Alpha (31 page)

Their spindly legs and narrow waists enabled them to build weight, and thus power, where it was really needed for flight—in their thick arms and powerful chests. I'd never seen pecs so well-defined, biceps and triceps so chiseled. They could have been carved from granite. As could their cold, decidedly unwelcoming expressions.

For a moment, we all stared at one another, the cats in wary amazement, the birds in outright suspicion. And when their faces gained human features, I realized I knew them by both face and name.

“Cade and Coyt, right?” I said, hoping my smile looked more confident than it felt.

“Girl-cat,” the one on the left returned in his odd, multitonal voice, nodding in imitation of an actual greeting. And considering that I didn't know which of them was which, I couldn't work up any irritation over the fact that they'd obviously forgotten my name. Or saw no reason to use it. “You've come to claim what we owe you?”

“Yes. But first I want to speak to Kai. He owes us his life, and I'm calling in his personal debt first.”

“Y
ou think he'll go for that?” Marc asked, as Cade and Coyt dropped onto the porch overhead, one right after the other.

I shrugged and turned to face them both, hunching deeper into my coat. “I give it a fifty-fifty chance of total failure. If Kai refuses to repay a debt he legitimately owes, he'll be dishonored in front of his entire Flight. Thunderbirds always avenge their dead, honor their word, and pay their debts. Those seem to be the only laws they have.” Based on what little time I'd spent with them.

Marc frowned. “It's that ‘legitimately owes' part that worries me.”

“Thus the fifty-fifty shot of failure.” I stared up at the nest, watching for any sign of activity. “It all depends on whether or not I'm able to bullshit him into thinking he owes us.”

“The odds are always in your favor when bullshit's involved.” Jace grinned, and I couldn't help returning his smile.

“It's not bull,” Marc insisted. “We could have killed
him when we caught him. Probably should have, considering how little information he actually gave us. So by their way of thinking, Kai owes us his life.”

“Let's hope you're right.” The door overhead squealed open again, and Cade and Coyt stepped to the edge of the porch, this time followed by a third, slightly smaller form. Kai. It had to be.

Cade and Coyt leaped off the porch in opposite directions—evidently standard operating procedure for jumping from tall buildings—and when they were far enough away to avoid collision, the third bird followed, already sprouting feathers all over his rapidly lengthening arms.

The two larger birds landed directly in front of us with bold, heavy thumps, and seconds later their companion dropped to the ground a few feet behind them, showing off an odd combination of a bird's upper body and a human's lower half. His face Shifted as he stomped toward us, his curved, pointed beak melting into his face as his feathers retreated like magic. Or at least like movie-magic.

Cade and Coyt stepped aside as Kai approached, wings spread aggressively, bare human feet evidently unbothered by the rough, cold gravel.

“What debt do you claim from me?” he demanded, his weird, dual-tone voice scraping down my inner chalkboard. Kai's black eyes flashed in anger, but I got the distinct impression that part of that was to cover up…embarrassment? Yeah. Something in his bearing—overkill on the menacing posture?—told me he was humiliated at having been called out by a trio of werecats claiming he owed an as-yet-unpaid debt.

Good. Maybe this'll work, after all….

“It's really not complicated. We spared your life, ergo, you owe us.” I crossed my arms over my chest, neglecting my frozen fingers in favor of the most confident look I could muster.

His jaw clenched visibly, beady black eyes narrowing. “I was ready and willing to die honorably, as a prisoner of war.”

I huffed, showcasing legitimate skepticism. “Yet, here you stand. A fully healed, functional member of society.” Wherein
society
was defined as a Flight of giant, ruthless, cannibalistic birds of prey.

Kai's arms suddenly sprouted long, dark brown feathers, and his hands arced into wickedly curved talons, three digits in front, and a fully opposable, needle-sharp thumb-digit. “Only because you wouldn't kill me.”

I grinned and tossed my hair over one shoulder. “Which brings us back to the part where you owe us.”

“I owe you nothing but a lesson in honor.” He stepped forward threateningly, puffing up like an angry rooster. Marc and Jace bristled at my sides, prepared to fight if necessary. “I was perfectly willing to die for my Flight,” Kai insisted, and I forced my racing pulse to calm.

