Shift

“Who is it?” I made no move for a closer look.

“Charlie.” Charles Eames was my uncle’s senior enforcer. His older brother was John Eames, the geneticist who’d discovered the truth about how strays were infected, and about Kaci’s “double recessive” heritage. Their father had been an Alpha up north when I was little, but none of his sons married. When he retired, his territory went to his son-in-law, Wes Gardner. Who was now firmly allied with Calvin Malone.

That particular tangle of family ties was just one example of why civil war would devastate the U.S. Prides. There were only ten territories, and everyone I knew had friends and relatives in most of the other Prides. Drawing lines of allegiance was very delicate work, and keeping them in place would be nearly impossible.

Charlie groaned again, and I steeled my spine, then stepped forward for a closer look. Marc came with me, and we knelt opposite my mother beside the downed tom. It took most of my self-control to hold in my gasp of shock and horror at what I saw.

Charles Eames lay with his head turned toward my mother, staring at her as if she were a meditative focal point. Perhaps the only thing keeping him conscious. Both of his arms and one leg were crooked—obviously broken at multiple points—and the bone actually showed through the torn skin of his left arm, where someone had ripped his sleeve open to expose the injury. Blood pooled from his arm, still oozing from the open wound.

“Needed a cigarette,” Charlie whispered to my mom. “Was only a few feet from the porch.” His eyes closed and he flinched as he drew in a deep breath.

My mother frowned and began unbuttoning his shirt. Gently she pulled the material from the waistband of his jeans and laid his shirt open to expose his torso. The left side of his chest was already blue and purple; at the very least, he’d broken several ribs, on the same side as his broken leg and the arm with the open fracture. He’d landed on his left side.

“How many were there?” My father bent to help my mom pull the rest of the shirt loose, and Charlie started shivering.

“Two. From the roof.” He flinched over another short inhalation, as every single head swung toward the house, to make sure we hadn’t just walked into a trap. But the roof was clear now. The birds wouldn’t take on so many of us at once. Hopefully.

I crossed my arms against the cold as Charlie continued, and my father shifted into his line of sight so the injured tom wouldn’t have to strain to see him. “I heard this whoosh, and when I turned around, they were on me.” He coughed, then swallowed, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. “Then I was in the air. One had my arm, one my ankle.”

“I can’t believe they could carry you,” I said, thinking of how the first thunderbird had struggled with Kaci, as little as she weighed.

“Weren’t trying to.” Charlie closed his eyes again, and spoke without opening them. “They took me up about thirty feet, then let me go.”

My own eyes closed in horror. They’d dropped him on purpose. And if he’d weighed any less, they might have dropped him from higher up. They weren’t trying to take him. They were trying to kill him.

When I opened my eyes, I found my father watching me, and I saw the same bitter comprehension behind the bright green of his eyes. Thunderbirds were unlike any foe we’d ever faced. They swooped in out of nowhere, then flew off once they’d inflicted maximum damage. We couldn’t defend ourselves from their talons, nor could we Shift fast enough to truly fight them. And we certainly couldn’t chase them across the sky.

In the span of a single hour, they’d injured Owen, gravely injured Charlie Eames, and killed Jake Taylor. We were down three men, at the worst possible time.

The lump in my throat was too big to breathe around. How could we fight Malone if we didn’t survive the thunderbirds?

“Greg…” Vic emerged from the crowd and my dad stood to take the phone he held out. “I got him on the line.”

“Thank you.” My Alpha turned to pace as he spoke into the phone, while my mother did what she could for Charlie. “Danny? How close are you?” He paused as Dr. Carver said something I couldn’t quite make out over the static. “Can you get here any faster?”

I squeezed Marc’s hand when it slid into my good one, and we followed my father away from the crowd to listen in on his call. If he hadn’t wanted anyone to hear, he’d have gone inside.

“Depends. Do you want me in one piece?” Carver asked, and my father sighed.

“Just hurry. These damn birds dropped Charlie Eames from thirty feet up. At best guess, I’d say he’s got six or seven broken bones, and he’s not exactly breathing easy.”

“Thirty feet?” I heard astonishment and horror in Carver’s voice, and faintly I registered his blinker beeping, unacknowledged by the distracted driver. “It’s a wonder he survived a fall like that.”

“He wouldn’t have, if he’d landed on his head. Or on anything other than the grass.” Fortunately, last week’s ice storm had melted and dampened the ground so that it squished beneath our feet, no doubt softening Charlie’s landing somewhat. “I think he has a concussion and he’s in a lot of pain. What should we do for him?”

Marc and I headed toward the gathering as my father nodded and “uh-huh’d” the doctor’s directions on how best to get Charlie inside without damaging him further. Kaci caught my attention, still sobbing softly on the edge of the crowd. Manx had taken the baby inside—it was still cold out, and Owen was alone in the house—so Jace had moved in to comfort the poor tabby, but he could do little in that moment to truly calm her.

