Pride (8 page)

Shit!
That wasn’t supposed to happen.

The scent of blood exacerbated my bloodlust, and this time when I growled, it wasn’t on purpose. My fists clenched around the afghan on either side of Colin’s knees. My toes curled in the rough cotton yarn, stabilizing my body for another lunge.

Colin’s eyes widened, then his focus shifted to something over my shoulder as footsteps shuffled on the carpet. One whiff of the air told me Malone was back. A tiny pop, and I knew he’d uncapped the syringe. The sharp chemical scent of the sedative stung my nose. “Hold her still.”

“What is that?” Dr. Carver asked from my right. I hadn’t heard him come back in.

“It’s just a tranquilizer,” Malone said. More firm footfalls, and I bucked wildly. I had prior experience with syringes, and
the memories were
not
pleasant. Marc’s grip on my arms tightened, and he pulled back, putting pressure on my shoulders.

“Stop, Calvin,” my father ordered, and I stilled to listen, still pinning Colin with my glare. “You wanted a demonstration, and now you’re getting one. She’s fine, aren’t you, Faythe?”

Marc answered for me. “She’ll be fine once she calms down. And she’ll calm down as soon as Dean tells the truth.”

Malone’s footsteps stomped closer.

“One more step and I’ll let her go,” Marc warned, and I expected to hear my father object, but he didn’t. “Dean’s the only one who can end this. Do it, Dean. Tell the truth. You owe her that.”

Colin whined, and I opened my mouth, showing my willingness to follow through on Marc’s threat. “Fine! You’re right!” He faced away from me on the pillow. “She was going after the stray, and I wanted to Shift first. He could have shredded us like he did Brett. I just wanted a fair fight.”

“Yet a tabby half your size was willing to face him with nothing but a meat mallet and a prayer. You’re useless, Dean, and you’re not worth her mercy,” Marc spat, releasing my arms.

Gratitude swept through me, chased by a familiar pang of loss I was coming to associate with Marc.

Justice is a powerful concept, and it was not lost on me, in spite of the more feral righteousness the cat in me demanded. Triumph penetrated my rage and soothed my bloodlust like balm on a burn. I swung one leg over Colin’s stomach and stood. He exhaled in relief, but watched me warily, as if I might yet decide to rip his throat out.

Dismissing Colin, I turned toward the rest of the room and smiled to the best of my ability. I crossed my arms beneath my breasts in a show of confidence, as if I’d never doubted the outcome.

“Well played,” Marc said, grinning at me proudly.

Malone’s face flushed beneath his obvious horror at my ap
pearance. He knew he’d been conned, and he was pissed. But he was too much of a coward to complain while I still had the physical advantage.

“Wow,” Dr. Carver said, and my head swiveled in his direction. A sharp gasp came from behind him, and Paul Blackwell stared at me in undisguised revulsion. Evidently most of the room’s occupants hadn’t gotten a good look at my in-between face in the mirror.

Their reactions were what I expected. They were horrified. Repulsed. Every last one of them, except Marc, my father and the doctor. Even Jace looked…
uncomfortable,
at best. Later, they might realize what a wonderful thing the partial Shift was. That if we mastered it, we would gain the use of our werecat’s enhanced sight and hearing—and one hell of a set of canines—without losing the use of our fingers, and those handy semi-opposable thumbs. But for now, all they could think about was my deformed face.

I had to look. I’d had no intention of doing it, but when the moment came, when I stared at each of them in turn, meeting stare after disgusted stare, I had to know what they saw.

Smoothing my shirt into place, I turned slowly toward the dresser, only dimly aware of the people around me as my face came into focus in the mirror. I’d only really seen the in-between face once before, but I’d felt the features with my hands often enough to know that what I saw in the mirror was unlike anything I’d Shifted into before.

Before, my jaw had always Shifted to one degree or another, and my eyes had taken on slitlike pupils and irises, if not their actual cat shape. This time, in addition to that, my jaw had elongated into a hairless muzzle, complete with an entire set of cat teeth. My nose was feline too—black, and flat, with the familiar thin split between the nostrils.