“You didn't sound too willing to die for your cause when you were begging me not to leave you alone in the deep, dark basement, walled in by the earth itself. To leave a window open so you could see your precious sky. And what did I do? I opened that window. We not only spared your life, we gave you comfort. And water, and shelter. Do you provide similar accommodations to prisoners of war?”

He opened his mouth to protest, and I interrupted before he could, remembering how well they'd treated
Kaci when she was their hostage. “Without previous negotiations, or the hope of some reward in return?”

The thunderbird's eyes narrowed. “Are you not here in search of just such a reward?”

My eyebrows rose. “Clever, aren't you? And again, we're back to the fact that you owe us. Are you going to quibble like a spoiled child, or are you going to stand up like a man—er, bird—and settle the debt you've incurred?”

Kai seemed to deflate a bit, but didn't unclench his jaw. He glanced from side to side, and though I couldn't read much in either of the other birds' expressions, evidently Kai could. He huffed, then turned back to me, spine straight and stiff.

“I will not dishonor my Flight by shirking my duty. You granted me some small measure of comfort when I was at your mercy, therefore I owe you some small manner of gratitude.”

Uh-oh
. “Small manner of gratitude” didn't sound quite big enough to cover what we needed.

“You don't sound very grateful. We saved your life.”

“No.” Kai shook his head firmly, jaw set. “You merely refrained from taking it. Those are two entirely different things. What do you want?”

“We need you to do some reconnaissance. A simple flyby over our ranch. All you have to do is count the cars and tell us how many men you see hanging around the property.”

Kai shook his head without a moment's hesitation. “Not even if you fed me your firstborn, still wet and screaming.”

I blinked, but for a long moment, his words made no
sense. Not the refusal. The part about cannibalizing my theoretical future child. “Well, isn't that…gruesome? Who are you, Rumpelstiltskin?”

Kai frowned, as if
I
made no sense to
him
. “No thunderbird would claim a name so senselessly flamboyant.”

Or any sign of a sense of humor, for that matter. What was I thinking?

“Never mind.” I rubbed my temples with half-frozen fingers, and when I licked my lips, I tasted blood. They'd cracked open from the cold. “Are you prepared to pay your debt or what?”

“Yes. But failing to take my life when I was willing to lose it is not worth such a task.”

“You wouldn't be in any danger—” I started.

“Of course not. I have nothing to fear from creatures who can't even leave the surface of the planet under their own power,” Kai insisted, though he probably still bore the scars Owen had given him.

Grrr…
I'd forgotten what a pain in the ass thunderbirds were. Inevitably.

“Okay, I get it. You're scared. But maybe you could talk to one of your friends for me. Get someone else to—”

“No one else will do it. No member of our Flight would debase himself as your errand boy.”

I swallowed a growl of frustration. “You can't answer for them. You guys may have this weird hive-mentality thing going on, but you don't actually share a brain, right?”

Kai's eyes narrowed as he frowned, obviously as impatient as I was. “They will say no. I know that like I
know exactly how you'd taste, just from smelling you, but…”

Marc's growl ripped through the air. Jace snarled and lunged at Kai. I threw myself between them, chest to chest with Jace. Cade and Coyt sprouted insta-feathers and beaks, facing off against Marc, two on one.

“Stop!” I shouted, desperate to avoid a confrontation we could not win. I wedged my arms between my body and Jace's and shoved him as hard as I could, then held out one hand to stop his rebound. Only once he stayed back—eyes and canines already Shifted—did I dare take my gaze from him to glance at Marc. Marc stood with his legs spread wide for balance, eyes glittering with rage, fists high and close to his body. He was ready to throw down, and that could only end in death. Whose, I was afraid to speculate.

I stood with my arms spread in the universal signal for Stop! “There will be no tasting of any kind. Right?”

“Damn right,” Marc snapped, while Jace only growled.

When Kai made no reply, I glared at him. “Will you guys play nice if we do?”

He narrowed dark, small bird eyes at my phrasing. “We will not attack unprovoked. That would be dishonorable. But with provocation… Well, I've never actually tasted fresh cat, and while I typically find carnivore flesh distasteful, I'm feeling like something a little exotic tonight.”

Great. Somebody was obviously still bitter over his time underground….

“No provocation. Just take us up there so I can present a rational request to someone who isn't looking to peck my eyes out.”

Kai made a high-pitched screeching sound in the back of his throat, and it took me a moment to realize he was laughing. “You won't find that in the nest. But if I get you an audience…you will consider my debt paid?”

