Rachel Vincent - Shift

Better decide what to tell Marc soon… Because if Jace couldn’t get it together, someone was going to notice him acting weird around me. And Marc.

“Yes. It doesn’t make much sense to Shift, in case the birds are still in the area. You can’t slash overhead without exposing your underbelly. And hopefully you’ll see them coming from a way off.”

Now that we knew to look for them…

“You’ll hear them, too, once they get close,” I added. “Those wings are strong, but not exactly stealthy.”

My father nodded. “What can we scrounge up in the way of weapons?” Because in human form, even with that swing-overhead advantage, we were pretty defenseless against talons.

“Tools,” Marc said. “Hammers, crowbars, tire irons, a couple of big wrenches.” All of which had gotten plenty of use two weeks before, when we’d fought a huge mob of strays trying to kill Marc in front of us to send a message.

“Knives,” my mother added softly. “I have three sets of butcher knives and several boning knives, all of which should work just as well on live birds as on dead ones.” The only person who looked more surprised than I felt was Paul Blackwell, who surely realized by then that his appeal to my mother as the “gentler sex” had fallen on not only deaf, but grief-hardened ears.

“And a meat mallet.” Jace crossed thick arms over his chest, and that time he did smile at me, while most of the toms chuckled. Even those who hadn’t been present had heard about me taking out a stray with a massive meat mallet in lieu of my claws, during my trial in Montana three months earlier. Apparently that one was going to stick with me.

“Good.” Even my father cracked a small, brief smile. “Karen, will you arm the troops?” Anyone else would have gotten a simple order. My mother got a request.

She nodded solemnly, then ushered Kaci into the kitchen as Dad turned back to the rest of us. “Pair up, and report to my wife to be armed. Call your Alpha if you find anything. Dismissed.”

Marc and I stood as the others filed out of the office and across the hall. He took my hand, and Jace watched us, forgetting to look away for a moment. To look uninterested. But then Brian stepped into his line of sight, just before Marc looked up, and surely would have noticed.

“You ready?” Brian had been paired with Jace since Ethan’s death, and now that Marc was back, we’d been reunited in the field, even with his unofficial status. Owen and Parker were still partners, but since my brother was temporarily out of commission, Parker would head out with Vic, who was currently partnerless because of the uneven number of enforcers.

Jace nodded and followed Brian across the hall with one more glance at me.

“He’ll be okay.” Marc nodded toward Jace’s back as he slid one arm around my waist. “Ethan’s death hit us all pretty hard, but it changed him.”

My heart nearly burst through my chest and I struggled to get my pulse under control. “What do you mean?”

He hung back to let me through the doorway first, so he didn’t see my eyes close in silent, fervent hope that he hadn’t seen too much difference in Jace. Or in me. “He’s serious all the time now. Morose and angry. It’s creepy.”

“He’s a better enforcer for it,” I said, and Marc nodded without hesitation. I knew what he was thinking: too bad it took my brother’s death to bring out Jace’s true potential.

A line had formed in the kitchen, leading in through the hall and out through the dining room. Kaci and my mom stood behind the bar, handing out an assortment of makeshift weapons that would have made any action-movie bad-ass proud. Toms left in pairs, clutching knives or tools someone had gathered from the basement and from assorted car trunks.

Ed Taylor and my uncle Rick were at the head of the line, and right behind them stood my father and Bert Di Carlo. The Alphas selected weapons, then headed toward the door with the enforcers, and I blinked in surprise. Then nodded in growing respect. Most Alphas were past their physical prime—although a glance at Taylor would undermine that assumption—and while they still had to Shift and exercise to maintain good health, they didn’t often patrol or hunt with their men.

The fact that they were all going to go out in search of our missing man filled me with more pride than I knew how to contain. They knew that every life was valuable, and unlike Calvin Malone, they were willing to put their own tails on the line to prove it.

Jace and Brian accepted their weapons in front of us and headed outside without a backward glance.

“Here.” As I stepped up to the counter, Kaci reached to the side of the dwindling selection and picked up a large hammer with a black rubber grip. “I saved this one for you. Figured you’d need an advantage, working left-handed.” She nodded toward my casted right arm.

My mother watched out of the corner of her eye, sliding a large wrench across the counter toward Marc while I arched one brow at Kaci. The tabby hated violence, which, on the surface, should have made her the ideal young tabby. But Kaci was raised as a human, by human parents who’d had no idea they’d each contributed the recessive gene necessary to transform their youngest daughter into a werecat at the onset of puberty.

Considering what she’d been through—accidentally killing her mother and sister during her first Shift, then wandering through the woods for weeks on her own, stuck in cat form—Kaci’s die-hard pacifist stance was no surprise. But it wasn’t enough to make her into what the opposing half of the council wanted. Because she was raised as a human, Kaci had human expectations from life, none of which included marrying the tom of her Alpha’s choosing and siring the next generation of werecats—as many sons as it took to get a precious daughter.

And Kaci had a mouth, and she was not afraid to use it. Which made certain elements of the council even more determined to get her out from under my questionable influence.

“Thanks.” I forced a smile, and met my mother’s gaze over Kaci’s head.

“Be careful,” she said, and I nodded. Then Marc and I went out the front door after the others.

Several pairs of enforcers had gone into the woods, but Jace and Brian were headed for the west field, so Marc and I started out in the opposite direction, walking several feet apart, and breathing through our noses in spite of the February cold burning my nostrils. We didn’t want to miss a scent.

It was eerily quiet in the field, other than the whisper-crunch of our boots crushing dead grass. Though the temperature had risen dramatically from the ice storm a couple of weeks earlier, it was still hovering in the mid-thirties, and my fingers had gone stiff with the cold. I tried to shove them in my jacket pockets, but my cast stopped my right hand at the first knuckles. My nose was running, and I sniffled as we turned at the edge of the field, eyeing the periwinkle-colored sky in distrust.

Danger had never literally come out of the blue before. Out of tree branches, yes. Overhead beams, second stories, and even porch roofs. But never from the sky, and suddenly I felt unbearably vulnerable standing in a wide-open field, where before, such surroundings had always made me feel free and eager to run.

And my paranoia was not helped by the fact that, though no one had said it out loud, we were obviously looking for a body on our own land.

On our third pass through the field, I dug a tissue from my left pocket and held it awkwardly to blow my nose—yet another simple activity rendered nearly impossible thanks to my cast. Then I froze with the folded tissue halfway to my pocket. My first unobstructed breath had brought with it a familiar scent, and an all-too-familiar jolt of fear.