Prey (7 page)

I caught his eye and shook my head calmly; I could see her.

A second later she collided with my midriff, but lacked the strength to even push me back. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” she mumbled into my jacket, and her arms tightened around my waist.

“What? Why wouldn’t I come back?” I dropped my bag and put both hands on her shoulders, prying her away gently until I could see her face. She was panting from the brief exertion, and her face was flushed with effort beneath the sickly pallor of her skin—a recent development.

But I smiled to reassure her, and she grinned back, evidently convinced I was real.

Kaci stepped back and took my bag in both hands, already turning toward Jace when she spoke. “Greg said you were hurt, and I thought you’d stay in Georgia till you got better.”

I took the bag from her, afraid she’d keel over with the additional weight. “I’m fine, Kaci. See?” I stomped my right foot on the floor, demonstrating my own sturdiness. “Not even a limp. And you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I
Shifted.
” I switched to a whisper in concession to the presence of so many humans. “Shifting
can heal injuries in a
fraction
of the time it would have taken if I stayed in human form.”

“Well, good for you.” Kaci shrugged and headed for Jace, dismissing my less-than-subtle hint with an easy toss of her hair. “
I’m
not injured.”

I growled beneath my breath. Two months earlier, I would never have believed a thirteen-year-old could be harder to deal with than an infant. I guess that’s why nature starts most women off with babies and lets them grow into teenagers.

Jace took charge of my bag, and I gave him a quick hug. “How’s the leg?” he asked, eyeing me carefully when I pulled away.

“Just a little sore. But these make me look badass, huh?” I pushed back my sleeve to show off my new battle scars, and he whistled in appreciation, then laughed. “Where’s Ethan?” I asked, tugging my sleeve back into place.

Kaci grinned, pulling her MP3 player from her front pocket. “He’s trying to hook up with the girl at the Starbucks counter.”

I scowled. “
Hook up
with her?” I wasn’t sure whether I should be more bothered by Kaci’s too-casual phrasing, or my brother’s obvious disdain for the concept of monogamy. Guess he was getting tired of white rice.

Kaci nodded sagely. “Yeah, but I don’t think he’s really after coffee.”

Jace grinned sheepishly at me over her head, and I rolled my eyes. “Let’s go home. And no more hanging
out with Ethan. You’re supposed to be under the supervision of your
mental
elders.”

We retrieved my brother from the food court, where he sat in front of a tall cup of something slathered with whipped cream, across from a girl in a green Starbucks apron. He grinned all the way to the car.

During the three-hour drive from the airport, Kaci fell asleep against the car door, her earbuds in place, blasting the latest teen-angst anthem. I watched her breathe, amazed by how peaceful she looked, all things considered.

Because Kaci Dillon had not led a peaceful life. Not even for a werecat.

Kaci wasn’t born into any Pride. In itself, that wasn’t incredibly unusual, as the ever-growing population of strays might suggest. But Kaci wasn’t a stray. She was a rare genetic anomaly—a werecat born to two
human
parents.

And so far, she was the only one of her kind we’d ever found.

We’d only known for about six months that, in spite of generations of belief to the contrary, it was indeed possible—if unlikely—for a werecat and a human to procreate. The children of such rare unions were humans whose DNA contained certain recessive werecat genes. Those genes would have no effect on the child unless they were one day “activated” by a bite or scratch from a werecat in cat form.

Normal humans can’t survive a werecat attack. Their bodies fight the “virus” and eventually they die of the
infection. So all strays were once humans who already had the necessary werecat genes
before
they were attacked.

Kaci’s parents both carried those recessive genes, though they never knew it. Their unlikely pairing resulted in one daughter who didn’t inherit any werecat genes. And in Kaci, who got them from both sides. She was a full-blooded werecat, born of two humans, and she’d had no idea until puberty brought on her first Shift.

I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. So much unexplainable pain and an unfathomable transformation. In the height of her pain and terror, completely ignorant of what was happening to her, she accidentally killed her mother and sister. And in the process, she’d temporarily lost most of her sanity.