I hesitated just long enough to decide that was the best deal we'd get out of them. Unless they had another infant I could rescue. Finally I nodded. “Paid in full. Should we shake on it?” I stuck my hand out, but Kai only frowned.

“Is your word worth so little you must offer pointless physical gestures?”

I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest. “Fine. Never mind. Safe passage to your nest and an audience with someone more useful than you obviously are. Passage for all three of us,” I added as an afterthought.

Marc mumbled something behind me, and I twisted to hear him better. “What?”

He rolled his eyes. “Safe return passage, too. Don't get us stranded up there.”

Oh, yeah. I turned back to the birds, trying to hide my embarrassment. “And safe return passage for all three of us. If you promise all of that, I'll consider your debt absolved.”

Kai nodded quickly, looking so relieved that I wondered if I should have pressed for more. “Fine. You're first.”

“Okay. Just one minute.” Already dreading the short, safety net–less flight, I turned to Marc and Jace and motioned them into an impromptu huddle. “Do
not
lose your temper in there. We'll be safe as long as we don't start anything. Got it?”

They both nodded reluctantly, and I turned to find all
three thunderbirds already in full avian form—one of the scariest sights I'd ever seen in my life. Much scarier than either a bruin or a werecat in animal form, because we looked very much like our natural-born counterparts. But there was no bird in the world as big as a thunderbird, and by all the laws of physics—what little I understood of it, anyway—that meant they shouldn't have been able to fly. They were too heavy. But then, they shouldn't have been able to Shift so quickly, either. No wonder they held themselves apart from us.

The world had never seen anything like the thunderbirds, and with any luck, neither had our enemies on the council, other than Malone. They'd never know what hit them.

“Okay, let's get this over with.” I held my arms out, and at my signal, Cade and Coyt rose into the air with several flaps of their huge, powerful wings. The air they moved blew hair back from my face and froze my already-dripping nose, but I barely had time to notice that before Cade—or Coyt—wrapped his thick talons around my upper arms in a bruising grip.

I closed my eyes as the earth abandoned my feet, and several seconds later, the other ferry-bird grabbed my ankles.

Don'tlookdon'tlookdon'tlook…

I didn't exhale in relief until the weather-worn wooden porch boards came into sight beneath me. One bird dropped my ankles, and my shoulders were wrenched mercilessly when my body swung free beneath me. Then the other bird let me go, and I crashed to my knees on the porch, eye to eye with a sizable knothole, through which I could see the ground, two hundred feet below.

Heart racing, I lurched to my feet and scrambled
away from the edge, pressing my back against the side of the building, irrationally afraid of being blown off the porch by the gust of wind beneath the approaching thunderbirds' wings.

A minute later, Jace landed where I'd fallen, and I helped him up. “You okay?”

“Hell, no.” He actually wobbled on his feet and clung to me, his face whiter than a sun-bleached Texas sidewalk. “There's a reason cats don't have wings.”

“Yeah, but at least we always land on our feet.”

“Then why did I land on my ass?”

I didn't have an answer for that one, so I just pulled him against the wall while we waited for Marc.

Marc's arrival was no better, and clearly no less traumatic. “Never. Again,” were his only words, as we followed Kai into the nest. I could not have agreed more.

Inside, my gaze was drawn upward, though I'd seen it all before. Twice. It was still impressive, in a how-many-ways-are-there-to-die kind of way. Most of the first floor was taken up by a large, open living space, scattered with worn but comfy-looking chairs and couches, all piled high with old, faded pillows, like little mininests. Along three sides of the room were several closed doors leading to other rooms, and directly across from the entrance stood the staircase.

There was no ceiling. The room was open all the way to the roof, six stories up, and along the way, platforms and long, thick beams jutted from the walls, each occupied with one or more birds in various stages of mid-Shift. And they all stared down at us.

The second and third floors were arranged like hotel rooms ringing a large, open lobby. Most of the doors
were closed, and in the far corner I could see the room where Kaci and I had woken up on our previous trip.

“Kai!” We all whirled at the sharp, disharmonic screech, and I flinched as Kai soared over our heads in response to the summons. He landed in front of a nude elderly female thunderbird with a human face and long white hair.

“I've granted them an audience, to absolve myself of debt and uphold the honor of my word.”