Hunt: A Shifters Short Story

  Beneath my front paws, Tim was sweating in spite of the cold, and his scent was part fear, part adrenaline. But not enough fear. I leaned closer, and the aggressive huff of breath from my nose blew his dark hair back. I sank my claws through his thick camo jacket and into flesh. He flinched and when his mouth dropped open in surprise, I saw blood staining his teeth.

  I sniffed while he shook in terror beneath me. The blood was Robyn’s. The bastard had bitten her.

  The entire world bled to red. I lunged, and the next few seconds were a series of unfocused, disconnected sensations. My teeth sank through something firm and warm. Tim jerked beneath me. I tossed my head, and flesh tore with a satisfying ripping sensation. Warm, fragrant blood sprayed my face, my shoulders. The form beneath me jerked one last time, then lay still.

  Someone screamed.

  I backed away from the body, cleaning my muzzle out of long-term hunting habit, and looked up to find Robyn huddled against the side of the nearest tent, shrieking uncontrollably. Her jacket lay on the ground to her left and she clutched the remains of her torn shirt to her chest, but the bloody bite mark on her right shoulder was exposed.

  Without thinking, I stepped toward her, confused by my simultaneous human need to comfort her and my feline inclination to first clean the fresh blood from my fur.

  Robyn’s screams rose into hoarse hysterics as I approached, so I stopped, physically shaking myself to clear my head. To fend off encroaching bloodlust and cling to my ill-fitting human logic. She was bitten, but otherwise unharmed. She’d be fine, physically.

  I turned away from Robyn, forcing myself to ignore that small part of me that wanted to chase her, simply because she wanted to run. My roommate wasn’t prey. But the men who’d hurt her were.

  Steve stood where I’d left him, his back to the fire, his white-knuckled fist still clenching a bloody knife. He watched me carefully, steadily, blade held ready, and again I saw too little fear to suit me, and nowhere near enough shock. He’d have to be either foolish or insane to openly challenge a giant cat, and frankly, I was hoping he was both.

  I growled, and for one surreal moment, I wondered if he could see the other me peeking through my greenish cat eyes. The human me, who’d once suffered what he and his friends had tried to deal out. That Abby couldn’t fight back, but this Abby could. And would.

  Steve’s blood whooshed rapidly through his veins. His eyes were bright and glossy with exhilaration. His arm tensed. He raised the knife for a strike, but I saw it coming because he wore his intent like a badge of stupidity pinned right to his shirt.

  I swatted the blade from his hand with my front paw, and my blow swung him around. He went down a foot from the campfire, but was up in an instant.

  “Good kitty…” he whispered, his voice low and steady, both hands spread in a defensive posture as I growled. He glanced over my head, and a sudden scuffle at my back made my fur stand on end. I leapt to the side, but was too late to completely avoid the blow. Billy’s huge knife slashed across my front right leg, several inches from my shoulder.

  I hissed, and suddenly the blood-scent on the air had a new flavor. My flavor.

  Dani scooted away from Billy. I took a step forward, trying to drive the men closer together, where I could see them both, but my injured leg half-collapsed beneath me. I couldn’t walk on it. Not for long anyway.

  Steve noticed the limp, and I could see him assessing his chances. He had a real shot at survival now, and he knew it. He backed slowly toward the tent and hauled Robyn up by one arm. She screamed again. I limped forward, hissing, but before I could pounce, he glanced behind me, at Billy.

  “We can’t bring them both,” he said. “Do her.”

  “No!” Dani shouted, and her shuffling grew frantic. She understood before I did.

  I whirled to see him haul Dani up by one arm. She dug her heels into the dirt, trying to pull free. I stepped toward them, and my leg folded again. Billy shoved his knife into her stomach and dragged it through her flesh toward her sternum. Dani’s eyes went wide, and her mouth fell open. I roared in grief and outrage. He let go, and she collapsed onto the dirt, blood pouring from the gaping hole in her torso.

  “Stay, kitty…” Steve said, slowly pulling Robyn toward the woods. Terrified and sobbing, Robyn glanced from me to Dani, then to Billy, whose bloody knife glinted in the firelight. But she didn’t fight his grip this time. She knew better.

