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Removed from the increasing aural chaos raging in the meeting hall, I could hear Mallory’s motorcycle approaching from the north side of the building. My mother had been set to ride behind my father just as I was riding behind Doone. Clark, the black bear who had traveled with my parents came into view near the northeast side, the section marked off for the leap’s security SUVs. Wearing a big bearish grin, Clark began slashing tires as a backstop in case we all fucked up our primary mission and were forced to flee. Buzzsaw, the huge elk shifter, rode in behind him, getting off his bike with a satchel of pipe bombs.
“We’re sure it’s adults only?” he asked, a thick knot of stress strangling his vocal cords as he slid his first explosive into the tail pipe of Henric’s Maserati Quattroporte GT.
“As sure as we can be,” my mother answered. “Henric despises children and wouldn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut about anything said at the gathering.”
“Confirmed,” Clover piped up. “I have the kids’ locations tagged.”
Seriously, when had the she-wolf slept? Of course, along with her mate there to guard her, Clover had Garland, the other elk shifter in our party who was nearly as tech savvy as she was.
Garret and Ross, the two older sons of an alpha wolf named Axel, were in sniper positions on the ground covering the lot’s south side entrance, while Axel and his youngest son David covered the north entrance. Rooster, Clark’s brother, was climbing down from a lookout position high up in one of the pines at the northwest corner of the lot.
Feeling a little dizzy from all the details spinning in my head, I squeezed Doone more tightly. The plan was that—on an orchestrated signal—Rooster would join my parents and Buzzsaw on the building’s north entrance while Clark and Taron joined me, Doone, and Onyx, at the south entrance. The two teams would simultaneously breach the building. How things worked out from there depended on which of the cats I’d grown up around were willing to die to preserve their sadistic leader’s hold on the community.
“Breach on four,” Mallory said before beginning the countdown as Taron, on our side of the building, grabbed hold of the door handle and eased the door toward him just enough to know there was no lock or other impediment to thwart our entry.
“One…two…three—”
A scream shouted before my father could reach four. I recognized the screamer’s voice. It had haunted me through all of my childhood. It was Henric. Only the scream wasn’t some strident command or beratement. It was an outpouring of agony.
“Breach, breach, breach!” Mallory shouted.
Taron threw open the door on our side. Doone rushed in as point man. I followed, my body nearly plastered against his back. Clark headed up to the empty gallery seating while Taron and Onyx brought up the rear.
“Kill them!” Kitka shouted, her body shielded by Henric, one of her knives buried in his chest. Black lines spiderwebbed across what was visible of my stepfather’s pale white skin.
My mother hissed over her headset. “She has nightshade on her weapons!”
“I’m your leader now!” Kitka shouted again. “The leap is mine by kill right.”
“He’s not dead yet,” Justine snarled, her hand jerking up as she took aim and fired a bullet that shattered Henric’s sternum and another that blasted a hole in his right cheek.
Already twisted in agony, his body collapsed to the floor as Kitka dove behind the podium.
The leap members carrying weapons reached for them, but no one seemed ready to fire the next shot. From above, two semi-automatic 12-gauge Bullpup shotgun’s were simultaneously racked, the sound somehow penetrating the confused shouts of the gathered shifters and Henric’s dying screams as the datura on Kitka’s blade impeded his ability to heal.
Like a wave cresting, dozens of heads lifted to stare at Clark and Rooster in the gallery, their powerful shotguns promising to spray down agony upon the head of every leap member gathered. The alphas in the group had a chance of surviving, but the betas lives would depend on whether their alphas were in a position to heal them.
Clover had silenced the recordings upon Mallory’s order to breach, but she brought the sound back up to an eerie whisper, adding in Kitka’s earlier bragging at the beginning of the meeting about killing Mammad, Pohl, Xander and Sarah.
“Bitch!” Kitka screamed, her fury physically lashing out at Henric as she jabbed at him like he was a block of ice cubes that needed breaking up.
He lingered in absolute agony. A hard part of me felt a dark joy. Then terror brought me to my knees as my mother broke cover, moving into position so she could line up the shot that would end his misery.
He didn’t deserve a merciful end, didn’t deserve Justine launching herself in harm’s way to deliver it.
With her unflagging, crazy, whiplash smile, Kitka expertly drew her 9mm, the bullets no doubt dipped in the same deadly nightshade eating its way through Henric’s blood stream. She didn’t point the gun at him.
She pointed it at my mother.
Doone threw an arm up to block me, but he didn’t read my intent fast enough.
And he had no idea what he was trying to block as my shift came over me mid-leap and against my will. It wasn’t a wolf or a panther taking shape—not like I was used to. The same disoriented rush of chemicals battered through me as the first time I had shifted as a wolf instead of a panther. But it wasn’t a beta’s paws I reached forward with.
Clawed hands took shape, the fingers elongating, the nails nearly as long and curved like a karambit blade. Shock at the form my body was taking hit me half a second before the first of Kitka’s three bullets. I screamed, the pain unlike any I had ever known as the datura hit my bloodstream and began to pump its poison through me. My senses reeled, but my body continued on course, the momentum of my leap too fierce. My clawed hand punched into Kitka’s stomach as we collided. I ripped the bitch’s intestines out at the same time my teeth sank into her neck. Tightening my jaw, I punched both hands back into her gut, slicing upwards through internal organs until I found her heart.
I sank my claws into it, felt its beat shudder one last time before I ripped it out, my howl echoing off the concrete walls. It hit the ground with a wet, meaty thud, the sound accompanied by my collapse as the nightshade from the bullets brought me to my knees. Tears flooded my eyes. I could barely see. And then a wave of energy knocked me to the ground.
Others collapsed around me. Not just foes, but friends. My parents, Taron and Onyx, even Clark and Buzzsaw up in the gallery, their weapons clattering onto the floor in front of me.