I plodded toward the mirror in a daze, and my fingers found
my nose. It was damp and warm, as it should have been—on a cat. But that wasn’t the worst part. Or the best. Or…whatever.

Though my forehead was smooth, and still completely human, sticking out of my normal, human eyebrows were several stiff white hairs on each side. Whiskers. I had brow whiskers. And cat eyes, in human sockets.

My face held the single-most bizarre combination of features I’d ever seen. And by “bizarre,” I mean ugly as shit. But on the bright side, if the whole enforcer thing didn’t work out, I’d have a long career waiting for me in the circus.

While the tribunal met in the dining room—I knew they were arguing because they’d turned on loud classical music to cover up their voices—I sat on the side of a bed in the empty first-floor bedroom, while Dr. Carver peered at my face with undisguised eagerness. “So, you can’t do this at will?”

“’Aw eh,” I mumbled, forced to work around jaws more suited to chomping than enunciating.

For an interpretation, Dr. Carver looked to Marc, who stood peering through a gap in the blinds at the darkness outside. “What’d she say?”

“‘Not yet,’” Marc translated without turning. “She can’t do it on command yet, but she thinks she could, with some practice. She thinks we could do it, too.”

Dr. Carver nodded, shining his penlight in my eyes. “I don’t doubt that.”

Growling softly, I winced and closed my eyes against the light.

“Try to keep them open for me, hon. This won’t take long.”

I opened my eyes and kept them wide as his light traveled back and forth between my pupils. Tears formed to defend my eyes from the invasion, and when I could finally blink, they rolled down my cheeks. When the light went off, I closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands against them.

“Here.” Something soft brushed my cheek, and I looked up to find Marc offering me a tissue. Smiling in thanks, I blotted my eyes, then wiped my cheeks, watching the doctor on the other bed as he scribbled in a notebook.

“Your eyes themselves appear to have Shifted completely,” he said, finally looking up from the paper, though his pen was still poised over it. “And you have brow whiskers, though the bone structure above your nose is still completely human. What about your vision? How do you see things?”

“’ike a aaa.”

“What?”

“Like a cat.” Marc settled onto the bed next to me, close enough that our knees touched.

“Mmm-hmm. That’s what I thought. Let’s take a look at your mouth.”

I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth. The tribunal had asked for a report on the examination, so I submitted, though it irked me to be inspected like a fucking show dog. It would irk me much more to be convicted, then executed.

After noting the shape of my nose, the fact that my sense of smell was enhanced, and the number and form of each of my teeth, Dr. Carver let me Shift back. He wanted to watch, though, which was a bit unnerving. I’ve Shifted in front of my fellow werecats literally hundreds of times, but only once could I remember actually being watched, and that memory wasn’t exactly pleasant. I’d killed the guy who’d ogled—Eric—shortly thereafter.

Dr. Carver was another case entirely, of course. He made notes, and commented on the relative ease of Shifting back to fully human form, in contrast to the difficulty I had doing the reverse. When the change was complete, he examined my human face, made several short notes on his yellow pad, thanked me for my cooperation, then headed for the door, clearly eager to report his findings to the tribunal.

And suddenly I was alone with Marc for the first time in weeks.

At first, neither of us spoke. Strains of classical flute and violin floated in from the dining room, and some radio announcer was giving a weather report in the kitchen, where Michael, Jace, and my father sat around the table, demolishing a huge platter of homemade nachos while they waited for the next update on the dead cop.

Marc was looking out the window again. There was nothing out there; he was just avoiding me.

Sighing, I got up and closed the door quietly, then leaned against it with my arms crossed over my chest. In all the years I’d known him—since he was infected at fourteen—he’d never once made an empty threat. He’d learned from my father that if you don’t follow through on your threats, people will stop believing you. The same goes for promises, as I’d learned the hard way.

Yet for me, he’d bluffed Colin and a whole roomful of Alphas. And now he wouldn’t even look at me.

From the kitchen, the weather report—calling for light snow overnight—gave way to another bouncy disco tune from the seventies.

I inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly. “Thank you.”

Marc turned from the window, and the blinds snapped back into place. “For what?”

I frowned. He knew damn well what I meant. “For bluffing Colin. I’ve never seen you make an empty threat before.”