  Billy circled me slowly, leaving plenty of room between us. He held his knife ready, and though I growled the whole time, I didn’t pounce again. And he didn’t expect me to. A natural-born cat—they probably thought I was a melanistic jaguar—would never chase three healthy humans into the woods on an injured leg, when there were three fresh bodies to eat right there in the clearing. And there would soon be a fourth.

  Dani was still breathing, but she wouldn’t be for long, and I couldn’t let her die alone. Especially since I couldn’t reasonably rescue Robyn. Not in cat form, when I couldn’t put weight on my injured front leg.

  Steve backed into the trees, pulling a shocked and sobbing Robyn with him, her face streaked with tears, her shirt streaked with blood. Billy stepped slowly out of the clearing on his side of the fire, and moments later, I heard him clomping through the underbrush toward Steve and Robyn. Then they headed through the woods together.

  The last thing I heard before their footsteps faded from even my sensitive cat hearing was Billy’s whispered question, and Steve’s even softer reply.

  “So, we’re just giving up on Abby?”

  “No way. We’ll regroup at the cabin.”

  I huffed softly through my nose as I limped toward Dani. There was a cabin. And they were obviously expecting me—the human me, the only one they knew—to return to the camp site. But why would they expect a girl they assumed to be helpless to return to the scene of a blood bath? Did they think I hadn’t heard my friends screaming? Was human hearing really that bad?

  Regardless, if they were planning to come back for me, the cabin must be close. I could track them. I could get Robyn back. But not until Dani was gone. And not until I’d made a phone call.

  Triple homicide in a werecat territory, involving a werecat tabby, was definitely a notify-your-local Alpha situation.

  Even mortally wounded, Dani tried to scoot away from me as I approached. She was dying, and she knew it—I could see mortality gleaming in her eyes, along with reflected flames from the campfire—but she wasn’t eager to speed up the process by being eaten alive. And she had no reason to think I wouldn’t do just that.

  I dropped my head as I limped forward, whining softly, trying to look unthreatening. To show submissiveness and concern. But she didn’t stop struggling until I dropped onto the cold ground beside her and laid my chin on her leg.

  “Wha—?” But she lacked the strength to finish even that one word. Her heartbeat had already begun to slow, and her chest was rattling. I didn’t want to leave her, but I couldn’t afford to let Robyn get too far away. And I still had to make that call. So I licked the back of her left hand—still bound to its mate—then scooted away from her to begin my Shift. And for the first time in my life, it didn’t matter that a human was about to witness the entire process.

  My injured leg bent to spare it, I stood three feet from the fire, and its warmth was my only comfort in the face of grief, fear, and ever-deepening rage. The last time my life had been in danger, I’d been too scared to Shift, even for my own safety. Even with Faythe there to talk me through it.

  Not this time. This time, the changes came almost too quickly to bear, my Shift fueled by an intense need to protect Robyn and avenge my other friends. To unleash justice on men so like the ones who’d brought a violent end to my adolescence, robbing me of peace and security for years afterward.

  My muscles tensed, bunching and stretching as they took on new shapes. My joints popped in and out of their sockets as, in my memory, I screamed “No!” over and over, until the weight pinning me to the ground st
ole my breath.

  My paws flexed uncontrollably, aching as they stretched and reformed. My claws retracted into the tips of my fingers as, in my brutal recollection, I clutched at my clothes, at the bars, at the edge of the bare mattress, desperate to make it stop. To hold myself together as long as possible.

  My muzzle began to shorten, my gums throbbing as my teeth broadened, the feline points smoothing into rounded human edges. My jaws ached, as they’d once ached from screaming, then from trying not to scream, desperate not to give him the satisfaction.

  My flesh began to itch as my fur receded, and in my mind, my skin burned—scalding water from the shower. I’d scrubbed and scrubbed, but couldn’t wash them off. Couldn’t clean down to the real me. The me they’d killed in that basement, in the shadow of the bars I still saw sometimes when I closed my eyes.

