Wild Cat

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cassidy opened her eyes and snarled. No time for meditation. She’d just have to fight through the pain.

She struck at the bear and the wolf that closed in on her. Her paw ripped across the bear’s face before she felt the tingle of her Collar. But she couldn’t stop for that. She had to protect Xavier.

The wolf went for her throat. Cassidy gave up and let herself go. She became a ball of snarling teeth and claws. She struck and bit, swiped and ducked, using her Feline reflexes to out-jump, out-smack, out-leap her opponents.

Idiots. Miguel should have sent a Feline to take down a Feline. Bears and wolves outweighed her and had more brute strength, but Cassidy’s agility kept them from pinning her.

She fought hard until Miguel’s paw caught her on the side of her head. His bear was huge, almost as big as Shane. Cassidy stumbled, stunned, and her Collar bit pain deep into her.

Still she fought him. She couldn’t let Miguel kill Xavier.

Miguel roared. He was finished playing. Cassidy struggled on against him and the wolf, her claws leaving deep gouges. The second bear had retreated, his face a bloody mess.

Miguel clamped his giant maw on the back of Cassidy’s neck, huge teeth breaking through her fur. He started dragging Cassidy toward the dark doorway, from which issued a stench of fear and sweat.

The wolf was joined by a second, both of them circling on huge paws around Xavier. They were going to kill him.

Cassidy struggled, snarled, lashed, bit. Miguel held her fast. Damn him.

She did not want to go through that doorway. Despair and fear reigned there. Not that door, not that door…

Bright, blinding light. The whump of an explosion. More light. Cassidy’s eyes screwed shut, and Miguel grunted and dropped her. Cassidy tried to scramble away, only to be stopped by a paw whacking her down to her side.

More light. A flash of brightness so intense it blinded her even though Cassidy had instinctively shut her eyes.

And then the stench. Not Shifters. Sharp raw smells-ammonia, gasoline, and pepper. So much pepper. Not pepper spray, but an explosion of nose-assaulting chiles, the kind that could burn your skin and make your eyes and nose run for hours.

To throw that over a Shifter…

She heard yowls and snarls, howls. Confusion.

Over it came another explosion of light, and in the middle of the light-as well as her streaming eyes could see-a man.

Not a Shifter. He was an upright man with black hair and eyes like midnight. He held a shotgun in competent hands, and he blasted Shifters left and right. Behind him came a very, very angry grizzly.

The Shifters weren’t dying. They were falling, groaning, weeping, howling. Whatever Diego was hitting them with was making them insane with pain.

Two large paws locked over Cassidy. Miguel. Still up, still fighting.

He dragged Cassidy to the darkened doorway, caught her by the scruff of her neck, and tossed her inside. Cassidy shifted at the last second, the change painful this time, and caught the doorframe with both hands. Miguel shifted at the same time, rising tall to face Diego.

Diego just looked at him, no emotion, no fear, nothing in his face. He’d come to do a job, and he’d finish it. No questions.

“The woman is mine,” Miguel shouted at him. “No matter what you do to my Shifters, she’s my mate. I claim her.”

“I reject the claim!” Cassidy yelled.

Her shout would have been good enough for civilized Shifters, but Miguel only smiled. “The claim is mine unless this puny human here wants to Challenge.”

Diego would have no idea what that meant, but apparently he didn’t care. Diego brought up his shotgun and aimed it at Miguel.

“Consider this a challenge,” he said.

He fired. What hit Miguel was not a bullet, but scattered shot that smelled and burned. Miguel got it full in the face.

While Miguel was howling, Diego charged forward and grabbed Cassidy.

At the same time, the room filled with still more light, blinding and hot. A tall, lean man appeared in the middle of it-Stuart Reid.

Before Cassidy could register shock, Reid bent over Xavier and came up with the man across his shoulders. Another white-hot flash, and both were gone.

“Run,” Diego said into Cassidy’s ear, but his voice was still very calm. “Marlo set explosives. This wreck is coming down.”

“No, wait.”

Cassidy had glimpsed something important on the other side of the darkened doorway when Miguel had tried to throw her through it. She shook off Diego and charged through to stairs that led down into cool earth. The stench came from below.

What she’d seen on the stairs in the one moment she’d had to glance at them had been a child.

