one had won the office pool.
I am literate. And no, we should not have helped Marc and Painter. We should get Manx and the baby to safety. Ethan wiped a dark smear from his forehead with the back of one palm. Not to mention Vic. Hes bleeding pretty badly.
Oh yeah.
The crinkle of plastic drew my eyes to the third row, where Vic was spreading black plastic sheeting across the seat, to catch his own blood. Even injured, he was trying to protect his upholstery. Must have been a guy thing.
But my brother was righta decidedly odd turn of events. So I took one last look at Marc and Painter and made my way to the back of the vehicle to see what I could do for Vic. Then we did what I couldnt remember any Pride cat ever doing before: we ran from the strays.
Wed been driving for about ten minutes when Marc called my cell phone.
You guys okay? I asked by way of a greeting, as I fiddled with the vent above the rear bench seat. Id bandaged Vic as well as I could, then stayed in the back to keep an eye on him.
Over the line, Painters crappy old engine protested as he accelerated. They were on the road, too. All scratched up, but Ive been worse, Marc said.
Me, too, Painter spoke up, his voice slightly muffled from distance to the phone.
What happened? Des started to fuss behind me, and I looked up to see Manx dig a capped pacifier from a pale blue diaper bag.
Marc exhaled deeply over the phone. After you guys left, their motivation faded. We dragged the dead ones into the trees. Same with the unconscious ones.
What about the rest?
The strays who could walk hobbled off on their own. We knocked the rest of them out and moved them into the trees with the others.
How many bodies? Vic called from behind me, his excitement obvious, even through the pain in his voice. Id never heard of Pride cats facing foes in such great numbers before, and wed more than held our own. The news would travel fast, and surely even my fathers opponents would be impressed. How could they not be?
Six dead, Marc said. Five unconscious. Seven more injured, but awake until we fixed that oversight. At least three got away.
Ethan whistled as he changed lanes, and I did the math in my head, gasping at the total. Twenty-one strays, all working together?
My brother huffed. Plus however many would have been in the second wave. The very thought of which made me shudder.
What do you think they wanted? I said into the phone, staring out the window at the passing darkness. After the ambush, my imagination was working overtime, and I kept thinking I saw eyes staring out at me from the woods.
Well, they werent dressed for conversation, Marc said. In fact, they werent dressed for anything, which was his point. It was impossible to negotiateor even make demandswithout human vocal cords.
The strays had come to kill. But why?
We need to call Dad. Ethan flicked off the high beams when headlights appeared on the road in front of us.
Already have. Soda fizzed and Marc gulped in my ear, and I pictured him drinking directly from Painters two-liter of Coke. Hes sending a crew to take care of the bodies. He paused for another drink. Theres a Holiday Inn just off the Meadville exit. Check in and get several adjoining rooms. Preferably on the back side. Well be there in half an hour.
What do you think they wanted? I said into the phone, staring out the window at the passing darkness. After the ambush, my imagination was working overtime, and I kept thinking I saw eyes staring out at me from the woods.
Well, they werent dressed for conversation, Marc said. In fact, they werent dressed for anything, which was his point. It was impossible to negotiateor even make demandswithout human vocal cords.
The strays had come to kill. But why?
We need to call Dad. Ethan flicked off the high beams when headlights appeared on the road in front of us.
Already have. Soda fizzed and Marc gulped in my ear, and I pictured him drinking directly from Painters two-liter of Coke. Hes sending a crew to take care of the bodies. He paused for another drink. Theres a Holiday Inn just off the Meadville exit. Check in and get several adjoining rooms. Preferably on the back side. Well be there in half an hour.
Adjoining rooms would make it easier to keep an eye on Manx and the baby, and parking in the back would help hide our vehicles, in case the second wave of strays came looking for us.
Got it. See you in a few. I hung up the phone and immediately wished Id told him I loved him, especially considering how close wed all just come to dying. How you holding up, Vic? I twisted again to look at him in the constant ebb and flow of the highway lights, now that we were on an actual highway, instead of some dark, two-lane back road.
The bleedings slowed, he said, accompanied by the crinkle of plastic. But my arm stings like a bitch.
Dont worry, well get you all fixed up.
Forty-five minutes later, I sat in the center of the left-hand bed in the hotel room Vic and Ethan would share. Their room was connected by a currently open set of back-to-back doors to another room, where Manx sat in a wheeled desk chair, nursing Des. Again.
Marc and I had our own room, next to Manxs, but not connecting. A little privacy was all wed be able to salvage from the botched transport/reunion. That, and dinner together, if Ethan and Painter ever returned with food.
