“Have you told her?”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my forehead, fighting off frustration. I hadn’t seen Marc in months, and I wanted these few hours together to pass pleasantly. “But she doesn’t think we’ll do it. She says she’d rather be tired for the rest of her life than risk hurting someone in cat form.”

“Yeah, but would she rather be dead?”

I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the headrest. “Honestly, I think she would. She’s horrified by what happened last time, and we still can’t get her to talk about it. But I’m hoping that if I can—”

My eyes flew open as Marc’s car jerked beneath us and started to sputter.

“What’s that?” I sat straight in my seat, staring out the windshield at nothing but darkness, broken by two overlapping cones of light from the headlights.

He didn’t answer, but his hands tightened around the already misshapen wheel—a casualty of many past temper fits—and his frown deepened.

The car sputtered again, then began to shake, like it was trying to die. Steam rolled from beneath the hood, white as snow against the cold, black night.

Marc veered slowly onto the right shoulder, glancing back and forth between the windshield and the rearview mirror. I twisted to watch as Vic came to a stop behind us. We got out, crunching on a layer of ice, and Vic joined us at the front of the car, where Marc pulled a penlight from his pocket and popped the hood. He shined the light on parts I didn’t recognize, grunting in frustration. Then he knelt and shimmied under the car, in spite of the frigid concrete at his back.

Seconds later he emerged, scowling. “My radiator hose is slashed.”

“Son of a bitch!” Vic muttered, as Ethan stepped out of the SUV, followed by Manx, clutching the bundled baby to her chest. “You can’t drive long like that. No more than ten, fifteen miles. Had to’ve happened at the gas station.”

Marc nodded in agreement, then his eyes met mine, his face lit unevenly by the headlights. “We’ll pile into Vic’s SUV with everyone else, and I’ll have mine towed.”

Obviously, that wasn’t how I’d intended our reunion to go, but it could have been much worse, especially considering that some asshole had sabotaged Marc’s car. What if they’d cut the brake line instead?

Pissed now, I jerked open the passenger-side door and leaned in to grab the sodas Marc had bought at the Conoco. And that’s when I saw them. Two pinpoints of red light in the trees across the street. Those lights went out, then appeared again a second later.

Eyes. Cat eyes, reflecting the little available light. Someone was blinking, and whoever it was, he wasn’t alone. Several more sets of eyes appeared in the trees, each pair at least ten feet from the next.

My stomach twisted in on itself, churning around my road-trip munchies in fear. We hadn’t just been sabotaged. We’d been fucking ambushed.

Straightening slowly, I sniffed, wincing when the frigid air pierced my nose, throat, and lungs with a thousand microscopic shards of ice. Fortunately, one good whiff was enough.

Strays.

“Um…guys?” I hissed as the first dark form slunk out of the woods and into the moonlit night, uncommon confidence in each silent step.

“We see them,” Marc whispered, and I glanced over the roof to find him backing slowly toward the trunk of his car.

“Three strays at your six o’clock, Faythe,” Vic said, anger threading a cord of danger through his voice as he stared over my shoulder. “No, make that four.”

At my back, too? Damn it! “Five more straight ahead.” I nodded at the trees across the street and stepped to the side so I could close the car door.

Gravel crunched on my left, and my brother spoke from his position near the passenger side of the Suburban. “This makes no sense. Strays are loners.”

Yet several had united to fight us in Montana two months earlier. This new trend made me nervous. As did the cats creeping slowly toward us—from all directions. Each in cat form. At a glance I counted eleven of them now, and there were only five of us, even if Manx could fight holding a baby. Which she could not.

“Manx, get in the car with Des,” Marc ordered. Manx climbed through Vic’s rear driver-side door without a word and shoved it closed.

Okay, make that four of us.

“Faythe?” Marc had his trunk open now, and he held something out to me. I inched toward him with my arm extended, sliding for a moment before I could steady myself on the thin layer of ice beneath my boots. Something long, cold and hard hit my palm—a shovel, still caked with dried dirt.

I arched one eyebrow at him in question, and he gave me a grim smile. “We don’t stand a chance unarmed.” And there was clearly no time to Shift. I shivered from the cold, but knew I’d soon be sweating from exertion.

Marc tossed a second shovel to Vic, who caught it one-handed, then he pulled a small ax from the trunk and wrapped both hands around the twelve-inch rubber grip. He hefted it briefly, as if considering, then handed it to Ethan, who’d come to a stop on his left.

“You ready for this?” Marc asked, pulling a crowbar from the trunk for himself before slamming it shut.

“Looking forward to it.” Ethan removed his earphones from around his neck with his free hand. He wound them around his MP3 player and slid both into his front pocket, then gave the ax an experimental swing. “What, no samurai?” He swung the ax again, then shrugged, green eyes glinting in bleak humor. “I guess this’ll do.”