I kept my head down as I crossed the street, passing two customers and the large front window, but I already knew that everyone who saw me would remember me. I was the height of a young teenager with enough hair for three girls my size, and I had no coat. They probably all thought I was a runaway.
That wasn’t far from the truth.
The restroom had no gender sign, and the door stood open to reveal a small, filthy space. I closed the door from the inside and considered locking it, but I wouldn’t be able to unlock it without human hands, so I settled for the desperate hope that no one would try to come in while the door was closed.
A glance at myself in the mirror showed a streak of blood I’d missed on my left cheek, but the hair hanging in my face would have covered that. My eyes looked glazed with exhaustion—or the remnants of shock?—yet I recognized determination in the set of my jaw. I was out of options and out of time, and the only hope I had for my own future was the possibility that taking out Darren myself, before he could capture or kill his next victim, would be enough to redeem me for killing Hargrove.
Shivering from both the cold and my own nerves, I pulled my sweater over my head and stuffed it into the plastic grocery bag. My boots came off next, followed by my pants, then underwear. Only once I stood naked in a frigid, filthy public restroom did the absurd, dangerous reality of my situation truly sink in.
Would leaving the restroom as a giant cat really be any safer than walking around covered in blood? The police were apt to get involved either way, considering they’d lost three citizens in the past month to a feral wildcat. And that at least one semi-local officer knew about shifters in general, and about me in particular.
Fear and haste fueled my shift, and my bones lengthened and popped, rearranging my skeleton out of some primordial instinct I would never truly understand. My eyes ached with pressure and my jaw crackled as a new structure of bone and teeth was imposed. My limbs popped in and out of joint, burning as if I were made of fuel and flame rather than flesh and bone. An itch washed over my skin in a brutally slow wave as fur grew from my follicles. My nails hardened into claws, lengthening, thickening, and when I tried to grip the floor, they dug into the concrete, chipping away tiny particles of grit.
My tail swished behind me, stirring dirt from the ground. I sniffed, and my nose twitched, my whiskers bobbing on the lower edge of my vision. And as my senses sharpened, the stew of old scents became a foul backdrop for my cruel transformation, but I could only breathe it in, waiting for the pain to fade.
When it finally did, after minutes that felt like hours, I stood tall on four legs, welcoming a configuration of bones and muscle I hadn’t taken on in weeks. My ears rotated on top of my head, instinctively listening for danger, but I heard only ordinary sounds. Water running inside the convenience store. Gasoline rushing from thick hoses into rapidly filling tanks. Customers chatting as they pumped gas, lamenting the encroaching clouds and the frigid gusts.
Fighting skittishness—werecats donotbelong in unlocked public restrooms—I made myself wait until the two cars closest to the restroom drove away. Every moment that passed drew the cloud cover closer and pulled the sun nearer to the horizon, but once I left the restroom, I would be exposed for the entire eighty-foot sprint into the empty field. Anyone who saw me would call the cops, which was why I couldn’t leave my blood-covered clothes in the restroom.
Even humans would start to believe in the “impossible” if we kept leaving it around for them to find.
When the convenience store was as quiet as it was going to get during business hours, I took the handles of the plastic bag in my mouth and pressed down on the door lever with one paw. The latch clicked, and the door swung open several inches. I froze, listening again, and when no one started screaming, I dared a peek through the crack.
A woman was getting gas at the pump closest to the road and farthest from the restroom, and I could hear an engine running from a parked car in front of the store. Other than that, the coast was clear.
I burst from the restroom in a flat-out sprint. The white plastic bag swung from my jaw like a pendulum, and the scent of Hargrove’s blood was thick in my nostrils as I ran. That scent reminded me of what was at stake. Of why I’d torpedoed my own career—and possibly Jace’s—and why this desperate efforthadto make those sacrifices worth it.
“Holy shit!” A woman cried behind me, as my paws pounded from concrete onto bare earth. My heart pumped blood so quickly, my head began to feel light. “Did you see that? Was that adog?”
I put another burst of energy into my sprint and shot forward into the field. Tall grass slapped my face, snagged in my fur, and caught on the plastic bag, but I kept running until I’d almost forgotten what I was running from.
The overgrown field ended in a steep ditch, then another road, and across that road was a strip mall that had been abandoned, except for a payday loan service. There were two cars in the lot, and not a person in sight.
I looked both ways, then sprinted across the street and through the parking lot into the deep shadows on one side of the building. There I dropped my bag on the ground and rested, shielded from the street by an industrial trash bin speckled with rust and peeling paint. I couldn’t stay put for long—when Lucas found me missing, he’d see the same potential escape route I had—but cats aren’t long-distance runners, and I needed to think.
Jace is going to kill me. Yet even knowing that, I wished he was right there with me. I could handle the yelling, if that meant I’d get to see him again, and…
But Jace wasn’t what I needed to be thinking about.
Which way is north?Thanks to the cloud cover, I couldn’t tell by the stars, but there was still a bit more light on one side of the sky than the other. That way must be west.
The first frigid drop of rain fell as I turned to the north, and within four steps, I was drenched and freezing. But minutes later, the sunlight had disappeared and the rain had driven people inside. As long as I stuck to alleyways and deep shadows, I realized, I could move through Lexington like a dark streak in the night. Unseen. Unheard. Unbothered. Which was good, because with a wild cat on the loose, if the police saw me, they’d probably shoot on sight.
I have no idea how long it took me to work my way across town, sticking to shadows and back roads, jumping backyard fences and skirting lighted parking lots. At first, nothing was familiar. I’d never really ventured far from school on my own, and I didn’t have a car.
I was starving by the time I got to campus, having shifted and walked several miles without stopping to hunt and eat. In fact, I hadn’t eaten since Patricia Malone had put a plate of bacon and biscuits in front of me at seven that morning. Back when I’d been her son’s girlfriend, and her daughter’s maid of honor, and the aunt of her forthcoming grandson. Back before I’d been a murderer and a dishonored enforcer, on the run from her Alpha and headingstraightinto danger.
You know better, Abby.
I also knew I had no choice.
I entered campus from the south side, avoiding the student center and the apartments, and any other building with lit windows. To my relief, the rest of campus seemed to be deserted, which was no surprise on the first Saturday night of the winter break. Anyone with family had gone home. Anyone who’d stayed at school was either working or partying.
Minutes after I stepped on campus, my dorm came into sight. All the rooms on the front side were dark, but I circled to the back, avoiding flood- and porch lights. From the edge of the parking lot, I counted up three floors and over four windows to find my room. My heart tried to claw its way up through my throat.
My bedside lamp was on, but the form silhouetted in the light didnotbelong to Robyn.
FIFTEEN