  When my Shift was over, I sat on my bare knees on the frigid ground, panting from exertion, crying over old ghosts. If I didn’t hurry, it would happen to Robyn too. The men who took her may not have had bars and a basement, but they had knives, and they had no reason to let her live.

  As soon as I could move again, I crawled over to Dani. Danielle Martin, with her big mouth and her kind eyes, who’d invited me to come on their couple’s weekend. Who’d insisted I wouldn’t be a fifth wheel. But Dani’s kind eyes were open and empty now, staring into the woods. Her bound hands still lay over her stomach, as if she’d tried to hold the blood in until the last second. And I’d missed it. She’d died alone, and scared, and in pain.

  Steve and Billy would pay for that. They would pay, and pay, and pay…

  Tears ran down my face, scalding my frozen cheeks as I pushed myself to my feet and raced across the clearing. The fire was hot, but not hot enough to keep me warm in the nude, yet instead of dressing, I dropped to my knees beside the pile of brush my purse had landed in when Steve kicked it.

  My teeth chattering, I pulled back the zipper and grabbed my phone, praying it hadn’t broken. I pressed the home button, and the screen shined bright in the flickering firelight as I scrolled through the “favorites” menu for my Alpha’s number. As I pressed call, I dropped to the ground next to the careless pile of our belongings. I’d just spotted my hiking pack beneath the portable charcoal grill when my call was answered.

  “Abby? What’s wrong?” Normally, his automatic assumption that something was wrong would have irritated me. But this time, he was right.

  “Jace, I need help. Fast.” My teeth chattered, and I sniffed back a choked sob. “How soon can you get here?”

  Springs creaked as he stood, and I heard heavy footsteps as he paced. Jace had bulked up a bit since he’d taken over the Appalachian Territory. “Where are you? What happened?”

  I hauled my pack from the pile and pulled back the flap, already digging for a change of clothes. “I went camping with some friends from school, and now they’re dead. All except Robyn, my roommate.”

  A single beat of silence passed before he spoke. “Okay, first of all, are you safe where you are?” His voice was solid and steady, a vocal cornerstone for me to build on. Like most Alphas, Jace dealt with crises all day, every day. Unlike most Alphas, he was young enough that he still looked good doing it.

  Damn good.

  I would have given anything in that moment to be staring at Jace instead of at the bloody remains of a human friend.

  “I’m fine for the moment, but I don’t have much time.” With the phone pinned between my ear and my shoulder, I stood and stepped into my underwear, my teeth chattering so hard I could hardly talk.

  “Okay, start from the beginning. You went camping…?”

  “Yeah. Just a sec.” My shirt was next, and I had to set the phone on the ground to pull the material over my head. “We’re in Cherokee National Forest, just south of the Tennessee border.” I gave him the coordinates we’d used to find the campsite, forever grateful for GPS technology. “I went for a run by myself—the private kind—and when I got back, there were three men at our campsite, carrying big hunting knives.”

  “Damn it!” he swore, and I heard as much guilt as I heard anger and concern in his voice. The concern was for me. The anger was for whatever suicidal idiot had dared put a member of Jace Hammond’s Pride in danger. A female member, at that; I was one of only three in the territory, and the only one who wasn’t Jace’s mother or sister. “I knew I should have sent someone with you to school.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. Things aren’t like they used to be, Jace.” He and Faythe had made sure of that. They’d brought a new youth and strength to the Alpha’s council, and they were in the middle of negotiating with an allied group of strays who wanted official recognition by the council. “Besides, having me watched wouldn’t have helped. Your enforcers wouldn’t have recognized the danger.” Because they would only have been monitoring the area for the scent of an intruder—a cat shifter without authorization to be in our territory.

  “The aggressors are human?” he asked.

  That could be assumed, based on the fact that they carried weapons—no self-respecting werecat would need them—but a good Alpha assumed nothing.

  “Yeah.” Humans’ movements weren’t restricted by werecat territorial lines, and humans were almost never a threat to shifters. Jace’s enforcers wouldn’t have identified the threat until it was already too late.