“You need your coat,” I said, rubbing her arms when she started to shiver. But her problem was more than just the temperature.

“Is that what they were going to do to me?” Kaci stared straight into my eyes, refusing to be derailed by my concern for her health. “Were they going to drop me?” Her eyes filled with tears and her pitch rose into a near-hysterical squeal.

Jace frowned at me over her head, and I glanced to the left, where my mother and several of the enforcers were trying to follow Dr. Carver’s instructions. “Let’s go inside, where it’s—” safer “—warmer,” I said, thinking of Kai’s prediction and his fellow thunderbirds perched on our roof.

“No!” Kaci scowled, and my heart ached to see a younger version of an expression I’d worn time and again. “You can’t just tuck me away in some safe pocket and keep me in the dark.” People were looking now, and my mother frowned at me, warning me silently not to let Kaci upset Charlie any more than his numerous broken bones already had. But the tabby wouldn’t be quieted, and I recognized the determination in her expression—from my own mirror. “That was almost me, so I’m entitled to answers,” she insisted. “What do they want?”

I sighed, well aware that nearly everyone was watching us now, including Charlie. “They want revenge.”

My father’s eyebrows shot up, then his forehead wrinkled in a deep frown. He pushed Vic’s phone into my uncle’s hand without a word and stalked toward me. “I think it’s time I met this thunderbird.”

My father stood just in front of the folding chairs, staring down at the prisoner, who’d made no move to stand, even after my dad introduced himself as an Alpha. “I understand your people—your Flight—” he glanced at me for confirmation, and I nodded “—thinks we’re responsible for the death of one of your own? A young man?”

The thunderbird nodded but remained seated, his broken arm resting carefully in his lap, but not quite cradled, as if showing pain would be admitting weakness. Werecats had similar instincts. Weakness means vulnerability, and admitting such to an enemy could get your head ripped right off.

But his refusal to stand was an outright insult, and his bold eye contact said he damn well knew it.

“Your name is Kai?” my father continued; we’d filled him in upstairs. The thunderbird nodded again. “Do you have some kind of proof I can examine, Kai? Because to my knowledge, none of my men has ever even seen a thunderbird before today. And killing someone of another species is precisely the kind of thing I would hear about.”

Though, there were always surprises. Toms like Kevin Mitchell, whose crimes went unnoticed until it was too late.

Kai sat straighter, though it must have hurt the stilloozing gashes across his stomach. “We accepted evidence in the form of sworn testimony from a respected member of your own community.”

“Wait…” I crossed both arms over my chest and ventured closer to the bars, confident that the bird was now too weak and in too much pain to lunge for me. And that if I was wrong, I could defend myself from one caged bird with a broken wing. “Someone told you we killed your…cock?” I resisted the urge to grin. What was a crude joke to us was serious business to him, and making fun of our prisoner would not convince him to cooperate.

Still, that joke was begging to be told. Later, when we needed a tension breaker. Where Kai wouldn’t hear.

“Who?” I demanded, frowning down at him.

“Even if I wanted to tell you—” and it was clear that he did not “—it’s not my place to say.”

“So you won’t even tell us who’s accusing us?”

“No.” He turned slightly, probably looking for a more comfortable position on the floor, but flinched instead when the movement hurt.

“How is that…just?” I almost said fair, but bit my tongue before someone could remind me that life wasn’t fair. Few enforcers knew that better than I did.

The bird heaved a one-shouldered shrug with his back pressed against the cinder blocks. “We gave our word that we would guard his identity in exchange for the information he offered. We swore on our honor.” He looked so serious—so obviously committed to keeping his promise—that I couldn’t bring myself to argue. Instead, I turned to my father, shuffling one boot against the gritty concrete floor.

“It’s Malone.” To me, it seemed obvious. Of course, in that moment I was just as likely to claim that Calvin Malone was the worldwide source of all evil. So maybe mine wasn’t the most objective of opinions.…

For a minute, I thought he’d argue. But then my Alpha nodded slowly, rubbing the stubble on his chin with one hand. “That’s certainly a possibility.…”

“It’s more than that.” I unfolded my arms to gesture with them, careful not to turn my back to the caged bird. “Who else would try to frame us for killing a thunderbird?”

Marc raised one brow in the deep shadows, silently asking if I were serious. “Milo Mitchell. Wes Gardner. Take your pick.”

“If it was either one of them, he was acting on Malone’s behalf. It’s all the same.”

My father waved me into silence and turned back to the thunderbird. “If we don’t know who’s accusing us, how can we defend ourselves? Or investigate the accusation?”