He sat on the edge of the far bed. “You still haven’t.
I
wasn’t threatening him.
You
were.”

Riiiight
. “You’re walking a pretty thin line there, Marc.”

“Yeah. I am.” He frowned in reproach. “I wish you’d walk it with me, just long enough to get the tribunal off your back.”

No wonder they wouldn’t let Marc testify. He really
would
do anything to save my life.

I flopped onto the empty bed on my back and stared at the ceiling. “What do you want me to do?”

He leaned forward, both elbows resting on his knees. “If you play the game their way—just tell them what they want to hear—life might go a little more smoothly. Or at least last longer.”

I huffed in skepticism, but hadn’t yet thought of an intelligent reply, when someone knocked softly on the door. “Faythe?” Jace called hesitantly.

“Yeah, come on in.” I turned onto my side and propped myself on one elbow as the door opened.

Jace glanced from me to Marc, then back to me, and his creased forehead relaxed. He was probably relieved to find us both clothed. Marc and I had rarely been alone together since we broke up, but in the past, privacy had always been enough of an excuse to make up.

But things were different now. This time
he’d
dumped
me
.

Jace smiled like he had a secret. “The tribunal’s ready to see you.”

Based on his expression, I was guessing the news was good. They wouldn’t have told him anything official, but the kitchen was much closer to the dining room than the bedrooms were, so he’d probably overheard enough to warrant the giddy grin.

Thank goodness.

Five minutes later, I sat at the end of the dining-room table, yet again. Michael had gone back to our cabin to search for information on the hikers and the dead cop, so the chair on my right was empty. Dr. Carver and my father sat against the right-hand wall. The doc looked eager. My father looked deliberately uninterested, as if the future of our Pride didn’t depend on whatever the tribunal was about to say.

At the other end of the long table, my uncle and Paul Blackwell flanked Malone, who stood and scowled down at me. I gave him a saccharine smile, gaining as much confidence from his displeasure as I had from Jace’s grin.

No counting chickens,
Faythe, my mother’s voice said from some distant memory.
Nothing’s hatched just yet.

And as usual, she was right.

“As I’m sure you know by now, Ms. Sanders, this tribunal needs a simple majority vote to render a verdict. In light of your recent exhibition and Dr. Carver’s expert opinion on the matter, we’ve discussed the demonstration of your partial Shift and have taken a vote. Since each member is confident enough in his vote to swear that it will not change after further discussion or evidence, we are now ready to announce our decision.”

My breath caught in my throat, in spite of my confidence a moment earlier. I uncrossed my arms and laid my palms on the cool surface of the table, but they were damp with nervous sweat and left wet smears across the wood.

Uncle Rick smiled reassuringly at me, and I tried to smile back. But though I was in a roomful of people, I’d never felt more alone. Sure, the tribunal’s verdict was important to the entire south-central Pride. Might even decide its future. But ultimately, I was the one who would live or die based on the next words spoken.

“On the charge of infection of a human, our vote was unanimous. As one, we find you guilty.”

My heart thumped painfully in my chest, and with each beat I could almost feel my sternum pushed out of line with my ribs. But I wasn’t really surprised. After all, I’d
admitted
to infecting Andrew. The real revelation had yet to come.

“Some of us are ready to hand down a sentence right now. But because others—” Malone glanced at my uncle, on his far right “—evidently believe the infection was an accident, we have decided to forgo sentencing until we are ready to render a verdict on the second allegation.”

“Wait, you’re not ready on the murder charge?” I sat straight in surprise.
Then what was the point of all this?

Malone’s scowl deepened. Apparently he was the only one
who got to talk. “One member has yet to reach a decision about his vote.”

I fully expected to see him frown at Paul Blackwell. But he didn’t. He glared at my uncle Rick.

At first I thought it was a ploy—that Malone was just trying to upset me. But my uncle stared straight at me, not even bothering to deny the accusation. I arched my brows at him in question, and he nodded. He’d held up the vote.

Disappointment and confusion swept through me like a chill wind, raising goose bumps on my arms and legs. Uncle Rick knew me better than anyone else on the tribunal. How could he doubt my innocence?