and neither of us even pretended I was shivering from cold, or from shock. He hadn’t touched me in months, and the pain of my injuries couldn’t trump the feel of his hand on my skin. Squeezing. Stroking. Lingering…
I clamped my jaws shut on a moan of both pain and pleasure, unwilling to embarrass either of us with my lack of control.
“You ready?” Marc asked, and I nodded hesitantly. In spite of many past injuries, I’d never had homemade sutures, and had certainly never surrendered to them with nothing more than Tylenol for pain. Well, Tylenol and whiskey—not my drink of choice, but apparently sitting for stitches wasn’t a margarita-sippin’ kind of event.
He smiled sympathetically and lifted my leg to slide a clean white towel from the bathroom beneath my thigh. “Take a couple of drinks while I get you cleaned up.”
For once, he didn’t have to tell me twice. On the table sat two glasses. One Manx had half filled with whiskey, the other with Coke and ice from the vending machine in the lobby. I picked up the first glass and made myself gulp twice before chasing the contents with half the cup of Coke. I barely felt the sting of peroxide on my thigh because of the flames of whiskey in my throat.
Marc laughed and poured more soda. Then he picked up the thin, curved suture needle.
The hardest part was holding still. The needle didn’t hurt much more than the gashes themselves. So as long as I didn’t look, I was mostly okay. Even so, within minutes I’d finished both glasses, and Vic crossed the room to refill them for me with his good arm.
We were both half-drunk, and probably looked pretty damn pathetic. The alcohol would wear off quickly, thanks to our enhanced metabolism, but I had a feeling the pathetic part would last a while. And leave scars.
Like I didn’t have enough of those already…
By the time Marc had sewed up my thigh, and cleaned and bandaged both my ankle and my arm, Ethan and Painter were back with dinner: five large pizzas, three more two-liters, and two dozen doughnuts.
Manx refused to leave Des, even with him asleep in the middle of the bed in the next room, with the connecting doors open. So she took a paper plate full of pizza back to her room. The rest of us spread out on the floor of Vic and Ethan’s room, pizza boxes open, plastic cups filled with one combination or another of soda, ice and alcohol. I had more Coke, with Absolut Vanilia, which Dan had picked up because he thought it might go down easier for me. He was right. If I held my nose while I swallowed, it tasted like Vanilla Coke.
Sort of.
“So, how is the kid?” Dan asked, a slice of pizza poised to enter his mouth, point first. “She any closer to Shifting?”
I shook my head. “She won’t even talk about it. And when you try to make her, she puts on her earphones and turns her music up loud enough to damage her own hearing.”
Vic grinned at Ethan, and spoke with his mouth full. “Michael says you should never have given her that damn thing.”
“Whatever.” Ethan tossed his crust into a half-empty pizza box and grabbed another slice. “She’s not turning up her music because she doesn’t want to Shift, or because she doesn’t want to talk about Shifting. She’s turning up her music ‘cause she’s a teenager. And because she doesn’t want to hear any more of that psychobabble bullshit you all spout at her 24/7.”
“We’re not spouting psychobabble, we’re trying to keep her healthy,” I insisted, sipping from my cup. “But you’re right. Michael’s full of shit.” My brother grinned, so I continued. “Listening to that MP3 player is the closest she’s ever going to get to a normal teenage activity. Well, that and ignoring the advice of her elders.”
“You’d know.”
“Bite me,” I snapped. But Ethan was right, of course. I’d recently begun seeing things from the far side of the generation gap, and the view from the adult side sucks.
“How long’s it been since she Shifted?” Dan asked, reaching for another piece of pizza.
“More than two months.”
He frowned. “Has anyone ever gone that long without Shifting?”
I searched my memory, but came up blank as Marc shook his head. “No one I can think of.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Ethan grinned. “I’m not one to deny my animalistic urges.”
I’d probably never heard a more truthful statement.
“Speaking of which, any idea what that whole ambush was about?” I asked, around a mouthful of Meat Lover’s. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Not even from Zeke Radley and his Pride.” I raised the cup again and drank deeply that time. I was more relaxed now that the alcohol had kicked in, and was determined to enjoy my buzz while it lasted. “I thought strays were mostly loners.”
Painter sat straighter as all eyes turned his way for verification from our resident expert. “Yeah, for the most part. But strays’ll come together if they have a good reason to, just like anybody else.”
“Like a common enemy?” I asked, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. How had we become that common enemy?
“Yeah. Or somethin’ they wanna know.” His cheeks flushed. “Like how to fight. To take care of themselves, you know? Like Marc’s been teaching me.”
And Marc was a fine instructor, if his protégé’s performance that night was any indication. Painter was damn talented with a hammer.
“So, did you know any of those toms we fought?” Vic asked, and I heard a thin thread of tension in his voice, though his expression seemed amiable enough.
“Not friendly-like.” Dan took another bite, but then his chewing slowed to a stop as the reasoning behind the question sank in. He swallowed thickly. “I had nothin’ to do with that. I fought with you guys.”
So he had, greatly strengthening our odds. And he could easily have been killed.
But Marc’s eyes had gone hard, and his expression sent a chill up my arms, in spite of the hotel heater and my alcohol-induced flush. “Dan, did you tell anyone we were coming through tonight?” His voice had gone deep and scary, and no one was chewing anymore.
Painter shook his head, eyes wide. “Just Ben. He’s interested in Pride politics and wanted to meet you guys. I told him I’d introduce him. But he never showed up.”
“Damn it, Dan!” Marc stood in a lightning-fast, fluid motion and kicked an unopened bottle of soda across the room. It crashed into the door and rolled away. “You may as well have handed us over bound and gagged. The whole damn ambush was your fault!”
Four
Painter’s face flushed, and he shook his head vehemently. “Ben wasn’t there tonight.” The stray stood uncertainly, backing away from Marc out of instinct even a human would have understood. “He wasn’t with the toms we fought.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t cut my hose, or tell someone else where we’d be,” Marc growled, advancing on him slowly as we watched. “You need to understand something, Dan. You will never be a Pride cat if you don’t learn when to keep your mouth shut!” With that, he grabbed Painter by the arm, ripped open the hotel door and tossed him out into the parking lot.
Before the door swung shut, I caught a glimpse of Dan as he stumbled across the sidewalk and reached out to steady himself on the hood of the Suburban. He looked shocked, and as disappointed as an orphan at Christmas, still clutching a half-eaten slice of Supreme in one hand as the door slammed in his face.
“Will he be okay out there?” I asked, as Marc threw the dead bolt and stomped across the carpet toward us.
“Who cares if he isn’t?” Marc folded his legs beneath