Okay, lets take a look at the damage, Marc said from the end of the other bed. He clenched the shoulder of Vics T-shirt and pulled. Seams split with a rapid-fire popping sound, and the detached material slid fromVics arm to the floor. Wed learned through experience that the torn-sleeve approach was much easier than making the patient pull his shirt over his head with an injured arm.
I sucked in a deep breath at the sight of Vics gored arm, and my fist clenched around the hideous orange-and-yellow-print comforter. But Marc didnt even blink. Hed seen worse. Hell, hed been through worse.
So had I, come to think of it. I fingered the healed slash marks on the left side of my abdomen as I stared at Vics arm. My scars were ten weeks old, and still pink, a permanent reminder of Zeke Radley and his Montana band of loyal/crazy strayswhich had just been dwarfed by the gang wed faced an hour earlier.
What do you want for the pain? Marc asked, angling Vics arm into the glow from the lamp on the bedside table. Why dont hotel rooms ever have overhead lights?
Vic grimaced. Whiskey.
Youre in luck. Marc smiled as he lifted a white plastic sack from the floor; he and Painter had made a supply run on the way. He pulled two bottles from the bag. One was Jack Daniels, the other hydrogen peroxide. But the clink from the sack as he set it down told me Marc was prepared for Vics second and third choices, too.
For the next twenty minutes, I watched Marc clean and stitch Vics wounds, grateful that they were shallow, if long and ugly.
I was next. Wed decided the bite marks on my arm could simply be bandaged, since they hadnt torn. But my leg needed stitches, and apparently that fact was nonnegotiable.
Marc held my arm to stabilize me as I hobbled across the dingy carpet to the cheap dinette, wearing only the tank top and snug boy-shorts I usually slept in. My pants had gone the way of Vics shirt and the remains were now draped over the unused chair on the other side of the table.
Marc knelt next to me and ran one hand up my bare leg, ostensibly inspecting the gashes above my right knee, and neither of us even pretended I was shivering from cold, or from shock. He hadnt touched me in months, and the pain of my injuries couldnt trump the feel of his hand on my skin. Squeezing. Stroking. Lingering
I clamped my jaws shut on a moan of both pain and pleasure, unwilling to embarrass either of us with my lack of control.
You ready? Marc asked, and I nodded hesitantly. In spite of many past injuries, Id never had homemade sutures, and had certainly never surrendered to them with nothing more than Tylenol for pain. Well, Tylenol and whiskeynot my drink of choice, but apparently sitting for stitches wasnt a margarita-sippin kind of event.
He smiled sympathetically and lifted my leg to slide a clean white towel from the bathroom beneath my thigh. Take a couple of drinks while I get you cleaned up.
For once, he didnt have to tell me twice. On the table sat two glasses. One Manx had half filled with whiskey, the other with Coke and ice from the vending machine in the lobby. I picked up the first glass and made myself gulp twice before chasing the contents with half the cup of Coke. I barely felt the sting of peroxide on my thigh because of the flames of whiskey in my throat.
Marc laughed and poured more soda. Then he picked up the thin, curved suture needle.
The hardest part was holding still. The needle didnt hurt much more than the gashes themselves. So as long as I didnt look, I was mostly okay. Even so, within minutes Id finished both glasses, and Vic crossed the room to refill them for me with his good arm.
We were both half-drunk, and probably looked pretty damn pathetic. The alcohol would wear off quickly, thanks to our enhanced metabolism, but I had a feeling the pathetic part would last a while. And leave scars.
Like I didnt have enough of those already
By the time Marc had sewed up my thigh, and cleaned and bandaged both my ankle and my arm, Ethan and Painter were back with dinner: five large pizzas, three more two-liters, and two dozen doughnuts.
Manx refused to leave Des, even with him asleep in the middle of the bed in the next room, with the connecting doors open. So she took a paper plate full of pizza back to her room. The rest of us spread out on the floor of Vic and Ethans room, pizza boxes open, plastic cups filled with one combination or another of soda, ice and alcohol. I had more Coke, with Absolut Vanilia, which Dan had picked up because he thought it might go down easier for me. He was right. If I held my nose while I swallowed, it tasted like Vanilla Coke.
Sort of.
So, how is the kid? Dan asked, a slice of pizza poised to enter his mouth, point first. She any closer to Shifting?
I shook my head. She wont even talk about it. And when you try to make her, she puts on her earphones and turns her music up loud enough to damage her own hearing.
Vic grinned at Ethan, and spoke with his mouth full. Michael says you should never have given her that damn thing.
Whatever. Ethan tossed his crust into a half-empty pizza box and grabbed another slice. Shes not turning up her music because she doesnt want to Shift, or because she doesnt want to talk about Shifting. Shes turning up her music cause shes a teenager. And because she doesnt want to hear any more of that psychobabble bullshit you all spout at her 24/7.