alternately staring at their butchered boyfriends and cringing up at their captors.
Three men stood between them and the campfire with their backs to me, each dressed in hunter’s camouflage. Two of them held hunting knives, still dripping blood onto the packed dirt. They were human, based on the scent, but every bit as monstrous as the cruelest Shifters I’d ever met. And one of them smelled vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t quite place his scent.
I backed carefully away from the bush concealing me and began to circle the clearing slowly and silently. I needed to be within pouncing distance before I made my move.
“Where is she?” the man in the middle demanded, and my heart actually skipped a beat. Did he mean me? Had they been watching us? Or had they simply seen five hiking packs and deduced an absence? Had they gone through my stuff to determine my gender?
“Where’s who?” Robyn said through chattering teeth, loyal to a fault. She would keep me out of this, even if it cost her last breath. But I couldn’t let that happen. They were scared and defenseless against men with knives, and I remembered being scared and defenseless. I remembered way too well.…
The man in the middle backhanded her, and Robyn fell over sideways, unable to right herself with her hands taped together in her lap. It took all of my self-control to hold in the growl itching at the back of my throat as I rounded the halfway point of the clearing. Drawing attention to myself before I was ready to fight would only get us all killed. That was one of the first things Faythe had taught me.
The tallest of the men hauled Robyn upright by one arm as I continued to circle silently, aching inside while she cried. “We know Abby was with you,” he said, and I froze in midstep. I recognized that voice. A few more feet, and my eyes confirmed what my ears already knew. Steve … something. He’d transferred into my psych class a week into the semester and had sat in the desk behind me ever since, trying to make conversation while I only nodded.
What the hell was going on? Had he followed us?
“Where’d she go?” the second man demanded, and I noticed as I edged along that the contents of both tents had been dumped in a pile about three feet from the campfire, including my sleeping bag and purse. Was this a robbery, or were they looking for me? Neither possibility made sense—college students don’t carry much cash, and I barely knew Steve and had never even met his accomplices.
The third man stepped forward, silently threatening Robyn and Dani with the knife when no one answered. My blood boiled, even as fear spiked my veins with adrenaline demanding to be used.
Robyn cringed, tears pouring down her cheeks. But Dani answered, staring at the blade now inches from her throat. “She went for a hike!”
“In the dark?” Steve crossed bulky arms over a bulkier chest, the tip of his knife tapping against the waist of his thick camo pants.
Dani shrugged, and I saw a spark of the stubborn defiance that made her fun to debate—and might soon get her killed. “She likes nature.”
“And she took a flashlight,” Robyn added, shaking violently, either from the cold or from shock. “Please, you can have anything you want. My purse is over there.” She nodded toward the pile of supplies. “Just take it and let us go.”
“Oh come on, this is a party!” Steve glanced at his friends with a look of anticipation that chilled my blood. “But we’re one girl shy. You have her number?” Robyn nodded slowly, and Steve glanced at the third man. “Tim, give her a call.”
I’d circled to within feet of my roommate by the time Tim—shorter and thicker than Steve—hauled Robyn to her feet. She whimpered when his hand slid into the front pocket of her jeans, and fresh tears rolled down her face. My claws curled into the underbrush, itching to rip through his flesh instead.
I watched Robyn and Tim, waiting for my opportunity to pounce, but in my head, I saw something else. Another man. Another place. A bruising grip on my own arm. A cruel, unwelcome hand, followed by pain, and screaming, and humiliation.
The bastard leered at Robyn until she closed her eyes; then he shoved her down again and flipped open her phone. He was already scrolling through the contacts list by the time she hit the ground. He pressed a couple of buttons, then held the phone to his ear, and they all waited.
But I already knew what would happen, and sure enough, a couple of seconds later, my phone rang out from inside my purse, on the edge of the pile of sleeping bags and hiking packs.
“Damn it, she didn’t take her phone!” Steve kicked my purse across the clearing without bothering to open it, as his dark-haired accomplice hung up Robyn’s phone.
Of course I hadn’t. My cat skin suffered an obvious and bothersome lack of pockets.
“Fine,” Steve said at last, having resigned himself to some inconvenient conclusion. “She’ll come back—where else could she go?” He shrugged. “We’ll just start the party without her.”
No … I recognized that tone. That slimy, hungry grin. I knew what would happen next, if I didn’t stop it.
Tim dragged Robyn away from Dani and closer to me. Robyn screamed and kicked, trying to twist free, but none of it fazed him. He dropped her on the ground and her head hit a fallen tree branch. Robyn moaned, dazed, and I could practically see the fight drain out of her.
“Get off her!” Dani shouted, struggling to get to her feet without the use of her hands. Her cheeks were dry and scarlet, fury eclipsing her fear, at least for the moment. She would fight them. And it would get her killed.
The third man glanced at Steve, brows raised, silently asking for permission. He hadn’t said a word so far, but his clenched fists spoke volumes.
Steve nodded and gestured toward Dani with one open hand. “She’s all yours, Billy. I’m holdin’ out for the little redhead.”
Me of course. Boy, wouldn’t he be surprised to see me sporting black fur and claws instead? One hundred and four pounds was only a scrap of a woman but added up to one hell of a cat. Not that he’d ever know it was me.
Billy shoved Dani down, then kicked her in the ribs before she could roll away. Bones cracked. Her shout ended in a grunt of pain, and then he dropped on top of her, his huge, bloody hunting knife pressed into her throat. “One more word, and I’ll cut your fucking head off.”
Silent tears rolled down Dani’s face, and each breath was a pained gasp. Her eyes closed and her head rolled to one side as he fumbled at the waistband of her jeans, and suddenly I couldn’t move.
No, that was all over. All but the terror. It had been two and a half years, yet the terror came back like a fucking razor-tipped boomerang. My heart beat too hard. The whole world began to go gray beneath memories of my own helplessness and humiliation.
But that was a lie told by the scared little girl still huddling in a dark corner of my mind. I’d grown up. I’d moved on. I’d learned to fight. True, my skills were unproven, but they were there, and they were a game changer. And beyond all of that, I was in cat form. They’d never recognize the Abby they were looking for in my current configuration of flesh and bone—and fur.
I
“No!” Robyn screamed, trying to shove Tim off with her bound hands. “Stop, please!”
And that was all I could take.
I leapt out of the bushes, fury now pulsing through my veins, hotter than blood. A growl rumbled from my throat and rolled across the clearing. I slammed into Tim’s side, knocking him off Robyn and onto the ground. My front paws pinned him to the dirt.
Around me, everyone froze. For one long second, they didn’t even breath, and several hearts actually skipped beats. Then Robyn took a single, shallow breath, and began edging away from us slowly, pushing herself with her feet because her hands were still tied. She was as scared of me as she was of him, and terror had now driven comprehension from her eyes. For the moment at least, Robyn had checked out.
