I scrambled across the floor, heedless as more glass sliced into my hands. Andrew sat against the wall, his eyes wide and empty. His hands clawed at his throat, now impaled by an iron railroad spike. I watched in mute horror as blood spurted.

It was over in seconds. His hands went slack and fell into his lap. His gore-stained chest stopped rising. And as his heart stopped beating, the flow of blood slowed to a dribble.

I sat still on the floor, in a hazy beam of light filtered through filthy windows, staring at a widening pool of the blood I’d first contaminated, then spil ed. Andrew was dead. I’d killed him. And I couldn’t feel a fucking thing.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Marc was the one who found us, an eternity later, though he swore it couldn’t have been more than two minutes. He burst through the front door, eyes blazing, ready to tear into whichever of us had survived. In a single sweeping glance, he took in the entire room: scattered debris, bloody corpse, and me. He didn’t ask me what happened. He just pul ed me to my feet and held me, heedless of the blood I smeared all over him.

I remember him asking if I was okay. And I remember not knowing the answer.

“Faythe, I need you to do something for me,” he said, wiping a smudge of blood from my chin. “I need you to save what you’re feeling now. Put it in a box in your mind, seal it up and stack it with all your other memories.” He took my hand and noticed the embedded splinters of glass, which he began to pull out as he spoke. “Later, you can open the box, and go through what’s inside. But for now, I need you to put it away.

We have to get everything cleaned up, and get out of here before the police come. Do you understand?”

Still numb, I nodded. I understood. It was time to save the day. Again.

“Luiz?” I asked as Marc lifted my arms and pulled my blouse over my head.

“Got away.” He turned me gently by my shoulders and began plucking shards of glass from my back. I thought it would hurt, but I didn’t feel a thing. “The park butts up to a swatch of pine forest, and he took off through the trees. I couldn’t catch him on two feet, and I couldn’t leave the rest of you like this. Don’t worry, though. We’ll get him.”

Sure we would. Just like I’d gotten Andrew.

Vic turned out to be mostly okay. Luiz had clawed the shit out of him, but the scratches, though long, were mostly superficial. He was even able to help with the cleanup, so while Marc got me fixed up and changed into his shirt, Parker and Vic dealt with Manx, who had to be cuffed, in spite of a very swol en wrist, and carried careful y to the van. She was alive but unconscious, and we had no idea how badly she was hurt. Or how the baby was doing.

Jace was shot in the shoulder. He’d lost a lot of blood and was drifting in and out of consciousness, but Parker said it didn’t look fatal. He’d already called my father and Dr. Carver, who’d promised to leave for the ranch immediately.

We threw the bloody two-by-four and the iron pipe into the van, then Parker and Marc wrapped Andrew in plastic, held closed with duct tape. I soaked up his blood from the floor with a roll of shop towels, which we then tied in a plastic bag, along with my ruined blouse. The guys poured bleach over the stain, from a half-full bottle found in one of the abandoned bathrooms. We did the best we could with what we had.

Hopeful y it would be good enough.

Marc drove to the Lazy S, with Andrew’s body in the van. Manx lay next to him, bound and still out cold, and the one glimpse I got of her reminded me jarringly of my own recent trip in the back of a strange van, also bound and mostly unconscious. I tucked that thought away in one of Marc’s mental boxes. Someday I was going to have to clean out my memory-attic, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

As per our Alpha’s instructions, Parker took Andrew’s car into an empty field an hour and a half west of Henderson, where Owen picked him up.

In spite of his injuries, Vic insisted on driving his Jeep to the ranch, so I sat in back with Jace, doing my best to keep him comfortable. He lay with his head in my lap. We all three winced over every bump in the road.

At home, my mother disinfected my cuts, clucked her tongue over my bruises, and stitched up Vic’s chest, after numbing it with a topical cream. She made Jace as comfortable as possible on the living-room couch, lined in plastic to avoid bloodstains. He woke up shortly after we got home, and I sat with him for nearly an hour. He said he’d thought Manx was aiming at me. Then he joked about how he should have pushed me out of the way, instead of jumping in front of the bullet.

I thanked him for being an idiot. Then I kissed him on the forehead and left him with a bowl of sympathy ice cream.

Manx wound up in the guest room, where my mother spent most of the first few hours after our return waiting for the mystery tabby to open her eyes. She’d been first surprised, then pleased to hear that Manx was pregnant, and she confirmed my amateur diagnosis with one quick sniff.

But she grew more worried with each hour that passed without Manx waking up.

I didn’t know how I should feel about the tabby who’d caused so much trouble. She’d kil ed at least three tomcats in the past week, and shot Jace, though as near as I could tel , she’d actually been aiming for Andrew, who’d snuck in behind me. Still, I had trouble feeling any real sympathy. But the baby couldn’t be held responsible for its mother’s actions. Even I had to admit that.

While my mother split her nursing duties between Manx and Jace, I spent hours in the office with my father, helping the guys re-create every microscopic detail of our day in Henderson. The box I’d stacked in my mind remained neatly sealed as I filled them in on Luiz’s failed efforts to create a female stray and Andrew’s involvement in the project. I told them I thought the col ege students Luiz kil ed over the summer were part of the same plan. And I told them how I’d killed Andrew in self-defense.