  “And you were in cat form?” he continued.

  “Yes, but they didn’t know it was me. And I spent most of the time hiding in the bushes.” Like a coward. “They’d already gutted Mitch and Olsen by the time I got there, but the girls were just tied up, at first.” The quiver in my voice triggered a near-silent exhalation from Jace.

  “You sure you’re okay?” He knew what I’d been through more than four years before.

  “Yes, but they killed Danielle, and Jace, they took Robyn. I have to get her back!”

  “No,” he said, and I recognized that single syllable as an order. “I understand the protective impulse, but you’re the one I have to protect. I want you to stay where you are, and—”

  “I’m not just going to abandon her!” I stood and shook out my insulated cargo pants, phone pinned to my shoulder again while I stepped into the fuzzy inner lining.

  “You’re going to do exactly what I—”

  “This doesn’t make any sense, Jace,” I said, and his growl at being interrupted normally would have frozen me where I stood. “I know one of the men who took her. He sits behind me in psych. He’s always been so friendly before, but now he’s crazy.”

  I sank onto the cold ground and swallowed another sob, trying to speak slowly and clearly, and to give him just the facts. Anything else would only slow me down and put Robyn in more danger.

  “Abby, are you okay?”

  “No! They know I’m out here, somewhere. They were going to wait for me until I came out in cat form and scared them off. Not that they knew that was me.” I sucked in another deep breath. “I don’t know if they followed us from campus or what, but while they were waiting for me to come back to camp, they tried to…”

  The words froze in my throat, the edges sharp, as if I’d swallowed glass. I coughed, then started over. “The girls were so scared. Robyn was screaming, and she couldn’t stop him. The other one held his knife to Dani’s throat. I couldn’t just watch, and I couldn’t leave them there…” My explanation trailed into fragile silence, but for the crackle of the fire.

  “What did you do, Abby?” Jace still sounded calm, but now his voice held a dark note of dread.

  “I killed the one who was on Robyn.” My words all ran together, but Jace seemed to understand. “I just wanted to get him off her, so I pounced on him, and he smelled like her, and he’d bitten her, and everything just went red after that. But then Steve slashed my front leg, and the other one stabbed Dani. Then they took off into the woods.” My tears were a mercy, smearing the carnage all around me. But they couldn’t blur the overwhelming scent of blood. “I couldn’t chase th
em. Not with my front leg sliced up and Dani dying.”

  “You shouldn’t have shown yourself, Abby. You could have been killed.” Jace’s growl was a mixture of worry for me and rage on my behalf. “Just stay there. We’re coming to get you, and once you’re secure, we’ll make an anonymous call to the cops.”

  I heard voices in the background, as other tomcats volunteered for the emergency mission. Save the damsel in distress—what every enforcer lives for.

  Only I didn’t have time to be rescued.

  “I can’t stay here, Jace. They’re coming back for me. And I have to get Robyn back before they hurt her.”

  “No!” A car door slammed and Jace’s engine roared to life. He was already on the go, no doubt with his three best enforcers. “Abby, do not chase the bad guys! That’s an order!”

  “They’re gonna kill her!” And by the time they got around to that, she’d be begging for death.

  “If you go after them, they’ll kill you too.”

  “I can handle myself. I’ve been training with Faythe.”

  “Sounds like you picked up more than just her left hook,” he muttered, and in the background, another tom chuckled. “Faythe’s an Alpha, and before that, she was an enforcer. You’re a poli-sci. major with three-summers worth of self-defense lessons. Sit tight. We’ll be there in an hour.”

  “She’ll be dead by then!”

  “But you won’t be.”

  I hesitated. I honestly did, because disobeying an Alpha was serious shit, even if the Alpha was young, and hot. But Robyn was the priority. “I’m sorry, Jace,” I whispered, digging through my pack again for an extra set of thick socks. “You can kick me out of the Pride if you want, but I have to help Robyn. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  “Abby, no…!” he shouted, while his enforcers went apeshit in the background. I hung up the phone, put it on silent, then slid it into my pocket.