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.
Wood creaked on my left as Billy squatted next to me, evidently unfazed by my knife. Or maybe he couldn’t see it, held so close to my opposite thigh. “You’re the first girl Shifter we’ve ever found. Been watching you for weeks now.”
“Psych 204?” I whispered, glancing up at Steve, who now leaned against the front door.
“A stroke of genius, if I say so myself. That’s also how I met your girl Robyn, and good ol’ Mitch. When he mentioned you all were going camping, I was happy to suggest a good, private campsite. Not many people know about this place.”
Which was why it had seemed perfect for my solitary run.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t push beyond the fact that they knew. That they’d lured me there to be butchered, stuffed, and mounted. And I’d fallen for it. “You’re hunters?”
“Of the highest caliber,” Steve said, one side of his mouth turning up into a creepy grin. “You didn’t really think no one knew your little secret, did you?”
Actually, I had. I’d always assumed that if anyone knew we existed,
“Damn, Steve, look at this!” Billy grabbed my chin, and I gasped as he turned my face toward the light. My fist tightened around the knife handle, but I was biding my time. I couldn’t afford to miss. “She’s got cat eyes. Never seen that before. Maybe we should just cut her head off and mount it like this.”
“Hmmm. Dramatic…” Steve ambled closer for a better look. I jerked my chin from Billy’s grasp, seething on the inside. Waiting for the perfect moment. It would come.
When he was close enough, I closed my eyes and sent up a silent prayer. Then I dropped from my heels onto my rump and shoved my left leg out, grunting as I swept both of Steve’s out from under him.
Steve shouted as he went down. Billy blinked, surprised, and reached for Steve, but my arm was already in motion. I swung Mitch’s knife underhanded, as hard as I could. It slid into his stomach, up to the hilt. Warm blood poured over my hand. I pulled up, and the knife ripped through flesh toward his sternum.
Billy grunted, but never screamed. Steve scrambled backward and leapt to his feet. Billy fell over. His skull smacked the floorboards. Steve pulled his own knife from the sheath snapped onto his belt. And finally, I stood.
We faced off, circling slowly, as I tried to edge him away from Robyn, who still breathed shallowly on the floor. Now I could see the lump on the side of her head. She was bait, good for nothing more to them.
“You should probably know, guns are the most effective way to hunt a cat,” I said, wishing I could wipe blood from the hilt of my knife. It was getting slippery.
“Didn’t think we’d need them for a little girl. You’re more trophy than challenge.”
“And you’re all monster.” I circled toward the couch and a rickety-looking end table.
He rolled his eyes, sidestepping toward me. “Says the girl with fur and claws.”
“Says the woman who’s gonna spit on your corpse in about three minutes.”
“Yeah, I’m scared of a five-foot-nothin’ scrap of meat in borrowed boots. Your luck has run out, and in a couple of days, your pretty little head’s gonna be mounted on a plaque in a cabin in Mississippi, where the next cat monster will get one fleeting glimpse of pointed pupils and red hair before we nail him up right next to you.”
Mississippi was free territory, crawling with strays, most of whom wouldn’t be missed. He obviously knew at least a little about our culture. Had he questioned his other victims before killing them?
I edged to the right, glaring at him with all the force of my hatred. My right foot hit the leg of the end table. I tripped and went down on my ass. Hard. I dropped the knife, and let it slide across the floor.
Steve dropped on top of me, blade ready. I shoved my right hand into the jacket pocket. He grabbed a handful of my curls and pulled my head back, exposing my throat. I grinned up at him and pulled Robyn’s folding knife from her pocket. Steve’s eyes widened. I pressed the button, and the blade popped out even as I shoved it forward.
The three-inch blade slid between his ribs.
Steve grunted. I shoved him off and stood, Robyn’s knife sticky in my hand. He lay on the floor, blood pouring from his chest. I’d hit the heart, and his eyes were already glazing over. “But girl cats don’t fight,” he whispered, as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
I arched both brows and pulled my phone from my pocket. “Welcome to the new regime.”
Jace got there twenty minutes later, armed with three enforcers and everything necessary to clean up my mess. Robyn was still unconscious, but breathing, and with any luck, she’d sleep through everything she shouldn’t see.
When the cabin was clean, I would “find” Robyn and call the police, while Jace and his men watched from the treetops. Robyn would tell them what she remembered, but the cops would find no sign of the murderers, or of their morbid hobby. Jace and his men had already reclaimed all the cat trophies and would give our dead brothers a proper burial. And even if a forensics team found my blood at the campsite, they’d never piece together what had really happened. They’d think their samples were contaminated.
But for now, I sat with Robyn, watching the enforcers work, wearing clothes one of the toms had retrieved from where I’d left them. Jace knelt next to me on his way across the cabin, bulging trash bag in hand. “You okay?” he asked, for the fourth time in an hour.
“Yeah.” Better than I’d expected, considering I’d just killed three men and seen three friends murdered.
“Good.” He nodded, but his blue-eyed scowl was dark and angry. “You ever disobey an order again, and I’ll send you straight back to your father. Understood?”
“Yeah.” I stared at the floor, feeling guilty, but not guilty enough to apologize. I’d done the right thing. The only thing I could do. The thing he would have done, in my position.
“Now that that’s over…” Jace lifted my chin by one finger, so that I had to look at him, and this time, he was grinning. “Good work. If teaching kindergartners doesn’t hold the same appeal after this, let me know. I’ll have a job waiting for you, if you ever want it.”
My brows arched in surprise. “For real?”
Jace nodded, eyeing me carefully. Admiringly. “It’s in you now. I can see it.”
I smiled slowly. Because it was. It was deep inside me, like it had been inside Steve, until I’d cut it out of him. “It’s all about the hunt.”
MONSTERS
Lilith Saintcrow
Leonidas held court in a nightclub, a cliché come to life. I do not ever make the mistake of thinking such bad taste makes him any less lethal. The place was full of walking victims, predators, and the Kin. The guards at the door barely nodded as I stepped past, wild-haired and in a bedraggled blue velvet that was last fashionable when Her Majesty reigned. And the boots, heavy-soled and more expensive than a human life in this day and age.