The cub had been about five years old, just old enough to shift, and he’d been naked and filthy. As she neared the bottom of the stairs, the smell got worse, and Cassidy found what she’d feared she’d find.

A big room-large enough, thank the Goddess, or Cassidy would have found worse than she did-spread out before her. Frightened eyes turned her way as she charged in.

The females. They were sequestered and naked, surrounded by the children too small to be around the full-grown males. Shifter males would have the instinct to kill the offspring of rival males-as with the problem of Torey in Cassidy’s Shiftertown-but the ferals wouldn’t even try to suppress the instinct. Miguel had obviously gotten around that problem by sequestering all cubs until they were big enough to fight for themselves. Even worse, some of the women down here were human.

Only one person rose to meet Cassidy-the alpha female, Miguel’s mate, who’d looked at Cassidy in such worry.

“Get them out,” Cassidy shouted at her. “Now.”

No one moved.

Damn it, there was no time. Diego’s attack depended on surprise, chaos, swiftness. Miguel would figure out how to regroup, and then they’d lose the advantage.

“This building is going to blow,” Cassidy said. “You have to leave.”

The females still stared at her, every confidence they’d ever possessed having been beaten from them long ago.

“Miguel’s down,” Cassidy said. “He’s finished. You’re free.”

“No!” The alpha’s cry was anguished. “You bitch, what did you do to my mate?”

She launched herself at Cassidy, shifting along the way.

Cassidy shifted again, her bones aching, her Collar already slowing her down. But she knew how this had to end. She had to defeat the alpha, become alpha herself, before the rest of the women would follow her.

The female, an Ursine, was unhampered by a Collar, but she’d been weakened by living down here in the darkness. In the real world, she wouldn’t have had the dominance Miguel had given her here.

The fight was swift. Cassidy’s Collar snapped and sparked, pain biting deep. Cassidy tried to close her mind to it and pinned the female with her paw. She fought the instinct that made her want to snap the woman’s neck, telling herself that whatever this woman had become, it wasn’t her fault.

Cassidy knocked the female’s head on the stone floor, and the woman groaned, the fight going out of her. Cassidy rose to her full height and shifted, pretending that the change wasn’t agony.

“Miguel mate-claimed me,” she said. “I just defeated your alpha, and unless someone else wants to challenge me, I’m alpha. And we’re going. Now.”

Animal instinct was amazing. The females sat for a stunned moment, then the idea made it through their brains that Cassidy had strength and power and, most of all, could protect them. Even the human females figured that out.

They got up, gathered their cubs, and started for the stairs.

“Diego,” Cassidy shouted upward. “We’re coming!”

“Hurry it up, mi ja,” Diego said, still sounding amazingly calm. “Marlo’s a pyromaniac.”

Cassidy herded the seven females and dozen cubs up the stairs. She’d have to come last, she knew, letting them know no one was getting left behind.

Cassidy caught the last, slow, crying little boy and sent him up the stairs after his mother. She grabbed the fallen alpha, who’d shifted back to human, slung her over her shoulder, and started up the stairs.

The Shifters were regrouping, looking for Miguel. Diego was propelling the women out of the gloom, Shane returning to help.

“Cass!” Diego shouted at her. “Hurry!”

Miguel was coming around. He saw Cassidy dash by with his mate over her shoulder, and came up with a roar.

Cassidy ran past Diego, who was walking through the big room as though he had all the time in the world. She emerged from the factory into sunlight and heat. Shane charged by her, crying cubs clinging to his back. Xavier was already out by the jeep, leaning heavily against it, Reid next to him. Some men from the village were there as well.

The bartender from the cantina saw the females coming toward them, gave a cry of joy, and launched himself at a dark-haired young human woman carrying a small boy. Father and daughter. Arms went around each other, the two crying and hugging.

Cassidy laid the alpha female on the ground next to the jeep then started back to the building. Diego hadn’t come out yet. She hurt too much to shift, but fear kept her running on her cut and bleeding human feet.

Before she made it halfway back, Diego emerged. He was dirty and bloody, his clothes ripped by claws, but he walked steadily toward her.

Behind him, the factory blew. Marlo’s charges, one after the other, sent the remaining walls of the factory heaving outward, and an orange ball of flame rose high into the hot sky.

Diego shouldered his shotgun as he reached Cassidy, then he put one arm around her shoulders and gave her a swift kiss on her lips.