Kaci had wandered on her own for weeks, stuck in cat form because she had no idea she could Shift back, much less how to do it. She did what she had to do to survive, mostly out of instinct, but when we found her and showed her how to regain her human form—and with it, her sanity—she was horrified by what she’d done on four paws.

So horrified that she’d sworn never to assume her feline form again, convinced that if she did, she would hurt someone else.

But by refusing to Shift, she was only hurting herself.

Watching her sleep, I was shocked to realize Kaci was nearly as thin now as she’d been when I first saw
her. She was slowly killing herself, and I had to do something to stop it. To help her help herself.

It was nearly four in the afternoon when we pulled through the gate onto the long gravel driveway leading onto my family’s property. The Lazy S ranch lay before us, winter-bare fields on both sides of the driveway. Deep tire ruts cut into the eastern field at an angle, leading to the big red barn, quaint with its gabled roof and chipped paint. And at the end of the driveway lay the house, long and low and simple in design, in contrast to the buildings my father designed in his professional life.

Jace parked behind Ethan’s car in the circular driveway, and the guys disappeared into the guesthouse, where my brother Owen was setting up a Rock Band tournament.

I grabbed my bag and headed for my room, not surprised when Kaci followed me. My mother had fixed up the bedroom Michael and Ryan once shared for her, but the tabby did little more than sleep there. She spent most of her time shadowing me, convinced that if she could learn to fight well enough in human form, she’d never have to Shift again. And no matter what I did or said, I couldn’t convince her otherwise.

In my room, I dropped my duffel on the bed, and Kaci plopped down next to it on her stomach, her legs bent at the knee, feet dangling over the backs of her thighs. “Hey, you wanna go see a movie tonight? Parker gave me twenty bucks to vacuum the guesthouse a couple of days ago, and I’ve barely been off the ranch all week.”

Groaning, I unzipped the bag and pulled my shampoo and conditioner from an inside pocket. “Kaci, don’t clean for the guys! They’re perfectly capable of picking up their own messes, but if you act like a maid, they’ll treat you like one.”

She frowned, her feelings hurt by my reproach, and I cursed myself silently. It should not be so hard for me to talk to one little girl. But then, I’d never expected to be someone’s mentor. Hell, I’d probably never even be anyone’s
aunt.

I grinned to lighten the mood and took another shot. “Besides, if you feel like vacuuming, there are plenty of perfectly good floors in the main house. Like mine, for instance.” I made a sweeping gesture at my beige Berber carpet, which could certainly use the attention.

Kaci laughed, and all was well. “So, what about the movie? You buy the tickets, and I’ll buy the popcorn.”

I walked backward toward the bathroom, hair products in hand. “It’s a school night.”

She swirled one finger along the stitches in my comforter. “I don’t go to school.”

“You
could
….” I left that possibility dangling and turned into my private bathroom, the only real advantage to being the sole daughter out of five children. Kaci pouted at me through the open doorway as I set the shampoo and conditioner on the edge of the tub. “You know how to make that happen.”

The original plan had been for Kaci to start eighth grade in Lufkin, at the beginning of the second semester. My father had acquired the necessary documentation—birth
certificate and shot records under the name Karli Sanders—and she would be his niece, recently orphaned and left to our care. She’d picked out a new haircut and color—long, dark layers—and we were relatively sure that with those precautions taken, no one would ever connect Karli Sanders with Kaci Dillon, who’d disappeared from her home in southern British Columbia during an attack by a pack of wild animals.

Of course, it helped that Kaci’s family was no longer looking for her. She was presumed dead in the same attack that had killed her mother and sister. Her father had erected a memorial headstone for her months earlier, and by all accounts seemed to be trying to come to terms with his loss and grief.

But in the end, none of that mattered because by the time the spring semester had started a week earlier, Kaci was too weak to go. She got winded just walking to the barn, and took several naps a day. Her skin was pale and sometimes clammy, and she got constant migraines and occasional bouts of nausea.

She couldn’t go to school until she’d Shifted and regained her strength. Until then, my mother was homeschooling her in the core subjects.

Neither of them was enjoying it.

