“I’m fine!” Jared called out. Then he muttered obscenities at me under his breath. But when he tried to stand, his dislocated knee folded beneath him and he crashed into the dirt with a less-than-masculine screech of pain. I might have laughed, if I weren’t hyperaware that Kaci was still out there somewhere by herself. Hurt andbleeding.
As two men scrambled down from the road, I glanced around, trying to figure out where Kaci might have gone. There was nothing but desert and a few rocky hilltops on this side of the highway,but—
My gaze caught on a small trail of dark droplets in the dirt, stretching from the car up the embankment to the road, about fifteen feet from where the crowd hadgathered.
Shit. She crossed thehighway.
One of the men who’d come to help saw me staring at the blood trail. “There was someone else in the car. A girl,” he said. “We called out to her, but she just ran off. Must have been inshock.”
“Thanks, guys,” I said as he and the other newcomer helped Jared to his feet. “I’ll see if I can find her.” While the injured enforcer glared at me, I followed the trail of blood up the embankment toward thehighway.
At the road again. I waited for a couple of cars to pass, then I confirmed that the trail led across both oncoming lanes and onto the median. I couldn’t see any farther than that, but by then Kaci’s destination was obvious. In the distance was a small grove of trees, an oasis likely fed by a stream or small river,and—
Movement in that direction caught my eye, and Isquinted.
Kaci. My chest ached, and renewed urgency spurred me into action. It was hard to tell across the distance, but she seemed to be limping. Orstumbling.
I hurried back to the rental, relieved to see that oncoming cars hadn’t yet ripped the open driver’s side door off, then I started the car and swung onto the road again as fast as I could. I took the first available turnaround, then sped back toward the wreck from the opposite side of the highway. When the trees came into view, I slowed and veered carefully onto the dirt, fully aware that the rental car was a sedan, not anSUV.
I drove past the thin length of woods and parked at the end, facing the direction we’d need to head to put more distance between us and the Southwestern territory boundary. Then I got out of the car and took off through thefoliage.
Kaci only had a few minutes’ head start on me. I was determined to find her and make up for putting her in danger in the firstplace.
This was my chance to do the right thing—even if that meant risking execution to take herhome.
Thirteen
Kaci
Desperate,I glanced around as I stumbled through the underbrush. The woods looked thicker to the west, so I headed that way, and when I found as dense a patch of underbrush as I was likely to, I squatted in it to rest while I examined mywounds.
My head was tender, but there was a lump in my brow, rather than a dent, so I decided to call myself lucky on that front. I had to use the filthy tail of my shirt to wipe the blood from my arms. Most of my scratches were minor and shallow, but the laceration in my left forearm was long and deep, and it welled with more blood every time I tried to cleanit.
The cut needed stitches, at the very least. But my only options were to try to tie the wound closed with a strip of cloth from my shirt or try to heal it by shifting into cat form. As my body reassembled itself, it would naturally begin to heal my wounds. At the very least, that would slow the bleeding in my arms and accelerate the scabbingprocess.
Unfortunately walking around as a big black cat would be dangerously conspicuous in the middle of the desert, especially in broad daylight, because in nature, most large cats are crepuscular; they’re mostly active at dusk and dawn. I did have this handy—if shallow—patch of woods, which should shield me from human notice. However, I wouldn’t be hard for Jared to find while I was leaking fragrant blood all over the place, even if he couldn’t actually track me byscent.
But maybe he wouldn’t bother looking for me. His car was trashed, and he’d have to explain that to both the police and to Paul Blackwell. And he was hurt. If the cops got to him before he got to me, they might make him go to the hospital, which would open a whole new can of worms for him, considering the risk of medical care exposing our species to thepublic.
Maybe if I hurried, I could shift to accelerate the healing of my arm, then climb one of the trees and hunker down out of sight for a while. Maybe Jared would walk right past me, if he came looking atall.
That felt like my best bet, so I knelt in the underbrush and took off my clothes, shaking from exhaustion and stress. I spread my shirt and jeans out on the ground and lay down on top of them. Then I closed my eyes and focused on breathing deeply. On blocking out the pain in my head and my arm, as well as the feline sense of urgency demanding that Irununtil I dropped dead, rather than get caught, though my human mind knew there was a better, if riskier,solution.
When my breathing was even and my hands had stopped shaking, I began to visualize what I wanted to happen. Speed was critical, but if I freaked myself out, the process would actually takelonger.
My first shift had been five years ago. It was traumatic, violent, and completely unexpected. I’d long-since learned to control the process and had never once, since the day Faythe found me in the woods, lost control of myself in cat form. But that old fear was still there. Still very real. It was still my worstnightmare.
In cat form, I still felt like amonster.
Tears filled my eyes as my jaw began to pop. That sound cascaded down my spine, then echoed through the rest of my joints, and more tears fell, not from the pain, though there was plenty of that, but from thememories.
I had never loved shifting like the others did, and I probably never would. I would never love to race through the woods and hunt and eat raw game, because where they saw sport and exercise—tapping into a primal nature that was as much a part of us as were our human selves—I saw violence and death. And this time was nodifferent.
As my legs began to thin out and reform, shooting pain through both muscle and bone, I remembered my mother and my sister. I remembered screaming in agony in my backyard as my body tore itself apart, out of nowhere. As my fingernails grew into claws, I remembered those very claws swiping and slashing at the mother who’d given me life and raised me, because I hadn’t known how to handle my own terror and confusion. Because inherterror, she had become a threat. Because my newly-feline self had lashed out through untemperedinstinct.
While my jaw elongated and my teeth moved around in my mouth, sharpening into curved points, I thought of that woman in the woods in Montana. The hiker. I remembered dragging her body into a tree through some compulsion I’d had no way ofunderstanding.
All I’d known for sure that day, trapped in the body of a creature I still hardly understood, was that I was hungry. And that she’d smelled likefood.