“Hey, mi ja,” he said, his smile warm. “Need a ride?”

Diego didn’t get a chance to speak to Reid until they reached the airstrip.

“How did you do that?” Diego asked Reid. Reid stood with him and Xavier under a corrugated tin shelter as Diego checked Xavier over. “How did you know exactly where we were and how to get in?”

“GPS,” Reid answered. The man looked none the worse for wear, not even scratched or dirty. “Your pilot gave Eric the coordinates of the factory. I landed myself on the roof, looked things over, and figured out the fighting was worst in the main room. Got in there, saw your brother wounded, and pulled him out.”

“Thanks, Reid,” Xavier croaked. “I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing,” Reid said, and walked away.

Xavier groaned a little as he propped himself against the big water cooler Marlo had provided. “Reid is weird, but I’m grateful to him. Stop worrying about me, hermano, and go find out who those other guys Eric brought are.”

A second, smaller plane sat on the end of the dirt runway. This one had contained Reid, Eric, a couple of Eric’s trackers, and some Shifters Diego hadn’t met.

The Shifter that seemed to be the leader had dark hair going gray at the temples, blue eyes, and the hardest stare Diego had ever seen.

“This is Dylan Morrissey,” Eric said when Diego reached them. “From Austin. His son’s the Shiftertown leader there. I asked him here to check out this feral problem.”

Dylan looked Diego up and down, nostrils widening as he inhaled Diego’s scent. He obviously tried to make Diego look away, but Diego was getting a little tired of this game. He met Dylan’s gaze squarely and stayed put.

Dylan held out his hand, conceding. “Well met.”

Diego took his hand. Dylan pulled him forward and slid one strong arm around Diego’s back. A hug, but not quite. More an I’ll-trust-you-for-now-but-don’t-fuck-with-me kind of greeting.

“Diego blew up the ferals,” Shane said. The bear had put a T-shirt on over jeans of the right size, and he grinned, showing all his teeth. “It was awesome.”

“He blew up their base,” Dylan said, sounding less impressed. “Whichever ones survived will try to regroup and start again, especially if the leader survived. I’ve come to prevent that.”

“You by yourself?” Diego asked.

Dylan nodded, the man radiating self-assurance. “With a few of my trackers. I’ll have my mate join me if I have to come down on the Lupines. They won’t want to deal with her.”

“I believe you,” Eric said. “I’ve met Glory.”

“Plus I brought Collars,” Dylan said. “They’ll take them.”

“What about the females?” Cassidy moved to stand beside Diego. Someone had given her a dress decorated with bright red flowers, and her tall, sexy curves made the shapeless garment look good.

“They’ll go back with us,” Eric said. “I claimed them.”

Diego gave him a sharp look. “Wait, what? What does that mean?”

“Their males are defeated, and I’m a clan leader,” Eric said. “As leader and alpha, I can claim as many mates as I want. Don’t worry-it’s just a technicality to take them back safely to our Shiftertown. They’re now off-limits to other males, and once I get them back home and put Collars on them, I’ll release my claim. I promised them I wouldn’t kill their cubs, so they’re fine with me so far.”

He’d promised not to kill their cubs. Dios mio.

“How do you plan to explain to the humans in Las Vegas that five new women and all those kids are suddenly living in your Shiftertown?” Diego asked.

Eric smiled, but there was no humor in it. “You let me worry about that.”

“That lead feral, Miguel,” Diego said. “He said he mate-claimed Cassidy.”

Both Eric and Dylan turned intense gazes to Diego. “Did he?” Eric switched his stare to Cassidy. “Did Miguel survive? We haven’t looked at the casualties yet.”

“Diego Challenged him,” Cassidy said.

Again, both Eric and Dylan looked at Diego.

Cassidy laid her hand on Diego’s shoulder. “In front of witnesses, including Xavier. And I’d say he defeated Miguel, whether Miguel survived or not.”

Eric wasn’t smiling anymore. Dylan watched with keen interest.

“Anyone want to tell me exactly what you’re talking about?” Diego asked.

Eric shrugged. “It’s a little unorthodox. But Shifter law is Shifter law. Miguel made the mate-claim. You Challenged, you won. That means the mate-claim for Cassidy transfers from Miguel to you. Cassidy is yours to take as mate, if you still want her.”