“I can’t do it.” Kaci’s frown deepened as she rolled onto her back to stare at my ceiling, rubbing her forehead to fend off another headache.

“Yes, you can. I can help.” I went back to the bag for my toiletry pouch and hair dryer, still talking as I
set them on the bathroom counter. “Dr. Carver says that once you’re Shifting regularly, you’ll get better very quickly. Then you can go to school like a normal kid.”

“Normal!” She huffed and rolled her head to the side to meet my gaze. “What the hell is that?”

I groaned at her language. How the
hell
had she managed to pick up all of my bad habits and
none
of my good ones? “You know you can’t talk like that in front of the Alpha, right?”

Kaci rolled both big hazel eyes at me. “
You
do.”

Damn it!

From somewhere near the front of the house, my mother laughed out loud, having obviously heard the entire exchange. She’d always said she hoped I had a kid just like me, but neither of us had expected that to happen quite so soon.

But Kaci was right, of course. I sank onto the bed with a frustrated sigh, and she rolled onto her side to look at me, her face in one hand, her elbow spearing the comforter. “Kaci, you do
not
want to model your life in this Pride after mine. A
smart
girl would learn from a few of my mistakes, instead of choosing to repeat them all just for the experience.”

She frowned and stared down at the comfortor. “My dad didn’t let me cuss, either.”

My heart jumped into my throat. Kaci hardly
ever
mentioned her father, or anything else from her previous existence, as if it were easier not to talk or even think about them. Though I understood that, I also knew that
ignoring her problems wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with them.

But before I could encourage her to go on, she changed the subject with a sudden shake of her head. “Besides, you look like you’re doin’ okay to me.”

“But
you
could do better. You could do anything you want. Starting with public school.”

Kaci sighed and flopped back over to stare at the ceiling, her hands folded across her stomach. But I could see wistfulness in her eyes. She wanted to go to school, no matter what she said to the contrary. I’d been in her position—aside from the whole refusing-to-Shift thing—and knew exactly how badly it sucked to be stuck in one place, under constant, nagging supervision.

At the end of the bed again, I dug in the duffel and pulled out my bloody, ruined jeans, tied up in a white plastic Wal-Mart sack.

“What’s that smell?” Kaci rolled onto her stomach and sniffed the air with a spark of interest as I dropped the bundle on the floor. That night I would have to fire up the industrial incinerator behind the barn and toss the whole mess inside.

Hmm. I wonder if it’s still hot from the recent mass cremation….

“You’re probably smelling the stray who slashed through my jeans,” I said, glancing at the bag in irritation. “That was my favorite pair.”

“No, that’s not it.” She stuck her nose into my duffel and sniffed dramatically, and when she rose, the zipper pulled several strands of thick brown hair free from her
ponytail to hang over her cheeks. “It’s Marc.” She shoved the loose strands back from her face. “Your underwear smells like
Marc!
”

I flushed and pulled my bag off the bed. When I was thirteen, there was no older woman around for me to ask about guys, other than my mother. And I wouldn’t have asked
her
about sex if the future of the species depended upon my understanding of the process.

Which, according to my mother, it did.

Caught off guard by the questions I could practically feel her forming, I crossed the room to upend the rest of the duffel into my regular hamper, a purple ribbon-trimmed wicker thing my mother had put in my room when I was twelve.

I stared at the hamper critically, suddenly perplexed by its presence.
What kind of enforcer’s hamper has ribbons threaded through it?
I needed something else. Something utilitarian. Something big and sturdy, and not at odds with the blood- and sweat-stained clothes it would be holding.

Like, a big metal trash can. Or a
barrel.

I turned toward Kaci, intending to ask her if she wanted the girlie hamper, but she was already talking before I could get the question out. “So, how long have you been with Marc?”

“Um…we were together for my last two years of high school, then we broke up for about five years. And we got back together last summer.”

“Why did you break up?”

Because I’m an idiot.
I tossed my empty duffel into
my closet and kicked the door shut. “It’s complicated, Kaci. Things get weird when you grow up. Enjoy being a kid while you can.”